Special Day of the Year

As part of my split of personality, on the one hand, I think that I’m no different than many folks in the society, cos I may have my own background, thinking or hobbies, I’m just a regular folk that easily ease in this complex society. On the other hand, I think that I’m very different from most folks, I’m not like most of them, I’m unique and don’t hesitate to go against what many others believe. One of the example is that, I don’t particularly fond of the idea of doing certain things on certain days of the year just because many others are doing it. However, those things are not something I’ve never done before. Maybe, cos I’m getting old, for many of those things, I’ve feeling of ‘been there, done that’. So, those things are just not appeal to me.

That’s why I won’t be keen on going out tonight to see the night scene across the Victoria Harbor, or going to Time Square in Causeway Bay to do so-called ‘Countdown’. Come on, I’d been the real Time Square in NYC on News Year Eve in 1999, how cool was that? So, I won’t even bother to the ‘rip-off/copycat’ even at the Time Square here locally.

To be sarcastic or else, I just don’t see what is the difference before and after midnight tonight?...Nothing! Why people need year end resolution? What they need to recollect what did they do wrong in past year and try to make changes starting January 1? For me, I can and SHOULD do that everyday. For me, all these are just simply excuses, try to make something out of nothing. I may be considered by others as ‘bored’ or ‘anti-social’ because of these. Nonetheless, if things are being looked at in an objective and logical way, I don’t think there is anything wrong with my opinion.

The most ridiculous thing that some local folks ‘created’ is the 'countdown' on Christmas Eve few days ago. Come on, I think it only happens here, cos it makes no sense at all. Christmas is ‘supposed’ to be the birthday of Jesus Christ. Whether he really borne on December 25 2007 years ago is debatable, but why should there be a countdown for that? Birth of Jesus is not like a rocket ready to take off! When some folks that I met on that day mentioned that I simply ridiculed that idea of joining any stupid countdown.

I think that what I said is kinda ‘anti-festival’ in some senses, but that’s not totally true. I respect certain traditions of festival. Just don’t create something out of nothing.

Dreams

Everybody has his/her opinion about dreams. Certainly, I’m not talking about day-dreaming or those so call dreams which are hopes indeed. I’m talking about those subconscious vivid experience while we are in deep sleeping mode.

I love dreams and I dream often in sleep, though I can’t recall 99% of them. But I do know that I’ve dreamed when I wake up in the morning, just base on those 1% residue of dreams. If I didn’t dream the night before, I’ll have a feeling that time passed very fast all through the night, and I will feel the lack of sleep. The feeling is like you flip through a blank book from cover to bottom in a flesh. There is nothing to hold your attention throughout the whole process.

When I was very young, I had a thought: it will be great if I can control my dream. Cos, people say that we sleep one third of our life. When we sleep, we dream. So, logically, if we can totally control our dream, it means we can totally control one third of our life. We can control what we do, what are the consequences and how we feel. How cool is that? We would be so free in our dream, cos dream world is our world. We can do whatever we want and we won’t suffer any bad consequence of it. Cos, logic or karma just don’t apply in dreams. If we can really do that, I don’t think anyone will want to wake up! Come to think of it, it is a pretty funny idea!

I’ve many memorable dreams, though most of them I’m not gonna to share with the world. Many people including I believe that dreams mean something. So, there are folks called ‘dream interpreter’ who can tell you what they means. Like it is good to have nightmare….got kill in dream means something good will happen in real life…..etc. I don’t care too much about that, cos to me, they are largely bullshit. But, there are 3 particular aspects about my dreaming experience are quite interesting:

1. How new folks show up in my dream – this is not new to me, but I experience that again recently. As I just changed job, I start meeting new coworkers, after about 3 weeks into my new job, I start to see my new co-workers in my dream. That happened to me before when I began a new phase of my livelihood, like going to college, and changing job.

2. Location of my dream changes – I remember when I was in the States, I start to have dream with backdrop there. The funny thing was that I started to dream in English. As least that was the language that I spoke to my then new friends in my dreams.

3. Illogical combination of people in my dreams – Certainly, things that happened in my dreams are already illogical, even though some of them deem to be some sort ‘realistic’. However, I just have folks showed up in my dreams that are no way logical to have interaction with each other in real life. Like have friends in Hong Kong mixed with friends in the U.S., folks that I know in the past meet with historical figures and folks in showbiz. That’s just not logical. Also, the ‘me’ in my dreams sometimes swap between being first person and third person, somewhat like switching from watching a movie to being in a video game. That’s also quite weird!

I wonder if other people have same experience as mine.

Expectation and Emotion

Recently, this thought came to my mind, when I was taking a shower….there are 2 sources of emotion drivers throughout our life.

The first one is from inside. It is largely biological. Like you feel pain, tired, sleepy, etc. Those things make you crampy or upset. Or simply emotional due to fluctuation in hormone level as a result of some physical activities.

The second one is from outside. Namely, what happen outside that affect how we feel. That is usually because we have already established certain expectation as a result of years of experience of either observing others or in person of what leads to what among things.

For example, when we won a prize in lottery, we felt like we get something out of nothing. Virtually, no effort had been made other than just showing up in the right place or bought a cheap ticket. However, what we won had value. We could use it ourselves, or gave it to others which could generate some returns of favor. Therefore, having gain something ended up making us feel good, as it can generate great consequence that we will benefit one way or the other. Therefore, next time when we won a prize, we will feel good immediately, even though the consequence of using the prize has not yet begun.

As experiences are being accumulated everyday, unless we suffer from memory loss. It is very hard to change a person’s expectation in perceptions. The older we are, the harder to change. Somehow, this becomes a building block of our characters.

However, there are so few people will get a grip of the fact that just because XXX happens externally doesn’t mean that we must feel YYY. The relationship between XXX and YYY can be de-linked, especially, when YYY is something negative. Unlike mathematics, double negativity doesn’t generate positivity in human emotion. That’s why when I read that ‘We may not be able to change what happens around us, but we can choose to react”, I felt like a light bulb is flashing inside my head. It sounds so simply and logical, how come I’ve never thought of that?!....I’m sure it is not something new, it must be first cited thousand years ago by some wise philosophers. However, so few people that I know have ever mentioned that it is something we can do to make us feel better, which can lead to positive actions and consequence for us as well as others around us.

Interesting maps of Europe

Come across this link from Littleoslo.com , just wanna FYI:
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_of_europe.shtml

New job

I've started working for a new employer last monday. Time just flies in this place. 12+hr-day is a norm. Well, getting to know who is who and what they do, etc is something that I need to learn quick. Before I join this company, people were asking me where I was going, I was saying "I'm hopping from an oven to a fireplace". I was semi-joking about that. In fact, what I said is really.... true!

I can describe that I'm working as a fireman now. I'm leading a small team to fight fire everyday, hour by hour, there are fire building everywhere. However, one of my job that my boss really want me to do is to install 'extinguishers' and teach people the 'safety rules'. It's hard to do that when I'm firefighter by the hours. Well, I've not giving up hope yet, cos, I've yet to really begin what I suppose to do. It is still mission possible to me. However, I can say that this place is burning chaotically!

Anyway, after long hours of firefighting everyday, bring home with fatigue is really challenging. So far, on the homefront, things are still being taken care of largely. Thank God for that!

Interesting Painting

See how many of them do you know?

I saw this pic on 'www.littleoslo.com'

Personal Mobile History

Comparing with most folks in Hong Kong, I think I’m way below average in terms of switching new mobile phone. Most folks changed there mobile annually, and I used to have some colleagues who change their mobile like every 3-4 months. To recount my old mobiles, I think this new one is my 7th. My very first mobile is a Motorola bulky mobile with a thick battery, it was a flip phone that back in 1996-97. My second one is also a Motorola Startec, it was considered to be very small back in 1999. Then, the next one is an Ericsson, not Sony-Ericsson, flip phone, it was gift from my dad back in 1999-2002. Then, I purchase my first Nokia 8250. I used that for few years as it was durable and actually I’m not a heavy caller and I don’t really do much with my phone anyway. After few years amazingly as phones are upgraded, I hadn’t temped to get a new one until 2006, when I bought a Toshiba T30, it was thin of only 9.9mm thick. Unfortunately, it was broken due to a ‘violent’ incident. So, I sold that to a street vendor for $400 and use my wife’s old Nokia phone until last weekend. I bought a new mobile phone last weekend, a Samsung Anycall L768.

I did some research to find out what is available now and finally select this one. It has most of the functions that I need and I join the 3G plan that come with this phone to access news and videos. I think I will enjoy this one when I start my new job next week.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Lately, I’ve been quite stressful due to couple of events. Firstly, my two-months-old son was emitted to hospital due to a sudden fever around midnight last week. Thank God, he is ok for now and he has to go through one more invasive testing to check if he has the problem of urine backflow which could be serious download if it remains untreated. That makes my wife very stressful and it flows back to me. Secondly, my wife is worrying about going back to work after more than 10 weeks of maternity leave. Similar to first event, her stress flows back to me. Thirdly, I’m about to start in a new company next week. It is always nice to have a new start in some sense. However, it is a stressful thing to start, knowing that the situation there is by no mean easy. That position, I would say is a quite ‘hostile’ position with some many unknowns. Though, I got inside briefing of the situation, knowing that is one thing, being there is another. I do put some pressure on myself to succeed in the new job there. I feel like I’ve something to prove to myself.

The stress above is substantial, and I don’t think I’m fully prepared to handle all of them when the timings of the above are so intertwined. However, while I’ve tried to do some soul-searching on how to handle all that stress, I spent few hours of reading in those few days that I was spending with my son in hospital. In between of feeding, diaper-changing, and cuddling my son, I found time to pick up a book that I bought years ago but never went through more than the first 50 pages. The book is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey. I’ve not gone through the whole book yet, but by ready the first 3 habits, I think that I’ve seen some light out of my current situation. At the age, in these days, I don’t get much advice or heads-up from other folks much. There are certainly some lessons or wisdom that I used to know but forgot as they have not been called into practice. However, this book does help me to refresh certain wisdom that would be useful to me now.

Quoted from Wiki, the seven habits can be summarized as follow:

1. Be Pro-active. Here, Covey emphasizes the original sense of the term "proactive" as coined by Victor Frankl. You can either be proactive or reactive when it comes to how you act about certain things. Being "proactive" means taking responsibility for everything in life. When you're reactive, you blame other people and circumstances for obstacles or problems. Initiative, and taking action will then follow. Covey shows how man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self, think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him. It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about 'Stimulus and Response'. Between Stimulus and Response, we have the power to choose the response.

2. Begin with the End In Mind. This chapter is about setting long-term goals based on "true-north principles." Covey recommends to formulate a "personal mission statement" to document one's perception of one's own purpose in life. He sees visualization as an important tool to develop this. He also deals with organizational mission statements, which he claims to be more effective if developed and supported by all members of an organization, rather than being prescribed.

3. Put First Things First. Here, Covey describes a framework for prioritizing work that is aimed at long-term goals, at the expense of tasks that appear to be urgent, but are in fact less important. Delegation is presented as an important part of time management. Successful delegation, according to Covey, focuses on results and benchmarks that are to be agreed in advance, rather than on prescribing detailed work plans.

4. Think Win/Win describes an attitude whereby mutually beneficial solutions are sought, that satisfy the needs of oneself as well as others, or, in the case of a conflict, both parties involved.

5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Covey warns that giving out advice before having empathetically understood a person and their situation will likely result in that advice being rejected. Thoroughly listening to another person's concerns instead of reading out your own autobiography is purported to increase the chance of establishing a working communication.

6. Synergize describes a way of working in teams. Apply effective problem solving. Apply collaborative decision making. Value differences. Build on divergent strengths. Leverage creative collaboration. Embrace and leverage innovation. It is put forth that, when this is pursued as a habit, the result of the teamwork will exceed the sum of what each of the members could have achieved on their own. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

7. Sharpen the saw focuses on balanced self-renewal. Regaining what Covey calls "production capability" by engaging in carefully selected recreational activities.

I think that the idea of “Between Stimulus and Response, we have the power to choose the response’ is very useful for me to deal with stress. I have to rely more on my logical side to handle this. I think that it can help keep my EQ level to handle all the incoming ‘waves’ from allover.

Also, ‘visualization’ is something I used to practice, so I think I will use it again especially in setting goals in my new job.

‘Put First Things First’ is going to be a big challenge to me as I really ‘buy’ this concept, but it is certainly something easy to understand but hard to practice. I think I will try to do that, if not practicing well, as least I need to keep this concept in mind all the time. Otherwise, I think I will be swarmed in my new job, as well as at home.

For all the rest, I’ve not completed my reading yet and I doubt that I will have much time to do that anytime soon. Nonetheless, I’m glad to read that book which has stimulated my mind which is something that is long overdue.

Crossroad

When I'm approaching the crossroad in my life, I often have a feeling of uneasiness. A crossroad means the current path is ending and the new one is coming up. Sometimes, I've the opportunity to choose which way to go. Once I selected, though I rarely regret the choice that I made, I can't help feeling excited, nervous, and uncertain about what's gonna happen on the new path that I choose. Like who am I gonna encounter, all the goods and bads that come with it....

I think I do have quite a few large changes in my life this year, certainly nothing is bigger than being a dad for the first time. However, moving to a new apartment, hiring a housemaid, and an upcoming career move did have effect on my daily life. There is only so much I can plan, planning can only scetch the outlook of things, a lot of the time, the worst and the best things I have prepared for just don't happen. On the other hand, sometimes I find that the attitude of 'take it easy' to see how things go....are just excuses of being lazy to plan and prepare. Anyhow, nothing is perfect....

6 degrees in Auto-industry

Find this interesting graph illustrating the relationships of major automobile companies in the world.