And that it mattered

"For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquillity that comes from knowing that you've had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: know that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered."

~Jim Collins, Good to Great

"I'm not afraid to start from the beginning."

Thanks for everything Steve. You will be greatly missed.

Dance

Dance! Dance! Let's blossom in a dazzling light on the stage of life.

On ignoring people

What is feeling of being ignored? Probably quite terrible to many people. Well, at least to me.

I have had experience in bumping into a friend or acquaintance and being ignored. Ignored not because s/he did not recognize or remember me but s/he chose to disregard of my existence.

"How can you be sure that s/he recognizes or remembers you?"

Yes, you can tell if you just pay a little attention to the look of their eyes. If they truly forget about you, their gaze will be empty, as if you are a stranger. If they kind of  remember you, they will look puzzled and wondered. However, if they decide to ignore you, they will look at your for less than one second and then turn to a different direction abruptly, right at the moment when you are about to greet.

The feeling of being treated as nonexistent is even worse than being cussed in one's face. When one cusses at you, at least s/he thinks that you deserve his/her energy and time to be cursed.

Whenever this happens to me, I always try to recall if I have done something horrible to the person. And, usually I can't think of any, which really perplexes me.

So, unless you really want to establish an enemy, just say that two-letter word "hi" next time. It's just some very basic kind of politeness.

An unforgettable Christmas present

This year I got a Christmas present that I'll remember for the rest of my life...

My car got stolen at the night of the Boxing Day.

I was pretty calm when I discovered it and proceeded to file a report at the local police station. The officer told me that whether they can find my car it's purely a matter of luck. Since I don't usually have good luck, I've pretty much thrown in the towel.

What really hurts me though isn't the resale value of my car. It's been with me for more than 10 years and has gone through many important moments in my life.

One time, I nearly got killed on the freeway because one of its tires exploded. My car turned 90 degrees and was blocking the forthcoming traffic. Very luckily, I was calm enough to put the car in reverse gear and backed off to the side of the freeway. If I've done that just three seconds late, I'm pretty sure I'd have been killed by a lethal side collision: the upcoming traffic averaged a speed of 80 mph.

And now, my car is gone, probably forever. Along with my favorite CDs that have been with me during my ups and downs all these years.

What makes losing something regrettable isn't the fact that you lose it. Instead, it's because it happens so quickly that you don't even have the chance to say goodbye.

It felt as if someone has robbed me of an important part of my memory. It felt as if a little part of my soul is eliminated forever.

I know the chance of that car thief reading this post is nearly zero. If God can hear this, please let the car thief stole whatever parts he wants and leave my car in a spot that can easily be discovered by the police. Even it's an "empty" car, I'd want to take a photo with it and say farewell...

Car thief car thief, do you realize what you've done to someone in Christmas time? And just in the last post I talked about having more trust in strangers.

What kind of world am I in?

Warning: "Be Wary of Strangers"

Today, after I bought a newspaper and went aboard my car, an old woman suddenly showed up outside the window and asked me if I was interested in buying some little bags hand-made by her.

"It's just $5 per bag." She said.

I told her that I wasn't interested because the little bags wouldn't be useful to me. Most importantly, however, I don't trust people asking for donation on the streets.

"If you're not interested in buying the bags, maybe you want to make a donation..." she said in a pitiful tone. "I'm doing this for my grandchildren. I'm not lying..."

Despite this, I didn't believe her and started my car and left.

On my way back home, I was glad that I avoided yet another scam. When I thought about it more, however, I started to think that, maybe...


Maybe she wasn't lying.


How bad a person one has to be for her to defraud others using her grandchildren as an excuse? And, after all, this excuse is pretty much a dumb one if it's fake. It's just like you won't lie to your boss that your mother was sent to hospital to get a day off.

I should have at least looked into her eyes to decide whether she was lying.

If it was indeed true that she was trying to earn some extra money for her grandchildren, I'd give her $5, no, $10, in a heart beat.

This is sad, really sad. The news that we read everyday, I bet you $100 that there's at least one piece of them about fraud. Enron. Mortgage meltdown. Bernard Madoff. Whatever. We get the idea that this world has many dishonest people who try to cheat whenever there's a chance.

There's a Chinese mot that says

"害人之心不可有、防人之心不可無"

which translates into

"One shall not try to hurt people. In spite of this, one shall be wary of others."

This is to say that, whenever a stranger approaches you, your "correct" behavior is to assume that s/he is a bad person so as to protect yourself. This was what I was taught when I was a kid and, until today, I still believe that it's healthy to maintain a certain degree of doubt on everything, including people.

But, maybe I'm wrong. This makes me think of how the fathers and teachers in my high school had unconditional trust in us, even though they might not know us well and that we made mistakes all the times.

I feel quite bad about this and hope that the old woman succeeds in selling her little bags to some kindhearted people (sigh, not like me) in that parking lot... I probably should try to hold a neutral standpoint on strangers from now on. They may be scammers but don't judge without giving them the tiniest chance.

Michael Jackson (1958 - 2009)

So our King of Pop died today... (-__- )

Michael Jackson's influence was without border. From inmates at CPDRC in Philipines to waiters at a wedding banquet to Final Fantasy to Indians, few stars had such a big impact to the music industry, no, to the entire world. He was truly a legend...

I went to the UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center and took some pictures:

People started gathering in
the afternoon

Lots of people at the
UCLA Medical Plaza

ABC7 Eyewitness News

Of course, NBC

Traffic was so heavy because
of the crowd

People walked toward the Ronald
Reagan Medical Center

Right outside of the main entrance of
the Ronald Reagan Medical Center

Four helicopters reporting the
incident

Some reporters were trying to
get inside via the side door

KCAL9 News

A cute little MJ

Either the woman or the guy
(V sign in the photo) made the word
"Michael" with flowers

Two black men who lead the crowd
for a parade were interviewed by
some reporter

It was 9 pm something and people
still didn't want to leave

This guy has been holding this posture
for at least 5 hours (see the flower "Michael"
photo above)

Fans left candles and flowers for
Michael outside of the hospital

For the one last time, goodbye Michael...

P.S. Two videos that I took at the UCLA Medical Plaza with fans singing Michael's songs:

How super-duper tiny we all are

Today I received an email from a friend that features comparisons of the planets in our solar system with the various giant stars in the universe and it elicited my quest to find out what the largest star is known to human as of now.

After some googling, the answer is VY Canis Majoris, which has a radius that's around 2000 times the one of the sun, which in turn has a radius that's around 109 times the one of the earth.

How large is that? Watch the following video and you'll see at the end how large the sun is compared to VY Canis Majoris:



Now, can you imagine how small human being is? In that sense, how big is the problem that's puzzling you today? Not that big really :)

P.S. Just to give you another perspective how ridiculously tiny the earth is in this gigantic universe, look at the following two images :P

Image from Wikimedia.org

Image source unknown (let me know
if you know)

What's wrong with being normal?

I'm a big Heroes fan. Although the narrative of the episodes in recent seasons aren't that excited anymore, I still watch it every Monday night.

Guess who my favorite character is?

Hiro? Yeah he's cute, but no. Claire? She's cute too, but no. Parkman? No. Peter? No.

Alright, let me tell you. Yeah, it's Sylar, the ultimate villain of the series.

"Oh why? He's a devil! Why would you like him??"

What Sylar fascinates me isn't his powers or evilness. The things that catch my attention are the internal struggles he had that eventually made him a monster.

One scene in the episode "The Hard Part" in season one gave me a strong impression: when Sylar visited his mother and eventually killed her. The following is a paragraph from Heroes Wiki about that scene:

As Sylar arrives at his destination, Hiro and Ando sneak around to a window to keep an eye on him. They are surprised to discover that the person Sylar is visiting is his mother, Virginia Gray, who seems happy to see him and is quite unaware of his recent activities. He decides to fix one of his father's old clocks, and his mother laments on how watchmaking is not a real profession; she suggests that he become an investment banker instead. He asks his mother to accept his desire to remain a normal watchmaker, but his mother refuses, saying she knows Sylar is special enough to be President if he wanted.

When Sylar's mom told him that it's not okay to be just a regular watchmaker, Sylar said the following:

"Mom — Mom, don't. Don't, it's just... maybe I don't have to be special. That's okay to just be a normal watchmaker. Can't you just tell me that's enough?"

Yeah, why can't we just be normal?





No, at least the modern world we live in now doesn't seem to agree. It's almost a sin to remain normal. Everyone should advance his/her career, climb the corporate ladder, be a manager, be a CEO, or even better, be a boss. Be rich, be significant, be special.

Last month, two episodes of Sunday Report became very popular in Hong Kong: "港男．講女" ("Hong Kong Guys Talking About Hong Kong Girls") and "港女．講男" ("Hong Kong Girls Talking About Hong Kong Guys"). In the latter episode, the Hong Kong girls in general expressed the following requirements for their boyfriends:

• Confident
• Good at communication
  
• Have quite an above-average income
  
• Well-educated (at least a bachelor degree I'd say)
  
• Desire to advance in career (In Cantonese, it's 上進心)
  
• Be significant (In Cantonese it's 出色, which means having certain status/authority/achievement in society)

Don't get me wrong, all the things listed above are some very good attributes that every guy should strive for. The thing is, how many guys can actually achieve all these goals?

If you study some kind of probability or statistics before, you should know what a normal distribution is. Never heard of it before? See the diagram below:

Image from Wikimedia Commons

To satisfy all the requirements I list above, I think that a guy will have to fall beyond one standard deviation from the mean (to the right of 1σ). What does that mean? That means that this guy is among the top 16% (no need to argue with me with the exactness of the percentage; my argument makes sense for, say, 30% too) of the population.

Surely, it's a woman's freedom to set whatever requirements she wants for her spouse. After all, it's someone who's supposed to be with her for the rest of her life, how can she make compromise?

Yes, I agree. However, having no room to compromise doesn't mean that the requirements are realistic. Marriage is a one-to-one relationship; how can the top 16% be enough for all the Hong Kong women? This is also true vice versa; it'd be unrealistic for all men to look for women in the top 16% (be it beauty, education, wisdom, kindness, you name it).

Actually, what really annoys me isn't the lovableness of normal people; after all, this is mostly a personal issue. The thing that does annoys me is the view that people who're normal don't deserve the same respect that significant people receive.

In the "港男．講女" Sunday Report program, one Hong Kong girl actually said this

"Honestly speaking, if you're poor, people will look down on you."

This may be the fact, but she said it in a way that it's okay to hold such a attitude.

Wow, do you know how many poor people there're in this world? According to the standard of living in Hong Kong and the Global Rich List, she'd probably have to look down on at least 85% of the people in the world. How many is 85%? Not that many, just around 5.7 billion. This kind of attitude is just plain crazy.

To my mind, a person deserves respect as long as s/he

• Brings value to society: This requirement is satisfied if you've a legal job and you respect what you do
• Is considerate: Care about others' feelings, such as telling your taste without hurting others
  

I do understand why people generally don't like living in a poor neighborhood: not because the people there are poor but the fact that poor people are usually inconsiderate. For example, people in ghetto areas often have dogs that bark throughout the night and make it difficult for their neighbors to fall asleep. Those people deserve to not be respected but they're not the normal people I'm talking about in this post.

In one episode of a BBC tourism program that I watched some years ago, they visited a little store in Italy that sells all kind of fruit jams. After the store owner (an old man) enthusiastically showed the program host the manufacturing process of his jams, the host said to him with admiration

"I can tell that you're a man who loves what you do."

"Yes, I do." Said the owner with a grateful smile on his face.

That old store owner may not make that much money since he only sells the jams in the small town he lives in. He may not have any ambition to be Knott's Berry Farm. He may not even have a bachelor's degree. He's probably just an insignificant old man that only the residents in his local town know had BBC not visited him.

Given all that, can you think of any reason why he doesn't deserve respect that significant people like Walter Knott (the founder of Knott's Berry Farm) receive?

We do need significant and powerful people like President Obama in this world. Nevertheless, it's unrealistic and unfair to ask everyone to be rich and significant. A normal watchmaker, a regular computer technician like Peter and a peaceful old man selling james in his little town are just as respectable as any normal person out there.

An interview of Ricky Wong (王维基)

There're two people whose values and life philosophies are very similar to mine: CK and Ricky Wong. Here's a good interview of Ricky conducted by Stephen Chan:



Let me share some of my thoughts about the interview with you.

Tool is neutral

He's ruthless and persistent on things that he believes are right. When he was in high school, he asked the principal whether they could bring cards back to school because they wanted to form a Bridge Club. Back in those days, adults often related cards with gambling and so the principal rejected him.

However, he didn't give up. He told the principal that many of his schoolmates learned martial arts at school and if these skills were used in the wrong way (fighting) it would be bad to the school too. At last, the principal changed his mind and let them bring cards to school.

The morale of of this story is that

Tool, including money, is a neutral thing. Whether it's good or bad depends on how you use it.

Of course, we shouldn't let young kids play with knives. After they pass a certain age, however, we should let them know that what knives are used for and and give them the freedom to use it; let them make decisions and learn from mistakes.

Risk taking

Although he said in the beginning that he's a timid person but I don't think so at all. He's actually a very good risk taker.

One time, he tried to bring around HK$120,000 into Taiwan to buy books for his business. Because there was a limit of the money (HK$40,000 per person) one can bring through the customs, the officers denied his entry.

After thinking for a while, he decided to give HK$80,000 to a couple and asked them to bring it through the gate and then give the money back to him on the other side. This certainly carried quite a good deal of risks since the couple could have grabbed the money and run. Nevertheless, he believed that the couple is trustworthy and they did gave that HK$80,000 to him afterward.

This world is full of risks and opportunities. Successful entrepreneurs are the ones who have the ability to measure various kind of risks and take them when the potential rewards are worth it. If you play chess with me before, you would notice that I'm not a very good risk taker. That's why this is one thing that I should learn from Ricky.

Physiognomy

One reason Ricky trusted that couple at the airport was that he could tell they're honest people from their appearance.

Physiognomy has a long history in China. When I was small, I always thought that it's just some mysterious belief with no scientific foundation. In recent years, however, I started to believe that it's indeed a study of the statistics of how human facial characteristics are related to characters.

A good example of that is "Hong Kong Girl" (港女). To my English reader, "Hong Kong Girl" are generally defined as the Hong Kong girls who are very self-centered and materialistic. From my experience, it's not difficult to tell whether a girl is "Hong Kong Girl" from her look such as makeup, clothes, and, most importantly (although it's not appearance technically), the way she talks.

Judging people from their appearance has been condemned and underrated for long and I hope that it'll see some light after scientists conduct research on it. After all, it's a very useful skill (like how Ricky interviews people in 5 minutes) :P

Media's Big Influence

The media is very good at focusing on and "enlarging" certain words that a celebrity says and ignoring the rest of the story. They do that since it can boost the sales of their newspaper/magazines/TV ads/whatever. A by-product of that, sadly, is that they also give you a false/unfair impression of the things and people of an incident.

For example, Ricky once asked a Miss Asia whether her breast is "real". Not surprisingly, the media found that it was a great title for their top news and used big font for these few words. Now that you watched Ricky's interview, you should realize that he was trying to test how well the Miss Asia's could respond to surprising/embarrassing questions (the Miss Asia's were well aware of this before he asked the questions).

Knowing the entirety of the incident, although I can't deny that the question is insulting by itself, it wasn't really much of a big deal given the context.

The media wasn't lying. To my mind, however, reporting part of the truth while intentionally ignoring the rest isn't much better than lying. After all, they both lead to the same result: give you a false impression of the truth.

So, instead of making a judgment right after you hear one side of a story, try listening to other sides of the story first. Having a certain degree of skepticism is always healthy.

Last but not least: the importance of family

At the end of the interview, Ricky acknowledged that he didn't spend enough time with his two children because of his busy career life.

Career success is important but we shall not forget about our family. That's why I define, as mentioned in my previous post before, a successful person to be someone who 1) brings great value to this world and 2) has a happy family. Although it's not easy, let's hope that we can all strike a good balance between the two :)

"I don't believe in too hard"

In Bill Gates' video about malaria and education, he told people that he is "an optimist. Any tough problem, I think it can be solved". This made me think of Professor Randy Pausch's testimony to the members the Congress before he died:

In the testimony, he said

"I don't believe in too hard."

He believed that if enough funding is allocated for pancreatic cancer research, we should be able to raise the survival rate to a much higher one like breast cancer's.

True that there're probably some problems in this world that just cannot be solved. Despite that, I believe everyone should hold an attitude like Gates' and Randy's toward life.

It's this kind of optimism that drives the human civilization forward. It's this kind of belief that took us to the moon. It's this kind of faith that gives us hope so that we believe we can make tomorrow a better day.

Because of this, whenever I encounter a difficult problem, I usually say this to myself

"You think this is tough? There're many tougher problems in this world and some brave people are ruthlessly working on them. Don't be kidding me :P"

"Error often is to be preferred to indecision"

When I visited Princeton University, I saw this statement from Aaron Burr Jr, the 3rd Vice President of the United States under Thomas Jefferson:

"Error often is to be preferred to indecision"

From my observation, many men are still too afraid of mistakes and incapable of making decisions quickly and confidently. The experience of learning from mistakes is just so much valuable than making no decision and idling that you would wonder why people choose the latter.

"Don't let anyone tell you that you're too young
to change the world"

Similarly, don't let anyone tell you that you're too old to change the world.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not more so"

One of my favorite quotes from Einstein. I hate unnecessary complexity.

The Alhambra fire last night

An image I took when I was out on the street in my pajama:

Here is a link to a video from Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/video/?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=3152121

We were very lucky that the firefighters from Alhambra and all the cities around put the fire under control within an hour. If it had spreaded to other houses/buildings, it would have been catastrophic. From the deepest of my heart, I would like to thank the firefighters for protecting our lives and properties. You have done an excellent job!

Bad decisons aren't that bad after all

Some days ago I shared Seth's post "The plight (and the pox) of the undecided". Now that I read about it again, I realize that there was a third reason in addition to laziness and keeping choices open for why people don't like planning:

They are just afraid of taking responsibility to make decisions.

Why are people afraid of making decisions? Obviously, they're afraid of making a bad decision, which in turn results in undesirable outcomes.

Actually, it's not that difficult to sympathize with that fear in certain culture. In a regular Chinese elementary school, students are very much encouraged to follow orders. The teachers don't want the students to make decisions because they may very well be bad ones. Because of this, they'd rather make you follow orders, even though they're boring and can only lead to mediocre and expected behavior.

As scary as it may sound, bad decisions are often better than indecision/following order. Unless a bad decision is so bad that it leads to permanent damage (such as killing yourself or cutting off your legs), it usually is beneficial because it makes you learn something.

I think you didn't forget about Nietzsche's "That which does not kill us makes us stronger", did you?

What's so much a big deal of making a bad decision? Google screwed up the Google Chrome's privacy policy by including the wrong words in the terms of service and they quickly admitted the mistake and corrected it.

It puzzles me so much that when some company makes a big deal of it when its employees make bad decisions. In such a hostile environment, no one will take any chance and, consequently, no one will do an outstanding job either. Worse still, the employees will constantly need to be babysat by their managers and if the managers are out sick then everything comes to a halt since no one can/dare make a decision.

That reminds me of another quote:

"I have never made any mistake but I've also never accomplished anything."

How sad is that??

It's okay to make bad decisions, as long as you

• frankly admit that you screw up
• take the effort to avoid making the same bad decision again.

So, be confident in making a decision next time (especially, yup, if you're a guy).

Rest in peace Professor Randy..

I'm sure many of you have viewed Professor Randy's Last Lecture presentation (you can watch a shorter version here) and know that he dies today at age 47. His story made me think of a old movie that I watched in my ethics class when I was still in high school: My Life. If you've not watched that movie before, watch it.

Rest in peace Professor Randy... You have inspired us :)

Tell your taste without hurting others

Let's say you're having lunch with your friends at a Chinese dim sum place and one of them says

"These chicken feet are so delicious, you want to give it a try?"

Being born in the US, you've never eaten such thing before and you say

"Oh no, that's so disgusting! I can't imagine that you dare eat that..."

".............."



How do you think your friend should respond?



There're at least 190 countries in the world, each probably having very unique eating culture. My experience tells me that if you grow up eating something everyday, you just can't feel that it's disgusting, no matter how much it is to people who've not tried it before.

Actually, we don't only have eating culture in this world. We have music, fashion, painting, architecture, to name a few. My love towards Rachimanioff's piano concertos doesn't ridicule your passion on Joan Jett's rock songs. I like Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture doesn't mean that your favoring of Japanese Zen Gardens is bad.

When it comes to a matter of taste, there's just no right or wrong.

If you're arguing for, say, whether a government policy should be approved or not, even if you may hurt some other people's feelings (which isn't necessary in most of the cases methinks), it may be worth it because it has an effect on people's daily lives, some impact on the real world.

If you're arguing against somebody's taste, not only it's invalid because when there's no right or wrong, you just can't argue by definition, the effort is also wasted as it doesn't do any good to the world but hurting others' feelings.


"Well, I'm not arguing. I'm just being honest and expressing my true opinion. Are you telling me that I should lie?"

No, I'm not telling you to lie. But being honest doesn't mean that you need to hurt others' feelings. Even if you're being honest, there are better ways to tell your thoughts.

Taking the chicken feet case as an example, you could instead say

"Oh, that looks interesting. I like eating Shaomai more though, thanks for offering :)"

Hearing that, your friend may not realize that chicken feet are disgusting to you but at least s/he would know that you don't like eating them.

When I was in high school, my Chinese teacher once told us that we shouldn't read Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People because it would inhibit us from treating people genuinely. I do agree with what he said to a certain degree but I also think that the principles illustrated in the book show some of the most fundamental human traits. One of the principle says that

Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say, "You're wrong."

If you disagree with other people's taste sharply, they'd think that their feelings are wrong and feel bad, even though that's not your intention.

"As you said, it's not my intention, so it's their problem for interpreting it the wrong way."

Well, using that as an argument is like saying that it's not your intention to kill that guy by pushing him off the building because you think that he'll fly instead of hitting the ground and die.

It's not that people want to interpret your words this way, it's just how human minds work.

It does take some brain power to avoid conveying your message bluntly. However, I think it's worth it. Is that a phony act? I don't think so. Think of it as politeness. Do you think that always saying "thank you" to people after receiving help is phony? Probably not.

Appreciate the difference in tastes among people. It usually is the difference that fosters creativity :)

Let me talk about punctuality also

I have long wanted to write a post about punctuality. Recently, Yun and ZZ both wrote a post about this so let me share with you some of my thoughts too.

Do you notice that some of your friends are NEVER on time? Yeah, I've quite some friends like that. Why are people late? Let's think about it.

True emergencies

If your friend got into a car accident, it doesn't make sense to ask him/her to be on time. Emergency, by definition, is something unexpected and has to be taken care of immediately or something very serious will happen. So, no one should be held accountable for being late in those situations.

However, how many of your friends are late because of true emergencies? Very few I would say, probably less than 1% of all late cases.

Can't predict how much time they need

Put me in a foreign city and ask me to meet you at some place where the only way to get there is by taking two different buses and a railway and a taxi, there's no way for me to predict how much time I need.

But that's also a pretty rare case. How often do you meet a friend who's traveling to your city? Not very often. Most of the times, you're meeting someone who's living in the same city/county. Unless you friend is some introvert who stays home EVERY weekend, chances are that s/he would have the ability to predict approximately how much time it takes to get to places around where s/he lives.

And, there're things like Google Maps and Yahoo! Maps in this world that provides real time traffic information; how difficult is it to make a reasonable prediction?? I'd say that at most 5% of the cases fall into this category.

They just don't give a dime

For the remaining 94% or more, this, to my mind, is THE reason why most of the people are late and it's something that I detest a lot.

There're quite many different kind of resources you need in your daily life, such as health, money, knowledge, relationships and time. Among them, time is the only resource that's always needed and never regainable (health is not regainable beyond a certain point, but not never like time does)

Because of this, you'd probably agree that time is the single most important and limited resource (with health being the second most important in my opinion).

When you're waiting for someone, you usually can't do anything productive (unless you're waiting at home or in the office). In other words, you're just wasting your time, wasting your life. Latecomers are effectively robbing your time for their own convenience and laziness (So, latecomers are just like people who don't plan because of laziness and the convenience of open choices till the last minute).


Let's do something on this!

If a devil suddenly appears and asks you

"May I steal an hour from your life every week?"

You would probably say no. If that's what you'd say, why would you allow your late friends to do that to you?

Let's see what things we can to this evil habit:

• End the relationship: This is the easiest. If you never see your friend again, s/he'll never be able to steal time from you. One time a friend was 30 minutes late during my one-hour lunch break. That's okay. However, he didn't apologize AT ALL. It was as if nothing has ever happened. Wow, I didn't know what else to do but to end the relationship.
• Friendly reminder: If s/he isn't just a so-so friend, I would remind him/her that it's not good to be late because it harms him/her in the end. Being late is one type of promise breaking. However small the promises are, when you break enough of them, people just wouldn't trust (or at least have reservation of) anything you say.
• Write a post about it: Like Yun and ZZ and me, write a post about it so that your readers can spread the message :P

Think about it, you won't be late for your final exams or wedding ceremony or the annual salary review meeting with your boss or whatever that's freaking important to you.

You HAVE the ability to be on time; it's just whether you want to do it or not and whether you would do it depends on how important the matter is to you.

If your friends and your trustworthiness are important to you, which I bet they are, start planning a little bit ahead today :)

Afterthoughts: Elizza's comment makes me think of one difficult situation:

Your friend is always late but s/he is also your best friend. You've told him/her many times that it's not good to be late but s/he just doesn't listen to you. Despite this, you really don't want to end the friendship since you like him/her a lot except his/her tardiness.

What to do in this situation? The only solution I can think of is to observe whether there's a pattern of his/her late behavior. If s/he is consistently late for 30 minutes, just ask him/her to meet with you at 7:30 pm and arrive at 8 pm.

It's better not to ask more than one late friend out at one time though or you'll have to tell each of them a different meeting time to offset their different tardiness :P

Help people to help themselves

Last month I wrote an article about the difference between needing help and deserving help. Besides deciding whether a person deserves any help, how we should help him/her is also something I'd like to talk about.

I guess to most people, the definition of "help" is

Doing something to solve the problem of the person in need of help

Sounds reasonable, isn't it?

Yes, it's reasonable, but it's incomplete. If I'm to define what "help" is, I'd define it as

Doing something to solve the problem of the person in need of help AND educate/empower him/her so that s/he can solve the problem him/herself next time

This is true in most cases. I say most cases because for some problems you just have to help the person solving it repeatedly: helping a blind person to cross the road, lifting a person in wheelchair up the stairs when there's no accessible route, you get the idea.

Without educating the person so that s/he can help him/herself next time, you'll have to help them over and over again. Isn't that not so effective (repeated effort) and reliable (for some reason you can't help him/her next time, e.g. you're sick)?

I always admire doctors who participate in organization like Doctors Without Borders to help people in developing countries. Not only do they have to give up their high paying job, they also have to risk their own health since the places they go to may have disease transmitting around.

However, I always wonder, are they also helping those people to help themselves? Are they establishing some kind of schools or programs so that local doctors can be trained? Are they educating the people so that they know how to prevent the disease in the first place?

If they're doing these, it's good. Otherwise, if one day there isn't any doctor who's willing to volunteer to help people in those poor countries, the mortal rates will rise again. It's just not solving the problem at the root.

Think about it, if you empower the people you help to help themselves in the future, they can in turn help other people with similar problems and thus spreading the effort exponentially. Life is just too short for effort to be spent on the same problem the second time.

So, next time you help someone out, why don't you ask yourself: am I helping him/her to help him/herself next time? :P

Pursuing one's dream till the last moment

Recently, I listened (yes, listen; it's an audio book from Audible.com) to the biography of Einstein: Einstein: His Life and Universe.

Since I was small, I've always heard about Einstein's name. I even needed to study his relativity theory when I took my last physics class in college. (And, honestly, I still don't understand why the returning brother in Twin Paradox is older than the one who stays on the Earth) However, learning his life is quite a different experience.

No one will doubt that the most significant contributions of Einstein to the academic world were his introductions of special and general theories of relativity in 1905 and 1915. Since his great breakthrough in 1915, he started to purse the Unified Field Theory, an attempt to unify the gravitational and electromagnetic forces. Despite his repeated failures, he kept on tweaking his mathematical models and assumptions.

When he died in the Princeton Hospital on the 18^th of April, 1955, twelve pieces of paper full of scribbled mathematical equations were found beside him. During the few days before his death, he was still working on his Unified Field Theory. I'm sure he knew that he didn't have time to finish his work. He just wanted to bring the world one step closer to the completion of the theory, even the theory may not exist in the first place.

How many people can be so committed to pursue their dreams until the last moments in their lives?

Although Einstein didn't complete his theory, I think he was blessed to leave the world when he was still on the road to his belief. It's much like a singer dies when s/he is performing on the stage, like Wong Ka Kui.

To me, it's the most dignified way to finish a life's journey... (*__* )

Afterthought: So, as a programmer, I'll then have to die in front of a computer, and I'd better be coding at that moment :P

Need Help VS Deserve Help

When someone ask for your help, how do you decide whether to help him or not? Below are some factors I think most people would consider before making a decision:

• the relationship with the person
• what can be gained by helping the person
  
• whether the person really need help
• whether the person deserves to be helped

If the person is your good friend, of course you're more likely to help him. That's pretty natural: the better the relationship between you and the person is, the more likely you'll offer a helping hand.

Some people would think

"If I help him now, is he going to help me in the future?"

Though it sounds more like "utilizing" your friends, I think that it's pretty natural also. You don't really want to help someone who doesn't appreciate your effort; if s/he does, s/he should be happy to do you a favor when you need it.

Obviously, you also consider whether the person actually needs the help. It's certainly a joke for a millionaire to ask you to borrow him twenty bucks since he has no money to buy something to eat. This factor is not only natural but very logical.

But, do you consider whether the person deserves the help or not?

Besides finding out if the person actually needs the help, this is actually the most important factor to me and I'm always surprised to learn that people ignore it consciously.

You have a problem finding out the derivative of f(x) = x log(x+2) and ask me for help? No problem. First of all, do you know what product rule is?

"No."

Alright, how about a derivative of a function? Do you know what it means?

"No."

Do you actually know what a function is?

"No."

Oh boy, have you read the textbook at all? Did you do your homework?

When people ask me for help, I expect that they've done some work on their own already. It's just that the problem is a little bit too much for them to solve on their own and so they're asking for some hints. Don't you feel embarrassed to ask for help when you've not even tried?

The government helps people ONLY based on their needs. If you're unemployed, you receive money through unemployment compensation. If you're poor, you can apply for food stamps. The government does not care whether it is one's laziness or over-spending habit that leads to his/her poverty; as long as you're in need, you're given the benefits.

I understand it is difficult (both resource-wise and political-wise) for the government to decide whether someone deserves the help s/he needs on a case by case basis. However, it is difficult doesn't mean that it's not the right thing to do. Actually, it's right because the resources of this world is limited, we should only help the people who need and deserve it.

You may ask

"Well, let's say we agree to help people who deserve it. But, who's to judge? Everyone has a different standard on this matter."

People have different values. Nevertheless, there're general standards among us. If our values are totally different, laws wouldn't exist as we'll disagree on every one of them.

So, next time people ask for your help, find out if they've tried their best first. There should not be any gain with no pain.