Sea World San Diego trip

Went to Sea World this weekend and want to share some photos with you :)

The killer whale was scratching its skin against the rock.

Scratching in action

Killer whale spinning!

I wonder how fast a killer whale has to swim
to be able to jump out of the water considering
how heavy it is

A cute picture of the killer whale :)

This fish held a little ball-like thing
in its month
See the teeth of the shark... (~__~ )

A cute picture of a sea lion :)

This fish looks kind of dumb

A fish with a little horn on its head

Is this a sea urchin? I think sea urchin
doesn't have eyes right? The one in the
picture does

A squid-like fish called cuttlefish. Its look
is really funny!

Is Ivy League always good for your kids?

I'm sure you have heard stories about the tremendous effort parents are willing to put into helping their kids to get into elite schools. To those parents, getting in elite schools is almost like a ticket to success for their kids.

Is that so? I don't think it's that simple.

My little story

My high school was one of the most famous ones in Hong Kong. Because of its fame, the admission competition is quite fierce (I've heard one student saying that it's happier to be admitted by my high school than winning lottery). Naturally, my classmates were all pretty smart.

I was kind of an average student back then. Instead of studying, I spent a lot of time playing Chinese chess. As you know, the more one works on something, the better s/he gets and the more confident s/he feels in that discipline: a positive feedback loop. I even managed to win a few prizes in some joint-school Chinese chess tournaments. My academic performance? No, it wasn't that good.

After I came to Los Angeles, I went to a so-called below-average community college to continue my study. It's not as bad as some outsiders think actually (I had one of my best teachers there). Compared to other nearby community colleges, however, the courses were relatively easy, and the students weren't as smart as my classmates in my high school.

Consequently, I got good grades for most of my courses and maintained a decent GPA. I started to believe that I could do well in academics and my interest in math grew a great deal during those days. Finally, I was admitted to UCLA as an engineering student and finished my graduate study there.

During all those years, my intelligence didn't change; I was just as smart (or as dumb, if you wish :P) as I was before. What changed a great deal is my confidence in academics, the belief that I wasn't that bad after all.

My story was by no means a rare case. A friend of mine had a similar story: she did pretty well in her first year in high school. Because of this, she was transferred to an elite class and suddenly she became the student with the lowest grades. She was then "thrown" back to the original class and has lost confidence in academics since then.

As you can tell, confidence is extremely important for one to succeed in any discipline, even much more important than his/her talents.

How does confidence form though?

That's a good question. My answer:

We become confident in something if we think that we are good at it and can continue to do a good job.

"How do we know we are good at something?"

That's even a better question. Although I can't deny the fact that people have the innate ability to appreciate the quality of things (like artwork), we usually conclude that we are good at something because we do it better than others.

I always think that I type pretty fast. According to a Facebook game, my top typing speed is 107 wpm. That sounds pretty good? Well I've seen quite a lot of people typing over 130 wpm before. I would say that I'm above average but not very fast. You just don't know how good you really are until you compare your work with others'.

Is it morally correct to build your own confidence by comparison? I won't try to argue on that since that's not the point of this post. The point is that we often do build our confidence that way.

If we do build our confidence by seeing worse performance from others, "helping" your kids to get into an elite school will probably destroy his/her confidence altogether when s/he realizes that s/he doesn't really "belong there". And, as s/he feels bad about him/herself, s/he will tend to perform worse, and s/he will feel like trash. You can see how it is going to end.

To be honest, my argument should be some kind of cliche; how can no one thinks of this before? Nevertheless, when I see how competitive the admission process is for all those top schools in the nation, I highly doubt if those parents have given a second thought to whether those "top" schools are really good for their children or not.

Everyone is talented in certain area to a certain degree; the job of education is to discover and nuture it instead of burying it by destroying students' confidence and making them feel that they're worthless. Your thought?

The most dramatic scene in The Pianist

This is the most dramatic scene in The Pianist. Despite the cruelness of the Nazi, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld helped Wladyslaw Szpilman while it was dangerous for him to do so as a German. Naive as I may be, I don't believe human beings are born to be evils...

Make it super easy for your customers to submit feedback

I'm sure you've received emails from companies asking you to fill out a long survey by offering you some good deal before, such as a cup of free coffee or a chance to win a $5,000 spending spree.

No one fills out long surveys

How often do you fill those forms out? I almost never do so because a survey is just too formal (no fun) and takes me too much time (it usually turns out to be 15 minutes when they claim that it's a 5 minute only survey).

It's good that you want to hear what customers think of your products/services; that's the only way you can find out what really matters to the market and it's freaking important to your continued survival. However, asking your customers to fill out long surveys just don't work. Trust me, people don't have the patience to do that and many people don't like to read.

Ironically, the solution to this problem is exactly what a LOT of companies trying their best to avoid:

Making it super easy for your customers to tell you what they think.

Let us look at two cases.

How YouTube screwed this up

This problem from YouTube has been annoying me for a long time:

Whenenver I'm viewing a video and try to make it my favorite, I'll be asked to sign in first. No problem there, I'm happy to sign in. However, I'm always directed back to the homepage of YouTube instead of the video I was watching. This is quite an embarrassing user interface design flaw from the the super smarts at Google.

Yesterday, I was fed up with it and tried to look for a way to contact them about this problem. So, I clicked on the "Contact" link at the lower right corner of the homepage:

Then, it says that

If you need help, please visit our Help Center. We've answered the most common issues our users have, and if you can't find your answer there, you'll be directed to a form where you can email Customer Service for help.

Alright, let's see if they've answered this issue at the Help Center. Now I'm on their "Current Sites Issues" page and don't see this issue there. At the bottom of the page, it says

Don't see your answer listed above? Look in our Help Center. It's full of answers to frequently asked questions, and we're continuously adding and updating information.

What? Didn't you say that I'll be directed to a form where I can email Customer Service for help? Why take me back to your Help Center? I just want to suggest something!

How Facebook did it correctly

If you're Facebook user, you probably already notice that you can try out their new site design at http://www.new.facebook.com/.

I like the new design because now I don't have to wait forever for the numerous applications to load on my friends' profile pages. That said, there was something that I didn't like. For example, the "Logout" link was only on the homepage while it should be available on every page (people want to log out whenever/wherever they want).

I noticed that they have this "Send feedback" link at the upper right corner of the screen

I clicked on that and this nice little window popped up


I told them that they should make the "Logout" link appear on every page and after like two days they made the correction.

To be fair, YouTube isn't the only company that makes you frustrated when you want to tell them how they can improve. Many big corporations spend millions on advertising campaigns and send out those long surveys instead of asking their webmaster to spend 15 minutes to create such a short form for people to contact them.

Better yet: respond personally

Of course, it'll be even better if you can give your customers a personal response to thank their feedbacks and explain what you're doing to tackle the issue.

"You're crazy! We're a fortune 500 company. How on earth can we personally respond to hundreds of thousands of feedbacks from customers everyday?"

You know what? I got a personal response from Amazon every time I submitted a recommendation to them.

I don't know how Amazon does it, but it they can do it, it's not that impossible, is it?

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 :)

Three Ninety Nine

One day, I was walking on Rodeo Drive and saw this nice little key chain at the elegant Prada store. I asked the salesman how much it is and he told me

"It's three ninety nine sir."

I thought to myself

"Wow, $3.99? I can't believe there's such a good deal here. This is Prada on Rodeo Drive man!"

After taking a few more looks at it, I decided to buy it.

"Yes, I would like to take..."




While the words were almost out of my mouth, I suddenly realized that he actually meant $399, not $3.99!!




"You would like to take it sir?"

"Oh no... I mean... I mean I would like to take a 'more detailed' look at it.."

"Sure, please take your time."

Of course, I didn't buy it after my "detailed look". Alas, Rodeo Drive isn't for me (O____O )

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) - Pink Martini

Just heard this lovely song again from my music library. Didn't know it's an old song from the 1950's..