12 [The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck] by Mark Manson

It is always hard to write a book review especially when you try to write one or two months after you have finished reading the book. This is exactly what happens on me right now. However, I am aware that if I never write this book review, very likely, I am not going to write the book review of every book that I read after this. So, I would like to “force” myself to at least write something to summarize some of the good points that I learned from reading a book and possibly the ways of how I can apply what I learnt in my daily life.

I remember the author discuss something about job changing in this book and he mentions that changing job is like moving from one shitty place to another shitty place, no matter when one is going, there is always hundreds tones of trouble and shit waiting ahead and therefore, the key is not to find something that suits you perfectly but find the things that you enjoy dealing with. Office politics, unscrupulous bosses, manipulative colleagues, long working hours and unreasonable pay are always there and would likely to accompany you from one job to another job, just like the haunting ghosts but of importance is the thing that you want to do and enjoy dealing with. This is quite true; I realized that it is extremely difficult to find a job that match a person’s personalities and characteristics. And at the same time, satisfy all his conditions on the welfare, working hours, stress level, remuneration, work-life balance etc. The easier way should be changing yourself to get the best job available in the market.

The author also share a few things on the purpose of life , saying that finding something important and meaningful in one’s life is perhaps the most productive use of one’s time and energy. I cannot agree more with what he says as I really think that it is a waste of time if I cannot find something meaningful that I want to do in my life. The things may be different depending on the stages of life but it is good to have something meaningful in which you can pour all your extra energy and time into. Because if there is nothing one wants to do in life, very likely the energy and time will be channeled to some meaningless and frivolous causes. One artist says when a person has no problems, the mind automatically finds a way to invent some. In our modern society, it is not difficult to find that some of the so-called life-threatening problems faced by the educated and pampered middle-class are really just side effects of not having anything more important to worry about.

This book uses simple and casual language that we can hear every day in daily conversation with others. The usage of words like “shit” and “F*ck” is numerous as compared to any book that I have read but these words help me to understand and feel the emotion and excitement of the author when he was trying to write this book. Overall, it is a book that deserves a read and it deserve to be placed in the top ten ranking of the most popular books in NYT.

 

(548 Words)

11 [Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future] by Ashlee Vance

For people who have been working for years in an engineering company, most of my colleagues and I always hope that the direct boss that we are working with is someone with sufficient technical experience or at least someone who has at least a basic understanding of the technical stuff that we are dealing with on a daily basis. However, this is not always the case and it can be quite frustrating if you are working for a Yes-man or someone who follow exactly the instruction given by the top management and care only the KPI results but knows nothing about the things that are going on in the office or without interest to know more. What if Elon musk be my boss? From paypal to spaceX, Tesla and then the Hyperloop. What he has done so far really gives me a better idea how a CEO in technical industry could be. As compared to achieve the KPI every month, the passion to change the world with technology could contribute more to the technological development for the mankind. Instead of creating something that can allow people to upload their baby’s photos to share with others online and see how many “Like” the photo is worth for, perhaps we need more powerful batteries, greener electricity driven car or powerful space shuttles that could take us to the Mar under the space migration project that seems practicable in the next two or three decades.

This book shows the readers the unknown sides of the entrepreneur that we could not know from the mass media in details. How he created all these companies and made them the leaders in their respective industries? How he continued believing that his plan was practicable after repeated failure and long delay from the targeted dates?  And even his private life, his young age, marriage and children. This book gave me a better understanding on how the life of an entrepreneur in west coast of US could be. Opportunity and timing is important. When you seize them, you must work the hardest you could to make use of what you have so that you won’t be regret of no making full use of them later. And, one more important thing, the life of an entrepreneur is many times more exciting than a white-collar job with daily 9 to 5 working routines. If you have passion for something, you should pursue it and challenge it. While reading this book, I can’t help but keep comparing my current job with an engineer in Silicon Valley or more specifically the engineer working in one of the Elon’s companies like Tesla or SpaceX. I think that they must be very passionate about what they are doing and that’s why they can continue advancing forward in spite of the difficulties and technological challenges. An engineer job in a company that makes its profit using the technology of last decade and almost no investment in R&D seems not promising at all. Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why many talented people migrate to US to pursue their dreams and look for a bigger world that can make use of the skills that they have!

Very interested to know how the future of the abovementioned technology companies would like and whether, in the coming future, would there be any new company to spearhead the technological development of the world…

(566 Words)

10 [In Order To Live : A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom ] by Yeonmi Park

 “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” A famous line by John Didion. But, what if, the story that we are going to tell is too sad to mention to others and even a single thought of it brings us unbearable sadness and heartbrokenness. Nevertheless, I understand that sometimes the only way we can survive our own memories is to acknowledge them and shape them into a story that makes sense out of events that seem inexplicable and carry the story with us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps with this thought in mind, the author started writing her Journey to freedom even though the writing of this book would unavoidably reminded herself of all things that happened in the past, be it good and bad, and the ways people look at her family and her would never not be the same again. However, in order to be completely free, the author chose to confront the truth of her past. Just like what she mentioned in her book, “We all have our own deserts. They may not be the same as my desert, but we all have to cross them to find a purpose in life and be free.”

I must say that before reading this book, what I knew about NK was very limited to what we could read from a mainstream newspaper or what we could get from a video produced by unknown people in youtube --- The crazy threats of nuclear destruction and its weird, scary leaders with bad haircuts. All these were nothing as compared to the direct personal experience shared by a person that had been born and grown up there.  The story attracted me since the first chapter and the story was brewing as it moved from chapter to chapter. Then, a small climax slowly took its shape as the author and her mum was about to flee to CH. Who know what would happen on them after crossing the frozen river for the freedom that they had been yearning for. It was totally out of their expectations what was actually going on the other side of boundary. Facing the threat of being expatriated back to their motherland, they were manipulated by the local gang members that had taken advantages of their vulnerabilities in the cross border human trafficking. They went through all sorts difficulties that they encountered anyway and managed to flee to Mongolia and finally to SK where they were given citizenship and the life that they had been looking for. But, it was not the end of the story, the integration to the local society remained a tough thing for the refugees and it took time for them to integrate completely and be part of the society in spite of the high similarity of the language and cultural background.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was extremely lucky to be born in a country that starvation to death is totally unheard of and having the opportunity to be educated to think freely and be myself. But ironically, I have so far taken what I have today for granted. So happy to be able to read a book that could allow me to think differently from other perspective and to appreciate more the things that I am having today.

Food and Spring

How our lives could be if the single most important thing that we need to do very best every day is to ensure ourselves are fed and the best thing that we can hope for is that we have something to eat for the next meal. Not like the developed countries in which people intentionally skip their meals to keep the shapes of their bodies or simply too busy for works, skipping a meal here could literally mean death. Since you don’t have the idea whether the next meal or tomorrow’s meal would be there for you. The food taste is the last thing that you want to care about if you are given a choice between quality and quantity. There is no such thing called eating with pleasure and one  just eat only with an animal instinct to survive and at the same time unconsciously calculating how much longer each bite of food can keep the body going.

Spring is perhaps one of the important seasons in East Asia. For the rich, they tend to celebrate the coming of lunar New Year with abundance of food but in some parts of the region, things are totally different. Spring is the season of death as during this period of time when the stores of food are gone, but the farms produce nothing to eat because new crops are just being planted. And because of all these,  spring is the season most people died of starvation. Normally starts from the sick and the weak, followed by the old and the young. At one point of time, you see abandoned bodies in the trash heaps and there are so many desperate people on the streets crying for help that you have to stop helping anyone of them for your own survival and opt to shut off your heart or the pain would be too much. After a while you are used to the scenes and that is what hell is like.  Instead of starving to death, people in deep desperation would risk their lives to do anything for the promise of a bowl of rice or a way to get out of these hell-like places.

Until today, I still cannot imagine how the life would be if I cannot openly show my feeling, be it anger, disappointment, sadness or happiness. Instead, I need to hide all the feelings that may be considered as something sensitive by others that trying to scrutinize and control me through my emotion by destroying my individuality and ability to react to situations based on my own experience of the world. There are many ways that can be used to control and manipulate others, just like the Big brother in George Orwell’s 1984. I can think of a few ways, like limiting the access of information from outside world and filling the books with all sorts of propagandas that aim to brainwash the readers that they are live in the greatest country in the world, even though most of them are chronically malnourished and live in extreme poverty. Second, nurturing the loyalty among the public by glorifying the leaders and also cultivating the awareness of the public to fight and treasure the country more than their own lives…A single thought on all these make me realize the freedom that I really enjoy in the country that I am living now even though lots of people sometime complaint about the limited freedom they are granted in certain things..

(579 words)

***With information from In Order To Live : A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park  

From Hyesan to China

From what I knew from the mainstream media, the life in North Korea is hard but I don’t have a clear idea of how hard it is. Even though, I saw some North Korean who were working in a local shipyard as general workers when I was studying in Europe, a follow-up study through internet exposed me to one of the ways how the regime earns the money to fuel its already depressed economy . Very often, the news on the media is about the supreme leader of the country and not much information and description about the lives of the ordinary people. Only until this week, when I started reading a book about a defector from North Korea, I gained some basic background information of how the living conditions and what exactly happened in the countries.

The lives there were tough after the collapse of Soviet Union and increasingly lesser assistance from its neighbour who is now a big economic and political powerhouse in the region. According to some news online, there was a famine during 1990s and lots of people died because of the lack of food and medicine. However, some people simply survived more easily than others due to the existing system which categorizes the citizens into a few main groups according to their backgrounds and contributions to the country. It is cruel but it is a fact that people at top of the pyramid are always getting the better treatment and sufficient food allocation and therefore indirectly increase their chances of surviving through a famine or a harsh winter. For those at the bottom of the pyramid, they are the most vulnerable group that are treated not like human being and not enjoy equal right. They are likely the first group of people to sacrifice when there is famine.

When the only hope to live is to find sufficient amount of food so that one do not die of starvation or malnutrition, it is not surprising at all that people are willing to take the risk of being sent to reeducation camp or even execuated and flee to china with their families to live underground. Perhaps the lacking of enforcement and boundary control made the human trafficking of North Korean women to China so prevalent then. The local traffickers would bring the women to cross the Yalu River that separates the two countries during winter when one could basically walk on the iced surface of the river. They then sold the women to the brokers in the Chinese small town, which was the start of the human trafficking network, before the women were sold at higher price to the middle-men from cities, one level by one level, the price tag grew bigger and bigger. In the process, the women were not treated like human beings; they were humiliated, threatened, raped, beaten and even killed for those who tried to escape. At the end of the human trafficking network, the women would be sold to the farmers staying in the rural areas as a wife-cum-slave or ended up in brothels or nightclubs populated by South Korean and Chinese businessmen. The crime gangs that dominated the illegal business controlling both the police and gangsters and they knew well what they could manipulate to make money out of the defectors. With limited knowledge in speaking the local language and the fear of being repatriated back to North Korea, the defectors usually stayed low profile and leaded an underground life to avoid alert the people around about their existences. The lucky one would flee from their husbands or gangs and obtained a well-forged Identity card to pretend as an ethnic Korean who was born in China.

It was really sad and sick to know how some people make money by selling other human beings just like animals and without dignity at all. Also, it was so desperate to do nothing and wait for starvation that people have no choices but risk their lives to go to a new place even though there were uncertainties, but at least food to survive…

(675 Words)

***With information from In Order To Live : A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom by Yeonmi Park  

Impromptu speaking

Attended a workshop about impromptu speaking last night and really enjoyed what I had been taught. It was not the first time I attended this kind of workshop but perhaps the speaker yesterday gave me something more impactful and inspired me to think not only on the ways of making myself a better impromptu speaker but also in a bigger picture, how to change from a quiet introvert to an outgoing and more sociable extrovert who is usually seemed to have better communication and interpersonal skills. The speaker showed us the comments given by his teachers on the report cards to show that he was not good at interacting and socializing with people when he was in schools but what happened after his graduation encouraged him to improve himself and his own efforts made him an excellent communicator and professional trainer of sales and interpersonal skills.    

 

Three useful formulas to prepare an impromptu speech that he shared – PREP, Pendulum and 5W1H. PREP is about how a speech can be structure and organized by using the formula of point (agree/disagree) + reason + example / elaboration / story + point (summary / restatement / conclusion). Pendulum is about giving the listener the freedom to make his own decision by analyzing certain things in detailed without bias. 5W1H is about using “What, Who, Why, Where, Which and How” to ask questions and generating the content of an impromptu speech. In addition, there are two more tips. Firstly, for a topic with a long and complicated title, speakers should only focus on a few key words and avoid explaining the title at length to avoid misunderstanding and make full use of the time. Secondly, if the topic is something very specific that a speaker without prior knowledge on, “reframing” technique could be used in preparing a speech in short time. By “chunking up” a certain topic, things tend to be more general and with that, we could link the existing topic to something that we are more familiar with. The speaker gave a good example by sharing with us how Mr.Tony Tan, the ex- president answered a question raised by someone during the presidential election, “What was the biggest mistake that you ever made in your career?”

“Practise makes progress” We can only progress in what we are learning if we constantly make an effort to practise it. The speaker shared with us how he made use of his toilet time to practise his impromptu speech by using the quote of the day on the newspaper as the title. And only by repeating the practise numerous times, he made a breakthrough in his skill. Lacking of motivation, I must admit that I put almost zero time to practise my impromptu speech even though I always want to improve myself. An impromptu speech needs only a few minutes and it does not cost much of my precious time, I believe I can afford to repeat it a few times per day under the same topic. There will be an impromptu speaking competition on 6 March 2018, 13days from now. I want to challenge myself how much can I learn and progress in delivering an impromptu speech if I put in real effort every day. Let me start from today to make a difference!

(549 words)

09 [The Power of Habit] by Charles Duhigg

This book explains in details how a habit can be changed and modified to make life better based on the research results done in United States. In comparison to change a habit completely, a better approach is to understand the habit loop and replace the routine that we do when we receive certain cue in order to get the same rewards. 4 steps to change a habit (1) identity the routine (2) Experiment with rewards (3) Isolate the cue and (4) Have a plan. Perhaps it is easier say than do so I decided to use apply the steps on one of my bad habits that I want to get rid of and see how it works.

To figure out the habit loop, the first step is to identity the routine which I want to change. The routine here is whenever I am free and have nothing to do in office, I feel empty and an urge to do something to keep myself busy as it is not good to be always free while other people around me are working so hard. Therefore, I start learning a few languages that I am interested in but not have sufficient time to study or browsing the internet looking for possible job opportunities.

To figure out which cravings are driving particular habits, it’s useful to experiment with different rewards. After experimenting a few times, I found that the reward that I got after sending out many resumes or indulging myself in language learning was the feeling that I had tried my best in learning something and therefore I were satisfied with the meaningful thing that I had done during my time in office.

To identify and isolate the cue amid the noise, the same system used by psychologist is applied: Categories of behaviors ahead of time are scrutinized in order to see patterns. By asking the following questions: Where are you? What time is it? What’s your emotional state?  Who else is around? What action preceded the urge? The answers would be as listed below. The cue is likely to be identified based on the answers to the questions. The possible cue is “Feeling everyone is busy with tier stuff except me”.

Where are you? (Office)

What time is it? (Early morning 8am)

What’s your emotional state?  (Ennui and despair)

Who else is around? (Colleagues)

What action preceded the urge? (Feeling everyone is busy except me)

Once the habit loop is figured out, the reward that driving the behavior, the cue triggering it, and the routine itself—actions can be taken to shift the behavior. A change to a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward that one is craving. Put another way, a habit is a formula our brain automatically follows: When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD. To re-engineer that formula, I need to begin making choices again. And the easiest way to do this, according to study after study, is to have a plan with a specific timing and well-mentioned objective. My plan perhaps can be any of the suggestion mentioned below.

Option A

Before working, list down a list of meaningful things that I want to do within a day and use it as a guide to focus on my tasks and prevent distraction from others.

Option B

Ask for more assignment from the superior and keep myself busy with works so that I don’t feel that I am the one who is free and lagged behind.

Option C

Spend partial of the 9 working hours in something that can give me fulfillment and spend the rest in doing assignment that I have in hand.

Not sure which option is the best to go ahead, perhaps I should try out each and every of them. If none of them are effective, I shall repeat the steps until a satisfactory formula is found to replace the existing habit loop. Changes don’t come easily, but it comes with determination and perseverance.

(675 words)