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