Is this really what U want?

一种米养百种人. This statement have got a deeper meaning to me recently. Looking at the people surrounding me makes me think about why they are successful in their own way. Some of them are successful academically, some in their career, some in their social life, and many in many different ways or combination of ways.

In particular to sucessful in career, two items hover in my mind whenever I thought about it. Courage to pursue what you want and the capability to acheive what you want.

Putting capabilities aside, I think the upper bound of how successful one can be is set by the courage to pursue. One can be very smart and have perfect plan for everything. But without sufficent courage to execute the plan, nothing can be realized. If one have lots of courage but insufficent planning and capabilities, there is still chance to be successful.

As one grows up, there are more and more things to think/plan/ponder/troubled about. Things that have long term effect and greater impact to life. Career and relationship are the main ones. How much do you want it, how do you want it to be, how good it should be, how much effort you are willing to give, how capable are you.

Often, it hard to acheive and conquer everthing. There is always a give and take. What can you give up to acheive what you want. Does it worth it to give up something to recieve something else? Am I asking too much? Am I on the right track? Is this really what I want? Think I should spend some time to think about it.

time management and overtime

Went PS for some window shopping today after my lesson and found that there is a wine fair going on there. The wine fair is a 14days (1st-14th Mar) event organized by Carrefour. Went around to try free samples and bought 3 moscato there. Wanted to buy more but one is out of stock and the other (icewine) doesn't have sample to try out. So didn't buy because I am afraid that it will turn out to be too sweet. Also can't find any german riseling and cienna there. Heard from ppl that german rieshling is very nice and wanted to try it. Its a shame that its not availble there.

Its another busy week for me. Looks like its always busy week for me and I thought its not right. Something is wrong. Attended a 1 day time management course with my lab and another lab. Learnt some useful tips about time management. I thought the course isn't conducted as well as I expect it to be. Maybe its because I read a supplement lecture note material the night before the course and was q.impressed by it. The note is based on "Eat that frog!" by Brian Tracy and I thought its interesting and enlightening.

From the notes and course, I realise that some of the things that I have done is actually done "sub-optimally". I think this is because I didn't have the right resource to do my work! For example, I should go for training about a system-A before I start working on the system-A. But due to some crop up, the training was delayed and I have to start working on the system-A before attending the training. Another example, I am suppose to do some estimation about system-A but I didn't have the development environment to work on it. I only have the code to do the estimation. From the mathematical point of view, suppose working on the system is a function F and resources needed are the inputs (i.e.: manpower, time, approperiate skillset, right equipment/tools,..etc). To simplify, I denote it as 4 inputs as shown below:

F(manpower, time, approperiate skillset, right equipment/tools) = solution

a 4 input variables is enough for me to solve for 1 variable which make up 5 variables altogether. But now I only have 2 known variables (manpower and time). How to solve the problem?? though its not that it can't be solved but it won't be efficient because

F(manpower, time) = skillset

then use skillset o/p into F(manpower, time, approperiate skillset, right equipment/tools). So need we have 3 known instead of 4 at the expense of time and that is what I am doing right now...

anything changed must have a reason behind it

Went for a short run just now so that my sin of taking too much calories will be reduced. But I thought the running is so insignificant to the amount of calories intake for the past 5 days.... =( As usual, it feels sooo good taking a brisk walk or taking a sit at park after a run. Enjoy the wind, the silence and the peace of mind. Its this time and maybe only this time, the minds opens up, free from details and it suddenly able to see big pictures again...

Anw, after the run, I suddenly recall about the first aid event that I did earlier. And decided to come out with a flow chart as a recap of the CPR lesson. Done up the flow chart immediately when I came back just now and realized that there is some discrepency between my understanding and whats stated in the notes. In summary, the discrepency is the sequence of DR. ABC. Which I thought should be DR. BABC. Because shouldn't we check breathing first before we can check airway? Maybe I should upload my flow chart next time to kick start a lesson and refresher session. =)

Ealier tonight, I have broken my practise of not-to-gamble-with-poker-cards (lol). Actually..., its not really a practise or something that I enforce on myself.. but rather its a belief or preference of how money should be used. And the reason why I "changed" is because I am doing it with a different mentality. The metality of doing it as an entertainment and socializing act, than a out-to-win-more-money act. Thought I have realize the difference long time ago, but its recently that I feel that the socializing act is important to perform... And I thought it maybe because of my 2010 resolution that is responsible for this change... Like my RO said, anything said must have a reason behind it. In my context, its anything changed must have a reason behind it. And I thought I haven had changed enough.

First aider course AAR

Attended 2 Sat 9-5pm First Aider course the past 2 weeks. Learn about the existence of the course through the notice board at my block. Wanted to attend first aider course for quite sometime already but didn't go because of time and money. So I only download videos on internet to learn some basic first aider skills last year.

The course covers quite a broad range of stuff, FROM the very broad and basic knowledge like how to visually identify wounds, accessing what injuries casualty is likely to have suffered, what to do during incidents and etc. TO more specialize skills like bandage and CPR during emergency.

What I like most about the course is the way it was presented. The way knownledge is convey. The instructor shared her life experience, deliver the knowledge in an interactive non-monotone way and videos of real incidents. She really put in extra effort, going beyond whats really required of her to make sure we recieve the message.

Apart from learning about first aid skills from this course, I learn a very different way of conducting a lesson and how a person deserve and gain respects. Setting high standard on one self before you expect high standard from others and how to deliever the knownledge through stories and interactive ways. I must say that the 2 saturday is really well spent.

End of Year 2009

This the 2nd last day of 2009 and I thought I should do a reflection. Searching through my blog, I found out that I did not make any new year resolution for 09 (formally). But as far as I remember, I think I have completed most, if not all, of what I thought I would wanna do in 09. Actually there isn't much that I want to do in 09.

The list of things for 09 should be:
- to finish off my remaining NS (this is not what I want, but rather I have no choice...)
- slack and relax before I hunt for job
- minimum, get a finance related job to learn more about the industry before I decide on what I wanna do OR get a good pay job in IT industry.

Looking at it, 09 is really a year that I didn't have high hope/aim for myself. Probably thats the reason why I didn't bother to write it down anywhere in the first place. Lol.

Now its time for me to set some goals for 2010. Hopefully the same time next year, I will be able to go through it with satisfaction. =)

Feng's wedding

The stress on my shoulder can finally be relief today. Feng and ying's wedding finally ended and it ended quite smoothly... It was an unforgetable wedding as I gave my "first time" to feng (as emcee).

Everything run q.smoothly with minimum hipcups through the day. Timing is almost perfect for every events, weather was good until we just finsihed everything (rain started after we fall out from ying's house) and the bro and sis are just excellent.

Ofcoz, all these won't be in place without putting effort in the first place. I can see that Feng really put in alot of effort to ensure everything will run smoothly. From choosing buddies, assign duties (setting up plot), behind the scene negotiation, making excel sheet for guest list, key appointment holder contact list, documentation and planning of schedule, things to note, who to do what and etc... Ofcoz, I am sure that ying also contributed to these too directly or indirectly. Through this experience, I see alots of work to be done for the wedding, learnt some stuff about wedding, marriage and other important lessons, as well as discovered more about feng and ying. There are many things that I believe I have learnt or can learn from this unforgetable experience.

aero

Came across this interesting video while doing surfing.



and I also came across this interesting article that talks about the physics behind

http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/phonedrmarc/2003_april.shtml