Interestingness Rediscovered

Great Actors Never Disappear

"Chameleon"—that’s how great character actors are described when they synchronize with their roles. Actors such as Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman play roles varying as widely as a lonely Vietnam veteran's wife, flamboyant retired mother, and ruthless fashion magazine editor (Streep) or a wimpy closet gay, maverick CIA officer, and cold-blooded super villain (Hoffman). However different their characters can be, they are exceptionally convincing that they seem to be embodying rather than playing their roles, like a channeler possessed by the deceased.

But do they really “disappear” into their roles? If that’s the case, they must be unnoticeable, as real chameleons are. Real people living their daily lives usually do not attract much attention, even if their objective is to dominate the world. Well, if I seriously wanted to take over the world, I would stay as low-key as possible until the day arrives.

Yet the aforementioned actors are nothing but noticeable. Every second they are on the screen, our eyes are transfixed, especially when they have successfully “blended” themselves into their roles. Actors who exaggerate real profiles more likely end up creating stereotypes and remain unnoticed, like TV commercials. Think of the villain’s henchman, for example.

I think character actors don’t “disappear.” Instead, they highlight certain aspects of the people they are portraying, making them more noticeable than they really are, just like any actors do for any roles. Does that mean we can compare Truman Capote played by Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Terminator played by The Governator? Yes. Apparently there is a considerable difference between those two actors in terms of acting skills. But here, we’re talking about how believable a role is, and those two iconic roles are equally “real” for the audience. The difference lies in how close their roles are to people we actually know.

Here are iconic roles played by actors not known for their acting skills (you can also call them “stars”): an adventurous archaeologist, a whining rogue cop, a killer android sent from the future. I bet I would never see a real person, even in the media, who fits those profiles. But I certainly have seen, or will see, a wimpy nerd, a lunatic rock critic, or a neurotic playwright, all played by Philip Seymour Hoffman (I know I am sticky, but let’s admit: He is the best in the world at what he does).

Playing a non-existent profile is about claiming an unoccupied territory in our head; there is no memory to compete. I don’t know how to hold a double-barreled shotgun in one hand and drive a motorcycle with the other. Whoever implants the vision first occupies my knowledge base. On the other hand, playing an imaginary but real person is about replacing an existing profile: Joe the mechanic, Lin the dentist, and Mary the ex-wife. The actor might have never repaired a car, filled a cavity hole, or bitched endlessly about why forgetting to buy a carton of milk is a punishable crime. But if those actors are top-notch, they succeed in rewriting our database.

Both types of acting can be equally effective, but the complexity and difficulty will never be comparable. A great character actor does what all actors do—he just does it closer to our skin.

P.S. I consider The Terminator a masterpiece, but this line by the protagonist describing how stealthy the new type of android is, sounds ironic now.

The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human... sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot.

Yes, looking back the Terminator was hard to spot...as hard as Schwartzenegger’s accent and constitution.

The occupants should watch out for occupants

People have been occupying everywhere according to the news: Wall street, Rome, Madrid. Roads are blocked and cars get burned. The protesters are angry that their life savings have diminished, and the traditional mass media is happy that it’s discovered a life-saving topic.

The big picture seems to be as clear as it can be: The Rich vs. The Poor. But the more I think about the Occupy movements, the less clearly I understand: Who is fighting against whom? I see photos of students pepper-sprayed by police officers but cannot find bankers and laid-off workers engaging in fist fights (which I was secretly hoping for). I even wonder: Is this a real fight at all?

The occupants are very clear about the problem, or crisis, occurring in their lives—faith in middle-class life—and have traveled very far to voice their opinions. But is the cause, or the enemy, clear? The “enemies” should be the executives in the financial industry and the government officials who have skewed the financial system for decades. Yet I am not sure if they are the root cause. If it is true, ridding us of the bad guys and re-establishing the financial system should bring job security back to the 99%. The former might happen. But the latter might not.

I have an idea about who is really “stealing” the promised middle-class life from the Occupants. The reassuring fact is that they are familiar: Yes, they are workers from Asia. The bad news is that they are closer than we think: They don’t work in sub-human air-conditioned factories in Shenzhen anymore. Instead, they work inside universities, financial industries, Silicon Valleys in the developed world. Yes, it’s Chen and Kapor who used to work next to you in the company you no longer belong to. They are the ones taking away the dream life you thought you were entitled to.

Then why don’t we see those “real” enemies coming up in the newsfront? Because they don’t fight. They don’t have to. They can do one thing those crusaders in the Occupy movement cannot: Walk away. The “new nomads” are not bound to their traditional environments. And when they (eventually) leave, they also bring the job—the job middle-class citizens in the developed world should have gotten—along with them, elsewhere.

Both the protesters and defenders have nowhere else to go. That’s why they have to fight. The protesters have already tried (inside their home country) and failed. The bankers and government officials know they cannot leave either: They have optimized their whole lives to niche roles in this society; they cannot move away (with their cushy incomes intact). Both sides are defending their home turf. No one will budge.

But the new nomads from the emerging world are not fighting. They aren’t bound by physical restrictions—if they can’t find a job in the United States, they can just fly back to their home countries, which is exactly what’s happening and why the IT industries in China and India are starting to dominate the game. They aren’t bound by mental restrictions either—they have already learned to leave everything behind when necessary. As Sun-Tzu said, a true victory is about winning the battle without engaging in a fight. New nomads know this, at least subconsciously.

Even if the Occupants see the existence of new nomads, fights won’t start for a good reason. The new nomads made their way based on the same belief the Occupants have (or used to have): hard work paves the road to a better future. The new nomads are just a mirror of the Occupants’ ideal life in a parallel universe. The difference between the Occupants and the nomads, in my eyes, is how far they are willing to adapt.

I went to the Occupy Movement in Taipei. They “demonstrated” through the first floor of the 101 Building for several hours (and probably contributed to the publicity of the facility). They it started to rain and got cold so everybody went home to have warm dumplings. The Occupy Demonstration in Buenos Aires, I was told, lasted for a couple of hours. Maybe they were busy engaging in siesta, or eating a mucho amount of beef.

Where are these differences coming from? Both Taiwan and Argentina are the suppliers of new nomads. I think both Taiwanese and Argentineans know they are far away from the battlefield. They are at the base station, not the frontline. Why should they fight here?

Things to Do in Desperateville When You’re Dead 2/2

Continuing from the previous thread...

3. Get high by knowing how low you are.

The holy grail, the forbidden fruit, the last Highlander of our mental health, is Know Thyself. Well, I still don’t know who I am, but I know where I am: at the bottom. The moment I am in my lowest state is also when I can see my naked self. Ground zero is where everything starts.
Do this: Narrate your actions and emotions in third person point of view as you wade through your shitty days: “Isao ate a six-pack of Toblerone chocolate and played Doom II for 5 hours and hated himself for not changing at all from 1990.”
Advanced level: Really, really want to know who you are? Make this list: 10 reasons why I hate (name someone). Then change his or her name into yours. There you are.

4. Leave the problem alone, but never lose sight of it.

A worry never goes away. I can shut my mental curtain for a while, but soon or later she will peek her head in. She is just there, all the time. Worries should be treated like an evil dog or spoiled kid: If I face it directly, or on the flip side, turn my back on it, a disaster will ensue. What I have to do is to keep it at the corner of my eyes and slowly walk (work) around.
Do this: Push the issue at hand to the peripheral of your mental space until your feet get numb and your stomach gets 20% heavier than usual; you can always feel the issue, but it does not hamper your ability to move.
Advanced level: Finish a small task before the end of the day so that you can say “At least I have done this.” Then go home, eat tasty (=unhealthy) food and go to bed early in a good mood. Your internal oompa-loompa will keep working on the problem and when you wake up, you’ll get a hint at how to tackle the issue at hand (without getting bitten).

5. When your trusted lieutenant says “Nobody move,” it’s time to move.

Depression is resistance to change. My body enters hibernation by ridding power from my limbs so that I won’t move around, and provides me with an abundance of mental food—I toy with my worries in endless loops. I know that my body is doing what it thinks it’s best for me from past experience, which means my childhood. But that’s older than Windows 1.0. And I am worried that my Windows XP at my work is too outdated to do my job? Look who’s talking.
Do this: Get up and talk with other people. But hold on—focus on clarifying what the issue is about, not solving it. Knowing what the issue is about is 80% of the battle.
Advanced level: Make sure that your hobby—your escape zone—does not completely consist of solitary or immobile affairs. Go to an event, watch movies with your friend, or go to a yoga class. What you need is to reach out, and it’s easier to do in your leisure time.

6. Screw the list.

Writing things down is about moving old information out of my head to create room for the new. Now that I have created this list, it’s likely that I won’t remember these lessons anymore, unless I become desperate and look them up. So there is nothing left in my head? I think it’s easy if there’s only one. Here it is: breathe (courtesy of Sasha Cobra). It’s not the unconscious oxygen intake movement I do to survive, or the S.O.S breathing technique I practice for 5 minutes before entering a tough meeting with my boss. It’s somewhere in the middle: a natural yet deep breath that pushes my diaphragm down and my belly out when inhaling and clears my entire intestine and lets go of tension when exhaling. It’s a habit that should stick with you regardless of your emotional or physical state to help you sync with your core self at any time.
Do this: What, do I need to say it again?
Advanced level: Legend has it that once you master breathing you’ll become enlightened.

That’s it. What’s astonishing about this list is that it took nearly four decades to compile. Damn, I am slow.

 

Weekly Update: Jan29, 2012

Below is the highlight from my weekly activities on the web.

Blog

• Great Films = Influential Films

Tales from the Net

• The Harry Potter movie series might be coming to an end (yes, “an”), but this is where I read the entire story.
• Started watching this video thinking it’s another feel-better slogan. Boy I was the one so superficial. This is the video I needed to watch when I was her age. I guess it’s the same for most of us.

Quotes

• "Don’t say you were a bit confused and sort of tired and a little depressed and somewhat annoyed. Be confused. Be tired. Be depressed. Be annoyed."
• (“I was getting a haircut the other day and I saw your article”). I mention this as a reminder that far more periodical reading is done under the dryer than under the reading lamp, so there isn’t much time for the writer to fool around."
• "Trying to add style is like adding a toupee. At first glance the formerly bald man looks young and even handsome. But at second glance—and with a toupee there’s always a second glance—he doesn’t look quite right. The problem is not that he doesn’t look well groomed; he does, and we can only admire the wigmaker’s skill. The point is that he doesn’t look like himself."
  — William Zinsser, On Writing Well

Insights

• I am definitely not the only one who believes The Hunger Games is about the annual hot dog eating contest to choose the next global leader.
• Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. No, I am not talking about teachers. I am talking about consultants, economists, and psychics.
• I suspect doctors prescribe excessive pills not only for receiving subsidies but also because they actively rely on placebo effects.

Things to Do in Desperateville When You’re Dead 1/2

We all experience the Jerry Maguire moment; one day we wake up in the wee hours intuiting that our lives have lost direction and will be wasted. We jot down what is missing, for 25 pages, in two hours.

 

The 4:00am manifesto instantly cheers us up. But later, when we look it up during our sober time to enjoy the same gravity-defying high, we experience withdrawal symptoms instead. “Can’t believe I wrote this,” we mumble, thank god we haven’t shared it with anyone, toss our scribbles into the garbage can and get back to our daily melancholy.

Usually there is nothing wrong with what’s written. The problem is in what’s not: the follow-up to our grand vision, the action items. Without them, the list is just an ideal, a dream, the “big picture.” Filled with hot air, the list’s only direction is up. And when it reaches a certain height, the initial breath of fresh air turns into an unbearable suffocation, leading to downfall. To keep an idea at a sustainable height, a matching weight is required so that it calms us down as much as lightens us up. Only then a piece of encouragement becomes doable, as in “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out in our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, “Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

What follows is my attempt to create a list of doable encouragements, the recipe of a universal drug that works as an upper because it was drafted during dark hours, and also as a downer because it was reviewed during sunny days. It (should) lift me up when I am low and smack me down when I am high. I hope it offers some insights for you too.

1. A day contains both darkness and brightness.

 I found out I get stuck in a low state for less time than I used to think, which seemed forever. Practically, I oscillate between “high” and “low” at least once a day. Just because I begin a day woken up by dreaming of The Lottery by Shirley Jackson doesn’t mean I’ll psychologically experience the same fate.
Do this: Hold the temptation to call the office for sick leave. Instead, leave the apartment on time as usual, as long as your body will move. Bird by bird, buddy. And remember the opposite is also true: When everything looks all right, it’s likely because you’re in a high mood. Enjoy the moment but know it’s going to end.
Advanced level: Keep track of your state no matter how you feel. That will not only give you the power to survive the low moments, but also make your future depression forecast more accurate.

2. Your routine saves you from getting numb.

Being mentally healthy does not mean I am always centered, but means I can center myself. Mental health is no longer a matter of status, which is the result, but a matter of action, which is the beginning. Then how do I begin? By maintaining the small daily routines that help me pull myself together. They keep me grounded and provide me with the pivotal point to turn around.
Do this: Take the shower, wear clean clothes, read books on your commute, thank the bus driver, play the piano (ouch), write, and breathe deeply. Every day.
Advanced level: Have one ritual you cannot lose no matter what. It’s the one that gives you the biggest headache and regret when you miss it. For me, as you might know by now, it is writing.

To be continued...

 

 

Great Films = Influential Films

I watched the new version of Tron. It was bigger and fancier and awfully cheesy, meaning the filmmakers paid a correct tribute to the original. We’ve come a long way from the pre-3D days, when the world was filled with closeted Tron fans.

 

The original Tron came out in the year 1982, when the the Cambrian explosion of modern sci-fi films occurred (in my opinion), Tron, The Thing and Blade Runner. (Yes, we need to give Star Wars the proper credit for creating the Big-Bang.) They might not be considered as cinematic masterpieces except for then-groundbreaking special effects.

The Thing is just a B-class horror movie filled with cheap suspense (and proudly so), Blade Runner looks like a cloned version of film noir in smoked sets surrounded by matte paintings, and in Tron, more attention is paid to computers than human characters. But they all have the essential element of great science fiction: a view into the future. They did it in terms of not only vision but also technology. Few films manage to achieve the latter, yet it happened three times in the same year. Explosion.

The Thing raised the bar of special makeup effects and showed an extremely grim future: annihilation of the human race. (Future-thinking does not mean forward-thinking.) Blade Runner brought Syd Mead’s cyburban planning into life and projected a slightly better, but depressing nonetheless, world: a landscape drenched in acid rain and covered by über-commercialism, towered by skyscrapers owned by mega-corporations (turned out it was right—just visit Hong Kong or Taipei today). Tron gave birth to CG blockbusters and envisioned a more technologically advanced society: gravity-defying virtual reality.

...And that used to be the end of discussion about sci-fi films, because if we continued from there we eventually had to start comparison with...traditional films, where acting and storytelling rule, none of which films of this genre have. (Sherry, my editor, voiced her disagreement for Blade Runner. I admit. Rutgar Hauer is charismatic in it.) We, sci-fi movie aficionados, would yet again be forced to realize the ugly truth: our B-class citizen status in the movie kingdom. Dream on, but always remember that there are barriers that cannot be crossed. We were always in a hurry to make a quick conclusion in a discussion, so we could end on a high note.

No more.

Let’s go back to the beginning: what is a film? A genre of art. Then what gives a piece of art worth? How it impacts the audience, how it enriches our lives, how it makes us think about what it is to be human. Then think about the aforementioned movies. They pushed the boundary of what’s technically possible and opened a new world for us. If a piece of art’s worth is measured by the influence it gives back to the society, then the 80s science fiction movies’ achievement is no less, or might be even larger, than Citizen Kane, Seven Samurai, or The Godfather.

Want an example? Here is one, coming from John Lasseter, head of the animation studio Pixar, stating if there were no Tron, there would be no Toy Story (which kicked off Pixar). Because Pixar is the company that made computer animation as we now know it, we owe Tron credit for the birth of an entertainment genre. How many “classical” movies can claim that powerful influence on our society? Here is another example, a personal one: I moved to Taipei partially because I wanted to live in the world of Blade Runner: smog and acid rain and rotten gutters and hightech. I have watched more than a thousand films so far but no other film has influenced my life decision so profoundly.

P.S. Yes, I haven’t discussed anything about E.T., the titan that ruled the year 1982. It contained great storytelling and top-notch special effects from I.L.M. (+ made a load of money), but it was looking backward. Its theme is returning home (alien) and growing up (boy): nostalgia for our lost youth, evidenced by the recent Super 8, a direct homage to E.T and the innocent 80s. Despite being a science fiction film, E.T. was already of the past when it came out. It’s a good film, but not sci-fi good, in my eyes.

From breathing in to breathing out to breathing through

“Breathe.” That was the first, and most important, message from the instructor Sasha Cobra as we sat tensely and quietly in a yoga studio to learn to get in touch with ourselves better. At first I didn’t know what to do—or I thought I already knew: breathe in to take oxygen, breathe out to discharge carbon dioxide. How could I not know something I had been doing 15,000 times a day for my entire life?

But of course I didn’t, I especially didn’t know what exhaling meant. The old me would have reacted this way: Thank you, I never lived in Greece 2,000 years ago, and I have been too busy doing more important tasks, such as actually breathing. Well, the new me reacts that way as well, but is now humble enough to admit that he seldom knows what he is doing, thanks to his series of life’s missteps. Not surprisingly, my breathing practice did not give proper attention to exhaling, the most effective action to let my mental waste—tension, emotion, anxiety—go, to cleanse my spirit. It might be called breathe through, as observed by my friend Prish.

What follows is my personal experience on breathing through: deep breathing with the intention of “letting it all out.” It brought an unexpected consequence as you can read, but was also a liberating experience.

Lying on my bed with my palms facing up and my legs shoulder width, I started taking deep breaths with more emphasis on the exhaling side; longer and deeper. I sounded my breath out, making it gradually louder, until it became a bad imitation of Tarzan’s call. It sounded really fake and silly but I just kept on doing it.

Three minutes into it I realized my face muscles and neck were becoming stiff. My neck began to bend, against, or independent of, my will. I was moving my head side to side and narrowing my shoulders until they started touching my chin.

Then my arms became numb. It was as if I had surrendered my will to lift them. My face was twitching more aggressively, as if I were in agony—even though there was no physical pain. I started gargling instead of clearing my throat. I'm like a baby, how strange, I thought.

But I WAS becoming a baby. Now my entire body was bouncing and I felt a surge of primitive fear. I was in complete darkness even though I could see the lights, and I was scared to the bone. I was crying, crying for help. I’d managed to get my arms halfway up, but it seemed as if my body, taken over by this 1-year old alter ego, decided that was my maximum reach.

The "adult" me thought I needed to quit but curiosity won (as always). I continued to push my breath to let it all out, although both my baby self and adult self were in terror, wondering what the heck was going on.

The “baby” me went through the entire course of what a toddler typically does: after he finished screaming for help, he stuck his mouth out probably to reach out for breasts, uttered incomprehensible words and shook his head to express his dissatisfaction, smiled as if to respond to the parents’ soothing words, and after using up all his energy, fell asleep by folding his arms and tucking his chin. All the while my adult self was alert, half-trapped inside the body and observing the entire process. The whole affair felt like 10 minutes, but actually took more than 30 minutes.

Shit, I muttered. I have been carrying a neglected BABY inside me for...thirty something years? I was surprised how stealthy my alter ego had remained, and was equally impressed by how easy it was to bring him to the surface. I had been complaining throughout my life that I frequently felt heavy, tired (+ kicked and yelled at), yet I never looked back over my shoulder to see the reason. All I had to do was to breathe through.

I decided to breathe through every day to give this grumpy little bastard a room to play, to help myself come in terms with...myself. Admittedly it's awkward but I guess befriending an estranged family member, myself in this case, is always so in the beginning. I may be able to share my progress in later posts (without too many graphic details). Overall I am enormously grateful for this experience, which gave me a hint at my protectiveness, my always-stiff neck, my unexplainable uneasiness about existence (ha ha).

I know, this little child might not be adorable, but he is what I got, and who knows? He might even be my lucky charm. As I sit in this wee hour typing this post, I remember what Stephen King said about his “muse.”

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.

Learning 0.0

My learning started without any purpose, as far as I recall. I just kept memorizing what appeared in the textbooks and on the blackboard. I registered the answer in my brain. Then the question. Then the combination of the question and the answer. Teachers and parents told me what to take in and when to take it, and I obeyed. Let’s call it Learning 1.0: Rote memorization.

Then Learning 2.0 emerged: reaching an objective. I gradually realized that learning had goals, such as entering into a better school, standing out among my classmates, or making my parents happy. To learn was to accomplish. Whatever piece of information I crammed into my head, it was always chained to a goal. Otherwise, I wasn’t learning; I was indulging in my hobbies.

I surfed on the waves of Learning 2.0 through the majority of my life. If I could or did not receive a tangible result out of my learning, I decided it was a waste of time, and shifted my attention to something that looked more rewarding. I thought I was climbing an upward spiral, getting closer to my goals one step at a time.

Then came Learning 3.0: Self hatred. After all these years of yearning for my goals—a better company, higher financial status, more language skills, more certifications that should lead to more opportunities—I started to feel like an actor who had been rehearsing throughout his entire life, never revealing himself in front of a real audience. Haven’t I already harvested enough “fruits”? Why am I still trying to make them bigger? Why can’t I enjoy eating them? I buried myself in the learning process so deeply I lost track of what I wanted to do with all the knowledge and skills. I must confess: Indulging in learning was sweet. When I finally mustered my courage and looked up, I did not see the goal any more.

I started to look for clues to re-discover who I am, and what and where my goals are. So I started doing yoga, practicing Buddhism, exercising Tai-qi, reading self-discovery books, taking workshops...the unique but common story of a man facing a turning point in his life. This is what I finally understood about my “goals”:

They were all given.

Almost everything I have learned, I started on because someone told, suggested to, or implied to me that it was important: my parents, my teachers, my classmates, my colleagues, mass media, my supervisor, my partner... I followed their orders and listened to their suggestions, trying to think what they would think. Even after I had grown up physically, I remained trapped inside the 5-year-old mentality where everything the child does is about getting approval.

Is there a way out? Or, is there anything left inside me that did not originate externally?

It is here, right in my face: Writing. Or to be precise, sharing a fresh perspective on tired issues with a pinch of humor. Nobody told me to do it, said it was a cool idea, or suggested it would make tons of money. I just did it. The reason my writing did not fall into the category of “learning,” even though I had learned more about myself and my world through writing than any other medium, was because I labeled it as my hobby, a category which every “selfish” activity of mine went into.

Okay, so this is what follows next: Learning 0.0—Unlearn. Or, learn to listen to my internal voice and follow it. It’s such a cliché, isn’t it? It is a unique yet common experience we all encounter when we hit a tipping point in our lives: the moment we realize that continuing on the old path leads to nowhere.

 

...And start stretching

So, comparison, my old life coach, has been dead all along. What has taken its place? Yoga.

 I started yoga several years ago to counteract my lack of exercise. As a technical writer making a living by typing documents in a cubicle for 8 hours a day, I needed to reconnect to my body parts—other than my eyeballs, fingertips, and tongue (for consuming a gallon of coffee).

Before my first class the teacher gave students this warning: “Everybody is different. Only your body can tell you how much you can stretch, and where to stop. Comparing your posture with others does more harm than good.” Untiringly he did that before every class, and more untiringly, I kept staring at other students all the time. Even after a year I was in constant despair watching a first-timer placing her full palm onto the floor while my fingertips were still crawling for the last mile: 3cm to the rendezvous point. Surely comparison was doing a great deal of harm—to my confidence.

This peep-and-despair sadomasochistic training continued until one day I realized I was reaching higher than the Elasti-Girls (and boys) during a back-bend. I thought I was doing things the wrong way for the 100th time. But I wasn’t; neither were they. I am doing better than them. My Archimedes moment finally let me digest the first message from my teacher: Everybody is different. Maybe my body didn’t stretch as far as I hoped, but it could sustain me higher.

After this revelation, I finally started to pay attention to the signals coming from my limbs, not my eyeballs. I learned to close my eyes as if to give them some rest after a day’s work. And as I focused inward, I streamlined all postures into three simple movements: stretch my body to the point where pain and pleasure meet, stay there for a while, and then release the tension. I wasn’t working toward an objective anymore, but instead endlessly looping the cycle of stretch, reach, and release.

Yet finally I started to feel my body evolving. I did not notice it in terms of quantity (length, height, or depth) as much as in terms of quality (comfort, confidence, …still struggling for the third “c”.... whatever). I wasn’t morphing into another profile, but I was becoming more flexible and relaxed, which was noted by the teacher. I ditched all objectives and let my body grow on its own terms. Previously, the whole point of yoga was about getting in touch with my body. Now another point has been added: growing up.

I don’t know why I haven’t applied the teachings of yoga to other corners of my life yet. The idea is so simple: start from within, not outside. Instead of reaching out for a goal (and losing balance), I can stretch my whole being while grounded into reality. The downside is that I cannot control how exactly I will change, but it’s all right in the end: Why spoil the future now?

 

Stop comparing...

As long as I can remember I have been using the method of "comparing" to validate myself and measure my progress, because I didn’t know a better way. . What I also didn’t know, until now, was that it wasn’t working.

 To "compare" is to measure the distance between where I am and where I could be. This model looks solid enough to become an equation: Comparison=|(Possibility) − (Reality)|. Then why it isn’t working? Two reasons.

Reason number 1: One factor is almost indefinable. Yes, our ideal state, Possibility, is always elusive... no, no, that’s always clear. Our sensory organs, coupled with our brain, enable us to virtually construct our ideal state. We can literally see, hear, or even touch it, for example in our dreams. What’s elusive is our true self, Reality. Know Thyself is one of the oldest, most elusive, philosophical questions. Only a madman or a genius completely understands who he is, while the rest of us keep wondering (which probably is the reason for trying to measure our worth; it would be an answer of some kind).

Reason number 2: The equation is only effective for parts of the whole. Two packs of fruit juice might taste comparable when they are diluted enough to meet the 7-Eleven standard, but if we trace their origins we can find out that they used to be apples and oranges. No matter how precisely we distill an aspect of an object, it never tells us the whole picture.

The flawed model of comparison harms us in two ways: We pay too much attention to our goals, thus further neglecting our core selves, and we falsely believe that we can disassemble ourselves into independent elements. To see how this is not working, try summing up the guidelines for becoming a perfect man as portrayed in lifestyle magazines. Ideally you will be strong yet gentle, earn a lot but enjoy a private life, act rationally but never forget to express your sense of humor, and behave as a modest gentleman but know how to turn your partner on. Practically, you will also have to counter-balance the lightness of being the perfect man in the day with the heaviness of a being a serial killer at night, which those magazines—still part of the journalism ecosystem—always forget to mention.

Everything about ourselves is interconnected. If you poke one location, another place sticks out. 99.999% of people cannot compete with Steve Jobs in terms of being a perfectionist, but probably those same people can beat him in being a compassionate coworker. The idealized model, our “possibility,” is flawless only when we ignore this whack-a-mole effect.

We have to find a way to know ourselves and measure our progress without virtually chopping our body into parts and inspecting them for dead tissue. It turns out there is such a method, and I have been practicing it for conditioning my body without knowing it is also applicable for mental growth. To be continued...

 

Simply Complex

I write posts on my new 11-inch Macbook Air while listening to Joni Mitchell. The machine and the singer have two characteristics in common: they’re the best in the world in the genre they represent, and they look—or sound—simple. Thousands of wannabes set out to mimic them yet few come close to their level, let alone surpass them.

I always took it for granted that their simplicity/supremacy is difficult to achieve, yet never understood why. Simple work is made of fewer elements. Isn’t it a matter of doing less? Wannabes are racing to find a straight path to the holy grail of pureness in the jungle of incomprehensibility. And as the legend goes, most of them get lost and die in vain.

Why is it so hard to achieve beauty in simple forms? Is it because the so-called geniuses see something us mortals don’t? (That’s right, but let’s keep looking for other reasons to keep our spirit up.) What is the formula? (Yes, let’s work with this hypothesis.)

We should go back to the whiteboard and think about what makes simple work so effective. One answer is the absence of unnecessary elements. For example, the easiest way to make a car run faster is to remove excessive parts such as fake spoilers, as Paul Graham observed.

A few years ago I read an article in which a car magazine modified the "sports" model of some production car to get the fastest possible standing quarter mile. You know how they did it? They cut off all the crap the manufacturer had bolted onto the car to make it look fast.

Therefore to reach simplicity, one has to subtract, not add. Simplicity artists are not so much architects who magically know the right structure and material in the first place, they are more like archaeologists who keep digging into the wasteland until they unearth a fossil. To use a more down-to-earth metaphor, they are essentially doing the mental version of trash-dump labor, with joy.

But wait. How come there is so much crap in the beginning? Can’t we start with less waste, so that we can deal with fewer unrewarding manual tasks? I know the answer, which is simple (yay) yet disappointing (aww): No.

Even for writing this post (an excavation of a shellfish inside what probably used to be a caveman’s kitchen compared to the exposure of a T-Rex done by a professional writer), I had to spend more time sniffing around for a story fossil, any fossil, in my imaginary wasteland than actually digging it up. The problem is fossils only reveal themselves by contrasting with the surrounding material. My brain can tell the piece of white rock is what I want only if the rock is covered with yellow dirt.

In other words, without the dirt, there is no fossil. If achieving simplicity is about reaching the pure essence, then the masters are people who simply—pun intended—keep digging until they hit something different, and then dig even more until they expose the skeleton in the original form, without any trace of surrounding dirt.

Most of us give up before even hitting the fossil, either because we lack the power to endure or because we don’t care that much, or both. Endurance, that’s what achieving simplicity is about. Isn’t it simple, after all?

Steve Jobs = Taste

Almost without exception, Steve Jobs’ management style turned into business topics. Dozens of books teaching you how to focus on design, deliver powerful presentations, and think outside the box. Equally without exception, their concepts are seldom executed. Hold on. There is one trait that has actually been copied widely, and it’s without the media’s endorsement: his tyrannical behavior. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even copycat PC makers haven’t paid a tribute as large as the wannabe-Jobs executives who are busy beleaguering their associates.

I have encountered people who identified themselves with Jobs and Apple products and imitated him by hogging all the credit, doing things behind the curtain, and meddling with small decisions. They justify their behavior by saying sometimes you have to be an asshole to do great things. It is a plausible excuse, except that they usually fail to deliver the great— not just good—products.

Where do they fail in imitating Jobs’ awesomeness? Taste. Pushing a product’s quality in terms of industrial design, functionality, and performance is achievable by forcing people to copy what’s already ahead of them. But acquiring a unique flavor is a different affair. It requires having an objective internally, as in Jobs’ case, not externally, as in the imitators’ case.

Steve Jobs’ behavior was ultimately accepted, or even cherished, because he was always right in the end. Contrary to the coarse surface attitude, he had an incredibly sophisticated taste that sensed the right direction—even when he was wrong. Wanna know what people will become, with the attitude but without the taste? This is it, coming right from the company that has been thriving by copying what Apple and Jobs did:

 

It’s also a scientific reminder that shows what happens when human cloning goes horribly wrong.

Was Steve Jobs an anomaly in the evolution of Homo executive sapiens? I used to think so. He must have been born an asshole with perfect taste, just like some models are gifted with a perfect set of teeth or pelvis. Now I think it’s the other way around: He was a born maestro with a turbulent personality. For him, “taste” wasn’t about creating a winning strategy, as imitators believe and spend insurmountable hours—and money—in business schools to emulate. It was about hearing his inner voice, as Jobs suggested in his famous speech. I believe Jobs simply adopted the best practices to realize his vision, and that included being an asshole.

Ironically, if Jobs’ motivation was to rule others, he would have catered to them more. You can remain a bully only so far as people (prey) show up each day. As far as I have heard, Steve Jobs did not flatter external opinion for the sake of flattering, which meant that he was probably more of an asshole than other assholes. But Apple employees followed Jobs no matter what, because they saw complete calmness below the storming attitude, as if they were swimming in an ocean. Once they survived the madness on the surface, they could identify with the Zen-like stillness down below. Half-baked assholes do otherwise: they remain calm on the surface, as if to put a lid to their internal turmoil.

Jobs wasn’t interested in ruling others or being an asshole; he was just trying to be precise, until the day he died. That’s what we should copy.

Steve Jobs = Ourselves

When Steve Jobs passed away I was taken by surprise, just like everybody else. One reason was because it came too quickly —we knew it would happen, but we assumed he would make it until the Christmas season, when his autobiography would be published. But the bigger reason was because I discovered that I was genuinely sad.

 I used to think Steve Jobs was just an eccentric genius, a bottomless source of episodes. (For example, his commencement speech at Stanford University is an address composed entirely of quotable sentences.) But the day he died, I felt sadness and emptiness that were comparable to the loss of a family member. I knew this because I went through the same emotional cycle when my family dog died a couple of days later. Judging from the reactions on the Net, I was just one of the millions who had the same feeling; I was lonely, but I wasn’t alone.

Everybody on the Net mentioned two things regardless of their status, opinion, or background—Thank you, and Miss you. The feeling of loss was so strong among us, it was almost physical, as if we were collectively trying to scratch an itchy part of our back that doesn’t exist. I wondered why the emotional pain was so real.

It all made sense when I widened my view and saw the platform on which I was reading the news, writing comments, watching videos: a Mac. I have been interacting with embodiments of his vision, therefore, himself. No wonder his loss felt so personal and physical. Barack Obama’s statement also echoed this point.

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

The personal computer, as we know, is the offspring of Steve Jobs and his team from the 70s. With millions of Apple products sold each year, more people are getting closer to his vision, and therefore, himself. In other words, Steve Jobs has been part of our lives, and he will continue to do so. He is a father figure we didn't know we had, therefore never appreciated enough—except when he came around during Christmas seasons with gifts we didn’t know we wanted: iMacs, iPods, iPhones, iPads.

And now I see why few people talked about what people usually talk about when a great CEO passes away: Is Apple over? Instead, I read stories of people buying the just-announced iPhone 4S even though they were perfectly happy with their older phones. (The iPhone 4S posted record sales in its first three days.) It was as if they had decided to carry his torch, using their own cash to keep it burning.

Steve Jobs may not have cared about other people in the way they wanted him to. He might have had his back turned toward people, including his fans, but it’s because he stood strong and kept walking ahead of us to pave the road. After all, that’s what we all want from our dad. And probably that’s also what Steve Jobs wanted us to do: Keep walking.

So I am back to where I am, waking up in the wee hours and typing on his child, Macbook Pro. As I watch, the sky brightens up and I look forward to another day. Thank you, Steve. And it’s time to go to work.

 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Tasteless might be one of the deadliest insulting words for us, the Mac generation. For book aficionados, that means reading works found in airport kiosks’ merry-go-round bookshelves. Therefore, I have avoided The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo for a long time. That dandelion-esque yellow cover was popping up everywhere. What’s the point of weeding one out?

 Nevertheless I read it because I didn’t see a better choice for my personal project: Conquer my phobia of tasteless über-famous fiction book series. Candidates were as follows: Harry Potter, Twilight, Lord of The Rings, and The Millenium Series which starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Harry and his pal’s adventures were too damn long, Twilight turned out to be a great example of why the airport kiosk test works (Yes, I read it. Any problem?), and I had already spent 50+ hours in cable television for Lord of The Rings. Only one was left.

 On average, I spend three weeks to read a book. It takes that long because I use my idle time: on the bus, in a café, in bed before sleeping. But I finished the 600-page TGWTDT (The Girl with...) in a week because I was using my valuable time, instead of dead times, to turn the pages. (The 5:00 AM alarm rang when I finished reading it.) Now I am in my third week with the third book.

 I say it loud that the series meets the requirements of a great fiction according to David Mamet.

 The Godfather, A Place in the Sun, Dodsworth, Galaxy Quest—these are perfect films. They start with a simple premise and proceed logically, and inevitably, toward a conclusion both surprising and inevitable.

The Millennium Series also meets my own criteria of a great fiction: show us who we really are. That’s a tall order if one of the main characters is a 24-year old bisexual woman who is a world-class hacker, dresses like a teenage punk rocker, is emotionally disconnected, and doesn’t hesitate a second to retaliate using psychological and physical weapons. But she, Lisbeth Salander, is as real a human as anyone we know. The author never settled into creating a cartoon-esque character for the sake of adding colors to an otherwise grim novel. When we have a chance to look through Lisbeth Salander’s surface, we find a soul instead of a plywood board. Here are some of my favorite quotes.

Salander's greatest fear, which was so huge and so black that it was of phobic proportions, was that people would laugh at her feelings. And all of a sudden all her carefully constructed self-confidence seemed to crumble.

What she realized was that love was that moment when your heart was about to burst.

And we see where that paradoxical character comes from, when we understand what the author, Steig Larsson, went through as a young man. Lisbeth Salander is a reincarnation of Steig Larsson’s unresolved guilt, anger, and commitment.

 Larsson, who died of a heart attack just before the trilogy was published, was disgusted by sexual violence, having witnessed the gang rape of a young girl when he was 15. According to a friend of his, the author never forgave himself for failing to help the girl, whose name was Lisbeth—just like the young heroine of the trilogy, who is also a rape survivor.

He passed away before the publication of this book, but in order to sublimate that traumatic experience into that book, he must have lived—really, really lived. Thank you.

P.S. If you want to know the plot, this extended trailer for the upcoming film version introduces the overall premise elegantly. Warning: you will be visualizing Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, and Christopher Plummer as the protagonists while reading the book (fortunately, I cannot think of a better casting).

 

Spoiler alert: If the movie sticks to the book’s storyline, Daniel Craig is going to sleep with more women than his alter ego, James Bond. Someone please kill that guy.

 

 

Quantity = Quality

This is me, seven years old. I live in a foreign country called Malta, a small island in the Mediterranean. There is a daily survival war at my school.  My friends exchange secret codes unknown to me, and my teacher throws me impossible missions labeled as homework. All information is encrypted in a foreign language, English. More often than not I miss the critical part and self-destruct, sometimes faster than 5 seconds.

I don’t feel connected to the world I live in. Sometimes I tap the ground because it just doesn’t feel real; I am supposed to be in Japan but why am I here? Is it possible that it’s all a dream? All day long after school, I read books to channel an alternative (and safe) world called Anywhere But Here.

This is me, three decades later. I live in a foreign country called Taiwan, a small island in the East China Sea. There is a daily survival war at my company. My colleagues exchange secret codes unknown to me and my boss throws me impossible missions labeled as assignments. All information is encrypted in a foreign language, Chinese. More often than not I miss the...enough.

Deja vu. How come? Anywhere But Here was supposed to be my life objective, yet I am back to where I was practically born (= became self-conscious). I swear it wasn’t done intentionally. My adult life has consisted of jumping from one stepping stone to another, hoping each leap would show me a new horizon. I never saw any objective beyond the next move (or I half-consciously avoided paths with a clear view). Instead of reaching a place far away from the origin, I have traveled a big loop, like a salmon or turtle.

I took a look at what I am doing, then it made all sense. At Malta, I started struggling with English, my first foreign language. Now I still struggle with English (Who doesn’t?) and in addition I have Chinese and Spanish. Back then I just read. Now I read and write. In Malta my reading activities mainly happened after school and on weekends. Now as a technical writer, my reading (+ writing) activities fill my schedule 24/7, 365 days. I am just doing—and amplifying—who I was. I did reach an alternative world as I wished, but with a slightly different title: Nowhere But Here.

No, there is one huge difference. I am happy being where I am. I feel more so after realizing that I have essentially kept living the life that I hated. I am fine being in an alien culture, speaking foreign languages, doing the same activity (following texts) all the time. I am fine being happy. But I am not fine not knowing why.

And here comes our hero, Franney and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, recently introduced to me by my friends. (I had never read a Salinger. Did that rank me in the same position as Star Wars virgins?) Here is what Franney, one of the protagonists, says about the power of praying:

But the thing is, the marvellous thing is, when you first start doing it, you don’t even have to have faith in what you’re doing. I mean even if you’re terribly embarrassed about the whole thing, it’s perfectly all right. I mean you’re not insulting anybody or anything. In other words, nobody asks you to believe in a single thing when you first start out. You don’t even have to think about what you’re saying, the starets said. All you have to have in the beginning is quantity. Then, later on, it becomes quality in itself. On its own power or something.

It also perfectly describes what has been going on in my life. I never had any faith, nor choice, in my life at Malta; it happened because of my father’s job assignment. But it has grown into a gem—this life, now—by virtue of repetition and amplification.

I used to worry about what’s waiting in the future. I still do, but not as much as I used to. I will keep doing what I do and being who I am, and that will lead to a quality life all on its own.

The Movie World is Flat

Reading stories of independent movie makers is fun because their backgrounds, methodologies, ideals are all different. But one theme is curiously similar (except for their love of films): how difficult a task it is to make their films. On that point, sometimes they sound as predictable as Hollywood stars reading the description of their roles aloud with lifeless eyes in promotional interviews. Is the movie industry an eternal uphill battle, in which Davids (indie creators) fight against Goliaths (studio executives, bank loan officers, unappreciative families)? In other words, is it unfair?

At a glance it looks so. On one extreme we have Transformers, a US $200,000,000 project destined to dominate the earth. On the other extreme we have Blue Valentine, a $1,000,000 project aimed at winning the hearts of the audience. And far off the scale, there are $1,000 projects from my friend Enrique Amador, aimed at sharing personal visions (and perhaps some lunacy). As Brad Pitt, playing Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane in the movie Moneyball, says: “There are rich teams and there are poor teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us.”

 

The movie industry’s hierarchy triangle might look like a flat line because the skirts are so wide, but it’s still a fair world because most movies that get distributed compete within the same conditions: appearing in the same venues, asking for the same amount of money, and most importantly, taking the same two hours from the audiences’ lives. The fairness becomes more apparent when the movies hit households: Each film is just a piece of software listed in a shelf (or hard drive). Whatever differentiating factors—stars, special effects, intrusive ad banners—exist, they all get dissolved in the screen, forcing the movie to answer one question from the audience: Is it worth my time?

There are service industries that carry the same level of “unfairness” in the cost structure, but they aren’t necessarily “fair” at the consumers’ end. Take the restaurant industry for example. The original cost per meal at a three-star restaurant might be $200. The same index for McDonalds might be $1. (Still expensive? Here is my 20-cent recipe: rice + two eggs = combo meal.) The cost ratio between the top and the bottom is 200:1 as in the movie industry—I am graciously ignoring the bottomest players—but the venue, price, and time all vary. In the end, there are many yardsticks to measure a meal’s worth: Can I afford it? Is it delicious? Can I make out with her afterward?

The “fairness” doesn’t mean the movie industry is “better” than other service sectors. By some economic definitions, it might not even qualify as a legitimate industry: The initial cost is not reflected at all in the final price. How could it exist in this capitalistic society?

The reason the media cites unfairness is because it is indeed unfair and difficult from the producers’ point of view. But what ultimately matters is what we, the consumers, think. The movie industry might be structured in a vertical hierarchy, but from our point of view, it is totally flat.

Welcome to the Twilight zone

There are historical events that force us to question our very existence: 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, the Fukushima incident, and Twilight. What made that book series a global phenomenon was more enigmatic to me than what or who actually caused the September 11 attacks. So I decided to decipher the biggest mystery of the past decade, by reading the book. (The 9/11 Commission Report was too intimidating, and I thought maybe I’d get some hints about what women like. These are minor issues, of course.)

Fortunately, there are plenty of audio recordings on YouTube, thanks to 3 million die-hard fans. I didn’t need to spend my money, or truth to be told, get caught buying—or reading—the book. Taipei is a small city.

The book certainly is engaging. The high school set-up is familiar to all of us, including the feeling of isolation in a new community. Each chapter contains a surprise (that mysterious boy is a vampire, for example) that is also reassuring (he never kills fellow classmates). The non-threatening world view is more apparent in the lack of daily adolescent survival wars: attention, grades, sexuality (or lack thereof), family. The most symbolic—or unforgivable—example is this: The protagonist is a black sheep who never gets bullied.

This is a world that is easy to immerse ourselves into because few things distract us from identifying with the main characters. (There is even one for me: the guy who eyes her but is destined to be friend-boxed forever. I know how you feel, buddy.) Yet that safeness is achieved by the lack of an important element in its universe: a real person.

The protagonist, from whose viewpoint the entire world is constructed, seems to be observing everything but one thing: herself, as reflected by her friends and family (vampires don’t reflect anything—one ageless rule this book kept intact). In our teenage years, our ego-inflated fragile self-consciousness was what consumed our lives more than anything. But whether we like it or not, that was what kept us in reality away from the mirage in our heads. Without knowing who she really is, the protagonist of Twilight is “an empty shell for the target audience to project themselves onto and empathise with,” as the movie review site Dark Horizon says.

A Japanese writer once said a book’s worth can be measured by how much you have changed after reading it. That’s not likely to happen with Twilight, for either its readers or characters. The protagonist might physically advance (sex, childbirth, conversion to vampire follow up in sequels), but she will be mentally trapped forever in her teenage days, like her fellow vampires who can still tolerate being high school students after living for 200 years.

A good book amuses us, which is a hurdle Twilight no doubt passes. It might even qualify as an entertainment classic, judging by the size of readership. But it is not a great book, at least for me, because it fails to do one task all great books achieve: show us who we really are.

P.S. What about the “What women think” part? Here you are: the essence of becoming the guy lusted by young girls according to Twilight. I have made the list easier to achieve, by waiving the requirement of being a kosher vampire.

• Be immaculately beautiful
• Understand every single detail about her and be around her 24/7
• Be passionate and caring for her but be detached from everybody else
• Wear designer clothes sans logos (= really, really expensive ones)

P.P.S. I recommend reading the entire review of Twilight: New Moon on Dark Horizons. I bet it is far more engaging than the movie itself.

While the parallels to "Romeo and Juliet" are laboured on thick, more fitting a comparison is "Moby Dick". What else is Edward if not a pale white force of nature, and Bella the protagonist so utterly consumed by her obsession to him much to the detriment of everyone around her.

How to attack controversial matters: make them visible

A while ago TechCrunch picked up an ebook to suppress, not to promote, its sales because it dealt with a controversial topic: how to be a successful pedophile. The book did disappear, but not before its sales got boosted by 100,000% thanks to this unexpected PR boost by a high-profile media outlet. Any PR is good PR, after all. Techcrunch admitted that the result did not go according to plan.

We first posted on this because some of us weren’t cool with the fact that a book that made it easier for pedophiles to commit their crimes was so easily accessible via Amazon. Our post drew awareness to how sketchy this was but also attracted thousands of Internet looky loos who thought it might be funny to buy the book.

Is there a winner here? Amazon suffered from negative publicity and eventually caved under pressure to pull a (bestselling) book out off its shelf. And for us readers, a precedent for censorship has been established. Bookstores will naturally start backing off from controversial materials.

And we all know that the source issue, child abuse, will not be solved by pulling a guidebook from retailers. The effect is more symbolic, if it exists at all, as in Michael Moore’s petition asking Walmart to stop selling guns.

Furthermore, labeling a thing “dangerous” and trying to hide it is the best way to make it more desirable. I once read that Thailand newspapers used to put graphic photos of dead bodies on the front page to attract readership. Some people inevitably complained, so the media duly complied—by adding a black bar over the victim’s eyes. I can imagine how it affected subscription rates.

Probably the most effective way to get rid of a dangerous object is to make it look like it never existed. But that’s what censorship is about: eliminating unwanted social elements without a trace. To keep discussion fair and healthy, we have to bring the topic up front. How do we tackle this dilemma?

I suggest looking at this issue from a different angle. Instead of thinking about ways to suppress pedophilia, why don’t we discuss this subject more openly? According to Wikipedia, up to one third of all people have some kind of sexual experience with a pedophile. That might be an exaggeration, but according to my experience, pedophilia is far more common than AIDS or bird flu, life-threatening issues we love to discuss partly because they rarely exist in our daily lives.

I know at least one person who experienced sexual abuse as a child. On the surface the damage looked “cured” because the person had a strong mental shield walling it off. But in close proximity, I started to see the scar inside still infecting the body, eating the soul from the core. Ironically, the mental shield aimed at strengthening the spirit was also allowing the psychological damage to thrive for decades, protected from the external world. Pedophilia must be the most convenient form of crime for the offenders because the victims also support hiding the traces, probably more aggressively than the perpetrator.

Even more sadly, this person was trying to compensate for the scar by abusing the people around, especially the close ones, unconsciously and without control. Pedophilic experience had made this person a living robot—or even a zombie—who automatically acts according to the “programming” implemented earlier in life.

Opening a public discourse about pedophilia is not about creating a vent for child abuse, or posturating that being attracted to young, vulnerable kids is healthy or normal. I am saying that we shouldn’t treat such a common phenomenon as something that doesn’t exist. We might still not know how to cure this disease. But we do know this: a psychological scar does not automatically heal itself—I reluctantly believe this, after witnessing how the “mental shield” works. But sunlight can help. It’s time to bring this issue to a visible level and watch, discuss, and treat it just like we treat other abnormal psychological states.

A belated movie review: The Hurt Locker

(Note: There are many spoilers. But even if you haven’t seen the film, it only gets better once you understand what it is about. I will explain why.)

The Hurt Locker, the 2009 movie that brought Kathryn Bigelow the first Oscar for a female director, does not allow the audience to feel catharsis. I watched that film on the big screen with a friend and we both came out of the movie theater with a shared but unspoken opinion: What was that about?

The movie worked fine until midpoint. A loner bomb defuser with an attitude (played by Jeremy Renner) keeps clearing up difficult assignments relying on his instinct and ignoring official protocols. Fellow soldiers are constantly annoyed by his go-fuck-yourself attitude but cannot help but admire his skills. It is a modern-day spaghetti Western revived in the desert of the Middle East.

But in the second half, the protagonist starts to drift off the high note. He takes revenge on the wrong person and along the way, shoots his colleague in his thigh by accident. In the climax scene, he fails to defuse a bomb, letting an innocent guy wrapped in explosives waste his life. He leaves the army, starts a peaceful but boring civilian life. Everything is downhill.

I was waiting for a resurrection at the end, thinking: It cannot end like this. The final twist did come, but equally uneventfully: He went back to the battle field and was standing at a corner of an Iraqi street, wearing a protection suit. And that was it. How could a Hollywood film offer such an anti-climatic ending?

I finally got a clue when I was listening to a Japanese movie critic/journalist Tomohiro Machiyama's seminar (in Japanese, sorry) where he explored a common theme that runs through two Oscar-contenders of 2009, Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker: A man’s transition from a big boy to a mature adult by realizing his calling, even though that calling is nothing glamorous. Now I get the reason why the former bomb squad commander went back to his old job, even though he failed miserably at his last mission and became disillusioned: Because he has accepted the fact that defusing a bomb is the only thing he could do well.

The movie does not vindicate his decision by showing what happens later, because that’s not the point. Knowing who he really is and getting down-to-earth by choice, that’s the point.  Had my friend and I known we were watching a mid-life crisis drama in disguise of an anti-Iraq war movie, we wouldn’t have been disappointed. Okay, let’s admit: We wouldn’t have seen the movie in the first place.

Why am I talking about this movie now, almost two years later? Because recently I have also consciously narrowed down my future career path to a few options. It was a scary decision. I used to believe throwing away life’s possibilities was about getting old, or even worse, dead. Some part of me still thinks so. But the rest tells me that knowing myself and walking the too-well-known road consciously has nothing to do with age. It’s that we are so stupid that we don’t realize what we should truly embrace until we hit a crisis.

P.S.
The movie’s central theme—men’s mid-life crisis—also explains why Kathryn Bigelow, a female director, was able to shoot the film. Male directors are too close to this subject. They go to the extreme and ignores it or glorify it. Think of any movie that includes a 40-year-old hooking up with a girl half his age (which means 50% of Hollywood films—now you are getting the big picture).

Do we prefer an endless game to a grand finale?

A technical writer's job is to write manuals and a manual's job is to solve chaos. Therefore, a technical writer’s job is to solve chaos. That has been the definition of my job for a long time, and in my fantasy I rank it as high as police officers and firefighters or as low as professional snow shovelers, depending on the mood.

But taking a step back, ALL jobs in the world are geared toward solving chaos. Teachers help students organize their knowledge base. Biologists and other scientists untangle the mysteries of natural science. Bookkeepers sort inventory and straighten financial status. Consultants tell their clients how to clarify complicated situations. Artists, no matter how entangled their works may seem, try to create a perfect world that can stand on its own.

Well, then, how come our world is still so...chaotic at large? In the world where everybody is busy solving the small mysteries around them, larger issues never cease to pop up. Food shortages, nuclear hazards, the steady increase in the jobless rate, an ever-increasing discrepancy between the rich and the poor. The list goes on and we are already apathetic about collectively reaching any sort of goal as human beings.

We spend most of our waking hours trying to solve this and solve that, yet those daily acts do not transcend to larger issues. Why?

Maybe it’s because we don’t want to solve issues—completely.

What we are accustomed to is the act of solving, not eradicating problems (maybe it’s because we have never enjoyed how it feels to eliminate all problems...but that’s another issue). If we solve everything at hand, what’s left for us to do? Retire peacefully in a small condominium? According to my parents’ generation, that’s not as fulfilling as governments and tourist agencies preach.

We enjoy what we do too much, which is endlessly tackling problems. I cannot help but think that that’s probably why our collective minds do not work together to solve the larger chaos that exist in our lives. Technically nothing stops us from solving major problems, such as war, but maybe people aren’t ready to give up the adrenaline rush, no matter how devastating the outcome is.

Are we going to continue destroying our health, society, or earth at the expense of doing what we have been doing?

Cults are Us

I emphathize with cults but do not sympathize with them. I would like to dig into this issue. I define a cult as a (mostly) religious group that meets the following conditions:

• Its core belief is not widely known but nevertheless considered dangerous.
• Its primary purpose is to sustain itself, not to reach a practical goal. If the latter is the case, it’s a project.
• Joining it is very easy but leaving it is very difficult. For me, this is the most important hallmark of a cult.

A cult might be labeled as “different” by both its members and the society, but it is still a group—a collection of people. A member of a cult is expected to follow certain rules such as belief, attire, and language, like in any other communities. Therefore, a cult’s identity is not being different; it’s about being the same. Otherwise, why form a group in the first place?

In other words, a cult is an attempt to create a miniature members club by people who couldn’t join one in the real society. It is like growing a bonsai tree because you can’t afford the money or space to buy a real one.

This similarity between cults and the rest of the society is one reason why cults are oppressed. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo and its members have been thoroughly persecuted after they spread sarin gas inside the Tokyo subway in 1995. Today, people talk about Aum in the same context as they discuss a lethal virus. But in terms of the amount of inflicted damage, the often-glorified yakuza far exceeds Aum. Why has Aum been treated so differently? Its structure holds the secret.

Aum’s members were mostly highly-educated young people—their main source of income was designing and marketing laptop computers—who organized self-sustaining community under a spiritual leader. Sound familiar? It looks identical to the Japanese society at large, even including the blindness to external points of views. Aum wasn’t an alien force trying to infiltrate the harmonious Japanese society. Aum was Japan itself. That’s why it is hated with a vengeance.

What we see in cults is often the ugly side of ourselves. Thus we persecute cults, and that’s how cults justify themselves; the harder the persecution goes, the stronger the badge of recognition becomes. The whole affair turns into a vicious circle.

There is a way to avoid this tragedy, which is to get back to the source: being different. Why do we need to crave for sameness? We can embrace ourselves as who we are. It’s not about being different; it’s about being unique. And everybody is the same for being unique. All we need is a little more courage and strength.

Being accepted or not shouldn’t be the way to vindicate our identities; we are not that weak. We should stop playing the belonging game, and instead start bonding with each other in a healthy manner. We might become alike in the end. But it should be the side effect, not the objective.

I do not sympathize with cults because I believe we have gone on to separate paths beyond the initial identity struggle. Let’s embrace our uniqueness. It is not only healthy, but—this is the real bonus—it’s also FUN. Sameness is so boring.

Is it about cults, or me?

So, my fear of cults doesn’t reside in cults but myself. What does that mean? This topic goes down a path in my history.

Throughout my life I never felt like I belonged to the majority. When I was five years old my family started to move around the world, from Japan to Taiwan to Malta and back to Japan. I was a newcomer everywhere, desperately trying to fit into given communities. I lived under the fear that someone might take my invisible visitor’s badge any time and declare that I didn’t have the right to be there.

Through years of half-attempted adaptations, I turned myself into a culturally/mentally hybrid person, someone who can be comfortable at skin level at anywhere but always restless at a deeper level. (There is even a word for my profile: ATCK, adult third-culture kid.) Then I came back to Japan, which didn’t improve the situation much. In the land of the rising sun, the myth of a homogeneous society was prevalent and the assimilation pressure was stronger than in any other cultures I had experienced.

I gradually got over my fear, not because I found how to adapt myself or a group I belong to but because I found myself fine (= surviving) being nowhere. Seven years ago I settled in Taiwan, and it has only been getting better in terms of being comfortable with who I am, a happy mutant.

But old habits die hard. Whenever I hear keywords such as “weird,” “foreigner,” “eccentric,” my ears stop absorbing anything else that is going on and pay all attention to what I am hearing, out of survival instinct. This is why the topic of “cult” not only triggers my attention but induces my fear; the fear of being singled out.

So the truth is that I don’t fear cults. Instead, I fear being called out as part of a cult, or as any name which implies that I “do not belong.” My old survival instinct gets triggered automatically, no matter what. And that instinct triggers another action, also automatically:  finding an escape route. Back when I was a kid, the routes consisted of simply saying no, or saying yes too loudly, or my favorite, shutting off physical sensors and living in my imagination.

Now I find there is yet another route: projecting my internal fear onto an external object—the cult, in this case. It’s about them, not me—that’s the pressure release valve my protection mechanism choose. I must admit it worked well; I haven’t noticed it until now.

Let’s go back to the cults. I don’t hate them. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I emphathize with them, as I do with other social misfits. Our paths might be parted, but at a point in our lives, we fought the same war for survival.

But it doesn’t mean I sympathize with cults. To be continued...

Do I fear cults?

Ever since I encountered Tibetan Buddhism, the word "cult" has been in my head. When I started visiting the dharma hall, I wondered if I saw one. When my visits became regular, I wondered if I befriended one. When I decided to seriously study Buddhism, I wondered if I joined one.

All the above questions have long been answered—I guess it’s hard for a group to become a certified cult when “Let it Be” sits at the core of the belief—but a question remains: Why am I always worrying about “cults”? It is time to go down the rabbit hole and see what’s in there. Figuring it out might be similar to knowing the identity of Freddie or Jason. This doesn't make either less harmful, but would make me feel much better.

The first step is to figure out which aspects of a cult make me nervous.

• Do I fear specific cults?
• Do I fear members of a cult?
• Do I fear how cults influence me?

Do I fear specific cults?
This possibility, though ear-pleasing, doesn’t exist; I have never received real threats or harm from groups identified as cults (as most of us haven’t). I associate the word “fear” with “cult” because I see them associated in news media. There is no physical entity that gives me cold sweat.

Do I fear members of a cult?
Cautiously, I would say no. I was annoyed a few times when some friends tried to recruit me into something I perceived as a cult. Although our friendship had changed permanently (mainly because I distanced myself), there was no harm. They were, without exception, trying to spread good will, not a scam or an evil scheme.

Do I fear how cults influence me?
Hmm...No. Ultimately it is up to each of us to decide to be “influenced,” except for kids forced to join a cult. There might be thousands of people who claim to be victims of a group, but also there are people who set their lives on good tracks because of that same group. Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and Beck might be part of a controversial group, but it doesn’t make them less professional and awe-inspiring.

It is becoming clear that the source of my fear does not lie in cults or their members. Of course—I have barely had direct interactions with any such groups. But my obsession and fears about cults are real. Where do they come from?

I already know: Me. Where else?

I don’t need to know what the exact cause is—my tummy is accurate enough to signal me (through contraction) that there IS something inside. I will dig into what issues exist in the next post, but for now this revelation is good enough: If I fear something but do not have a solid reason for doing so, it’s because I am looking at a projected image of my private issues.

First Impression: Sasha Cobra

In a cozy apartment, munching a delicious home-cooked meal, a dozen of us eagerly wait for Sasha Cobra to join the Skype call after we have watched the DVD of her bodywork. We have more questions than we anticipated. One reason is that we are simply confused because her practice is nothing like we have seen before. But the bigger reason is that we are hooked and we want to know more.

Sasha appears. She is pleasing but doesn’t please. She is relaxed but she is alert. She looks young but appears more mature than any of us. She is soft-spoken but her messages are strong. Her attitude is gentle but her focus is sharp. To summarize, she is off-balance but integrated. I keep thinking: This person actually exists?

I google my brain for the word to describe Sasha, because there is no framework I can automatically categorize her into—a habit which is probably treated in her workshop—and the search result comes out: authentic. I am exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. I have used that word on numerous occasions, but now they all seem fake (indeed, some were). Something tells me that I am using “authentic” correctly for the first time.

She shares her insights on why we are so confused about sexuality, how our energy runs through our body, and what it means to be a man/woman. Her words are handed to us gently, but they penetrate right through our mental walls. It is as if she is throwing marbles of wisdom into our soul’s dry well. I hear the clicking sound all the time.

To get more glimpses of her insights, I listen to her podcasts including this interview she did with a so-called dating guru. Using the same relaxed tone, she nails audience questions (and the guru) as in this one:

Q: What do you make of men who constantly get friend-boxed?

Sasha: They’re too needy, or seeming to be too needy, which is usually about the same. Where they have started, a lot of these men have unresolved issues with their mother. When a little boy wants to get approval from his mother, he tends to do things to please her, undermining his manhood, just to make sure that his mom says “Oh, you’re a good boy.” So what a lot of these men would be doing is relating with women in the same dynamic.

Truth hurts. But it’s a medicine—or even an operation—the patient has neglected for a long time. It’s time to “take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

P.S. A friend’s comment reminds me that the whole affair is more about invigoration than investigation. So here is an uplifting message from Sasha’s Youtube channel, which contains more gems.

This is your life, and your life is going to be a direct reflection of what goes on internally. So as long as you are creating some kind of blocks for you, as long as you are feeling insecure about what other people think, your life is going to have blocks externally. So you know, sometimes I work with men and it’s like, it could be something where you get rid of blocks in the physical level, and all of a sudden they get a promotion at work. And they are like, “How do those two connect?” But they do. You could just imagine if it’s difficult for you to grasp the concept but your whole reality externally is a direct reflection of what’s going on inside.

P.P.S. She is coming to Taiwan on November.

An unsent letter to a person with whom I had shared my life

Dear ---,

Our relationship was a very... dynamic one, to put it positively. Before we met each other, we were both walking minefields looking for someone who would release our explosives.

Luckily, we found each other. Not a single moment of boredom existed. That’s the good news. And the bad. We were stripping off our skins and grinding our raw nerve systems into one another.

What particularly annoyed me was that you never compromised. Most people "mature" their expectations to dodge serious confrontations, sometimes by telling mild lies. You didn't (in my eyes and ears). I couldn't keep facing a person who was always filled with raw energy and also not changing her behavior according to external expectations at all. I started avoiding you, which meant making excuses or sometimes not talking to you at all. Our relationship naturally degraded.

Fast forward to the present day; now when I form a relationship, anything from a casual conversation to a serious one, I try to make it work by being as sincere as I can be. I don't want to repeat the mistake I made, which was to fake the relationship out of fear.

Or am I trying to learn from the "mistake"? Being sincere to one another is, after all, about being "true." In other words, I am constantly asking myself: "Am I presenting myself as I am?"

And that is exactly what you were doing when we were together. You were always you, no matter what.

After all, I have been learning from you, not "mistakes." I probably do not copy your behavior, but I do take your deeper intention and apply it as my everyday philosophy. You tried to teach me hundreds of things and I learned none (from your point of view). But this one, something you taught me unknowingly, is what I am keeping in my heart. It has been staying with me, also unknowingly (until now) and it will do so for some time—maybe for good.

Now I feel closer to the days we spent, although we still might be oceans apart in many aspects (literally there is an ocean between us).

Enough of mumbling. Today, this is what I just want to say: Thank you.

Afterthought & a Summary : Inside Job

I was attending a charity auction dinner when a Smart car was introduced as an item, with the starting price of NT$20,000 (US$600). That’s the spirit of charity, I thought—except that it would still belong to its original owner after the winning bid. So, was it a leasing plan? No: What the bidder would gain was the right to sit in the passenger seat and cruise Taiwan for a day with the owner-driver, a married guy in his 40s.

Half of the audience, dressed in proper attire for a five-star hotel banquet (except yours truly who dressed, looked, and was treated like a waiter), patiently sat out of respect and curiosity. An unexpected situation occurred: The bid went UP. A group of businessmen, occupying the nearest table to the stage, were bidding...against each other. One raised his hand. 25,000! The chairman yelled. After 30 seconds of calculated momentum, the next guy lifted his finger. 30,000!

I imagined two baldies cruising downtown Taipei in a yellow Smart for “fun,” wearing matching black suits. The whole show started to look like a scene from a surrealist art film, mimicking David Lynch or John Waters. I asked my friend who these guys were. She told me they were from Standard Chartered and were new in town. They were using this auction as an introduction to the higher echelon of Taiwan’s foreigner society (=gold mines). Presumably their “generosity” would be a corporate expense.

Who said the financial industry was in trouble?

Or was it ever in trouble, to begin with? I stumbled on a documentary called Inside Job, which revealed what was going on inside the U.S. financial industry during the first decade of the 21st century. Because everything financial is carbon-copied around the world under the name of globalization these days, we can take a hint about what is going on, or what will happen, to the rest of the world from the film.

(Spoilers ahead) The whole affair can be summarized roughly as follows. During the Reagan era, ex-bankers were invited by the government to become regulators because they were considered “experts” on complicated financial issues. Of course, the “regulators” started bending laws for, not against, their “old friends’” sake. The inmates had started running the asylum. Thus the housing credit scheme was born, which (1) disguised all risks under complicated mathematical terms, (2) targeted the uneducated poor, and (3) let people buy something they wanted but could not actually afford: housing properties. All “certified” under federal laws.

The rest is history. The financial industry knew that the meltdown was going to occur. Records show that internally they were betting AGAINST their own offerings. One more: Politicians, even the President, have short-term tenure, which limits their circle of influence. Bureaucrats, or financial regulators in this case, don’t. They stay. Not a single top financial executive has been prosecuted in the financial meltdown. History will repeat itself.

Here is the whole Inside Job, online. Go watch it, especially when you need some chills in the midst of summer heat.

Also, do not miss the (end credit of) The Other Guys., which brilliantly analyzes the recent financial situations and scams. I also bet you can enjoy 5 minutes of Will Ferrel movie if it is doesn’t have Will Ferrell in it.

 

 

What do I want my legacy to be? 2/2

The last post was about my personal plan to answer this question. This post is about the question itself, which I believe is THE question that we should all ask ourselves whenever we lose a sense of direction in our lives. It is the evolved “What should I do with my life?,” a question that has symbolized both mankind’s victory (gaining control over our destinies) and defeat (losing it again—read the question aloud), and also the title of a book I have read several times.

The author, Po Bronson, started writing the book by throwing out the titled question and listening to the overwhelming replies. His initial motivation was to get inspiration for dealing with his own life crisis; he ended up not only writing a bestseller but also setting his life on course (more about this later). For me, the book didn’t offer any solutions but helped me feel comfortable dealing with my doubts. I felt like I was working with a top-notch therapist who charges only one-time fee of $20.

But while “What should I do?” remains an important question for many of us, it can also slow our lives down by allowing us to (1) ponder the “choices” we still have and (2) take our lives too seriously. We all love pondering this question. But what we really should do is to move on with our lives, not just pause. Otherwise we are...spending a long time thinking about how not to waste our time.

The new question “What do I want my legacy to be?” deals with the same issue—how to spend the rest of our lives—but turns the focus around from “us” to “them.” It reveals that (1) the long-term outcome matters more than our next step, and also (2) slaps our face gently to remind us that it’s not just about us anymore. We realize that we need to keep up with the rest of the world because it, or the people we care about, just keep on going. This question not only makes us think, but also makes us move: Time to move on. Change the direction if you want, but don’t stop walking.

We can see what happens when someone moves away from “What should I do?” in none other than Po Bronson himself. His follow-up book was “Why Do I Love These People?”, again a collection of interviews but with an important change: This time it focused on one’s relationship with his family. His next (and latest at this point) book “Nurtureshock” went even further: It revealed various misconceptions about how we treat our offspring. The evolving topics show a clear trend: From Us to Them.

It is not just the topics that have kept changing in Po Bronson’s books. During the course of writing these two books, he has gradually shed his trademark style (intuitive monologue with a touch of sarcastic humor) and started presenting logical discourse backed up by research, similar to other “business books” in the market. It is as if he has transformed into a different persona. I used to think he has lost his mojo, sold out, or even deserted us loyal readers. I still love his old humor, but now I think of his transformation positively.

Therefore, I think the reply to the good old “What should I do?” is to twist it into “What can I do (for them)?” Or if we still prefer a clear-cut solution, how about this: Grow out of it.

What do I want my legacy to be? 1/2

This two-part post series is the reply to an overdue commitment for a contribution to Brazen Careerist’s blog series, and personally to Ryan Paugh. In this post, I will talk about my personal commitment to creating my legacy. In the second post, I will talk about why this is such a great question to ask.

In the beginning I thought it was an easy question because I already had an answer in my mind: I want to be remembered as a helper. I supposed all I had to do was to add some meat on top of that skeletal idea, simply and quickly. Then I looked up the meaning of “legacy” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Legacy: a gift by will especially of money or other personal property

Which means leaving a legacy = helping others. Therefore my answer just amounted to “I want to leave a legacy.” I was back to square one and had to look further into myself to find out WHAT legacy I wanted to leave.

I looked into my mental hole, in a manner similar to peeking into a well from its edge. There I saw a man in his late 30s who has gone halfway through his entire life and still “checking out opportunities” with no “dividends” to leave for others. He looked like a wannabe athlete who has been doing nothing but training for the unseen big event for his entire professional life, finally realizing that he has no trophies in his closet because he hasn’t joined any race yet. To make things worse, his biological clock had already turned into a timer.

The good news is, I saw something clear. The bad news is, that guy was me. Cold sweat ran down my back. I backed off from the edge of my mental black hole and stopped thinking about the legacy issue.

Recently, I finally mustered the courage to tackle the question again. The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown that hit Japan had no doubt influenced or shaken me up profoundly (this will be a separate blog entry). Every Japanese was forced to rethink of his or her life onward and I was no exception. What should I do for my family and communities back in my home country? The old questions resurfaced: What should be my legacy be? What should I do?

The result is, I still have the same answer: I don’t know. But this time, it is followed by “I don’t care much—I just leave legacies behind all the time.” Let me explain.

Leaving a legacy is an act of giving. The act of giving is ultimately about the receiver, not the giver. In other words, it is the recipient who decides what to make of the gift—or legacy in this case—just like the audience in the bar who judge whether the stand-up comedian is funny or not.

Therefore, thinking of the legacy in terms of “what” sounds like dictating people’s reaction to receiving your gift. We all crave praise, attention, admiration. But aiming for these reactions belongs to the realm of “crossing the line,” because in doing so we are wanting, not giving. Besides, what’s the point of knowing how well your work/life is going to be perceived, if you are no longer there?

Now that I have eliminated the “What” from the first question, “should I do?” is the only part left. To do or not to do, that is the question. For this centuries-old question (in a slightly different form), a 20th-century sportswear company has already provided an answer: Just do it. So let’s just do whatever we can to help others. That’s what leaving a legacy is about, for me.

What about the worry of not having done much in my life? Well, if I think of leaving my legacy as an everyday act, not an accumulation, then I might have been leaving legacies behind anytime, anywhere, with anyone. That wannabe athlete I saw in my mental hole was probably joining the competitions all along, without realizing so. Maybe I can be more forgiving about myself, my life so far, and my life ahead. Maybe I can just carry on with glamourless everyday stuff with the act of giving more integrated into my core philosophy, leaving others to judge what’s left in the end. All I have to focus on is to give rather than take.

And therefore this blog post, as well as any of my writings, is also a gift, a piece of legacy. I can only hope someone reads it and not think he or she has wasted her time.

--------------------------------------P.S.----------------------------------------

For us wondering what it means to be leaving great legacies (= being a mensch), Guy Kawasaki offers a great summary in his book.

The big point, and what separates a mensch from a good schemer, come from helping people who cannot help you. In ascending order of karmic purity, there are three reasons to help these folks:

• • You never know—they might be able to help you someday.
  • You want to be sure to rack up karmic points just in case the theories are right.
  • You derive intrinsic joy from helping your fellow man.

The first reason will get you in an exit row in coach class. The second will get you into business class. The third will get you into first class on Singapore Airlines in a seat that converts to a fully reclining bed with a power outlet for your laptop and noise cancelling headphones on a plane with in-flight Internet access.

 

Liberating ourselves by segregating ourselves

Back in junior high school when I was unknowingly suffocating from living a double-layered monolithic life in a Japanese (layer 1) suburban (layer 2) area, I was thunderstruck during the sociology class by reading in the textbook about the mythical diverse culture that existed somewhere in the land of Far West called the U.S. According to the short blurb, a dream-like society was starting to emerge where people with different skin colors, cultures, and beliefs could co-exist without trying to assimilate each other. It was the 80s, you know.

I thought: How wonderful it would be to live in a world without peer pressure, where you don’t have to live according to unwritten rules? Of course back then I couldn’t articulate my desire this clearly (if I could have, I wouldn’t have stayed in Japan for long), but the idea that I might be able to find a place where I would not feel constrained stuck with me, eventually leading me to settle into Taiwan at the beginning of the new millennium.

I have associated myself with nomads: people who do not belong to where they should belong. It was a great feeling to find a perfect niche in the world, almost free from the constraints of group-mentality tribes (Yes my view is skewed and unfair. Let’s move on.) But lately, I have started to have a deja vü sensation: I have been surrounding myself with the same type of people all the time. The difference between the past and present is that this time, I am one of them.

I listed twenty most-frequently contacted friends online and offline, and none of them belong to the “majority” in the traditional sense. Or in other words, I cannot describe any of my friends in a stereotypical way, such as “American-born Chinese doctor,” “expatriate housewife,” or “marketing manager in an international firm.” My friends are (mix any three from the following list): Actor/designer/dancer/engineer/Buddhist/Chinese medicine doctor/photographer/martial arts instructor/yoga teacher/poet/painter/English teacher. As for me, I am a Japanese guy working in a Taiwanese company writing English manuals and practicing Tibetan Buddhism.

It looks like I am in a community with diverse backgrounds and philosophies. But maybe it is not. Members of my “tribe” do have a huge common ground: We do not belong to the majority and we are proud of it. And that unspoken pact both unites us and repels people who live according to the unimaginative “accepted standards.” I fear that instead of mingling with various types of people, we have been isolating ourselves from folks who do not share core identities. And I think the same attitude applies to other “tribes” too.

I think this is happening because thanks to the Net, we can effectively blind ourselves from the existence of people who do not share ideas with us. In this paper titled Internet Islands: The rise of digital fortresses and the end of the Digital Republic, the Internet is helping us getting disconnected as well as connected. We will soon be living in isolated digital fortresses feuding with each other, instead of enjoying a unified world society that was once promised. Here is a quote from the paper.

The Internet of 2010, a care-free childhood where you could go nearly anywhere and do nearly anything is no more. The unitary Internet is a memory, replaced by Internet Islands protected by government-run agencies and closely-allied corporate empires.

The technology is always neutral—it can be used both ways. And sadly, grouping with like-minded people is easier than reaching out to strangers. I can already see the influence of the Internet as a tool for isolation. On-demand streaming videos saves (prevents) us from receiving information that are irrelevant to our current interests. Google news feeds us customized views of the world as we want. Facebook accelerates the pace of uniting like-minded people.

These conditions might apply only to residents of a large city (Taipei in my case). But the fact is, half of the world’s population is living in the city as of now and the number of urban tribes is only growing, making digital isolation a global movement.

When I was in Japan I used to think I would choke myself because that society was so homogeneous. Am I (or are we) getting back to square one?

How to Know Your Argument is Hitting the Point: The Reply Misses It

A while ago, a serial entrepreneur/writer Penelope Trunk wrote a piece on TechCrunch about why few women begin a startup. (Note: here, "startup" means a type of company, usually a technology company, aimed at dominating the world, like Google/Facebook/Amazon. It is different from family business or freelancing.) She says women are not wired toward making companies bigger because their desire to have children gets in the way.

 

Women are under real pressure to have kids, though. They have a biological clock. So women who are the typical age of entrepreneurs—25—need to be looking for someone to mate with. Think about it. If you want to have kids before you’re 35—when your biological clock explodes—then you need to start when you’re 30, allowing for one miscarriage, which is more probable than most young people think. If you need to start having kids when you’re 30, you probably need to meet the guy you’re going to marry by the time you’re 27, so you can date for a year, get married, and live together for a year before kids. If you need to meet that guy by 27, you are very distracted during your prime startup time.

 

A reply was soon posted from Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur turned academic and a frequent TechCrunch contributor. He debunks Penelope's account with an abundance of data, saying many women with children have succeeded in startups, while other successful entrepreneurs have chosen not to have children.

 

My research team systematically analyzed the backgrounds of 652 startup founders in the tech industry. We looked not just at the narrow slice of tech companies that gets featured most often on TechCrunch, but at the broader universe—those that economists, professors, and the general public would call high-technology companies. And then we studied the backgrounds of a sample of 549 company founders of companies in 12 industries that grow as fast as those in technology, and are equally important to the U.S. economy. Our research focused on “successful” startups—those that had made it out of the garage, had employees, and were actually generating revenue.

 

To summarize, Penelope Trunk told the truth* and Vivek Wadhwa counter-argued it with fact. I don't know who is right. Certainly I am inclined to believe Penelope Trunk's story more because she's been there and done that, and also because she is a master of persuasion (one of the most important characteristics of a serial entrepreneur). But in the end, maybe both are right, despite the disagreement. It is because they are talking about different subjects.

 

Penelope Trunk explores why women are not inclined to begin startups, while Vivek Wadhwa data highlights how many women have already done so. If we live in a perfect world where we don't have to do something we are not especially willing to do, then Vivek Wadhwa beautifully refuted Penelope Trunk's argument. Well, welcome to the real world; most of us work long hours, eat obsessively and break commitments to a long-time relationships. The connection between goal and action is always fuzzy. Sometimes it doesn't exist.

• Q: Why are women not initiating startups?

• A: There are many women founders in startups.

The reply might be correct, but answers a different question.

 

I remember a similar discussion regarding Microsoft's position in the technology world. Paul Graham, a venture capitalist and writer, wrote an article titled Microsoft is dead a few years ago. Don Dodge at Microsoft's Emerging Business Team (at that time) passionately retorted that it wasn't at all. Paul Graham then clarified the issue.

 

When I wrote that Microsoft was dead, I didn't mean it literally. I couldn't have. Companies aren't alive, so they can't die.

 

In fact "Microsoft is Dead" was what we in the trade call a metaphor. I meant something else. Over the last couple days there has been some disagreement about what I meant. Some people who were scandalized by the essay convinced themselves I meant something rather stupid: that Microsoft is about to go out of business. This they diligently refuted.

 

Paul Graham said Microsoft was dead as the leading influencer, and Don Dodge argued that Microsoft was alive because it made tons of money. Again they were both right, but again they were talking about different issues.

 

Here are the similarities between the two cases:

• The main argument was controversial (Women don't join startups, Microsoft is dead)
• The counterargument was equally passionate (replying by posting a full article)
• The counterargument did not actually...argue (it talked about a different subject)

Why did the replies miss the point? They are both from extremely smart people with tons of credibility. But they still counter-argued the main issue indirectly. I guess they did so because they were afraid of the original article's influence. They knew the original argument was correct, and more important, real. They had to counter-argue, despite having insufficient ammunitions on their side. (From my editor: Or perhaps they read the article and interpreted it according to some pre-existing hot button, thus missing the article’s actual point.)

 

So I think it was fear that drove these two people to post full-length article with many pieces of pseudo-evidence to back up their claim. And of course, their attempts backfired and gave more attention to the original topic. I personally came to read both original stories from links in the discussion threads. I remembered, and was even inclined to believe, the original point. Not so much the counterargument.

 

On the flip side, we can apply this lessons of missed-counterargument-as-a-sign-of-anxiety to our own discussions. If someone passionately argues with you on an agenda but (slightly) missing the point, you know you are hitting the bull's eye.

 

*Maybe it was just HER truth. But isn't it always THE truth?

 

Let me just begin by saying that there are two sides to every story. And this is my side, the right one.

 

Art is about seeing things in a different way

I used to define art only as a creative activity and as a counterpart to design. The following had for years been my definition of art and design:

• If you create something because you simply want to or have to, you are making a piece of art.
• If you have a purpose more important than your creative impulse, you are making a piece of design.

But these points were refuted very easily by my friend:

1. The great composers, Mozart, Bach, Chopin, etc., were all great artists. Nobody calls them designers.
2. Yet they were all "designing" music, composing tunes that cater to the taste of their patrons.

He was right. My beautiful theory crumbled in seconds--not because he found faulty logic but because he simply pointed out what I knew--but was trying to suppress. I stopped thinking about what art is, resorting to the cop-out statement "Art is something you cannot define." It also felt silly to think about art while not making some of my own.

 

Some months later, a hint about the solution to the mystery came unexpectedly.

 

I have been attending a monthly event called Red Room, held in a beautiful studio in the center of Taipei. Red Room is an event without events. You go there, stand up in the front, and express yourself. Some read their poems. Some sing. Some dance. Some share their blogs (yours truly). When you are not in the front, you become part of the happy audience. Most of the "performers" are not professional; some have never before stood up in front of an audience.  It is a place to appreciate how unique and interesting each of us is.

 

One night, as I was expecting to hear a song, the performer asked the audience to sing with her. She sang the introduction, followed by the audience singing the bridge. Music-wise, the result was--to be honest--completely out of tune. But as a good Red Roomer, I stayed there, making sure my smile didn’t change into a burst of laughter, and sang with the others. There we were, 50 of us, singing in cacophony but in unison.

 

During the second verse, a weird sensation was occurring inside me. Instead of sheer amusement, a genuine feeling of joy was appearing, followed by a shade of sadness. Yes, I was getting happy and sad singing that song. Happy because the out-of-tune singing was turning into a song in its own right--I never thought one could do that with a Björk song-- and I was taking pride in the fact that I was in it. It was as if I was creating something that I didn't know I was capable of. And I was sad because I knew that moment wouldn't last long. In fact, it was going to disappear in a matter of minutes.

 

The whole experience had nothing to do with the quality of the performance, which was anything but "professional" as in established markets. It just resonated with my mind, something buried deep within my memories. Maybe it was about my early memory of singing in front of the classmates in embarrassment because I was totally missing the tune and my friends were all laughing at me. Maybe I could finally allow myself to sing something out loud without trying to make it "smooth." Who knows.

 

After that incident, I knew I wouldn't see group singing--including karaoke--in the same way again. It just changed how I perceive singing. I realized that all I had in my mind, up until then, was that “singing” was to follow the original song pitch-perfect. The idea of morphing a song into something else just didn't exist for me.

 

It finally dawned on me that art is about changing how we perceive. Perceive what? The world, in a fixed way. Art does not reside merely in the artists, nor their works. Art is something that we perceive: a chemical reaction. In other words, the audience creates the art, and the artist is someone who catalyzes the change through his or her own unique perception. I don't know if this is the correct definition of art. But does it matter? It works for me.

 

Now I might have solved the dilemma about the great composers: their music, without exception, has the power to change how we perceive the world. Who cares, then, if they made their music for their patrons, or "sold out" in current term? Their works all--work.

 

P.S. If you want to experience the fluid nature of our perception and reality, this movie shows it in a brilliantly weird way: Waking Life, recommended by my editor Sherry Lamoreaux.

 

Why Staying Underground for a Week Helps Us

I spent the Chinese new year holidays underground. It was a Buddhist retreat, but instead of staying high up on a mountain or out there on a beach, we spent nearly a whole week inside a facility.

What do we do in a retreat? It's not like we collectively sit in the dark, hoping for an epiphany to arrive. (We already do that in our cubicles during daytime, don't we?) We remain active: We read sutras, recite mantras, and meditate on a set schedule. In other words, we repeat our usual workday—using our holidays.

Therefore initially I took the retreat as a great opportunity…to push my patience beyond limits. Result: By the end of the retreat I was daydreaming about…continuing the retreat for a month or even longer. I wanted more of it, with pleasure. Had I totally gone "in my head"?

Six Feet Under -In Case Of Rapture - Celebrity bloopers here

 

Maybe. Or not. What I experienced toward the end of the retreat, the result that motivated me to push further, was the joy of doing without expecting. Before the retreat, I thought I loved doing things. I was known (still I am) to be effective, completing one task after another in 30-minute chunks. Indeed, I love the rhythm and the sense of accomplishment.

But that wasn’t “doing.” That was “completing.” The moment I finished one task (or even before completing it), my attention shifted to the next task, as if I were in a rush to keep the momentum while the sense of victory lasted. Most of the time I barely remembered what the previous task was about.

To be fair, I kept the same old attitude until halfway into the retreat, scoring numbers and measuring time. But after the initial excitement got wiped out, I had to cope with the never-endingness of the retreat, such as meditating every day, which by definition had no goal. At one point I thought work life feels better; at least I have different sets of assignments each day.

To cheer me up, I decided to relax. Not “try” to relax - just decided that I was already relaxing and enjoying the retreat. So I put the goals and numbers aside, and just allowed myself to do what I was doing without thinking about the outcome.

And then I finally started enjoying what I did. During tai-qi, I could feel a tingling sensation running up my whole body and then receding like a tide. When reading classical books, what used to be a string of Chinese sentences in isolation started to form a coherent story. And I could finally see that my task-completion mentality left little room for embracing what I really do in the moment.

I wondered how I could have missed the joy of doing without the completion pressure before; I should have enjoyed that sensation during the Sunday afternoon doodling. The truth is, I was still carrying the task-oriented attitude during my free time. I might wake up at 1pm on a Sunday afternoon and order pizza while watching a video and then take a nap and wake up and go to 7-11 and munch banana-chocolate ice cream while watching another video and then sleep, and I would still be counting the number of accomplishments. I would agonize if I do not meet the two movies/scoop of ice creams/hours of sleep “quotas.”

These revelations might not have occurred if it weren’t for the mindful repetitiveness I had endured. Conclusion? Being in the retreat works at all stages. The initial activities kick your body into active mode; later stages help you question your motivations and (if you endure them) reward you with insights you weren’t aware of before.

P.S. What a coincidence ;-) EWCP, the group I am in, is holding a retreat event in Taipei from April 29–May1. It is a 3-day retreat—how short—but will be done out in the sun, in the beautiful Yao-Ming Shan.

Incident, Mistake, and Wrong

What do we say when we have to admit that our actions/attitudes didn't work as we expected? Our response, in preferred order, is usually as follows.

1. Something bad happened.
2. We made a mistake.
3. We were wrong.

...While the other side prefers them in the opposite order. Okay, we know.

A well-known example of this expectation mismatch appears in an open letter written by a writer fired from TechCrunch for soliciting gifts. This is how the culprit acknowledged his wrongdoings.

In some way or another, a line was crossed that should have never been.

It's just a statement; there is not even a word of “sorry.” But as much as we would like to label this guy as a liar/chicken, we must admit that we all try to do what he did, and that's why his response makes us so upset. We try to deflect the blame with the same passion as when we try to spearhead the accusation.

 

The blamer/blamed relation is like a well-choreographed fight sequence. Hold your sword in one hand, your shield in the other (and make sure you have a well-matched opponent). Once the fight begins, despite the death/life tension, the interaction starts to look like dancing or even figure skating. You thrust the sword and the opponent turns it aside with his shield; vice versa. Sometimes we don't even notice we are taking predictable turns.

 

The good thing is that we are fighting on fair ground. The bad thing is that the fight continues forever, especially when the parties are at equal levels.

I admire Jackie Chan, but 10 minutes of this? 9.5 minutes too long.

 

What all of us should want, in the end (and in the beginning), is to finish it off quickly, as demonstrated by the world's most famous professor:

 

But most of the time, we prefer the long, hard, and brutal version, both as an audience and as a player.

 

Why?

 

The answer has eluded me for years, especially because I myself have the same tendency to join choreographed discussion/fights (mostly on the defensive side), knowing what they take. I now think it is because we are NOT actually discussing the subject, after all. In this blame game, our focus is always on the same issue, regardless of the nature of the problem: us.

• When we defend ourselves, we are trying to dodge the accusations that point toward us.
• When we blame someone, we are trying to point the accusations toward him or her.

We aren't trying to solve the problem; We are trying to communicate. And because communication itself is pleasure (it might even be our raison d'être), we tend to engage in fruitless fighting. In fact, the more prolonged the discussion is, the better; the definition of a good game is that it can continue forever (ask any game designer or TV show producer).

 

To break out of this mold, we consciously need to change the subject (person) to something else...what about the problem itself? Then "I made a mistake," the second less-favorite response, starts to look attractive. Admitting a mistake seems to work well because:

1. The person still takes responsibility (the accuser will be satisfied).
2. The focus shifts from the person to the incident (from making to mistake)
3. The analysis of the "mistake" follows (completing the shifting of the subject)

As far as I know, the people who have mastered this subject-shifting technique is Israeli businesspeople. During several years of working at an Israeli company, whenever they had to admit errors, they always--always--made the "it was a mistake" statement. It still pissed off some people, especially Japanese customers who are too accustomed to hear apologies (long story), but it did move things forward.

 

Wait. If they are that specialized in moving things forward, how come they are continuing their struggles with their neighbors for...two millennia?

What can we do for Japan?

Instead of the usual Thursday blog update, this week I would like to share some information regarding the tragedy that hit my home country. My family, my friends are all safe but that doesn't make the three incidents—earthquake, tsunami, nuclear power plant malfunction—less serious.

The whole incident started somewhat similar to a Hollywood film, such as fishing boats sailing across rice fields while a car frantically finds a way to avoid the onslaught of waves.

But the similarity ends there, sadly. The whole picture is increasingly looking like a beginning of a year-long marathon. It's not going to end in a happy tone after two hours of viewing.

Forget all the hypes for now. What can we do? That's the only question that matters now. After researching (=googling) for several days, here are two things that Japan needs right now.

• Send money. Don't sent stuff (including yourself).

Nobody in the ground zero has the capacity to accept small contributions such as clothes, canned foods, and blankets. Put yourself in their positions—what you need is 10,000 identical blankets that doesn't require inspecting and repacking and considering sizes and genders. Who does that? Big brothers—corporations and international organizations such as the Red Cross.

We're not a big fan of them, but who cares? They get the job done, so let's support them. It is very easy: go to Google.com, click the special link under the search box (or go directly), check all the news and Red Cross donation box. Make it as simple as possible for the people out there.

• Spread words that you trust.

It is true that the Japanese government and the electricity company are not doing a great job in terms of disclosure. They simply don't have the capacity or experience (in case of the electricity company, they do have an incentive to shut up). What we can do is to restrain ourselves and send information that we personally trust. News from a credible organization is not always trustable.

What we should do is not to judge information based on its source, but based on our gut. Before you pass the next "Japan in crisis of meltdown" rumor that came from your friend or your RSS feed from The NY Times, read the whole article. Watch the whole video. And ask yourself: Do I believe it? If the answer is yes, share it. If no, don't. It doesn't matter if the news came from the Associated Press or your grandma—it is ultimately about creating mutual trust. Let's trust ourselves more, first.

Here are some information that might help in getting a better perspective, or inspirations.

• How bad is the nuclear meltdown in Japan? A thorough but accessible explanation from a professor.
• Japan on catastrophes and miracles, a personal account A very encouraging first-person account during the first 24 hours after the quake
• News, maps, donations page from Google I am going to stick with you for my life, Google.
• Riots and Looting in Japan (or lack thereof) Japan disappoints the world yet again :)

Finally, let's focus on the hope, not despair. Three senior citizens were rescued from their apartment after three days of lockout due to tsunami. What did they say with a broad smile, right after they had been rescued?

1. We are all fine.
2. We have been through this before. (So there is a positive aspect in getting old, after all)
3. Let's build it again.

 

I would like to add: Let's behave like that old, nameless, but awesome guy.

TechCrunch Bought by AOL - So What's the Negative Factor?

(Note: This is old news.) A while ago TechCrunch sold itself to AOL. TechCrunch did it to outsource promotion and technical support.

Michael Arrington, TechCrunch founder: The truth is I was tired. But I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software. And when we did find those engineers, as we so often did, how to keep them happy. Unlike most startups in Silicon Valley, the center of attention at TechCrunch is squarely on the writers. It’s certainly not an engineering-driven company.

He made sure the soul of TechCrunch would not be compromised, especially in these areas::

• Independence
• Neutrality
• Employment

What does AOL get in return? Well, it needs something to anchor itself in reality. "Oh, it's TechCrunch’s owner" is not the greatest way to be remembered, but it still beats being forgotten.

Sarah Silverman: @SteveCase You should be nicer to the last person on earth w an aol account.

So that was a match made in heaven? Not so much. A mere two days later, the very same Michael Arrington made this statement: He cannot work under their conditions (sarcastically, of course):

Total number of internal TechCrunch meetings in the five years prior to AOL Acquisition: 1

I’m not even sure our AOL acquisition has legally closed yet. But today we celebrate our new corporate overlords with…an internal all hands. EVP David Eun, Heather’s new boss, scheduled a whopping 3.5 hour all hands meeting today starting at 11. Everyone’s here in the office pretending like it’s perfectly normal to be awake and in the office at this ridiculous hour. And God help us if news breaks, because we’ll all be in the conference room acting out a Dilbert cartoon.

 Looks like they were too busy crossing the items in the prenuptial agreement, while ignoring the existence of...cultural differences.

It reminds me of a story about the acquisition of IDEO, the world-famous design house, by SteelCase, one of the biggest office furniture companies. IDEO designs, Steelcase makes and sells. Perfect? No - what I heard from a person close to the source was as follows: Instead of IDEO's creativity adding spice to SteelCase's business mind, bureaucracy and rigidity were infiltrating the design house.

We tend to forget that collaboration is about changing as well as adding to each other. You can't simply add your partner's strength to your existing expertise. You change, as well as your partner. You can't pretend it's like adding an optional module onto your computer. It is more like switching your OS.

P.S. Maybe Michael Arrington couldn't see it coming because he was too detached from how the world outside his kingdom works. One meeting in five years?

Does Putting Yourself in the Spotlight Make you More Effective?

We choose a job that is popular at the moment because we think it will allow us to be in the spotlight, and therefore, to be more effective. I used to believe in (or hope for) both assumptions. But now I am doubting the latter. I now think the more attention you receive, the harder it becomes to be effective, or to get heard more.

Here is a bit of my own story. I am a technical writer. I sit in a cubicle for nine hours, barely talking with anyone, typing on the computer keyboard. My fingers and eyeballs are the only sense organs that are in use. This job can be defined as anything but fancy.

Yet it is the most creative work I have engaged in. Three months into being a technical writer, I was already having great fun organizing content, sorting out procedures, and filling in the missing information. My employer liked my documents and my ego was boosted.

So I became ambitious, sort of, and switched to a boutique computer accessories company under the equally fancy premise of being an "interaction designer." I thought it was a natural progression. Any technical writer will face a situation in which he or she is forced to write a 15-page section for a simple task such as downloading a software update…knowing that putting a red Download button on the screen will eliminate the need for the document (thus saving users in the true way). If I joined the design team, instead of being a firefighter, I could be the architect who can allocate fireproof materials or more sprinklers in the first place.

And in the new workplace, I couldn't do what I hoped to do: improve the usability of products. There were many reasons, but the biggest one was my inability to deliver results—as always the case. It wasn't simply about doing the best and not reaching the goal; it was also about not being able to getting into the 'zone,' where your work turns into your hobby. I didn't enjoy working as I hoped.

I switched my job back into technical writing, and my mojo has started to come back. The final verdict has yet to be served, but I have been having a great time creativity-wise, and I have a feeling that things will go fine with my colleagues.

I had to ask myself the hard question - why I couldn't express myself enough in a supposedly creativity-oriented company? , Yet here I am enjoying a burst of creativity in a traditional manufacturing company similar to where I first started? What is the difference?

The answer: fewer people care about what I do as a technical writer r than as a designer.

In documentation, except for the poor victims (users with broken devices), many stakeholders tend to be happy as long as there is a small booklet in the product package. Or they have been given bad manuals for the whole time and don't know anything else. It is a sad truth, but as a side effect, technical writers in general enjoy a great amount of autonomy in how they do their work. (I have yet to see career advice for technical writing highlighting this issue, so here I say it out loud.)

But I learned that in product design, EVERYBODY cares (and has an idea of what's a good piece of design regardless of his or her professional background). The more voices exist, the longer the design takes. It wasn't uncommon for my employer to spend a month designing a packaging box. Let's not mention the product itself. (Granted, the result looks stunning.)

I was asked to accomplish work without errors, without free experimentation, and under close scrutiny. On the contrary, the good works I had done in the past were results of small failures, lots of iterations and many experiments, and autonomy. I did not realize it; if I did, I would have tried to abandon my "business model" early on.

So here is the lesson: Attention > Freedom. The closer you inch toward the center of attention, the less creative space you automatically receive. You must be aware of this factor and make a conscious effort to break out of this wall, or decide what’s best for you.

Is Buddhism Religion or Philosophy?

It has been over a year since I started learning Tibetan Buddhism. Initially it was just out of curiosity: I was thinking of Buddhism as a philosophy integrated with traditional Asian culture such as meditation, healthy diet, and relaxation. I focused on the intellectual aspect of Buddhism, telling myself that I wasn't into organized religions; I was too comfortable positioning myself as agnostic, because (1) it sounded less offensive than being an atheist and (2) honestly, I had no idea if God exists. (I still don't know.)

A few months after I started visiting the dharma hall I realized my life was turning around in a better way when I caught myself during a burst of anger. I felt strange because the angry emotion was so...intense, despite the source incident being relatively minor. Then I noticed that I was upset for the first time in two weeks. I used to get upset on a daily or even hourly basis. It was like having a shot of whiskey after staying away from alcohol for months: the intoxicating effect is much stronger when you are usually sober. But what’s more important in this case was that being angry was no longer a part of my daily routine.

I checked what has changed, and studying Buddhism was the most probable cause of my improved calmness. I was sold, and have started practicing it, not merely learning about it.*

Now that I claim myself to be a Buddhist, it is time to do a reality check. How I would look to my old self two years ago (pre-Buddhism)? That self would ask me these two questions:

• Am I getting religious (which I had always avoided like a plague)?
• Have I changed fundamentally?

To the first question, my current attitude is: Whatever. Religion is just a label (or as a smart friend of mine told me, it is the believers who create religions[SLX1]  to control whatever they wish to control). I believe what I believe, and now I put less emphasis on how others would think of me than how I can be myself, or who I want to be.

Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It does not matter what you call it. Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label is immaterial. Even the label 'Buddhism' which we give to the teaching of the Buddha is of little importance.
What the Buddha taught, Walpola Rahula

To the second question: No, I haven't changed. Instead, I might be turbo-charging my focus on life, which might come across as "change," though. I have always been fascinated about knowing the deeper truths in our lives, and Buddhism just came at the right time, because it is all about realizing the truth. The truth about what? Again, whatever.

Almost all religions are built on faith--rather 'blind' faith it would seem. But in Buddhism emphasis is laid on 'seeing,' knowing, understanding, and not on faith, or belief.
What the Buddha taught, Walpola Rahula

To summarize, I guess I am getting better at being myself, after all this year of meditating, practicing qigong, reciting mantras, and reading sutras. And now I am starting to think about all the "life change" people talk about: isn't it all about getting better at being ourselves?

*My anger management is getting better. For minor issues, now I can predict how my anger would grow, and how long it would take until it disappears. It is a weird but refreshing feeling to know something before it actually happens, because my relationship with anger had been in the line with this:

I store my sip of coffee before I swallow it, like a chipmunk. This is something I know I do but I can't stop doing because I don't notice I am doing it until after I've done it.
Jill Soloway, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

P.S. This is where I practice: EWCP.

 

The Fall of the Japanese Manufacturing Industry; It's Because They Stopped Manufacturing Stuff (We Want)

The once-mighty Japanese manufacturing juggernauts have been in a slow death spiral for two decades. Hitachi, Sanyo, Toshiba, Casio, Panasonic, and even Sony. I have the feeling that people born after 1990 do not even know those brands, except the last one.

People wonder what happened to those zombie companies. The companies themselves provide the same answer every time (for two decades now).

• Everything has shifted from hardware to software.
• People do not care much about craftsmanship any more (but we keep our timeless industrial heritage).

In short, it's the customer's problem.

I might have a bit more sympathy for the manufacturers if we were in the 19th century and they were producing horse carriages or ice blocks. In those days few people foresaw what was coming, and changing the business model from building wooden carriages to assembling gasoline engines wasn't...straightforward, I guess.

But that's not the case for the aforementioned Japanese companies. They have the tools (state-of-the-art factories), resources (thousands of obedient and diligent workers), and knowledge (all hail the Internet). They are simply not reaching out of their tired mindset. They bury their necks in the sand, mumble the craftsmanship mantra, repeat what they already know how to do, and wait for retirement day. Eternal masturbation, I might say.

Enough about theories. Let's have a look at a real example, Sony's e-book reader. Slick design, light weight, rugged structure, easy viewing. Looks like the Japanese craftsmanship spirit is very alive in this device. So is Sony making a great product? It’s not selling more than a Kindle or an iPad; is this beyond our understanding?

No.

Take a closer look at how it works. In a nutshell, this is what you need to do in order to buy a book online and read it on Sony's e-reader.

1. Install Sony's proprietary software onto your computer
2. Purchase an e-book
3. Download the e-book to your computer
4. Connect Sony's e-book reader with your computer through a USB cable
5. Transfer the e-book from the computer to the reader
6. Read

Lord knows how many steps (missteps) and minutes I need to spend for the whole procedure.

This is what I currently do with my Amazon Kindle.

1. Purchase an e-book in Kindle
2. Read

Two steps, one minute. No cables, no installation, nada.

As a hardware device, the Sony Reader might have higher quality than the Kindle. But who cares? Show these two devices side by side, with a live demonstration of book purchasing and reading procedures, and see which becomes the darling of users. Clearly Sony has learned nothing from that blinking 00:00 VCR display.

To rub salt in the wound, Kindle is cheaper than Sony Reader ($139 vs. $149). I am surprised that Sony even bothered to sell that reader in the first place. But that's exactly what masturbation is about, isn't it? The only difference between real (?) masturbation and Sony's is that the latter never reaches a climax, thus avoiding the inevitable self-doubt.

P.S. The same situation is happening everywhere in Japanese industries, even in the once-mighty Toyota. Why does a company that pulled off the impossible—fusing an internal combustion engine and electric power train into one--have to team up with a company with an almost zero traction record of mass production to build an all-electric car? There's even FEWER parts than a hybrid engine. Toyota might be a technology expert, but it doesn’t know how to take shortcuts.

Behind the Communication-Less Japanese Communication Style

I know, it doesn't matter anymore. Long gone are the days of "mysterious Japanese people" getting front page coverage from The New York Times. "China" is where the spotlight is on. We cannot blame the media; its attitude remains neutral (so they say), but what pays their salaries is covering what's hot. As George Orwell said, all news subjects are equal, but some are more equal than others.

But maybe focusing on Japan still matters, because understanding Japan should indirectly lead to understanding China, considering the long and tangled history shared by these countries. The recent feuds between them are sibling rivalries, after all.

Today I would like to focus on one of the deepest chasms that divide the East from the West: the expression-less Japanese expression. Imagine you are a first-time foreign tourist in Tokyo. You have asked a question to a friendly-looking local person in a way that deviates from textbook English expressions, such as "Do you have the time?" Or you might have made a request that does not exist in the Japaniverse: "Can you make a vegetarian version of the deep-fried cutlet? And please leave the garlic out." Congratulations, you have just received a blank stare as a reward.*

What happened is that you have stepped onto a tipping point: Expectation (the East) vs. Expression (the West). Maybe in the place you grew up, when you face miscommunication, you simply speak out. The responsibility of clarifying the situation and maintaining a healthy communication falls on you, the initiator: You need to make the other side understand.

In Japan, the responsibility falls on the other side: the receiver. You are expected to understand the given message and act properly, as a listener. In order to maintain a healthy communication, active listening skills--including reading non-verbal cues of the speaker (who is usually more senior than the listener)--becomes important.

Mix the above two scenarios, and you'll get this picture: The (Western) speaker waits for the (Eastern) listener to speak up, and the (Eastern) listener waits for the (Western) speaker to explain more. A Zen-like silence might dominate the scene. Quite contrary to the tranquility on the surface, the inner worlds of these two people become chaotic. One side is questioning "Why don't you say what the problem is?" and the other side "What does he (or she) want?"

This is what is going on in their mind (watch from 1:30).

 

This Catch-22 situation is like a computer showing nothing but a blue screen--we think it is frozen, but in fact the computer is running as fast as it can--inside the same subroutine loop, endlessly.

Who holds the key for escape? It's the speaker, for now. Isn't it much easier to change the topic than to wait for a solution to come up? So if you're in the said situation, maybe you can simply point a finger toward your left wrist to ask for the time, or randomly pick an item in the menu and mutter "Kore Kudasai (Give me this)." Life is a box of chocolates.

 

* Being  Japanese myself, I am going to stand up for those poor waitresses who have to endure fussy requests from fussy customers. Girls, you have two perfectly legitimate options:

• A: Shove this message into that dude's mouth: Dear customer, with all due respect, you are in a CUTLET restaurant.
• B: Keep staring at him. When you smell danger, the best way to save your ass is to pretend you don't understand a thing. It's universal.

P.S. Blogging will be a weekly stuff - I will see how disciplined I have become during this hiatus.

The third man stimulates innovation and extinction

For the past few years, I have been following gaming industry news: mostly news about Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft—the Big Three that rule the gaming platform with their Wii, PlayStation 3, and XBOX 360, respectively. I thought I was following their news because of the technologies and innovations involved: What is the alternative for Wii’s motion control scheme and what is the next big thing?

But back when there were only Nintendo and Sony, I didn’t care about the gaming industry at all. It was only after Microsoft entered the picture that I started reading gaming news coverage on daily basis. What happened? (1) more stimulating news came out because of accelerated innovations, and (2) a survival game touch was added to the competition.

The third person stimulates innovations

When two companies rule an industry, they are in a safe equilibrium. There are tensions between them, but the structure of that microcosm is fundamentally stable. Innovations or changes occur in one dimension (do something faster or cheaper than the opponent) or two dimensions (do the opposite of the opponent). In a word, they are predictable. When a third player joins, innovation goes wild because the newcomer cannot survive by playing according to the existing rules.

When Microsoft and Apple dominated the computer industry, we did not know who will ultimately win, but we never questioned that a computer is a black box ruled by the OS. But then Google stepped into the computer industry and they introduced us with a new idea: the black box can exist somewhere (in a remote server), channeled by the browser. They started introducing Google Mail, Map, Calendar, and even office applications, all online. Google did so because they were great at building web applications, but also because they couldn’t compete with the BIG 2 on their turf.

In the gaming industry, if Microsoft did not join the console war, Nintendo and Sony would have played the clock speed race forever: trying to build faster but affordable gaming machines while alienating common people. But Nintendo saw that the market was getting too crowded, and decided to create a new market based on motion control. And here we are getting a daily dose of technical innovations, from motion controlling to glassless 3D to controller-less controlling.

The third person ignites a survival game

If we are perfectly happy with having three players in general, our lives will be much more peaceful (and boring). But in many cases “two” is the optimal number, like in our personal relationships. A perfect couple has its Good and Bad but is fundamentally stable (and boring, at least from the outsider’s point of view). It is when the Ugly—the third person—enters the picture, things get dramatic. We know it won’t last long, and someone must exit the stage sooner or later.

Maybe dualism is embedded in our mind, especially as an audience. For the parties concerned, the world might be big enough to accept many rooms. But as bystanders, we might always be looking for things to “settle down” into two: man and woman, heaven and hell, the hero and the villain, ying and yang.

I have applied the “two as the optimum number” theory to check my motivation for following the gaming news, and found out that there is a hidden agenda behind the ear-pleasing innovation-following: I want to know who gets booted/butchered. Is this how people feel when they watch bullfighting in Spain to enjoy the “elegant movement of the fighters”?

* An example of an industry with only two players is large-scale airplane manufacturing. I have a hunch that as long as there are only Boeing and Airbus, we might keep having faster or more comfortable airplanes, but we might never have a new transportation system that solves our imminent and largest problem: reliance on fossil fuels. It requires an out-of-the-box innovation rather than straightforward competition

A good question sticks, resonates, and draws answers

I practice qi-gong and attend a meditation group on weekly basis. There is a Q&A session in which we ask questions such as “What is zen?” to a teacher. In the beginning, I used to think it was the answer that mattered so I listened carefully to what the teacher said but did not pay much attention to the original question. *

But recently I realized that good questions are as memorable as good answers. Answers and questions stay in my memory in different ways. (Good) answers get digested. I can take in the information and feel how it dissolves in my mind. On the other hand, (good) questions stay. Like a piece of gum, they hold fixed positions in my mind. I get mentally constipated.

Once a question sticks in my mind, I enter into an automatic search mode: I start picking information relevant to that question from all inputs (see, feel, listen) and also outputs (talk and write). A good example of the latter is my blog posts. Most of my blog posts start from a question that pops into my head: “Is iPad really designed for paying customers?” “Does confrontation lead to mutual understanding?”. I then start describing my question, and along the way, try to articulate my own answer to that question, borrowing quotes and putting links in. **

In the end,the majority of a blog post, especially the second half of it, gets constructed from scratch; it does not exist at all when I start writing a post. For the links and quotes, sometimes they are googled, and sometimes they re-emerge from my pool of memory (I call it my junkyard), as if attracted by a huge magnet plate temporarily energized by the original question.

In this sense, questions are mental antennas, or radio tuners, that catch useful information that comes through our heads. Questions allow us to tune into a specific topic or narrow the range of interest, sometimes even unconsciously. A good question lets us tune into the right mental frequency so that the music (the answer) is heard loud and clearly. If the question is bad (not tuned), the answer becomes murky as well.

Okay then, so what makes a question “good”?

I think the answer in the antenna analogy: Resonance.*** A good question vibrates inside our mind, letting us find resonating elements (answers). That also explains why asking a good question is hard, because resonance, or empathy, does not generate on its own. Empathy arises with regard to the context of communication, whether it is between two people, a group of people, or a person and an object (such as a book).

To generate a good question, we need to find both good content and a matching context. We can generate smart-ass questions out of nowhere (which I frequently do), but those usually aren’t good at all.

Recently I found out that the teacher gives different levels of answers to the same question, depending on the student. No wonder some answers did not register in my memory smoothly. It was another instance where I realized the context (question) is what matters, more than the content (answer).

** In this post’s case, only the first two paragraphs are what originally existed in my mind.

*** I got the keyword resonance from Nintendo’s mastermind, Shigeru Miyamoto (again). In his recent interview, he mentions that after 30 years of game design, he finally realized he has been making games that resonate with the audience, when he was forced to provide the reason why he rejected some seemingly good ideas while developing the latest Mario game.

(Miyamoto) Whether or not the game world resonates with you as you're playing the game is what's most important. For example, when you watch a big-budget movie, you may be amazed by all the pyrotechnics, but at the same time, something isn't quite striking home with you.

(Iwata) Because it's not resonating.

P.S. A Note from my editor, to which I should reply in a different post..

What about the unasked question?  A few weeks ago my son bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee and now, suddenly, I see them everywhere.  I suppose they were there before, but I never had the question..or is it not a question, but just something that generates a specific awareness, to which observation then provides “answers” (or some other kind of contextual response ?

Management should be just a job category

I am reading books on management and leadership. In summary, leadership is about showing others where to go, and management is about showing how to do it.

To paraphrase Stephen Covey, if a company is a group of traders/explorers moving through a jungle, a worker is one of the young fellas carrying bags, a manager is the one on the front of the group clearing bushes using machetes, and a leader is the one standing on the hill yelling “Wrong jungle!”

• Leadership: setting directions
• Management: creating environment
• Working: executing tasks

What the above distinctions really mean is that working, managing, and leading are totally different categories of works. And that’s exactly what we do not “get.” We usually frame management/leadership as just one of the steps in our linear career path. In fact, management and leadership are not an extension. They are fundamental shifting.

Hooray! I am getting it. Except that I don’t: Why switching from being a worker to being a manager/leader is called “promotion”? Shouldn’t that be “transition,” after all? If we understand management and leadership from this angle, we would be more prepared to be...a good boss.

The word “boss” is almost synonymous with “a-hole.” (Is it only me? Never mind.) It is almost as if changing to a manager automatically turns a perfectly nice average Joe into that evil Dick.

I believe most managers work on good terms, but not many of them seem to understand that their job is to help others, not pursue their own agenda. I have seen competent people promoted to executives who continued working the way they worked as a player: going their own way.

Naturally, people working for them silently but swiftly leave that work environment. The new executive analyzes what went wrong with his workers with his brilliantly logical mind, and tries to find better puppets. He cannot see what he has been doing.

I think one of the biggest mistakes of modern corporate structure is to treat management and leadership as something above, not something different from, daily tasks. People flock to management believing it is jan extension, a reward for their hard work. Management should be a job category, and so should leadership.

It is all about framing, as self-help gurus agree. We need to put different tags to managers/leaders and also put them on a level playing field. Managers should be called “Helpers” and Leaders “Watchers.” They are merely slightly glorified version of housekeepers and janitors. They might be paid well, might not be.

The ordinary guy with ordinary tasks should be treated as the king. Doesn’t that make things easier? Gosh, I sound like a Russian agitator living in the 1900s.

P.S. Note from my editor: "And leaders and managers are support staff for the people who do the actual work…someone likens this to an upside down pyramid, with the wide pool of hands-on workers at the top, supported by exec staff."

The alarm clock is ringing

I have been on a hiatus from blogging for the past three months. There are (sort-of valid) excuses.

• Changed my job.
• Changed where I live.
• Changed my philosophical belief. (More about this in the future posts)

But the biggest reasons are my laziness and fear. When these two are mixed together, a sense of relaxation appeared: making me believe that I could take time off from writing without losing the writing direction. I made these mistakes.

Slack off a bit during the transition, you can pick up what you left whenever you want.

Of course I completely wiped off this simple truth from my mind: Our life changes us. Or, to be more exact, nothing stays the same. The idea of storing a project in a safe box and return some months later to recoup it is plain wrong. Not morally wrong, but factually wrong.

Stay away from writing during a transition period - we don't have time for writing.

What I should have done is to shift my gears: speed down, incorporate my life's changes into my writing, observe what is going on - if 80% of the struggles during writing are about finding out good topics, the transition period of one's life should be a gold mine. Why not exploiting it? Why wait until our life "stabilizes," only to face the tidy but barren field of imagination?

It is all about you. You decide what to do.

I recently received warm letters from my readers, asking if I was still alive. I knew they weren't saying it out of courtesy: Some people did miss my writings. It made my extremely humble: It wasn't just about me anymore.

So I am going to shift into gear one and start walking again. It should be a weekly stuff at the beginning, and I will see how things go. This starting post is a private letter to dear readers and friends of mine who taught me to break out of my shell.

Isao

Thank you Heidi, Sadya.

Note to Taiwanese Farmers: Face the Customers, not Competitors

Not a single day goes by without seeing at least one update on newspapers regarding the ECFA (Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement), a proposed trade agreement between Taiwan and China. Everybody in Taiwan has an opinion when it comes to relationships with China, and for ECFA, each person is juggling three ideas in his head: (1) What is ECFA? (2) I welcome it. (3) No, I am against it. People are learning and forming opinions at the same time. No wonder the situation is messy.

Political implications aside, I agree with the idea of making an economic or cultural bridge between the two countries. Any communication ultimately benefits both sides; nobody says lack of communication is the recipe for a great relationship.

I was discussing this issue with my Chinese teacher who told me that the loudest protest is coming from domestic (Taiwanese) farmers. They are worried about competition from an onslaught of cheap imported foods. She was worried too whether Taiwanese farm products will disappear from the supermarket if cheap—and allegedly less organic—vegetables from China flood the shelves.

Surely due to the lobbying activities from the farmers, the Taiwanese government decided not to include farm products in the first stage of ECFA. I think these farmers are fighting the wrong fight. First, obviously, refusing imports from China also means that they cannot sell their products to the biggest potential market in the world. Well, they know it.

But what about this second point: It is Taiwanese consumers who decide which products are desirable, not Chinese exporters. Thus, if the Taiwanese farmers really want to protect their home turf, they should be lobbying toward their consumers, not the government.

The farmers should work with restaurant owners, specifically. Supermarkets are fine; many Taiwanese housewives, including my teacher, will choose Taiwanese “safer and more tasty” vegetables over Chinese ones, and Taiwanese vegetables are already inexpensive in the first place. But in the cutthroat environment of the restaurant business, cost is everything; the owners will surely choose the cheapest options available. The customers will have no choice, or will not care.

Those farmers may cry out that the problem is Chinese food production; it’s not safe, it’s not fair, etc. Dream on - their real “enemies” are their own peers. I bet the inevitable liberation of food import and export between China will shake the Taiwanese farm industry hard, but it will work for the better. Farmers, in the best scenario, will ditch their old style of depending on government subsidies and protection measurement and start trying to find a better way to appeal to consumers.

Am I being too harsh? I am from a country where the price of the most important aliment, rice, is four times that of international standards, thanks to the government trying to “protect” our food sufficiency, and, well, the biggest group of political donors. And each time I hear complaints from Japanese rice farmers on the TV or on newspapers, I mutter “Screw it.”

iPad is for Kids

A month has passed since the sensational debut of the iPad, and some people are starting to wonder if the fuss is sustainable. Early adopters are loving the iPad even more than the iPhone, but will the mass public follow? My verdict: No, for now.

The iPad’s customers, adults with at least $500 disposable income, have one fatal shortcoming: they understand a new device only as an extension of existing ones. Consider Apple’s past “revolutionary” products: they were, in fact, more likely “evolutional,” fixing big holes in existing devices that few people noticed, in addition to making them beautiful.

• Apple II: brought mainframe computers to our homes.
• iMac: made the existing desktop computers, ugly black boxes, desirable.
• iPod: made the Walkman searchable and configurable.
• iPhone: made smartphones...smart.

The iPad is an anomaly. It does not fix an existing problem. In fact, on the surface, it seems to fix nothing.

• Mobile device: We cannot hold the iPad in one hand, and cannot put it in our pockets. Netbooks have similar screen sizes, similar weights, and built-in keyboards.
• eBook: I am not sure if we want to keep reading texts and PDFs on a glossy screen.
• Movies: If we are at home, we have big LED TVs. If we are out in the streets, we have IMAX theaters. If we are out on the road, we have on-demand movie libraries on the plane.

Sure, the iPad has huge potential. That’s why all of us jumped in and shelled out $500 - $800, right?* Yet we are using it as we did on devices before: reading texts and watching videos. Where did the “potential” part go? I guess a bulk of the users’ frustrations will come from the iPad not making their lives better in any way, or not seeing any of the promised magical moments.

I believe that in the midterm, the fever will fade away and the troubled voices will emerge from Apple believers that Steve Jobs might be over. I do think Steve Jobs is preparing to retire. But it is not because he cannot make smart decisions anymore; it is because he did the most important job— maybe even a mission—in his life: creating a device for future generations.

Almost everything he has done before was aimed at his peers, or paying customers. This time, he made the iPad for the kids. That’s why the iPad is essentially a blank slate. Its real potential is in its nothingness, or in other words, the power to absorb anything. This device is designed for creators, not executors. And who are the best creators? Kids, of course.

Of course, the current iPad is not there yet. It is way too adult—heavy and colorless—for small children. But that is part of Apple’s strategy. How do you bring an expensive magic tablet to a child? By disguising it as an expensive toy for adults. Soon or later, dad will be bored playing with it, and pass it over to his children—and that’s when the real users start to using it for real.

In several years, we will be seeing iPad 2.0, or even 3.0, in a completely different shape. It will be much lighter and “toyish.” It might even look cheaper. But by then, the swarms of teenagers, who had their hands-on experience on the iPad as kids, will start buying the new models with their own money, and will also start creating things.

Unlike the current iPad users who are still seated as the audience and waiting for the show to begin while killing their time reading books and watching movies, the new generation of iPad users will get on the stage and start making magic on the spot. I bet that’s what Steve Jobs is dreaming about. His only hope might be that this day will come before his days are over.

*I have tested, but haven’t bought, the iPad. I bought Kindle instead. That’s what it means to be mentally teenage but intellectually adult.

It’s About Who You Are, Not What You Say

I have never considered taking an MBA program, but an argument by Vivek Wadhwa made me almost wonder if I had missed the train to greater-career-ville altogether. This is his life story unveiled, centered around an MBA program.

1. A young man invests in an MBA program to increase his career potential.
2. He questions his choice after getting a programming job at his first post-degree career.
3. He nevertheless persists, and climbs up the corporate ladder step by step.
4. Along the way to the executive level, he finds out that the business skills he acquired during the MBA era are quite handy.
5. Now as a successful entrepreneur, he is convinced that getting an MBA degree was the best investment he has made.

The story doesn’t exactly offerrefreshing insights, but is nevertheless encouraging and persuasive. The secret of his persuasiveness lies not in what he says, but in how he builds his argument, highlighted by his recollection of a debate with an anti-MBA celebrity: Guy Kawasaki.

In email exchanges, Kawasaki explained that his issue with MBAs is that they are “taught that the hard part is the analysis and coming up with the insightful solution”. In other words: implementation is easy and analysis is hard. “But this is the opposite of what happens in startups. Implementation is everything in a startup.” Kawasaki believes that MBAs aren’t a good fit for startups, and engineering graduates are.

I agree that engineering degrees are important. They provide a level of technical depth and analytical capability that is invaluable in the tech-startup world. But not everyone needs to be an engineer. You need smart people coming up with creative marketing campaigns; managing finances; and selling your products. And the CEOs and CTOs need to master all domains.

It doesn’t matter whose opinion, Wadhwa’s or Kawasaki’s, is right—chances are, both are correct. After all, they both made their names following their own voices. What matters is how gracefully Wadhwa handles this topic.

• He gives proper credit to his opponent’s position and praises its merit; he does not end up in finding fault with Kawasaki’s argumen.
• He admits his success story is not applicable to everybody, and even implies that Kawasaki is right in some degree
• He understands that the whole argument should ultimately benefit the readers, not the debaters, and tries to share as many valid viewpoints as possible

While reading this article, I thought: I still don’t know the reality of getting an MBA degree, but if this guy says it is valuable, it might be*. If this article were his speech in an MBA showcase event, I would be signing up to a program afterward.

We used to spend a big chunk of our time in a decision-making process for collecting information. No more. Thanks to Google and its news aggregator service, we can get 100 opinions on a single subject in a matter of hours. Now we spend more time in finding useful information while surfing through the tsunami of texts, images, podcasts, and videos.

We are like speculators during the Gold Rush, relentlessly digging dirt in order to hit the jackpot. Guess who made the most money in that period? The tool suppliers. In the MBA degree case, it is the information filter that matters.

And what filter is more trustable than authenticity? We can find a million people saying having an MBA works and ten thousand people getting (or having gotten) MBAs either online or offline. But how many people are out there who claimthey are who they are because of an MBA? That’s authenticity. And that’s what we should all aspire to, if we want to persuade others on a big subject.

*I must confess that I felt exactly the same when I first read Guy Kawasaki’s argument against MBA programs.

From Consulting to Doing

One of the most popular themes of blogging is how to make a living while blogging. Apparently some people make money by blogging about how to make money by blogging. And here I am blogging about people making money by blogging about making money by blogging.

It is like becoming an entrepreneur who offers consulting on becoming an entrepreneur. I don’t say it’s wrong or right; I just feel...awkward. Not about individual bloggers but about the whole blogosphere, filled with discussions and posts regarding this topic.

Blogging on blogging is, in short, (a) consulting to the (b) converted. These two points are where I feel awkward, and I would like to dig deeper into this issue.

Going consulting

Consulting itself is just a job category, maybe even a noble one, if we consider it part of the education industry. But it is never about doing something on our own; it’s about helping others do what they want.

Here, we need to stop and ask ourselves why we started blogging in the first place. It was probably because we wanted to establish our own brand or voice. We wanted to claim our independence, and wanted to make a difference in this world.

Then ask ourselves next: Why do we want to consult? Perhaps we wanted to break out of living our lives fulfilling someone else’s (= our employer’s) dream. Falling into consulting—unless your dream is to become a consultant—seems like going back to square one. Po Bronson, in What Should I Do With My Life?, sums up this question nicely.

Why was I bent on encouraging people to change their lives?...Because I have seen us glorify those who make decisions over those who enact decisions, prefer being a consultant to being fully engaged, being an investor to being invested in, being an advisor over being politically involved, being an expert over being partisan, being a news analyst over being a news gatherer—all in fear of the inflexible boredom of commitment?

Preaching to the converted

Another issue is that the whole consulting thing works mainly inside a small circle of bloggers: people who already share similar ideas and goals as you. But if you go too far in that direction, you are doing a glorified version of scratching each other’s back, eternally staying inside the small community of bloggers. A recent article (or warning) from Hugh MacLeod highlights this issue nicely:

We’ve written blog posts that other bloggers like (especially high-traffic, “A-Lister” bloggers who link to us). And we squealed like happy children when we saw our traffic stats spike up massively.
[...]
But at the end of the day, it’s not the A-Listers or the pajama-clad, Web 2.0 basement-dwellers who are paying your mortgage. It’s the regular shmoes with a regular problem who are willing to pull out their credit cards to get it solved.

We blog to be more authentic and to connect with the world outside our inner circle. I personally would love to see a blogging society in which growing a blog means offering something unique to bloggers and non-bloggers alike, and becoming a consultant is treated as a temporary solution for making ends meet—unless you are destined to become a kick-ass consultant.

Criticism changes our actions, but not our attitudes

We often use criticism and accusations to change behavior, be it that of governments, organizations, or individuals. A majority of the cultural improvements in our society have been brought by punishments under the name of justice. But sometimes correcting behavior by force obscures the real issue. I have seen that in two cultural incidents related to Japan: a demonstration by Chinese citizens and a documentary about dolphin fishery.

Five years ago people in China, mainly younger generations, stood up to demonstrate against Japan for its atrocities during the Second World War. They claimed that Japan never apologized officially, and that Chinese people were still suffering from the traumatic past. As a result, the Japanese government cancelled Prime Minister Koizumi's annual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honored along with the nation's 2.5 million war dead. So it was a happy ending? No.

After the demonstration erupted, all I kept hearing in the Japanese news media and among my friends was confusion (Why now? Why the spoiled brats?), anger (It’s in the past! Look at what the Chinese do to others), and fear (We gotta get out of China, now). The Japanese government changed its behavior not because it understood the issue more deeply, but because it didn’t want to aggravate China any more.

Few people discussed the real issue: further communication that should have lead to mutual understanding and respect, proper apology or other form of condolence, etc. This incident triggered a “Cold War” between the two countries. Trust was lost, mutual hatred increased, and organizations started to close cultural doors. From what I hear, the relationship has not yet recovered.

Last year, the documentary film “The Cove ” followed the covert operation of a group of animal rights activists fighting against Japanese dolphin fishermen. The film won the Oscar, Japanese media noticed, and the dolphin fishing industry shrank its activity. Win-win? Again, no.

The majority of the comments from the Japanese media and Internet communities can be summarized as follows: Why do they keep bashing and preaching to us for preserving our culture? We just eat some dolphin out of tradition, we preserve the limit, and we don’t extract oil on a massive scale like they did hundreds of years ago.

Again, the real issue, the importance of preserving wild animals based on scientific facts and logical arguments, was nowhere to be seen. The whole argument moved to the tired but addictive “crash of the cultures.”

Accusations and criticism have the power to change our actions, but not our attitudes. I admit that’s easy to say. Let’s face it: punishment and humiliation work as huge (de)motivators in our lives. I don’t know if there is positive way for making an impact on others. But if we succeed only in superficial changes, but worsen the underlying tensions, doesn’t it go against the original purpose?

P.S. As a Japanese, I am obliged to state my personal opinions.

Demonstrations in China: Historical incidents never become history unless we face them to the fullest, and hey, the Japanese haven’t, from the outsider’s point of view, either by avoiding it on purpose (older generations) or by being uneducated about the past (younger generations). So we have to learn. That said, I see that incident as another sign of the surge of nationalism happening worldwide. With fewer people having real memories of real wars and the traditional religions no longer answering our questions effectively, nationalism is gaining power as our new god. That scares me.

The Cove: I am against killing dolphins but I also think every wildlife protection measure should be discussed based on percentages, not on preferences. Personally, I worry more  about the extinction of tuna fish than dolphins. To be honest, I am half sure that some species of tuna fish will be extinct in the near future. And yes, the filmmaker of The Cove, Louie Psihoyos, is a righteous snob.

Noting that some Japanese media have been saying that "The Cove" is bashing Japanese people, Pshioyos said, "To me, it's a love letter. I'm giving you the information your government won't give you."

Who does this guy think he is?

Self-Image is Important, But Get Away From The Mirror Sometimes

If a person’s self-image is far apart from how the world sees him, the whole situation turns into a tragic comedy. I had a chance to witness that in *cough* BBC online news. The article Why are British actors playing Americans? says British actors are flourishing in the U.S. mainstream media because they are seen as a cost-effective yet talented alternative to the U.S. actors.

British producer Andrea Calderwood, who worked on Generation Kill for HBO, agrees that cost is an issue.

"American producers are going for the best talent. Obviously there is an element of cost involved.

"Once you become an established actor in the US, you can command huge prices - so people are looking for fresh talent that doesn't cost that much."

Strangely, she and the news touch only half of the “cost” issues. The other and arguably the bigger half, tax sheltering, is left out. Wikipedia explains the British tax shelter scheme as follows:

The same copyright can be sold again to a British company and a further $10 million could be raised, but UK law insists that part of the film is shot in Britain and that the production employs a fair proportion of British actors and crew. This explains why many American films like to shoot at Britain's major film studios like Pinewood and Shepperton and why a film such as Basic Instinct 2 relocated its action from New York to London.

The action film Wanted showcased that trend well. It was directed by a Kazakhstani-Russian (Timur Bekmambetov), shot in Hungary (Budapest), and starred a British (James McAvoy) and a German (Thomas Kretschmann). The only visible “American” elements were Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman in supporting roles.

Well, nobody wants to admit that they had an advantage from the beginning, but omitting what everybody knows only highlights the missing parts. And it’s not just the producers who seem to be missing the big picture:

"More value-for-money, that's really what it is. If they wanted someone experienced and I was American, they'd pay a lot of money - and I'd be better known, I suppose. We're cheaper."

English actor James Purefoy, who played Mark Antony in Rome, believes the network of British actors is perceived by American colleagues as cheap labour.

"We are often referred to in Los Angeles as white Mexicans," he told an audience of British hopefuls at a seminar on how to make it in America.

Considering the fact that James Purefoy is still alive, I bet he never said the above comment to a real Mexican trying to break into Hollywood. When did British/Irish actors become underdogs? They have always been the most privileged among the non-American acting peers. They are the only “minorities” whose cultural inheritance works for them, not against. Even the same article admits this point.

Moreover, anything with a sword-and-sandals theme offers employment opportunities to British thespians. It has often been suggested that American audiences expect their Romans to speak like the English. So the HBO/BBC mini-series Rome was peopled by British and Irish stars.

Those are not the only juicy parts. The same article quoted Helen Mirren as complaining that Brits always play the villain.

Speaking at an event in Los Angeles to celebrate British success in Hollywood, she said: ''I think it's rather unfortunate that the villain in every movie is always British, we're such an easy target that they can comfortably make the Brits the villains.

''It's just nice to say we're not snooty, stuck up, malevolent, malignant creatures as we're so often portrayed. We're actually kind of cool and hip!''

I seriously wanted to be a reporter for a moment. Here are the *some of the* questions I wanted to ask her.

• Have you shared your opinions with French or Russian actors?
• In which part of the world does the James Bond series make the most money?
• Batman is directed by a Brit and played by a Welshman. Is he a British character too?
• Name one major British film that has a non-British/Irish hero/heroine.

What I get from the all above unintentionally funny quotes are ignorance, arrogance, and snobbery. I now admire BBC News, James Purefoy, and Helen Mirren because of their splendid act: revealing their naked selves wearing a dress. Well, you might be “kind of” cool and hip, Dame. Everybody is entitled to her opinion.

No Impact Man: Leading a Green Life Inside a Gray Building

The documentary No Impact Man follows the story of a man who decides to create an experiment: Make the least possible ecological impact on earth. The catch is not in what he changes but in what he does not change—his address, in Manhattan, New York. His wife and daughter join the ride. They go vegan, cut electricity off, wash their clothes with their hands (and feet), walk the stairs to and from the 9th floor, stop drinking coffee, live without toilet paper, while recording their adventures in a blog.

Although the idea is ground-breaking, the execution goes on quietly. News media treat his experiment sensationally, but otherwise he lives an ordinary life, offering some insights along the way about healthier eating habits, more awareness about our ecology, etc. If a viewer is looking for a grand climax or a spiritual experience, he’ll get disappointed (I did - I admit).

But this documentary did one great job. It effectively killed our excuse for not taking up a radically eco-friendly life. When we hear about someone taking a big leap toward a greener lifestyle, we instantly react by saying No I Can’t, Because... followed by one or two pieces of “evidence” showing how impossible it is to ditch the way we live now. Like, We Need to Live in the City, implying that urban life and green life cannot co-exist.

Thanks to this film, we now have a strong counterargument: This guy did it in Manhattan. Ouch. Economically unpractical? His wife kept her job and supported the family. Not family-friendly? They had a toddler. Sure, the whole project was not practical, but it was proven to be doable. For this point alone, No Impact Man deserves to be listed in the Hall of Fame for Documentaries.

And yet, No Impact Man also shows the limitation of the current ecology movement. The results aren’t quantified. We cannot blame the documentary; we simply don’t have the means to measure our “greenness” yet. At least I haven’t heard of any.

We all know that we cannot solve a problem unless it becomes measurable. A good example is our diet. Although reducing our weight itself is hard, the methods are simple: take in less energy, or burn more energy. It is a zero-sum game played in a one-dimensional world.

But in case of ecology, we are playing in a two-dimensional, or even three-dimensional world. It is like trying to pull a thread out of a ball of strings. Every time we untangle a bit, we also tighten another bit, in an unexpected place. Nobody knows what is going on inside that huge ball, and everybody is secretly hoping for someone with a sword to cut the ball in half to end this endless game.

Let’s take chopsticks for example. If I stop consuming chopsticks, am I going to save one more tree in the Amazon jungle? How many trees? Or should I just switch to bamboo chopsticks to nurture the alternative industry to wooden chopsticks? Wait, I heard (at least in Japan) that we should use a certain brand of chopsticks which has a partnership with the domestic timber industry to use residual wooden chips, which in the long run discourages deforestation. The question goes around endlessly. A pair of chopsticks lead to global logistics, and then our thinking stops. Brain overloaded.

Can we create a model that measures our impact on this earth with reasonable accuracy, ease of use, and available for anybody with access to the Web? I think that’s the whole question.

* How could he blog without having electricity? Check the film. It’s one of the best parts.