Soul searching

Scientists have found out that the brain, to put it in its simplest form, is just a giant neuro-network. There are simply millions and billions of neurons interconnected together. When we “learn” something new, it means that certain path(s) of the network has been connected or blocked depend on if you’ve learned a new trick like juggling three balls or not to do something like punching a stone wall with your bare fist.

To push this idea a little further, we realize that everything about who we are, every value we have about us, every do’s and don’ts, and how we react and do everything is a learning process which dictated by what we’ve experienced in the past and what we will experience in the future.

So to push this thinking just a tiny bit further, we must ask ourselves “what’s the definition of a soul?” According to the Webster dictionary, soul is “the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life. ” That sounds to me like what I described above.

If our brains equal our souls and nothing more, does that mean there is no heaven, no after life, no next life, no future, an probably not even a tomorrow? If you are a pessimist, you are probably telling yourself you should go rob a bank right now! But think about it, even if you are completely right, why rob a bank when there is no tomorrow? To me, I’m thinking “this is it!” I mean, since there is no tomorrow or after life, it means what we do today and now is all there is to it. Who you are is defined right here, right now!

Here is what Saint Augustine said at 400BC “How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.” So according to St. Augustine, now is eternity which strengthen my point that what we do now is more important than ever.

So whatever you’ve encountered in the past, no matter how irrelevant it seemed at the time, have all led up to this moment to crafted this beautiful soul reading this “thing” that you are reading and you and your soul will continue to evolve with every new and old experiences you are going to come face to face with.

When the Oracle told Neo that “Because you didn’t come here to make the choice, you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand *why* you made it.” Seriously, I wasn’t happy because it sounded a lot like we don’t have a choice in life. However, when you think it through you will realize that the Oracle actually meant he had made all the choices to led him to that moment and if he didn’t try to understand why, his future would most likely be dictated by his “usual” way of decision making. And once he understood why he made the previous choices, he understands, in a way, how his brain were “wired” and he can have the choice to “re-wire” his brain and thus derives a different decision which would led to a different future.

In trying to summarize what I’ve just wrote, I came across a paragraph which describes beautifully what I have in mind, so here it goes: “We can’t make sense of our lives as a whole. To do that, we’d have to be able to step outside of our lives and see them as a whole, and of course we can’t do that. All our ways of making sense are parts of our lives, so that if we could step outside of our lives, we’d of course also step outside all our way of making sense. The result is that the idea of making sense of our lives as a whole literally doesn’t make any sense.” or as Yoda put it best “unlearn what you have learned!”

20111031 meeting

the meeting went rather well yesterday. I tried “model 2′ed” them all the way and focus on getting info and make sure that they understand all I wanted was a win-win situation for everyone. end up I realized that our assumption that we need security on making sure the workers are not here to make a quick buck is irrelevant. at the end I asked Yu if he truly believe what we discussed could work and I believe that he does feel good about what we said and hopefully he’ll make them happen.

on another note, the more time I spend on “talking” (since I’m still not sure if what I’m doing is couching yet) to them, the more I feel like I’m stepping on a mine field. I have to take each step extremely careful. and the worst thing is that I’m pretty sure I can walk across the field without blowing up myself, it’s leading everyone across that is the hardest part mainly coz most of them don’t even realize it’s a mine field. and to top it off, I have to go home each day to do homework with Brandon which, in itself, it’s another mine field with a completely different trigger system. so I have to change the mode I cross the field between them all day, everyday!

I just realized this this morning and I told myself I’m at the edge, I’m about to break down anytime soon! so I’ve decided to go ahead with a new commitment where I’ll take a 1/2 hour swim at least twice a week. I’m hoping that it’ll help me blow some serious steam off.

Intuition can only get you so far

So I was helping my son, a 4th grader, doing his math homework. Almost 2 hours in and we were at the very last problem (meaning that we were both tired and ready to just get it over with). The whole worksheet was on fraction and the answer to the last problem was 65/117. Now I don’t know about you but my son was happy with the answer and ready to pack his school bag. Me, on the other, felt something awkwardly wrong with that answer.

I asked my son is he sure that’s the simplest form of that fraction and, since he’s been trained by me, he refused to say yes or no but instead said he tried everything from 1-10. So I took out my iPhone and start dividing those numbers by larger numbers and finally found that 13 was the key.

By this time, since I was extremely tired, I just told him to try dividing the fraction with 13 and at the same time I was silently cursing at the teacher who gave these 4th grader something so not obvious.

This morning on my way to work, I was thinking about the post process department thing and I was really sure about my believe that the simplest way is always the best way to do things (unlike Mr. Chai who always likes to make things as complicated as possible). Anyway, the words “simplest way” got me thinking about that math problem last night and all the sudden it dawn on me that there is a systematic way to solve that problem without using a calculator dividing all the numbers known to man. All we had to do was to find the “common factor” on both numbers which was his previous homework assignment!

Now I’m cursing myself for cursing at the teacher because she actually gave them a system to work on the problems and a challenge to use the system on solving the problem.

So what did I get from all these? I like math and I always have a good intuition about how to solve math or, in general, logical problems. But my intuition can only get me so far and there is always a system on how to solve a problem so even if we get stuck in a corner and especially if we are tired and in fatigue, think system wide and you should and will almost always find a way to solve the problem. It might involve a lot more work (in the fraction problem, instead of focusing on one number, finding their common factors mean we have to find all the factors on both numbers), but at the end it’d always be worth it.

One of the biggest concern

that I have right now is how do I steer May to realize that she still has lots to learn and improve.

Tge 7 level of people opening a door

imagine you are at a mall, what would the different stages of people do and think at one of those big glass door.

the opportunist would, no doubt, rush to open the door for himself and himself alone, he might even knock over someone in the process.

a diplomat would, I’m pretty sure, open the door for almost everyone even if that someone is so far away that he’d need to wait 5 minutes for him to come over.

an expert, interestingly, would probably be calculating the energy he needs to hold the door open and/or the time it’d take for this old man to slowly walk through the door while he’s holding it.

the achiever, on the other hand, would determine what’s the most effective way to get everyone through the door quickest and if he couldn’t be sure, he might forget about the rest of them and just walk through it himself.

as for the rest of the levels, I’m sure you can fill in the blanks……

Homing in

today, I think I’ve found out what’s been bothering me all these years. it’s that fact that I don’t like to be labeled “a 2nd generation”. it seems like that I’ve been really annoyed by that for years and looks like it’s been my guard for many years. this guard has prevented me from taking control of what i want to do with my work and my life. it’s like telling me that I’m nothing without my dad and it’d seem that I’ve been doubting myself a Loy due to this.

not trying to avoid this issue, instead, I’m going to make sure that I embrace this “label” and excel from it.

Vicious cycle

what happen when someone who thinks the world revolves around her meets someone who thinks the world revolves around HER? and the ironic thing is they are daughter and mother meaning that whatever the daughter sees “evolved” from the mother! now many people, when they can’t blame anything else, they blame “it’s genetic” but what I believe is that most of the tine you are just seeing yourself in your kids because they learn by studying you instead of what you taught them.

I’d say that it’s pretty much the same with your subordinates and you and if there is something you don’t like in your staff, look in the mirror first coz you’d probably see what you hate most in the mirror.

20110916 talked to Johnson

talked to Johnson about

1) pattern department problem, mainly on date confirmation & delays. agreed to try going to the factory to see how they actually do it and start from there.

2) sales person in DG. agreed on two numbers for actual sales & cs.

The fifth discipline

the reason that costs don’t stay down is that the system has its own agenda.

Brandon’s progress 20110916

was doing math homework with Brandon at McDonald’s this morning. he couldn’t get his mind straight at first. I saw he was frustrated and told him to calm down. then he started actually focus and read the question and understood how he was going to approach the question. I was really proud of him.