Last Few Heart Beats

Even though I am a mortal, I never really experienced it. Ever since I was a kid, I have been told by my siblings that we all will die someday. I never really had first hand feeling about it. I guess I took it for granted, so wasn't able appreciate being alive.

However, last couple of mornings have been different. Every time I wake up, I feel my heart beat and breath, and have realization that my life clock is ticking. As soon as this heart stops beating, I won't exist anymore. All those experience I have accumulated in my life would be so useless. I will disappear from this world as if I never existed.  For some reason, I am glad I have this realization. Now I am starting to appreciate my life much more than before.

Spending Habits - Rich, Poor & Middle-Class

Another interesting idea to share with you. Here is the nut shell of a book, "Rich Dad Poor Dad" I finished reading recently. 

"The rich buy assets. 

The poor only have expenses. 

The middle class buy liabilities they think are assets."

Kiyosaki, Robert T.  (2011-04-25). Rich Dad Poor Dad (Kindle Locations 1119-1122).

One Way To Be A Better Listener

Last couple of days, I have realized that when I ask a coworker for suggestions, most of the time I interrupt him while he was speaking (as if I have a better idea he or she must hear). But I came to a conclusion this is very inappropriate to interrupt someone while he or she is speaking.  I also understood makes me look like an asshole. I used to have a very talkative friend who always ask for advice, and then end up interrupting me when I was speaking because he thinks his ideas are better than mine. So what's the point of giving him any advice?

So, I ended up creating my own technique to be a better listener - Whenever I am having a conversation with someone, I would always remind myself of this phrase "SHUT THE FUCK UP" while he is speaking. I would just nod my head a little bit to show acknowledgement, and pay complete presence. I don't even have to say, "okay" or "makes sense" to show approval. If I have a strong urge to speak, I would take a deep breath to let the tension go. No matter how best my ideas are, or how wrong the person who is speaking, I will never interrupt.  I will simply take any inputs and be more open-minded, but in the end of the conversation I will chose either to approve or disapprove his suggestions. If his ideas suck, I may choose not to let him know this is a bull crap.

I have been following this rule a lot this week during team meeting, informal, and casual conversations, and I must say that this is the best communication method I have applied after a long time.

A Nerd's Guide to Be A Conversationalist

I live 8,260 miles from my parents back home abroad. So I pretty much have to vist them once a year by buying an expensive airline ticket which sometimes cost of a fortune. Beside seeing them once in a while, I have also decided to create a routine to call my mom and dad once or twice to week to speak with them for at least 10 to 15 minutes. I am no "mama's boy", but it is always nice to stay in touch with people closest to me in regular basis. But to be honest with you, speaking in phone for just 10 minutes seems like a chore to me. But I figured out a way to make conversation longer by using a simple technique I learned from an cheesy book I read years ago to improve my social skills, "How to Talk to Anyone - 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationship". The author calls it "Parroting Technique".

Technique: Just Repeat the Last Couple Words As a Question
Tonight when I was speaking with my dad in phone, I simple repeated the fact he stated with questions. Here is an example. I haven't written word for word. Just something to prove my point:

Dad: "Your little niece is planning to study abroad and getting ready with her TOEFL exam"
Me: "TOEFL exam?"
Dad: "Yes, it sounds she needs to meet the minimum TOEFL score to get college admission"
Me: "Oh, that quite soon. College admission?"
Dad: "Her mom and dad are thinking of sending her abroad and have her elder brother take care of her"
Me: "Oh, elder brother?"
Dad: "Yes, how is he doing these days? Any luck getting a job?"
Me: ....

The above method actually helped couple of times to hit the 15-20 minutes conversation mark. Another thing you could do to make this technique effective to change your tonality when asking your questions. It works like a charm! Communication has never been my strongest skill. I like getting things done by saying as less as possible. But I realized my family and friends are more important than my comfort zone, and I do have to use some kind of methods to make myself better at conversation longer (and less awkward silences).

3 Hot Tips for A New & Inexperienced College Graduate

Six months before I graduated from college with a Bachelor's Degree, I had to spend  hours making cold calls to companies and send resume to couple hundred places. It was a great challenge me because only experience I had was being a night security in a dormitory (who checks id for underage drunk girls) and a visual basic programming tutor. Most companies were looking for someone who at least have internship experience, and not an alien resident. But  finally I did get an offer as a software developer couple days before I graduated. In this post, I want to share three things I had done right in the first six month in my new job:

I Worked My Ass Off
When you are new and inexperienced, you can easily be replaced by someone else better and cheaper than you. You really do not have the luxury to be as comfortable as your experienced coworker who leaves at 5 PM sharp. If you work your ass off in the first six months (I pretty much spend 50-60 hours per week), you would probably prove yourself to the company that you are a valuable assest which would be hard to get rid of. Another advantage is you will gain much more experience in a very short period of time. Nowadays, I try to get my job done within 45 hours a week, but I do thank myself to be diligent in my first 6 months to be a hard worker.

I Asked Lots of Stupid/Idiotic Questions
I was quite new to the technology industry. In my first in the company, it actually meant a world to me to have very minute portion of my code rolled to production environment used by thousands of customers. I also didn't know much technology jargon, and many things I listened to staffs meeting sounded so foreign (like Chinese). So most of the time I felt stupid to ask questions, such as, what is <insert any technology terms>? how can I deal with this?

I Solved Lots of Problems
When first started, my employer just asked me to feel comfortable with the code, and keep myself busy. I wasn't provide much specific directions. I guess they thought it's my training phase since this is my first job after college. However, my mentor (who has been in the industry for over 10 years) advise me to focus on solving problems. And I am glad I took that advice word for word. I ended up fixing over hundred bugs/faulty code with our softwares in my first year. That really helped me to be a better developer, and have me understand the business much better than reading a book

There you go. I am not sure what industry you are but I am sure the same rules apply for you too. You definitely need to be very comfortable being very stupid (even annoying sometimes because you bug a lots of coworkers), and you would alway be solving problems. Unless you work for a big company, you manager would really appreciate for your strong work ethics to spend extra hours in your job. I even got couple hundred dollar gift cards from my manager few months ago for being so deliberate at my work. Well, if you have any more better ideas for a new college graduate, then feel free to share in the comment section below!

Identity - A Fish Name John!

If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and two minutes later he gets eaten by another fish — that’s tragic. But it’s only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none

Tolle, Eckhart (2009-03-25). The Power of Now (p. 100). New World Library. Kindle Edition.

So True!!!