Worship Excellence.

We went to watch Tiger Woods playing Golf again. It has become our family tradition. He is excellent in what he is doing! What an inspiration!!

What makes hero a hero? We can’t swing as well as he does. Yet everyone of us was designed to have a talent or more. Right? Some of our talents are not even found, some of them are just a hobby. If we are lucky we are making a living doing what we feel comfortable with and are good at.

What defines success in life? The answer is given by Tiger and other role models of ours. Just do what you are doing or you like to do and do it excellently. We are promised to love ourselves more and for sure happier.

I guess I get it.

Linda

We all know role models are important in our lives. They help to guide us in almost all respects of our lives.

I used to admire movie stars, translators, engineers, singers, dancers, doctors...After all those years, I still get inspiration from almost everyone in life. Everyone has their own traits that I can learn from.

Somehow something is missing. Some heros are hard to relate to. For instance, Tiger Woods plays great golf. The spirit of his is to some extent inspiration but I have no idea how to swing. He is the God. God is too far, only brothers or sisters can bring reality closer.

I bought this book titled "Google Stories" in Standford University. this is one of the kind that you don't want to put down after you started.

I could see vividly these two regular, yet very dedicated, driven and smart guys, like those I grew up and am surrounded with. They work without being driven by money. They work until early in the morning so that they can solve a problem. They only want to graduate to be a professor because their passions say so.

When they eventually develop something only to solve a painful problem associated with search engine, they couldn't sell it for a million. They were so reluctant to put doctor degree on hold and tried themselves. Only 5 years, they were forced by reality to go public and became billionaires at age of 34.

Success of google is closer to my believes. Talent, passion, hardwork and sense of having fun. See what this combination brings to people's life and changes people's way to live and work. To most people, even to me, google is more equivelant to internet and is the one that really kick the door of Internet wide open to majority of regular people.

Salute to you, my Google heros.

Politically Correctness

We may all have experienced occasions where we lower our voice while we say the word “black” even when we mean the color of certain item is black; or even worse, instead of saying black jack, we have to say African American Jack. Or women workers report almost any conflicts to Human Resource as discriminations and win the case.

I read this article titled “rethinking political correctness. “ I am attracted to the term the author uses in the second paragraph –unspoken cannon.

I am not the person who has to be politically correct and how to be that way is not my real concern. My real concern is when we have grudge or concern and we choose to hold back, what could happen. Like this term indicates, the unspoken matters leads to people to draw private conclusions, “untested, their conclusions become immutable. Resentments build, relationship frays, …”  Isn’t it exactly the consequence broken communication leads to? Like exploring balloon, over time, people start to use the harshest words against each other, use judgements the defendents have no ideas what they are about and how to react. Things get worse and worse. Best friends become hated enemy over time, sweet couples start divorcing process…

So it is very necessary for us to express how we feel when we have uncomfortable feelings. But how to productively express in order to really solve the difference?

This article also gave useful suggestions.

1.    Pause to short-circuit the emotion and reflect. Obvously this is the most common reaction of ours. Once we feel we are offended, we react by “jumping into people’s faces” and casting blames and judgement. The consequence is nothing but hatre from both sides.

The right way needs to step back for a few moments and check what really bothers us and use “I statement”, as opposed to trying to prove how wrongful others have been and leave others on the defensive side.

2.    Questioning thyself. Do people mean what I think they mean? Should I ask for clarification? Will I be overly sensitive to matters like this? What is the matter that really bothers me and I have to put it to a stop? Am I too self-righteous? Do I have a right to ask for the change?

3.    Change mind-set. As opposed to trying to prove others are wrong from intention to actions, we should stick to “how I feel is” in stead of saying: “you do this because you want to …”

Yes, I totally agree, we express our uncomfortability to raise issue to attention and for solutions, not to blame. It is healthy to bring them up, it is essential to communicate in a constructive way—stay the fact, expect the solution and way out to common ground.

I never know how to translate well some Chinese idioms into English 。 The one" 仁者见仁， 智者见智”, to save time.

I guess it is about the same thing could be very different in people's eyes.

San Francisco is called to be the favorite city by a lot of people. I asked them why, they all had different explanations. I can join them now after the third time visit but I guess my reasons are mine.

Here is why:

Atmosphere in SFO and San Jose is extremely different from anywhere we have been to. I am staying in San Jose and San Francisco is 40 minutes away.  Driving through Great America Drive to see "Yahoo" "Cisco" "Sun" "AT&T" "Nortel" "Google"... those first class admirable companies sitting side by side is so inspiring. Sun's Campus is like old time castle...I totally smelled technologies and their glories to change our ways to work and live.

Stanford University is even better. Standford University is on the way from San Jose to San Francisco. The campus is absolutely splendid. Obviously the campus was built in an ancient forest. There are lots of huge trees of hundred of years. Not one department building was constructed without art in mind. They were all made of stones and with sculptures all over, on the pole, on the edges of windows... Students on the campus seem to be very driven. They walk or run or hang out in the book stores with the firmest facial expressions that show they know good things are waiting for them to reach with diligence and excellence.

Golden Gate is awesome. But the ride on Federal Highway is beyond description. You must remember seeing in the movies that people drive on the edge of mountain, on the other side down below are the mighty waves hitting the rocks? This is it! Ocean mostly means relaxing beaches, flat and wide open. Not in San Francisco. After I drove in the mountain for a long time and just started to enjoy its calm, all the in a sudden, the scene opened up, in front of my eyes was the white, endless, energetic ocean.  From there on, the road keeps turning, turning, scene keeps changing, mountain, water, or mountain and water.


I guess the atmosphere and smell of phylosophy, academy, knowledge is what took my breath away.