Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Thanksgiving leftover...

While many people are still going through their thanksgiving feast leftovers, I don't have that kind of worries because I didn't even have any solid plans for the holiday, and it turned out to be a peaceful, quiet, and even inspiring one for me. I didn't have turkey (but roast chicken instead), feast, or any specific celebration per se. The reason is that there were so many things going on at home, at work, and in personal life that I didn't make any plans as it's not celebrated back home anyways. That's also why this blog went on a hiatus for a couple weeks. But somehow I managed to read a great classic book Chicken Soup for the Soul which got me into A LOT of thinking, and I guess I was well fed in a different way and hence the following thoughts.

I was pleased to see Nate's quote on "the greatest things in life aren't things". It's getting out of hand here in America that a holiday supposed to be giving thanks is becoming all about feasts and black friday shopping. Even though I admit I was tempted to wait in line at the wee hours on black friday morning because of the great deals, I came to realize it's not worth it to sacrifice my precious rest hours and even my health just to save a hundred bucks. Now I can easily earn that same amount of money or even more with the same amount of time and energy wasted. I came to realize I should focus on the spirit of the giving part, not just lip service of "oh, how blessed I am and how poor all those people in the world around us are" kind of attitude. It should mean we are in a position to give, not to get so as not turning thanksgiving into a holiday of "giftgetting". I made a decision to begin with doing a few things to the people that I will ever be indebted for. First it's my family, especially under such challenging circumstances, I need to put them in the first place. Then for the next few days I will put either into words or actions to a few people that I've always wanted to express my gratitude to. I know there are a handful of people who are reading this and please bear with me some of the details in the coming days about the things I am going to write which may not mean much to anyone else but are really personal and meaningful to me in many ways.

The Chicken Soup book reminded me of this quote from Mr. Keating in Dead Poets Society:

All of us are walking around with some kind of birthday card we would like to give -- some personal expression of joy, creativity or aliveness that we are binding under our shirt... Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)!

Happy belated birthday, dad and Anthony! Hang in there! :)

Saturday, November 10, 2007

It's all about COMMUNICATION!!!

Have been heavily involved with a couple work related projects that I'm devoting my whole holiday weekend to them. And I realize lately that whether work is enjoyable or successful or not depends a lot on communication. I'm learning this the hard way again that unfortunately some of the people I am now working with are not good communicators at all. They delegate work without clear instructions or what is expected of me that I have to make a lot of guesses amidst confusions. Hence my students and the work suffer. I recall the experience of a couple of the so-called "miracle companionships" (named by others, not myself!) on my mission that things went amazingly well only when we got along and communicated well. It tended to attract good things to happen. I guess that is what happened with my former teaching team that we "attracted" good students or what actually happened was bringing out the best of them if the teachers work well together. When there is no communication, bad things are bound to happen.

On a totally different note, these are what I call real talents:
I'm obssessed with Wade Robson's choreography lately.


And this has been my favorite song the past month.