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Books

Mud or Stars (New Prisoner Welcome Booklet) by Peter Sage

New Prisoner Welcome Booklet

Mud or Stars by Peter Sage is not exactly a book, it is a fictional story that Peter Sage wrote when he was in jail. It is part of the New Prisoner Welcome Booklet that he designed for new inmates but I think the principles of this story is applicable to all areas of life. 

These are the 6 principles of this story from New Prisoner Welcome Booklet (I have made moderations so that they are applicable in daily life): 

  1. Everyone has grievances and unhappiness but nobody really cares about them so don’t go around talking about your unhappiness. 
  2. I always get to choose what I focus on. Mud or Stars. 
  3. Don’t cry over spilled milk, crying over it won’t make it any different. Accept that the milk is spilled and figure out how to deal with it. 
  4. Life is like a mirror. If I am angry at the world, the world gets angry with me. 
  5. Circumstances can restrict my liberty but not my freedom. No one can ever do anything to me emotionally without my permission. 
  6. Set myself up to win. Learn the ropes, get busy, set a goal. 
Categories
Books

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

Purple Cow

I have read quite a few articles talking about the book Purple Cow. I was intrigued but not motivated to get the book until I read about it in the TradeBriefs newsletter that sends articles many times a day to my email. Maybe it was because I was looking for something new to read, but I bought the book Purple Cow.

Purple Cow revolves around the concept that you or your company needs to be remarkable to stand out from the competition and thrive.

The author believes that TV-industrial age is long over (I agree) and consumers are advertising-adverse (I agree too).

Seth Godin argues that the only way for anyone and any company to survive in the current era is to be a Purple Cow. Your company or business needs to stand out from the crowd so that sneezers (people who like new things and who likes to share) can help you spread the word about your product or company. 

3/4 of the book are case studies of companies that either adopted the Purple Cow mindset and thrived or did not and fizzled out. It is inspiring to read all the case studies and see how those companies did it. 

The last chapter is a new addition where readers wrote in to tell stories of Purple Cow companies they have encountered. 

Every company and everybody should read the book Purple Cow. Get Purple Cow by Seth Godin here

Categories
Books

So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

I have always felt that I was in the wrong profession. After the initial passion wore off after a few months into the job, I was more convinced that I was not cut out for this job. 

I read many books on how to find the job you love and each one of them tells me that I need to discover my passion. After many years of trial and error, I still have not figured out what my passion is. 

So Good They Can’t Ignore You gives a refreshing new perspective on finding work you love. 

According to this book, there are people who make a great career following the passion hypothesis (what your work offers youbut it is very rare. 

Most people aren’t born with pre-existing passions to be discovered.

That makes me feel a little better about not figuring out what my passion is.

If the passion hypothesis is not the way to go about finding work that I love, am I doomed to get stuck in a job that I do not love?

When I did a careful analysis of my work, I realized that I do not like this job because it lacks these traits:

  • control: I can’t choose to shorten my hours
  • recognition: I am not valued for my skills 
  • impact: I don’t feel that my work have any directly positive impact on people’s lives

All of these actually coincides with So Good They Can’t Ignore You is saying, that career passion is rare. 

I realized what started many people on their successful careers is: making extra spending cash. That is why Steve Jobs first dabbled in electronics and why Ryan Voiland became a farmer. 

The book goes on to describe in detail how to go about finding work you love. The steps are: 

  1. Have a craftsman mindset: in other words, be So Good They Can’t Ignore You
  2. Career capital: work on and improve on buildup of rare and valuable skills with constant immediate honest feedback using deliberate practice (activists that stretch your abilities) 
  3. Leverage career capital to gain control of your work but 
    • control requires career capital to support it 
    • employers will fight your efforts to gain more autonomy 
  4. Do what people are willing to pay for:  money is a neutral indicator of value. By aiming to make money, you’re aiming to be valuable 
  5. Have a clear and compelling mission: have a unifying focus on your career and maximizes your impact on the world
  6. Think small act big: get to the cutting edge of your field, find a career mission and go for it 
  7. Take incremental steps: deploy small, concrete experiments that return concrete feedback 
  8. Be remarkable: for a mission to produce a sustainable career, it has to produce purple cows, the type of remarkable projects that compel people to spread the word about the project in a venue that supports these remarks

At the last part of the book, the author Cal Newport details how he put what he learnt into practice. 

Get So Good They Can’t Ignore You. 

Categories
Books

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah totally blew my mind. It is such a revolutionary book that altered what I knew about the evolution of mankind. 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind Part One – Cognitive Revolution

Part one of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind talks about the Cognitive Revolution and how it allowed the Homo sapiens to evolve from animals into what we are now. 

I thought that the Homo sapiens species was the only one of its kind but this book says that “there used to be many other species of this genus besides Homo sapiens”. A few of our siblings were  Homo rudolfensis (East Africa), Homo erectus (East Asia) and Homo neanderthalensis (Europe and Western Asia).

The book gave various theories why Homo sapiens survived while the other species of the genus homo didn’t.

The “Interbreeding Theory” tells a tale of attraction, sex and mingling. According to this theory, as Homo rudolfensis spread around the world, they bred with other human populations, and people today are the outcome of this interbreeding.

The “Replacement Theory” tells a story of incompatibility, revulsion, and perhaps even genocide. According to this theory, Sapiens and other humans had different anatomies and they would have had little sexual interest in one another. Even if they did, they could not produce fertile children, because the genetic gulf separating the two populations was already unbridgeable.

According to the “Replacement Theory”, Homo sapiens could have driven the other species to extinction. Sapiens were more proficient hunters and gatherers – thanks to better technology and superior social skills – so they multiplied and spread. The less resourceful species found it increasingly difficult to feed themselves. Their population dwindled and they slowly died out. 

Another possibility is that competition for resources flared up into violence and genocide. 

An accidental genetic mutation changed the inner wirings of the brains of Sapiens, enabling them to think in unprecedented ways and to communicate using an altogether new type of language. This Tree of Knowledge mutation allow Sapiens to connect sounds and signs to produce an infinite number of sentences, each with a distinct meaning. We can thereby ingest, store and communicate a prodigious amount of information about the surrounding world.

Mind-blowing right? There’s more to come.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind Part Two – Agricultural Revolution

Part two of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind talks about Agricultural Revolution and the domestication of farm animals.

Agriculture sprung up from different parts of the world between 9500 and 3500 BC. 

People in Central America domesticated maize and beans while Middle East domesticated wheat and peas. South Americans domesticated potatoes and llamas while China domesticated rice, millet and pigs. North Americans cultivated pumpkins while New Guineans tamed sugar cane and bananas. West Africans domesticated African millet, African rice, sorghum and wheat. 

The book Sapiens argues that the Agricultural Revolution was not the “great leap forward for mankind” as scholars proclaimed. Instead, humans became slaves to the domesticated plants and animals.

From a narrow evolutionary perspective, which measures success by the number of DNA copies, the Agricultural Revolution was a wonderful boon for chickens, cattle, pigs and sheep. Unfortunately, the evolutionary perspective is an incomplete measure of success. These domesticated animals may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueler with the passing of the centuries. 

The Agricultural Revolution turned foragers into farmers. The food surpluses allowed the Homo sapiens population to increase radically. Farming created stress for the farmers because they had to produce more than they consumed to build up reserves. 

Without grain in the silo, jars of olive oil in the cellar, cheese in the pantry and sausages hanging from the rafters, they would starve in bad years. 

These fortified food surpluses fueled politics, war, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples. 

Homo sapiens used their advanced cognitive abilities to invent stories about great gods, motherlands and joint stock companies to create the needed social links to cooperate effectively.

According to this book, all religions, government systems, economic systems are imagined order created from the imagination of the Homo sapien’s mind. The way to make people believe in imagined order is to never admit that the order is imagined and educate people thoroughly. 

From the moment they are born, you constantly remind them of the principles of the imagined order, which are incorporated into anything and everything.

The desire to take a holiday, for example, was born from romantic consumerism. 

Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people.

The book also describes the process of how language came about. Ancient Sumerians who lived in southern Mesopotamia invented a partial script by combining two types of signs. One type of signs represented numbers and the other type represented people, animals, merchandise, territories, dates and so forth. More and more signs were added to the Sumerian system, gradually transforming it into a full script that we today call cuneiform. 

At roughly the same time, Egyptians developed another full script known as hieroglyphics. Other full scripts were developed in China around 1200 BC and in Central America around 1000–500 BC.

The next few chapters talks about imagined hierarchies, the birth of racism and the hierarchy of mankind.

Different societies adopt different kinds of imagined hierarchies. Race is very important to modern Americans but was relatively insignificant to medieval Muslims. Caste was a matter of life and death in medieval India, whereas in modern Europe it is practically non-existent. One hierarchy, however, has been been of supreme importance of in all known human societies: the hierarchy of gender. 

There are various theory for the patriarchal nature of our society such as Muscle Power, Aggression, Evolution but none of them can really explain the patriachal views. 

During the last century, there has been revolutionary changes in gender roles. Women are not only given equal legal status and political rights, they now also have equal economic opportunities. 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind Part Three – Unification of Mankind

Part three of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind talks about the unification for mankind in terms of geopolitical, economic, legal and scientific systems and how they laid the foundation for the united world of today. 

Over the millennia, small, simple cultures gradually coalesce into bigger and more complex civilisations, so that the world contains fewer and fewer mega-cultures, each of which is bigger and more complex.

The first millennium BC witnessed the appearance of three potentially universal orders: economic system, political systems and religious systems. 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind Part Four – Scientific Revolution

Part four of Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind talks about the Scientific Revolution. 

The Scientific Revolution started when mankind was willing to admit its ignorance. Modern science aims to obtain new knowledge by gathering observations and then use mathematical tools to connect these observations into comprehensive  theories. These theories are in turn uses to acquire new powers and develop new technologies. 

The leading project of the Scientific Revolution is to give humankind eternal life. The average life expectancy jumped from well below twenty-five to forty years, to around sixty-seven in the entire world, and to around eighty years in the developed world. 

Science, like all other parts of our culture, is shaped by economic, political and religious interests.

Most scientific studies are funded because somebody believe they can help attain some political, economic or religious goal. Scientific research can flourish only in alliance with some religion or ideology. The ideology justifies the cost of the research. In exchange, the ideology influences the scientific agenda and determines what to do with the discoveries.

The Industrial Revolution created more efficient ways of exploiting existing resources and completely new types of energy and materials. Steam engines, petroleum, electricity are a few examples. 

At heart, the industrial Revolution has been a revolution in energy conversion. 

The modern capitalist economy started promoting consumerism so that people bought whatever new stuff industry produces. 

Consumerism sees the consumption of ever more products and services as a positive thing. It encourages people to treat themselves, spoil themselves, and even kill themselves slowly by overconsumption.

The Industrial Revolution also bright about adjusting to industrial time, urbanization, disappearance of peasantry, rise of the industrial proletariat, empowerment of common person, democratisation, youth culture and disintegration of patriarchy. But the most monumental social revolution was the collapse of family and local community and their replacement by the state and the market. 

Imagined communities such as the nation and consumer tribe fills in the emotional vacuum left by collapse of intimate community. 

We are living in a peaceful era due to decline of violence due to rise of the state. 

As kingdoms and empires became stronger, they reined in communities and the level of violence decreased. In recent decades, when states and markets have become all-powerful and communities have vanished, violence rates have dropped even further. 

The British, French and Soviet empires fell without much bloodshed. With very few exceptions, since 1945 states no longer invade other states in order to conquer and swallow them up.

There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war. For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year.

A few factors contributes to this happy development:

  • price of war has increased dramatically 
  • profits of war declined
  • peace became more lucrative 
  • domination by peace-loving elites 
  • tightening web of international connections erodes the independence of most countries

The second-last chapter of this book concludes that material wealth is only one part of what makes us happy. Social, ethical and spiritual factors have a great impact on our happiness too. Money bring happiness, but only up to a point.

Family and community seem to have more impact on our happiness than money and health.

People with strong families who live in tight-knit and supportive communities are significantly happier than people whose families are dysfunctional and who have never found (or never sought) a community to be part of. Marriage is particularly important. Repeated studies have found that there is a very close correlation between good marriages and high subjective well-being, and between bad marriages and misery. This holds true irrespective of economic or even physical conditions.

Happiness depends on the correlation between objective conditions and subjective expectations. Mass media and the advertising industry May unwittingly be depleting the globe’s reservoir of contentment. 

So maybe Third World discontent is fomented not merely by poverty, disease, corruption and political oppression but also by mere exposure to First World standards.

Biologists believe that our subjective well-being is determined by a complex system of nerves, neurons, synapses and various biochemical substances such as serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin.

Some scholars believe that some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system while others have a gloomy biochemistry. External stimuli does not change our biochemistry, they can startle it for a fleeting moment, but it is soon back to its set point. 

A famous study by Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, demonstrates that happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.

As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan. Hence any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion.

The last chapter of this books talks about how mankind is now beginning to break the laws of natural selection, replacing them with the laws of intelligent design. 

Sapiens started this during the Agricultural Revolution. By mating the fattest hen with the slowest cock, they produced the fat, slow birds that we now know as chickens. 

Today, in laboratories throughout the world, scientists are engineering living beings. The replacement of natural selection by intelligent design could happen in any of the three ways: 

  • biological engineering – modification through manipulation of genes 
  • cyborg engineering- combining organic and inorganic parts 
  • engineering of inorganic life e.g. computer programs that can undergo independent evolution

The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘What do we want to want?’

Get Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind by Yuval Noah

Categories
Review

《亲情满屋:孝敬父母应该做的39件事》

Qin Qing Man Wu

最近我一直在想:我应该怎么做才能让我爸妈知道我爱他们,让他们开心?

我在图书馆找到这本《亲情满屋:孝敬父母应该做的39件事》。

这本书里其实收藏了39个小故事,体现父母对我们的爱。每个小故事后面都有“爱心提示”,提醒我们应该怎么做来孝敬父母。我把书里的“爱心提示”总结了一下:

  • 给父母买健康保暖(羊毛/骆绒/鸭绒/蚕丝/棉花)的衣服和围巾
  • 好好学习和工作
  • 常回家看看
  • 不说谎
  • 陪父母去户外做适量的运动
  • 提醒父母做口腔检查
  • 送父母一张按摩椅
  • 拥抱父母
  • 结婚,让父母放心
  • 为父母订阅报纸和杂志
  • 给爸爸/妈妈找个老伴
  • 不“啃老”,不让父母帮自己带孩子
  • 做好自己,不让父母操心
  • 经常和父母聊天
  • 为父母买几件合身的衣服
  • 为父母请个保姆
  • 带父母去体检
  • 多收集父母的照片/录像/录音
  • 多陪父母出外旅游
  • 过好母亲节和父亲节
  • 给父母洗脚
  • 按月给父母寄钱
  • 在外交友,一定要让父母参与
  • 帮父母暖被窝
  • 让孩子和父母成为朋友
  • 为父母做一顿可口的饭菜
  • 多听父母说话,尝试了解他们
  • 为父母买好枕头
  • 开车带着父母兜兜风
  • 帮父母整理房子
  • 父母生病时,细心照顾
  • 向父母索要他们能力所能及的事情,让他们知道他们是被需要的
  • 鼓励父母参加老年人的集体活动
  • 送母亲化妆品,唤回青春
  • 给父母买一份医疗保险

最重要的是爱父母一定要告诉他们,用实际行动表示对父母的爱。

Categories
Review

Product Review: Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo and Hair Mask


Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo and Hair Mask 1

Sometime back in 2018, Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo suddenly became very popular in Singapore. 

Many instagramers, even some of my own friends and colleagues, were all raving about how good this shampoo is.

According to information I have gathered online, Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo is supposed to have the following benefits: 

  • Improve scalp blood circulation 
  • Anti-dandraff
  • Prevent hair loss and hair breakage
  • Stimulate hair follicle cells to promote hair growth
  • Provide oil control to inhibit bacterial growth

A few weeks ago, I saw that Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo was having a promotion on Qoo10. Since all the other shampoo has not helped me tame my hair, I thought I will give this “miracle” shampoo a try. 

Purchase of Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo gets me a free bottle of Hair Mask. So all in all, I paid S$12.90 for Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo 300ml and Hair Mask 150ml. 

Delivery was quick, I got the products 2 days later.

Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo and Hair Mask 2

The shampoo and hair mask are much thicker than other hair products. It’s more of a thick paste than a gel.

My worry that my hair will smell of ginger after washing was unfound.

I like that the shampoo gives my hair a very clean feeling after washing, but it also dries out my hair. I think it is more suitable for oily hair. 

The hair mask is a little too thick for my liking. It’s hard work trying to work that paste-like hair mask into my already tangled hair. 

All in all, I won’t really recommend Wowo Pure Ginger Shampoo and Hair Mask for those like who with dry and tangled hair. 

Categories
Books

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

I found this book when I was browsing Amazon’s Kindle books one day. I was intrigued by the title so I brought the ebook. 

This book offers different theories to look at different aspects of our lives. There are no “one-size-fit-all” answers or miracle cures, but this book offers the formula for you to figure out the answer yourself.

The first part talks about how to find jobs that we love. Since we spend at least 40 hours a week on work, it’s important that we do work which we love. I keep feeling that my job doesn’t really have a meaningful contribution to society. According to this book, both hygiene factors (status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, supervisory practices) and motivation factors (challenging work, recognition, responsibility and personal growth) have to be fulfilled for us to love what we do. 

The next section concentrates on finding happiness in your relationships. I learned that face-to-face talking using sophisticated adult language to 0-36 months infants gives them incalculable cognitive advantage. I also learned how to view relationships using the “what job are you being hired for” lens. 

This book also teaches me how to raise children, indirectly.
Besides learning new skills, children need to be challenged, they need to solve hard problems, they need to develop values. Children will lean when they are ready to, not when you are ready to teach them. So in order to raise great children, I need to display the priorities and values that I want my children to learn through my actions. 

Decide what you stand for, and then stand for it all the time.
In the epilogue of the book, the author answers the question posed in the book – how will you measure your life with this:

The only metrics that truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people.

Get How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

Categories
Books

The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

I bought this ebook many years ago. In fact, it is one of the first ebooks I bought after my father got me my first Kindle Paperwhite. 

This is about the 3rd time I am re-reading the book. I think the reason why I keep going back to this book is because I have always wanted to become an entrepreneur.

I know that being a nurse is a noble job and all. It pays the bills and it is an “iron rice bowl”. I am sure that in the grand scheme of things, I am indirectly contributing to the health of patients and the world, but I don’t feel satisfied. I don’t feel like I am making a difference to the world by drawing blood and getting consent from patients for procedures. 

I think that’s why I like blogging so much. When someone likes my blog post or forwards it to someone else, I feel like I am making a contribution to the world. Although I am nowhere near able to support myself from my blogs, but that is the main goal. 

Being an entrepreneur is less about earning money than about providing solutions to everyday problems. The amount of money you earn is proportional to the enormity of the problem you have solved.

Everytime I read this book, it gives me hope that I will able to help the world become a better place, one small product at a time.

Get The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

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Lifestyle

3 Threading Parlors in Singapore That I Have Personally Tried

According to Wikipedia, “threading is a method of hair removal originating from Iran, India, Central Asia and China”. Threading has become more popular in recent years.

I prefer threading over other forms of hair removal for a few reasons:

  • cheap price: as compared with waxing which can easily cost S$50 or more, threading is so much more affordable. 
  • quick: most threading sessions take just 5-10 minutes, it’s quick and hassle-free. 
  • relatively painless: as long as the threading artist is skillful, threading is relatively painless.

I love threading so much that I have taken it upon myself to scout out threading parlors that are cheap and good. I have personally tried the 3 shops listed below, you can be assured that the threading will be quick, relatively painless and cheap. 

Bonita 

Bonita - Shop Front

Bonita - Threading Price List

Bonita means “beautiful” in Spanish. You can’t beat Bonita in terms of location. There are two outlets, one in One Raffles Place (Raffles Place MRT) and Orchid Hotel (Tanjong Pagar MRT). The prices are very reasonable considering both outlets are in the Central Business District. The threading artists are very quick and professional, you will be done before you know it. 

Let them know if you are new to threading so that they can tell you how to pull the skin taut. If there is a certain look you are going after, let them know too.

I usually go for eyebrow + upper lip which costs $14.

 

Bonita (Raffles Place/Tanjong Pagar) 

Price: S$6 – S$30 depending on the area(s) for threading 

Website: https://www.bonita.com.sg

Prisha’s Boutique 

Prisha's Boutique - Shop Front

Prisha's Boutique - Price List

I was looking for a threading salon in Orchard Road and my colleague introduced me to Prisha’s Boutique. Located on the second floor of Midpoint Orchard, this small shop doesn’t look like much but it is hugely popular.

The threading artists are swift and experienced, you will be out of there before you know it.

My usual combination of eyebrows + upper lip costs S$10, the cheapest among the three shops. 

 

Prisha’s Boutique (Midpoint Orchard) 

Price: S$4 – S$27 for Ladies, S$4 – S$35 for Gents depending on the area(s) to be threaded

Rupini’s

Rupini's - Shop Front

Rupini's - Interior

Rupini's Services

Rupini’s is the most established among the three with three outlets in Little India, Yishun Central and Midpoint Orchard.

My usual routine of eyebrow + upper lip costs S$15 here. It is slightly more expensive than the other two but still acceptable.

 

Rupini’s (Little India/Yishun Central/Midpoint Orchard) 

Price: S$6 – S$27 depending on the area(s) 

Website: http://www.rupinis.com

There are many other threading parlors in Singapore but these are the three that I have personally tried before. I can vouch for the skillfulness and affordable prices at these three shops. 

If you are new to threading, visiting any of three parlors will ensure that your virgin threading experience will be less traumatizing. 

Categories
Books

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult is talking about rape and the aftermath of it. It is also talking about the bond between parents and how children change. 

I wanted to do a better job than my parents, I don’t want to make the same mistakes they did. I wanted to give my children the best childhood, to give them all the love they need and protect them. 

If you are wondering, the “tenth circle” is talking about the tenth level in hell, for those who lie to themselves. If there were really a level like this in hell, I think 99.9% of all humans will end up there. We have all lied to ourselves one way or another.

Get The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult