About how he was born in 1944, three years after the attack at Pearl Harbor. That him and his siblings had lost his father when he was age two, left to fend for themselves, surviving on tapioca leaves; which was the only thing they could afford then. He told us stories of how closely knitted they were, as they took care and relied on each other. His brother-in-law would retrieve fish from Changi and sell them, and the family would settle with the leftovers which were by then, unfresh. And that was how they grew up, briefly.

We were not convinced how the story was linked to the generous angpow, but he just insisted that we, especially family members, should help one another, not expecting anything in return. Being nice to others is a given; whether or not they reciprocate need not be considered. Even though we couldn’t help our uncle for his hospital bills, my dad said at least the extra cash could allow him a few comfortable rides home from the hospital. You don’t have to tell someone you respect them; it is felt in the heart.

When we got home, my mother showed my sisters and I my dad’s work bag; trying to prove to us how heavy it was. I took a close look, and realised it was already torn. The pull tab on the zipper was already broken, making it painful to slide the zipper’s chain. It was also partly heavy because of the many medicine pills that he carries around.

Just this afternoon, my sister was recommending me new bags that I should be getting, saying my current ones look old, making me look ungroomed. I was even made to set aside a budget for that new bag… even though I told them I would rather spend the money on other stuff. I didn’t really understand what was the deal with buying overly expensive bags from Chanel, and LV. Then I looked at how my dad could generously give away money to our relatives, yet refused to spend any cent on replacing his old, torn bag. Heartbroken, I got him a new bag the very same day. It isn’t branded, but at least it wasn’t torn.

He often reminded us that money was hard to come by. Thanks to him, I learn to be frugal. He’s 68 this year, and should have been retired by now, but he insisted on working a few more years so he could fund me for my studies (I was also working part-time). Even though we couldn’t have enough to allow me to study overseas, or even attend student exchange programmes, I am happy enough for whatever I have. I may not be a rich man’s daughter, but I’m thankful that my family is all safe and I’ve a place to call home. I feel blessed.

(Pictures from Rails Girls’ Facebook)

 Notice how I was the only non-Mac user there…

We had already been told from the start that we shouldn’t be expected to become programmers after attending this half-day workshop. If programming had been that simple, there’d be no lack of programmers already. Ultimately, the point of it was to give newbies like us a sense of how programming was like.

Thankfully, there were many tutors walking around to provide assistance and explanations. Personally, there was too much information to be absorbed but I’m glad I did not leave the event learning nothing. If anything, it got me more curious and inspired to pick up programming.

It was a female-dominated event (I’m sure you know by now…) and meeting many other awesome, like-minded girls definitely made it very fun. Joyce also recently started a community Geek Girls intended to bring female entrepreneurs together. I’m looking forward to attending the next event soon, and may we see more females in the local entrepreneurship scene!

P.S. I’ve also signed for CodeYear on Codecademy and have been obediently keeping up with the lessons so far. I may not be able to write my own codes yet, but I’m so happy that I am slowly making progress.

“The science of happiness:  If I know everything about your exeternal world, I can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness. 90% of your long-term happiness is by the way your brain processes the world.  Only 25% of are successes are  predicted by IQ – 75% are by optimism level, social support, ability to see stress as a challenge instead of threat.

The absence of disease is not health. We need to reverse the formula of happiness and success. The usual one is ‘If I work harder, I’ll be more successful. If I’m more successful, then I’ll be happier.’

First, everytime you reach a success, you just changed what the goal post look like.

The brain, when positive, performs better than when it does when it is negative, neutral or stressed. It’s referred to “happiness advantage”. Your intelligence rises, energy level rises, creativity rises, in fact every single business outcome improves.

• Better secure jobs
• Better keeping jobs
• Superior productivity
• More resilient
• Less burnout
• Less turnover
• Greater jobs

Train your brain:
-3 Gratitudes (3 new things for 21 days. Brain begins to write a pattern to see the world more positively)
-Journaling (About one positive experience you have had over the last 24 hrs teaches your brain to re-live these moments.)
-Exercise (Teaches your brain that behavior matters)
-Meditation (Detaches you from multi-tasking. Increases your focus on the task at hand)
-Random Acts of Kindness (1 positive email thanking somebody in your social support network)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

http://titanic.sg

Everyone should go. No, it’s not about Jack and Rose… the other stories will move you instead.

It costs $24 for standard tickets ($20 for Singaporeans). If you’re an OCBC cardholder you get to receive an additional 20% off. I topped up an additional $5 for the hour-long documentary “Ghosts of the Abyss” directed by James Cameron (remember Avatar?). The prices were all worth it.

Titanic was re-discovered in 1985.. and “Ghosts of the Abyss” was shot in 2001. Titanic is expected to corrode and disappear within the next few decades due to the ‘rusticles’ corroding the ship’s metal. The documentary showed how these explorers travelled down to the bottom of the ocean to explore the wreck. It felt creepy, yet from the remains we could tell how beautiful the ship was.

Can you imagine? A third-class ticket would have cost $40, about $900 today, and the first class ticket costed $4500 back then, equivalent to about $100k today. (I would still only be a third-class passenger if I had boarded the ship). The exhibition recreated some of the iconic sections of the ship and it really is grand!

However things got sadder as we proceeded. There were displays of the possessions and the stories of these characters. People who saved hard to board the ship, leaving to seek better life elsewhere. People on their way to meet their loved ones. I teared a little when they showed a wall of the passengers’ names – those who had survived and those who hadn’t. Needless to say, the ones on the third-class and the crew had the least percentage of survivors.

My favourite and most memorable character is Ida Straus.  ”I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so we will die: together.” Who knows what we would have done in such times of danger?

The most tear-jerking quote, for me, was “Women and children first!” Someone was shouting these last few words over and over again…. They meant my own safety but they also meant the greatest loss I’ve ever suffered – the life of my husband.”

This is not an exhibition to be missed. Go and experience for yourself the story of Titanic.

Use double quotes for exact phrases.
- to exclude unwanted keywords.
~ for related words

It even works as a calculator.

Don’t bother about trying to live to be 100. Only about one out of 5,000 people in America can.

Our bodies have 35 trillion cells, and those cells turn themselves over once every eight years. And every time they turn themselves over there is some damage. And that damage builds up. And it builds up exponentially. That’s why a 65-year-old person is aging at a rate of about 125 times faster than a 12-year-old person.

The first area discovered where men live the longest , is on the island of Sardinia, an area called the Nuoro province. There are about 10 times more centenarians than in America. And this is a place where people not only reach age 100, they do so with extraordinary vigor. Places where 102 year olds still ride their bike to work, chop wood, and can beat a guy 60 years younger than them.

Because the land is so infertile, they largely are shepherds, which occasions regular, low-intensity physical activity. Their diet is mostly plant-based, accentuated with foods that they can carry into the fields. But the real secret I think lies more in the way that they organize their society. And one of the most salient elements of the Sardinian society is how they treat older people. Here in Sardinia, the older you get the more equity you have, the more wisdom you’re celebrated for.

A second area is on the archipelago of Okinawa, a place where the oldest living female population is found. It’s a place where people have the longest disability-free life expectancy in the world, and tend to die in their sleep. What do they do? Once again, a plant-based diet, full of vegetables with lots of color in them.

They have all kinds of little strategies to keep from overeating. E.g. they eat off of smaller plates, so they tend to eat fewer calories at every sitting. Instead of serving family style, they serve at the counter, put the food away, and then bring it to the table.

They also have a 3,000-year-old adage invented by Confucius – to stop eating when their stomach is [80] percent full. It takes about a half hour for that full feeling to travel from your belly to your brain.

Typically in America we’ve divided our adult life up into two sections. There is our work life, where we’re productive. And then one day, boom, we retire. And typically that has meant retiring to the easy chair, or going down to Arizona to play golf. In the Okinawan language there is not even a word for retirement. Instead there is one word that imbues your entire life, and that word is “ikigai.” Roughly translated, it means “the reason for which you wake up in the morning.”

In Americaon the prairies of Minnesota, there actually is a very high proportion of centenarians. But that’s because all the young people left. (Laughter) So, we turned to the data again. And we found America’s longest-lived population among the Seventh-Day Adventists concentrated in and around Loma Linda, California.

They have a set of very small lifestyle habits that they follow ritualistically for most of their lives. They take their diet directly from the Bible. Genesis: Chapter one, Verse [29], where God talks about legumes and seeds, and on one more stanza about green plants, ostensibly missing is meat. They take this sanctuary in time very serious.

For 24 hours every week, no matter how busy they are, how stressed out they are at work, where the kids need to be driven, they stop everything and they focus on their God, their social network, and then, hardwired right in the religion, are nature walks. And the power of this is not that it’s done occasionally, the power is it’s done every week for a lifetime.

So, what are the common denominators in these three cultures? What are the things that they all do?

1. N one of them exercise, at least the way we think of exercise. Instead, they set up their lives so that they are constantly nudged into physical activity. These 100-year-old Okinawan women are getting up and down off the ground, they sit on the floor, 30 or 40 times a day. When they do do intentional physical activity, it’s the things they enjoy.
2. Each of these cultures take time to downshift. The Sardinians pray. The Seventh-Day Adventists pray. The Okinawans have this ancestor veneration. When you’re in a hurry or stressed out, that triggers something called the inflammatory response. When you slow down for 15 minutes a day you turn that inflammatory state into a more anti-inflammatory state.
3. They have vocabulary for sense of purpose, ikigai, like the Okinawans. You know the two most dangerous years in your life are the year you’re born, because of infant mortality, and the year you retire. These people know their sense of purpose, and they activate in their life, that’s worth about seven years of extra life expectancy.
4. There’s no longevity diet. They tend to eat a plant-based diet. Doesn’t mean they don’t eat meat, but lots of beans and nuts. And strategies to keep from overeating.
5. And then the foundation of all this is how they connect. They put their families first, take care of their children and their aging parents. They all tend to belong to a faith-based community, which is worth between four and 14 extra years of life expectancy if you do it four times a month.
6. We know from the Framingham studies, that if your three best friends are obese there is a 50 percent better chance that you’ll be overweight. So, if you hang out with unhealthy people, that’s going to have a measurable impact over time. Instead, if your friend’s idea of recreation is physical activity, bowling, or playing hockey, biking or gardening, if your friends drink a little, but not too much, and they eat right, and they’re engaged, and they’re trusting and trustworthy, that is going to have the biggest impact over time.
7. Diets don’t work. No diet in the history of the world has ever worked for more than two percent of the population. Exercise programs usually start in January; they’re usually done by October.
8. When it comes to longevity there is no short term. Your friends are long-term adventures, and therefore, perhaps the most significant thing you can do to add more years to your life, and life to your years.

Acquaintances tend to think that I’m a quiet person… but, the truth is, I’d rather just listen, ask questions and learn instead. Some reasons. If I realise the person likes to speak, I let him go on. It boosts their ego, they like having an audience, and can’t seem to stop. They let it when they get a chance to talk. There’s a saying, “You can’t learn anything new while you’re talking.”

I don’t claim to be an expert, but I like to share what I know; it helps me learn and remember better. Sometimes, only sometimes, I rant about my Blackberry, but I never treat this blog as a ranting ground or to make cocky statements like, “screw this/that, i did it myself”.

I don’t even claim to be very clever. I’m told that I’m not confident of myself, but shouldn’t we all be modest? I admit I’m not very much of a salesman when it comes to promoting myself especially, but I think I learnt them from my favourite, humblest role models Seth Godin, and here’s a new one, Derek Sivers.

Particularly this post by Sivers, sharing his thoughts about sharing.

When I built my Singapore deal aggregator, Dealzilla, it all started with the intention to serve the community (and of course came from a personal frustration first). I didn’t even know how it was going to evolve, but I did it just because it felt like there was a gap between the current ones that’s out there and the one that people should have. I was often asked, “so what’s your business model?” and I would go, “What business model?” I figured I didn’t really care.

Learning is endless, and thanks to Google we can learn anything we want.. so why not make things easy for all and just share what you know?

“It’s suspended there to remind us before we pop the champagne and celebrate the New Year, to stop and reflect on the year that has gone by. To remember both our triumphs and our missteps – our promises made, and broken. The times we opened ourselves up to great adventures – or closed ourselves down, for fear of getting hurt.

Because that’s what New Year’s is all about: getting another chance. A chance to forgive, to do better, to do more, to give more, to love more. And stop worrying about ‘what if’ and start embracing what would be.

So when that ball drops at midnight – and it will drop – let’s remember to be nice to each other, kind to each other. And not just tonight but all year long.”

On my bus ride home, a girl beside me had to squeeze back to back with a man of generous portions. Imagine how the width of the isle can fit 2.5 persons. Worse still, he often lost his balance. I think we all know how annoying it feels, especially more as a girl.

So I put down my big, manly backpack, tapped her hand and gestured her to come closer. At first I thought she might have found me weird, but she knew what I meant. Even without a word of thanks, I knew I had reduced her discomfort, and you can’t imagine how good it made me feel. I truly think it is more happy to give than to receive.