Listened but not heard

Yesterday I drove for an hour to have a group lunch in Mountain View. I tuned in to NPR during my drive.

On the way out of Half Moon Bay, my wondering mind was caught by a story of the conviction of the Michigan man, who shot and killed a black woman when she knocked on his front door around 4 AM in the morning. But since I wasn't close paying attention, I missed the part where they said what the man was convicted for.

On the way back home, the PBS News Hour was on. The same story was told, and I listened this time. The short description of the story was repeated, and that the man was convicted in court. The anchor again brought up the comparison of this case with the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. When it transitioned to the next story, I was puzzled, and asked: "So what was he convicted for, again?"

Is it just me, or is the respectable Gwen Eiffel missing the key part of the information in this news item?

Later on I finally found out that the man in this case was convicted of second degree murder.

Divergent, the movie

The society separates people into 5 groups based on the personality traits: bravery - dauntless, selflessness - abnegation, intelligence - erudite, honesty - candor and kindness - amity. Once people come of age, they get tested to see which group, faction, they belong to and they can choose the faction, which they will be part of, for the rest of their lives. Each faction performs duty for the society. They believe this system keeps a peaceful society.

So this totally doesn't make sense to me. How can anyone belief a person can only possess one characteristic exclusively? It's a silly system that will surely create rebellions and revolution.

Another dystopia movie, like Hunger Games, Aeon Flux, and Gattaca. To my surprise, I liked this movie. It's not so violent; has good actors; and things weren't too exaggerating. Overall, it's an entertaining movie.

What I don't understand is, why anyone feels the needs to make duplicate efforts to portrait dystopian stories? Don't they all end the same way?

Turned off

I have a bone to pick with Yoga Journal. As much as I like the information provided by the magazine, I am totally turned off by its advertisements. I feel strongly that YJ is taking advantage of Yoga practitioners' passion to influence them in terms of what they should wear, eat, give as gifts, use as makeups, and even on supplements. The ads made YJ seems unjustifiably shallow and unsatisfying. In this way, YJ is just the same as the rest of our capitalistic commercial businesses.

You may ask, why so negative? After all, the magazine is in the business to make money, and its number one source of income is advertisement, just like any other lifestyle or hobby magazines, such as Fitness, Cooking or Golf. It maybe obvious to some, that money making againsts Yogic ways, which advocate simplicity and inner contentment.

Does one really need a new pair of Lucy Yoga Pants or Gaiam mat to deepen the practice?

Talking dirty

Here are some examples of me "talking dirty". If you don't use this term to define being technical in certain professional areas, then just think of it as a private joke.

Work -
One day in recent months, I was working with a client trying to figure out what in his Java program could cause the error we saw in our product. We had a web session to discuss my findings, as I tried to explain to him my theory of what could cause the issue, and what was my proposal to resolve the problem. From the top of the program, I discussed the constants, which were labeled "public static final", constructors, and then how multiple threads were created. As I talked my way through the program making sure the client understood and agreed with me, I found myself smiling inside, because I felt that I was: "Talking dirty."

At the same time I was amused that 10 years after working at the same job, I still feel out-of-place when talking like a software engineer.

World Cup -
I watched the semi-finals and the final match of the World Cup. After the first game, I found myself talking about off side, and forward and Messi. I was really talking like a pro when I wasn't even fan.

Kiteboarding -
Last year, I only kited one day in March, so I felt disconnected with the sport this May when I had my first kiteboarding day. After one day in the water, I was talking to my fellow kiteborder friends using terms like: gusty wind, overpower, how easy it was to go upwind, and how big the swells were.

I guess the only time I didn't feel like I was "talking dirty" was when I was talking Yoga. I can naturally tell people to relax the shoulders; take the attention inwards; inhale belly to chest, exhale chest then belly; release the tension through the forehead and let it flow into the earth.

~~> SMILE

Fear factor and mental block

I was brought up in a sheltered environment.  Since I was very young, my parents did not let me do many things, such as jumping around, or climbing trees, fearing of scraping of skin or breaking bones. Therefore, P.E. classes were my biggest fear. I hated climbing rope, high jump, or even plain old running.

Intellectually, for some very odd reason, I also grew up as a person with low self esteem, and it took me until the recent years to shake it off. There could be many reasons why I had such a low self esteem, and many of them point to being a Chinese girl growing up in China. My parents just didn't want to let anything (harmful) happen to me.

It also took me a while to stop blaming the society or my parents for my 'weaknesses', and focus on growing out of my own shadows. By the way, I strongly encourage anyone over 30 to start doing so, and taking responsibility to oneself.

Obviously there were many things that were told to me, which were wrong, but I erroneously absorbed them like a sponge. I would call them "myths". Luckily, in college, I took this class called: "critical thinking", which I enjoyed very much, even though I took it as credit/non credit, because of heavy computer science course work. Let's apply "critical thinking" to the following myths I have heard since childhood, and discuss briefly why they were merely myths, nevertheless they could bring adverse impact to someone's upbringing and adult life.

First and foremost, and this I still hear today among my relatives. "Girls are not good with math, physics and science." Many years ago, when I heard my cousin said that to my girl cousin, I protested furiously, "you should never say such things to a girl! Girls can do math and physics as well as boys." I heard the same from my own physics teacher in middle school. Back then I believed him, so I didn't try at all to learn the course, because, "obviously I'm not good at it." Luckily, when I came to the U.S., I sort of had a second chance to try things I normally didn't dare when I was in China. I found math and physics easy to understand when I studied them in college, which encouraged me to learn other challenging subjects.

As far as my lacking physical abilities. It was changed since I started hanging out with Jack. He got me to go snowboarding, kiteboarding and scuba diving. None of which I would have done on my own. Back in college, my physical exercises were limited to jogging, aerobics classes, and the occasion Tai Chi. If it weren't for the purpose of weight lost, I would have been a perfect book worm, aka, nerd.

My conclusion and lessons learned? Fear factors, however they were ingested into us, create mental blocks. Apply critical thinking to everything in life. Question everything you heard and check the sources. Don't let your fear impair and limit you. Go out of your comfort zone once a while or you will never know what you'll find. If you ended up not liking what you found, then move on. For example, I now find out I'm afraid of heights, and am still unable to do Yoga inversion poses because of fear.

So like Dory said in the animation, Finding Nemo, "Well, you can't never let anything happen to him (Nemo). Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo." I also like this quote I heard somewhere: "People say 'you can't do it' just because they can't do it themselves."