My Renaissance Domain

Blog announcements

2010-06-21T18:18:00.003+08:00

My blog has been quite stagnant for a while. Don't worry, it's not that I have stopped thinking, but I'm encountering some anamolies in thought for various issues, and am trying to iron things out.

Within the next few months, I will churn out thoughts on the following issues:

1) Hedonism and the hedonic treadmill

2) The diverse manifestations of psychology

3) What we can learn from Sherlock Holmes

4) Is our understanding of creativity completely wrong?

5) Malcolm Gladwell's articles

6) A spiritual approach to materialism

7) The value of questioning everything

The posts may not come out in chronological sequence, I will naturally write the ones which have more weight on my mind first. If you'd like to know, numbers 1,3 and 7 are constantly bugging me.

Some posts will be linked as well, but that's all i would say for now. Please stay tuned to my Renaissance Domain :)

A spiritual approach to creativity

2010-05-22T00:29:00.003+08:00

This is my first 'idea-in-progress' post, which from the name, is about an idea in progress. Actually, while all my ideas are ideas in progress, these posts are about ideas that are at a very primitive stage, meaning I could have just thought of the idea today, which for this one, I have. And to differentiate such posts from normal posts, there will be no picture to begin it.

So anyway, today I was viewing these youtube videos on this notion of a 'spectrum', of mental disorders. The spectrum was measured along the notion of love and fear, and on the fear end of the spectrum was schizophrenia. In the middle, of mixed experiences, is bipolar mania, and the love end, is a spiritual emergency.

So the video was going about how some 'bipolar' experiences are in fact, spiritual emergencies. And it prompted 2 questions in me. Is the link between bipolar disorder and creativity, pseudo? And, what if we approached creativity from a spiritual point of view?

The first question would lead somewhat to the 2nd question. Because I've noticed from the video, that the traits exhibited by people in spiritual emergencies, are similar to those of creative people. For instance, they become more intuitive, and the traditional barriers they once held on to begin to break down, and they see things more metaphorically. So creative people might not have bipolar disorder at all, but they are having a spiritual emergency. Just that if society does not let them develop their spiritual awakening, it becomes full-blown bipolar disorder. That is when the bad stuff really happens.

But this is just my deduction, remember it's an idea in progress.

Then comes the 2nd question, which is the main theme for this post. What if, we decided to break the traditionally held ideas of creativity and viewed it from a very spiritual viewpoint? Da Vinci did it, (or at least I think he did it). At the moment, many creative gurus are viewing creativity a bit like a machine, or process. To put it clearer, it's a bit like how many martial arts teachers teach martial arts nowadays. They teach the form, the technique, but not the philosophy, or the 'art' of the martial art. In my opinion, they might as well change the name to 'martial science'.

My point here is not to derail science, I am a science student after all, but what I'm trying to say is that we should not solely depend on science alone. True we need to know the form, but it is also important to know the art and the philosophy behind it. Because it is the art and the philosophy of a martial art, that we can use in our daily lives, outside our training, which enables us to understand what we practice better. It is through understanding this art that the science begins to change. For instance, if your martial art is based on compassion, then if you attack an opponent violently with a lot of anger, then you know that something is wrong with your training. If that's the case, then perhaps you should learn a more aggressive martial art, with which the philosophy is about securing victory at all costs. Either that or you can begin practicing compassion in your daily life.

This is like how martial arts meets spirituality.

Same with creativity, I personally feel we have been taught a lot of science about creativity, but we have yet to learn to appreciate it as an art, which is important. We know creative techniques, we know brainstorming, but other than the creative meetings we attend, how often do we use creativity anywhere else? If we only use creativity in that one or 2 hour session, then how are we supposed to develop creativity?

Da Vinci probably viewed creativity as a means of cultivating his soul. The thing about him is that he didn't use creativity to generate scalable business ideas, he used creativity simply because he enjoyed being creative. Just like great martial artists practice martial arts not to defeat everyone around them, but for health and leisure, and also a little bit of intellectual curiosity.

For me, I believe in being creative as a means of being happy, that's it. There's a certain thrill to taking risks and using your creativity to maneuver through the odds, just like how u maneuver a jet plane through a mass of falling rocks. Creativity to me isn't just about solving problems or generating new ideas, it's about enjoying life and being happy.

I think if a person wishes to be truly creative, he has to adopt this attitude. He should learn to enjoy writing stories, poems, and engage in art and music. A person who only knows creativity is important in his job but does not seek to live creatively, is like how many kids start to learn martial arts because they saw a cool move in a movie. The essence isn't there.

So this ends my first idea-in-progress post. Why I am still quite uncertain about it is because of the notion of spirituality. I've realised that spirituality is a bit hard to define. That's why I didn't use so much of the word here. Perhaps I will think along the lines of the 'mind, body, soul' concept I've thought of recently and do some adjustments from there.

The Idea Book, talk about immense creativity

2010-04-29T20:36:00.007+08:00

Well, it has been a long time since my last post and finally I'm putting one up because my exams are over! And what better way to celebrate than to go listen to a talk by Fredrik Haren, the author of 'The Idea Book' and probably the most creative person I have ever met.

Fredrik is one of the most talked about names in the field of business creativity, and this masterpiece of his, the Idea Book, has sold 200 000 + copies in 40 countries and has been translated into 9 languages. Amazing thing is, his company, interesting.org, has only 6 employees.

2 in Singapore, 2 in Sri Lanka, 2 in Sweden.

And his book, is one of the top 100 management books of ALL TIME.

The only way he could possibly achieve this success is through a massive amount of creativity. And indeed, he is no doubt super creative, and it was very apparent during his talk.

So the talk was held in SMU, I travelled all the way there from NTU, joined a couple of friends and basically just sat in for the talk. (sorry, i forgot to take a picture) Perhaps what struck me first was his tone and pitch. He kind of reminded me of the eccentric Doctor Who when played by David Tennant, my favourite doctor ever. Not to mention his lean and lanky figure resembled that of Tennant as well. So he began with a humourous introduction to 'Swedish creativity' (o yes, I forgot to mention he was from Sweden but residing in Singapore), and then came the more serious stuff. Basically, it was how to be creative in business.

So the first rule was to essentially, take away the fundamentals. Write down what are the fundamentals of the product you have, and do away with them. Why? Because if everyone else does the norm, and you don't, you will stand out. You will grab the attention of others which is important, if you are to sell your product effectively. But of course, it is not taking away every fundamental, there will be some you need to keep. It all depends on your focus.

For The Idea Book, the author's name, publisher's name, the picture, descriptions, endorsements, were all done away from the cover, front and back. The front cover only has 3 words "The Idea Book". Now it was on the bestseller list in Kino, and among all those colourful books by Trump and Gladwell, suddenly you see this little black book which resembles the Bible. Now that will make people curious, and you want to flip it open. And you see blank pages... and a few other pages.,.. you find it cool, you buy it.

amazing.

The next rule was to use external capital. With only 6 employees in 3 countries, interesting.org essentially made use of competitions to get members of the public to take creative photos for their 'creative picture' of the book.

Ok, so this little book alone can teach us so many lessons on creativity. Indeed, all irony was negated when the whole idea of publishing and writing the book creatively, because it is a creativity book, was thought up. There are 2 other rules, unfortunately I cannot remember, because this paragraph was written a week after the paragraphs above (i got tired and was busy).

So just to end off, this little book is worth taking a look at. Inside are some pretty interesting stuff about creativity you can check out. It is a worthwhile investment, and you can use it as a notebook, a thoughts book or even a random doodle book. You can go find it in kino, it should be on the bestseller shelf.

Stay creative people :)

Think and Drink

2010-04-09T20:38:00.004+08:00

Last Wednesday, I paid this nice little room in Bugis, called Hackerspace, a visit. It was a not for profit place for aspiring technopreneurs to incubate their ideas. But I am no technowiz, I went there for this event co-organised by Syinc and TEDx Singapore known as Think and Drink.

3 Ashoka fellows were there to share their experiences. In the picture above, Padmanabha Rao, from India on the extreme right, Joyce Djaelani Gordon from Indonesia in the center, and Preeyanan Lorsermvattana from Thailand. The man standing to introduce them is Ashoka Staff Chris Cusano who's based in Thailand.

You can go find Preeyanan's Ashoka profile here:

http://www.ashoka.org/plorsermvattana

This is Gordon's profile:

http://www.ashoka.org/node/2701

and Rao's profile:

http://www.ashoka.org/node/2575

All 3 speakers were riveting and kept everyone focused. I especially found Preeyanan's story of her 19 year struggle to find justice for her son's condition due to medical malpractice very moving. I realised that all 3 speakers actually spoke one common point, that if you want to change something in your community, you must involve a lot of people at all levels, and you must be prepared for resistance. That's what I like about the entrepreneurial spirit, the willingness to break rules and challenge authority. The spirit of social entrepreneurship is even nicer, doing it for the good of the community. I really admire such people.

After the speeches, there was a massive networking session with good food (and did I mention it was free?) I spoke with a lot of people, including the founders of Syinc, the founder and curator of TEDx Singapore, Chris Cusano, it was pretty intensive. I got a total of 5 name cards that night, including Preeyanan's.

The event started at 7.30pm, and was supposed to end at 9.30pm. I stayed until 10.45pm. It was near my exams but I felt it was time well-spent. Not only did I get to meet extraordinary people, I learnt of this extraordinary little space called Hackerspace! Something tells me I will be seeing it again...

My self-designed creativity session

2010-04-05T18:58:00.003+08:00

This post marks the first post of the "inventions and designs" post, and I certainly hope there will be more to come in the near future.

This is a further elaboration of the creativity session that I designed for Symposium Neue Thinken last Saturday 3rd of April 2010. I'll describe it again.

In the room that you see in the photos, I have arranged 15 objects and 15 pictures around the room. The participants were split into 3 groups of 5 participants each. Each group was given a 'problem picture', depicting one social problem, so the objective was for the group to find solutions for the problem in the picture. The solutions I was looking for were supposed to be innovative and sustainable, and able to prevent the Sisyphus effect. For those who don't know, the Sisyphus effect basically describes the typical "endless list of to-do tasks" that we experience everyday, and in terms of social problems, it's about how when we solve one problem, another one comes rolling in. The groups were to use inspiration which may be triggered by the objects and pictures through associations, which is a key feature of creativity (making connections where none existed before)

I had deliberately placed the objects around the room, (or rather my kind and helpful facilitators did it for me), because I wanted the participants to stand up, walk around, and explore. I felt it was more meaningful than having them just sit while I flash the pictures and objects on slides. A really creative person would not just sit and wait for answers, he would go outside and start looking around for solutions, so that was what I wanted to simulate.

Also, the pictures and problems may or may not have anything to do with the problem at hand. The idea was to be able to form associations, no matter how disparate, between the objects and possible solutions to the problem. The more disparate the link, the more likely innovative solutions will be formed.

So the groups were given 35 minutes to explore and discuss solutions, then present it on mahjong paper. I saw some very good action, the participants really got up and explored, and good associations were formed. Common associations were with the spider-web picture, (networking) and the word 'internet' with an online portal specifically directed at solving the problems at hand.

At the end of the day, everyone had fun, many were inspired to practice creativity in their lives as well as in making a difference to society (i gathered this from the feedback forms I gave out). I felt it was a good first try (yes, it is the first time this session saw light), but I would certainly improve the session in future for Project Ahead meetings. So as you can see from the picture above, I made new friends, and I was happy.

This session is not just limited to social service, it just so happens that I was asked to give a session in Symposium Neue Thinken, which centers around social enterprises, so I geared it towards that. I believe a similar session can be given to corporate leaders, teachers, designers (O i would love to see this one), students, even scientists and engineers. For now, I mainly plan to use it for Project Ahead meetings, but I'm pretty excited as to how far I can take this brainchild of mine.

And lastly, I have to thank people. Thank you Josh and Alvis for helping me out in the session, putting the objects and pictures around and all that. Thank you Ying Shean for inviting me to take part in this eye-opening experience, and thank you Colin for uploading the pictures. And of course, a big warm thank you to all those who showed up and took part in my session. It could not have been possible without you guys.

Symposium Neue Thinken

2010-04-04T11:44:00.006+08:00

Yesterday, I had the great opportunity of attending an eye-opening symposium organised by NUS AIESEC. FYI they are one of the participants of Project Ahead, so that's how I managed to get involved. As you can see from the subtitle, the symposium is about "new thinking for social action" and basically the theme revolves around social enterprises.

In the morning, I listened to a mini-lecture on social enterprises by Prof Albert Teo from the department of philanthropy and social enterprise in NUS business school. So I got to understand the concept of social enterprises better, since after all, it is a new concept to a physics student, who has been living in the world of equations for near eternity. Following which, we went off for our combos of workshops and 'conversations for inspiration', followed by a great panel discussion and a 'world cafe'. There were a few combos available for the participants, I attended combo B, (and I was the head facilitator of the conversations for inspiration section in that combo)I shall talk about them one by one.

Workshop: Creating a good social brand.

The invited speaker was Ms Kuik Shiao Yin, founder and creative director of the School of Thought. For those who do not know, the School of Thought is somewhat of a tuition center specifically aimed at GP. It was a really interesting talk as she described how the School of Thought actually came about. I found the concept particularly interesting since the original idea was not actually a tuition center, but rather it aims at the 'apathy of the middle class'.

Seeing how Singaporeans love to complain to no end, 3 friends, including Ms Kuik, decided to target at educating the middle class in current affairs, to give them a better understanding of what was happening around them. General Paper was a great medium, because it was precisely this subject that allowed discussion of current affairs.

It was a great success, and it has been running for 8 years. There have been many success stories especially how one of the graduates actually jumped from a C6 to an A1 under the guidance of the School of Thought in a few months. He was one of the facilitators and he also attended the workshop.

Anyway, during the workshop, Ms Kuik told us about the 7 important principles in making a social brand. They are the 7 Ps, passion, purpose, purity, possibility, perserverance, product and people. The things that particularly caught me were passion, purpose and possibility.

From the workshop, I learnt that passion was seriously overrated. And I could easily relate to that. Passion is not permanent, the heart is a fickle thing, and during times of crisis, passion can easily fade away. What is really important is purpose. When you start to feel a passion, you need to think of a purpose, in times of crisis, it is ultimately your purpose that will sustain you.

It reminds me of what I put up 2 posts ago, on "design thinking on a personal level". Ultimately, the purpose would be like "what the world needs". So I now feel it is important to question your own passion, on whether you feel you have a purpose behind it to sustain you when this passion fades away.

And regarding possibility, Ms Kuik brought up this touching story on "The Maid internship". A housewife, using her rights to hire a maid, used the opportunity to ask her newly-hired maid what she would like to achieve, write them down, and she will send her for training. In return, the maid was to work for her like other maids. This way, she was giving her maid the power to make a difference to her life when she returned back to her home country.

In a sense, it goes to show that wherever you are, whatever you are, there is always something you can do to help. The housewife did not think of starting a social enterprise or whatsoever, she just wanted to help the maid make a difference in her own life. It is pretty inspiring and I think I am inspired to think about what I can do in my position to make a difference.

Conversations for inspiration: "Creativity for social service"

This is my show, I was the head facilitator for this session, and it was an opportunity to prototype a session on creativity exploration that I had designed about 2 weeks ago.

The session works like this. I got the participants into 3 groups, and each group had a 'problem picture' on their table. I also arranged several objects and pictures around the room, and the objective was to get the participants to 'stand up' and 'explore' the room, trying to gain inspiration for solutions to those problems.

The idea was to get them to associate the items and pictures that they find with possible solutions. Sometimes, 2 seemingly disparate objects have some kind of intimate connection between them. Probably the best association that I've seen yesterday was with my 'yingyang' necklace. The problem was world hunger, and the necklace was associated with astrology being used to predict the weather. As such, with a system to predict the weather, technology could be used to help agriculture find the best time to grow their crops. I thought it was really cool.

I managed to see other good uses of associations during this session, and I thought the groups did a pretty good job. In the end, I gave everyone a reward, I sent them all my slides along with the slides for Ms Kuik's talk (she used my laptop).

Panel Discussion

This panel discussion was really on fire! Jack Sim, founder of World Toilet Organisation, Bernise Ang, founder of Syinc, Eugene Tay, founder of TEDx Green and another Dr Tay ( i forgot his affliation), was on the panel, and it was moderated by Victoria Chen, AIESEC member commitee Vice president, business development.

During the discussion, we really got to see the firy entrepreneurial spirit of the panel. Dr Tay and Mr Sim really had a lot of angst inside them, so strong that it made them want to change the world. A lot of meaningful things were said along with quite a load of bad language. After the firy exchange, I felt that my eyes were somehow massively opened to the demographics of social entrepreneurship in Singapore, and how we really need to change our culture, from being mindless robots to actual human beings with creativity, if we were to have any sustainability at all. It was definitely the highlight of the day, with lots of laughter and a lot of applause. I had a lot of fun.

World Cafe: Happiness and Thankfulness, can social enterprises promote those?

My show again, and I had not prepared for this at all. I was too caught up with my creativity session. Well, great opportunity to practice thinking on my feet. So I did a very classic science research sort of analysis with the participants, mindmapping associated words for happiness and thankfulness, then after that, trying to link these associations with the concept of social enterprises being able to promote happiness and gratefulness for their beneficiaries.

The participants brought out interesting insights, because I really had not thought much about the topic. One good insight is that those who work in social enterprises themselves must be thankful for what they have before they try to bring happiness to others. Other insights include the fact that the beneficiaries are already thankful.

In the end, to kill time, I made everyone say what they have learnt during their short stint with me. I was glad they all have learnt something, so I did not have to bury my face in shame. Well, I guess in future I should prepare better for my topic, and I also feel that the World Cafe should be held in a cafe, and not in a classroom, since the whole idea was to be free and easy and move about seeing different discussions. (I mean, if you're in a classroom, it wouldn't feel very good just leaving right?)

Conclusion

So that about sums up all the events for the symposium. I felt it was a good way to spend a Saturday, getting to learn more about social enterprises and meeting new and awesome people, making new friends, getting free food... I collected several name cards, met 2 fellow polymaths (it's very rare to find a polymath, and can you imagine there were 3 of us in the same room?) , and got inspired to make a difference to society, by doing what I enjoy doing, exercising my creativity!

I went home happy and fulfilled. This symposium was a success, for me and for everyone.

Here's the group photo with the organising committee and other facilitators, as well as the chair, taken at the end of the day. It was a lot of fun and they are great people.

Traits of Highly Creative People

2010-04-02T14:39:00.003+08:00

Image source: http://dezignus.com/behance-creative-portfolios-network/

I was sourcing the net for what others feel are the traits of highly creative people, and I have come across 3 different websites, each offering their own views on what creative people should be like. There were some similarities, and some unique points listed in some of the sites. So through some analysis and based on my own experience, here are the list of traits of highly creative people which I feel are the most relevant.

1) Curiosity (unknown author)

This one is without question, a creative person is inquisitive and curious, which enables him to garner incredible amounts of knowledge. His ability to think outside the box is not actually out of the box thinking to him, it is because his knowledge is so great, that essentially, the act of learning to him is 'expanding the box', enabling him to pull in different fields of knowledge together to create innovative solutions.

2) Optimism (unknown author)

Every problem has a solution, is essentially the philosophy of a creative person. This positive sort of attitude makes the creative person happy, and because he is happy, his mind is open, and because his mind is open, he can come up with innovative solutions. The creative person's emotional self-defence also enables him to see any problem as interesting and acceptable, and this also helps fuels the optimism.

3) Positive attitude towards failure (unknown author)

The creative person sees every setback and failure as opportunities for learning. Essentially meaning that there is NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE to a creative person. Because whatever he encounters, he will learn something from it. I think Thomas Edison is a good example of this, saying "I have found 1000 ways how not to make a lightbulb". Essentially this also brings about an attitude of perserverance, which enables him to press on and learn more.

4) Intuitive (Michelle L. Casto)

A creative person is able to trust his gut, and does not rely solely on logic to make his decisions. Naturally, there are increased risks, but the rewards reaped are much greater. I like to describe this as 'wormholes of thought', whereby it is possible to analyse the intrinsic sequence of logic for most creative thoughts, but superficially, it seems as though the creative person has taken the chain from the 1st ring to the last ring without going through the rest of the rings. To complement this, the creative person must have trait 3), since he is more likely to fail, but because of his incredible space of ideas, he is also more likely to succeed.

5) Action-oriented and Expressive (Michelle L.Casto, Dean Rieck)

Creative people have a very strong need to express their thoughts and feelings. As such, they may also not be the best person to entrust your secrets on. However, the great thing about this is that whatever lies inside their mind, they would want it to take on a physical form. They want to turn their visions into a reality.

6) Playful (Dean Rieck)

Creative people love to play. It is through this play that their creativity flourishes. Play to me is active exploration of everything and anything. As I like to describe it, creative people are essentially 'matured children', because their path never deviated from their childhood days, but rather, it was stretched by adult wisdom into something incredible.

7) Experimental (Dean Rieck)

Creative people love testing their ideas. They are not afraid to be wrong or look stupid, because it is only through mistakes do learning take place. Like my father likes to tell me, "if you already know everything, then what's the point of learning?"

All in all, I have listed 7 traits of highly creative people which I feel are the more relevant ones for anyone wanting to develop their creative muscle. There are other traits, but essentially they all link here and there.

It is only through creativity can we generate the innovative solutions needed for today's problems.

Design thinking on a personal level

2010-04-02T00:16:00.004+08:00

Today I had this wonderful opportunity to meet the other facilitators for Symposium Neue Thinken, which is happening this coming Saturday (and yes! I'm getting a free t-shirt! :) ) And from what I see, these facilitators are not just students, they are really good student leaders, founders and pioneers of their own social initiative. I met the founder of give.sg, as well as the co-founder of Moolah. I felt kind of shadowed because I wasn't the founder of Project Ahead, just the successor, and not to mention the chair of this whole event was there as well, and gave us an awe-inspiring session on the concept of facilitation and it was really an eye-opener for me. I had already taken back so much from tonight, I just wonder how much more I will take back on Saturday.

But anyway, the topic I would like to discuss in this post is again on design thinking, hence this pretty venn-diagram that I had used back in the very first post of my revamped blog. I decided to bring it up because it was actually brought up today during the meeting. Actually, what was brought up was not design thinking on a personal level, it was about basically, acheiving a balance between our strengths, passion, and what the world needs. Some of you may jump ahead already in fact. When I saw the venn diagram drawn on the board, I instantly thought of design thinking, and sure enough, the answer to this question, "how can i bring design thinking to a more personal level", a question which I had been thinking about for about 3 months, finally came to me.

1) PASSION as DESIRABILITY

Well, you are passionate about something, so naturally you would desire to do it.

2) STRENGTHS as FEASIBILITY

If you're good at something, it is definitely feasible for you to try doing it.

3) WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS as VIABILITY

You cannot just keep your talents and passion to yourself, as human beings, as social animals by nature, we have an obligation to serve a cause greater than ourselves as well. The good news is, there is always a way to translate whatever you enjoy and are good at to something the world needs. It's all a matter of....you guessed it... creativity.

So to bring you all to see the big picture, we are talking about design thinking, for designing your purpose in life. Ultimately, the questions you should be asking yourself ( and I should be asking myself as well) is, "What makes me happy?" , "What am I good at?" and "What can I do to serve my community?" The ultimate objective is to find one single answer, which can answer all 3 of these questions, and that is your purpose in life, and that is what you should be doing.

For me, after contemplating long and hard. I feel I have finally reached an answer. I like to invent things, and not just "things", I invent ideas, theories, philosophies and concepts as well. In fact, I have not invented any"thing". But I have invented many short stories, the triple personality theory, the new perspective of the mind, body and soul, the creativity exercise for SNT, and many hare-brained solutions to handle my personal oddities. I realised that the process of "inventing" these new concepts and stuff make me very happy.

But I don't want to stop there, after going through a module on entrepreneurship, I've been thinking about inventing world-changing products and designs as well. And being inspired by Tim Brown and IDEO, I've also been thinking about inventing services and processes. Essentially, I enjoy 'Renaissance inventing'(as i call it), where inventions just aren't about technology and hard science, but also about the metaphysical and the human factor.

And again for those who jump ahead of me, you would probably realise that the first 2 questions are very closely related. If you enjoy something, as long as you have the discipline and the perserverance to push on, high chances are that you will be good at it as well. The main question is how can we actually push these 2 factors into the 'viability' portion of the venn-diagram, or rather, how can we translate it into something the world needs.

For me, it is simple, I simply need to invent things to change the world. What about others whose interests are intrinsically more subjective? Recently, I've watched this rather interesting TED talk on how interpretive dance can raise awareness of social issues in India. Essentially, the lady was doing what she loved (I apologise, I can't remember her name), but at the same time she was bringing awareness of the sufferings of people, especially women, in India, to authorities who had come watch her performance.

Even something like the arts can help in social change, so even if you are the next Van Gogh or Michaelangelo, it doesn't mean you should be stuck in your atelier painting your fantasies and not care about the world. What if you could paint a picture of social issues, using your artistic talents to make it catchy, and thus bring about this awareness to members of the community?

So to sum it up, I strongly believe that we MUST do something that makes us happy, and we MUST have the discipline and the will to be good at it, and we MUST have a heart to give back to society. This is design thinking to help change our own lives. (note the 'experience innovation', you are innovating your own experience.)

Mind, Body and Soul, a more general perspective

2010-03-28T23:52:00.004+08:00

Image source: http://www.lth-hotels.com/london_events/mind-body-soul.htm

We often hear this advice, that we are to take care of our 'mind, body and soul'. Most of us do it quite adequately, we take good care of our mental health, exercise regularly and maintain our spirituality through some form of religion. From a free-thinker's perspective, I was a bit concerned on how I should see the soul. I'm not the hardest type of free-thinker around actually, I do believe in a Creator, and I can fully appreciate the concept of the soul, but I feel our understanding of the soul should go beyond simply a 'ghost' or a 'spirit' living inside our flesh.

This was an intuition I had about a year ago, and today, I am going to reveal my insights into this issue, those that I have developed over one year.

The first question we should ask is "What is the soul?"

Initially, I drew a venn diagram, one circle for the mind, the other for the body, then I called the intersection the soul. So in this prototype model, the soul was essentially the link between the mind and the body

But them I began to see flaws in my design. I can think of many ways how the mind influences the body, but it seems like the body cannot seem to reciprocrate the powers of the mind. It was then that I was prompted to revise the statement.

So now, the soul is the "dominion of the mind over the body".

And having a healthy soul essentially means that your mind is in control of everything. Essentially saying that "whatever your mind thinks, you can achieve". And "the spirit is willing, and the flesh can do it!"

Now this may actually be something quite powerful. We're talking about super athletes, those who can perform amazing feats with the means of visualization techniques. We're talking about super observers, those whose 5 senses are in strong communion with the mind. We're talking about people who can force illnesses out at will, and perhaps in a more practical sense, people who can dream big and achieve big. Based on my definition, these are people with 'super souls'

So basically, what is this saying? It's essentially saying that we should first develop our mind and body before we talk about developing our soul. This is just my conjecture, but listen to the following logic. You can have a very fit body, but if you are ridden with mental illnesses and constantly plagued by stress, there's no way you can hope to develop the mind's control over the body. In fact, the body is most likely to get ill because of poor mental health. Likewise, you can have a very strong mind, but if your body is weak and you are constantly bugged by illness and fatigue, you wouldn't have the energy to develop the soul and your mind would also be in a vulnerable position.

Now let's say we've already taken care of our mind and body, how do we take care of our soul? This is actually something I'm not very sure of, because well, honestly, I have yet to take care of my mind and body. But what I think can be done is through the practice of certain skills. Meditation is one obvious example. Other skills would probably be ambidexterity (balance the body, balance the mind), observation with the 5 senses, active exploration of everything and anything (curiosity) with your hands and your mind, and visualisation with physical practice, as in sports or a physical stunt.

In fact, it may even be possible to develop the soul simultaneously with the mind and the body, and this may in fact, help to quicken the development of both entities. I'm not too sure. But the speed of development would certainly not be as great as if both the mind and the body have already been well-developed. But I guess for most of us, simultaneously developing the soul may be more practical. Good news though, the speed of development is likely to increase as our proficiency increases.

Yep, this was the insight I came up with today after a heavy lunch. Personally, I feel it is a good insight, because it caters to all faiths and beliefs, from religious church-goers to rationalists and atheists. As for myself, I have been self-inspired to take better care of my mind and my body (lose weight!) because now I am really curious as to how a powerful soul would feel like.

Unconventional Story Writing

2010-03-26T12:50:00.003+08:00

Image source: http://kapalama.ksbe.edu/faculty/weburbri/FictionWriting/index.html

Back in the past when I was relatively more free, I enjoyed writing short stories related to science fiction themes and more recently, I've been playing around with other genres as well. I also experimented with some unconventional strategies that I have seen or thought of, here's just a list of them.

1) Chronologically backwards.

I've ever seen a story about some sort of time-travelling device which essentially reversed the flow of time, such that the person actually went through a lot with another person, 'before' actually meeting the person. It is something very curious and intriguing, because in a sense, you are left in suspense, for something that has happened 'in the past'. I have not yet attempted to write a story like that, but yes, it is something to consider.

2) Breaking the 4th wall.

Sometimes, in films or cartoons, the characters 'break the 4th wall', and end up having a conversation with the viewer. Good examples I've seen are mainly cartoons for pre-school kids, where the main character regularly talks to the intended audience. There are also some comedies where the characters suddenly become aware that they are in a show and often tell the audience to 'forget' their scenes of embarrassment. Those really make me laugh.

So I had a thought, why not try to 'break the 4th wall' in a short story as well? I have written stories whereby the character scolds the author, me, for making him end up in a bad state, and then, depending on my mood, I sometimes help out the character or make him end up in an even worse state. Talk about author-character relations eh...

3) Picture story

Not too unconventional, but it was an idea that I had last night. This was actually inspired by my own planning for the creativity session in Symposium Neue Thinken next Saturday. It would be fun to try surfing the net for certain pictures, related to a certain theme, and some other random pictures, then try to write a story relating all these pictures. Now I bet those seemingly unrelated pictures may just give the story a little juicy twist.

4) Anti-musing

As the name suggests, this story will have a very conventional background. How conventional? The story is based on a day of the author's life. Waking up, brushing his teeth, eating breakfast, going to work/school, going for tests/exams...etc... But then, when the author sits down to write about his day, everything is transformed. Instead of eating breakfast normally, he has to fight off jackals from the underworld to get his scrambled eggs, and instead of going to school normally, he has to fight off evil martians who try to rob his brain of knowledge. Simply put, it is transforming your boring life into a more interesting one. Who knows, after trying out some of this, you may develop new insights into your own life or whatever. (PTN, the examples I used are exaggerations, feel free to try more 'conventional' ones if you want)

5) Deep-thought diving

If you hit a story without planning before hand, you will see somehow that your inspiration gradually increases as you write. It is a very fun and exciting journey which I enjoy. Hence, I often like to jump onto a story on a whim, and as I write, deeper and deeper thoughts and creative insights enter my mind. A conventional method of story writing done in an unconventional way, who knows what wonders you can come up with using this method?

Story writing is not just restricted to the realms of authors and writers. People from different professions may just do well trying out writing as a hobby or an interest. Writing is a good way for me to exercise my creativity and unleash my built-up creative tensions. Perhaps you can try it too? If you have any interesting insights, feel free to share them with me :)

Creative Time Management

2010-03-21T14:56:00.005+08:00

Image source: http://picturepost.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/time-travel/

Dealing with the issues of a mind tormented by creativity often boils down to the fact that the guy has issues with managing his time.

Creative people generally tend to hate organisation, seeing it as souless and a big hassle. Actually, it is rather important for a creative person to manage his time well, in order for his creative juices to flow more effectively. In fact, a creative person must handle his time better than other people, because while 'normal' people can take the usual stressors of life, creative people are likely to be worn out by it and develop all sorts of psychiatric disorders.

Here are some things I have learnt in my exploration of creative time management, and yes indeed, such things do contribute in managing the often turbulant emotions of high creativity. This is more for people like me, who are often faced with the challenge of exploiting 'extraordinary creativity' amidst a sea of what we do not consider creative processes.

In truth, creativity is present everywhere. And it doesn't mean that just because we are not in the arts or design, we do not have creativity. Scientific research and enterpreneur activities demand a lot of creativity. The main thing is that creativity is used in finding solutions to problems when other, more conventional solutions, have failed, or there is no solution in the first place.

So here are my tips, essentially, it is about seeing time as a dimension, just like length, breadth and height. To organise a table, we place things here and there, with respect to each other in terms of position such that we know where everything is. Creative spatial organisation often appeals to creative people such as poets and writers because it serves them inspiration and facilitates their thought processes. Likewise, we can do it for the dimension of time as well.

The main problem with time as a dimension is that it is ever flowing, it does not stop for us, and we cannot see all of time at once, unless you are Nikola Tesla. So 4th dimension management demands quite a bit of discipline and resolution. Fortunately, if you are creative, it means you'll be able to think of a fun way to do this. So here are some ways I have found.

1) Creative space management is strongly recommended. I like to arrange my table in hall in a way which balances organisation and disorder. This actually promotes a sense of creative expression yet it does not throw you off from the demands of work. I've also learnt that light management is essential. It is important for a creative person to work with sufficient light. I believe this is a sort of adaptory result from our times as hunters and gatherers, where we usually hunt in the day time. And yes, another thing, air, it is important for a creative person to open the windows in his room, and allow the fresh air to come in. If it is hot outside, I suggest turning on the air con, or better still, stop doing work and grab a cold drink, and just relax.

2) Exploit the weather. We cannot see all of time at once, so that implies the future often brings along surprises. For me, I try to exploit pleasant surprises as much as possible, and one of such examples include the rain. You can always count on the rain to come, but you are never sure when it would come. I love the rain, because the air is cooler and fresher, and it makes me feel more refreshed. When it begins to rain, I like to run out of my room and just walk around in the rain, until it becomes too heavy. Yeah, it makes me wet, but it also makes me happy. I like to wait in anticipation of a rain, and right now, it is raining outside my room, and yes, I am slightly wet.

3) Fix some time regime. You must try to block out certain times of the day for certain activities. For a person with a varied schedule such as myself, I do not block out a specific time, like 5pm to 6pm, what I do is I block out periods after certain activities. Like for instance, after I finish school, I do not usually jump into work immediately. I spend about an hour or so handling important but not urgent work (more on this later), or writing stuff on my blog, or just chatting with friends on msn. If my day is relatively free, I will spend the morning doing the same thing. It usually gives you a better sense of satisfaction knowing that you are clearing up stuff in advance.

Now I know that you are likely to have the mindset that you should settle the most pressing matters first, and leave everything else till later. With so little time on my hands, I also find this very understandable. But I feel it is better to raise your own morale first, before settling in to tackle the challenges of urgent tasks, you are likely to be more productive this way, instead of feeling frustrated and tired when you get stuck with an assignment.

I also like to block out certain times where I do absolutely nothing. After doing some work, or after a run, I like to sit outside the kerb near my hall and just drink some ice lemon tea from the vending machine nearby. but more on this later.

4) Have some regular habits with which you do everyday, like an obsession. Now I know this sounds anything but creative, but I find that having certain regular habits are good for simulating the creative mind. I would say this is because creative people are humans after all, we need to have some sense of order to keep us sane. And having these regular habits gives us a sense of expectation and certainty amidst the chaos we like to immerse ourselves in.

For me, I like to keep regular habits in the morning just after waking up. After waking up, I brush my teeth, eat breakfast, and bathe, always in this order. And for breakfast, I always eat the same thing, kaya toast and soft-boiled eggs, with teh-o. I'm so regular, until the store owner need not ask me what I want, she just prepares it for me straight away.

Then at night, as what I've mentioned above, I sit on the kerb side drinking canned drinks.

5) Make sure you exercise everyday. I tend to have this problem, whenever I am stressed or feeling depressed, I tend to avoid exercise,and instead go binging. Not healthy. Make sure you at least force yourself to don your exercise wear, go outside, and start to trot. If you really don't feel like exercising, just tell yourself that you are just going for a slow, leisurely stroll, and in the end, you are likely to end up doing a serious run. I find that occassionally 'charging' during my runs help me expend the unused creative energy for the day, and relieve the stress and frustrations as well. Remember the important thing is not to exercise as what experts tell you (20-30 min non-stop), the important thing is that you are exposing yourself to physical exertion, and even if it's just 10 minutes, as long as it can keep you sane, it is fine.

6) Give yourself something to look forward to. This is especially good if you need to spend a night doing some work. For me, if I have to complete a lab report and I need to work till about 4am in the morning, I think of the sleep I will have after my report is done and I am motivated to carry on. If it is a busy week, you must imagine the end of the week and think of how happy you would feel.

7) Live for the present. This does sound a little contradictory to the above point, but well, it is up to your creative mind to see how you are going to balance between the two. Living for the present generally takes your mind away from anxiety and worry which comes from thoughts of the future. Try not to become a master of the flow of time, and instead, let the flow of time carry you wherever and whenever, and just do what is necessary. You just need to remember one thing, the present is always ok, hence, you should try to live in it. If you have trouble with this, I suggest trying out meditation.

8) Important but not urgent work. As I've said, always try to find some time to do this throughout the day. It boosts your morale and also takes away the task before it becomes urgent and important, which is likely to lead to stress. If you keep doing this, you will eventually find that you have more control over your time, and your stress is likely to be allieviated.

9) Learn to ask for help. If you are really stuck in a difficult situation, I suggest you quickly attempt to seek help or talk to people before the situation becomes dire. If the problem is a difficult tutorial, I suggest you find some time to attempt it first, before discussing with friends.

10) Keep happy. This is very important, because only with mastery of emotions can you master your time. Try to remain happy, and smile at people you know, even if it may seem mad. I've recently adopted this strategy of putting motivational messages and advices in my phone and set them to sound at certain times of the day, every day. This way, no matter how lousy I feel, I will be reminded to be happy.

Of course, I would not completely suppress my frustrations, you don't have to be a person with bipolar disorder to have frustrations, so it would be good to find some time throughout the day to allow yourself to feel lousy and evaluate those feelings. For me, whenever I go to the kerb side for a drink, I allow myself to feel lousy or depressed, and during that period of time, while relaxing, I think over my feelings and attempt to see rational causes for them. Also, whenever I feel depressed, it is usually when creative thoughts start rushing in, so I sometimes try to exploit this period of time as well.

Ok, I just spent about an hour in total writing this post, but I feel it is time well-spent, because as I write, I reflect upon the strategies I have adopted in the past week and realise their potential. I hope you would benefit from this as well.

How far would you go to be creative?

2010-03-12T21:34:00.003+08:00

Project Ahead kick started with its first meeting this semester, and also the first meeting which I attended. A lot of discussion occurred, including my suggestion of a creativity group. This is the topic I would like to talk about in this post. Now before I start to sound too self-centered, I do intend to blog about this first meeting proper once the photos are out.

Now, creativity is developed through a series of powerful, multi-sensory exploration, and sometimes, these explorations take the creative person through a series of roller coaster rides into potentially dangerous yet insightful quests.

For me, I have seen the good and the dark side of creativity, and sometimes I ask myself just how far I would go to develop my creativity. And the answer is always, "as far as required", which essentially means I won't stop.

I am definitely more creative than I was one year ago, and in fact, I have reached the point where I am practically dependent on creativity for my sanity. It thus can be seen that creativity is a self-sustaining entity, my creativity prompted me to be even more creative, because of my desire to explore. So through creativity, I developed creativity. Then after a certain point, it breaks apart the path it had walked, and I am now in a realm of no return. I can only go forward.

I would not think that I am courageous to try taking risks and new things, more like, I often feel a lack of inhibition. To me, some conventionally dangerous things do not seem dangerous, and I just feel like, well, giving it a whack.

Now, another creative revolution is occuring, and more new entities and pathways are being explored. I have began experimenting with different routes to take from hall to school. I am wearing 2 watches, one on each hand, to explore the link between symmetry and ambidexterity. At the moment, there seems to be nothing inhibiting me, nothing at all.

It's a very awesome feeling, yet potentially dangerous. I must learn to master this innate power that I have, or it may turn into something really destructive.

Explore with caution

The Warrior Physicist

2010-03-03T16:58:00.002+08:00

I attended a tea session with Professor CN Yang today, the 1957 Nobel Laureate. Somehow the topic of how Western researchers somehow do better than the researchers of the East came up, and yes, as I had expected, it was a matter of courage.

Western researchers are somehow more courageous than those of Asia. And I attribute it to the fact that their education is not as rigorous as ours, as such, their minds are often free to explore the arcane and the weird. For us, because we are forced to subscribe to a very rigorous chain of thought, we ultimately narrow our comfort zone to intense rigour and it prevents us from going on to explore.

But before you think I'm throwing stones, Prof CN Yang also did stress that rigour was important, to get the fundamentals down solid. This was the strong point of Eastern science education.

So if each of the 2 modes of education have their own strengths and weaknesses, what does it boil down to? Human nature. Humans somehow need to 'fit in' with their society, since we are social animals by nature. If everyone's trying something new, we would feel pressured to try something new as well. But if everyone's busy 'mugging', then somehow we would as well.

So ultimately, what does this mean? It means, that the ultimate form of science education combines the courage of the West, with the rigour of the East, such that both strengths are tapped. And if you combine courage and rigour, you may think of the training of a warrior. So I propose that to train the best researchers in the world, you need to train them into warriors.

A warrior physicist, the notion is pretty cool. But you would immediately point out that while such an idea seems fancy, it is definitely not easy. Well, I don't know about students who have been good students all the way, but I was once a delinquent, so my study powers are not as good as some of the other good students out there. For me, when it comes to tackling difficult equations and rigorous proofs, it does require a lot of courage. My fear of maths was a result of a lack of courage to attack the proofs and rigour. But to me, it is simply a matter of overcoming your fear, fear of failure, fear of this, fear of that... The way I conquer this fear is probably not something I should mention on this blog, it's a little weird, if not very weird.

So it's really just a matter of conquering fear. For the West, their fear may be getting into the rigour of the East, for the East, it is about venturing into the unknown and battering down preconceived notions.

Sadly, there is not a single education system in the world that can teach a person how to effectively overcome fear. Happily, this means that success in science is independent of geography.

So to every aspiring scientist out there, don't feel bad that you may not be studying in the West, the key to your future ultimately lies within yourself, no one else. Because if you so want to, you can batter down mountains, lakes, oceans, people.......

So which fear are you going to overcome today? I'm going to work on becoming a warrior physicist, anyone wants to join me?

A battlefield of thinkers

2010-03-02T16:35:00.003+08:00

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker in this world----Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've been having this thought for quite a while in my head, about how this world has really been a battlefield of thinkers, and how the lives of 'doers' have been shaped by thoughts of thought leaders.

If we look at major revolutions such as the rise of communism, the rise of democracy, rise of quantum theory etc... You may realise that they are merely the thoughts of one or one group of people. Communism is the brainchild of Karl Marx, democracy...not very sure, perhaps George Washington, and the Copenhagen Intrepretation, the group of physicists who discussed it in Copenhagen.

But these were not the only thoughts that had existed in their fields, they were merely the thoughts that 'won'. Communism as of now has mostly been defeated by democracy, and the Copenhagen interpretation had dominated over another 14 or so schools of thought for quantum mechanics. Even in religion, we see stuff like 'orthodox' Christianity, but whose authority was it to decide that this school of thought was 'orthodox' or not?

Ultimately, we see that pretty often, there are large battles fought amongst the thought leaders, and it is usually the thought that 'fits in' with the majority of the populace that wins. In the past, burning heretics at the stake was 'ok', now it is just wrong. A new thought had overpowered the old thought, and that's why everyone's thinking like that today.

Even things like moral values, those are really just the 'winner' of a large battle of values.

In my opinion, this is really an interesting phenomenon. The world can essentially be divided into 2 groups, thinkers and doers, as I have already mentioned. The thinkers fight, and the doers follow the winner. Of course, it is not all pleasant when doers start to kill doers of a rival thought faction, but that aside, it is interesting to think about how thoughts would evolve over the next hundred or so years.

Would religion still exist? Would science still exist? Would we start burning people at the stake again? Would we be wearing clothes? It's really a matter of whose thoughts win.

I would like to begin observing thought leaders from around the world to see what is their progress in the 'battle'. I am also interested to know whether there has ever been a 'walkover'. Perhaps some day, I would join in this battle as well, just to see how far I can go.

Some reflections on stress

2010-02-19T09:55:00.005+08:00

I decided to start the day with a post in this blog, and the topic I'm going to talk about today is stress.

Now I have read from somewhere, I wished I remembered where, that stress is actually a condition caused by wrong beliefs and perceptions. So now people may get very annoyed, how can stress be created by wrong beliefs? The pressure they face in life is real, and it's giving them pain, so how can we just say that stress is wrong?

In my opinion, stress can be managed with the right thoughts. If we just examine a little of how stress works, we realise it's through a series of programming. For instance:

O my goodness! I've slept for 8 hours! Now I only have 16 hours left to do work!

I have so much work to finish! There's no way my week is gonna be pleasant.

Now, how is a person who constantly thinks like that going to ever be happy? Quite impossible isn't it? But what if he now thinks like this:

I've slept for 8 hours, that leaves me 16 good hours to do my work.

I have a lot of challenges this week, but once I'm done with them, o would i be so happy!

See the difference?

So really,managing stress is all about telling yourself the right thing. Like there's a lot of wisdom about how a diamond is really a coal that has been through pressure? Likewise, we must learn to get stress to work for us. If we just twitch our thinking a little, just how much would our management of challenges change?

Then once we're done with ourselves, it's time to go out there and change the world. After all, it's very easy to get influenced by people whom are negative, but it is much more rewarding to be influenced by people whom are positive.

80/20

2010-02-14T22:45:00.003+08:00

I have been quite fascinated with the concept of the 80/20 policy in google, about how employees get to spend 20% of their time doing something innovative and creative which exists outside their portfolio. It is also quite amazing to note how 50% of Google's products actually come from this ITO (innovative time off).

The 80/20 time has proven effective, with applications such as gmail, Adsense and google news coming from it. But there are still some dissidents to this idea. Bob Cringely believes that such an idea is fatally flawed and that "over time, there would be former Google employees with time, money and experience pursuing ideas rejected by the former company"

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/topics/reader.aspx?oss=28937

This guy is so certain Google will fail. But I believe results speak for themselves, and I feel in this world right now, more companies and societies need to be willing to take the ITO approach, and really allow active participation from all their employees in pursuing innovative ideas.

I now challenge myself with this question, how can I introduce the policy of ITO in CNYSC and Project Ahead? After all, we don't work 5 days a week, so we need to have a more systematic way of implementing ITO.

Perhaps I can be more autocratic and suggest ITO as an assignment, thus encouraging my members to come up with stuff outside their portfolio. I think with the starting of the CNYSC blog, this would be great.

Anyway, I'm a huge fan of Google and I really admire the amount of innovation and creativity that transpires from there. I can see how they became the wealthiest internet company in the world. I have actually switched my default browser to Google chrome, more for its simple and elegant design. I wonder whether Chrome was a result of 80/20 as well.

So I'd like to hear a little from you guys as well, what is your opinion on ITO?

Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day

2010-02-14T11:09:00.004+08:00

This post is really a little reflection on some marketing issues I had been observing yesterday. Unfortunately I did not take pictures in Cold Storage itself, so I had to make use of these pictures I found on the net.

Basically this year, Chinese New Year and Valentine's day fell on the same day. Yesterday when I went to Cold Storage to do some Steamboat shopping, I noted that there were chocolates and new year goodies that were sold all over the place.

Somehow, I felt that something better could have been done. In fact I had been noticing this for a while, that the Cold Storage in Great World City did not have a section allocated for special events such as this. I thought what might have been good was if they had set up one section, specially for Valentine's chocolates, and one section, specially for new year goodies.

That way, shoppers would find it easier to find what they want and with the right decorations, it would make shopping a happier occassion. :p

Then perhaps this begs a little creative thinking. Let's say I've decided to make use of this combined festivities to make money, how would I go about doing it?

Let's think about the online way first. Ghost Trappers is doing a fantastic job on facebook by exploiting special occassions such as christmas to create new ghosts, new hunting grounds and more excitement. What if let's say I were to launch a social networking site and connect thousands of people seeking to do extreme networking.

Then on this day, I launch a new system within the site which allows chinese corporate networkers to state their new year wishes (that are related to business), and we find them people with the same new year wishes. Of course, this is already being done throughout the year, but CNY is a great occassion to renew wishes and so we provide the chinese customers more value-added service.

Then since it's also valentine's day, there would be quite a number of corporate networkers who have been working so hard to live their dreams that they have not had time to find a girl or guy. Well, great opportunity! In the spirit of valentine's day, an additional dating service can go on for a few weeks!

So now, let's say I don't want to use online services and instead be like those school kids who try so hard to raise money. Well, since I study in a university, there would be more freedom for me to try crazy new things. For valentine's day, I can set up a booth with a few of my friends and we can sell chocolates and those of my friends with enough savvy advice can advise guys who're chasing girls on what to do, and where to take her.

So it's a kind of a 'valentine advisory booth'. So rather than just touting people over to buy our chocolates, we can give them advice on good dating locations and techniques as well. Again, value-added service.

As for the chinese new year aspect of it, well, I think it would be a great opportunity to combine it with valentine's day as well and sell lanterns to couples! Then we can organise a couple lantern procession. My goodness, what a spill that would be.

Ok, I'm not an experienced entrepreneur so I don't know how feasible those ideas probably are, perhaps some of you would like to comment on this? Just drop it in the cbox somewhere on the lower left.

Thank you! :)

KAIST visit

2010-02-14T10:37:00.006+08:00

Thought it might be a good idea to talk about what the club has been doing over the past few weeks. On the 28th of January, 6 KAIST students came over to SPMS. Their main objective was to interview one of the CBC professors, who happened to be Korean, and was actually making it big here.

So the club took this opportunity to host them, because we were actually planning to make a trip to Korea this May. It would be great to know some of the local students such as to better facilitate our school visit.

Everything went excellent that day, in fact better than I'd expected. The photo below is of me giving a presentation about the CNYSP.

After this presentation, we took them around on a campus tour of the PAP/MAS side of SPMS.So this is a picture we took after the tour, and then we went to glutton's bay to have some local delicacies! We managed to satisfy their craving for chilli crab.

Ok, the chilli crab wasn't shown here, but you can see there's Hokkien Mee as well.

So at the end of the day, everyone was happy, and now we have hosts we can go to when we go to Korea!

Overall, this was a very enriching and new experience for me, and I simply enjoyed the thought of 'receiving foreign delegates'. But I think more importantly, there had been quite a lot of preparation and participation from my committee members and friends who showed up that day. I think all of us put in good effort to make this visit a successful one.

Hopefully in the next visit, I can upload the photos on this blog a little faster :)

Be-The-Hero by Noah Blumenthal

2010-02-13T01:35:00.005+08:00

In this post, I'm going to talk a little about this life changing book that I have recently read, and encourage readers of this blog to buy this book and keep it in your 'precious posessions' list.

This book can empower you to change your life in 3 different ways. It teaches you how to reframe your thinking, to begin to tell different 'stories'. It teaches you how to change from being the 'victim' to a 'hero'.

The first part is about how we view people. Viewing people in a negative way, meaning telling 'victim' stories, will only make everyone feel bitter. But if we begin to tell 'hero' stories, and begin to empathize with the person, the effects can be amazing.

Second part is about telling 'hero' stories about what we have, and feel gratitude for it, rather than telling 'victim' stories, and feel jealousy and envy towards others.

Third part is about how the hero sees hope, and begin to take action.

So this book teaches us how to bring out the hero in each of us, and begin reshaping our lives. It is written in an ingenious way, from the point of view of a fictional character as he faces life challenges, rather than bold bullet points and underlined sub-headings.

All in all, this book is a must read. It has given me much inspiration and I strongly recommend you to read it as well.

Noah Blumenthal has been listed by Leadership Excellence magazine as one of the top 100 minds for personal development. He is also the founder of Leading Principles,a consulting firm specializing in the development of exceptional leaders and teams through coaching, workshops and team retreats.

Design thinking

2010-02-12T22:58:00.002+08:00

I took this from IDEO's website. This diagram basically depicts design thinking as innovation in terms of the work IDEO has done.

Quite recently, after a short fascination with design thinking, I decided to try design thinking for real. And it's pretty impressive what you can do with the authority to direct your team's direction. I applied design thinking by working together with one of my club's portfolios in coming up with a research attachment internship programme which would hopefully enhance the student and scholar experience.

Another example in which I've applied design thinking was in my module in entrepreneurship. During the initial group discussion, one of my friends thought of runners, since he is quite a disciplined exerciser. Our project had to be science and technology based, so we began to think of a device which would enhance the runner's experience.

And the whole thought process itself was actually a very good practice in design thinking. our original design included a LCD screen on the arm with a GPS system, heart and breath rate monitor, etc... then eventually one of my group mates felt that this was a little too difficult. pretty true, i realised, it made the runner look like robocop.

So the design was reduced to something simple, based on what runners, casual runners, really want. they want a good running EXPERIENCE, not some fancy high tech gizmo that tells you how fast your heart is beating. And so it was reduced to a simple design of pressure distribution sensors in the shoe and a pair of headphones with pace-sensitive songs and digital verbal warnings of bad terrain or poor technique.

So design thinking is really something that I'd love to explore deeper. I'm often visiting IDEO's website and downloading some of their brochures. You can visit the link I've put up. You can also go see Tim Brown's TED talk in 2009 TED Global.

I'm also attempting to take design thinking to another level, to make it something that can transform people's personal lives, a bit like a self-help kind of thing. So perhaps you could say I'm trying to redesign design thinking?

Look forward to more :)

2010-02-12T17:07:00.003+08:00

gong xi fa cai and happy cny, this blog will be undergoing massive revamping (ok, not that massive) over this festive season.

the blog will be adopting a new format and several old posts will be deleted. this blog will now longer have personal things and sentiments and instead focus only on my thoughts and exploits.

new labels of the blog will include:

design thinking
ambidexterity
personal development
leadership
science
innovation
corporate world
CNYSC
Project AHEAD
internet
etc....

there'll be more i'm sure, i intend to work with my sister to redesign this blog, she's the expert not me.