Blog
- December 15, 2014
Toastmasters speech #3: Love at Second Sight
We have all heard that story before. Boy enters room, catches sight of girl across a room full of people, their eyes meet, time slows down to a standstill, a romantic song starts to play, they fall in love and live happily ever after. “It was love at first sight. We were meant to be.” […]
- October 15, 2014
Toastmasters speech #2: Lost and Found in Germany
One of the unexpected benefits I have gotten out of Toastmasters is it has given me an opportunity to reflect on my life, and condense bits of them into interesting stories worthy of an audience. Dear madam toastmaster, fellow toastmasters and guests, today I’d like to share with you a very important chapter of my […]
- August 6, 2014
Smartphones and Journalism
If you were to assume that the dawn of the mobile era means people are giving up reading actual article and are just snacking instead, you’d be wrong. The Atlantic recently reported that a gorgeously illustrated 6,200-word story on BuzzFeed—which likewise gets about half its readers through mobile devices—not only received more than a million […]
- August 1, 2014
Tech’s Ugly Gender Problem
There has been many instances where people around (or even close to) me wave off the notorious ‘sexism in tech’ problem as ‘all in the woman’s head’. The worst thing is, these are intelligent people. They argue that talking about sexism won’t solve the problem, that we cannot avoid it from happening (and thus need […]
- June 3, 2014
“一路有你” (The Journey) 观后感
在往悉尼的飞机上看了“一路有你” （The Journey)。真好看。电影拍得诚挚感人，看得我眼泪直流。那演爸爸的演员演得真好。 华人父母对子女伟大又含蓄内敛的爱，是外国人很难明白的。我一定要和Glenn看这部电影，让他明白这种爱。期望他至少能稍微体会我一直以来很难跟他形容明白的我和爸爸妈妈之间的感情。
- April 13, 2014
Wealth Inequality in America
Not only do the bottom 20% and the next 20%, the bottom 40% of Americans barely have any of the wealth. the top 1% has more of the country’s wealth than 9 out of 10 Americans believe the entire top 20% should have. The ideal we asked everyone about: We’ve got some incentive, as the […]
- March 18, 2014
The Problem with Silicon Valley’s Youth
An exceptionally thought-provoking (albeit long) article on virtually everything about the Silicon Valley tech scene. The Web 2.0 checklist: cloud-based, scalable, mobile-friendly. (They are buzzwords, but they are also true) In pursuing the latest and the coolest, young engineers ignore opportunities in less-sexy areas of tech like semiconductors, data storage and networking, the products that […]
- March 7, 2014
Desire
Interesting TED talk about The Secret of Desire in a Long-Term Relationship Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want […]
- March 4, 2014
How to Get People to Do Stuff
Basically understanding the psychology of what motivated people to take action. Some interesting bits: If you use nouns when making a request, rather than verbs – for example: “Be a donor” versus “Donate now” – it results in more people taking action. That’s because nouns invoke group identity. (people want to feel they belong) Use […]
- February 24, 2014
Twitterstorm
A textbook example of how a Twitterstorm unfolds. Funny because it is oh so true. The 29 Stages Of A Twitterstorm
- February 17, 2014
The Perfect Refugee Camp
The refugee camp in Kilis, Turkey for Syrian refugees is doing a great job at providing the refugees with a decent shelter, completed with basic amenities, food, security and even some entertainment. Some might say the Turkish government is making a shrew investment, “It needs to be seen in the context of Turkey’s policy to […]
- February 15, 2014
Disconnect
Creators of things are people like anybody else. They have flaws, often major flaws, like anybody else. They are nevertheless often able to create art that is moving, meaningful, emotionally involving, satisfying, and beloved. This is a very strange alchemy that doesn’t really make much coherent sense. Humans create art that is better than they, […]