April 13, 2013

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Weather:  Low clouds, 36F with snow flurries

Location:  U.S. Postal Office, Naperville, IL

Clerk:  "Is there anything fragile in the package?"

Me:  "No, it's my check to the government."

Clerk:  "Which delivery option would you like?  We have...."

Me:  "The cheapest!"

So, $1.72 will carry my significant contribution to the IRS!  

As much as I support the notion of every responsible citizen should pitch in to help build a stronger country, I pray every day that my hard-earned $$ will not be wasted.  I pray every day to have an effective way for me to contribute my $$ to strengthen America's education and healthcare systems.

I read the book below back in 2006, and am reading it again -- it's a fascinating book, at least it was 7 years ago...

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The World Is Flat

By Thomas L. Friedman

National Bestseller

There is a saying in China that whatever you put in your head and your stomach, no one can take away from you.  In this whole region, Hong Kong , Japan , South Korea and China , that's in their DNA.

When it comes to the flat world, is America prepared?  It's not...  You've gotten a little contented and slow, and the people who came into the field with triple convergence are really hungry.  Immigrants are always hungry - and they don't have a backup plan.

What is really scary is that China is not attracting so much global investment by simply racing everyone to the bottom.  That is just a short-term strategy.  China's real long-term strategy is to outrace America and the E.U. countries to the top.  So in thirty years, we will have gone from "sold in China" to "made in China" to "designed in China" to "dreamed up in China."

When I asked Bill Gates about the supposed American education advantage - an education that stresses creativity, not rote learning - he was utterly dismissive.  In his view, those who think that the more rote learning systems of China and Japan can't turn out innovators who can compete with Americans are sadly mistaken.  Said Gates, "I have never met the guy who doesn't know how to multiply who created software...  You need to understand things in order to invent beyond them."

One cannot stress enough:  Young Chinese, Indians, and Poles are not racing us to the bottom.  They are racing us to the top.  They do not want to work for us; they do not even want to be us.  They want to dominant us - in the sense that they want to be creating companies of the future that people all over the world will admire and clamor to work for. 

In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears.  In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears - and that is our problem.

You cannot maintain rising standards of living in a flattening world when you are up against competitors who are getting not only their fundamentals right but also their intangibles.  China does not just want to make GM cars.  It wants to be GM and put GM out of business.  Anyone who doubts that should spend time with young Chinese.  

The world is being flattened.  You can flourish in this flat world, but it does take the right imagination and the right motivation.  The world needs us to be forever the generation of strategic optimists, the generation with more dreams than memories, the generation that wakes up each morning and not only imagines that things can be better but also act on that imagination every day.

308 Days Later...

Often times, we spend a tremendous amount of energy seeking minimal incremental improvement in what we do.  Is it really worth it?  Are we crazy??!!  Obviously, the answer varies depending on your perspective.  In my case, it took me 308 days to have a chance to see the "minimal incremental improvement".  

Can you even tell the difference??? 

The truth is, I don't think either is good enough only because I was too afraid of risking my life to move the tripod further out to take the shot...  But let me tell you, if you want to be the best, you must be willing to risk everything!  So, the obvious conclusion is:  I will never be the best, and sadly, I might have come to terms with that :-)

Colorado River at the Horseshoe Bend

Page, Arizona

April 6, 2013

A journey vs. a musical thing...

As always, my life continues to be filled with drama!

Earlier last week, I went to Arizona for a meeting at some fancy resort.  Drove from the Phoenix airport and my lovely GPS directed me to this nowhere land...  Just imagine the rest of the story. 

Friday afternoon, after the meeting, I was on my way from Phoenix to Page, Arizona to spend the weekend in high deserts.  It was supposed to be an easy 4-hour drive, but it turned into a more than 8 hours journey.  About 25 miles from Page (just think about how close I was to my final destiny), a section of the highway 89 was totally destroyed by a landslide.  It was impassible so when you get to the closed section of the road, the little red sign would direct you to an unexpected 4-hour detour...  At that point, a GPS is completely useless!  It's probably hard for you to imagine the rest of the story, as the pain and the darkness is pretty unimaginable!

Remember the FL sinkhole and the WA landslide??  The world has randomly become a very scary place!!!

Anyways, I did some photography work, but not nearly as intense as what I had anticipated.  Maybe due to the high stress from all the driving drama during the week, for once, I decided to just ENJOY life -- enjoy the boat rides in Lake Powell and the spirituality in Sedona...

As my little Michelle perfectly put in her Facebook:

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end... but we missed the point the whole way along: it was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing and dance while the music was being played.