A lesson from survivor Samoa

I've always find that certain people makes me uneasy. There's often no obvious and justifiable reasons, but no matter what I do I just find that I have the innate desire to get as far away from them as possible.

Sometimes I wonder, why my other friends don't mind these individuals, and whether the problem has something to do with me.

Well...watching survivor Samoa brought me a revelation. This is what happened: in the Foa Foa tribe, there's a guy called Russell who started a strategy of deceit from day one. On the surface, he was friendly to everyone and tried to get everyone's trust, but at the same time he secretly manipulated people into fighting with each other, causing rifts in the tribe. (This was on day one! Wasn't it a bit too early? Shouldn't you be focusing on having unity in the tribe so that you can win challenges first?)
When he talked to the camera in private, he started gloating about how stupid he thinks everyone is and how everyone is going to be his puppets.

Having a villain like this certainly made the show more entertaining, but it shows that there are certain people you just shouldn't place your trust with.

Almost everyone was blindsided by him, but some started to sense that something about him just wasn't quite right. A former police officer, Betsy, stated: "I wouldn't trust Russell", but when asked by another tribe member "why?", she couldn't explain it. "I don't know...it's just my female intuition...". Another member, Marisa, made the mistake of voice her concern about his trustworthiness to him, so he manipulated the tribe to vote her out in the first episode. Since Betsy instinctively knew that she couldn't trust Russell, true to his villainous nature, he got her voted out in the second episode. From there on, the Foa Foa tribe suffered a streak of defeats challenge after challenge. Well...when everyone who's smart enough to be suspicious of the villain's behaviour were voted off, is there any surprise that you're left with a weak tribe?

Maybe, when your instinct tells you that you can't trust someone, there's a good reason for it, even if you can't explain it (perhaps especially if you can't explain it).

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Defeated

I felt defeated after today's interaction. At first I was frustrated, then as we left the interaction without any resolution, I was angry. After that, I started to doubt, maybe I shouldn't have brought up the topic at all, maybe pretending everything was normal as if nothing happened previously would've been a better choice, after all, that's how millions of people dealt with issues. Then, I felt the a feeling worse than anger - guilt. Then, finally, I felt resigned and defeated. Then something interesting happened, I started to feel a sense of relief, and I was finally at peace.

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People always come into your life for a reason, a season and a lifetime. When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.

When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, or to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or even spiritually. They may seem like a godsend to you, and they are. They are there for a reason, you need them to be. Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die, Sometimes they just walk away. Sometimes they act up or out and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.

When people come into your life for a SEASON, it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season. And like Spring turns to Summer and Summer to Fall, the season eventually ends.

LIFETIME, relationships teach you a lifetime of lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person/people (anyway), and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas in your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. Thank you for being part of my life.

Brian A. "Drew" Chalker

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Personality & communication

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is probably by far the most popular personality model out there. I have seen its application in many different places, from casual personality quizzes to sophisticated studies to help people find their potential partners.

There are 4 pairs of personality functions (or dichotomies):
1. (E)xtraversion/(I)ntroversion
2. (S)ensing/i(N)tuition
3. (T)hinking/(F)eeling
4. (J)udging/(P)erceiving

While my preference for functions in group 1,2,4 is ambivalent, fickle and changes depend on the situation; when it comes to the way I gather, interpret and understand information(ie. functions in group 2), I'm a clear cut N.

This means that the way I process information is based more on my intuitive feelings, I can only get a clear sense of what facts and data mean, when I understand their relationship with other things (ie. how they fit into the big picture), and that I tend to skip unnecessary details.

Only about 26.7% of people are N's, and the majority are S's: people who like facts and details, who tend to pay attention only to things they can observe through their 5 senses.

This difference in personality trait, is the one thing that caused the most trouble in my communication with others.

Being the minority means that you have to deal with lots of S's, who, since they are the majority, have little or no awareness of the fact that people with a different thinking/communication style existed.

To be fair, not all S's are the same, some are less extreme than others, some are more observant of their audience's reaction than others, some are pretty good listeners, and some knows how to calibrate their communication depend on who their audience is.

On the other hand, some of them are seemingly...how do I put it...living in the ivory tower of obliviousness.

It's been quite a journey for me to learn to communicate with people in problems caused by this N-S clash. The Myers-Brigg model is really handy, it allowed me to understand what the fundamental problem is, and explain it to the parties involved.

It's funny though that so far I've not been able to do this verbally very often. When it comes to explaining these intricate things in details, writing proved to be much more effective.


On a side note, one study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues (eg. tonality, expressions, body language...etc). My interpretation of this statement is that, if the other party doesn't get you, meaning that they've missed out on all the subtle signal & messages you are sending, then no amount of talk is likely to change the situation.

It was an interesting epiphany for me to realise that verbal words really are just a small part of a communication, and nowadays I find that I will generally have a more enjoyable time, if I tone down the seriousness of the conversation, and focus on making it fun, fluid, interesting, exciting & engaging.

My focus had shifted from worrying about what to say, to paying more attention to what the other person is communicating non-verbally, and respond to these non-verbal cues. There's a learning curve involved, so sometimes it makes me wish that someone had taught me these things when I was younger. Why didn't they teach these in school?

Anyway, enough rambling, time to end this post.

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Pine Gun - conspiracy

Finally the 48Hours animation our team made is online.

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48Hours Auckland Finalists

We made it! Our team is one of the fifteen Auckland finalists.

After watching our animation on the big screen along with 7 other films last Sunday, I wasn't sure if we can compete with the traditional live-action films, especially after seeing how well made one of them was ("Fanatics"), from plot, acting, cinematography to lighting.

And consider there were 207 films handed in in Auckland, I say we did pretty well.

Now it's going to be screened in the Civic Theater.
link: Finalists
link: screening at the Civic
link: some screenshots

Go team Half Full.

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48 Hours of Madness

Yes, that's what I was up to last weekend, making an animation in 2 days for the 48 hours film competition, in a team of almost 40 people.

Being the Technical Director, my job was to make sure that everything ran smoothly, so that the animators & artists can put all their attention on pumping out their creative juice.

Everything went relatively well, the pipeline we designed worked like a charm, the software scripts I wrote didn't break, the only hair raising moment came 1.5 hours before the deadline, when we realized there wasn't enough time to render all the images. All the computers were running at full power, and there was no way that they can go any faster.

The director had to made the call, he canceled the re-render of several shots with problems (crazy reflections in a character's eye, wrong camera angle...etc), and focused only on the missing shots, so that we can at least have something to deliver. Finally at 20 minutes before the deadline, our tape was out of our door, and was delivered to the organizer 10 minutes before they shut their doors.

Now I can't wait to see it on big screens on Sunday.


To find out more, go to this link: 48HOURS - Pure Belter Madness

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The Daily Show - The Stockholm Syndrome

This is why I love the Daily Show, they made current issues fun to watch.

Wyatt Cenac travels to Sweden to wake them up from their socialist nightmare.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

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500000 customers hit by Telecom broadband blackout

A heading from a news website.
It happened last Friday night, the blackout came abruptly and without warning I suddenly find that I could not connect to any website.

Well, a year or two ago this probably would have made me angry or feeling frustrated, but after my time in India, where internet & power outage was part of your daily experience, I simply have lots of appreciation for the quality of life and the stable services I'm getting in a developed country.

The dramatic contrast between India and NZ really put things into perspective. Living in a country, where a company would apologize for the occurrence of an overnight service outage, is, awesome.

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Stories

Story 1
Life is hard. You have to study hard, work hard, compete with everyone to earn your place in the world.
How successful you are determines your value to the society, to the world, so you better struggle and strive to be somebody.

Story 2
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. You just have to relax, follow your heart, flow with the current and it will take you to where you want to be. Who you are is valuable and worthy beyond question, so, believe in yourself, relax and have fun on this journey called life.


I've followed story 1 for almost two decades in my life, the problem with it is that not only does it not work for me, but it almost broke my spirit, drove me to despair and the edge of self destruction.

So screw it, I'm going with story 2.
Letting go of the mental & emotional baggage of story 1 takes time and effort, but it's the best decision I've every made.

There are many people who live by the principals of story 2, for example: Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Irwin...etc, and I found them to be a great source of inspiration.

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Visualization

Soviet Union Olympic study: During the 1980s, what was then the Soviet Union's Olympic team tested various training procedures. Athletes from various sports were split into four groups.

The first group trained entirely with physical practice - 100 percent of the time. The second group used physical training 75 percent of the time, and mental imagery 25 percent of the time. The third group split its training 50-50. The fourth group spent 25 percent of the time training physically, and 75 percent of the time mentally.

The mental training required them to spend time every day practicing their sport in their mind using mental imagery. At the end of the study, the group who had made the biggest gains or improvement was the fourth group - the one that had spent only 25 percent of the time training physically and 75 percent of the time using mental imagery. Interestingly, the group that trained 100 percent of the time physically actually improved the least.

-- from "Speed Secrets 6" by Ross Bentley.

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Ouch my fingers!

The cold weather on the mountain have taken its first victim, after some itchy red patches appeared on my hands for several days, now 2.5 of my fingers are swollen like sausages.

Of course, it was my own fault for not realising the hazard of cold temperatures and taking preventive measures, but there was a good reason (whether wise or not): I tried to test my limits and see how much my body can adjust to the cold weather with minimum amount of external help.

So as a result:
- I washed clothes by hand with cold water
- I only wore a pair of gloves that's not wind proof and is probably slightly too tight (bad for blood circulation)
- I walked in snow/hail storms where the cold breeze attacked my umbrella-holding hands mercilessly (this one is unavoidable though)
- I ignored the early symptoms - the itchy red patches

Anyway my hands are now wrapped in a new pair of warm gloves, and with 12 days to go until I leave here, they shall survive.

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Nobody's perfect

No matter how amazing a person is, there's always something about them that can really annoy you.

In order to have a great friendship/relationship, you always need a bit of space & distance from each other. Maybe there are some exceptions, but the above holds true in most cases.

Ah well, nobody's perfect, I'm no exception.

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Opportunities & choices

My friend Yillie, who's both spiritual and a real psychic (interesting that these two qualities don't always come together in the same package), told me at the end of last year, when I felt like I have exhausted my options in finding works in the field I was pursuing, that there'll be opportunities coming to me in March 2007, and I'll be facing the dilemma of choosing between them.

Boy~ was she right. In the middle of March, I had to choose between staying in Auckland and joining a cafe business with my friend, or to go to India and work on the visual effects for a movie, and I only had 1 week in total before I had to make the decision.

It was a tough one, every mental & emotional muscle of mine were fired up, causing waves and waves of unsettling sensations in my body for over a week. Facing two totally different options with no "right" solution, I swung back and forth between my decisions.

Then something strange happened, on the last day, at around 2am in the morning, I reached a state of clarity, my mind was quiet, my emotions were silenced, I felt calm and peaceful, and I heard my inner voice repeating a message clearly: "Go to India".
It wasn't based on some logical reasoning, like "I should go because of...etc etc", instead it was a clear sense of knowing, that puts all my thoughts to rest.

So that's it, I'm leaving for Hyderabad, India, on Saturday 7th of April, staying for an initial contract period of 2 months, and then decide whether I'll stay longer or not.

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working overtime

The difference between last week and this week cannot be more drastic than it had been for me. Last week I had all the free time in the world, and I was considering apply for a position in a UK company, the job is pretty much what I'm looking for (technical artist/scripter), and at the moment there doesn't seem to be any opportunity of this nature in NZ.

However, a phone call last friday changed my plan. A friend brought the info that a company wants a short 3D animation to be done in 2 weeks, and he asked if I'm interested in taking on the project with 4 other people. I agreed without giving it much thoughts. But when I finally found out the complexity of the project....I was seriously stressed.

It seemed nuts to attempt to create a 2 minutes+ animation in 2 weeks, especially when none of the character design/setup, storyboard & animatic are finalized. With no other options, everyone in the group jumped straight in and started working, and I've been working for 10~12+ hours everyday since then.

The stress only goes away when I'm making progress, or when I detach myself from the project emotionally. Either way, I'm looking forward to get the animation finished and done with.

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translating wikipedia

I've spend 3 days last week translating wikipedia's entry of Hannibal Barca from English to Chinese. It took a lot longer than I expected: 3 full days of work for 5000 words.

A lot of time was actually spend on finding out existing translations for all the different names, for historical person, tribes, countries, cities, provinces, rivers, mountains...etc, which turned out to be a rather time consuming job. Some of the names have no translations to be found, and some of them have different variations in which case I had to find out which one is consistent with other wikipedia entries.

In the end it's a rather satisfying experience to see everything being neatly put together, however I'm definately going to take a break & probably won't start translating another entry any time soon.

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