Black Orange – Peter Du’s Blog

How does it feel to be in the flow?

1. Complete involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
2. A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing
4. Knowing that activity is doable – that our skills are adequate to task.
5. A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by in minutes.
7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes its own reward.

[via TED]

I felt this from time to time. And it has other name like “peace of mind”, “zen feeling”.

Update: Here is a diagram of how to get to flow, the nearer to “flow”, the easier it becomes.

How to achieve flow

NASA showed a photo of Mars which contains a whole in it. According to NASA’s explanation, the size of the hole found on the Mars are of the size of a football field. The hole is capable of protecting Martian life

and I don’t understand the joke on the headlines here, can someone explain it to me?

If you can identify colors and love flags around there world Come here and try it out!

Always successful? No Way! How fear of failure destroys success. It talks about:

1. Cultures of perfection
2. Clinging to the past
3. Why high achievers fail
4. Why balance is essential

No errors means no successes either.

hole,mars,game,fail,success,lesson,joke

I have attended Google’s recruitment talk in NUS on Wednesday. The talk is only for those who are interested in doing engineering. They talk about the well-know facts about Google, like those information easily found on the Google’s website. They talk about the free meals they have in Google, which spins off all the topics of the evening: what you will get in Google? Food. Interestingly enough, I am not particularly interested in doing engineering. So I raised several questions. One of them is

“Do you look to Yahoo! and Microsoft, talk to them or compete with them?” The answer was totally non-sense : “We don’t compete with them at all, we compete with ourselves only.”

And here is the quote from Times Magazine interview with the top three people in Google:

SCHMIDT: With all the headlines we’re making, we don’t want our announcements

to surprise or confuse anyone. We don’t want our partners to think we’re

competing against them.

So either the guy is really well brain-washed or he is simple carrying out the Google’s strategy, which is stated by Eric as follows:

SCHMIDT: We try very hard to look like we’re out of control. But in fact the

company is very measured. And that’s part of our secret.

I think a simple recruitment talk is part of the strategy as well. Techically the guy was on holiday. And he still chose to come to give a talk with a few colleges and brought T-shirt.

PAGE: We don’t generally talk about our strategy … because it’s strategic.

I would rather have people think we’re confused than let our competitors know

what we’re going to do. That’s an easy trade-off.

And I think being mysterious is the best way of describing Google in the strategy.

When he is being asked about his retirement plan besides 401K plan. He has a well-expected answer:

Stock Options.

Google, Recuirment, NUS, SOC, Marketing

There are programs in the school designed specifically for the l33t students, because the school deem them as the special crowd who are able to perform well in school, both academically and industrially.

I agree on this opinion, for most part of it. Of course, most students in the school are working very hard, but due to diversity in class choosing, people might not score that well in their other classes, but they do possess the talent to shine for school. But they are working, for companies set up by themselves, or those well-know ones. And it is very difficult to reach out to that crowd, but the company pay off them well, and they are doing really great business with those great characteristics they have within. Without a doubt, if they are enrolled in programs set for l33t students, they will do even better, for they have had the knowledge, and they have done it well before. As for those top ones, they prefer doing things related to research, and those jobs do pay them off well.

Hence, here comes the controversy, those who do really well genuinely do not want to go to industry that quickly and those are not doing that well in university has established a solid foundation for their future, hand-crafted by themselves. How will you solve it?

• Tay E Teng NUSSU President
• Cynthia D/O Mark R Mohan Computing Club President

More to Count? This is really something surprising to me. Girls work better together, don’t they?

In a sudden, or rather some self-prepared shock, I found myself sitting in front of my computer since 6pm yesterday, a twelve hours straight! Staring at my computer, coding my project And and I realize in a short while that time is indeed like water in sponge, while you can always extract them out, they goes off your fingers in a blink. How can you well utilize time?

Seldom a time I would think about the past, because they resembles only what I did, unchangeable. But I would like to reflect more on them, so that I could find out those times I am indeed spending time at my will. Save them

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Come one dude, energy rise and concentrate!

There are STILL two exams ahead, you need to really put your full attention to them instead of all the rest. Time flies, if you do not treasure what you have at hand, you will lose what you will have in the future. That’s why you do not need to worry about tomorrow. What you are doing will determine your future. God Bless those who obey his will.

Three more days to go for my exams this year. By then, I could finally go watching movie and prepare myself for some work. But Hey, It’s not the time yet!

After reviewing one particular module for so much time. I realized how hard it is to be a teacher who keeps on teaching on same module year after year. It is not only boring, but somehow very hard after a period of several years. Students who are becoming smarter and cleverer, having done your ten year series, they are harder to be tested. The teacher must think of some more creative ways to igniting the studying passion of the student, but most importantly, test how much his/her student really have learned.

Student as well, need to realize that study itself is not only doing projects, finishing assessments, handing in your lab report and do exams. They simply don’t prove you are capable of something, but you are capable of writing down the knowledge of it and possessing good question-answering skills

Maybe I have thought too much. Time for relaxing and continuing to reviewing next module

Around an hour ago. I finished my second exam : Financial Accounting. Though being tough, it is an interesting module. It allows you to read and understand those information published by various companies. Maybe I will take sometime to explain some key concepts later.

Sigh… A night has passed and yet I did not feel the pressure of the
upcoming exam tomorrow.. @ 12:16 GMT+8

Wasted 3 hours on posting on the forums… instead of reviewing the content
of the database.