The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley

Key takeaways from this parenting book by Amanda Ripley

Maths skills tended to better predict future earnings. Math had a way of predicting kids' futures. Teenagers who mastered higher level math classes were far more likely to graduate from college, even when putting aside other factors like race and income. They also earned more money after college.

Why did math matter so much? Some reasons were practical: More and more jobs required familiarity with probability, statistics, and geometry. The other reason was that math was not just math. Math is a language of logic. It is a disciplined, organized way of thinking. There is a right answer, there are rules that must be followed. More than any other subject,  math is rigor distilled. Mastering the language of logic helps to embed higher order habits in kids' minds: the ability to reason, for example, to detect patterns and make informed guesses. These kinds of skills had rising value in a world in which information was cheap and messy.

In Polish math class, they had learned tricks that had become automatic, so their brains were freed up to do the harder work. It was the difference between being fluent in language and not.

He didn't know that math could be cosmically beautiful and something he could master with hard work, time and persistence, just the way he'd mastered Chekhov.

A student's race and family income mattered but how much such things mattered varied wildly from country to country. Students from private school, did not, statistically speaking, add much value

In essence, PISA revealed what should have been obvious but was not: that spending on education did not make kids smarter. Everything - everything - depended on what teachers, parents, and students did with those investments. As in all other large organizations, from GE to the Marines, excellence depended on execution, the hardest things to get wrong.

Money did not lead to more learning either. In the education superpowers, parents were not necessarily more involved in their children's education, just differently involved. And most encouragingly, the smart kids had not always been so smart. Change, it turned out, could come within a single generation.

PISA demanded fluency in problem solving and the ability to communicate; in other words the basic skills I needed to do my job and take care of my family in a world choked with information and subject to sudden economic change.

Rigor mattered. Koreans understood that mastering difficult academic content was important. They didn't take shortcuts, especially in math. They assumed that performance was mostly a product of hard work - not God given talent. This attitude meant that all kids tried harder and it was more valuable to a country than gold or oil.

Korean schools existed for one and only one purpose: so that children could master complex academic material. US schools by contrast,were about many things, only one of which was learning This lack of focus made it easy to lose sight of what mattered most.

Other parental efforts yielded big returns, the surveys suggested. When children were young, parents who read to them every day or almost every day had kids who performed much better in reading, all around the world. What did reading to your kids mean? Done well, it meant teaching them about the world - sharing stories about faraway places, about smoking volcanoes and little boys who were sent to bed without dinner. It meant asking them questions about the book, questions that encouraged them to think for themselves. It meant sending a signal to kids about the importance of not just reading but of learning about all kinds of new things.

As kids got older, the parental involvement that seemed to matter most was different but related. All over the world, parents who discussed movies, books and current affairs with their kids had teenagers who performed better in reading. Here again, parents who engaged their kids in conversation about things larger than themselves were essentially teaching their kids to become thinking adults. Unlike volunteering in schools, those kinds of parental efforts delivered clear and convincing results, even across different countries and different income levels.

In fact, fifteen year olds whose parents talked about complicated social issues with them not only scored better on PISA but reported enjoying reading more overall. What parents did with children at home mattered more than what parents did to hep out at school.

Korean parenting, by contrast, were coaches. Coach parents cared deeply about their children too. Yet they spent less time attending school events and more time training their children at home: reading to them, quizzing them on their multiplication tables while they were cooking dinner, and pushing them to try harder. They saw education as one of their jobs.

Asian parents taught their children to add before they could read. They did it systematically and directly with a work book, not organically.

Parents who read to their children tended to raise kids who scored higher points on PISA. By Contrast, parents who regularly played with alphabet toys with their young children saw no such benefit. And at least one high impact form of parental involvement did not actually involve kids or schools at all: If parents simply read for pleasure at home on their own, their children were more likely to enjoy reading too. Kids could see what parents valued and it mattered more than what parents said.

A coddled, moon bounce of a childhood could lead to young adults who had never experienced failure or developed self control or endurance - experiences that mattered as much or more than academic schools.

Actual research on praise suggested the opposite was true. Praise that was vague, insincere or excessive tended to discourage kids from working hard and trying new things. IT had a toxic effect. To work, praise had to be specific, authentic and rare.

Adults didn't have to be stern or aloof to help kids learn. In fact, just asking children about their school days and showing genuine interest in what they were learning could have the same effect on PISA scores as hours of private tutoring. Asking serious questions about a child's book had more value than congratulating the child for finishing it, in other words.

Authoritative is a mash up of authoritarian and permissive. These parents inhabit the sweet spot between the two: they were warm, responsive and close ot their kids but as their children got older, they gave them freedom to explore and to fail and to make their own choices. Throughout their kids' upbringing, authoritative parents also had clear bright limits rules they did not negotiate.

Parents and teachers who manage to be both warm and strict seem to strike a resonance with children, gaining their trust along with their respect. Authoritative parents trained their kids to be resilient and it seemed to work.

In Korea and Finland, despite all their differences, everyone - kids, parents and teachers - saw getting an education as a serious quest, more important than sports or self esteem. Everything was more demanding through and through. Kids had more freedom too. This freedom was important and it wasn't a gift. By definition, rigorous work required failure; you simply could not do it without failing. That meant that teenagers had the freedom to fail when they were still young enough to learn how to recover. When they didn't work hard, they got worse grades. The consequences were clear and reliable.

The fundamental difference was a psychological one. The education superpowers believed in rigor. People in these countries agreed on the purpose of school: School existed to help students master complex academic material. Other things mattered too, but nothing mattered as much. The most important difference Id seen so far was the drive of students and their families. IT was viral and it mattered. Kids feed off each other. This feedback loop started in kindergarden and just grew more powerful each year, for better and for worse.

In the education superpowers, each child knew the importance of an education,

The teachers, everything is based on the teachers. We need good teachers - well prepared and well chosen.

In an automated global economy, kids needed to be driven;; they need to know how to adapt, since they would be doing it all their lives. They needed a culture of rigor.

To give our kids the kinds of education they deserved, we had to first agree that rigor mattered most of all; that school existed to help kids learn to think, to work hard, and yes to fail. All children must learn rigorous higher order thinking to thrive in the modern world. The only way to do that is by creating a serious intellectual culture in schools.

David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell

Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough at all. 

The lesson of the trickster tales is the third desirable difficulty: the unexpected freedom that comes from having nothing to lose. 

Find the means to create a crisis to make...tip his hand. Play Brer Rabbit and try to get xxx to throw them in the briar patch.

We need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others.

When people in authority wants the rest of us to behave, it matters how they behave. This is called the principle of legitimacy and legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice - that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Escape from harsh reality is easy when one loves books. I can see why this book was named best novel of the year (2005) by Times Magazine - I was sick when I started picking up and had intended to read till I got sleepy enough but instead, it was such an engaging page turner that I could not put the book down till I got to the very last page.

The Slog Reviews: 9/10. The book, written in the first narrative, is made for easy reading yet the author manages to convey and deal with many difficult issues from cloning to the angst of growing up and relationships with all its hopes, fulfilment and pain.

There are 3 main characters - Kathy, the character through whom the story is told, Tommy and Ruth. For a really good summary of the story, click here. All are clones who are expected to give donations and brought up in a house called Hailsham. There, they are encouraged to engage in artwork and poetry. Tommy and Ruth becomes a couple despite there being an unmistakable bond between Tommy and Kathy. This bond however remains that of friendship and respect and never does Kathy think of entering into a relationship with her close friend's (Ruth) boyfriend. Years later when their paths seperate, Kathy looks for Ruth to become her carer after Ruth's second donation which apparently did not go well. Before Ruth goes for her next donation, she apologises to Kathy for keeping her and Tommy apart. Kathy looks for Tommy and they become a couple but Tommy is scheduled for his fourth and final donation. Ruth urges them to look for the Madame at Hailsham where she believes Tommy can get a deferral if Kathy and Tommy can show they are in love. Ruth even convinces them that the artwork was used to gauge the depth of Kathy and Tommy's souls, and judge their true love. So filled with hope, Kathy and Tommy goes, but only to find out that Hailsham was a failed experiment to prove to the world that clones had souls - the artwork was used for that purpose but Madame did not managed to convince the world and starved of funding, Hailsham was closed and clones brought up in worse environments. Kathy asks Madame why she had tears in her eyes long ago when she watched Kathy hugging a pillow as if it were a baby and singing Never Let Me Go. Kathy thought that Madame had felt sorry for her knowing that Kathy would never have a baby, being a clone. Madame replied that she saw a child asking the old kinder world she knew never to let her go in face of a new and cruel world (using clones). I didn't understand the ending though - when Kathy and Tommy parted for the last time and Kathy saw a fence with all the things she lost washed up against them and Tommy now 1 of them. It was just sad, but significant in a way that needs to be explained to a denser mind. :P

I kind of liked the book in that...if 2 people are meant to be together, they will be, in the end. Even someone else trying to keep them apart can only succeed for some period of time. It isn't true love prevailing I think, I think it's fate, all written in the stars and somehow we will find our way back to the one we were meant to be with. The years in between (whether alone or someone else) aren't lost or wasted, but necessary as a lesson and experience.

It isn't the length of time we had or will have together that mattered, it is the quality of that time, the moments lived, to be had. :P

And on never letting a person go? There is nothing to stop a person from leaving - you can cage the body but never the heart, the mind, the soul, the spirit.

Whatever you Think Think the Opposite by Paul Arden

I happened to pick up this book while at Borders last week. Tired from all the walking and running about, I decided to flip through the rather thin but interesting looking book while resting my feet/butt at the bookshop. Some of the pages didn't "speak" to me but some did, especially those related to work woes which a number of my friends have been sharing.

So I thought I'll share the wisdom in the book to encourage those of you who are discouraged / tired etc at work.

Life is about decisions. Whatever decision you make is the only one you could make. Otherwise you would make a different one. Everything we do, we choose. What is there to regret? You are the person you choose to be.

If people constantly reject your ideas or what you have to offer, resign. You can't keep fighting AND losing. That makes you a problem. If you are good and right for the job, your resignation will not be accepted. You will be re-signed on your terms. If they accept your resignation, you were in the wrong job and it is better to move on. It takes courage but it is the right move.

Death is more universal than life - everyone dies but not everyone lives ~ A. Sachre

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In by Roger Fisher and William Ury

I picked this book up by chance at the National Library and it is one of the best books that I've ever had the good fortune to stumble upon. This book has made a difference to my life, and came in extremely handy, especially over the past few weeks. The Slog Reviews: Off the charts. Anyone, everyone, should pick a copy up and start reading! As always, I'll set out below the parts I would like to share and, well, remember:

1. The game of negotiation takes place at 2 levels. At 1 level, negotiation addresses the substance, at another, it focuses on the procedure for dealing with the substance. Instead of positional bargaining (taking positions), an alternative would be principled negotiations. This can be boiled down to 4 basic points:

People: Separate the people from the problem. Be soft on the people, hard on the problem. Proceed independent of trust.

Interests: Focus on the interests, not positions. Avoid having a bottom line

Options: Generate a variety of possibilities before deciding what to do - before trying to reach agreement, invent options for mutual gain.

Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard. Try to reach a result based on standards independent of will. Reason and be open to reason; Yield to principle, not pressure.

2. Failing to deal with others sensitively as human beings prone to human reactions can be disastrous for a negotiation. Always ask "Am I paying enough attention to the people problem?" It is useful to think in terms of 3 basic categories: perception, emotion and communication.

Perception - The other side's thinking is the problem. Put yourselves in their shoes. The ability to see the situation as the other side sees it, as difficult as it may be, is one of the most important skills that a negotiator can possess. You should withhold judgment for a while as you "try on" their views. Don't blame them for your problem - separate the symptoms from the person with whom you are talking. Discuss perceptions in a frank honest manner and look for opportunities to act inconsistently with their perception. Also, give them a stake in the outcome by making sure they participate in the process - agreement becomes much easier if both parties feel ownership of the ideas. Get the other side involved early, ask their advice, give credit generously for ideas wherever possible, don't take credit for yourself. Make your proposals consistent with their values - if the substance can be phrased or conceptualized differently so that it seems a fair outcome, they will then accept it. Face-saving involves reconciling an agreement with principle and with the self-image of the negotiators.

Emotion - Talk with the people on the other side about their emotions. Talk about your own. Allow the other side to let off steam. Listen quietly without responding to their attacks and occasionally to ask the speaker to continue until he has spoken his last word. Use symbolic gesture - often an apology can defuse emotions effectively even when you do not acknowledge personal responsibility for the action or admit an intention to harm.

Communication - Listen actively and acknowledge what is being said. If you pay attention and interrupt occasionally to say "Did I understand correctly that you are saying that...?" Make it your task not to phrase a response but to understand them as they see themselves. As you repeat what you have understood them to have said, phrase it positively from their point of view, making the strength of their case clear. understanding is not agreeing. Speak to be understood - It is clearly unpersuasive to blame the other party for the problem, to engage in name-calling or to raise your voice. It is more persuasive to describe a problem in terms of its impact on you than in terms of what they did or why. Before making a significant statement, know what ou want to communicate or find out and know what purpose this information will serve.

3. Prevention works best - build a working relationship. The time to develop this is before the negotiations starts. Face the problem, not the people. A more effective way for the parties to think of themselves is as partners in a hardheaded side by side search for a fair agreement advantageous to each. To help the other side change from a face to face orientation to side by side, you might raise the issue with them explicitly "Look, we are both lawyers. Unless we try to satisfy your interests, we are hardly likely to reach an agreement that satisfies mine and vice versa. Let's look together at the problem of how to satisfy our collective interests." It helps to sit side by side on the same side of a table and to have in fron to you the contract or whatever else depicts the problem.

4. The basic problem in a negotiation lies not in conflicting positions, but in the conflict between each side's needs, desires, concerns and fears. To find out their interests is as important as figuring out yours - one basic technique is to put yourself in their shoes and ask "Why?" If you do, make clear you are asking not for justification of the position but for an understanding of the needs, hopes, fears or desires it serves. Ask "Why Not?" Identify the basic decision that those on the other side probably see you asking them for and then to ask yourself why they have not made that decision. If you are trying to change their minds, the starting point is to figure out where their minds are not. Realize each side will have multiple interests. Do not assume each person on the other side has the same interests. The most powerful interests are basic human needs - eg security, economic well-being, a sense of belonging, recognition and control over one's life. To sort out the interests of each side, it helps to write them down as they occur to you. This will not only help you remember them but also enable you to improve the quality of your assessment as you learn new info and place interests in their estimated order of importance. Be specific about your interests. Concrete details make your description credible but also add impact. If you want the other side to appreciate your interests, demonstrate you appreciate theirs. Put the problem before the answer. If you want someone to listen and understand your reasoning, give your interests and reasoning first and your conclusions or proposals later. Look forward, not back. You will satisfy your interests better if you talk about where you would like to go rather than about where you have come from. Be concrete but flexible - to convert your interests to concrete options - ask yourself, if tomorrow the other side agrees to go along with me, what do I now think I would like them to go along with?" Go into a meeting with 1 or more specific options that would meet your legitimate interests but with an open mind. An open mind is not an empty one. Give positive support to the human beings on the other side equal in strength and vigor with which you emphasize the problem.

5. Broaden the options available instead of narrowing the gap between positions, Do not engage in premature judgment, searching for the single answer, assumption of a fixed pie and thinking that solving their problem is their problem. To invent creative options, you will need to separate the act of inventing options from the act of judging them, broaden the options on the table rather than look for a single answer, search for mutual gains and invent ways of making their decisions easier. Change the scope of a proposed agreement -and ask how the subject matter may be enlarged so as to sweeten the pot and make agreement more attractive. Look for mutual gain and identify shared interests. Dovetail differing interests - invent several options all equally acceptable to you and ask the other side what they prefer. You want to know what is preferred and not acceptable. Take that option and work with it some more to come up with 2 or more variants - look for items which are low cost to you and high benefit to them. Few things facilitate a decision as much as precedent. Search for it. Look for a decision or statement that the other side may have made in a similar situation. Instead of threats, concentrate both on making them aware of the consequences they can expect if they do decide as you wish and on improving those consequences from their point of view. A final test of an option is to write it out in the form of a yesable proposition - try to draft a proposal to which their responding with the single word yes would be sufficient realistic and operational.

6. Insist on using objective criteria. Depending on the issue, you may wish to propose that an agreement be based on market value, precedent, scientific judgment, professional standards, efficiency, costs, what a court would decide, moral standards, equal treatment, tradition, reciprocity. Fair procedures - to produce an outcome independent of will, use fair standards for the substantive question or fair procedures for resolving the conflicting interests - eg dividing a cake between 2 children - one cuts and one chooses - neither can complain about an unfair division. A variation is for parties to negotiate what they think is a fair arrangement before they go on to decide their respective roles in it. Other basic means of settling differences - taking turns, drawing lots, letting someone else decide and so on. 3 basic points - 1. frame each issue as a joint search for objective criteria, 2. reason and be open to reason as to which standards are most appropriate and how they should be applied 3. never yield to pressure only to principle. Ask What's your theory, agree first on principles - each standard the other side proposes becomes a lever you can then use to persuade them. In a given case there may be 2 standards which produce different results, but which both parties agree seem equally legitimate - in that case, splitting the difference is perfectly legitimate as the outcome is independent of the will of the parties. Pressure can take many forms - if the other side will not budge and will not advance a persuasive basis for their position, then there is no further negotiation. Take it or leave it. Before you leave it, look to see if you have overlooked some objective standard which makes their offer a fair one.

7. No method can guarantee success if all the leverage lies on the other side. In response to power, the most any method of negotiation can do is to meet 2 objectives: 1st to protect you against making any agreement you should reject and second, to help you make the most of the assets you do have so that any agreement you reach will satisfy your interests as well. Instead of having a bottom line, have a BATNA - Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement. If you have not thought carefully about what you will do if you fail to reach an agreement, you are negotiating with your eyes closed. Although your BATNA is the true measure by which you should judge any proposed agreement, you should have a trip wire which should provide you with something in reserve. The better your BATNA, the greater your power. Spend time developing your BATNA.

After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick

I haven't written for a week since the last post because I pretty much lost the inspiration/will to get up in the morning, much less blog or write. No prizes for guessing why - I am the champion of wallowing - I could hit rock bottom and scrabble for some time there instead of bouncing up.

A friend of mine who had met my CEB told me to go hang out with my CEB because that "Bag of Nonsense" would make me laugh again. And indeed, despite my best efforts to bemoan my current situation, my CEB cheered me up considerably in no time at all, enough for me to burst out laughing even. We also went to Kong Kong Taison Seafood Restoran and needless to say, the RMB164 meal revived my spirits. Nothing to put a person in a better mood than food! We had 2 large crabs (more than 1 kg each) cooked in 2 different styles

Chilli sauce:


Black pepper:

And for once, we were allowed to sit in the air-conditioned area because we had breached the RM150 mark with all that food - crabs, lala and kangkong

After lunch, it was off to his favourite hotel in JB and despite us vowing not to have dinner at all after all the "pigging-out", we ended up driving out still about 8.30pm, at his behest, to have porridge at Tang Shifu at Sutera Mall. I wanted something different so I ordered the Shi Quan Mee Suah with Ginseng and Fish Maw (RM 16.90) and that, was pretty good!

Because they forgot his order, we waited a full half hour more for the food to be served, and by that time it was too late to get my craving for the white chocolate macademia nut cake fulfilled. Believe it or not, Secret Recipe would not sell me any cakes at 9.50pm on a Sat night because they said the cashier had gone home. So, we decided to head back and when we tried to start the engine, we found the batt was flat. I'm not kidding. There we were in an open-air carpark in a foreign land (without the same standard of public transportation as SG) with a car that wouldn't start. And oh yeah, it was raining to boot. My CEB found a guy who had the one of those jump-start cables but the cables were too weak (wrong voltage). Thankfully my CEB had the presence of mind to run into Carrefour just when they were closing and buy a pair of jump-start cables with the right voltage. The next morning, I was praying that somehow the batt would start up but no such luck. And, the brand new cables didnt work - the car batt was so low that the usual beep sound when I click the unlock doors button didn't even sound! I suggested asking the hotel for help and one of the staff found a cab driver who drove over and using that same set of cables, he managed to jump start my car by pulling on the trottle bit of the old cab's engine. Apparently the cables didn't work with the first two cars we tried with because the air con in the cars were turned on while they were revving the engine. After that, I drove to the Autobac place and paid RM250 for the battery to be replaced - it was a particularly nasty experience, esp when the batt first went flat in the night - but I think that my CEB and I are getting slightly better at handing stressful situations together after laying down some basic ground rules.

So when I read the book After Ever After a few nights ago , a book which was obviously meant for a different target audience (teens), one part of the book stuck with me. Ok, context first - the book is told through the eys of a young teen who is a cancer survivor (Jeff). Jeff has a best friend at school who isnt past the 5 year mark for cancer (Tad). When Tad has a relapse (and yes, he eventually dies), Jeff beats himself up for it and his school's guidance teacher asks him for his application form. Jeff is suitably puzzled (as was I). The teacher explains that the application form is the one he filled up to get cancer. Obviously there isn't such a form. The teacher then explains to Jeff that one doesn't always get to choose the cards one is dealt with by a higher power - one just has to play one's cards as best as one can, even if one is dealt a lousy hand. (As my friend, The Slug (not The Slog, mind!) would say "Go down fighting always rather than roll over and show your belly").

So this timely reminder that life is indeed a series of accidents and choices (both of which can be either good or bad), together with my CEB and my beloved boss's advice/plan, has set me right back up on my feet again instead of scrabbling at rock bottom. :)

I am The Slog, hear me roar...:D

Death Mask by Graham Masterton

I've just completed yet another horror novel, and by one of my favourite authors, Graham Masteron. I've never forgotten his first novel, Tengu, which I read in my teens (oh dear, and where did time go?) and reading Death Mask made me recall how good Graham is at writing novels with lots of random senseless violence.

The Slog Reviews: 9/10. Death Mask is about a woman who is sodemised against her will with a vodka bottle by a man who takes a fancy to her at a conference. The man who appears to be remoseless about what he has done to her, sends her flowers every week with a note referring to what he had done to her. One day, she kills him by slashing him to death in an elevator with a knife and then sticks the knife into the gap between the elevator doors so as to inflict deep slash wounds on herself. She tells the police that a red faced man with slits for eyes was the assailant and the police engage a sketch artist to draw a pic of the so called assailant based on the description. Little do they know that the sketch artist is experiening a phenomenon where things she draws come to life because of a ring by Van Gogh hung on a necklace around her neck that she bought from some flea market. So when she draws the picture of the assailant, the picture does come to life, borne of the spirit of the sodomised woman's vengeance and commits mass murder of men, women and children all around the city using two choppers. The sketch artist eventually manages to put an end to this unnatural creature by drawing (and therefore bringing to life) a picture of her late father in law who was a superb detective. A horror novel that is a good bedtime read.

House Rules by Jodi Picoult

I reserved this book weeks ago and almost forgot about it until I received a reminder from NLB that the book was ready for collection. It really has been quite some time since I've read a fiction book - backlog of Time magazines on my room's table is the primary reason. It doesn't help too that my "reading" taste has changed considerably over time from fiction to non-fiction.


That being said, I got home about 11 last night and despite my resolve to put down the book at an appropriate time and have an early night, I found myself reading till 3-4am this morning until I got to the end of the book. I don't think I could write a synopsis of the book as well as this one found here by the author herself. There are also extracts of the book found on that webpage.

The Slog Reviews: 8/10. Most of JP's books are tearjerkers on its own but not this one, well, not unless one relates to the subject matter of "autism". Even so, this book has a happy ending, unlike the last book "Handle with Care" which had a most tragic unexpected ending. I've never met anyone or known anyone personally who is autistic but after reading House Rules, I am filled with even more respect and admiration for someone I know whose child is autistic. Given what a wonderful person she is intrinsically, indeed I see why God would chose to give a child with special needs to her to love and take care of. The challenges that a mother faces with an autistic child is depicted in a realistic yet heartbreaking manner in House Rules. And because of that, it dawns upon me after reading this book, how this woman I know of, is able to do what she does and be someone I can only hope to be someday, some time.

Superfreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

I was #47 on the reservation list and I picked it up only...erh, 3 weeks ago? Now the book is due tomorrow and I can't renew it because other people have reserved the same and I am barely through with it. Not that it isn't as great a read as Freakonomics which I reviewed here but because I have been, to use then law-firm parlance "swarmed". With work of course but also with all the fishing and travelling - and it's going to be this way till October.

The Slog Reviews: 10/10 for this book's contents and also for the writing which engages the reader with its light, friendly and informative style. In its explanatory note, the authors said that their previous book had a unifying theme afterall - "People respond to incentives". In this book, using statistics/accumulated data, the authors present theories/conclusions which may change or at least challenge the beliefs and norms that we hold dear.

For eg, from this book we learn that

1. Drink driving is safer than drunk walking in USA (except that a drunk walker isn't likely to hurt or kill anyone other than himself cf drunk drivers)

2. There is good reason to be skeptical of data from personal surveys. There is often a vast gulf between how pp say they behave and how they actually behave (declared preferences and revealed preferences).

3. When the solution to a given problem doesn't lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong.

4. Women earn lesser than men. Even Harvard women. Further, a considerable amount of research has shown that overweight women suffer a greater wage penalty than overweight men. The same is true for women with bad teeth. However, there is one labor market which women have always dominated: prostitution. Since time immemorial and all over the world, men have wanted more sex than they could get for free. Wages are determined in large part by the laws of supply and demand which are often more powerful than laws made by legislators. The greatest competition to a prostitute is a woman willing to have sex with a man for free and sex outside of marriage was much harder to come by and carried significantly higher penalities than it does today. However, the prostitution market still thrives because men hire prostitutes do do things a girlfriend of wife would never be willing to do.

5. In the business world, to price discriminate, some customers must have clearly identifiable traits that place them in the willing to pay more category and the seller must be able to prevent resale of the product, thereby destroying any arbitrage opportunities.

6. A realtor and a pimp perform the same primary service: marketing your product to potential customers. The Internet is proving to be a pretty powerful substitute for the Realtor.

7. While gender discrimination may be a minor contributor to the male-female wage differential, it is desire - or the lack thereof - that accoutns for most of the wage gap. 3 main factors: Women take fewer finance cources. All else being equal, there is a strong correlation between a finance background and career earnings. Women work fewer hours than men. Women take more career interruptions than men. Female MBS with no children work 3% fewer hours than the average male MBA but female MBS with children work 24% lesser.

8. It is no exaggeration to say that a person's entire life can be greatly influenced by the fluke of his or her birth, whether the fluke is one of time, place or circumstances.

9. Mastery arrives through deliberate practice. Deliberate practice has 3 key components: setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome. When it comes to choosing a life path, people should do what they love because if you don't love what you're doing, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good at it.

10. What are the characteristics of the best doctors? An excellent doctor is disproportionately likely to have attended a top-ranked medical school and served a residency at a prestigious hospital. More experience is also valuable and oh yes, you also want your ER doctor to be a woman.

11. Human behaviour is influenced by a dazzlingly complex set of incentives, social norms, framing references, and the lessons gleaned from past experience - in a word, context. We act as we do because given the choices and incentives at play in a particular circumstance, it seems most productive to act that way. This is also known as rational behaviour which is what economics is all about.

12. Most giving is impure altruism or wam glow altruism. U give not only because u want to help but because it makes u look good or feel good or perhaps feel less bad.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

After watching the movie Shutter Island which I reviewed here, I knew I had to get the book and read it asap to get the answer to the twists the movie presented, so I went online to reserve the library book and thankfully, I was the first in the reservation list. The other book I had reserved some time ago, called Super Freakonomics which is some sort of a sequel to the book Freakonomics which I reviewed here, had also arrived at the Central Library so I picked both books up at the same time together with another 2 books that caught my eye.

When I got home, the first book I read was Shutter Island of course and because I've discarded the nasty habit of reading the last few pages of a book first (it spoils the pleasure), I only got my answers at the end of the book - Andrew Laeddis/Edward Daniels/Teddy was insane - the hospital was not trying to make him crazy or make him believe he was crazy so that they could imprison him out of fear he would blow the whistle on their experiments on patients. Andrew Laeddis could not accept what had happened - his wife killing their 3 children, in particular, Rachel, his 4 year old daughter, closest to his heart (according to the book) and he murdering the person he loved the most in the world, his wife.

The line in the movie "Would you rather live as a monster or die as a hero?" is not in the book at all. I read though that the author of the book had taken the stance that Teddy did not consciously opt for the lobotomy to erase all his memories because if this was the case, that Teddy had shown some awareness, the lobotomy would not have been carried out. So this answers the second twist in the movie too.

The Slog Reviews: 8/10. As for whether one should read the book, I would say that if one has not watched the movie, one could well enjoy it but if one has watched the movie and read my reviews on both the movie and book, then maybe one could give it a miss. Because some of the lines in the movie are lifted right off the book and the movie brings to life not just the characters but the relationships as described in the book, in particular, Teddy's deep love for his wife.

The book describes the relationship between Teddy and Dolores in a moving manner too:

When he met her
"He thought: so this is what it feels like to love. No logic to it - he barely knew her. But there it was just the same. He'd just met the woman he'd known, somehow, since before he was born. The measure of every dream he'd never dared indulge."

When he thinks of her (when he is Teddy and not Andrew)
"But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking...I held her. This world can't give me that. The world can only give me reminders of what I don't have, can never have, didn't have for long enough...We were supposed to grow old together. I wanted to watch the lines etch themselves into your flesh and know when each and everyone of them appeared. Die together. And if I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again would be to die, then I couldn't raise the gun to my head fast enough"

"What was the point of buying groceries, shaving...if none of it brought him closer to her..."

When he has just pulled his 3 children's bodies from the lake she drowned them in
"If he could sacrifice his own mind to restore hers, he would. Sell his limbs? Fine. She had been all the love he'd ever known for so long. She had been what carried him through the war, through this awful world. He loved her more than his life, more than his soul."

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

The Slog Reviews: 10/10. This book, as The Economist put it "A delight". It is well-written yet easy to read and most captivating (one could read it in a single sitting!). The book is the product of an unconventional, creative economist and a talented journalist and as the economist admits, there is no unifying theme at all. The book is rather, a publication of the economist's investigations of the riddles of everyday life and how the world really works. The economist's underlying belief is "that the modern world is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of thinking".

Some bits of the book worth thinking about:

1. Experts are human, and humans respond to incentives. How any given expert treats you, therefore, will depend on how that expert's incentives are set up. It is one thing to muse about experts' abusing their position and another to prove it. The best way to do so would be to measure how an expert treats you versus how he performs the same service for himself.

2. This book has been written from a very specific world-view, based on a few fundamental views: incentives are the cornerstone of modern life and understanding them is the key to solving just about any riddle.

3. Economics is at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, esp when other people want or need the same thing. We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and positive, from the outset of life. An incentive is simply a means of urging pp to do more of a good thing and less of a bad thing. There are 3 basic flavors of incentive: economic, social and moral and very often, a single incentive scheme will include all 3 varieties.

4. Any incentive is inherently a trade off: the trick is to balance the extremes. Every incentive has a dark side. Whatever the incentive, whatevcer the situation, dishonest pp will try to gain an advantage by whatever means necessary. As W.C. Fields once said: a hting worth having is a thing worth cheating for.

5. Who cheats? Well, just about anyone if the stakes are right. Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more for less. If economics is a science primarily concerned with incentives, it is also a science with statistical tools to measure how pp respond to those incentives. All u need are some data.

6. Information is a beacon, a cudgel, an olive branch, a deterrent - all depending on who wields it and how. Information is so powerful that the assumption of information, even if the info does not actually exist, can have a sobering effect. It is common for one party to a transaction to have better information than the other party. In the parlance of economists, such a case is known as information asymmetry. Information is the currency of the internet - it has shrunk the gap between experts and the public - but it has hardly slain the beast that is information asymmetry eg Enron.

7. Armed with information, experts can exert a gigantic leverage: fear.

8. Five terms with a positive correlation to the sale price of a house: granite, state of the art, corian, maple, gourmet while five terms with a negative correlation: fantastic, spacious, charming, !, great neighbourhood. 3 of the 5 positive terms are physical descriptions of the house and such terms are specific and straightfoward and therefore pretty useful. Fantastic meanwhile is a dangerously ambiguous adjective as is charming.

9. Of the many ways to fail on a dating website, not posting a photo of yourself is most certain. For men, a woman's looks are of paramount importance. For women, a man's income is terribly income. But a woman's income appeal is a bell-shaped curve: men do not want to be date low-earning women, but once a woman starts earning too much they seem to be scared off. For men, being short is a big disadvantage but weight doesnt matter. For women, being overweight is deadly.

10. The gulf beftween the info we publicly proclaim and the info we know is true is often vast. This can be seen in personal relationships, in commercial transactions and of course in politics.

11. Emotion is the enemy of rational argument. And as emotions go, one of them - fear- is more potent than the rest.

12. A long line of studies, including research into twins seperated at birth, had already concldued that genes alone are repsonsible for perhaps 50% of a child's personality and abilities. The 8 factors that are strongly correlated with a child's early test scores (bearing in mind poor testing in early childhood isnt necessarily a great harbinger of future earnings, creativity or happiness): the child has highly educated parents, the parents have high socioeconomic status, the child's mother was 30 or older at the time of her first child's birth, the child had low birthweight, the child's parents speak Eng at home, the child's parents are involved in the PTA and the child has many books in his house. A child's family structure, a mother not working between birth and kindergarten, the child attending "head start" the child being regularly spanked, the child frequently watching tv, the child's parents reading to him nearly every day do not have any effect. The first list describes things that parents are while the second list (the ones without any effect) are things that parents do. By the time most people pick up a parenting book, it is far too late. Most of the things that matter were decided long ago - who you are, wh om you married, what kind of life you lead. But it isn't so much a matter of what you do as a parent; it's who you are.

13. An overwhelming no of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their child will be. The name isnt likely to make a shard of difference.

14. An economist might describe a gift as a signaling mechanism that allows 1 to tell another that she (a) is thinking about him (b) cares about him and (c) wants to give him something that he'll value. With adults, an adult is free to buy whatever he wants, and presumably he knows what he likes. So ideally, you'd want to give him something he might like but doesn't know about, or some kind of guilty pleasure that he wouldn't buy for himself. Either case, u are creating value for the recipient by giving him something that is actually worth more to him than the money you spent on it.

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I doubt I have the ability to summarise or condense this book - my mind is still spinning from the terminology used - ludic fallacy, epilogism, epistemic opacity, epistemic arrogance, mediocristan, platonicity, retrospective distortion and statistical regress argument. Nevermind the glossary page at the end.

The Slog Reviews: 9/10 and a must-read (well, for those who have a certain amount of faith in their intellectual and reading abilities)

Some bits which I thought worth typing out and referring to:

1. The lesson for the small is : be human! Just be a fool in the right places. Avoid unnecessary dependence on large-scale harmful predictions - those and only those. Avoid the big subjects that may hurt your future: be fooed in smal matters, not in the large. Do not listen to economic forecasters or to predictors in social science. Know how to rank beliefs not according to their plausibility but by the harm they may cause.

2. If you shed the idea of full predictability, there are plenty of things to do provided you remain conscious of their lmiits. Knowing that you cannot predict does not mean that you cannot predict from unpredictability. The bottom line: be prepared! Be prepared for all relevant eventualities.

3. Be open minded to let luck play a role. Maximise the serendipity around you. Trial and error means trying a lot. You need to love to lose.

4. People are often ashmed of losses so they engage in strategies that produce very little volatility but contain the risk of a large loss.

5. Barbell strategy - if you accept most risk measures are flawed, because of the Black Swan, then the straegy is to be hyperconservative and hyperaggresive instead of being midly aggresive or conservative. Instead of putting your money in medium risk investments, you need to put a portion, say 85 to 90 percent in extremely safe instruments, like Treasury Bills. The remaining 10 to 15 percent you put in extremely speculative bets, as leverages as possible (like options), preferably venture capital style portfolios.

6. Make a distinction between positive contingencies and negative ones. Distinguish between those human undertakings in which the lack of predictability can be (or has been) extremely beneficial and those where the failure to understand the future caused harm. In positive black sawn busineeses, you have to lose small to make big. You have little to lose per book and for completely unexpected reasons, one may take off. And you fare best if you know where your ignorance lies. This is different from collecting lottery tickets as these do not have a scalable payoff: there is a known upper limit to what they can deliver. The ludic fallacy applies here. Also, lottery tickets have known rules and laboratory style well presented possibilites.

7. Don't look for the precise and the local - chance favors the prepared. U do not have to look for something particular every morning but work hard to let contingency enter your working life. You got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going because you might not get there. Invest in preparedness and not in prediction. REmember that infinite vigilance is not possible.

8. Seize any opportunity or anything that looks like oppty. They are rare, much rarer than you think. Positive black swans have a necessary first step: you need to be expcosed to them. Collect as many free nonlottery tickets as you can and once they start paying off, do not discard them. Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunies and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters.

9. Beware of precise plans by government. U need to keep a vigilant eye on the side effects.

10. All these recommendations have one point in common: asymmetry. Put yourself in situations where the favourable consequences are much larger than unfavorable ones. The notion of asymmetric outcomes is the central idea of the book. This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can known) rather than probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty. You can build an overall theory of decision making on this idea. All you have to do is mitigate the consequences.

One minute for yourself - Spencer Johnson

I'm not sure why I left this book untouched (despite renewing it once) until the due date was over - maybe I was distracted by other fiction books along the way, and even, freakconomics, or probably that I have been travelling out of the country the past 2 weekends. In any case, I managed to finish this book a couple of days ago.

The Slog Reviews: 10/10. The book isn't thick, is easy to read and understand and gives one hope that things can be turned around with a few tricks. The cynics will scoff that it is far too simplistic but I'll say that unless they've tried the few tricks, they shouldn't be so quick to write off the book. The author is the one who wrote Peaks & Valleys and Who moved my cheese which I'd reviewed earlier.

Here are some extracts which I thought was worth writing down and referring back to once in a while, esp when one is down and out.

1) Finding your inner success is the best, easiest, and in fact, the only way to achieve and enjoy everything else in life.

2) Workaholics think they are happy. That's because they kid themselves. Workaholics in fact, lose themselves in their work so that they never have to look at themselves. Other people do this by filling their life with activities. They confuse activity is productivity. The deception is they think they are accomplishing a lot because they are busy. In reality, they never deal with what's important.

3) In 1 quiet minute with myself, I can first become aware of what I am doing and then I can choose to see a better way. I simply stop and quietly ask "Is there a better way right now for me to take good care of Me?" Just stopping and looking prevents you from running into something and hurting yourself. I stop, look, and see that I have a choice: to proceed ahead, or change directions, or do whatever I see is best for me. The truth is we each know what is best, if we will stop long enough to see it.

4) It doesn't matter what I do. It's the little things that make a big difference. 1 thing I do when I feel rushed, overwhelmed and lose my perspective is to ask myself another simple question "Ten years from now, how much difference is this going to make?" Another thing I do for myself is to laugh at myself and with myself. Other than the little things, there is something more important - I treat myself the way I want others to treat me.

5) ...So I avoid setting myself up wiht rigid expectations and comparing me to what I think ought to be. Now I simply appreciate what happens instead of comparing it to what I think ought to happen. I've learnt that my personal pain comes from the difference between what is happening and what I think ought to be happening. Letting go of what I think is missing from the fantasy and appreciating what is already good about the reality.

6) I take care of me by looking at what I want versus what I need. A need is something we require for our well being a want is something we hope will make us happy. I feel successful when I get what I want but I feel happy when I want what I get. Again, I see things more clearly when I stop and look at what I am pursuing. We can never never get enough of what we don't need eg money.

7) How do you know what you need? By spending time lokoing at what really makes me happy. When I take a min to ask "Do I really need what I am chasing?" Also, never look at where you don't want to go.

8) A quick way to reduce stress is to uncomplicate life - cut away more and more until I find the core of what makes me happy. Play is for the body what a good attitude is for the mind.

9) Attitude is the name of the game. How you look at life is the single best way to take care of yourself. You have a perspective that either beats you up or builds you up. And we can choose our attitudes. In one minute you can change your attitude and in that minute, you can change your entire day.

10)...It seems there are really only 2 basic emotions in life. Love (positive) and Fear (negative) . One is the absence of the other. Another way of taking care of myself is by giving away part of my time and my money because when I give away some of my money or my time, it reminds me that I am not afraid. I believe I will always have enough to share with others.

11) One of the best ways you can help other people is to encourage them to take better care of themselves and to reward them when they do.

12) You can get some very important needs met in a relationship - like romance and tenderness and belonging. But you cannot get your primary needs met - like becoming happier. You must do that yourelf. The min any of us looks to a relationship to satisfy our basic needs, we begin to experience pain. And we believe it's the other person's fault. When I feel no one else is nurturing me, I nuture myself by doing some silly little thing for myself that makes me feel good. The point is, I don't ask someone else to nuture me all the time. I do what I can myself. I also nuture myself by creating a beautiful environment because my environment affects me. But I nuture myself most when I create a beautiful internal environment - even more important than my being loved is loving.

13) The truth is, people are eventually going to do what they want to do anyway. so why kid ourselves. If you give up and do what the other person wants against our own best interests, sooner or later, you are going to become resentful. And then it is only a qn of time before you, consciously or subconsciously find a way to get back at the other person. ... should communicate and negotiate to help both of us get what we want. The whole idea is first to feel good yourself - even if it doesn't totally please the other person at the moment. And then, as you feel happy and peaceful, go on to feel good about the other person. And the important thing is, when you feel good about the other person, show it. It will be in their best interests. And that is what they are interested in.

14) The key to a good relationship is balance. That means we don't insist the other person be thinking of us all the time. The key is to hae a great relationship with yourself first. Start by liking yourself, with small steps. Only when you stop doing what doesn't work can things get better.

15) Getting in touch with our best self (that part of us that knows what we need) is like giving ourselves the perfect hug. We can have a wonderful relationship together when I have one with me and you have one with you. One good way of taking care of yourself is not to run away from yourself. We can help ourselves and each other by askin g"HAve u hugged yourself today"

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

It was a bad idea picking up this book to read at 12 midnight after a long day and two seafood meals at JB. What made it worse was that I had to get up at 8.30am today for church. Guess what, I ended up sleeping close to 4am because I just could not put down the book.

One thing about Dan Brown's books - never ever read any of his books backwards ie don't flip to the back few chapters and read the ending. The whole idea is to read the book from the front, or else, all the impact, the journey the book takes you on, the suspense it puts you through and the many false surprises.premises that the writer has planted along the way will be for naught.

The Slog Reviews: 8/10. Brilliantly researched and written and the reader will find interesting nuggets of information (history, religion, language). The storyline remains much the same as Dan Brown's other books with the hero Langdon sent on a chase (around the world or country) and emerging victorious and unmaimed at all in the end.

MPH sale extended till 26 Feb 2010

I was informed by a colleague yesterday that MPH at City Hall was still having a sale. Per my previous post, the sale was supposed to be till 31 Jan 2010 only but it apparently has been extended until 26 Feb 2010. The sale this time, is even better than before. There are books sold at SGD 3, 6 and 12 and for all other items, there is a huge discount on the books. For eg. Books priced at less than SGD 25 (ie between SGD 1 to SGD 24.99) are only sold for SGD 6. Definitely worth a trip there. However, be warned that travel books and most languages books have been snapped up and all the books are mixed/jumbled on the shelves. The only visible separation between the books are between children and adult books.

Anyhow, I bought another 3 books today, one of which was Being Beautiful, the book that I'd wanted to buy last month but hesitated. Ended up saving SGD6. The other two are self-improvement books with attention-grabbing titles. I'm not sure when I'm going to read them, much less write about them here given that to date, I'm at least 4 issues behind my Time magazines which sit on my desk waiting to be read, still have yet to finish my 3 library books (Fooled by Randomness, Black Swan, One Min Manager), owe 1 of my best friend 2 books (Blink (which I've finished) and The Lost Symbol) and am 7/8 through What the Dog Saw. Oh yeah, and all the books I bought the last time from MPH? I haven't read a single one yet. Go me. And there I was, feeling bored. Hah.

The Gift by Cecelia Ahern

I read the book “The Gift” for the first time in the Starbucks section of a bookshop in Bangkok somewhere back in November 2009. I remember tearing up at the end of the book and going out of the shop with a lump in my throat. This is the second time I’ve read the book and it still has exactly the same effect.

The Slog Reviews: 8.5/10. The story in short is about a man, Lou, who is a very busy man trying to do two things simultaneously at every single moment. 1 of the two things is always work-related where he is trying to get ahead. “Lou had spent so many years moving so quickly through the minutes, hours and days, through the moments, that he’d stopped noticing life. The looks, gestures and emotions of other people had since stopped being important or visible to him. Passion had driven him at first, and then, while on his way to the somewhere he wanted to be, he’d left it behind.” Anyway, on impulse, he gives a job to a “man” named Gabe who is homeless. Through Gabe, he learns how to make time for his family and slow down just a bit. Gabe also gives him a pill which is supposed to allow him to be in two places at a time. Anyway, Lou dies in the end in a car crash, but is given the last of the pill by a police-woman who arrives at the scene which allows him to be with his family for one last night where he asks for forgiveness and tells them how much they mean to him.

I like these parts of the book:

1. The lesson of the story. Appreciating your loved ones. Acknowledging all the special people in your life. Concentrate on what’s important.

2 Time is more precious than money, more precious than anything. Because you can never earn more time. Once an hour goes by, a week, a month, a year, you’ll never get them back. Lou was running out of time and Gabe gave him more, to help tie things up, to finish things properly. That’s the gift. So we should fix things before it’s too late.

3. One thing of great importance can affect a small number of people Equally so, a thing of little importance can affect a multitude. Either way, a happening – big or small – can affect an entire string of people. Occurrences can join us all together. You see, we’ll all made up of the same stuff. When something happens, it triggers something inside us that connects us to a situation, connects us to other people…A lesson finds the common denominator and links us all together like a chain. AT the end of that chain dangles a clock…enough time leaves us warm; when our time is gone, it too leaves us cold.

4. Time is more precious than gold, more precious than diamonds, more precious than oil or valuable treasures. It is time we do not have enough of, it is time that causes the war within our hearts, and so we must spend it wisely. Time can’t be given. But it can be shared.

Have a little faith by Mitch Albom

Reading this book made me ask myself some pretty hard questions about my own life, questions which I would not have otherwise asked. Some parts of the book gave me hope, some parts made me sad about the state of things as they stand now. I guess how one reacts to a book is largely dependent on one’s state of life/mind. While the story is simple (the author is asked to do the eulogy for his rabbi and the author gets involved in a church set up by an ex-con), it captures the author’s search for what he feels truly matters in life. The Slog Reviews: 8.5/10. You won’t feel that the short time taken to read this book is wasted and it is likely that the reflections of the author in the book will stay with you after you have turned the last page.

Some parts of the book which I liked:

1. (Part of a sermon by the Rabbi) “My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of I could have and I should have. We can sleep in a storm and when it’s time, our good-byes will be complete.

2. Much of what we called “depression” was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures that we weren’t willing to work for. I knew people whose unbearable source of misery was their weight, their baldness, their lack of advancement in the workplace, or their inability to find the perfect mate, even if they themselves did not behave like one. To these people, unhappiness was a condition, an intolerable state of affairs. If pills could help, pills were taken. But pills were not going to change the fundamental problem in the construction. Wanting what you can’t have. Looking for self-worth in the mirror. Layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren’t satisfied – before working some more.

3. He loved to smile. He avoided anger. He was never haunted by “Why am I here?” He knew why he was here, he said: to give to others, to celebrate God and to enjoy and honor the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with “Thank you Lord, for returning my soul to me” When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.

4. Having more does not keep you from wanting more. When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched…because a baby, not knowing any better, wants to grab everything to say “The whole world is mine” But when an old person dies, how does he do so? With his hands open. Why? Because he has learnt the lesson... “We can take nothing with us.

5. The secret of happiness. Be satisfied. Be grateful. For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you. That’s it.

6. Can you predict which marriages will survive? Sometimes. If they’re communicating well, they have a good chance. If they have a similar belief system, similar values, they have a good chance. Love they should always have. But love changes. A love is proven through actions, not words. The kind (of love) you realise you already have by the life you’ve created together – that’s the kind of love that lasts.

7. The Reb once did a sermon on how the same things in life can be good or evil, depending on what, with free will, we do with them…But nowhere in the story of Creation, do we read the word “bad”. God did not create bad things. God leaves it to us…Why doesn’t he eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive? Because, from the beginning, God said, I’m going to put this world into your hands. If I run everything, then that’s not you. So we were created with a piece of divinity inside us, but with this thing called free will.

8. (Casey). But it’s not me against the other guy. It’s God measuring you against you. Maybe all you get are chances to do good, and what little bad you do ain’t much bad at all. But because God has put you in the position where you can always do good, when you do something bad, it’s like you let God down. And maybe people who only get chances to do bad, always around bad things, like us, when they finally make something good out of it. God’s happy.

9. (Reb to Mitch). It does no good to be angry or carry grudges. It churns you up inside. It does you more harm than the object of your anger. Let it go or don’t let it get started in the first place…Nothing haunts like the things we don’t say.

Thanks for the memories by Cecelia Ahern

I finished reading "Thanks for the memories" by Cecelia Ahern some 2 weeks odd ago along with my weekly Time magazine and I just haven't had time to update at all.

Anyway, this book is about a woman age 34 who has been married for some time, finally gets pregnant, rushes to answer a telephone call (from the video rental shop reminding her to return the dvd she borrowed) falls down the stairs and receives a blood transfusion in the hospital. She lost her baby in the fall, and she decides to separate from her husband because the love has long gone out of the marriage. Moves back in with her elderly dad (her mother died sometime back) and starts dreaming again and again of a little girl and a red-haired woman. She also starts learning how to speak in a language she has never learnt and to find out she knows stuff now that she never knew before. Her path starts crossing with a divorced gentleman from the States but somehow or other, they keep missing the chance to really know each other. Turns out that this gentleman had donated blood and she was the receipient of his blood.

The Slog Reviews: 7.5/10. Plot was simple and makes for a light entertaining read.

Some parts of the book worth remembering:

1. Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim (Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you)

2. It occurs to me how happiness and sadness are so closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a threadlike divide. In the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites. The movement is minute, like the thin string of a spider's web that quivers under a raindrop....at your weakest, you end up showing more strength; at your lowest, you are suddenly lifted higher than you've ever been. They all border one another, these opposites, and show how quickly we can be altered. Despair can be altered by one simple smile offered by a stranger...everything is on the verge, always brimming the surface, with only a slight shake or tremble to send things toppling.

3. A veil hangs between the two opposites, a mere slip of a thing too transparent to warn us or comfort us. You hate now, but look through this veil and see the possibility of love; you're said, but look through to the other side and see happiness. Absolute composure shifting to a complete mess - it happens so quickly, all in the blink of an eye.

Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson

I love this author already. After reading his book "Who moved my Cheese?", I saw his latest book Peaks and Valleys at MPH and decided that I would borrow it from our library which I must say, does a fabulous job stocking up on new books. The reservation system rocks big-time too because one is assured of getting one's desired book ultimately.

The Slog Reviews: Peaks and Valleys. 10/10. I love Spencer Johnson's books because they are so easily read (not thick with small print), engaging (told in a story form) and he always condenses the points he is making on a page so one doesn't miss the message he is trying to get across. Best of all, I love his attitude of encouraging readers to pass the positivity and messages along which all in all, make a better world for everyone to live in (and prob increase his book sales hehe). For peaks and valleys, I read the book twice because it was THAT good and I recommend you all to just grab a copy and read - it won't take more than 1 hour of your life. Some might say he states the obvious but but but...he does it in manner that makes it stick.

Anyway, here are some points worth sharing:

1) It is natural for everyone to have peaks and valleys at work and in life. Peaks and valleys refer to one's personal peaks and valleys - not just the good and bad times that happens to one but also how one feels inside and respond to outside events. You become more peaceful when you realise you aren't your Peaks and not your Valleys. A personal peak can be a triumph over fear.

2) These good or bad moments may last for mins, or for months, or longer. How one feels depends largely on how one views one's situation. The key is to seperate what happens to you from how good and valuable you are as a person.

3) The key is also to understand that personal peaks and valleys are connected and how they are connected. How? The errors you make in today's good times create tomorrow's bad times. And the wise things you do in today's bad times create tomorrow's good times. During bad times, return to basics and concentrate on what matters most. And in good times, do not waste too many resources, get carried away from the basics and ignore what matters most because that will lead to a bad time. So, we actually create our own good and bad times far more than we realise.

4) No one can stay in one place forever. Even if you remain physically in one spot, you are always moving in and out of the places in your heart. The secret is to truly appreciate and enjoy each time for waht it is while you are living it. How you experience a valley has a lot to do with how long you'll remain in it. Peaks are moments when you appreciate what you have and Valleys are moments when you long for what is missing. If you want to have fewer Valleys, avoid comparisons.

5) To change a Valley into a Peak, you need to change one of two things: what is happening, or how you feel about what is happening. The path out of the valley appears when you choose to see things differently ie in a positive way (so you don't appear downtrodden and whiny) You need to find and use the good that is hidden in bad times.

6) Between Peaks there are always Valleys. How you manage your Valley determines how soon you reach your next Peak. If you do not learn in a Valley, you can become bitter. If you truly learn something valuable, you can become better.

7) Like a healthy heartbeat, your personal Peaks and Valleys are an essential part of a normal, healthy life. So are the Plateaus, if they are times of healthy rest when you take stock of what is happening and pause to think about what to do next. While it is unhealthy to try to escape by blocking out reality, it can often be very healthy to relax and rest and trust that things will get better. Because, after a good night's sleep or a few days' break they often do.

8) The source of most pp's fear is ego. Your ego can make you arrogant on the Peak and make you see things as better than they really are. And when you are in a valley, our ego makes you fearful, keeps you from seeing what is real, and makes you see things as worse than they really are. It makes you think a Peak will last forever and a Valley will never end. The most common reason you stay in a Valley too long is fear masquerading as comfort. The most common reason you leave a Peak too soon is arrogance masquerading as confidence. Ask yourself always then 2 qns, 1) what is the truth of the situation? Make reality your friend. 2)How can we use the good that's hidden in this bad time?

9) The best way to get through a valley is by creating and following your own sensible vision. A vision of a future Peak you want to be on that makes good sense to you. Something as big as you can imagine that is also realistic and attainable if you want it enough. And sensible means you can make what you magine more real when you use all your five senses to create an image in such specific detail that you begin to realise you can make it happen. Enjoy doing what takes you there.

10) Wishing leads to no action. When you truly follow a sensible action, you want to do the things that make it happen. Fear blocks you but the truth helps you succeed. Peaks and Valleys is more than a way of looking at things, it's a way of doing things too. And the more you do, the more youl earn and grow, and the more calm and successful you become.

11) The purpose fo the Peak is to celebrate life and the purpose of the Valley is to learn about life.

12) To stay on a peak longer: Be humble and grateful. Do more of what got you there. Keep making things better. Do more for others. Save resources for your upcoming Valleys.

13) You get out of a valley sooner when you manage to get outside of yourself: at work, by being of greater service, and in life, by being more loving.

14) What counted was not where a person lived. but how a person lived. A joyful rich life is a naturally changing landscape of Peaks and Valleys.

If you could see me now by Cecelia Ahern

I've finished the book finally. The main character, 34 yr old single Elizabeth is responsible for bringing up her irresponsible sister's 6yr old son, Luke. Luke develops a friendship with a make-belief friend, Ivan whom Elizabeth cannot see at first. Somehow or other, Ivan becomes visible to Elizabeth who appears to suffer from OCD, Insomnia and the trauma of a broken home (her mother is an alcoholic who abandons the family after giving them hopes and dreams). Elizabeth mistakenly believes that Ivan is Luke's friend, Sam's father. Ivan and Elizabeth fall in love after spending time together and Ivan is about to declare his permanent love for her when his mentor, Opal brings him to his sense. She leads him to the house of a man who is now eighty and pining for her (he stopped seeing her after 20 years). Make-belief friends don't get old. Ivan makes a decision then to leave Elizabeth because he doesn't want her to be a lonely old woman growing old pining for him. However, just by his touching her life, she is no longer the same woman she was before she met him and dares to reach out for a new life.

The Slog Reviews: 7/10. I'm a jaded slog afterall and this book is too happy-ever-after for my liking :)

Parts of the book I liked

1) (Ivan) "There's no sense of fun with them (adults). They stick rigidly to schedules and time, they focus on the most unimportant things imaginable, like mortgages and bank statements, when everyione knows that the majority of the time it's the people around them that put the smiles on their faces...People forget they have options. And they forget that those things really don't matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don't have. "

2) (Ivan) "The most important thing is not what we (as a friend) look like but the role we play in our best friend's life. Friends choose certain friends because that's the kind of company they are looking for at that specific time, not the correct height, age or have the right hair color."

3) (Ivan) "Life's kind of like a painting. A really bizarre abstract painting. You could look at it and think that all it is is a blur...but if you really look at it, focus on it and use your imagination, life can become so much more. That painting could be of the sea, the sky, people...or anything except the blur you were once convinced it was.

4) (Ivan) "Don't ever take for granted when people look in your eyes - you've no idea how lucky you are. Actually, forget about luck, you've no idea how important it is to be acknowledged, even with an angry glare. It's when they ignore you, when they look right through you, that you should start worrying.

5) (Ivan) "But as for your heart, when that breaks, it's completely silent. You would think it's so important it would make the loudest noise in the world...But it's silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain."

6) (Ivan) "Life is made up of meetings and partings. People come into your life everday...some stay a few minutes, some stay for a few months, some a year, others a whole lifetime. No matter who it is, you meet and then you part. I'm so glad I met you...I think I wished for you all of my life but now it's time for us to part."