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Monday, November 30, 2009

Towards Archiving and Managing Community Formation in Web 2.0

As 20 vacancies are available for LAS member, I just take an afternoon off to attend the talk by Dr Paul Wu Horng-Jyh, Senior Fellow (Wee Kim Wee School of Comm & Info), NTU


Topic : Towards Archiving and Managing Community Formation in Web 2.0 environment

Speaker : Dr Paul Wu Horng-Jyh

Date : Monday, 30 November 2009

Time : 3.30pm - 5.30pm

Venue : Toa Payoh Public Library / Agatha Room (level 3)

6 Toa Payoh Central

Singapore 319191


LAS Professional Development Scheme (PDS):

Participant can earn 46 points under Industry Knowledge Development – Participate in library related talks, forums, discussion sessions and business meetings organized by LAS or other libraries (category ID1)


Outline of Talk

In this talk, Dr Paul Wu Horng-Jyh, Senior Fellow (Wee Kim Wee School of Comm & Info), NTU present a case study on the formation of learning community.

He first explained the functioning of the learning community as an activity system constituted by spirals of offline as well as online SECI (socializing, Externalizing, Combining and Internalizing) knowledge creation activities. The online activities are supported by a cascade of Web 2.0 tools consisting of blog, forum and wiki to reflect distinct SECI cycles.
About the Speaker

Dr. Paul Wu Horng-Jyh is a Senior Fellow with the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Presently, he researches and directs the academic areas of Digital Preservation and Archival Informatics, particularly in the e-Learning and e-Social Science domains.

Before joining NTU in 2004, he had been involved in technology start-ups for almost a decade and was a co-founder and CEO of Mustard Technology, which specializes in multilingual search and data quality technologies for businesses and government agencies in the region and beyond.

After obtaining PhD in Artificial Intelligence from University of Michigan, he served as a Senior R&D Member of Kent Ridge Digital Labs in the 90’s, during which he invented two US Patents on search and language processing technologies.

He has two decades of experiences in theoretical and practical consultancy in information science and technology. The most recent project he consulted was the Web Archives of Singapore (WAS) project – a collaborative effort between National Library Board (NLB) and NTU, which created the first Web Archives in this region.

Currently, he is conducting a general study on Website Preservation and a case study on preserving e-Learning records, under the InterPARES 3 framework.

Source of information: email dated 25 Nov 2009 from lassec@las.org.sg

Saturday, November 28, 2009

How to Write a Memoir

Just attended the talk: "How to Write a Memoir"

Saturday, 28 November, 2.00 - 4.00pm (Registration starts at 1.50pm)

Visitor's Briefing Room, Level 1, National Library Building

The session is conducted by Mr Wong Chai Kee. The talk walks through the four-year writing journey of a first-time author – of how the difficulty in getting out the first 1,000 words and other experience related to writing.

A Melbourne University-trained psychologist, Wong Chai Kee has run his own management consultancy firm, with a 190-strong client list of multinational, government-linked and mainboard-listed companies, for twenty-two years. He loves writing, and has written numerous articles on psychology and on Christianity. A voracious reader, especially of memoirs and history, he has an insatiable urge to buy books, despite reading at least a page of every book bought.

Here is the title of the book by the speaker available from National Library Online Catalogue:

Title
Even when she forgot my name : love, life and my mother's Alzheimer's / Wong Chai Kee.

Author
Wong, Chai Kee, 1952-

Publisher
Singapore : Epigram, c2009.

Physical Description
182 p. : ports. ; 22 cm.

Notes
Some pages contain repetition of words, words crossed out, words jarred together or no words at all, to represent the state of an Alzheimer's mind.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Graphic Organizers

When I teach mind mapping using the Software "Inspirations", Graphic Organizers http://www.graphic.org/goindex.html is a site that I use to explain and expand the concept of mind map.

The Graphic organizer, a mind mapping software similar to "Inspirations" illustrates concept mapping, and mind mapping with good examples.

Some resources you might find useful for teaching mind mapping and concept mapping can be found on the "References and Links" page at"

http://www.graphic.org/links.html

You can use the rich resources to help motivate the students to organize their thoughts. After they understand the use of mind map, they can apply and it to increase recall and assist understanding.

Teaching mind mapping this way can create interest and combat boredom!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

NLB Professional Talks: Driver or Passenger - Responding to Changes

Here is some backgroup of the Professional Talk series and brief information on the talk:

Source of information: 28 Sept 2009 email from Petrina_ANG@nlb.gov.sg
===============

NLB's Professional and International Relations (PIR) is expanding their Professional Talks to include prominent local library and information professionals in addition to the current overseas speakers.

The speakers will share with us best practices and their respective areas of expertise and specialisation.

We seek to engage the various libraries across Singapore through these sharing sessions which will serve as excellent platforms for networking and bonding within the local library community.

In addition, NLB staff and LAS members will benefit from the sharing and imparting of knowledge during the talks.

PROFESSIONAL TALKS

Topic : Driver or Passenger - Responding to Changes - NTU Library

Speaker : Mr Choy Fatt Cheong, University Librarian, Nanyang Technological University Library

Date : 22 October 2009 (Thursday)

Time : 4.00pm - 5.30pm

Venue : Imagination Room, Level 5, National Library Building


LAS Professional Development Scheme (PDS) Points:

46 (Applicable only to librarians who are participants of PDS)


Summary of the talk by the speaker:

"Libraries today exist in an environment that is bubbling with rapid and often disruptive changes in the technological, social and cultural dimensions.

These changes have and will continue to alter the nature of many of the core functions of libraries and perhaps create new roles for librarians.

The biggest challenge for libraries is to find ways to respond to these disruptive changes, which by definition cannot be predicted or anticipated.

I believe the key lies in how we prepare our staff and how we organize our libraries to meet these challenges successfully as and when they come.

These thoughts were very much on our mind when NTU Library reorganized itself four years ago. This talk reflects on some of the major initiatives we undertook and discuss some problems and issues we encountered in our attempt to respond successfully to the challenging environment. "


About the speaker:

Choy Fatt Cheong is University Librarian at Nanyang Technological University.

He started his career in librarianship at NUS Library in 1984. Since then he has worked in MINDEF to set up the SAFTI Military Institute Library, at Temasek Polytechnic to set up two diploma courses as Course Manager and Principal Lecturer and finally ran his own consultancy company for four years before joining NTU in 2004.

He had served as the President of the Library Association of Singapore (LAS) from 1997 to 2005 and also as Board member of the National Library Board for six years until 2003. He contributes actively to the profession and recently helped to initiate the LAS Professional Development Scheme as Chairman of the Working Committee.

Currently, he is also a Board member of the International Association of Scientific & Technological University Libraries (IATUL).

Source of information: 28 Sept 2009 email from Petrina_ANG@nlb.gov.sg

IFLA Journal

For your reading pleasure, if you are a librarian or like the subject...


IFLA Journal Volume 35, No. 3 (September 2009) available at: http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/publications/ifla-journal/ifla-journal-35-3_2009.pdf

Contents:

Editorial: Reading, Information Literacy and Professional Development Stephen Parker 211

Letters to the Editor: Nunavut and the Inuit Peoples Stephen Salaff 213

The President’s Page
Claudia Lux, President of IFLA, 2007–2009 214

Reading Sources and Reading Spaces in Honduras Denice Adkins 215

Information Literacy and Scholarly Investigation: a British perspective Andrew K. Shenton 226

Our Space: professional development for new graduates and professionals in Australia Fiona Bradley, Alyson Dalby and Andrew Spencer 232

Open Access Repositories in Computer Science and Information Technology: an evaluation Mohammad Hanief Bhat 243

The Library Services to People with Special Needs Section of IFLA: an historical overview Nancy Panella 258

REPORTS
Indian Library Association International Conference 2008: a report N. K. Swain and Satish Kumar 272

NEWS (with separate Table of Contents) 274

INTERNATIONAL CALENDAR 283

SOMMAIRES 285--ZUSAMMENFASSUNGEN 286--RESÚMENES 288--Pефераты статей 289

Notes for Contributors 291

----

Each issue covers news of current IFLA activities and articles, selected to reflect the variety of the international information profession, ranging from freedom of information, preservation, services to the visually impaired and intellectual property.

Sign up for Email Alerts from Sage! (http://ifl.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts)

• Editor: J. Stephen Parker (zest@bart.nl) • Frequency: Quarterly • ISSN: 0340-0352 • eISSN: 1745-2651 • List of previous issues (http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/ifla-journal)

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Supporting Faculty Knowledge Production

This morning I went up to NTU and attended the following talk:

Supporting Faculty Knowledge Production:
Challenges and opportunities for information professionals in a digitally connected world

Speaker: Mary Lee Kennedy
Executive Director, Knowledge and Library Services,
Harvard Business School

Date: Wednesday 25 November 2009

Time: 10.30am – 11.30am

Venue: Lecture Theatre 5, Nanyang Technological University


About the speaker:

Mary Lee Kennedy is responsible for Harvard Business School’s knowledge and information management strategy and its implementation.

Prior to Harvard, Mary Lee held knowledge management positions with global responsibility for Microsoft Corporation and Digital Equipment Corporation.

In this talk, Mary Lee Kennedy shares about:

1.Primary shifts in digital scholarship and the related changes in the nature of the information profession

2.Challenges in a time of transition

3.Opportunities to create significant value for constituents

4.The work at Harvard Business School

5.New opportunities for Global Knowledge Exchange via GKEN


Source of information: 11 Nov 2009 email from lassec@las.org.sg

As I like to know more about the speaker, I run a search on youtube and found the following clip:

Interview with Mary Lee Kennedy on Information Types



I also found the following article "The knowledge: Mary Lee Kennedy" posted on 18 Jan 2006 in Volume 9 Issue 5, Inside Knowledge.

http://www.ikmagazine.com/xq/asp/txtSearch.competitive+intelligence/exactphrase.1/sid.0/articleid.737ADABC-1138-455B-8F1C-FDD3943C699C/qx/display.htm

Here is what I like to quote:

"Today we realise we can’t document everything. By understanding the nature of human discussion, conversation, collaboration and communities, we can create environments for knowledge sharing that may not be accessible to large numbers of people.”

"We can now do things we hadn’t even dreamed about. It has changed what we do and has made things more complicated as we accommodate how different people choose to use and share information.”

Some interesting facts and background of her are listed at the end of the article:

======================
Name: Mary Lee Kennedy

Place of birth: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Education: B.A. Social Psychology, MLS

Employment history: Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan, Mexico; Sherritt Inc., Canada; Digital Equipment Corporation, USA; Microsoft Corporation, USA; The Kennedy Group, Harvard Business School, USA

Personal strengths: Determination, a sense of humour, critical thinking

Must improve: patience

Biggest inspiration: People who think and do things a lot bigger than themselves

What I do to relax: Talk to my kids

Favourite film: Shakespeare in Love or The Mission

Must read: Anything by Shakespeare or, for professional reading, "When Sparks Fly" by Dorothy Leonard

======================

I enjoyed her sharing at NTU and I think her success in her information work is not because she can uses IT well, but have her main focus on users.

"My career has focused on understanding how different people use and share information, expertise and ideas, and what motivates them to do so to create a free-flowing exchange of knowledge.”

I think it is this core focus that make her do her work differently and win the heart of the people around her!

The Paradox of our Age!

The paradox of our time in history is that...

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers.

Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.

We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families.

More conveniences, but less time.

We have more degrees, but less sense.

More knowledge, but less judgment.

More experts, but more problems.

More medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly,

laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly,

stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little,

watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.

We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life;

We've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor.

We've conquered outer space, but not inner space;

We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.

We've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less;

We plan more, but accomplish less;

We've learned to rush, but not to wait;

We have higher incomes, but lower morals;

We have more food, but less appeasement;

We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication.

We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion;

tall men, and short character;

steep profits, and shallow relationships.

These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare;

more leisure,but less fun;

more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce;

of fancier houses, but broken homes.

These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill.

It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to make a difference, or to just hit delete...

Dr. Bob Moorehead

The essay appeared under the title "The Paradox of Our Age" in Words Aptly Spoken, Dr. Moorehead's 1995 collection of prayers, homilies, and monologues used in his sermons and radio broadcasts.

Read the Urban legend about the essay

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Stinking thinking

Just found some good reading on "Stinking thinking" and here it is:

Our own reality is created by our thinking.

"Stinking thinking" generate thoughts that cause us pain. The more we pay attention to our own stinking thinking, the more we increase our inner pain.

=========================
How to Get Rid of Stinking Thinking
By Jeff Herring
http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Get-Rid-of-Stinking-Thinking&id=60091

"Have you ever tried to drive your car looking only through the rear-view mirror? It's a silly notion, but it's how we live our lives when we get caught up" in Stinking thinking!

"When you catch yourself using this particular brand of self-defeating thinking, stop and ask yourself some better questions, such as: "What can I learn from this situation?" "What mistakes did I make that I never want to make again?" "How can I use what I've experienced and learned to live better the next time I face a similar situation?

... Then you are able to live in such a way as to create few, if any, future regrets."

To read the article, visit:

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Get-Rid-of-Stinking-Thinking&id=60091


=============================
The Top 10 Types of “Stinkin’g Thinking”
by David Burns, M.D.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=1787


"As you learn to better identify them, you can then learn how to start answering them back with rational arguments.

In this manner, you can work to turn your internal conversation back to being a positive in your life, instead of a running negative commentary.

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories...

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as “always” or “never” when you think about it...

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water...

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count.” If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn’t good enough or that anyone could have done as well...

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion...

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities...

7. Emotional Reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly.” ...

8. “Should” statements -You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be...

9. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying “I made a mistake,” you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.”...

10. Personalization and Blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control...

To read the article, visit:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=1787

Friday, November 13, 2009

Beauty in everything

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.


--Confucius

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Freedom

Neither my life of luxury in the palace nor my life as an ascetic in the forest is the way to freedom.

-- Buddha

What is Freedom?

Here is the definition from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom

"Freedom may refer to:

Freedom (philosophy), the idea of being free.

Freedom (political), the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual

Four freedoms, Roosevelt's freedoms of (1) speech and (2) belief, along with the freedom from (3) fear and (4) want.

Liberty, the condition in which an individual has the ability to act according to his or her own will

Economic freedom, a term in economic research and policy debates

Free content, freedom of an artist's work to be redistributed, modified, and studied by others

Freedom of the City, an award made by municipalities

Systolic freedom, a concept in mathematics

Individual freedom, the moral stance, political philosophy, or social outlook that stresses
independence and self-reliance

Statue of Freedom, on top of the U.S. Capitol dome in Washington, D.C. "


It is interesting to note that "Freedom" is also a first name and the names of many places in the world etc...

To learn more on "Freedom" being used as name of many things and objects, just read the entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom


What attracted me is the first definition "Freedom (philosophy), the idea of being free." at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_(philosophy)

I think the "Inner autonomy" is the one that I find it closed to my heart.

"Freedom can also signify inner autonomy, or mastery over one's inner condition. This has several possible significances:[1]

the ability to act in accordance with the dictates of reason;

the ability to act in accordance with one's own true self or values;

the ability to act in accordance with universal values (such as the True and the Good);

and the ability to act independently of both the dictates of reason and the urges of desires, i.e. a arbitrarily (autonomously)."

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Dealing with the Digital Deluge

Today, I attended the following talk organized by Professional and International Relations (PIR) of NLB.

NLB PROFESSIONAL TALKS (20 vacancies are available for LAS members)

Topic of today's talk:

Dealing with the Digital Deluge: NLNZ's Role in Shaping the Strategy and Delivery for New Zealanders

Speaker: Ms Sue Sutherland,
Deputy Chief Executive, National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ)
Director, National Digital Library, National Library of New Zealand

Time: 3.00pm - 4.30pm

Venue: Possibility Room, Level 5, National Library Building

Ms Sue Sutherland, Deputy Chief Executive of National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ), is also the Director at the National Digital Library, NLNZ.

With immense experience in the library and information profession, Ms Sutherland outlined in her talk the digital content framework NLNZ is working on and describe some of the initiatives that are addressing the challenges we all face in living and working in the digital age.

Here is the website cited in her presentation:

DigitalNZ
http://www.digitalnz.org/

================

DigitalNZ is an initiative that aims to make New Zealand digital content easy to find, share and use. This includes content from government departments, publicly funded organisations, the private sector, and community groups.

DigitalNZ is a collaborative initiative led by the National Library of New Zealand and work with a wide range of contributing institutions and organisations. The tasks of DigitalNZ is to test and develop approaches that increase the amount of New Zealand content flowing through the Digital Content Life Cycle.

It sees the need to create and digitise more New Zealand content to stay digitally connected to national stories, creations, knowledge and culture.

DigitalNZ does not have a copy of the items in the collection. Instead, it holds metadata about items in other collections, together with a pointer to the content object.

DigitalNZ therefore behaves much like a search engine, except that the metadata is highly structured.

================

From a librarian's point of view, it is a national union catalogue of digital contents. The union catalogue is just a catalogue which helps users/searchers to locate items available from various sources. It serves as a pointer for searchers. It does not provide the actual ditigal content, yet link the content or content providers with the users.

The first step to build the database and make DigitalNZ conprehensive is to source for contents contributor.

Here are some information extracted from http://www.digitalnz.org/contributor:

================

Participation in DigitalNZ is free, and potentially means:

* your content will be easier for people to find, through the DigitalNZ search engine

* people can build their own mini search engine to find your content - you could make one too!

* new tools and applications created by other developers (using the API) bring more people to your website

* options to share content through other DigitalNZ projects are available to you, such as the remix campaign we ran last year.

================

To learn more about the development of DigitalNZ, visit the blog at:

http://www.digitalnz.org/blog

================

To understand how the interface works, visit:
http://www.digitalnz.org/developer

Here is some information extracted from the page:

================

About the API (Application Programming Interface)

The metadata available through DigitalNZ comes from content providers across the New Zealand cultural and heritage, broadcasting, education, and government sectors; as well as local community sources and individuals. Geospatial and commercial content is coming soon.

Our goal is to uncover hidden or buried New Zealand content such as images, audio, video, interactives, and documents, and make them available for discovery and use.

We only collect metadata for the content, so these APIs will point you to the online items made available by our fantastic content contributors.

We hope you'll use this metadata to do good and wonderful things, create new experiences, and demonstrate the value of sharing data.

================

After listening to the talk, I have a question

What’s an API (Application Programming Interface) ?

I search the blog and found some entries in the search result page that provide more information:

http://www.digitalnz.org/search/contributor?q=API

"In short, it’s a way for software applications to ‘talk to’ each other, and a way for developers to ‘talk to’ applications. We use an API to share data with other applications."

"The Indicommons website summarises it like this:

"Open APIs allow services and collections to become interconnected, the experience of outside developers to be engaged, and new tools and spaces to be fashioned to benefit the community at large."

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen two new examples that really demonstrate the joy of a ‘joined up’ web of data. Both Te Papa and Auckland City Libraries have recently launched systems that draw links to content from other organisations into their local search experiences. Take a look below to see the DigitalNZ API in action.

Via the API you can submit a query to our search index and it will return information about the various NZ images, audio, video, magazines, documents, and web pages that we're aggregating. We're working with a wide range of content providers from across the New Zealand cultural and heritage, broadcasting, education, and government sectors; as well as local community sources and individuals."

About the speaker:
=============

Ms Sue Sutherland is highly regarded by the library and information profession both within New Zealand and internationally.

In April 2007 she was awarded a Leadership Development Centre Fellowship that recognised her as one of New Zealand's leading public servants. In her professional life, Sue was President of the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA) in 1991 and in 1997 she was awarded a Fellowship of the Association.

She was also involved for seven years in a group of international librarians sponsored by the Bertelsmann Foundation. In addition, she had led the development of the draft New Zealand Digital Content Strategy and also organised the first New Zealand Public Libraries Summit in 2007.

With her rich experience, the talk is informative and insightful. I think those who attended will find her message valuable!


Interesting point about the talk
======================

This talk is made possible by Ms Ngian Lek Choh, Director, National Library of Singapore who learnt about Ms Sue Sutherland's transit at Changi Airport and invited her to visit NLB. She is having her holiday now and being a librarian, her holiday before home ended with a visit to a National Library overseas and a talk to share her experience in "Dealing with the Digital Deluge".

Even though the talk is a brief one, it is informative and insightful. I think those who attended the talk like me, will find her message valuable!

If you missed the talk, you may view the following ppt I found on SlidesShare which have some info on DigitalNZ

http://www.slideshare.net/nextlibrary/sue-sutherland


Notes:
LAS Professional Development Scheme (PDS) Points: 46
(Applicable only to librarians who are participants of PDS)

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Learn to make do with less

Lately, I start to look at what I have collected and I think one major message I get from packing and re-locating items is how to make good use of what I have in stock, and how to make do with less.

We tend to worry about having limited resources, and we like to acquire things for our future needs and wants. If we sense that we do not have things others have, we cannot have the comfort that we will be just fine.

A lot of things in our present possession are the needs and wants that we preceived in the past.

When I examine the things in my cupboards and books on my shelves, there may not be my needs now.

Nevertheless, the desire to have them are still there. Hence, to keep them in my "Wants" list, I have to spend money to create new storage and spend time going through them.

To be with them and feel their present, I need to clear them. To enjoy the present view of my collection, I need to give them special attention and decrorate them in some new ways from time to time.

Having the company of the wants is both enjoyable and exhausting. That is life!

So, if possible, learn to make do with less!


Dexterine Ho





e, and more wants are Even if a new edict of economy comes down from above, you can hold your ground and hang on to what belongs to you and your peers.

Be an editor at heart

The role of editor is to weed and select good articles for publication. Rewrite some of the articles and make it flows better. Source for new contacts for the next cycle and keep the publication work continue.

It is very similar when we handle our heart issues.

When we are dealing with our own emotion and thought, be an editor at heart. Communication of all types your received is your source and you need to edit it and select those that suit your life at the present moment.

A lot of issues will become clearer and the most important thing(s)to your heart will stand out if you adopt the approach of an editor.

But, first you need to have an objective in mind. It is good to use that objective to guide you whereable it applied.

When you change your objective, you need to look at issues at hand from another angle and your editorial process will be very different.

Just re-look at how you experience in your daily life in the past and you will understand how editing affect your life even if you are not aware that you did something to it at that point,

When time change and your objective is changed, you will likely to handle the same issue differently.

There is no right or wrong answer. It is how you feel at your heart that count and make you do it that way to suit your choice.

"If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now." -- Marcus Aurelius

So just be aware that you have a choice and exercise it!


Dexterine Ho

Be mindful and to be a better person to compose them carefully and express exactly what you mean every time.

《轉載》香港名DJ 梁繼璋給兒子的信

<作者介紹> 梁繼璋(1955年8月17日-),英文名Michael, 前香港電台第二台節目主持人,也是一位名DJ、作家, 曾從事廣告、電視台等媒體創作。因其柔和、磁性的聲線,令他讀文章時更有氣氛、更容易令聽眾投入。


香港名DJ 梁繼璋給兒子的信

我兒: 寫這備忘錄給你,基於三個原則:

(一)人生福禍無常,誰也不知可以活多久, 有些事情還是早一點說好。

(二)我是你的父親,我不跟你說,沒有人會跟你說。

(三)這備忘錄裏記載的,都是我經過慘痛失敗得回來的體驗, 可以為你的成長省回不少冤枉路。

*****************

以下,便是你在人生中要好好記住的事:

(一)對你不好的人,你不要太介懷,在你一生中, 沒有人有義務要對你好,除了我和你媽媽。 至於那些對你好的人,你除了要珍惜、感恩外,也請多防備一點, 因為,每個人做每件事,總有一個原因,他對你好,未必真的是因為喜歡你,請你必須搞清楚, 而不必太快將對方看作真朋友。

(二)沒有人是不可代替,沒有東西是必須擁有。看透了這一點, 將來你身邊的人不再要你,或許失去了世間上最愛的一切時, 也應該明白,這並不是甚麼大不了的事。

(三)生命是短暫的,今日你還在浪費著生命, 明日會發覺生命已遠離你了。因此,愈早珍惜生命, 你享受生命的日子也愈多,與其盼望長壽,倒不如早點享受。

(四)世界上並沒有最愛這回事,愛情只是一種霎時的感覺, 而這感覺絕對會隨時日、心境而改變。如果你的所謂最愛離開你,請耐心地等候一下,讓時日慢慢沖洗,讓心靈慢慢沉澱, 你的苦就會慢慢淡化。不要過分憧憬愛情的美, 不要過分誇大失戀的悲。

(五)雖然,很多有成就的人士都有受過很多教育, 但並不等如不用功讀書,就一定可以成功。你學到的知識, 就是你擁有的武器。人,可以白手興家,但不可以手無寸鐵,緊記!

(六)我不會要求你供養我下半輩子, 同樣地我也不會供養你的下半輩子,當你長大到可以獨立的時候, 我的責任已經完結。以後,你要坐巴士還是Benz, 吃魚翅還是粉絲,都要自己負責。

(七)你可以要求自己守信,但不能要求別人守信, 你可以要求自己對人好,但不能期待人家對你好。你怎樣對人,並不代表人家就會怎樣對你,如果看不透這一點, 你只會徒添不必要的煩惱。

(八)我買了十多二十年六合彩,還是一窮二白,連三獎也沒有中, 這證明人要發達,還是要努力工作才可以,世界上並沒有免費午餐。

(九)親人只有一次的緣份,無論這輩子我和你會相處多久, 也請好好珍惜共聚的時光,下輩子,無論愛與不愛,都不會再見。


你的爸爸

梁繼璋

*****************

Primary source: unknown

Secondary source: from an email forwarded by a friend, additional information from http://www.wretch.cc/blog/lisa56731/21133435

Monday, November 02, 2009

Courage

"Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk and to act."

- Dr. Maxwell Maltz


"Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third."

- Joseph Epstein


"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be."

- Clementine Paddelford


"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear."

- Mark Twain

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Character

"Character is not a commodity that can be purchased. It is built by the decisions you permanently chisel on your heart. Strive for a reputation that will cause people to say, 'He means what he says.'"

- Neil Eskelin"

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson


"Our own heart, and not other men's opinion, forms our true honor."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge


"Circumstances do not make the man or woman, they merely reveal them."

- Brian Tracy

Thought is the seed

Thought is the seed that may grow to a tree.

If you know that it is your thinking that determines your reality, you can be in control of your feeling and emotion.

If you blame your frustration on others, you pass your control of your own emotion to others. When you are defeated, your will feel very helpless psychologically and act like a victim.

With that kind of mind set, you will be a slave of your emotion. With the same experience repeated in your life and your social cycle, you conditioned yourself to be a person with negative thought. With that, you attract all the negative reaction inside you!

Remember that we are the gardener of our own head and mind.

A good mind gardener weeds away unwanted plants regularly. That keeps the bad away from the good.

To glow something new, a seed or a new plant need to be nurture with constant care. Having enough sunlight, yet not over exposed at the beginning. Water it regularly and use pot with holes that allow excess to be drained. Trim it so that it will branch naturally. Pass what you have trim to others, so that it will grow in their own garden. That allows the good to grow and multiply.

Blooming beautiful flowers in our head and mind is like gardening a "Botanic garden".

What is blooming inside is planted and nurtured by our thought and habit.

Fixing physically unhealthy bodies is relatively easy. Mending unhealthy minds on the other hand, may not be so easy.

Nevertheless, once we realised that we are the gardener of our thought, caring for our mind is like growing plants in our garden, we can find a way to weed the bad thought and tender to good one slowly!

Fixing negative thought is not easy, it is only easy when we realized that we can think differently, choose differently and behave differently and we start to swift the focus on ourselves instead of blaming it on others.

We that kind of mindset, we will experience life in a different perspective.

Learn to think differently!

Remember that everything begin with a thought. With a new thought, you create a new reality!

So start and create a different garden for your mind, once you have a beautiful garden that you enjoy yourselves, you will attack like minded people.

Beautiful mind is contagious too!