From Men’s Health:
In the modern workplace, the best way for a man to succeed might be for him to think like a woman.
1. It wouldn’t kill you to smile;
2. Be as smart as she is;
3. Stop barking;
4. Play down the fight-or-flight instinct;
5. Act as if people outside lives;
6. Gossip;
7. Be nice to people you outrank;
8. Don’t just think inside the company;
9. It’s not just about the money;
10. Recognize what you don’t know;

Wow..time is flying and the January has passed! Besides the research, nothing is really going on. I have been lazy to post any. Friends have been celebrating the Chinese New Year but I don’t really feel a lot. I guess it would be quite different if I could be in China. But any way, I uploaded some pictures from the trip to California. I had these pictures on the hard drive but it is until today I finally sent them to Flickr.

1. Diving at Channel Islands (Anapaca/Santa Cruz)
2. Trip to Santa Cruz Island
3. Some pictures from San Diego Wild Animal Park

Marriage is usually guided through dating. Both processes ensure an intimacy relationship between two people. In a university, advisor and student, particularly in graduate school, will have to establish an intimacy relationship to ensure years of research can be productively accomplished. However, this relationship in many cases would end up with a ‘marriage’ without ‘dating’, which often leads to very unpleasant result.

The key point here is that (graduate) student-advisor relationship is fundamentally based on mutual benefit (well what relationship isn’t). If the benefit can not be well generated and most importantly, shared, tension starts to grow. Obviously, the students will be the weak group. This situation would be even worse than ‘dating’, where two people in the relationship are at least equal.

The problem is that the students wouldn’t have long enough time  to ‘date’ before they will have to engage the advisor-student relationship. If the students are lucky, the ideal ‘life-time friendship’ can develop. If they are not, still lucky enough, there is ‘divorce’. In the worst case, it will either develop into a peaceful ‘master-slave relationship’ or an aggressive fatal dissaster.

What can be done? Practically, there is nothing simply because both sides are looking for maximum benefits with the minimum cost. Is anything wrong about it? No! But luckily, teaching (mentoring) – learning is probably one of the most accepted morals. Everyone, especially for those in academia, would have the obligation to learn and to teach. This would probably be the true reason why intimacy relationships still widely exist throughout the campus.

In the past several years, I always spent the new year’s eve on the road, driving back home as soon as possible. In that case I had much time to think, to think about what had happened in the past and what would happen in the new year. This time, I can stay with my friend and wait for the flight back home. This actually distracts me from thinking too much.

I finished the diving and was completely exhausted with my sinus badly infected.  But I miss everytime that I grab the camera and dive into the water, I would never know what will happen and what I will capture. Maybe what captured by the camera is not the most important, but the fun to explore the new things I would never expect gives me most motivation.

This is exactly the same to the life. I am amazed how much can happen in one year – precisely, not even one year but just in a couple of months, I would experience things I never thought about and life gets into a completely new stage that I barely imagined. This, I think, is the most amazing part of life.

Wish you a wonderful and successful new year!

I started to think about again my blogging tool after realizing more and more people are using facebook. The question in my mind is that if everyone is facebooking, how can you keep the traffic of your own personal website since everyone already knows you enough through the facebook?

After some research, I figured out that actaully people have thought about this for a long time. So the RSS feed can keep not only the facebook but nearly any other websites updated of your activities from you own website. The consequence is obvious – you will still stay connected with the way you like! Moreover, through some websites such as Twitter and WordPress, you can keep your blog updated through your mobile devices.

Therefore, I need my blog tool to stay in a ‘standard’ way so that I can take the advantage of all of these. This is why I need to upgrade my really old and messed-up B2 to WordPress. Now I can enjoy all the amazing benefit. What is more powerful than staying connected with the out world?