I wrote two posts before on:
– the tragedy at Stanford about May Zhou
– the tragedy on Virginia Tech

What provoked me to write today is that Mercury News from yesterday provided an update on May Zhou’s incident where they find her death palpably caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, making her death palpably a suicide. I said “palpably” because I’d still like to pay my condolence and respect for her father, who is still pursuing his private investigation…

Disclaimer: The following statements are purely speculative and not intended to provide any “truth” about the incidents. Please read with your own discretion.

Contradictingly, this makes me feel and perceive even MORE of the pain and solitude, which is definitely unimaginable, that May was experiencing. And ultimately, this is where I draw the parallel with the Virginia Tech student, Seung Hui Cho.

Despite the great disparity between the two’s situations and backgrounds, I sincerely believe that both faced the same internal struggle – a sense of loneliness due to others’ lack of understsanding of their true feelings and mentality, as society and others around them are quick to forced upon them pre-judgement and labels. In May’s case, she’s judged to be successful and happy because how she is so very accomplished and of great scholarship. In Cho’s case, he’s quickly identified as weird, queer, “keep-to-himself” most likely because appearance, backgrounds, and association with “mental problems.” Whatever it is, there is this pre-established “lens”, which others ALWAYS perceive them through that is the main cause of dis-communication. These lenses then become an automatic barrier that prevents May and Cho from being understood and communication on a deeper level. As their days go by with such continuance, pain accumulates and the degree of loneliness increases and finally gets to a point when they’re unbearable…

While May’s case requires no “solution”, let me point out how the Virginia Tech panel has just concluded from investigation into Cho’s case, they will not implement “solutions” that involve arming the school with more securities, adding locks on the classroom doors, offering of more mental health facility, etc. Note how this is not the only time that people come up with such “solutions” followed similar incidents.

Ah, their so-called solutions.

All the while, what we need is more compassion amongst ourselves, amongst human beings. What I see is a clear neglect of that in today’s society. We seem look so far and wide and through all these “complications”, then conclusively think by implementing these fancy, superficially sounded solutions will prevent such problems from happening again, meanwhile not understanding the most basic needs of people in general, at a very simple human level.

This, I think is the source of many problems.

Call me naive or foolish, but I think if someone, anyone has provided true regards to May and Cho’s feelings, and genuinly talk to them without prejudice, knowing that we’re all the same human beings, both tragedies could have been prevented.

I see solutions in nothing fancy. Just basic kindness. Just simple compassion.

I talked about reflecting on yourself to become a better “you” as everyday goes by.

I’m not a very political person, but I wonder if our president does any self-reflection.
I wonder if President George Bush Junior ever think to himself:

I’m already the president of U.S., the most powerful man in U.S. and possibly in the world, do I really need more power?
Maybe I should use my power more appropriately, for better cause, and not abuse the darn thing…

Did I really change the government for the better?
Did I really make America a better place?
Have I contributed to the world positively?

And finally…
Am I being a good president? Am I being a good person?

Personally, I’m not sure if he can close his eyes and say with peace in his heart, “Yes”.
But that’s just me.

Do you have questions for our Mr. President?

When you read the title, did you think “So this guy only drink water, what a cheapo”?

Hey now! I am not gonna ask you to never order a soda or other kinds of beverage at restaurants and ONLY drink water. Let me describe what happened:

I was at lunch with colleagues at an Indian buffet restaurant. Being an engineer, I prefer to have some caffeine in my body for the afternoon (I’m an avid coffee drinker, one cup of coffee everyday is not bad for you). So I ordered a coke. To my unpleasant surprise, the glass they use is at most 6 oz in volume and half filled with ice, so I can essentially drink the whole thing w/ one tenth of a breath. I was not happy.

But here is the lesson:
Before ordering drinks at restaurants, pay attention to surrounding tables’ order of beverages. If most people don’t order beverages other than water, follow suit because something must be off. Then check out the glass size they use for non-water beverages, get it if it’s a decent size in your mind.

That’s it for the day…
Oh wait…
What did I say at the beginning?
Or rather, what did I not say?

Why not just drink water?
It’s good for your health.

Have you ever think that…
“God, bad things keep happening these days. When is it going to stop?”

It’s like whenever bad fortunes befall you, they come like a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, a flood of mighty water that seems to want to swallow you whole, and they don’t stop coming?

I’m sure somewhere along your life, you have felt that way.
If not, lucky you!

Going back to the title of the post “The Spiral of Life, featuring Power of the Mind”.
What a great title…just kidding.
It’s not as philosophical as it sounds.
Let me explain.

When things turn sour in life, you start feeling down, depressed, frustrated, angry… You expect more bad things to come your way and think “God, bad things keep happening these days. When is it going to stop?” With the negative mentality in place, you then see everything happening with a negative perspective, put a negative spin on all events, and accordingly, act negatively in response, which then lead to more bad and perhaps worse things to happen. Then you get more down, depressed, frustrated, angry… Eventually and finally, you hate the entire world, think everyone is against you, and go to gun down people at school or in the office with an AK-47… wait, they like to use those automatic pistols these days… alright, that maybe too cynical, not very funny, and besides the point.

“Oh… you are just exaggerating.”
Oh really?
Pay attention to what’s happened out there and ask again.

Anyways, in the explanation above, we are depicted seemingly in equivalence to be asking for more bad things to happen, albeit unknowingly and unconsciously. That’s exactly what is it. That’s why we have the saying, “Misery loves company.” Simply put, it’s all about our mentality and attitude, which essentially materialize themselves as our actions, or reactions.

From my observation, almost everything in life operates like a spiral… relationship with your boss, relationship with your spouse, progression in your career… In personal finance, once you fall behind on payments, your credit gets degraded and you get slapped with fees, which will make you future payment worse. Also look at how hatred spawns hatred, how people are suing each other these days. To generalize…

When our thoughts are negative, negative things happen because we react negatively. Things will continue to spiral downward from there.

BUT!

Just the same and conversely, when our thoughts are positive, positive things happen because we react positively. Things will spiral upward from there.

“What can we do to break out of this chain of negative mentality?” You ask.
It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, or catch-22, or whatever you want to call it.

There needs to be something that breaks the spiraling downward.
There needs to be some form of energy that changes things around.
That something, that some form of energy is the power of the mind.
Right inside your head.

There’s a catch, though.
It has to be the power of YOUR OWN MIND.
It’s up to yourself to use your own mind.
Nope, you cannot use mine.
Nope, I cannot do it for you.

You have to use your own head.

Sorry if it’s not easy.
Sorry if this is bad news.
I never said it’s easy.
Plus, not very many things in life are ever easy.
But it will most probably be worse news if you do not change.
It is a choice, and you will have to make this choice yourself.
A choice to make a change.

Whatever ways you can find… Whatever you can dig up inside yourself to change your mentality…
Be it sheer will, a distaste of presense, a desire to be excellent, a stubbornness to compete…
Whatever you can find inside yourself to trigger this change in your mind.

So either, you make up your own mind and use its power to plow through obstacles and clear the fogs in your head to allow yourself to think more positively and clearly or… keep doing what you were doing.

It’s your choice after all.

But once you make the choice to change your mentality to one that’s positive (so you can think clearly and optimistically, be genuine and kind, etc.), I assure you more good things will happen to you AND around you, making the world a better place, at least in your vicinity.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a scenario, relating to to personal finance since that’s what I also talk about here on this blog.

Now if you are poor and don’t make a whole lot of money. You can:

1. Think that you will always be poor and therefore, continue to spend all your money, and therefore, continue to stay poor.
2. Think that you are able to become financially secure and therefore, spend less than your earn and save a portion of every paycheck, and therefore, have a sizable savings eventually.

The choice is yours.

Last month, besides spending for the 2 trips, I also splurged on a set of Playstation 3 upon the price drop announced by Sony. This is after I buckled down to save for many months. It hurts me as much as my pocket, but I considered all these are worth it. We save in order to spend after all, with the key being controlled spending. Anyways…

So what happened was I jumped on the Circuit City deal that offered an extra controller plus 5 self-selected Blu-ray DVDs (from a limited collection), which quickly sold out on the same day when I checked at night :P Lucky!

That’s besides the point though.

Today, I finally received my first Blu-ray DVD, which is the awesomely choreographed 300 that I ordered from Amazon. My expectaion is high…

After my first Blu-ray experience, I have to say that Blu-ray does indeed provide crisper image and more details. I did not notice a big difference in sound. In addition, the load time from the root menu to the various features seems faster than regular DVDs.

However, I do have doubts whether the improvement that Blu-ray provides is really worth the extra bucks, especially if someone has to drop major bucks for a pure Blu-ray player. I’m talking about non-Playstation 3. I personally think the difference between DVDs with 1080p-upscale (on Playstation 3) and the Blu-ray is there but not significant enough to provide a motive to invest purely for a Blu-ray experience. Again, I’m talking about non-Playstation 3.

Au contraire, Blu-ray DVDs prices are dropping and so the actual value of Blu-ray DVD relative to its cost is also increasing. They are also becoming more popular, so Blu-ray seems to be the way to go eventually, if not now.

Yep, that’s my 2 cents.