Ars Poetaka

Curious About Curiosity? How to Make People Curious

2010-04-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

Do you know when and how you get curious about something? Why should you care? If you want to make other people pay attention to what you have to say, you better know how to hook & reel them in. And one of the most effective ways of keeping their attention is to make them curious.

So when do we get curious?

Common experience tells us that we get curious when we encounter something new, or surprising, or perplexing. But think of the times when you got intensely curious about some conversation between total strangers in the next table at a restaurant, or some secret your friend was withholding from you. Surely, these aren't new, surprising, or perplexing.

These and many more are instances when we feel intensely curious.

Is there a common theme underlying all these divers phenomena?

Do we say, "We get curious when we see something new, surprising, perplexing, strange, secretive, gossipy, hard to remember, etc.?"

That seems to be an awfully clunky and unsatisfactory answer.

Rest assured, there is an elegant answer. Once you know it, it becomes easy to predict what makes people curious, deliberately induce curiosity in people, and keep their attention.

Curious about curiosity now?

About time.

Carnegie Mellon Professor and psychologist George Loewenstein gives us the answer to the riddle in his excellent article, "The Psychology of Curiosity: Review and Reinterpretation" in the form of what he calls "the information-gap theory of curiosity."

The article can be found here.

Published in Psychological Bulletin, the article is unfortunately abstract, technical, and full of jargon, but the main arguments are not hard to follow.

In this article, Loewenstein combines past theories of curiosity and presents a more comprehensive one of his own that combines insights from Gestalt psychology, behavioral decision theory, and social psychology. I will skip over the interesting yet unnecessary historical review of the past theories and jump right into Loewenstein's theory.

In a nutshell, the information gap theory of curiosity states that we get curious when we become aware of a gap in our knowledge or understanding. Such a gap induces the feeling of deprivation akin to hunger and motivates us to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate this feeling.

This means that there has to be some prior knowledge of the subject to have any kind of gap. For example, when your close friend says, "I have something important to tell you... but never mind," it drives us nuts. We want to know. "Why, what's up? Tell me!" we say.

What's going on here is that you know a lot about your close friend. Your friend telling you that she has something important to tell you shifts your attention to the fact that you don't know something about her; i.e. there's a gap in your knowledge.

But when there is no prior knowledge about something, we're less likely to get curious. Say someone tells you, "Did you know that Matsumoto is pregnant?" the chances are, if you don't know Matumoto, you won't be interested. "Who's Matsumoto?" "Some girl I know." "Oh." And the conversation trails off.

There are two implications of the theory.

The first is that our curiosity is commensurate with the ability of information to close a gap. This is pretty intuitive. For instance, your curiosity will be much greater right before you're given the last clue to finding out the murderer in a mystery novel than one of the first clues that don't fully close the gap.

The second implication is that curiosity increases with knowledge. This is because once you start learning about something, it's more likely that you'll focus on what you don't know than what you know. For example, if you know the capitals of only 3 of the 50 states, you'll probably say, "I only know 3 states." But if you know the capitals of the 47 states, you're more likely to say, "I don't know 3 states," thereby focusing on what you DON'T know. So when you know a lot about something, you tend to focus on gaps in your knowledge.

This theory predicts that information gaps are made salient by exposure to certain factors, which include, but not limited to:

1) The posing of a question or a puzzle (see the first paragraph of this post)
2) Exposure to a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution (e.g., who wins an athletic event or learn who is the murderer in a mystery novel)
3) The unexpected (e.g., "Did you know that dear are more dangerous than sharks?")
4) Possession of information by someone else (e.g. your friend's secret)
5) Past knowledge, or something we used to know but no longer available (e.g. something on the tip of the tongue)

So if you want to make people curious, tap into these factors and make them be aware of their gaps. If you suspect they don't know anything about what you're about to say, tell them something about the topic, just like mystery novels do.

Put a spotlight on their gaps and they'll be enthralled by whatever you do on the stage.

I've covered most of the material in the article but there are certain little things I've omitted, like why, if curiosity triggers the feeling of deprivation, we willingly put ourselves in curiosity-inducing situations like reading mystery novels, and why curiosity is so intense, transient, impulsive, and disappointing when satisfied. For these, please check out the article.

Murakami's Mystery: Why is He So Fascinating?

2010-04-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

1Q84. It's a strange book.

The book doesn't have a plot synopsis anywhere - you know, the kind that goes something like, "X, the son of Z, begins a journey of unforgettable atrocity when he discovers that..." Worse yet, the book title looks like it's about a low IQ.

And yet the book is written by my favorite author, Haruki Murakami, and you know when it's by this quirky guy, you're in for a wild ride. So everyone seems to agree. The book literally disappeared from bookstores on the day it was published in Japan. Half a year later, I sat down with the book and read it, and it was good. I enjoyed being steeped into his world that my heart actually raced in excitement every time I opened it. I couldn't put it down. I read late into the night and couldn't wait to read the next part when I did put it down. I even fell in a state of despair when I learned that the story didn't end by Book II and the next installment was to come out in five months. And I bet Book III will disappear from stores faster than Louis Vuiton bags on sale.

So, I want to ask a simple question: why are Murakami's works so fascinating? The prose is nothing fancy. It's written in a deceptively simple style in the tradition of Vonnegut and Carver. The stories are usually about an "ordinary" person (usually a guy), punctuated by long, pseudo-philosophical conversations that remind one of Dostoevsky. The main guy usually doesn't do much and likes to just chill. In short, Murakami's stories seem to have NOTHING fascinating about them.

So I ask, "Why are his stories so fascinating?"

What about all that weird stuff. Oh yes, his signature surrealism that offers the reader the spectacles of fish raining from the sky, a pitch-back floor in a hotel that shouldn't exit, a giant frog waiting at the apartment... yes, these seem fascinating enough. But this can't be the sole reason his works are so riveting. Usually the surreal moments comprise a very little portion of his works. And there's even less of them in 1Q84.

The book in question opens with a female protagonist in a taxi stuck in heavy traffic. She hears music by a Czech composer, Janáček in the taxi and knows that it's by Janáček and the piece is called "Sinfonietta" composed in 1926. Okay. Then she starts thinking about Central Europe and Japan in 1926, then wonders why she could identify the music by just listening to the opening passage. The taxi scene continues. She realizes that the taxi she's in isn't a normal taxi. She talks to the driver who talks a bit funny and tells her that she won't be able to make it to her appointment on time because of the traffic. The driver proposes an "emergency method": take the emergency stairway. She does. End of Chapter 1.

Did you find anything inherently fascinating about the story so far? No? I thought so.

Then it hit me recently.

It's not surrealism, or the simple, easy-to-read prose, or his quirky humor that crops up every so often. It's not his passive male characters who listens to music a lot and can cook passably well or their female lovers who show inordinate interest in them and jilt them later without explanation.

It's all that and more.

What makes Murakami fascinating is his masterful maintenance of mystery.

It starts out slow and very subtle. The main character FOR SOME REASON knows the exact name of the music and the composer and the exact year in which it was composed. The cab driver who tells the main character something weird: Don't be deceived by appearance. There is always only one reality. The main character remembering "the sharp object at the bottom of her shoulder bag." All these hints are scattered throughout the story strategically to keep your interest high. Then it snowballs until you get the signature surreal moments.

We are curious animals. When we don't understand something, we want to know. When we feel that there's a gap in our knowledge, we want to fill it. When a mystery is presented before us, we want to solve it. We want to know.

So like any good mystery writer, Murakami drops these nuggets of mystery along the way. There are a lot of places where he overindulges and makes it a slow going, but overall, he doesn't neglect to crank up our curiosity before it starts to flag. When we're almost fed up with elaborate physical descriptions, he pulls out a Crow or Little People or something out of his bag of tricks. What is this main character doing with this "sharp object"? What's her "duty"? Her "job"? Who is this eccentric driver? What's this comment about reality?

And we keep reading.

Personal Fad: Hamasaki Ayumi the Japanese Pop Goddess

2010-03-08T05:23:00.000-08:00

Hamsaki Ayumi is the Japanese equivalent of Britney Spears: she is THE female pop star that's been around for the longest time (eclipsed, perhaps, only by Amuro Namie). Honestly, though, the only thing she's got going is her really cute look. As a former model, her body is skinny as hell without any trace of voluptuous sexiness that I associate with porn stars and Western celebrities. Her singing isn't all that powerful (like Aoyama Teruma or Misia). She might, though, have something to say about fashion as her clothes are immediately imitated by every Japanese girl.

Overall, though, she seems to be thriving based on her distinctly cute Japanese beauty that may be hard to come across in the West. Despite her mediocre singing talent, her songs are, like any pop songs, catchy and pleasant to listen to.

Back in 1999 in high school, I listened to her music along with Utada Hikaru and her songs became part of my teenage years of angst, sex overdrive, low self-esteem, and other issues I let my fragile self deal with.

Now after 11 years, I come back to Hamasaki Ayumi (I refuse to call her, like her fans, "Ayu," just on principle) and am hooked. Naturally her songs are different and her style has evolved. It's a more adult version of the pop idol I used to know. She even tries sexy in some of her music videos, but I must say on that point that she just can't do sexy right (Koda Kumi, on the other hand, can. She's the Japanese equivalent of Christina Aguilera after she shed all that cutie teen pop idol image and became a sex fiend/slut - slutty, but sexy nonetheless).

Anyways, all rumbles aside, I'm hooked on some of Hamasaki Ayumi's old songs and her new songs.

"Boys & Girls," "M," "Fly High," and "Evolution" belong to her old style that I'm familiar with. They are pretty upbeat and especially fit to listen to when you want some music to wash over you while doing something else.

Her new songs, "Game," "Steps," "Inspire," and "Startin'" keep her signature upbeat rhythm but also convey a certain edginess in the bass that pervades the songs and in the lyrics that have departed from the naive, innocent, lovey-dovey lyrics of her earlier days and adopted a darker, edgier, more mature tone.

As far as the music videos (or PVs as they are called in Japan) are concerned, they get weirder as the more recent you get. The music videos for all her earlier songs are quite normal. Fast-forward to recent days. "Steps" is a pretty cool video involving the concept of four different dolls. Who the man in a suit and a strange monocle is is up to anyone's guess. "Game" gets weird really fast, featuring a tentacle monster dancing a funky dance that makes you wonder if it was meant to scare you or make you laugh. "Inspire" details an elaborate fantasy involving dancing on an island with seemingly indigenous people. Well, this is tolerable, but look at her "Startin'"! I have no idea who those two goofballs in the beginning are, and I'm not sure what to make of Hamasaki Ayumi trying, for all intents and purposes, to belly dance and gyrate in a sad attempt to be sexy, and the whole Kill Bill theme, but I must say the song is pretty catchy.

The Japanese Pop Goddess is still going strong, but even she cannot ride the tide of trend all the time as she is eclipsed by new and younger artists and slides down the hit charts. The comeback of the other Japanese Pop Goddess, Amuro Namie might mean that the waning and aging Goddess may very well make another come-back, but for now, she has been consigned to the Idol of the Past.

But at least she's been listened to with perverse enthusiasm by someone like me.

The following are the music videos for "Steps," "Game," and "Startin'."

Traveling in Japan: Hot Springs in Gunma-ken Part III

2010-02-26T18:51:00.000-08:00

At Ikaho Hot Springs, located at the top of a mountain where air was pure and roads were covered in snow, we decided to spend the night there, but after eating the famous Mizusawa Udon (水沢うどん) in Mizusawa, which is about five minutes on the bus from Ikaho (NB: the bus stop is next to a large hotel called Todoroki, or 轟).

We chose Tamaruya (田丸屋), a renowned Udon Shop in the district. When we got there around 1:30, there were about 9 groups waiting ahead of us. But no matter, we decided to wait. The place was HUGE, built in the traditional Japanese mansion style you'd see in movies. The floors were all laid with tatami mats and the waitresses were all dressed in some sort of informal kimono.

The shop was famous for two different kinds of sauce - soy-sauce-based one and sesame-based one - and so I chose the udon set with tempura and both sauces at 1,575yen.

Let me just say one thing about this set. The mushroom tempura was OUT OF THIS WORLD. Gunma Prefecture, if you didn't know, is famous for its mushrooms and this mushroom tempura lived up to the glory of its prefecture. I would count it among one of the best mushrooms of any kind I ate in my life. The rest of the tempura was also good, but nothing you can't get in Tokyo.

Now onto the udon. The famed Mizusawa Udon is supposed to be super fresh and juicy with rich texture. But it really wasn't. Someone who knew the Udon most told us that it was usually A LOT better. We ascribed this let-down to how busy the shop was. They probably couldn't get around to doing their best for each one of us customers flooding the shop.

So I advise you to NOT go to the famed Tamaruya for delicious Mizusawa Udon and instead go to Yamamotoya (山本屋 ). That's where the bus drops you off from Ikaho. According to our friend, the Udon there was bombshell.

Having gorged on the local specialty Udon, we next chose our lodging for the night: Hotel Tenbo (天坊). Our decision was based primarily on the price and customer ratings. This large hotel has top-notch customer services at a very reasonable price of 7,000 yen a night. It comes with free public onsen and buffet breakfast.

A word of caution, though. There is NOTHING around the area and the only place we found for dinner was this Japanese bar (飲み屋) with EXPENSIVE nibbles like fried chicken and dumplings, and only a few healthy, reasonably priced dishes that can fill you up. So if you are staying at this hotel, find something to eat elsewhere for dinner!

Also, once you take a bath, you wrap yourself in a Japanese bathrobe called yukata (浴衣) that's so comfortable that you pretty much would want to stay in it as long as you can. The outside, however, is cold as s**t, so I advise you to either get something to eat before you take a bath and wear yukata, or, like us, throw a jacket over it and forge into the cold and risk looking like a novel experiment in fashion (or, depending on the fashion sense of the observer, an idiot).

The onsen was good. It's huge, but public. If you're not used to seeing others prowling around naked in there, well, just suck it up and take it in stride like a grown-up. It's part of the experience. Make fun of it all you want, but WE TAKE AND HAVE BEEN TAKING BATHS NAKED AT PUBLIC BATHS, just like, let me add, the good old Romans.

After eating dinner that was surprisingly decent both in terms of taste and price, we trudged to the nearby convenience store that was about 300 meters uphill, got our snacks, and played pool (1000yen/hour). A relaxing night.

Next morning, we crammed down as much food at the breakfast buffet and retreated from the dining hall before our bellies burst. The eggs there was simply fantastic. Since the checkout was 11, we squeezed in one last bath and checked out, intending to head to a near by diary firm where we wanted to drink fresh milk and eat fresh ice cream, but alas, the place was closed from Monday through Friday during winter.

So we decided to go to the famous shrine at the top of the mountain, and no, we did not hike up there but took a local bus from across the hotel. The shrine and the well-known Stone Stairs was nothing impressive, so if you're staying there, I'd advise you to just enjoy the onsen and not venture out into the cold and get not much out of it but a bruised butt from falling on the slippery snow and sour muscles in the legs from climbing all those stairs.

And this ends our little onsen trip. The whole irony was that although we went there to RELAX, we were exhausted on the train back although our skin was markedly more supple and healthy-looking. Here's to the salubrious waters of onsen!

Traveling in Japan: Hot Springs in Gunma-ken Part II

2010-02-23T02:36:00.000-08:00

Here are some hilarious knickknacks we found at Yamada-ya :

What the...?

It's a penholder!

That screams!

And in the bathroom, there is another obscene trinket:

Anyways, with its great service, good, fresh food, free private baths, and infinitely entertaining trinkets all around the hotel, Yamada-ya lived up to the highest hotel standards.

We left there at 10 a.m. the next morning (the check-out time) and they drove us to the station where we took the express to Ikaho, the famous hot spring district, to hunt for one of the Three Udons of Japan, Mizusawa Udon (水沢うどん)(the other two being the Sanuki Udon （讃岐うどん）of Kagawa Prefecture, and the Inaniwa Udon (稲庭うどん）of Akita Prefecture).

Ikaho is about an hour south of Manza-Kazawaguchi by express (1750yen). Once we got there, we decided on the fly to stay there for the night.

Stay tuned for incredible Mizusawa Udon and UNREAL mushroom tempura, plus a cool hotel called Tenbo.

Traveling in Japan: Hot Springs in Gunma-ken Part I

2010-02-22T07:05:00.000-08:00

Going to hot springs, or onsen (温泉) in Japanese, is one of the favorite national pastimes of us the Japanese.

For those of you who don't know what's so special about hot springs in Japan, you get to stay at a very traditional Japanese hotel called ryokan (旅館) where you can gorge yourself on traditional Japanese cuisine cooked with SUPER fresh ingredients (usually locally grown) and bathe in these really cool, picturesque baths with hot spring water that makes your skin supple like pudding and drives away all physical tiredness.

There are literally thousands and thousands of hot spring spots all over Japan and it's always a pain in the ass to find a very good one at a reasonable price.

So here is one really good one in Gunma Prefecture, which is like two prefectures away from Tokyo and three to four hours away on the train (4 hours and about 3,000 yen if you take the local train, and 3 hours and about 6,000 yen if you take the express): Yamada-ya.

Located in Manza-Kazawaguchi, it's about 15 minutes away from the train on foot and they can come pick you up at the station if you call them. Although they only have 10 rooms, all the rooms are big and really clean, and they have three FREE PRIVATE open-air baths on top of two large public baths.

Let me explain the significance of this.

I'm NOT talking about a stupid bathtub in the room. I'm talking about those really slick and traditionally Japanese outside baths with real hot spring water that you usually have to pay extra elsewhere to use.

On top all this, they have SUPERB customer service even by the most exacting Japanese standards and their food is really good. These are all small things, but it's the details that count. When you go in, for example, they give you coffee and really fresh milk while checking in; they give you a reminder call for dinner and breakfast; and they deliver you fresh milk in the morning. To my delight, they also have kotatsu (a table with an electric heater underneath and covered by a quilt) in each room. During winter time, this is a MUST-HAVE in any Japanese household but rare to have one at hotels.

Anyways, we stayed in the cheapest rooms (at 16,8000 yen, or about $150 a night) and I have to say I'm fully content with the experience.

Here's my little journey in photos:

We left Tokyo at about 11a.m. and got to the destination at around 3:40:

The hotel from the outside (nothing spectacular, but appearance is always deceiving):

The hotel's front:

The coffee and milk we got at our check in (they are in a very cool two-way cup):

The room (sorry, I forgot to take pictures - to be addressed):

One of the three free private outdoor baths:

Dinner!

But there's more. The hotel has these little things that are, let's just say, very interesting.

Stay tuned. More to come in the next post.

Brainstorming! Impromptu Rhapsody on the Word "Turn"

2010-02-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

Total Read Time: 4 Minutes

I'm reading a book called Writing the Natural Way by Gabriele Rico, Ph.D. This very cool book explores simple techniques to "release creative inhibition" and let your mind go. From what I read, it focuses on the well-known technique of brain-storming or brain-mapping, where you put down a word at the center of a blank page and start writing down words and ideas you associate with that word WITHOUT THINKING DEEPLY ABOUT THE CONNECTION.

This last bit is crucial as once you start to think about the relevant connections, you are using your left brain and interfering with your right brain activity of coming up with novel ideas and connections. I've known about the technique for a long time, but for some inexplicable reason, I have never put it to serious use in my creative endeavors. I have been, however, aware of those precious moments when my right brain took charge of the writing and began making connections I had never seen there before.

So for the first time, I'm giving this technique a shot, and here I am, actually using it for real and marveling at its effectiveness.

If you're like me and have heard of this technique and HAVE NOT ACTUALLY DONE IT YET, give it a try. Here is an exercise straight from the book:

1. Write and circle the word "TURN" in the center of the page.

2. Let your mind make connections and put down anything that comes to mind when you write the word "turn." Avoid judging or editing yourself. Simply let go and write. Let the words or phrases that come to you radiate outward from the center word - using lines and arrows if you wish - drawing a circle around each word or phrase that comes to you. Don't think too long or analyze.

3. At first, your left brain will try to interfere, as it is uncomfortable with the seeming silliness or randomness of this exercise. Reassure yourself that this randomness is an important first stage of the creative process.

4. Allow brainstorming to continue naturally. If you reach a point where no further words or phrases come to mind, keep the flow coming by doodling a bit - drawing arrows on your existing cluster, etc.

5. You will know when to stop when you feel an urge to write. It may happen suddenly, like an "Aha!" or it may surface gradually, as though you were slowly unveiling a sculpture.

6. Now write, either ignoring the brainstormed words altogether or scanning them for specifics. Through the process of brainstorming, your right brain has perceived a pattern of meaning - so trust in the natural writing flow which that pattern will dictate. Take about five minutes. Don't feel that you must use everything. Ignore what doesn't fit.

7. Come full circle and complete your vignette by referring to what started your thought process when you first began to write. You might repeat a word or phrase or refer to a dominant thought or emotion; this will give your vignette a sense of wholeness.

8. Read aloud what you have written. Make changes until you have a strong sense that everything in your vignette belongs.

The part about doodling when no association came to mind was completely new to me but made a lot of sense. When doing something completely irrelevant, your mind tends to come up with something unexpected. If you do it, please share it here.

Here is my exercise - it turned (no pun intended) out to be a pretty cool reflection:

Turning, days and nights blend in as the earth revolves around with the moon and the planets, on the stage we call the sky, a stage studded with the lights of the stars at night, and covered with clouds and azure during the day. Day is time for activity, night, for rest and sleep. Even on a warm summer night when the air is filled with the chirping of insects, you can't wipe away the feeling of loneliness that comes down on you as the sun goes down. It may have to do with the mysterious bone-white illumination of the moon, or all the little stars strewn in the black sky that make one nostalgic and romantic, even emotional and sentimental. This is when you notice a hole inside you, and your eyes see, like a screw boring into a wooden surface, this emptiness, and like the sawdust, this hole bleeds as your eyes plumb deeper.

You then inhale the smoke from sheesha and blow it out toward the ceiling, staring the smoke dissipate slowly, turning and twisting, expanding and vanishing, neither black nor white, but gray. On the large couch in Kamakura, you stare at the ceiling, surrounded by smoke that turns into thin fog that surrounds you like an aura. You still hear the chorus of the insects in the quiet house after a weekend of wild partying, and embrace loneliness along with the ghosts of your partygoers. With loneliness comes a special kind of agitation. You call it boredom, because it is bored out of your chest with that feeling of loneliness that comes with sunset.

In this state of mind, your ears often hear the piano playing the Moonlight Sonata, one of Beethoven's best. Music wafts up from your memory, those tunes you played by yourself in the confines of a dark chapel in high school, expressive and comforting, evocative and inspiring, your fingers against those black and white ivory keys, surrounded, like the smoke from sheesha, by music that is neither black or white, but gray, the gray of emotions, the gray of ambiguity, the gray of creativity, dream, and illogic. Turning, night becomes day, and you wake up with the sun, slowly coming out of the fog of your night, from the gray of the night, and regaining your powers of words, logic, and reality in black and white.

A Drama You Must Watch: One Liter of Tears

2010-02-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

It's a drama series that was broadcast in Japan about four years ago and based on a true story.

Aya Ikeuchi is a kind, happy, smart fifteen-year-old. She applies for the prestigious high school she has been dreaming to attend. After studying really hard, she gets in with her best friend from middle school and begins the happiest time of her life. She becomes the class president and makes a bunch of friends. She plays basketball, and although she's a first-year, she gets to play varsity. She goes on a date with the dreamboat teammate she's had crush on since middle school. Everything seems to be going well except her clumsiness.

She falls flat on her face twice and injures her jaw, and then her head. Sometimes she can't grab food with her chopsticks and drops plates. Sometimes her body doesn't move. I must be tired, she thinks and smiles - she always smiles. I'm just clumsy, she says to herself and smiles. One day, her worried mother takes her to the hospital and receives unexpected news.

Spinocerebellar ataxia.

A progressive degeneration of one's cerebellum, characterized by the slow, progressive loss of muscle coordination, starting with gait, then hands and speech, and finally the rest of the body. In other words, she will gradually, but surely, lose control of things she could easily and unconsciously do before, like walking, running, talking, writing in neat letters, swallowing, making a phone call, and everything we take for granted in our day-to-day lives. But since the disease does not affect the rest of the brain, she is condemned to understand - for her intelligence will be in tact - what's happening to her own body and see it get worse and worse, helplessly and hopelessly.

There is no known cure for the disease.

She breaks down in front of the doctor and her parents, saying, "Why did it choose me?" "Why me?" "God is unfair, God is unfair!"

She's only 15.

But that's just the beginning. It's a story about a girl who struggles against her own body and tries to live her life to the fullest, supported by her family and her friends, crying but smiling, faltering but walking - no matter how slow, how clumsy - loving and being loved.

As you can see, it's a powerful story. It made me cry. It made me appreciate being healthy. And it made me want to help others in need.

Highly recommended.
(There used to be a free online subtitled source, but it's gone now. It stars one of the really popular and (in)famous actresses Japan has produced: Erika Sawajiri)

Best Pancakes in Japan: Bills

2010-02-06T04:25:00.000-08:00

Located in Shichirigahama - about 1.5 hours away from central Tokyo on the train, and one stop before the (in)famous Enoshima, THE beach located to the south of Tokyo, to which Tokyoites schlep to enjoy the expanses of volcanic sand, dirty water, and occasional view of Mt. Fuji (see below) during the hot and humid Japanese summer - Bills offers probably the best pancakes and scrambled eggs in the whole of Japan, period.

Eating these incredibly fluffy, tasty, and filling pancakes and scrambled eggs facing the beach is an experience worth dying for if you're in the Tokyo area. I recommend, however, trekking down there any time EXCEPT summer, when it's impossible to get seating. They take reservations only for dinner,so expect to wait 30-45 minutes for breakfast or lunch. and the waiters are always haughty and occasionally rude, so don't expect to get the same level of customer service you'd expect elsewhere.

The pancakes have ricotta cheese as filling and cost 1,400 yen (about $15), and the scrambled eggs with toasts 1,200 yen (about $11).

Their burger, despite its price (2,000 yen/$18), isn't all that, and their drinks, especially fruit juice, are way too small and not worth the price. Just get the pancakes and scrambled eggs, enjoy them with the scenery, and call it a day.

Too far? Don't worry, on March 27th, they'll be opening another restaurant in The Red Brick House (横浜赤レンガ) in Minato-mirai, Yokohama (a famous dating spot about 30-40 minutes away from central Tokyo).

Read more about Bills.

The island to the left is Enoshima, and the snow-capped mountain to the right is Mt. Fuji:

The location. The sign with "409" is Tokyo, and "A" is where Bills is located:

大きな地図で見る

Inglorious Emericans and Jepanese

2010-02-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

The following clip is my favorite scenes from Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. If you haven't seen the movie, you most definitely should. It's violently funny and engrossing. The schizophrenic and polygot villain (who speaks English, German, French, and Italian), Land, is probably one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

This section of the movie in particular pokes fun at Americans who in general can't speak any language but English (something that is flatly said in an earlier scene by the same female character in this section). This is so dead on the spot and one wonders if the language education in the States - just like the English education in Japan - will ever get better.

In Japan people start studying English from middle school - in some places from elementary school - all the way up to college and all we are good at is to translate, on paper, from Japanese to English and vice versa, and most us, just like the character Brad Pitt plays here, can only spit out a few bits of English when forced to speak.

And we are talking about the two biggest economies in the world. Conclusion?

GDP has little to do with linguistic ability.

Funny: Hitler and iPhone

2010-02-04T21:14:00.000-08:00

This section of the movie has probably been spoofed so many times, but I just found out about it.

Comedy comes from tension that results from a contrast. The contrast here is the apparent seriousness of the situation and the frivolousness of the substance.

A little humor while you take a break.

Absolutely Inspirational!

2010-02-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

Feeling sick and tired? Think you're unhappy? Think you failed? Think you're in doubt? Think you're depressed?

Watch the video. It's probably one of the most inspirational clips I've seen:

That's all.

How to Fix Your Psychological Problems in 20 Minutes

2010-01-31T23:04:00.000-08:00

Here Be Dragons: The Psychological Problem, Cause & Cure by Manuel J. Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Total Read Time: 2 Minutes

Do you get defensive often and wish you didn't?

Are you afraid of being criticized?

Are you scared to death of people thinking less than perfect about you?

Do you hate it when you make a mistake?

Would you rather die than make a fool out of yourself in front of people?

Are you suffering from the loss of your loved ones? A painful breakup? A divorce?

This book will teach you how to effectively solve all these problems and more using a scientifically proven technique called Orienting Reflex Methodology. Basically it puts you through a very uncomfortable barrage of personal negatives about you (or what's called "flooding") and you're given a very simple task of calmly agreeing to their truth or probability. For example:

Someone else: You're so stupid that you'll never succeed in your life.
Me: You might be right, I think that myself, too.
Someone else: I bet you have a problem in bed, too.
Me: How did you know? I have so many problems in bed!
Someone else: No one's gonna read your crappy reviews!
Me: I wouldn't read it myself, either.

The reason behind this somewhat idiotic procedure is simple and yet mind-blowing. Listen carefully: when we get emotional, defensive, nervous, or anxious about anything, we resort to the defensive reflex that activates our sympathetic nervous system. When we process information or focus on a task, we resort to the orienting reflex that activates our parasympathetic nervous system. The crucial fact is that these reflexes are mutually antagonistic, meaning that when we start to, for example, process information, we can effectively reduce our emotional response.

And by practice and flooding, we can reliably desensitize ourselves to any personal negatives that have been bothering the hell out of you for your entire life in as short as TWENTY minutes.

This helps you to become a psychological adult, someone who can 1) rise above any conflict, 2) cope with pretty much any personal negatives without being painfully affected or influenced by them, and 3) be your own judge of what you do and what reality is.

Having sung the praise of this excellent book, however, I must point out a few flaws. The author speaks in a mix of jargon and layman's terms in first three chapters, making them pretty tough to get through. He is clearly not an expert at punctuation, glaringly evinced by his consistent failure to properly place hyphens where they are necessary. Finally, I thought the last chapter on beliefs and critical thinking to be completely useless, uninformative, and utterly boring. That may have to do with my background as a philosophy major.

I recommend reading Chapter 4 and the subsequent chapters that are relevant to your problems, and going back to the first 3 chapters to fill in the theoretical gaps that may surface in reading those invaluable chapters.

EVERYONE should read it.
Highly recommended.

View all my reviews >>

Katou Miliyah

2010-01-31T21:53:00.000-08:00

Just discovered Kato Miliyah (or Katou Miriya or 加藤ミリヤ or how-the-fuck-ever you want to write it). Post-Utada J-R&B with a dash of Koda Kumi would be the label I'd give to her style of music. I especially like the upbeat songs - Lover Forever, Love for You, and Sayonaraベイベー.

Yes, this probably shows how poor my music taste is.

Just like books, good songs you want to listen to over and over again are hard to come by.

Book Review: Lolita

2010-01-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated by Vladimir Nabokov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
She was Lo, plain Lo without the annotations--

I came across the unannotated version of Lolita in summer 2004 when I was a raging philosophy maniac whose obsession was everything existentialism and thinking about The Meaning of Life - in general, I wasn't a very happy person to say the least.

Toward the end of a strenuous and almost cruel summer reading syllabus I had imposed on myself (Soren and Friedrich I could handle, but Martin and J.P. gave me the existential headache), came this brilliant gem of fiction, an oasis in the desert of angst and bad faith, a breather for my nothingness of a mind that craved being-not-in-the-world. Thanks to Vivian Darkbloom, I achieved veritable transcendence of my ego.

Onto my impressions of the novel. I remember the first part being tantalizingly erotic and second part average. So engrossed was I in poor Humbert Humbert's fantasies and seduction that, in a manner of speaking I had to repeatedly resort to the good old manuo-frictional means of extinguishing the fire of my loins. The second part, however, disappointed me and when I began my second fill of Lolita, I remembered nothing about the second part, save the scene where Humbert Humbert makes an advance at Dolores when she's studying and she says, "Oh not again."

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you have had your fill of Lolita once without the benefit of the annotations, you can easily understand my plight when I decided to go through it again, especially when one is loath to have recourse to the all too conventional means of extinguishing the aforementioned fire. But my apprehensions came to naught.

The annotations, I must confess, are tremendously helpful. I did not recognize to what magnitude I missed the allusions, echoes, jokes, and delightful word plays our Hum engages in. It is staggering how much he is able to weave into the narrative. Frankly, I missed, without exaggeration, 100% of it. I was, as the diligent annotator notes in his recondite and illuminating 64-page introduction, Nabokov's ideal reader-puppet.

Not so, this time. Thanks to the annotations and two years of reading hard literature plus two years of French, I was able to see the cracks and holes in Lolita and enjoy it an artistic artifice that it is. Strangely, I experienced no tumescence - not one bit - and enjoyed it on a totally different aesthetic level.

In short, although the prolix and detailed annotations may have taken away from the reading experience, I still enjoyed Lolita very much. There are slow parts, however, I had a hard time getting through. For example, the first 20 pages of Part Deux where H.H. and Dolly travel across les etats unis boasts more than enough expositions to drive you to the edge of despair and tantrum.

My favorite scenes are, in order: 1)the last scene with Humbert and Quilty; 2) the Enchanted Hunters hotel scene; and 3) the interviews with the Beardsley School headmistress. Like any work of literature, there are more than its fair share of slow parts whose necessity is in big question at least from the humble reader's perspective.

Insofar as the novel manages to both engage on the gut emotional level (especially the first time without the annotations) and intellectual, literary, and artistic level, Lolita remains, and will remain, one of my absolute favorites.

The four stars for the second level of reading. Overall, I give it 5 stars.

Another must read.

View all my reviews >>

Food For Thought: Sunflower Poem

2010-01-29T21:19:00.000-08:00

ひまわりは、いつでも君たちのそばに咲いている
君たち自身がまた、ひまわりのように咲くことができれば
やり直しのきかない人生などない
例えば老人になったとしてもだ

Sunflowers are always blossoming around you.
If you can blossom like sunflowers,
There is no life you can't start over
Even though you've become old and withered.

ひまわりは日差しを欲しがる
しかし、争うようにはしない
みないたわり合うように、太陽の出る東の空を向いている

Sunflowers crave the sun
But they don't fight over it.
As if caring for each other, they all face east.

僕は知っている
君たちは、友達というひまわりを求め
そして君たちもまた、ひまわりになれることを
ひまわりの花言葉を知ってるかい
いつも、そばにいる
そしてもう一つある
あなたは、素晴らしい
そばにいる人に言ってあげられるかい
そうしたら、君も言ってもらえるよ
あなたは、素晴らしいと

I know
You are seeking sunflowers called friends
And you, too, can be sunflowers.
Do you know the meaning of sunflowers?
"Always there for you."
And there is another:
"You are wonderful."
Can you say that to people around you?
Then, they'll say it to you, too.
That you are wonderful.

Our Deepest Fear

2010-01-25T23:25:00.000-08:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be so beautiful, talented, gorgeous, fabulous?' Actually, who are you NOT to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small dos not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. This is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fears, our presence automatically liberates others."
-Nelson Mandela

Night

2009-09-23T07:51:00.000-07:00

Night comes. Night, that dreadful hour when you're by yourself, that dreadful hour when you are forced to face the hollowness that's inside you.

It creeps up to you out of its hiding place, an ugly lair in the recesses of your heart, and strikes out when your guard is down. A gossamer of daily routines weaved out of threadbare material with you at its center, feeling safe and well protected.

But see, there goes one thread - SNAP! - and it sees an opportunity and snaps at you. Like a hermetic tank with one tiny crack, it floods out and drowns you, slowly, surely, and painfully.

The pyramid collapses with one little act of negligence. The whole magnificent architecture you spent an eternity to erect comes tumbling down.

Night comes, lighting the sky with small dots of stars, leaving you all by yourself to fend yourself from your own thoughts.

Jittery. Fidgety. Things aren't right.

Reflection: Creation in Silence and Solitude

2009-09-21T01:12:00.000-07:00

When silence knocks at your door in your deep-sea solitude, will you answer it and let it enter and seep into the core of your being? Or will you thrash about and spurn the terrifying loneliness that it brings to your solitude? “For the memories themselves are not important,” writes Rilke, “Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves – only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”

Memories. Do they not constitute the material with which we mold ourselves and create something out of ourselves? And is it not the breadth of experience that defines the scope of our lives and gives us that rich depth from which we draw our inspiration? Why, then, am I shut up in this small apartment, far from life and all its inexhaustible experiences, and dwelling among the dead, in the imaginary realities of poets and writers? Why are you not plunging yourself into the swift current of life? Why are you not— living? Or are you gazing down into yourself, probing what has just happened in your life, and trying to make sense of it all – all, that is, of a mere 22 years?

But listen to the wise man: “Present experience has,” Nietzsche writes, “always found us ‘absent-minded’: we cannot give our hearts to it – not even our ears! Rather, as one divinely preoccupied and immersed in himself into whose ear the bell has just boomed with all its strength the twelve beats of noon suddenly starts up and asks himself: ‘what really was that which just struck?’ so we sometimes rub our ears afterward and ask, utterly surprised and disconcerted, ‘what really was that which we have just experienced?’ and moreover: ‘who are we really?’ and, afterward as aforesaid, count the twelve trembling bell-strokes of our experience, our life, our being – and alas! miscount them. – So we are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law ‘Each is farthest from himself’ applies to all eternity – we are not ‘men of knowledge with respect to ourselves.”

Yes, so who am I really? Is that what am I asking and seeking? My “Self”? Let me reflect back to the time when I was still callous and immature, arrogant and clueless, and think – in retrospect – who I was. And who was I, other than what those four telling words reveal? No, self-search is not the point, not the point at all.

Rather, I am engaged in creating something out of all that past, setting aside for the moment if this act would “justify” that heap of memories, that pulp of experience. Creation requires attention and concentration; it requires, moreover, sacrifice, or more precisely the sacrifice of everything present and ordinary.

The budding and burgeoning of this little plant I am nourishing with my past requires my turning-in and turning-to the future (which amounts to my turning-away from the present) is known and understood by so many artists. What I impart in this plant whose flowers and fruit remain hidden from me, is the cry of loneliness, that species of human experience that echoes back throughout the history of art. And it is this cry that seeps out of the text and leaps up to the minds of the readers. An emptiness. Do I feel it? That whatever is permeating through your work and your life amounts to nothing? That your work is only – no, not even – a tiny molecule in the sea of creativity? I do feel it – or think I do – just underneath my soles, throbbing with menacing pulse. If someone were to push me ever gently, I’d fall into this abyss of nothingness. I stand on a fragile and dangerous ground – so thin, so tiny, so high.

Carve out that part of your experience that calls you to take it up in your hands. Carve it out and lay it in front of your eyes – can you do that? Comb through your past, sift it, shake it, and see if you can find any gems glittering in the dirt. Can you find them? Those diamonds of your experience, buried deep inside the mantle of your existence, exposed to the pressure of all that past. Can you find them, cut them, and polish them into round brilliant cut?

Death be not proud

2009-09-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

Let me gut out all the feelings I have and see them splatter on the page in blotches of awkward sentences. My brush is ready to be dipped into the cans of roiling emotions; I pick the colors from the palette of my experience. Where is this going?

The first stroke sweeps across the canvass like an arc that could have been smooth with slightly more paint, with slightly more feeling. Nothing occurs on the canvass. The paint dribbles down in spidery lines - a thought lost and abandoned in an over-elaborate analogy.

Life is sometimes difficult even when it isn't. Even when everything is going well, we choose to interpret it otherwise based on pale comparisons. Akihabara happened because he couldn't see other unfortunate people on the brink of death. People commit suicide for insignificant events - when seen from a larger perspective.

We become too small to see things, to see the world in any other way but in the way dictated by our emotions. Life thus becomes difficult when it's not. This is our weakness, our fatal flaw.

Ending one's life has its appeal. I've felt it; it's strange. So strange that I'm baffled when it comes from nowhere and takes over me. It really does, this ghost of an emotion, this gaping hole that sucks everything out of you in slow bleeding.

What am I talking about?

The death wish.

I said it.

All of a sudden the world transforms itself. A veritable metamorphosis takes place. Now, obliterating your own being seems like the most natural thing to do. It just makes perfect sense.

Life loses its vitality; soul loses its brilliance. The world becomes GRAY.

There is no sense of vertigo or violent sea of emotions. There's just this calm, single nutshell of a feeling that sinks deeper and deeper. Deeper and deeper. Half falling, half sleeping, half listless, half everything.

Half-assed.

Liminality of being.

Imbalance of forces.

The ground is shifting underneath, ready to swallow you in.

And all you need to do seems to just end it, right there and then. Yet, despite this seemingly unhealthy, insane mode of being, you have before you-- a perfect calmness.

Tranquility.

Blue and gray.

More gray than anything else.

But it's there, sitting, sinking, falling, rising all at once, like a particle out of the quantum world.

Maybe it is so. Maybe it comes from that odd part of the universe. A particle of feeling escaped from it and wandered into my world, into consciousness without rhyme or reason.

Without meaning.

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

A Missing Piece

2009-09-17T07:52:00.000-07:00

We're looking for missing pieces in our lives.

Usually, it takes the form of another human being: the ideal lover, the soul mate, the one, the love-at-first-sight.

Sometimes, though, you meet them in the middle of the night, in the folds of your dreams.

Fragments of a dream stayed in my mind like a familiar flagrance from long ago.

I remember: a girl waiting - for me.

I walk in with her into a store where her father owns and runs. He spreads open his arms to greet her but as soon as he sees me, he clamps his mouth shut. It’s obvious that he doesn’t like me. She tries to appease him. I’m with her and I’m her lover.

I disappear and come back to find her all alone sitting outside, waiting for me. A moment later, she is surrounded by her friends – her guy friends – who watch over her and make sure she’s OK. She’s wearing a white, fluffy woolen jacket, asleep with her head resting on the armrest of the wooden chair she’s sitting in.

I walk up to her slowly and stop next to her. Then I gently touch her neck. She stirs and look up at me.

She smiles. I smile. A moment of happiness.

When I woke up, I wanted to go back to the dream and live it and continue seeing her, whoever she was. I wanted to stay in my dream where I was comfortable and happy with this girl who was waiting for me until she fell asleep.

Everyone wants to be loved - by a great person.

Reflection: Death Comes Knocking at the Door of Loneliness

2009-05-31T08:40:00.001-07:00

For some reason, I really like this post; it resonates with my mood in a way. This was when I said fuck you to the world and wrote and read in solitude for 11 straight months. Looking back, it was a fun time - I got to do what I really wanted to do, although the whole sedentary existence in seclusion got to me at times.
_____________________________________________________

I need to write something. Do you ever get that feeling? You don't want to do anything. You feel distracted. You can't focus. You feel agitated. What you've been doing all along looks pale and gray, dull and almost insignificant. It's not really boredom, but simple restlessness. And it sometimes helps to spell it out though I'm afraid when it's done, it comes out wrong.

Have you read Rilke? If you haven't, please do. Read this line for example: "We don't know our feelings' contour, only what shapes it from outside. Who hasn't sat anxiously before his heart's curtain?" It's just right. To me, right now, that is. You have to be in that particular mood to read poetry - those condensed constellations of words sparkling with feelings and moments.

What do I want to tell you? I want to tell you that I'm agitated, and nothing else. What can I say? I'm a lonely man. And when you're alone for a long, long time, it starts to get to you, and you start to bleed from your heart. Not many people know this, because they haven't been alone for that long, haven't steeped themselves deep in their own solitude. And what's the point? Nothing, when all's said and done. It's just an experience available to anyone - not special, just rare, because no one wants to be alone for a prolonged period of time. But all this is boring for you, isn't it? So I'll stop talking.

Like a puff of air, it comes out and dissipates into the vastness of nothingness. And like a sigh, it wafts away unheard by anyone.

But that's not what I wanted to say. No, not at all, really. Get to the point, will you? Okay.

It came knocking at the door, softly, very softly, inviting me to go over and open the door for it. Why should I? It invites me to go out with it, never to come back again. But why should I? It comes once in a while. Only once in a while in the loneliest loneliness, and whispers into my heart. It comes from nowhere, beckoning me, enticing me, wheedling me to break it, end it, shatter it. It's not a violent calling - no, by no means - but a gentle murmur almost inaudible, rippling through the emptiness I feel inside and I don't know what to do with it but to hear it, hear it and scream it out just to keep myself sane, knowing full well that it always comes out as a whimper no matter how hard I try to scratch and rip my throat with it. It comes at night, usually, and is gone by morning. The hardest part is to hold the restless emptiness in your arms and sleep with it.

What am I talking about? The unnameable: it shows everything in dull colors and beckons you to disappear.

The Experience of Being Alive

2009-05-31T08:25:00.000-07:00

Today, I came across a quote by Joseph Campbell:

"People say what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we are seeking is an experience of being alive"

That gave me a sudden jolt while I was stretching on the gym's matted area after an intense hour of working out (Yes, Taka is getting big). It's amazing how sometimes you come across these moments when things fall in place and the world starts to look differently. Then out of this jolt, from the depths of my being came a roar of liberation:

Fuck being a lawyer!

Am I going to spend a few months re-studying that meaningless and frustrating test called the LSATs just so that I can get into a law school and spend three years studying something that I'm not wholly interested in just so that I can slave away and wallow in the tedium of legal agreements and proofreading and wrangle over legal niceties all to pay off student loans?

Yeah, but listen Taka, you'll have a law degree! You can do anything with it! And you'll be free to do whatever you want after you pay off your debt. Let's be realistic. It's a backup plan. Plan B. Safety net when you fall! Ain't that great? I mean what happens when you don't succeed at whatever you decide to do? You'll be poor, miserable, unhappy, and people will look down at you! Get a stable job, play safe, man.

Fuck you. I will do what I want. Hear me? I will do what I want to do and live my life the way I want. Fuck 9 to 5, fuck playing safe, fuck socially respectable jobs, fuck doing something you don't enjoy, fuck comfort, fuck the "Money = Success" mentality, fuck crowding out your days with meaningless routines whose SOLE purpose is to make you forget about the experience of being alive. Fuck all that. I will do what I want and I will have everything I want in my life. I will not compromise. I will be relentless.

Life is a challenge. Not a comfortable car to get a ride in. Life is a fucking mudflow of challenges. To weather through it, all you need is a bit of courage to step off that deadly treadmill of 9 to forever of the daily grind and eternal procrastination that gets you NOWHERE because all it does is produce NOTHING BUT INCORRIGIBLE INERTIA.

You live your life once.

ONCE.

Are you gonna get off that treadmill? Or stay and regret not having seized the day when you retire and find yourself without anything to do?

Nothing great can be achieved without taking risks.

We're all risk-averse. Every educated person knows this. But knowing/thinking is WORLDS apart from actually doing.

I've done enough thinking in college (yeah, philosophy and paralysis of analysis). It's about time that I acted. I'm gonna be a doer and enjoy the experience of being alive. I will double my life experience and have a blast.

I will enjoy my life.

Principles of Social Intelligence

2009-01-14T01:54:00.000-08:00

I recommend everyone to read Dale Carnegie's old classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It's amazing.

Granted, the book delineates very commonsensical principles to apply in social situations. But. That's an emphatic but. People don't use these fundamental principles in their daily lives. Why? Probably out of laziness. Or in other words, they understand the principles intellectually, but have not internalized them.

This is crucial.

Understanding and doing are totally different modi operandi. You can understand how to swing a tennis racket or spin on your head, but it's a whole 'nother story to be able to actually do them.

So with that caveat in mind, let's keep the following fundamental imperatives in mind and actually put them to use in our daily lives:

1. Don't criticize, condemn, or complain (or in a positive statement, "Be hearty in approbation and lavish in praise.")

2. Give honest and sincere appreciation

3. Arouse in the other person an eager want

Then comes six ways to make people like you:

1. Become genuinely interested in people
2. Smile
3. Remember that one's name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language
4. Be a good listener and encourage others to talk about themselves
5. Talk in terms of the other person's interest
6. Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely

The fourth imperative follows from the first. The fifth principle is KEY and neglected by so many people. Understanding and seeing the world through the point of view of another person is really, really, really crucial in influencing people.

Then the author goes on to describe twelve ways to winning people to your own way, but I think the most important of them are:

1. Avoid arguments, show respect for the other person's opinion, and never tell them they're wrong.
2. Let the other person do the talking
3. Let the other person feel the idea is theirs
4. Appeal to noble motives
5. Throw down a challenge
6. Start with questions the other person will answer yes to

As you can see, all of these are "common sense." But be careful. You might dismiss them as just that and not make any initiatives in internalizing them until you find yourself in a heated argument with your significant other and realize that you don't know jack.

A tool for creativity

2008-12-29T19:48:00.000-08:00

Being the pretentious snob that I am, I've always carried a slick leather-bound Moleskine notebook to write down my thoughts and ideas since college. But recently I realized that ironically it's the slickness that ruins creativity.

I churn out better ideas when I'm doodling on a cheap notepad or a torn sheet of paper. Why? Because on a Moleskine page, you don't want to make it all messy. You want to have something cool written down without any waste. It's hard to describe but creative ideas come when you let go and jot down whatever comes to your mind. Neat, creative ideas rarely come pre-packaged. So a napkin or a sheet of paper is a perfect place to let your thoughts unleash and produce great ideas.

Moleskine is nice and elegant. I love it. But the book of my choice when brainstorming is a plain spiral notebook.

Try and see the difference. You'll probably use up more pages but at the end of the day have at least a few good ideas to work with.

It's all psychological. Pick a cheap notebook for your ideas.

Art of Social Intelligence: An Anecdote

2008-12-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

Social intelligence is a form of art.

I was reading Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence (highly recommended) and came upon a fantastic anecdote that demonstrates an art of social intelligence at its best:

One afternoon he [Terry Dobson, who in the 1950s was one of the first Americans ever to study the martial art aikido in Japan] was riding home on a suburban Tokyo train when a huge, bellicose, and very drunk and begrimed laborer got on. The man, staggering, began terrorizing the passengers: screaming curses, he took a swing at a woman holding a baby, sending her sprawling in the laps of an elderly couple, who then jumped up and joined a stampeded to the other end of the car. The drunk, taking a few other swings (and, in his rage, missing), grabbed the metal pole in the middle of the car with a roar an tried to tear it out of its socket.

At that point Terry, who was in peak physical condition from daily eight-hour workouts, felt called upon to intervene, lest someone get seriously hurt. But he recalled the words of his teacher: "Aikido is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it."

Indeed, Terry had agreed upon beginning lessons with his teacher never to pick a fight, and to use his martial-arts skills only in defense. Now, at least, he saw his chances to test his aikido abilities in real life, in what was clearly a legitimate opportunity. So, as all the other passengers sat frozen in their seats, Terry stood up, slowly and with deliberation.

Seeing him, the drunk roared, "Aha! A foreigner! You need a lesson in Japanese manners!" and began gathering himself to take on Terry. But just as the drunk was on the verge of making his move, someone gave an earsplitting, oddly joyous shout: "Hey!"

The shout had the cheery tone of someone who has suddenly come upon a fond friend. The drunk, surprised, spun around to see a tiny Japanese man, probably in his seventies, sitting there in a kimono. The old man beamed with delight at the drunk, and beckoned him over with a light wave of his hand and a lilting "C'mere."

The drunk strode over with a belligerent, "Why the hell should I talk to you?" Meanwhile, Terry was ready to fell the drunk in a moment if he made the least violent move.

"What'cha been drinking?" the old man asked, his eyes beaming at the drunken laborer.

"I been drinking sake, and it's none of your business," the drunk bellowed.

"Oh, that's wonderful, absolutely wonderful," the old man replied in a warm tone. "You see, I love sake, too. Every night, me and my wife (she's seventy-six, you know), we warm up a little bottle of sake and take it out into the garden, and we sit on an old wooden bench..." He continued on about the persimmon tree in his backyard, the fortunes of his garden, enjoying sake in the evening.

The drunk's face began to soften as he listened to the old man; his fists unclenched. "Yeah ... I love persimmons, too ...," he said, his voice trailing off.

"Yes," the old man replied in a sprightly voice, "and I'm sure you have a wonderful wife."

"No," said the laborer. "My wife died..." Sobbing, he launched into a sad tale of losing his wife, his home, his job, of being ashamed of himself. Just then the train came to Terry's stop, and as he was getting off he turned to hear the old man invite the drunk to join him and tell him all about it, and to see the drunk sprawl along the seat, his head in the old man's lap.

That is emotional brilliance.

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That perpetual and radiating cheerfulness and positivity the old man must have shown and exuded in such a tense situation is quite frankly something I would like to achieve. Studies have shown that emotions are highly contagious. If you can remain in that calm and happy state no matter what situation you're in, people will be drawn to you.

Inspirational.