This is a wonderful American dream story. For a peasant boy an impoverished village in Qindao under the Chinese communism in the 70’s to an accomplished ballet dancer, Li Cunxin gave his all and lived his life to the fullest with some luck and influence of his teachers, friends and, most of all, the love from his family.

The story was truly inspirational. It taught us that determination combined with hard work paves the way to greatness. And never forget the people who made it possible for you. There are more people cheering you on than you can imagine.

Li’s ballet teachers, Mr. Shao and Mr. Zang, portrayed in the book can be a model for all the teachers out there. They saw the strong will inside Li and went on to inspire and push him to become the best dancer he could possibly be. The strangest thing is that Li did not make his own decision to become a ballet dancer. He was “accidentally” chosen by the central planning of the central Communist government, as a pawn for the government to advance its own art agenda. In other words, sometimes the passion can be shaped at the early age. I don’t know what Li would be doing had he not been picked to be a dancer or his school teach did not tap on the shoulder of the selection committee member to “take a look” at Li.

Told over and over, the frogs living inside a well epitomized his life and the life of his family. From the village to Beijing and to eventually America. He saw a bigger and bigger world that shook his belief in communism. The shocks he encountered along the way can easily be compared to the Tarzan movie. China certainly did a good propaganda job in convincing the people that they were living in heaven and yet in extreme poverty.

The author went into lots of details on various steps of Ballet. Not being a Ballet expert, it’s hard for me to visualize how difficult the dance steps are. But from his struggle, I can tell it’s no small feat. I can tell that he is an intense perfectionist carried with him a mission to accomplish the dreams of his family – his mother, father, and the six brothers. It’s a heavy burden that he was able to let go after his triumphant return to his family, after being barred for 8 years after his defection to USA.

Based on my Google search, Li has turned into an inspirational speakers and security exchange manager after his retirement from dancing. I think he has a lot to offer given what he has gone through. But I would love to see him perform his ballet dance.

The narrator, Paul English, of the audio book had a British or Australian accent that took a while to get used to. But he carries the emotion of text or the author’s intent so well, it was like being told a very interesting bed time story. Sometimes, he came through as the original character in the book. He kept me captivated throughout the 15 1/2 hours. Wonderfully done.

I really enjoyed this book. This true story is many times better than the Joy Luck Club. It’s honest, sincere and full of emotion – a triumphant story of human spirit.

I picked up this book from the library while browsing the shelves. I thought it was interesting to put a methodology around debugging and was pleasantly surprised by the contents. They match what I practice when I need to debug a hardware or software issue. Some of the examples are really old and are probably difficult to understand for some but I can appreciate the examples as they put some context around the framework. I think this book is a must read for an engineer who has gone through some debugging wars and is disparately looking for a method to the madness. This is it!

The 9 Rules are:

1. Understand the System. a) Read the manual. b) Read everything in depth. c) Know the fundamentals. d) Know the road map. e) Understand your tools. f) Look up the details.

2. Make It Fail. It seems easy, but if you don’t do it, debugging is hard. a) Do it again. b) Start at the beginning. c) Stimulate the failure. d) But don’t simulate the failure. e) Find the uncontrolled condition that makes it intermittent. f) Record everything and find the signature of intermittent bugs. g) Don’t trust statistics too much. h) Know that “that” can happen. i) Never throw away a debugging tool.

3. Quit Thinking and Look: You can think up thousands of possible reasons for a failure. You can see only the actual cause. a) See the failure. The senior engineer saw the real failure and was able to find the cause. The junior guys thought they knew what the failure was and fixed something that wasn’t broken. b) See the details. c) Build instrumentation in. d) Add instrumentation on. e) Don’t be afraid to dive in. f) Watch out for Heisenberg. Don’t let your instruments overwhelm your system. g) Guess only to focus the search.

4. Divide and Conquer: a) Narrow the search with successive approximation, b) Get the range, (if the number of 135 and you think the range is 1 to 100, you’ll have to widen the range) c) Determine which side of the bug you are on, d) Use easy-to-spot test patterns, e) Start with the bad – start where it’s broken and work your way back up to the cause. f) Fix the bugs you know about – bugs defend and hide one another. Take them out as soon as you find them. g) Fix the noise first. Watch for stuff that you know will make the rest of the system go crazy. But don’t get carried away on margin problems or aesthetic changes.

5. Change One Thing at a Time: a) Isolate the key factor. b) Grab the brass bar with both hands. (as the brass bar in a nuclear submarine on the instrumentation panel – look at the dials and indicators carefully) c) Change one test at a time. d) Compare it with a good one. e) Determine what you changed since the last time it worked.

6. Keep an Audit Trail: a) Write down what you did, in what order, and what happened as a result. b) Understand that any detail could be the important one. c) Correlate events: “It made a noise for four seconds starting at 21:04:53” is better than “It made a noise.” d) Understand that audit trails for design are also good for testing. e) Write it down!

7. Check the Plug: Obvious assumptions are often wrong. Assumption bugs are usually the easiest to fix. a) Question Your Assumptions, b) Don’t Start at Square Three, c) Test the tool.

8. Get a Fresh View: You need to take a break anyway. a) Ask for fresh insights, b) Tap expertise, c) Listen to the voice of experience, d) Know that help is all around you, e) Don’t be proud, f) Report symptoms, not theories, g) Realize that you don’t have to b sure.

9. If You Didn’t Fix It, It Ain’t Fixed: a) Check that it’s really fixed. b) Check that it’s really your fix that fixed it. c) Know that it never just goes away by itself. d) Fix the cause. e) Fix the process.

The author’s website may be helpful.
The Debugging Rules Poster

The author uses the word “know-how” as something of a individual core competency for a CEO or company leader to perform or bring the “substance” to a company. A person of good “know-how” can turn around a failing company or produce consistent high return for the company. He outlines the following 8 skills:

1. Positioning and Repositioning. The ability to find an idea for the organization that meets customers’ demands and makes money. A lot of times, the leader need to change the business model to extract more profit from the market or remain viable, by zeroing in on the central idea that meets customer needs and makes money. Walmart had to re-position itself to offer its customers a wide assortment of good quality merchandise at the lowest possible prices. Moving from the rural area to the metro area by taking on the big guys. The 2nd tweak lies in leveraging its strength in logistics and IT to move into groceries. The classic example now is the newspaper industry.

2. Pinpointing External Change. The ability to identify patterns that place the organization on the offensive and connecting the dots. Ask yourself the 7 simple questions: 1) What is happening in the world today? 2) What part of my frame of reference has worked for me? What hasn’t worked for me? 3) What does it mean for everyone? 4) What does it mean for us? 5) What would have to happen? For macroeconomic trends to create opportunities, certain things have to happen. 6) What do we have to do to play a role? 7) What do we do next?

3. Leading the Social System. The ability to get the right people with the right behaviors and the right information to make better decisions and business results. Here is the Social System Test:
a) The built-in conflicts that are part of every organizations are being surfaced. b) These conflicts are resolved in a timely way by people committed to delivering results. c) Information flows horizontally across silos and is not hoarded or deliberately distorted. d) The right questions are raised so that you can look at your business from both “50,000” feet” and at ground level and conduct brutally honest dialog. e) Operating mechanisms are designed so that they result in high quality, timely decisions are help deliver the aspired results. f) You know the points of intersection where operating mechanisms are needed for people to make trade-offs and share information. g) Appropriate and continuous improvements are made in the working of the operating mechanisms: creating new ones, combining some, eliminating others. h) Each operating mechanism is connected in a unfiltered way to sources of external information. i) Leaders have the psychological courage to confront reality and shape behavior of participants in line with the value of the business. The right behavior and values are reinforced and those who deviate are dealt with.

4. Judging People. The ability to calibrate people based on their actions, decisions and behaviors and matches them to the job’s non-negotiables. How to spot the future leaders: a) They consistently deliver ambitious results. b) The continuously demonstrate growth, adaptability, and learning better and faster than their excellently performing peers. c) They seize the opportunity for challenging, bigger assignments, thereby expanding capability and capacity and improving judgment. d) They have the ability to think through the business and take leaps of imagination to grow the business. e) They are driven to take things to the next level. f) Their powers of observation are very acute, forming judgments of people by focusing on their decisions, behaviors, and actions, rather than relying on initial reactions and gut instincts; they can mentally detect and construct the “DNA” of a person. g) They come to the point succinctly, are clear thinkers, and have the courage to state a point-of-view even through listeners may react adversely. h) They ask incisive questions that open minds and incite the imagination. i) They perceptively judge their own direct reports, have the courage to give them honest feedback so that direct report grow; they dig into cause and effect if a direct report is failing. j) They know the non-negotiable criteria of the job of their direct reports and match the job with the person; if there is a mismatch they deal with it promptly. k) They are able to spot talent and see the “God’s gift” of other individuals.

5. Molding a Team. The ability to coordinate competent, high-ego leaders.

6. Setting Goals. The ability to balance goals that give equal weighting to what the business can become and what it can achieve.

7. Setting Priorities. The ability to define a path and direct resources, actions, and energy to accomplish goals.

8. Dealing with Forces beyond the Market. The ability to deal with pressures you cannot control but affect your business. How not to be between a rock and a hard place: a) get the management team psychologically prepared for the fact that societal issues will arise and can pick up stream fast given today’s high transparency and the Internet. b) As you examine your company’s positioning, you need to anticipate what societal issues might be raised and what kinds of advocacy groups might raise them. c) Develop a methodology for dealing with such issues, first in terms your personal psychology, and second for the organization. What are your methods for picking up early warning signals of issues that are just emerging or gaining traction? How will you assess the power of various causes? d) Be prepared to exchange information and build bridges with advocacy groups to help shape the issues and solutions. Go on the offensive.

Citing case studies from his consulting practice, Charan identifies personal traits of leaders that help or interfere with the know-hows.

1. Ambition. The drive to accomplish something but not win at all costs.
2. Tenacity. The drive to search, persist and follow through, but not too long.
3. Self-confidence. The drive to overcome the fear of failure and response, or the need to be liked and use power judiciously but not become arrogant and narcissistic.
4. Psychological Openness. The ability to be receptive to new and different ideas but not shut other people down.
5. Realism. The ability to see what can be accomplished and not gloss over problems or assume the worst.
6. Appetite for Learning. The ability to grown and improve know-hows and not repeat the same mistakes.

This book went through the 8 skills with fairly good examples to backup his points. Of course, if a person has all the 8 know-how skills, he/she should make a good CEO indeed. Often times, there is “luck” involved in having the right positioning strategy at the right place at the right time. Perhaps, that would make the 9th “know-how.” The narration of the audio book was good and the flow was as smooth as one large body of idea that I had to borrow the physical book to re-capture the 8 skills.

I picked up this book from the new book section of the library. The title was catchy and the book was short. So I picked it up and read it.

This book reminds of the “Goal” book with similar style that turns the learnings into a story line. It’s about this guy, Thomas, of 30 years old, who has been working in a profession (CPA) that does not bring out his passion. He was fortunate enough to meet this old guy in Italy, who guided him using the David sculpture of Michaelangelo as the stepping stone. The learnings are summarized in the following (or p.92 of the book):

1. Find the Angel (gift/beauty) within you. Know your strengths first or see the beauty inside (like Michaelangelo saw in the marble that was used for the David sculpture.

2. Follow your own passion. Like Michaelangelo did; he turned away from his father and found a mentor. “If you do not follow your passion, you will always be unhappy.”

3. Be confident (have faith) in your strength. As “David” was portrayed by Michaelangelo as a confident warrior in front of Goliath. Indeed, having the confidence seems to be the right first step or you’ll never start.

4. The beauty is in the details. The fine details are what separate the experts from the novices. Michaelangelo sculptured fine details in the “David” sculpture and truly show his crafts. In other words, one must walk the talk.

5. The hand creates what the mind conceives. (Mind over body). Michaelangelo was first a writer that perceives how he wanted the “David” sculpture to represent before he started the work.

6. Plan and prepare. The artists frequently sculpture a ‘test run’ or a small sculpture before embarking on a new statue.

7. Start with swift action (like pick up the hammer, aim, and strike the marble). One must start. “Action is the beginning of accomplishment.” Don’t let “fear of unknowns” or fear of succeeding get in the way.

8. Embrace the stages of chipping, sculpting, sanding, and polishing. Reading of the “classic” books, authored by people who already passed away may be very helpful because their contents stood the test of time. “Sanding” of life wears us down but they give us substance and make our lives meaningful. “Every negative situation can bring a positive outcome if we look for it. Those who are successful are those who can turn adversity into achievement.” Yesterday, I happened to be checking out Forbe’s richest 20 people in the world. I counted nearly half of top 10 list dropped out of school, including Bill Gates. It goes to tell you that trial and tribulations bring out the best of people. “Polishing” (looking good) will always come last.

9. Sometimes success takes years, so be content.

10. No one starts with the Sistine Chapel. (Don’t expect big, quick accomplishments).

The storyline may seem a bit corny but the teachings are deep. For those who have yet to find their passion, this book is a great boost. For those who are pursuing their passion now. The last few lessons can serve as great encouragements to “hang” in there and continue to push forward.

This is a memoir of Lance Armstrong, the seven-consecutive-time champion of Tour De France. Before reading this book, I had this impression he must be really talented and victories must have come easy to him – winning the superbowl of the bicycling sport for seven times in a row. This book earned me new found respect for him. This is another success story of a person who had been all but written off and proceeded to make a comeback in a big way.

1. How it all began.Lance Armstrong was born in 1971 into a poor family. His father practically abandoned him and divorced his mother at his age of 2. Upon his mother’s re-marriage, he was adopted by by step father and took the surname of “Armstrong.” He wasn’t very impressed with his step father. Throughout his young life, he participated in swimming, biking, and triathlons, where he found himself talented in endurance sports – probably due to his high VO2 max and his ability to block out pain. However, this may have caused him to seek out diagnostic of his testicular cancer so late. But his ability to tough it out may have helped him tremendously during the chemotherapy and the come-back of his biking career.

2. Relationship with his mother. His relationship with him mother was amazingly close because she was always there for him especially during his fight with cancer. Though he sounded resentful of his mother’s failed marriages, he remained close to his mother and his mother to him. He was very proud of his mother’s rise from a KFC clerk to a program manager, while lacking college education. His mother reminds me of Forest Gump’s mother, always faithful, caring and loving.

3. Fighting cancer and winning over cancer as Tour De France. His description of the struggle with the testicular surgery, brain surgery and chemotherapy was rather vivid and personal. The doctor later gave him an odd of survival at 5% or less. Killing cancer is like poisoning your own body and hope that your body can survive longer than the cancer cells. I now have great sympathy for people who go through this kind of treatments.

4. Cancer survivorship. Lance went through a spout of the cancer survivorship, which is similar to people who lived through great tragedy and found themselves not able to go back to their normal life due to the confusion with the purpose of life and self awareness of one’s own limitation. I would probably feel the same way if I had survived a stage 3 cancer. It would be very confusing to me.

5. Against all odds:Lance Armstrong’s story can easily be titled “Against All Odds.” What’s the odd of a US sport jockey turned into a 7-time champions of the Tour De France, a coveted trophy of a sport dominated by Europeans. And stacked against these odds are the fact that he came back from a stage-3 testicular cancer. Quite an amazing story. Like my dentist friend, Dr. Wu, said, “the toughest are the guys most victimized.” How true!

6. Biking as a sport.A lot of my friends are into biking. It never quite appealed to me due to its long, boring, enduring nature. This book really changed some of the negative aspects of biking – it’s no different from living a life. Sometimes, it’s long and boring and sometimes it’s an uphill battle that you’d need to peddle really arduously just to make some small advance. And sometimes, it’s all downhill and you must focus on the road and the turns so you won’t “crash.”

7. Fame and money corrupt. Lance’s love story with his wife, Kik (Kristin Richard) was really touching and the classical. But based on Wikipedia, he divorced her in 2003, a few years after publishing this book. I don’t mean to be judgmental, but I think having the fame and wealth does corrupt a person. Prior to the discovery of his cancer, he was very cocky and was on top of the world. Honestly, he wasn’t a very likable person. The cancer brought him down to earth, mortality and maturity.

This is truly an inspiration book, a most read for someone fighting the terminal disease and a must read for someone who thinks he/she had it all. And for the regular guy like me, this book serve as a warning that I had it good. Don’t complain and keep my eyes on the road. You never know when the road may turn up or down.

This book is a memoir of a Marine (Jay Kopelman), who was sent to Irag during the Iraq war, somehow fell in love with this puppy called Lava. He want through quite a ordeal to get the puppy out of Iraq.

In a way, I believe the author sees a little of himself in this puppy -a little restless, lawless, and emotional. Rescuing the puppy in a way is like to rescue himself and his sanity and give him a sense of purpose from a country of insanity and war zone. With help from an Iraqi, a CNN Journalist, bomb-detecting kennel, he was able to fly the dog out of the country after the end of his tour. The fate of the dog hung on the balance throughout the story.

I was surprised to learn how badly Iraq has fallen into. This is not a country anyone would want to live in. The vivid account of the situation there (like separation of green and red zone, human bodies being eaten by stray dogs, constant threat of suicide bombing, and bomb-strapped cows, retarded kids and etc.) does send a chill through my spine.

The book reads like a novel but was in a journal format and kept the reader interested all along. Very nicely done. Looking at these pictures of Lava, I can see why people would want to preserve his little life. He is a miracle in itself (the odd was stacked against him) and gives us hope that things will get better for his homeland – Iraq and for the US men and women who are still there. Our thoughts are with you.

This is a rags-to-riches story. Chris Gardner would have been written off long time ago and would not stand a chance to succeed. He was a poor boy living through abandonment by his own father, several separations with his mother due to her going in and out of prison, verbal and physical abuses by his step father. Against all odds, based on his own drive to success and his mother’s encouragement (“You can make a million if you want to.”)

The most dramatic and interesting part of the story is that after he had some success with his medical equipment sales career, he became homeless with his boy, walking around in baby stroller in Oakland, BART station, San Francisco, all the while trying to make a career in the E.F. Hutton Brokerage house, sometime sleeping in the bathrooms of the BART station, or dark corner of the Union Square WITH his baby boy!

Armed with his SPD (Smart, Poor, and Deep desire to succeed) and several people’s help, he was able to rise through the ranks, founded his own firm and became rich. This story should serve as a good motivator for people stuck in the same situation. There is no question that Chris Gardner was a very smart person in his own right. Who would capture any seemingly unlikely chance to talk to a guy driving a Farrari sports car and ask him directly how he became rich. He was direct, charming, knew exactly what he wanted – to pursue his happiness that he desired in this world against all odds. No one else believed in him except his Mom and his little boy.

By any standard, he is a very good salesman. He just knows how to sell. His secret? Understand what the customer needs and sell them what they want, above and beyond their needs. Of course, it doesn’t hurt what he was selling was making money for the clients. The numbers speak for themselves. He also found a niche to sell into the rich black community that needs his service.

I haven’t got a chance to watch the movie version. But this audio book was so vividly narrated, I can feel all the emotions encountered by the author. Sometimes, it helps to be put in the deepest cycle of the life to shake someone out of his comfort zone and become the best he/she can be. This is a success story. If he can do it, there are many people can do it too.