Daily Archives: August 14, 2007

Personal

Bad things tend to come in three or more

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Last Friday, 8/10/07, I experienced a sort of the personal perfect storm. I think bad things tend to come in three or more – probably a result of natural selection. Anything less wouldn’t be memorable. It’s like you always find the thing the last place you look.

It started with my credit card being denied at the cafeteria during lunch. Upon returning to my office, I called the credit card customer service and found out someone has gone on a shopping spree with my credit card number. Thanks to their sophisticated theft prevention software, the credit charges were stopped in time. They are small charges like iTune downloads and on-line game charges – probably stolen by kids. Of course, the credit card company quickly stopped the card charges and cancel the card altogether. This is going to cost my some griefs in moving several monthly charges to the new credit card number. It’s a nuisance for the modern world of convenient shopping experience.

After coming back home, I found out that my dishwasher was clogged up again after nearly a half year of good operation. This took me another hour or so to clear the drainage tube to the air hole and then to the garbage disposal. There were some undigested rices. This took several trials; I had to re-do it on Saturday. Another nuisance for the modern technology. I don’t know why there is always some residue water on the dishwater, no matter what – probably acting as p-trap thing I suppose.

While trying to pay off my credit card payment by phone (the on-line account has been closed), I discovered that my land line phone didn’t have a dial tone. I spent another hour tracing the problem to the outside jack. So I then scheduled a checkup with our phone company, AT&T. They sent a technician out on Saturday morning and found out the wires were lose at the distribution box a few blocks away in my neighborhood. Boy, first AT&T (or Pacific Bell, or SBC) lost my DSL business, now they couldn’t even keep the wires attached. This is another interconnect problem in today’s interconnected world.

And now the bonus nuisance: On Friday, IT had EOL’ed the NIS server my mail server normally used. After switching to the new NIS server, my email SMTP server has stopped sending emails out. I haven’t figured out why yet as of today (Monday). Rebooting did not fix the problem though. I had to switch to another SMTP server. It took me a few days to figure out that my emails were not being sent out. Somehow, I felt my communication to the world has been cut. It’s a stymieing kind of feeling.

There you go! 3 bad things or more like nuisances in one day of living in a modern world. Let the record shows.

Book Reviews

Book Review: “How to Make People Like You in 90 seconds or Less” by Nicholas Boothman

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This is a book about building rapport on your first impression. As the author stated, you have roughly 90 seconds to make a first impression – making the best impression during these 90 seconds makes a whole world of difference. My main take-aways:

1. Be congruent of your body language (3 V’s: visual constitute 55% of communication, vocal (tone) 38%, and verbal words only 7%) from your head to toe: in your eye contacts, smile/”beaming,” head tilt (like a model would do), unbuttoned coats, open hand pointing to the heart, a slight lean (this is the subtle one), handshake, and good posture.

2. Interesting conversation: start with current event or weather then ask open ended questions on things related to the person who may have dropped the hint or clues like where they work and etc.

3. KFC: Know what you want, Find (get the feedback) and Change.

4. Synchronize to the 3 dominant sensories: visual, auditory and kinesthetics (touchy and feeling). This is nothing new to me but the quizzes are very interesting and help you differentiate which of your sensories are strong. He also pointed out the long-lasting married spouses tend to have non-overlapping dominant senses, which make married lives more interesting and probably incurring more conflicts at times as well.

5. Mirroring people’s gesture, language, attitude and tone. I didn’t know there are so many aspects of the mirroring. The tough part is to do this without being noticed and to able to conduct a meaningful conversation at the same time.

6. Identify the eye cues: Based on people’s eye movement, you can tell which of the dominant sensory type he/she is. Looking up tends to be visual (and right – fetching visual memory, and left constructing visual image). Looking side ways tends to auditory (and right – fetching auditory memory, and left – constructing auditory sound). Looking down tends to be kinesthetic (touchy) (and right – fetching past feeling, and left – internal dialog).

7. Make a memorable impression – this is a challenging one. Sometimes a memorable impression does not make a good impression. Giving easy-to-remember tag (like a nick name, certain clothing pieces – a loud shirt) could be a good way to make people remember you.

8. I like you = I am like you. If people like you, they’ll see the best in you and help you succeed. To make people like you is to mimic/synchronize your body language, verbal cue, attitude with the person. In other words, to connect with them. Who wouldn’t like that?

The author spoke with a British accent but is general easy to understand. Oh yah, he just made a memorable impression on me – the smooth Brit 🙂 This books taught me a few things. Indeed, making first impression could sometimes make or break a person’s career and livelihood. Some may consider this book a used-care sales training, but I think it’s a must for a world that’s even more connected ever. I think I’ll listen to it again.
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