Book Review of “Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder” by Arianna Huffington


The third metric in addition to power and money touted by the author involved well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.

Well-being: Meditation, Being a gazelle (be peacefully enjoying the moment), don’t overconnect (the snake in the digital garden of Eden), secure your own mask first (take care of ourselves first), don’t deprive yourself of sleep (a performance-enhancement drug), do lots of walking/hiking. adopt pets.

Wisdom: Daily gratitude exercise (writing down a list of things to be thankful for) makes sense to relieve stress and pave a better outlook in life. Use your inner voice, hunches, and intuitions. They can be helped with good sleep and meditations. Our smartphone is not adding smartness to our lives – iParadox. Our “hurry sickness” or “time famine” could dampen our creativity. Protect our children time affluence. Join the “slow movement.” Letting ideas simmer on the back burner could yield insights, and sometimes breakthroughs. “The future will belong to the people who can innovate – and innovation comes from knowing when to slow down. A good tip of accomplishing you really want to do – drop the rest from the list. The author recommended evicting the “obnoxious roommate (negative thoughts).” Our habits are our auto-pilots; forming good habits would reduce our need for willpower that gets depleted under stress. Use of stoicism and find meaning in life suffering and facing difficulties could benefit us. Take a minute when you wake up to breath deeply, be grateful and set your intention for the day.

Wonder:
Take time to wonder at the world around us. Slow down and let wonder do its job, at its own pace. Be open to the serendipity of coincidence. Momento Mori – remember death or our mortality. Allowing the reality of death into our everyday reality can keep us from veering off course. The author talked about her mother’s death and how she lived her life in wonder until the last day.

Giving:
No self-development book is complete withing talking about giving back. No exception here. Make plan to volunteer in a weekend. There are more stories about her mother’s giving and helping others. Go-getter are good; go-givers are better. Giving promotes positive health boost and grow brain. Start small with giving and make it a habit.

The appendix is full of apps and tips. Also the Audiobook narrated by an foreign accented woman (may be from Greece). Lots of good quotes throughout the book.

It’s a decent book if you’re really lost and mired in pursuit of power and money. Otherwise, it makes a good gift for someone like that.

Movie Review: “Interstellar”

What a perfect timing of watching this movie right after reading “The Future of the Mind” book by Michio Kaku. If you haven’t seen the movie (Trailers here), I suggest you watch it first or skip the next paragraph.

The future is bleak for humans as we have polluted the earth and the food is in great shortage. The way out is to migrate to another planet. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is tricked into captaining a space ship, leaving his daughter Murphy and son on earth. The first planet has a giant wave and not habitable. The second planet has an earlier explorer in deep sleep, who upon woken up conspires to hijack their space ship out of plant. (This story line is weak). Then by this time, they’re almost out of the fuel. So Cooper hops on the black hole and time travels back to warn himself not to leave earth through the “ghost” of his daughter’s bedroom. At the end he meets his daughter, much older than he is, because he has time warped. And the humans have migrated to the third planet and he meets his daughter on her dying bed. Very interesting twist.

My takeaways from this movie:
1. Boy, there is a lot of science and myth here. Yes, it takes a wormhole to travel fast and parallel universe, thanks to the Strings Theory by Dr. Kaku. It’s still unreal to me. But flying and surviving it through the black hole like Cooper did is nearly impossible due to astronomically huge gravity force.

2. Humans will end up killing ourselves if we don’t take care of this earth. The next habitable planet is so far away (more than 1200 light years away).

3. When people are desperate, they’ll believe anything like Professor Brand’s (Michael Caine) half-baked theories that got NASA to launch the mission and trick people into Kamikaze pilots.

4. Movies with half science and half myths (extrapolated truths) make good entertaining movies and get my wife and daughter asking whether any of them could be true.

Overall, it makes a pretty entertaining movie. I highly recommend it.

Sprinkler Valve Leaks – How I Repaired and Replaced them

My neighbor and I have been chasing down the root cause of the water leaving out from the water meter into the street. It’s a serious offence now we’re in a serious drought here in California. We originally suspected that it was coming out of his main faucet. The water company (San Jose Water Co.) came out to inspect in the summer and fixed some gasket. Now it’s happening again. I then noticed that water was leaking out of my sprinkler valve. So I decided to fix it once and for all. I thought it was a simple task of cleaning the diaphragm. After I opened it it, I determined that the diaphragm was pretty worn out. Upon checking out the price of the diaphgragm (~$8) and comparing it to a new valve ($14), I decided to replace the entire valve instead. No sense replacing a sub par parts when I can get a brand new one. The challenge is to adapting the valve to the copper piping as PVC pipe is much easier to work with. Then I discovered the adjacent value was leaking very badly too. And it got more interesting…
Check out my video how I got the valve(s) replaced here:

Unlock/Open Pump for Hand Soap, Face Wash, Detergent and Shampoo – A LearnByBlogging Quick Tip

This video shows how I fix the common pump problem for the hand soap, face wash, detergent, and shampoo. The pump when first purchased is usually locked to avoid leaking during transport and in display. Often, the pump would get stuck in the locked position despite your best effort to follow the instructions in turning counter-clock-wise to unlock it. The trick is to hold the neck/shoulder of the pump tight and turn the pump in the direction instructed (usually counter-clock-wise). For this particular Clean and Clear Face Wash, I spent more than 30 minutes unlocking it – not easy when I first purchased it.

Just a quick tip for you all, saving you from breaking the pump like I did on the previous one I bought. Enjoy!

Learn by Blogging (and Sharing) – Derek Tsai's Personal Blog