I am reading the story by Morris Chang. The part is about his childhood, when he went through a period of troubled years. Yet his family was able to move from Shanghai to Hong Kong and Chongqing during the worst years of China. During all these years, Morris was studying in the best schools in all these cities. How lucky was he! He must be a smart and hard working kid. Morris is the only son in the family. He was apparently loved by his parents. One good habit that he has from the young age is the love for reading. I feel that's a critically important part of his strength, and it's a determining factor for his success in school.
That's exactly the reason I am going back to the habit of reading and writing. I want to instill that habit into my kids. It would become a great habit for them to keep in their life. I will buy a lot more books for them to read.
Another idea is, I want them to study in the best schools available in the area. I know it's going to be competitive, but competition is just part of life. So be it.
People should realize the power of families. Well connected families are able to leverage on each other, in building important connections going forward. In the case of Morris Chang, he benefited so much from learning important experiences from all kinds of sources. Those sources are critically important in help the family make planning for future.
For us, we don't have a lot of connections. The key would be to make a lot of friends. True friends. We should pay attention to friends around us, and help them when they need help. We should not only pay attention to ourselves, but think of people around us.
Yesterday I had a short conversation with Zhe, who encouraged me to do whatever I want to do and not to wait until the best moment. I generally agree but realize that I don't have enough urge to commit myself in enterpenerior endeavors. I might one day change my mind, but so far I have been more or less following paths of others, and trying to establish our family firmly in the States.
I spent some time watching a Youtube tutorial of C programming with Jace. It's a rather introductory piece. I hope he get a sense of the subject. I might have over-prepared him for too many things. In fact, it's rather the basic elements that really separate a real exceptional person from the rest: love for reading, capacity to learn, ability to think, strong body and will, and good spirit and attitude towards life.
I spent tons of time trying to figure out which hotel to stay during the Tokyo trip. There are multiple factors; one is I need to please Ariel, and the other is I need to make sure the cost fits into the company's guideline. It took me almost full day to do the work. I think it's utterly counter-productive. We want to spend the time relaxing, yet we spent so much time in planning. The purpose of the trip is to see something we have never seen and experience something we want to experience. Yet the reality is that we make such detailed plans to prepare ourselves way ahead of the actual trip.