The Gemini Triangulum

I'm going to be away on a trip to Portland, OR and Seattle, WA for about a week.

Boy... I never expected it to be this hard to take four days out from work... Big thanks goes to Aurelia for taking my shift for me

If all goes according to plan, I'll be back on Friday night... Before than... if anything happens... I'm not here...


For now, I'll bid my farewell! Until next time! Yay!

Hmm... Asian girls... They are priced for their small frame, their elegance and most importantly, their cunning...

2 days ago, a Carcaction man came into the Garden with a cellphone and a small 3" picture. On the cellphone is a picture of a teenage Asian girl and a much older old reside in the 3" picture with the man. The man was quite miserable when he came in and told us that he was looking for the 2 people. He told us that they were his wife and daughter and that they had been missing for about 6 hours...

A few things went through my mind as I listen to his story... but the first most of them is pity.. Pity on this poor man for being tricked and pity for the woman who has to treat an someone to get into Canada. Love and marriage in the Western culture is based more on emotions and romance while in the Eastern culture, yes, there is still emotions, there is still romance... but there is also chances, opportunities...

Of course, I know I'm being stereotype, but the fact is... Asian girl isn't afraid to sacrifice themselves if they deemed the reward good enough. For some, a Canadian passport is an incredible price... and a Western man might just be blind enough to fall for such a trick...

It is surprising how encompassing the word leadership really is! What is the line between a good and a bad leader? How does one's leadership style affect those they lead? This question has been circling around in my brain quite a bit today. Now, I won't go soppy and say that life will give you an answer to any question if you only look for it... but while watching Hell's Kitchen today, I got this quote:

To be successful as an individual, you must first be successful as a part of a team.

~Gordon Ramsay

I was in awe the second I've heard it because so much of what's happening, of what's going wrong around me can be explain by this very simple philosophy. we're simply not working as a team... or rather... it's more like working as two competing team of each playing their own different sport...

This prompted me to rethink my definition of a leader. I believe that I am very lucky in life as I have 2 extremely good real life teachers and one fictional character to take my leadership skill from. In fact, sometimes I forget that not everyone is as lucky as I am. Perhaps I have been holding unreasonable expectation, unreasonable hope to the kind of leader who I'll get to work with. Perhaps I'm simply spoil because I'm lucky enough to meet and learn under some incredible leaders in my short life Perhaps, just perhaps, I'm just scared of the person I would become if I were to have a bad leader and if I were to disagree with them.

I'm not going to try to judge what is good leadership style and what is bad leadership style; the key word there thou... is "try..." What I can do however, is to define what I believe to be a good leadership style and to follow it as much as I can no matter what anyone else tells me.

Being a leader is about earning the respect of those you lead. To begin, you have to first learn how to respect yourself, to know very clearly how you would like your superior to treat you and apply that without change to those you lead. Respect from those you lead can only come if you give them your respect first. You must treat those you lead as equals; however, at the same time, you must also show those you lead that you have the ability for them to place their respect in you. Only ask those you lead to do something that you would and can do! If you would not/cannot do what you're asking those you lead to do, you have no right to be making that request at the first place.

Being a leader is about leading by Example. The best way to be a good leader, a good teacher is by setting a good example. If you've already earned the respect of those you lead, they will watch you, they will learn from you and they will help you without being asked. If you show those your lead that you're not afraid to do the heavy work; if you show those you lead that you will lead them even through the heavy work, they will follow you without question and without complaint. Treat those you work as equal, not as cheap labour. The reason why they're there is to help you, not to do the dirty work for you, so the least you could do is help out as it is your job to as a leader.

Being a leader is about responsibility. Let's skip the great power and great responsibility talk and jump straight into expectation... A leader is expected to shoulder heavier responsibility, simply because a leader is responsible for those they lead if nothing else. With the rise in position is the rise of workload. Yes, you will have the help of those you lead, but, there is a big differences in between being helped and watching them help. Responsibility also extends to your responsibility to those you lead; to protect them, to make sure they don't get mistreated. If there is suffering to be had, you should be the one shouldering the pain.

Being a leader is about priority, what is more important? Which picture is bigger? Is getting the large income overnight more important than building a strong staff team ready for the future? A leader have to be like a good chess player, to be able to see five moves ahead and should never ever get tie down by what had passed. Just because you lost a pawn doesn't mean you have lost the game; however, if you spend too much time thinking about the lost pawn, you'll surely lose.

Most importantly, being a leader is about trust, about trust in yourself, and trust in those you lead. If you are a good leader, you will be able to trust the people you've trained, and if you trust yourself and your ability, then you should also trust those you've trained, and their ability. Yes, they may make mistake but mistake is as important a learning process as achievement.

I know that in the future, I'll probably look back on this post and wonder how I could ever be so naive... Heck, I probably broke all of them beforehand... but then again... this is not the future, this is the here and the now and in the here and the now, I believe this is how a leader should act... how I should act... So until the time I realized just how naive this is... I will do my best to work toward becoming a leader with these traits... a leader that I, myself, can respect. Until I do thou, I guess I really shouldn't be judging other people's leadership style...

PS. Boy... This post took almost a week to write...

A few of you might had already suffered through my birthday loot show off... but here it is again! Okay... okay... just one!

Within my large collection of birthday loot this years includes a Sansa E270 mp3 player! Think of the E200 as Sansa's version of Ipod Nano, except it's packed with more functionalities (FM, Recording, Video)and the good old MSC (drag and drop) mode! (so it can better compete with the Nano if nothing else...) Now, I guess I've been spoil by my first mp3 player, a Creative Muvo TX FM, which support MSC mode so when I look at mp3 players, I really look for the MSC support. This means that all the major mp3 players like the Ipod and Zune are complete out... sufficient to say, I was very happy to find the E200.

Out of the box, the E200 is an incredible mp3 player with all the functionality I asked for if not more! While it does have it's problem such as reseting the volume on startup, horrible photo/video codec support and no directories browsing... they can all be forgiven for the above average sound quality, the 5 band EQ, and most of all! The MSC mode! Overall, I think Nano really have to start watching it's back with the e200 as a competition! I love my e200!

Now, this is the E200 just out of the box! I've been following a very interesting open-source Operating System for mp3 players over at anythingbutipod.com call "Rockbox." I've read that in most cases, Rockbox outperform the original OS of all the supported mp3 players in almost all aspect. I saw screenshots, did my research but still... knowing that installing it will void my warranty stop me from going ahead... That is... until today. After hearing so many good things about it and making sure that no one actually break their E200 by changing to Rockbox, I've decided to move over as well... and boy... the change is incredible! Rockbox improved all the problem I have with E200's original OS and some more I'm sure! Now that my volume will stay at where I set it! I can use regular jpg for photo and even MPEG2 for video! It almost feels like a completely new mp3 player from the future! Improve sound, advance audio enhancement, directories browsing support, jpg photo support, MPEG2 video support and a bunch of plugins that goes from calendar to all kinds of entertaining games! (did I mention Doom?!) The only trade off is that it uses more power and it's album art support is still somewhat limited but that's the only 2 I can find!

So here I am with a huge grin on my face! My new toy just became so much better and I by association feel so much more happier as well! (James would probably kill me if he know I missed Tai Chi playing with this thou... )

PS. I managed to figure out how to import my Blog's RSS feed into Facebook! Yay! Although... it doesn't look half as good on Facebook... Please click on view original if you're reading this from facebook!

So as previously reported, I'm taking step into taking back my life from the unending gravitation pull that is the Garden. I'm very happy to report that the Blog's posting rate has risen 500% as compare to the last 5 months... lol... Surprisingly, I feel quite a bit better, quite a bit more in control just by this one single outlet!

I've always known the important of creative outlets and their effect on a person stress and I think I finally understood why! One can never have complete control over their work, there are always variables which will affect your control by various degree. On the other hand, this right here is something I have complete control over and just this little bit of control grant me more satisfaction over my life.

I've also finally try my hand at Facebook. One first glance, it looks very much like myspace... and we all know how myspace ended up as... But then again... I got no idea what I'm doing nor what I should be doing on Facebook yet... so... my assessment could be off. All I know is that it seems a lot of people I know is on it... and why fight the masses... Besides, it may provide me with yet another outlet of control!