Welcome to my "RANDOM" world, which is full of random things, and is all about random things...! Enjoy, and please leave some random thoughts :)

About Me

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San Francisco, CA, United States
Sur mon Ile, j'ai écris une page d histoire, pas d'humanité, ni historique, mais une page de MON histoire. Ne rêvons pas nos vie, vivons nos rêves...

Read Me...Join Me...Meet Me...

~Join Me at My Events~
* Runway of the World, Oct 22, 2010 6:30pm @ Hotel Valencia, San Jose
* Indulgence Lounge Exhibition & Show, Nov 5, 2010 6:00pm @ The Payne Mansion, 1409 Sutter Street, San Francisco
* Green Festival Exhibition, Nov 6-7, 2010 10pm @ San Francisco Convention Center
* Chance Fashion Show, Nov 13, 2010 8pm @ Vela Lounge, Seattle
* Silicon Valley Beauty Contest Chapter I, Apr 2, 2011 6pm @ Temple Lounge, San Jose
* Silicon Valley Beauty Contest Chapter II, May 8, 2011 6pm @ Temple Lounge, San Jose
* Ao Dai Festival, May 15, 2011 5pm @ Dynasty Restaurant
* Silicon Valley Beauty Contest Chapter III, June 4, 2011 6pm @ Temple Lounge, San Jose

Monday, November 29, 2010

Intuition

In the previous articles I have talked about information and intuition--simply saying, everybody gets different information and nobody knows all the information, with limited information sometimes we have to use our intuition to make decisions, but intuition is not pure guesses, it comes from observation, analysis, and experiences.

One day I have talked about "trust" with a friend--Everybody subconsciously has a "initial trust level" when first meet someone--let's scale it from 0 to 100, people that are more suspicious start from a lower number, and people that give more trust start from a higher number, then adjust it while gaining more information overtime.  This initial level depends on people's characters and previous experience, usually range from 20-80, and there is a "resistance factor" which measures how difficult is to change one's "trust score" to other people.

My friend usually starts the score with 0 (which is quite an extreme) when he meets someone, and when he spends more time with that person, and get more information, he will raise up the score. He seems to view the information as it is, resistance factor is pretty low.

I look things differently. I do not have a fixed initial trust score when I meet people, the score varies by my first impression of people--guess I have pretty good intuition about how one person is after my initial conversation with them. Once I set the score, it is really hard to change.  Because the information is incomplete, and the truth may not be what we see and what we hear, so I trust my intuition more (which is right most of the time), unless I can gather enough information to do a solid analysis to prove the point, I would not change my judgment dramatically.  I believe nothing we see really means anything, and nothing is stand-alone, we need to look at things collectively--that's what I meant by "look at people with your heart not your eyes", and "use your intuition not only information".
Many people think good intuition comes from experiences, but it is not completely true.  A lot of people think they have experience so that they know better how to deal with things, but sometimes people get tricked by their experience, because they didn't realize that same cause can lead to different results, and different causes can lead the same result--they use what happened before to predict and to deal with what happens now or what will happen in the future, sometimes it just doesn't work. 

I think overall I have pretty good intuition, it is mainly because I observe things well (due to my psychology education & experience) and I analyze things in a different way (thanks to quantum physics and my scientific friends).  It is not easy to make decisions based mostly on intuitions, it needs a lot of efforts, but just observe carefully, think logically, analyze wisely, then close your eyes, clear your mind and follow your heart.:)

From Past to Future

I don't really like to be asked to introduce myself by brief descriptions, because I do not think simply talking about what I like what I hate or where I've been to can really describe me. I think people are made by stories, not by single dots--I always like to hear people's stories, good or bad, from what I can get a better sense of who they are and how they are and more important, why they are who they are and how they are now.

We always say, it's the past that made who we are now. I really believe so--everything happens with a cause, our past affect our behaviors today, and what we do today will affect our future.  To that logic, many people may think the past of one person decides one's future, which I don't think is true, since our life is going on continuously, and every moment can affect the next moment, and whichever one is closer has more effect than what happened before (assume what happening is at the same level as what happened before). I never judge people from their past, even though I always try to know as many past stories of them as possible, I just try to understand what made them today, but I don't think that's what they will be in the future. I'd look more today and the "trend" to think what they will be in the future. 

It's just like when we analyze stocks.  Most people, even most professional analysts look at a stock by its past performance to predict it's future and make their investment decision today. But we all know that past performance and future performance can be totally different, it should just be a reference--people still rely on it because it's the only information they have, and barely anyone thinks about what is the underlying reason of its performance/trend up to now and what is the story it is really telling us between the numbers--only the outstanding top people do.

I remember in my Investment class in school, the professor kept emphasizing "forward looking", at that time I read the existing numbers, calculate the intrinsic values, and predict in the long term if the value will go up/down, then make decision if I should purchase/sell the stock. Theoretically that works perfectly, but it's not very realistic in operation--it may be true that eventually it will arrive to its intrinsic value, but who knows how long that will take, and the value can change over time with different events as well. And in the real world when we need fast reactions, it doesn't work any more. 

The real forward looking, in general, for me, is to see, or I should say, observe carefully, the current situation (PRESENT), find out the causes (from the PAST), analyze them, and find the underlying order to find the possible future trends, then adjust the valuation of the FUTURE with the ongoing events. 

Sometimes we rely too much on existing information, but remember we don't get all the information? and some information we get can be wrong and/or misleading as well. Sometimes we just have to make reasonable assumptions to make decisions, and we do have to trust our intuition more than the partial information we have--though I have to say, the intuition comes from observations, analysis, practice and experiences, not just a pure guess out of nowhere...so BE AWARE :) 

My Relativity

I remember couple of years ago I used to write something on my blog about when we were little, we knew what is "good" what is "bad", but when we grow up, we get more and more confused about what is "good" and what is "bad". Is that because we get dumb or this world just confused us? 

Today, when I was asked about if I think the world is more of good things or more of bad things, I suddenly thought about that question I asked myself couple of years ago, but now I realized nothing is absolutely good and nothing is absolutely bad, everything is really relative.  We got more confused is just because we are growing up.

Let's say, if all the information in this world is transparent and shared, and everybody gets the exact same information, this world will be really peaceful and beautiful. However, each of us can only see a part of this world from certain angle, and we all get different information, that's what made the chaos and complications of our society.  I believe nobody is born to be evil, and everything happens with a cause, and people do things with their own reasons.  It may hurt other people, and from some people's point of view, it's really bad, but if we think from different angle or put ourselves in other people's shoes, that might not necessarily be a bad thing.  

People have instinct to protect themselves, everybody, and the protection level, like needs, has hierarchy, when one satisfied one level, it takes to another level. For example, a homeless guy wants to keep himself from being hungry, cold, and dying, he would not try to do anything to hurt people unless he feels his life/food/etc are threatened; however when one becomes rich and/or famous, he gets more things he needs to protect (e.g. public image, money, rights, etc), so he would do more things to protect them, some of the things he does may look bad from other people's eyes, but that's what he's got to do, to his point, it's not a "bad" thing really. 

The more I have thought, and the more I have experienced, the more I realized nothing is really bad.  Even something happened to me that make me feel really bad, or even damaged my life, it can still be good in certain way--at least I learned my lesson.

I may still complain about things sometimes, but now I can be calm shortly and can sit back and see what I did wrong instead of pick on other people--I guess after these months of break, I did become more mature now ^^

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Time of Fashion

This economy crisis slowed down lots of things, especially in the banking industry.  Since the working activity is very slow, I decided to do something different, something I like...

One day I jumped in to a fashion show, volunteered to be a model, and started my fashionista life from there. The first month I was running around different fashion shows, worked with different designers, met different models, at the same time I had to practice my runway catwalk and posing everyday, and then photoshoot posing -- not an easy job really, but I did it, in a short time. When I looked back the pictures of that one month, I was very impressed with my progress.

The past 4 months, from a model, to back stage manager, to show producer, as well as being involved in movie premiers and TV shows, I saw a whole new world out of a banker's life, a beautiful and interesting world. We talked about all different things, from fashion to Chinese medicine, from business to quantum physics, from work to the way of life...

I really love fashion.  It is not just the surface, it is about connecting the soul with body, mind, society and culture.  It anticipates, and elegance is really a state of mind, and a way of savoir vivre.

Guess it's time to be back to my real world, but I appreciate this experience, that has built up my confidence from other ways, opened my eyes for a different world, and added color to my life.

 * Indulgence Lounge - Resort Collection by Monique Zhang *
  * Indulgence Lounge - Mur d'Art Collection by Monique Zhang *
 * Chance Fashion Show @ Seattle - Haute Couture Collection by Debbie Nghiem *
* Calendar Photoshoot - Ao Dai Vietnamese Dress Collection by Debbie Nghiem *