Alvin Lai

Aren’t you tired of rummaging through drawers of stuff, finding things that you have no immediate need for but feel maybe would be useful sometime down the road?

I sure have.

From old physics textbooks that I might need to refer, perfectly cute looking empty containers that would make potentially nice containers for presents to downright ridiculous spare pen caps just in case I were to lose the one on my current pen (Yes, looking back it was plain silly).

Other than keeping things, there are other ways to get stuff like impulse bargain purchases to storing something you don’t use because it’s ‘too good’, like ‘good china’.

Finally, there is a logical reason to this seemingly absurd behavior.

One of my favourite essayists Paul Graham wrote about accumulating stuff and how it affects you and I today in several different ways:

1. Wastes time
2. Saps your energy
3. Costs you money
4. Chains you mentally

We overvalue stuff

Many things have gotten a lot cheaper, with advances in technology and mass production by the Chinese and Indian powerhouses. However our attitudes toward stuff have not adjusted correspondingly, thus we overvalue stuff.

Paul argues that this mentality affects the poor and I kinda concur.

When I first came to America on a budget with 13 other people, everyone had one mission – to get as much stuff free or at a garage sale bargain from Craigs List or from our seniors.

Fair enough, we saved a lot on the essentials like tables, mattresses, table lamps, and fans. However our garage soon filled up with stuff we got free which nobody really used, but thought would be useful in the near future. When our seniors had to vacate their apartments to return to Singapore, we saw all kinds of stuff being relocated to our almost full garage, for our batch to pass down to our juniors. Believe me, there were hardly any climbing space inside. When our juniors came to scavenge, I saw the same cycle happening

Having too much stuff around you is stressful

For the first time after getting rid of a whole lot of dreadful stuff in my room, I feel real peace and serenity in my own room to get stuff done … and blog!

Paul attempts to explain why:

I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.

Now I realise why my mom nags at me so much back in Singapore to get rid of stuff in my room – she finds it tiring and depressing with little room for people in a room full of stuff! My mom will be so pleased when I get back, finally she’ll be authorized to dump a whole lot of junk haha..

Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?

With all the fantastic bargain sites like Slick Deals, 1SaleADay, Woot within shipping reach here, it’s really tough resisting impulse buys. Likewise other retailers who have spent years figuring how to make the experience of buying stuff so pleasant that “shopping” becomes entertainment, or shopping therapy, stress relief, as my dear friend Trina would say

A few helpful basic guidelines from Paul to rational purchases:

1. Would I use it constantly?
2. Is it JUST something nice?
3. Worse, a mere bargain?

Food Wastage

Check out this carton containing 6 pint baskets of strawberries Colin and I bought for a mere $8 by the road side on our journey to Los Angeles. It was so fresh with a lip smacking tinge of sweetness that we had strawberry for lunch, a dinner side and supper

Maybe not as relevant to stuff in general, but I’d like to include the topic of food due to the similarities of not wasting food to hoarding stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s an Chinese or Asian thing, but not coming from an extremely well-to-do family might have a part to play in this.

I stuff myself because I feel guilty wasting food.

Asian kids might recall their parents chiding them not to waste food with the African kids got no food guilt trip or reincarnation believing grandmas warning us about being reincarnated into a poor desperate starved person (or animal) due to sinful food wastage in the current life.

As a result, I grew up with the habit of cleaning my plate, often stuffing myself to discomfort because of this guilt.

It’s silly, but not without a logical explanation.

Kids my time have little pocket money, and we generally relied on our parents for food. Eating out felt comparatively expensive back then.

As my allowance increased with age and now finally earning my own keep, coupled with the food wastage guilt trip, this mentality has not quite adjusted yet.

To make things worse, American food portions are huge, often twice the size and cost almost twice as much as compared to Singapore dollars.

As a result I put on a whole lot of weight in the first few months I came to California. Now that I’ve kinda settled down, I’ve been jogging almost everyday (weather’s real good here!)

Wow!

It’s great having a peace of mind again and being able to blog effectively. The related thought on food wastage came to me spontaneously as I was finishing off the point about “Is this purchase going to make my life noticeably better?”, isn’t it amazing? Blogging about a topic and having relevant thoughts just appearing out of nowhere?

Superfabulous!

It can be frustrating when things do not go as planned —
miscommunication, technical difficulties, unexpected long
waiting times you name it.

It is right for the service provider to test his system,
but not at the expense of the waiting customer, who is already
miffed at the problem.

The tipping point comes when the customer receives an
insult in exchange for an attempt to seek redress for
the inconvenience.

The business would not only lose that customer, but potentially
hundreds that customer would recommend against the service.

A mistake a startup cannot afford to make.

-

Frankness is good in many aspects like maintaining healthy
relationships to attaining better understanding.

But when it is used as an excuse for reckless venting,
it might be better to remain silent about it in the first place.

One good rule of thumb when addressing an issue frankly is
to ask yourself, am I using this privilege of being frank
as an excuse for anger?

Some good silent thought process before a frank encounter
goes a long way.

My professor John Nesheim challenged us to blog what we learnt each day, so there’d be a nice log of 365 entries by the end of the year to reflect upon when I get back to Singapore, so here’s the first.

1. You can patent the non-obvious process.

2. It’s not easy for big corporations who have established their brand name to emulate you and do a me-too — because it would only cannibalise and hurt their existing brand.

Image from virginia.edu

Chancing on the Financial Times article published in the Straits Times titled “Bluffing’s the name of the game”, by author Lucy Kellaway, I thought it would be timely to discuss the whole process of remembering names. Especially since it was personally relevant at a barbecue as recently as last evening.

The author Lucy aptly highlights the importance of remembering names as a form of courtesy and career advancement, since business is all about relationships.

I believe that it would be highly relevant to you, my reader too

Some of the points suggestions cited were:

1. Repeating the name – may help, she says but it feels very American and even hypocritically ‘fake’ in an asian context. I personally disagree. When you repeat the person’s name, you are actively making an effort to ensure that you get his/her name right the first time round. This not only shows a sincere interest in the person but also saves you further embarrassment when you reintroduce him/her to another with a wrong name. A sincere interest in others transcends all cultures. The former American president Bill Clinton nicely portrays this with his sincere interest in others coupled with two handed handshakes and elbow contact. A similar CNN excerpt illustrates this.

2. Using mnemonics – Lucy suggests taking the first letter of the name and associating it with a suitable animal beginning with the same letter. Not only is it difficult to hold an intelligent conversation while deciding if this Steven’s a snake or a stork, but what’s to stop you from confusing him with a Simon or Shawn in future after you’ve decided that he’s a stork? Mnemonics have been a powerful tool in helping me remember names, and the trick is not to restrict yourself in using animals or any single category per se. I would never be able to remember Chinese names of brief acquaintances I’ve met during Japanese baito without the use of mnemonics. One example would be a funky guy called Yong Zhong I met. As funky as he could get, it was difficult to remember Chinese names, but just mentally picturing him in the middle of 2 pillars allow me to come up with a mnemonic “always middle”, which also relates to Yong Zhong in Chinese. A whacky memorable mnemonic goes a long way. Controversy helps.

3. Other tips – include associating a person with a body/facial feature (which doesn’t help if he/he doesn’t look too distinctive), logging stuff into a PDA (looking weird if you’re attempt to enter the name on the spot or easily forgetting to do so right after and back to square one) and of course eating healthy, exercising regularly, sleeping well for a healthy body mind and memory.

So what’s the best way?

I’ve found a combination of points 1 and 2 to work well. By repeating the name and enunciating it several times, not only do you exude an interest in the other person with an effort to get his name right, it also serves to help come up with a mnemonic. Similarly for Chuan Yun, whom I met last evening, just reiterating the name a few times made me think of her donning a FedEX uniform delivering a parcel as Chuan Yun sounds like “pass transport” when literally translated from Chinese.

I also gave Yang Jun, also known as Steve a controversially alternate add on name – Stiff Steve, which brought much joy and laughter to the Japanese Studies Society club we’re all in, just simply because it rhymes.

Remembering names can be fun too!

It’s unfortunate that Lucy has to decide that bluffing’s the name of the game of remembering names (oops haha), to always bluff, play around and wait for a clue to jog your memory for the person you’ve met not too long ago.

I think honesty’s the best policy here. When you sheepishly admit that you’ve forgotten a name, not only the accompanying guilt helps you better remember the name, but it also shows that respect the person, not taking him on a ride, treating him like a fool and playing along with him just to get clues of who he really is. It’s far worse to be found out and trust me, it’s not worth the risk.