Dream Analysis

We dream every time we sleep. You don't? No, you just forget what you saw. People dream in the period of REM sleep. I took a class about Dream Analysis when I was the freshman at university. That was interesting actually that I still like to dream and analyze. The famous psychologist Jung started the theory that dream is what your unconscious tells you. And our unconscious have no means to tell you using language that our unconscious uses our image that is close to what it wants to say, and this is a dream. We dream, but we don't know what exactly unconscious tell because the whole picture is so random that we don't understand the story. However, when you somehow analyze your dream, and interpret it, you'll notice something related to your real life, and definitely know our unconscious tells something through dream.

Here is how I do analyze. First we have to dream, technically we have to remember our dream. If we don't care about dream, it will easily gone. Therefore, I recommend first that you get interested in dream. This is the first step, you show your attitude that "I'm listening" to our unconscious. And then, when you dream, I recommend taking a note of your dream. By making that ambiguous dream written, it will be concrete that you are dreaming. You should do this every time you dream. And this will increase the possibility you remember the dream.

Now, next step, you have dreamed and written it, now it is time to analyze it. My method is as follows.
- mark any symbol or outstanding points while writing ( I use @@ as signal)
- analyze that points using dream dictionary and your brain
that specific word implies something, (e.g. go exploring => hope)
- maybe you'll see your dream is consists of many parts that each represents something to you
or different parts together implies big story to you.
you should see the entire picture rather than seeing particular detailed points
- contrast it with your real life ( this will happen naturally)


And today's dream told me that....
In dream, I went to go treasure hunting with my friends, and I was in jungle and eventually fell down from falls.
This implies that I have hope(treasure hunting) and exploring jungle(success), and fell from falls (missing opportunities) but eventually I enjoyed falling falls like amusement attraction(be on the way of success)

In reality, I got know about Python, new language for me, and I was in quandary whether I do iOS development or OpenCV and python. And I knew my instinct tells me to do OpenCV and Python.

For me, the dream matches to this problem in reality.


It is interesting.
PS. I often have dream that ends with the scene I kissing, does this have some implication that I'll get girlfriend?? lol

They say, there is nothing useless...

Steve Jobs resigned as a CEO of apple. This is a big news for me. I bought ipod, ipod touch, iPad, Macbook Air. Now, my life is not easy without those apple products. They now seep into my life. And not only those products, Steve Job's speech at the graduation ceremony at Stanford is also seep into myself. His speech was impressive. Especially the story about "connecting dots". That story reminded me who struggles which way to go and wonder where I am going. The story game courage that what I do now will connect to somewhere.
Yesterday, I read an article of a guy who works at Silicon Valley. He is 2 years older, and the fact that we are in the same generation gives me courage. His article was about Steve Job's "connecting dots" either. And as I read it, I noticed that Steve Jobs was saying the truce but didn't tell the really important part. He didn't do something randomly or recklessly. He did have a best choice he may have had, the choice that came from his instinct of experience and passion and sangfroid. And even after doing the best action, you'll never know where that dot connect to. This is the real interpretation of his story.
Now, reflecting back the acts I have made, I was a little different from this finding. I was placing dots which may connect to some dots with expectation, not real consideration or guesses. For example, I was practicing for TOEIC so much, that I thought the Toeic score will connect to somewhere fantastic, which is not. The most important thing is to choose the best choice for me, the best choice was to get the real English in academic context, that I realized when I was sophomore. However, even that Toeic practice is not useless. But the loss of that time could have created another dots which will connect to more fantastic dots, these regrets are the problem, and we have to learn from these, take best things out of them.

Steve Jobs, good job! You have given us the message that still requires some consideration after you resign. Thank you.

Toefl Practice

Is homework important for students?

Schools give assignments to students. This is one of important role. A lot of students don't like that, and even some people suspect its meaning. I think homework is essentially important element for students. There are 2 reasons that will lead you to this conclusion.

First, time is limited. Learning is based on a lot of effort that requires a lot of time. And that is not enough just study at school. Also, the levels of each student differ that the school as a whole has to adopt to the average student, this makes some top-notch students boring. However, this is inevitable because school has to offer a unified education in a sense. Therefore, homework will complement this downsides of school education.

Second, I think the most important role of school is to make students get used to learning constantly and alone. Since learning at school is just a part of entire life that each person has to do something on their own. And if he/she has a custom of learning by themselves, it will be so much easier to explore the new world, this will bring a progress to students. Therefore, giving a homework to students will grow this habit.

In conclusion, giving homework to students will make them more independent in learning, and complement the drawback of school education. For these reasons, I think it is important to give homework for students.

What My mom probably thinking

My mother, recently a little too nervous. I wake up and say "good morning", but she replies something like "Do this", "Don't do this", such as "clean your room" instead of saying "good morning". So is my sister experiencing this. If this does not end, quarrel never ends. I can stand with that, but my sister can't; that they just keep fighting.

But, I don't know what she is thinking about. Why bother say something offensive in the morning. She wasn't that nervous before. There must be some changes she had. What is she thinking? I'll consider this as if I were in her shoes.

I am mother. I have a son and a daughter, both of them are university student, they both go to private school which means the tuition is high. And they eat a lot. And my son doesn't speak a lot, while my daughter speaks too much. My son does something weird everyday, does he have a friend? Computer is a friend? he doesn't even work. he used to work. But, he studies a lot, and his grades are good. But he failed to get scholarship which I expected a lot. My daughter, doesn't study a lot, she is lazy.
Wow,, I have to work everyday for a living. not for me, for my kids who are not perfect to me. What is about my life? Is my life for my kids? I am feeding them, that I am not equal to them. I am greater than them. They must obey what I say. but they don't!!

Maybe this is something my mom is thinking about and why she is so nervous. She is nervous because she wants us to be perfect, and our incompleteness stands out to her, and that gets her nerves. And she doesn't have enough free time that her mind is full of stress.

I noticed interesting implication of what I did so far. Reflecting myself by pretending to be someone else. As I wrote about myself as mom, I felt something different. I felt I am looking myself from the sky. Maybe this is useful method to recognize the status of me properly. Especially, this is useful to get a picture of me from other's perspective. Because, in the previously used method, we recognize ourself from our perspective which of course we know ourselves well. This will sketch the picture what others see us. Of course, the picture differs depending on who sees that, but more exercises will reveal the general picture of me.

However, this is experimental method. I'll try this later.

Seeping into the world full of English

I'm now going through a series of online lectures provided by Stanford University, and I am doing it in a quick pace now. Yesterday, I watched 4 lectures because the contents were already a little familiar to me. And I noticed one thing we leap when we dive into the world of English for a long time.

I usually watch one or two lectures at most. In that case, I feel a little far from being able to listen to English instinctively, but yesterday, I could understand it like an having image in my brain, just like listening to my mother language Japanese. And I got a hint of attitude about how to listen. The point is, you shouldn't follow the sound to interpret the meaning of each word. It is actually hard to explain, but I felt something different yesterday. I felt "I am getting better!!". After more than 8 years of learning English, I felt a little impatience that I don't speak and listen well. But there was a progress yesterday, I am now more motivated.

Learning something requires constant effort. Since nothing comes easily, we need to practice and practice on a daily basis. However, our motivation gradually get weaker, when we are challenged or having failure. But we should keep doing that, because we know something happens that shows progress or brings success that motivate us if we do it a lot. And once you get over any obstacles, your passion becomes stronger than before. Leonald Da Vinchi said something like this. "Whatever challenges I have, they will only strengthen my passion." I like this. I want to have this in mind every time.

Toefl Practice

Do you agree or disagree? "The most important thing about a job is how much money you earn in that job.

Earning a certain amount of money is crucial for living. Without money, you can't even do something new or interests you. This means you lose some important parts of your life. Therefore you should choose a job with a certain amount of money that will guarantee you explore uncertainty. However, you shouldn't choose your job based on only how much money you can earn. There are 2 reasons that will lead you to this conclusion.

Firstly, just having a lot of money won't make you happy. Money is not the unified currency of happiness. I think money is just a tool to get something amazing. If you yourself have nothing special, you don't know how to use that tool. If your life is full of purposes and meanings, your tool or money will be useful. Therefore, you should choose your job that interests you because you spend a lot of time in working in your whole life.

Secondly, your job certainly makes you happy. If you have a job that is you are really passionate about, and you love the job, you will be happy in time. A lot of successful people really like their field that even work paying money for it. You should follow what your instinct says. You certainly have something really interest you. If you don't, you will lose an important element of your life which is something like achievement, success, or friendship.

In conclusion, job is an important part of your life that you have to choose carefully. Since job selection affect your life in terms of happiness, you should choose your job that you can be able to be passionate. And the motivation to choose shouldn't be only money oriented because only having money means you only have tool that won't make you happy.

Basketball

I played basketball with my one of closest friend for the first time in almost 6 years. I was in a basketball club when I was in middle school, and I shifted my main sport to Judo. Since then, I was away from basketball. But, I have always liked it, its rule, dynamic play, big and cool players. Japanese basketball comic "Slum Dunk" triggered me to like it. Not only me, people liked the manga. I still sometimes become wanting to read it again.

Yesterday, we played at the basketball court in the park which is really small, the size of doing free throw. And we played for a while, a boy came and joined us. And my friend asked him to play 1-on-1. I was surprised that he talked to stranger. I thought he was a little too shy of strangers. This is a little finding. well... he lost.

After playing it, I felt a nice and comfortable tiredness, and I felt I still like that.

dispersion to convergence

There are many many things in this world that forms dispersion to convergence. The way you learn, the political argument, human thinking, this kind of process occurs in every domain. For example, when having argument, first you will come up and share some ideas, and this is dispersion, and by arguing, the ideas become more sophisticated and some of them are declined that the argument becomes convergence.
However, there is also the opposite direction of process of this. Convergence to dispersion. For example, learning English, the most efficient way I believe take this form, when learning how to listen and read, we first take cautious way of learning, meaning we spend more time on one or a few materials, and keep this practice. And as the learner gets better, he decreases the amount of materials that are for detailed learning, and instead of that, increasing the amount of materials for more rough usage of materials. This is calles "taking English shower"
It is interesting that phenomenons take a different process interms of dispersion and convergence. Each phenomenon can take the other one of course, but that will make it much less efficient. This finding implicates we need to be careful about this. But, we naturally take the best form. Amazing.

Mother and sister quarrel

It occurs often that my mom and my younger sister quarrel. In this morning, my sister first showed her newly bought clothes to her mom expecting her to say something good. And she asked her "how much is this do you think?" and mom replied "500 yen" which is really cheap, and she was joking I think. And my sister argued back. This triggered their war. My sister didn't like mom's reaction, and my mom didn't like her attitude.
And this war went another direction, they started talking about problems other than clothes. Something like how she behave everyday, money, the fact that mom feeds and give a living to her. It is interesting that they didn't even argue about what was the initial problem.
The first stimulus triggers both of them to express and tell what they had in mind secretly. There is a wall between we think and wanting to express and actually expressing it. And the first stimulus eliminated that wall. In that case, it is like a dam of water, and it won't be easy to stop until they finally finish flowing all of their water(or emotion)
However this is interesting to me, I need to take precaution not to split the relationship of them, and I want them to get along. Now, I think they need the objective viewpoint. And I decided to record their quarrel every time, and let them listen. That will make them realize how their logic collapse, and how ugly they are. With emotion flowing really fast, they are blind, they lose their objective viewpoint.

What am I? I am the observer. Peacemaker.

Toefl Practice

Is it important for students to evaluate their teachers?

The quality of teachers matter how good or bad students will be. Students have almost nothing at first, and teachers give to them.And not only that, teachers can also give curiosity that will make them explore after they leave school. I think it is important for students to evaluate their teachers for 3 reasons.

First, teachers are human who make mistakes. Even passionate teachers will have problem in teaching because of the diversity of student's activity that will bring about uncertainty. Even experienced teachers will have problem that has never happened. By giving a feedback, teachers would notice the problems students had, but not noticed. And this finding will make the teaching strategy more efficient and better for the future students.

Secondly, good part of teaching would be strengthen. If feedback contains good evaluation, teachers would strengthen what was good in the lecture. This will make the lecture more sophisticated. Furthermore, teachers will be more motivated in teaching by reading good reputation. And he/she will feel enjoyment in teaching, this would create better teachers.

Finally, students themselves may be able to improve. By evaluating teachers and whole lecture in the end, students will reflect what was going on in the whole lecture, and this will have good effect on student's future in a way that students will have more concrete idea of which way to go next.

In conclusion, evaluating teachers will strengthen the good and solve the bad points, and evaluators themselves can reflect the past for the future. Therefore, it is important for students to evaluate their teachers.

Toefl Practice

Is it important for students to evaluate their teachers?

The quality of teachers matter how good or bad students will be. Students have almost nothing at first, and teachers give to them.And not only that, teachers can also give curiosity that will make them explore after they leave school. I think it is important for students to evaluate their teachers for 3 reasons.

First, teachers are human who make mistakes. Even passionate teachers will have problem in teaching because of the diversity of student's activity that will bring about uncertainty. Even experienced teachers will have problem that has never happened. By giving a feedback, teachers would notice the problems students had, but not noticed.

t

Own Domain

I went to Tsukiji fish market this morning to buy not fish, but vegetables and fruits. I was really overwhelmed by people there. The way people talk, move, behave was a little rude compared to normal stores in Tokyo. But their energy was something similar to that of Taiwan. The feeling of people "living" was there. And I noticed 2 things being there.
First, I am living on someone else's work. I do nothing about living, doing everything that's possible when living is secured such as using computer, learning English, and etc. And that's why I felt uneasy being there because I felt I am powerless there, seeing my mother and father buying foods for our living and people selling for living. And this also made me realize one more finding.
There is a individually different domain for each person. Everyone has different field that one can release a lot of energy while not in other field. For people there, business or selling vegetables is there domain. For me, doing computer is maybe my domain. Even though I feel amplified energy while doing that, am I as energetic and passionate as people at Tsukiji? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I now know that I have to be more passionate about this. I know a lot of successful people really like their field by having a strong passion. And with that, they face obstacles but they strengthen their passion.

By Next time I go there, can I be able to be a person who don't feel uneasy being there? Am I a person who are strong for living?
I was a little far away from the fact we have to live by myself. My parents now feed me, but they will be gone sometime. I knew this, but I was keeping away from that. Let me be strong. I've got to be.

Mixing together

I watched a TV program about people in Africa, country of Malawi, reporting what Japan is. They came to Japan, and report whatever fascinates them. They went to Tsukizi to see Japanese eat raw fish, and unagi, and kimono, pet shop, etc.
And I felt really interesting to see people who even don't know a fragment of Japan get to know about Japan. This is not the rare case to me, I've been always greedy to let non-Japanese to know about Japan. It feels good to tell. I think we are made to communicate regardless of our race, color of skin. There are now no boarder of information, there is just a physical boarder. As internes get prevalent, the physical boarder becomes distinct. Considering this world became much safer, even though there are still a lot of conflicts, that physical boarder is now becoming lower and lower.
I don't care which country I belong to, I love Japan, but if I have to live in other countries in order to achieve something meaningful and important to me, I don't care. Because we are now all connected physically and informationally. The physical position does not really matter. This is gradual unification of physical and informational distance between people.
Next, the language is becoming unified. It happens to be English that became lingua franca. Using English, it is beneficial for all. I learn and use English not because I love to learn, but because I can reach something that is important to me using English. In one part, I love English language itself because I like its rhythm, but essentially I don't want to bother to learn it if it was not lingua franca. It just happens to be. I think this stream will not stop. More and more non-English speakers use the language, and now the number of non-native English speaker outnumbers that of native speakers. I hope this is the beginning of language unification. With only one language, it will be so much efficient to communicate. I don't feel sadness about the disapeeraring languages because I know the beauty of internal human intellectual activity. There are so much things that could not have been communicated because of language. That loss is the loss of the world. Maybe 2 more next generations, we'll be talking one language. Isn't it great.

My cousins

Yesterday, my 2 cousins returned to Taiwan after staying for 6days. I hope they had enjoyed Japan. I am a little worried about him. I noticed that he is a little too much patriot. There is a story that makes me concerned about this. When we went to appliance store and bought a camera, we asked them to deduct tax by showing passport. And in the process of that, the clerk wrote he was a Chinese while he believes he is a Taiwanese. It is not clerk's fault, she just did her job, but he got really angry that he even said "I am not Chinese" in Japanese. He was prepared to say this. Considering his level of speaking Japanese, he intentionally learned how to say that. I know Taiwan is not independent country while it has certain qualification to be seen as independent, and I think Taiwans should be independent, but it is not good idea to blame the end node of this problem, he shouldn't have blamed to the clerk. It is not fair. The problem stems from elements of deep inside, emotional action won't solve this problem. Same kind of thing happens when war is happening, is it inevitable to kill civilians because it is war? What about their justice, life. It is not always fair to attack the end of tree, and the structure that the people who made the problem always hiding is really disgusting.

What if you need to use/eliminate someone in order to achieve your goal, would you do that? By preparing for this kind of potential choices, it will be easier to live this life. It depends.

The beauty of fireworks

Fireworks is one of Japanese traditional thing that explains one part of Japan. People get together to see it and share its brief beauty. A lot of people go there every summer, a lot of couples, families, children. People enjoy it very much.
Its beauty comes from a variety of fireworks, colors, shapes, sizes, and sound. Sound comes after it first explode in the air. And that makes it more exciting after actually see it. You see it, enjoy its brief pop in the air, and close your eyes, and enjoy its sounds. You definitely feel so good.
Yesterday, I went to one of the biggest and most famous fireworks event. Since there was a influence of the earth quake, a lot of other fireworks were canceled, a lot of people were there. There are even police to control the traffic. Every year, there are some incidents that some people were killed due to crowded environment. And that's why police control crowd recently. Fireworks is this much popular in Japan.

Writing something from nothing

I try to update this blog everyday, but every time I start writing, I have problem in setting what to write. Topic setting is the most difficult part. Once I set an appropriate topic that means I know about that well, I basically can write smoothly with a certain quality. Now it came to me that this is somewhat related to my way of having conversation. I talk less, not because I don't want to, but just I am not good at it.
Writing and Speaking is basically same, just the way of telling is different. The key point is that whether you have good content or not. If you have enough content, what you have to is to speak out about that. However, there are differences actually. Timing and interactivity. In writing something, technically there is a plenty of time, and chance to revise it. On the contrary, conversation is not like that. You've got to speak at an appropriate timing, and quite often wait to listen to others. And writing is single-oriented activity, that is you don't get response immediately that you don't have to adapt to that such as estimating what response or question or argues my occur when writing. On the other hand, when having conversation, you have to adapt to context of conversation in real time. That requires high level function of brain, higher than that of writing.
I want to learn to speak well, talk well, and write well. I think those each ability is closely related. You get better in speaking, you also get better in writing as well. But, I think there is not much correlation between talking and writing. Because of its nature that is one-way communication.
What I want to get better most is talking. I am poor at communicating with people. Not only what/how much content I have to have, there are other factors I have to consider. How to tell those contents, how to react with responses, how to behave. These are still problematic to me. Well, to be honest, I have these problems only when talking with girls. This suggest that I have to take steps to get used to girls and take some measure to deal with that. I have to consider about this.
I don't know why simply. This gradually started when I was in middle school, I didn't talk with girls. And in high school, what's worse, I thought talking with girls is something not what I bothered to do, or not what I proud of. I was a really damn stupid. Now, I am willing to do that, but now girls around me, meaning I even don't know whether I am good talker or not.

In conclusion, I keep writing in order to present something well in speech and writing that is one-way oriented communication. This is going smoothly I think. I also have to do the same thing in Japanese. I have done too much only in English.
And for 2-way communication, talking, I've got to make more friends, or take more chances to talk with new people that means I have to be more willing to ask people out. I'll consider about this later.

TOEFL Practice

Do you agree or disagree? "You shouldn't judge people by how they look."

People get most information through eyes. It is same in terms of communication. You never can know everything about other people because our mind is separated. However, we can know it more and more as time goes, and that will grow better relationship with other people. Of course, all the people should judge people by how their inner character, but I think it's inevitable to judge people by how they look. There are 3 reasons that will lead to this conclusion.

Firstly, we communicate with most of people in a brief way. We meet new people having only one body and limited time that we can't manage to spend enough time to communicate. Therefore, we have to rely on information from eyes, that may be superficial but mostly correct based on the experience we've built since we born. And this is why handsome/beautiful smiling people get along well. This is how animal live and how natural selection works.

Secondly, memory remains. Memory in our brain is categorized so that we can remember how that people is like, and in the process of getting information of that people, with time is limited, our information of that people is quite a few. Therefore, memory of our brain storage for that person is full of information of first meeting. For example, she was always smiling that she should be kind and cheerful even if she was really evil woman. However, we can't help relying on that.

Lastly, we all are animals. Animals have instinct in unconscious that tells us what the target is. For example, whether I should cooperate or not. It is not logical to feel in that way because of our brain, but under the scenes that we don't know, our brain has something it has long collected over the generations. Therefore, we as animal, act in that way.

In conclusion, because we have limited resource physically interms of time communicating with others, and this make our brain have a few information about others that make occupy the specific part of brain that is used when communicating with specific person, and we instinctively get some information about others, we inevitably judge people by how they look.

Anger flows

In this morning, I had a dream, and that was a little long since I had last, and I felt happy being able to feel something different. I woke in a different mind this morning. And I suddenly realized that was because I did "experiencing the experience meditation" last night, and that's why emotion has flown inside me. And I jumped out my bed and said Morning to mom. But she replied in a really tired attitude. Without replying morning, she said take garbage out. And I felt anger, knowing how she think about us, our life. But at that time, that was out of me. Anger grows eventually, as she quarrel with my sister. And I started my everyday work in the morning, but feeling uneasy though. I couldn't keep doing them. Anger grows. I felt really bad, that my attitude toward mom was terrible. I recalled how bad I was, and shamed on me.

Since my mind wanders, I did nothing, just relaxed for an hour, reading manga. And I noticed that my mind eventually cleared up. Anger became small. And for finishing up, I took a shower, and used mint to fresh me up, I feel now different. I feel so confidence, so optimistic, and willing to do my work.

Now, I've got one way to recover me from the state my mind full of anger and anxiety. Do nothing, and do whatever you feel relaxed, and take a shower. Sometimes we need this kind of refresh.

Have a nice day!!

The amazing insight into procrastination

I read one article yesterday, that was about why we procrastinate and how to avoid that. Indeed, I do that. Learning for exam, and sometimes computer science, reading books, doing chores, etc. Main factors that make them happen are commonly considered such as fear of failure, perfectionism. But the article pointed out that there may be a one more factor, human evolution.

We are human species, and if we go back long time, there are another kind of human. So, how we survived? Archaeologists have long examined about that, and found out out brain is the key, the size of if. Especially, one part of our brain is bigger than other's, made it happen. That part organize how we think. We can have multiple plans, and pick the seemingly best one out of them. That is the reason. And that is how our brain developed.

Now let's go back to our story. The brain development theory implicates that our brain can judge whether the plan is valid or not. Therefore, the 3rd reason of procrastination is that our brain warns us not to do it, or it is not worth doing. Procrastination is considered stems from our character, but it may be not.

And this is the most amazing point, how we avoid procrastination. We now know the reason. Now let's eliminate that. Say, if our brain refuses the plan you really think you've got to achieve, our brain says "Oh, don't do that, that is useless, waste of time, I know trust me". Brain is not telling lies, but truth based on your whole experiences and unconscious. And here is a hack. By knowing someone who has succeeded with your plan, and how they achieved and what process they took, our brain would think that can be possible because each human is mostly has same capability.

This strategy is really useful. But one thing I noticed is that we can't apply this to challenging something new because there is nobody have done this before. In that case, you've got to have courage, and logics, calmness, willingness, passion to dive in that.
And one more hack is that it is also nice to here what our brain says, because it is good warning system. Therefore, you've got to get along with our brain.

Toefl Practice

Would you rather work at a job that required you to work a lot, but paid you a lot, or a job that required you to work less, but paid you less?

Working is a main part of life and source of living. We make money so that the economy cycles and we can commerce. However, earning money is not the No1 reason to work for me. Passion to work in that field is the reason so that I would get a job that I love to. Life is full of failure and uncertainty that it is quite often that that kind of job is paid less. However, I would take this for some reasons.

First,