How I Vote for a President

I have been voting for the past ten years and at each event, I found myself to be apathetic and intrigue at the same time. I voted in the Presidential elections, California governor election, state laws, and too many I could not recall. I was involved in choosing the first Black president for America and even worked as a canvasser after receiving my undergraduate degree, going from neighbors to neighbors to get citizens to vote. And despite how politically active I was, I was always on the fence on who to choose as the next leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world.  

The presidential campaign for 2016 has been different from any other elections. I found myself to enjoy reading the news about what the candidates said and even laughed occasionally as the candidates attacked each other with rude and harsh comments.  Presidential hopeful Donald Trump, for instance, cannot stop make me laugh.  His controversial statements not only surprise me but also add a little excitement to the usual more serious debates for a presidential election. Mr. Trump boycotted a GOP debate because of a row he has with the Fox News facilitator Megyn Kelly in the past.  Then of course the more serious politicians Ted Cruz and Hilary Clinton who I found to be very much excited to get to know as they gain more supporters in the states.  Despite how entertaining the presidential campaign is so far, I still vote on the next America leader base on these factors:

11. It does matter who we vote for. Many Americans are apathetic and believed politics do not affect them so they choose to opt out of the privilege to pick the next leader of the US. False belief. Politics affect us every single day.  How much we pay for our taxes and how our tax money is spent is base on the politicians of our country.

22.  Experience matters when it comes to being a leader of a country. As a first lady,Hilary Clinton watched her husband formulated laws and dealt with national problems  and she went on becoming active in politics, becoming a senator of New York and ambassadors of various organizations. Experiences will triumph good personal characteristics and brain power, no matter what the problem a nation has.

33.  Whether we are alive or about to die is base on the politicians. They are the individuals who make a call if the military should be sent out to protect the nation. They create laws that affect how the military should be used in which case scenarios on a daily basis.  

Politics plays a large role in our life. If we do not believe it, we are living in an illusion. We have to wake up and see the reality of our political system and we need to make the choice to be active in politics. Voting for the next leader of a nation is not an easy task, but if we use our brain and logic, we will at least choose the best of all the candidates, even if he or she is not perfect.


 

How to Think Like a Genius

The Geography of Genius

In a recent episode of Talk on Google, author Eric Weiner discussed his latest book "The Geography of Genius." The book discusses the characteristics of a genius and it stresses the type of environment that cultivate the so-called genius in our history.  Mr. Weiner traveled around the globe to explore the habitats of where many world-known genius lived in; he explored Athens, Hangzhous in China, Renaissance Florence, Enlightenment Edinburge in Scotland, Calcutta, Vienna, and Silicon Valley with the purpose to study the genius in the past.  He walked on the foot-steps of Socrates in Athens and Mozart in Vienna and tried to uncover the key factors that separate those genius from the rest of the population.

Gene verses the environment: which has more influence to a person? Social psychologists have done numerous researches on the topic and the general consensus is it depends and that both factors take part in shaping a person.

I believe the environment has the greatest impact on an individual.  Of course genetics play a huge role in how a person turns out in life but many individuals who have a born disability did not let it takes control of them, rather they let their ambitions and willpower to take control of their lives. And the result is they blossom in life and they succeed in areas in life that they could never thought of.  For instance, Serbian-Australian Nick Vujicic has a rare disorder called Phocomelia, a rare condition where a person is born with no limbs.  He struggled mentally and physically as a child but he came to accept it and used his physical state and life story to inspire other people. Today, he is a motivational speaker helping people to find hope and meaning in life, and he even runs a business that hires thousands of people.  He had social supports from friends and family and was able to overcome his disappointments. With this being said, it proves that one's genetics do have an impact on a person but how we carry out our lives depends on the environments greatly.  Nick's environment helped him to overcome his disability and he grew and became success in life.

The author Eric Weiner is right, genius are shaped by their environment. They are the product of their own personal experiences and the environment cultivates the genius.  There will always be roadblocks in life, there will be people who put us down and believe we are no good and we are damaged and cannot be fixed. But--there is always a but in most aspects in life-- what they said do not have to be our reality. We can make a big difference in our life  and change for the best. We cannot let our gene dictates us.  We are the creator of our future and our environment is in our hands, ready to let us mold it.

America, the Land of Billionaires

As an American, I live among some of the most ambitious people on the planet Earth.  America is always ranked as one of the richest countries in the world and it has the most billionaires compared to any other countries despite how young the country is, and in fact, the richest person in the world, Bill Gates, is an American.  I live in California and here Americans fit the stereotype of being ambitious; we live in a state that is most expensive and hardest to survive in. The cost of living here is always higher than most states and in order to pay bills, you have to have a job or two.  Those who cannot afford to live in California relocate to other states for financial reason and they choose to live in states where the cost of living is more affordable. 

I came from an immigrant family where we came with nothing but a few hundred dollars that my mom saved up back in our home country Vietnam.  My parents had to work in low-waged jobs before our family was more financially stable.  I can remember my mom saving plastic bottles and use them as water bottles in order to save some cash and we had to recycle bottles of waters to bring extra cash in.  Twenty-one years later, we are more financially stable and most of my siblings have stable job so we are able to be financially independent from my parents and the government assistant.  Some families, however, never get out of poverty and continue to live in the cycle of poverty for generations.  Chicago, for instance, is one of the most segregated city in the United States; and within driving distance, one can see the well-off and upper-class white neighborhoods and the impoverished black neighborhoods. America is a great place to live but it definitely has differences on how people live out their lives base on the income they make.  

America is not perfect but I find that if we want to succeed in life, we have to use every given opportunities wisely.  Living in America is an opportunity.  Billions of people in the world would do anything to live in this land and cherish what it has to offer.  We should take every opportunity to succeed and know that there are chances out there for us to succeed.  It takes determination and motivation but it is possible if we believe. You never know, you might be one of the billionaires one day and America is a place where that dream can become a reality.  

A Picture with a Thousand Words

As I perfused through a collection of pictures from last year on CNN, I ran into a photo that spoke to me more than any picture I have seen in my time of existence on this earth.  It is a picture of migrants collecting rainwater in Myanmar.  People say a picture speaks a thousand words and this picture spoke to me a thousand words.  These migrants came from Bangladesh and Rohingya and they hoped to settle somewhere in Southeast Asia; they went by sea hoping to find a new home in a new environment and to seek a better life.

This story is no news to the Vietnamese culture.  The people in Vietnam fled their country in 1975 right after the communist took over South Vietnam and many chose to travel by sea to the new land, hoping to find a new life there. Many of them landed on an environment that welcomed them while many were not fortunate and they died either by natural causes such as starvation, ship sinking, thirst and many were robbed and killed by pirates in the body of water surrounding Vietnam.  Similarly, the picture of the migrants in Myanmar is definitely familiar to many immigrants who had to go through the travel on the sea to get to a new land.  In the picture, the men were collecting water from the rain. They are standing in a shack and they are holding metal plates and water bottles to get water from the open air.  The men are dark skinned, lank, look malnourished and with the physical condition they are in, they would eat and drink anything they have their eyes on.

The picture reminded me how grateful for me to live in a country where I have clean water and  not have to live in an environment where I am dependent on rain water. The worst thing that can happen to California is the drought and despite the warnings of the shortage of water, many people I know-- and guilty of myself-- to not give much attention to the problem.  Us Americans have big land mass and there will never be a point where we have to drink rain water. There are Californians who collect water in rain barrels but the purpose of it is not to drink, the barrels are used to water plants with the intention to reduce the drought.  Sometimes we forget how blessed we are to have all the necessary in life and a picture can remind us how fortunate for us to live in a place where we do not have to worry about the necessary in life.

Pictures: http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/03/world/gallery/year-in-pictures-2015/

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You Know You Are A Grown-Up When...

You Know You are A Grown-Up When:

1. When someone criticizes you, you stay calm, try to understand it, and then move on if it is incorrect.

2. You travel for the sake of self-improvement, not with the purpose to post pictures on Facebook.

3. Facebook gets boring. You want to go out and explore your city and meet new people.

4.  You know what you want out of life. You know what type of job you want, you know what career you most want and the money that goes with a chosen career becomes less of a matter.

5.  You realize Prince Charming only exists in the world of Disney.

6. If a guy rejects you, you move on and realize that there are men out there who would treat you 1000X better than the last one.

7.  You become friends with your parents and siblings.

8. You move out and pay your own bills, car insurance, rent, and you make sure you mark the due date of each bill on a calendar.

9.  You own a planner.  

10.  You believe in quality over quantity.  While that Forever 21 jean makes your butt looks great, you spend $40 more dollar to buy a quality pair of jeans from Gap or J. Crew.

11.  You enjoy staying in on a Friday night rather than going out.

12. You learn to say no and you mean it.

13.  You don't know where the future will lead but you are okay with it.

Why We Should Use Wikipedia

As a college graduate, I was taught by professors that we should always be aware of what we are reading, whether it is an academic work or in an entertainment reading material. It was ingrained in me for the four years in college and one cannot forget it if it was hammered in them for that long. I was brainwashed by the American college system and the skill became a part of me till now.

On January 15, Wikipedia turned 15.  I can still remember the first time using Wikipedia back in high school over a decade ago.  I was new to using the internet (or World Wide Web) so Wikipedia was definitely a challenge to navigate. Before using Wikipedia, I had to flip through rows of encyclopedia books in the library whenever there is a research paper assigned; my comprehension in English was minimal so it was definitely a challenge to have to read all those thick and dusty volumes of books that might have contained out-dated information. And besides it was time consuming while I could use that time for reading or sleeping and preparing for the next day of school.

Over the years, Wikipedia gained popularity and many college students depend on it for the quick and current information that it provides. Opponents say it is cheating to use the website and that the information can be incorrect.  After using the website for over a decade, I beg to differ on the criticisms that it has been getting for the past decade of its existence.  Here are the reasons why we should continue to use Wikipedia:

1. It is free. Shall I explain more?
2. It is useful. We can find any information on it and use it in conversations in social gatherings, school projects, and our daily life.
3. The information is generally accurate. Of course, there will be time where the information may not reflect reality and this is why we always have to be aware with what we are treading into. Also just because an information is in a academic work, it does not mean it is correct. Every piece of writing is prone to error and our job as a critical thinker is to recognize it when we run into it and to always take any information in with a grain of salt.
4. Best of all, it saves us time from looking up the information.  Why spend the time flipping through books and random internet websites when the information is just a click away?

I am not working for Wikipedia or endorsing it in anyway. The above writing is from my own personal experience and I hope it can shed a better light on a resource hat has helped me survive in my daily life and academic work for the past decade.

The Seconds Before Death

January 7th marked the anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris a year ago.  The attack left a total of 17 deaths with the 10 victims came from the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.  The two gunmen were killed two days later in a city north of Paris after the manhunt that left the country in a high alert. The gunmen marched in the magazine's headquarter and knew who they wanted to shoot, and they exited the building with their mission accomplished. The dead were the well-known staffs of the magazine which has published controversial cartoons of Muslims for the past years. In November 2011, the office was firebombed after an issue with the picture of Muhammad was published on its cover and despite the tragedy, the magazine stood by what they believe and continued to publish. 

All that aside, in a video recorded by a resident showing the killing of a policeman by the two gunmen, the assailants stopped a black stolen car, got out, and shot a police officer. While the police was injured and still alive on the ground, he looked up at the assailants one last time as the gunmen approached him. One gunman shot the police on the head and he was dead in an instant. 

The closest to death experience I had was when I was six. As I stood in the kitchen doing my oral hygiene, an episode of laughing attack hit me and I choked on the water that I had in my mouth.  Seconds later I became blue in the face and found myself to have a difficult time breathing and luckily my dear mother was home and ran to me and started doing CPR on me and I survive.  I remember to not have any thought as I found myself grasping for every bit of air and trying to regurgitate the water that entered my windpipe.  Maybe because I was too young and did not have much life experience so there was no instant thought or memory. But what about the people who got killed in the two Paris attacks in 2015.  What run across their mind the seconds before they died?  The Paris attack in November 2015 left 130 people dead, majority of the death came from the shooting in the Bataclan theater and most of the deceased were young in their 20s and 30s and still had much to look forward to in their life.  Did the people who died have time to think about their love ones and did they have time to remember the happy parts of their lives?

Death seems like a scary thing and it is an experience that no one has any recollection of. Is death the transition to another life, another earth, a better place? We don't know and no one knows.  The victims of the Paris attacks did not have more time to accomplish what they wanted in life but those of us who are still breathing at this moment still have it.  We still have time to travel to the places we have always wanted to, we still have time to show to another person that we love them, we still have time to get that one career that we always wanted to at a young age, we still have time to reach our goals.  All we have is this life, this one life and we have to make use of it to the best of our ability, because we might not have another life, another chance to enjoy the experience that many people call life. 

In Syria, Children Eat Leaves from Trees to Fight Starvation

Starvation. It is an experience that many of us have never gone through but millions of people in the world have to go through it every day.   That is Syria in 2016. Activists in Syria reported and showed pictures of Syrians starving and  dying because of the lack of food. Pictures of an elder man with ribs protruding from his chest, lying down his back and of a child crying wearing nothing but a thin cotton pant.  These starving Syrians come from a small town called Madaya, south of Syria, bordering Lebanon. The children and older men of the town eat  soup made from leaves and grass. And if they want rice, that would cost them more than $100. Yes, dollars. More than most Americans would ever spent on a kilo of rice.  Some children have not eaten for more than seven days.

Hearing these stories should make us feel grateful to be able to live in a country where we have all the necessary. If we have a roof over our head, then we are safe. If we have enough food on our table, then we are blessed. Millions of people do not have access to a shelter and even food and they do not have a choice but to live that way as it is the way of life for them.  For most of us, we should use this opportunity to count our blessings every day and to remember that every meal that we eat is an experience that millions of people in the world do not have. 

When A President Cries

During a speech to the nation yesterday, US President Obama proposed an executive gun law where gun sellers are required to do a background check on their customers.  Every president has have proposed a law before so there is no big deal but what makes this speech different than others is that the President put some emotions in it.  Rather than stay firm and strong as a man, he cried as he spoke about the killing of children in the town Newtown in Connecticut in 2012 and other victims in gun violence for the past decade.  We are taught that in order to think clearly, we have to remove any hint of emotions in our life.   But sometimes emotions can be a good thing. Having emotions shows we are still humans and we care, rather than brushing every problems away and coming up with a solution, like a programmed robot.  Despite the fact how he is the leader of the United States, Obama is still a human and he has emotions.  And best of all, the crying shows he cares and in a time of trying to put a change in effect, we need someone who cares behind all the fact at hand. 

The End of A Chapter

My favorite show How I Met Your Mother ended in March 2014 after ten years of being on air. Today is the year 2016 and I can still enjoy the series when I replay it on my laptop.  In an interview with the lead actor Josh Radnor, who played the character Ted in the show, he and the cast felt it was the right time to wrap up the show and the timing was in their own plan and it did not come as a big shock.  Likewise, in life, there will be chapters of our life where we will have to close and move on. When we choose to close certain parts of our life, we sometimes do it grudgingly and unwillingly but when we look back, we see how it benefits us and how it was the right move. When we move on, we open to new opportunities for our future instead of reliving the past.  Closing a chapter of our life means we have decided to live the presence and not focus on the past and move with where life takes us.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Chinese philosopher Xun Zi once said, "Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity."  Is human nature really evil?  In the movie The Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo wanted to see the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner and prison guard from August 14 - 20, 1971.  He interviewed a group of 70 students and chose 24 of them, giving them the role of either a prisoner or a prison guard in an experiment conducted in the Jordan Hall, in the Stanford Psychology building .  The participants came from middle class families and were mentally stable.  It intended to last for 14 days but it ended only after six days of the trial. Unexpectedly, the prison guards took their role seriously and began treating the prisoners as if they were real convicts.  The guards humiliated and used physical force to make the prisoners do certain tasks that the prisoners refused.  A few prisoners left the experiment early due to the mental torture that were inflicted on them.

The experiment shows the label of a person produces behaviors and it causes the person to act certain ways base on the label.  The worst part about the situation is that the person does not feel bad about their action because they see that it is their duties to do so.  It is the duty of the prison guard to be firm and show no leniency toward the prisoners.  And that the more authority a person has, the more risks he takes to mentally or physically harm the other person.  I wonder if each of us were given a label as a prisoner or a guard, would we do the same? Would we still be submissive like the prisoners and be harsh like the guards?  And despite how fictional the label is, would we forget our identity?

The experiment did no physical harm to the participants but the psychological effect is apparent through the actions of the participants after the label was put on them.  The study shows how our human nature is prone to being evil just by putting a label on us.  So is human nature naturally evil? Are we prone to inflict harm on other people?  At the end of the movie, a new student took the role of a prisoner after a few prisoners exited the experiment and he saw the brutality and the harsh treatment that the prison guards were inflicted on the prisoners.  The new prisoners refused to do what the guards ask them to do and they pointed out the harshness of the guard and how the experiment has gone too far.

As humans, we are prone to evil but like the new prisoner demonstrated, we can sense it when we see one.  We can smell and see evil from afar and we can choose to do something about it.  I used to complain to my mom that our American government spends so much time interfering other countries' business; for instance, America is involved in the Syrian refugee rescue because of a civii war in Syria and many of the refugees need a place to stay for their own safety and for a better future and the United States offers to take in a number of refugees. I used to be against the action but now I am all for it.  As humans, we cannot see evil and let it gets on with its cycle, we have to do something and make the world a better place to live.  The Stanford experiment shows humans are capable of evil but at the same time, we are capable of seeing goodness as well.