Quotes – Think

Copied from Sylvia Jean’s FB

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good. –> its good when I am surrounding by my beloved people: parents, bro, friends, etc.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. –> yeap, a small one but firmly
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. –> I do not have enough time to love someone so I will not waste it hating anyone.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch. –> Always do. Skype, FB and other on-line tools help me so much keep in touch with friends.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month. –> Luckily, I do not worry much about this – Salary is good enough to live in such a small town.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Agree to disagree. –>  Always true, esp. at work
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone. –> It is hard for me to cry with someone. Most of the time, crying alone. Somehow I feel much better if be hugged by friends though.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it. –> I do not follow any religion. I do not have God. Dealing with my anger is to keep silence and go away.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck. –> Every month, I save up a bit from my little salary.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile. –> haha, it is true
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present. –> I do. Past is past. Nothing to argue with it.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry. –> uhm, will do when I have children
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. –> Haha, I do NOT ever do, but my mama does. Sometimes I am really pissed at her. She is my mom and she always wants the best for me though. Only way to deal: let her talk as much as she wants and I do what I really want because my live/my journey is NOT like the others
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it. –> 90% right, at least to me
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don’t worry; God never blinks. –> Such a thing has not happened yet to me. Will see!
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind. –> Always do, esp. at work with ridiculous clients and partners.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful, beautiful or joyful. –> uhmm…
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger. –> 1000% TRUE
19. It’s never too late to have a happy childhood… But the second one is up to you and no one else. –> I think I did have a happy childhood – alone one but still good to me. It taught me a lot.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer. –> will see if it happens to me…
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special. –> Yes, live for special today.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow. –> yup!
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple. –>
24. The most important sex organ is the brain. –> uhm, never try so do NOT know, haha
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. –> YEAP, I m in charge of my happy life!
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words ‘In five years, will this matter?’ –> yeap, should do this!
27. Always choose life. –> Choose a life for myself… Do NOT let anyone decide/choose one for you! It will be terrible then.
28. Forgive everyone everything. –> Try my best
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles. –> I try but so far nothing happens
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do. –> uhm…
35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now. –> I am doing now
36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young. –> true
37. Your children get only one childhood. –> yeap, so do NOT ruin it with your standard or lectures. Let them live their life. Just be a guide
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.. –>  ??? dont get it yet
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere. –> haha, I do, everyday, everynight
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back. –> … I solve other people’s problem much more than mine… frustrating
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need. –> I do NOT ‘cuz  I have what I need
42. The best is yet to come. –> work hard and it will come soon
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. –> haha, yeah!
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift. –> so much precious gift

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

What do you do when you meet the love of your life when you’re six years old? And he’s 36, but he’s really only eight years older than you are? If you’re Clare Abshire, you wait for each of his visits throughout the years until you meet him in real time.

Henry DeTamble is a time traveler, although not by choice. A genetic mutation causes him to spontaneously travel through time, disappearing from view, leaving behind his clothes and possessions, and arriving naked in another time and another place. For the most part, this is a curse. Henry often has to turn to petty crime to feed and clothe himself when he travels, and must run from people, thugs, or the police. Eventually Henry returns to his present time, bringing only the bodily injuries he’s suffered back with him. Sometimes he travels back in time and visits an earlier version of himself. One of the places to which he travels often is the meadow behind Clare’s house, and throughout her younger years, Clare meets him there and falls in love with him.

This is the basic outline for the story of Henry and Clare in Audrey Niffenegger’s remarkable debut novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife. This is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum, but a heartfelt love story of two people who must live with this curse as part of their lives. Ms. Niffenegger has thought through all the ramifications of the time travel, and sewn it seamlessly into the storyline. Once you accept that time traveling is a part of Henry’s life he can’t control, nothing that happens to him seems farfetched or out of character.

The Time Traveler’s Wife follows the story of their lives mostly in a straightforward chronology, at least from Clare’s perspective. She’s a child and then a teenager with their secret rendezvous throughout the years in the meadow. Henry first visited her at an older age, so he knew the dates that the earlier versions of himself would visit the older versions of Clare. She kept clothes hidden for him in the meadow and sometimes hid him in a basement room of her house. He was her big secret that she always kept to herself. How could she explain the presence of an older man who traveled through time to be with her? As a teenager, she was rumored to be a lesbian since she had no romantic interest in boys.

In those early days of her life, Henry knew much about her future, but declined to tell it to her. Not that she could have done anything about it. Henry often knew things that were going to happen, but nothing he could do would stop them. They still happened. Once Clare became an adult, she knew she had to wait to meet Henry in real time, and that he would be her lover. When they did finally meet, Henry in the present was a younger man, who had not yet traveled to the meadow to meet Clare. At this point, she knew parts of his future that he did not. As Clare and Henry merge lives, his time traveling excursions become times that he is absent from her life, even if he’s traveling back to meet a younger Clare. Clare explains after living with Henry for a while:

Our life together in this too-small apartment is punctuated by Henry’s small absences. Sometimes he disappears unobtrusively; I might be walking from the kitchen into the hall and find a pile of clothing on the floor. I might get out of bed in the morning and find the shower running and no one in it. Sometimes it’s frightening. I am working in my studio one afternoon when I hear someone moaning outside my door; when I open it I find Henry on his hands and knees, naked, in the hall, bleeding heavily from his head. He opens his eyes, sees me, and vanishes. Sometimes I wake up in the night and Henry is gone. In the morning he will tell me where he’s been, the way other husbands might tell their wives a dream they had: “I was in the Selzer Library in the dark, in 1989.” Or: “I was chased by a German shepherd across somebody’s backyard and had to climb a tree.” Or: “I was standing in the rain near my parents’ apartment, listening to my mother sing.” I am waiting for Henry to tell me that he has seen me as a child, but so far this hasn’t happened. When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence is a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer materializes at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone.

Time travel has its advantages as well. Henry’s mother died in a car accident when he was a small boy. He often goes back in time to see her, although all he can do is watch from a distance. At the same time, he’s traveled back often, too often, to the fateful day that took her from his life. As Henry gets older, he learns more about his disease, and that stress and watching the flickering images on television can trigger an episode. He can’t drive a car since he might disappear while behind the wheel, nor can he fly in a plane since it won’t be at the same place in the air when he returns from his travel. Once Henry convinces a leading geneticist that he can time travel, he enlists the doctor’s help is isolating the genetic problem and trying to control it with different combinations of drugs.

The novel is titled The Time Traveler’s Wife, but as Clare realizes, her life is so intertwined with Henry’s that it’s his story also. The story is told in first-person narration from both Henry and Clare. Each section begins with the date and the ages of Clare and Henry, and sometimes multiple ages for Henry when more than one version of him is present. This allows us to see their lives from both their perspectives, to see Clare’s fear every time Henry leaves or how his actions in the past or future affect her life in real time, and to see Henry’s struggles to cope with his “illness” while trying to remain safe and keep the secrets that he shouldn’t reveal to anyone.

At its heart, and a very big heart at that, The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story, one populated by realistic characters. Even with the time travel and its effects on their lives, Henry and Clare are people you intimately know and empathize with, their fears and flaws common to us all. Everyone has a cross to bear, and Henry’s is unique. Ms. Niffenegger does an admirable job portraying their life together, and exploring a love built over a lifetime that courses deep through both of them. Even through their rough stretches of their life, the lifelong fear of something terrible happening to Henry while time traveling, their anguish at the miscarriages when Clare wants a baby more than anything else, the moments where they’d just rather be alone, their love for each other is never questioned and their hope is never extinguished.

The time travel, while not completely an original idea, does bring a spark of freshness and suspense to the love story. Knowing that stress can trigger an episode, Henry plans carefully and worries often during potentially stressful situations, like his wedding to Clare or meeting her family for the first time. It also adds to the suspense of the story, not knowing when Henry will arrive or leave during any important part of their life together. Although, at times it’s obvious where the story is headed in the larger sense, Ms. Niffenegger is astute enough to throw in surprises with Henry’s travels that either fills in lost knowledge about their pasts, or sets the stage for some part of their future. Often it’s these small portents of the future that keep the pages turning in the hope that they mean something other than what they seem to suggest.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is also more than a love story between two people. It explores all the relationships of their lives: their parents, families, friends, and ex-lovers. My only complaint is that, whether a realistic depiction or not, love in this novel is something from which recovery never seems to happen. Henry’s father mourns his beloved wife to the point that it cripples and debilitates him. Ingrid, Henry’s old girlfriend, despairs to the point of suicide about losing Henry to Clare. Everyone loves with such a passion that there is no middle ground, no loved and lost and grown from the experience.

This is a minor complaint in a wonderful novel. This book will make you glow as you share the love between Henry and Clare, it will make you laugh, it will leave you on the edge of your seat while Henry time travels, and it will make you cry. Once you’re buried within this novel and fully immersed in their lives, you have to suffer their pain as well as celebrate their joys with Henry and Clare. This is a testament to the literary skill of Ms. Niffenegger.

Henry summarized his love for Clare in a letter to her after they’ve been for married for many years:

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

Grab a copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife and throw yourself headlong into their story. It’s time well spent. This is a highly recommended read, and I know it will be a gift I’ll offer generously to others on my holiday list this year.

Published by MacAdam/Cage

Review by W. R. Greer

Copyright © 2003 reviewsofbooks.com

WORK HARD!

Glad to be busy and helpful now since new high season is coming a bit early

A bit tired but not because of working hard… of other reasons… a bit frustrating as well.

C’mon! I can do it! =)

Teamwork – Model

According to Wikipedia, here is what I copied

Teamwork is a joint action by two or more people, in which each person contributes with different skills and express his or her individual interests and opinions to the unity and efficiency of the group in order to achieve common goals. This does not mean that the individual is no longer important; however, it does mean that effective and efficient teamwork goes beyond individual accomplishments. The most effective teamwork is produced when all the individuals involved harmonize their contributions and work towards a common goal.

In order for teamwork to succeed one must be a teamplayer. A teamplayer is one who subordinates personal aspirations and works in a coordinated effort with other members of a group, or team, in striving for a common goal. Businesses and other organizations often go to the effort of coordinating team building events in an attempt to get people to work as a team rather than as individuals.

The forming-storming-norming-performing model takes the team through four stages of team development and maps quite well on to many project management life cycle models, such as initiation – definition – planning – realization.

As teams grow larger, the skills and methods that people require grow as more ideas are expressed freely. Managers must use these to create or maintain a spirit of teamwork change. The intimacy of a small group is lost, and the opportunity for misinformation and disruptive rumors

MODEL

The Forming – Storming – Norming – Performing is a model of group development, first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable in order for the team to grow, to face up to challenges, to tackle problems, to find solutions, to plan work, and to deliver results. This model has become the basis for subsequent models.

Forming

In the first stages of team building, the forming of the team takes place. The team meets and learns about the opportunity and challenges, and then agrees on goals and begins to tackle the tasks. Team members tend to behave quite independently. They may be motivated but are usually relatively uninformed of the issues and objectives of the team. Team members are usually on their best behavior but very focused on themselves. Mature team members begin to model appropriate behavior even at this early phase. Sharing the knowledge of the concept of “Teams – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing” is extremely helpful to the team.

Supervisors of the team tend to need to be directive during this phase.

The forming stage of any team is important because in this stage the members of the team get to know one another, exchange some personal information, and make new friends. This is also a good opportunity to see how each member of the team works as an individual and how they respond to pressure.

Storming

Every group will then enter the storming stage in which different ideas compete for consideration. The team addresses issues such as what problems they are really supposed to solve, how they will function independently and together and what leadership model they will accept. Team members open up to each other and confront each other’s ideas and perspectives. In some cases storming can be resolved quickly. In others, the team never leaves this stage. The maturity of some team members usually determines whether the team will ever move out of this stage. Some team members will focus on minutiae to evade real issues.

The storming stage is necessary to the growth of the team. It can be contentious, unpleasant and even painful to members of the team who are averse to conflict. Tolerance of each team member and their differences needs to be emphasized. Without tolerance and patience the team will fail. This phase can become destructive to the team and will lower motivation if allowed to get out of control.

Supervisors of the team during this phase may be more accessible but tend to still need to be directive in their guidance of decision-making and professional behavior. The groups will therefore resolve their differences and group members will be able to participate with one another more comfortably and they won’t feel that they are being judged in any way and will therefore share their own opinions and views…

Norming

At some point, the team may enter the norming stage. Team members adjust their behavior to each other as they develop work habits that make teamwork seem more natural and fluid. Team members often work through this stage by agreeing on rules, values, professional behavior, shared methods, working tools and even taboos. During this phase, team members begin to trust each other. Motivation increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project.

Teams in this phase may lose their creativity if the norming behaviors become too strong and begin to stifle healthy dissent and the team begins to exhibit groupthink.

Supervisors of the team during this phase tend to be participative more than in the earlier stages. The team members can be expected to take more responsibility for making decisions and for their professional behavior.

As team members get to know each other better, their views of each other begin to change. The team feels a sense of achievement for getting so far, however some members can begin to feel threatened by the amount of responsibility they have been given. They would try to resist the pressure and revert to storming again.

Performing

Some teams will reach the performing stage. These high-performing teams are able to function as a unit as they find ways to get the job done smoothly and effectively without inappropriate conflict or the need for external supervision. Team members have become interdependent. By this time they are motivated and knowledgeable. The team members are now competent, autonomous and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision. Dissent is expected and allowed as long as it is channeled through means acceptable to the team.

Supervisors of the team during this phase are almost always participative. The team will make most of the necessary decisions. Even the most high-performing teams will revert to earlier stages in certain circumstances. Many long-standing teams will go through these cycles many times as they react to changing circumstances. For example, a change in leadership may cause the team to revert to storming as the new people challenge the existing norms and dynamics of the team.

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