When I am doing something, I tends to overdose. I have a habit to write a review for all the books I read, anime, movies and TV shows I watched. I often have back-log my reviews, since it takes time for me to organize my thoughts before writing the blog entry. Somehow I found that I often back-logged reviews of the same kind. Last year, I clearly remember I had for a period of time I overdosed movies, wrote 6 movie reviews in a row. Then at another time, I overdosed animes, wrote 6 anime reviews consecutively. This time I have back-logged three book review entries and I am working on another 3 books in parallel. I am in the middle of the book cycle at the moment. It seems that when I consume one type of media, I tends to overdose until I feel guilty for having too much of it and move on to something else. Eventually after I rotate all the different medias, I will come back again and repeat the cycle. I remember a long time ago, I set my goal for a balance media diet. I mandate myself to consume at least one entry from each type of media every month. If I average out my annual media consume, I did better than the minimum requirement. However, the consumption of each media type always comes in large chunks. My media diet would be more healthy if I maintain a balance profile, or does it really matter?
When I browsing audio books in the company library, I just discover this hidden treasure hiding on highest level in the bookshelves. The company has a subscription to the executive book summary, that is a book abstract service for busy people. It summarize two to three popular business books per month in a single CD. The library a collection from the last 3 years. From my experience with popular business books, most of them just have one great idea, then repeat the same theme over and over again. The book summary is a good way to quickly separate the chaff from the wheat. Instead of spending many hours reading a book, you can quickly scan its key points in 20 minutes. If you found the ideas in the book useful, you can read the full version to learn more about the details later. The only draw back is human’s memory is a leaky bucket, you may forget what you learn if you just spent 20 minutes listening to the key points. Reading a book may takes more time, but the more time you spent, the more knowledge will stay in your mind after you long forget you had read the book. I just add another goal to my 2009 new year resolution. I am going to listen all those CD on my drive to work.
I have a very bad reading habit. I have the tendency of reading multiple books in parallel. After I started a book, reading it half way, sometimes even just the first few chapters, I may get distracted by a new book. Then I will put down the old book and start the new one. I just count the number of books that are reading in progress, I have 8 books pending to finish. I am not abandoning the unfinished books, I will still read a few chapters from time to time, until I got distracted by another book again. I just finished a book that I started 2 years ago. Here are the books pending in my reading list:
1. Asimov’s Guide to the Bible
2. Dimensions of Moral Theory
3. Free Culture
4. A History of Christian Thought
5. Philosophy of Bullshit
6. A Good Book, In Theory
7. Philosophy of Law
8. Contemporary Political Philosophy.
The oldest book stuck in the queue started almost 7 years ago. My reading pipeline is so full that I really should refrain myself from the temptation of new books. I should focus on the books in hand and just be content with what I reading. Interesting though, I only have this problem with non-fictions. It is easier to concentrate when reading a fiction. It has the element of a story to keep my attention until I flip to the last page or it’s so boring that I give up.
In 2008, I absented from the Toastmaster most of the year. I have many excuses, like getting marry, travel to India, working on project with ridiculous schedule etc. I went to the Toastmaster year end party before X’mas, mostly for the free pizza. I found that I do miss the enjoyment and satisfaction of delivering a good speech in front of a crowd. Today is the first Toastmaster meeting in 2009. The theme of the day is goal setting. The president of the club try to re-energize the club by having a mini-workshop. During the meeting, he asked the members to think about what they want to archive in club this year.
I am not making any process in my ATM speeches. It’s over a year since I did my last speech. My goal of this year is finishing off my “Humorous Speech” manual and achieve the ATM credential. There are only 4 more speeches to go, my plan is to give one speech every two months. This club has its annual humorous speech contest on Oct. I am going to deliver my last speech as a contest entry. Since I am long time Toastmaster, I feel very natural speaking in front of people. This year, I am going to focus on my pronunciation and the use grammar in my speeches. These two problems are the biggest challenges for most ESL speakers need to overcome.
說來慚愧﹐信報老總練乙錚的名字﹐我這還是頭一次聽﹐他的文章當然也沒有看過。偶然在別人的網誌上﹐看見有關他文章的評論。說他讀數學出身﹐寫的文章邏輯性強﹐要很花精神才可以跟上他的論據推理。好奇心驅使下﹐便上網找他的文章看看有多難讀。散文評論找不到﹐卻找著了他的回憶錄《浮桴記》﹐憶述他在董建華年代當中央政策組顧問的事情。原文分十七篇於信報發表﹐後來附加多幾篇短文再錄輯成書。我看的網上版本應該是轉載報紙﹐不知與後來出書的版本有沒有出入。原本預期這本書會爆料式揪開很多政府內幕﹐細讀下來卻像一篇政治哲學論文﹐分析特區政府施政失敗的結構性原因。可能我自己平時習慣看學術論文的關係﹐練老總的文筆很容易讀﹐論點層次分明先後有序﹐比起其他不停打圈說話的作者﹐更能一矢中的說出問題精要所在。