April 2012

April has been a pretty big month!  I thought I would share a bit on this blog.

Outline of Blog Post
Family
A New Car
Books
Tutoring
How to Learn


Family
April has been my first month with my new son, Ethan!  (Pics on Google Plus!).  He is pretty cool!  He has started to make sounds and actually look at you!  He is also starting to be able to lift up his head!  Big milestones in a baby's life :).  Some of the rewards that he gives us as parents are his smiles and his cute cooing noises.
We are blessed with a quiet baby, who sleeps fairly well.  Nevertheless, I am very grateful for the support of my parents and brothers.  My mother and father came to visit us in Vancouver and support us there, and then we came to visit them in Courtenay.  Their expertise and help has been invaluable!  Really, I think that raising kids is meant to be done with the support of extended family! It is a joy for them, and it is so nice to be able to take baby breaks throughout the day!
Having a new baby really seems to have brought my whole family together, with support coming from my entire nuclear family (my parents and both my brothers), with additional help from extended family and friends. Surrounded by family, I have a sense of warmth and comfort and place in life, which I imagine must have been more common in our tribal and village days.  It has actually been a long time since I have felt this relaxed!

A New Car
I also have my first car!  With the assistance of my parents, I bought a 1991 Dodge Spirit from my cousin for only $650, and then paid $1800 for one year of insurance!  I am enjoying the freedom of just being able to drive wherever I want whenever I want, and the car is already proving invaluable in transporting the baby around.  Between the car and the baby, it's as if I'm all grown up now!

Books
  CBT for Dummies
  This book on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was recommended by my friend.  I have only read the first 6 chapters, which were quite good.  I plan to practice it more in future, and perhaps write about it more as well.  One of the things that I really like about it is that the effectiveness of CBT has been validated by hundreds of studies (it's rock solid!).  I think the skills they teach are great life skills, and may also help me with my anxiety.
  One section that really struck me was that on flawed thinking, particularly all or nothing thinking.  An example of this is that I like to avoid playing computer games, as I can waste a lot of time.  And when I start playing, I basically think that I screwed up already, so I might as well stay up all night playing!  Less black and white thinking might recognize that, even though I have already played for three hours, there are still benefits to stopping earlier, rather than later.  The same goes for eating dairy, which I am mildly allergic to.
  Attached
  This is a book about attachment theory and attachment styles, and how this understanding can be practically applied to relationships (finding a good fit, making relationships work, knowing when to end them, knowing how to end them with reduced pain).  In particular, I found reading this book helped me understand myself better.  I noticed that I have a mostly secure attachment style, with some avoidant tendencies.  Also, I think the advice on how to end relationships has helped me to more efficiently continue to heal from my separation from my wife over 1.5 years ago!

Tutoring
  April was the month of UBC exams.  Sometimes tutoring was moderately busy, and sometimes it was crazy busy!  There were about three days where I was working over ten hours a day, making over $300 each day!  In order to give me the freedom to work these hours, Diane returned to Courtenay with baby Ethan and my parents on April 14th.  By April 24th exam tutoring was done, and I was able to join them!
  This April I gave an exam review session for Math 267 (Signal Processing).  This was my first time giving a review session, which was a great experience!  They found it very helpful, and decided to hire me to fix up the solutions to their exam review guide (many of the solutions were previously hard to understand, or even wrong!).  I actually didn't know the material for this course when I agreed to do the review session, but with my background in math I found it very quick to learn.  I am gaining confidence in my ability to quickly learn mathematics and physics, and then teach it to other people.  I have also found that it really pays off to spend time prior to the tutoring session to learn the material, rather than learning it while I'm with the student and feel rushed/pressured.  Also, this semester I started making pencasts (Here's an example pencast) to help students with their assignments and test-prep, which I am finding is a very efficient and effective way to help students in combination with in-person tutoring (so I stay in touch with where they are at and can answer their questions).
  While I am still enjoying tutoring and find some challenge every so often, I am definitely interested in moving on to something more challenging, more lucrative, and more stable in the near future!!!

How to Learn
In terms of moving on from tutoring, the career direction that I have been most interested in is Machine learning.  Unfortunately, it looks like I won't be getting into the masters program at UBC in the fall, and so I may have to delay or abandon this plan.  Meanwhile, I have been learning machine learning through the free online Stanford course.
Because I am a learner and also a tutor, I am very interested in how people can learn well.  Here are some ideas for learning that I am playing around with recently:

My steps to learn new stuff well:
1)  Start to read
2)  At certain points, I think ahead to how I would do certain things
3)  Read how it is actually done, and try to understand why their way works better than my own
4)  Make my own notes based on my understanding of what I read, looking back at the material as little as possible so that I am really exercising my own understanding.
5)  Explain it to others, often just creating a pencast if there is no willing person for me to explain stuff to! For some reason my brain seems to work much better when explaining to someone else!
6)  Do problems that have solutions, using steps 2) to 5)!

In highschool I figured out a lot of mathematics and physics myself.  This ensured I understood it very well, however it was quite a slow way to learn.  In addition, in textbooks I would often find even better ways of explaining/understanding math/physics concepts than those I came up with.  Hence, I am hoping to be able to learn what has already been figure out and then really internalize it and make it my own as if I had figured it out from scratch.  I do this by seeking to understand the answers to all the 'why' questions, and then explaining the concept myself.

The 5 Competencies of Emotional Intelligence

Hi All,

I'm learning about emotional intelligence from Daniel Goleman (Books, videos), and would like to share some of what I have learned so far.

Some of the most important facts to know about emotional intelligence are in my opinion:
1)  It is immensely important to success in all aspects of life, and
2)  It can be improved throughout our lives, unlike IQ which is difficult to change once you are grown up.

So far I have primarily learned the theoretical framework from which to understand Emotional Intelligence, which Daniel Goleman breaks down into the following five competencies:
1) Self Awareness - of one's emotions and their cause
2) Self Regulation - of one's emotions
3) Self Motivation - a master life-skill
4) Empathy - the recognition and understanding of other people's emotions

5) Social Intelligence - managing relationships and emotions in others

The Human Brain - A Hand Model

I am very interested in learning about the human brain at the moment, both because I am planning to do a masters in Machine Learning, and also because I have anxiety that interferes with me being as successful as I would like, and I want to learn how to deal with it better.

This is the first in a series of posts I am planning about the human brain that introduces a hand-model of the human brain. Enjoy!

Thinking Big - It Works in Many Ways

How often do you spend time thinking big thoughts, having big dreams, and reflecting on what is really important in life? And how often do you find yourself thinking about the details of your current task or of a recent conflict or argument?

I argue that thinking big and keeping the larger context in awareness is key to 1) inspiring and motivating oneself, 2) keeping smaller issues in perspective, and 3) making good decisions that include creative thinking from outside of the box.

Most of these may seem pretty obvious, but the value of this idea lies in really getting and internalizing how it can be fully applied in our lives. Hence, for both the reader and myself, in the video below I expand on this idea using examples. Enjoy!

Touch – Grooming is Necessary Even if Humans don’t have Fleas

This Blog Post is based on this article and my own experience

The science is in. Touch can help reduce stress, engender trust and teamwork, improve our happiness, and improve our health. Most other primates spend 10-20% of their days grooming each other, and in other countries (like France) friends talking in coffee houses touch each other 2-3 times per minute! Here in North America we rarely bond through touch, but this research suggests that it would be hugely beneficial to find ways to do so.

As someone who greatly enjoys touch yet is uncomfortable with a significant amount of touch with anyone other than my partner, I find this a significant challenge, so I invite you to share your ideas about how we can inject a healthy amount of touch into our lives individually and collectively.

Here are some notable quotes from the article:

“There are studies showing that touch signals safety and trust, it soothes. Basic warm touch calms cardiovascular stress.”

“preterm newborns who received just three 15-minute sessions of touch therapy each day for 5-10 days gained 47 percent more weight than premature infants who’d received standard medical treatment.”

“In a study by Jim Coan and Richard Davidson, participants lying in an fMRI brain scanner, anticipating a painful blast of white noise, showed heightened brain activity in regions associated with threat and stress. But participants whose romantic partner stroked their arm while they waited didn’t show this reaction at all. ”

“NBA basketball teams whose players touch each other more win more games”

Proper uses of touch truly have the potential to transform the practice of medicine—and they’re cost effective to boot. For example, studies show that touching patients with Alzheimer’s disease can have huge effects on getting them to relax, make emotional connections with others, and reduce their symptoms of depression.

“when teachers pat students in a friendly way, those students are three times as likely to speak up in class”

“when librarians pat the hand of a student checking out a book, that student says he or she likes the library more—and is more likely to come back.”

As usual, feel free to leave your comments. I am also interested in having a few phone discussions about this as I find this helps with learning and coming up with new ideas!