Night Culture

It’s interesting to me to note the differences between Taiwan/Far Eastern culture when it comes to sleep.

Traditionally, people in the Far East tend to sleep later. Events are generally held in the evening when it is cooler, so the result is that people tend to sleep later. One of the things my Language Exchange partner pointed out to me is that prime time TV dramas tend to start at 9pm and finish at 11, which would be too late for most people in the West, I believe.

It’s very common for people to sleep at around 2am or later, chatting on MSN. I have no idea how they make it up again in the morning, but one trip on Taipei’s MRT and you’ll realise that the culture as a whole is horribly, horribly overworked. Around half the people on the MRT at any given moment are sleeping, and the other half are standing up. They aren’t even mutually exclusive as the occasional person is found dozing against a window from time to time. A girl I tutor had to work overtime until 1am. Absolutely unbelieveable. It’s not only adults that are subjected to such work, even elementary school kids have to wake up at 6am, and some attend additional cram school until 9am or later.

Any time of the day or night, people are around and cars are tearing across the city streets. 7 Elevens open 24 hours, and you can get food any time. The net result is that many of the people here sleep so late, it’s difficult to stop it from affecting me. When I was teaching, even waking up before 8am was difficult because I was sleeping so late. But late for me was 12.30, but my flatmate would sleep even later, around 3am or later. I found my sleeping time creeping closer and closer towards his, and I find it happening again now. It’s unthinkable for me to sleep before 10pm because it’s completely unheard of in this culture.

Yet as I’m needing to be at 100% to get any programming done, along with the physical exercise, in order to wake up at 6am as I desire, 10pm is the time I need to be sleeping at. It seems a bit unsustainable in this culture. Even my Toastmasters meetings finish at closer to 10pm. As lately my sleep pattern has become completely destroyed, I’m considering a switch to around 7.30 instead, since the gym here only opens at 8am, making waking up early difficult to justify.

C8 and C9 Speeches: Post Mortems

The C8 and C9 speeches didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped, but at the same time, I’ve stopped taking it all so personally. Even if a speech falters, it’s still a learning experience.

I delivered them in clubs in which I knew barely anyone, so it was a little difficult to build up a good rapport with the audience. I’m still scared to pull out my jokes in this kind of situation, and since both speeches were so packed with content, I had to cut many of the jokes out anyway.

That caused my speeches to suffer I think, as I was lacking a personal connection with the audience.

So the first lesson I learned from these two speeches is that building a relationship with the audience is vital. I think something as simple as a show of hands is very important when I’m in these tough atmospheres. I’ll definitely do this for my C10 speech this Friday.

I learned more from my second speech in which I made the call for vegetarianism, or at least to make more conscious choices over the food we eat. I’ll probably post a lot of my arguments in a blog post regarding my switch to vegetarianism, but the thing I wanted was to stress that I didn’t want people to become vegetarian, rather for them to know the costs to the planet if we keep eating so much meet.

There were too many points I was making, and my message fell kinda flat. There was nothing particularly wrong with my speech, but with the lack of time I had available, I didn’t quite know how I wanted to deliver my message. In this sort of persuasive speech, I should perhaps have taken a more personal and emotional approach, rather than the broad environmental message that I wanted (even though that’s my own reason for making the switch.)

I felt somewhat guilty for trying to persuade people to become vegetarian, as people will defend their meat eating as if their life depended on it. So in the end, I didn’t take the message one tenth as far as I might have.

I’m going to pull out all the stops for my next speech, and deliver it with a lot more confidence. I have a lot more time in this final speech, and I’m going to try to give it without a script, so that I can really build up the crowd. I spent a vast amount of time preparing the previous speeches, and it doesn’t seem worth it when it’s clear that no-one is putting in as much effort as I am. Time spent on stage is the best way to learn, and I’m interested to see how I’ll perform when I haven’t got my rehearsed delivery to fall back on. I’m curious

Dragon Boat Report

So the dream is over.

I’m proud of our team’s performance, but ultimately very disappointed in our result. Both the mixed team and mens team won their first races at a canter, against some pretty pathetic competition (other boats managed to collide at the very start of the race, and the mens team won by over a minute.)

It’s almost impossible for me to understand the lack of determination displayed by some of the local teams, many of which gave up on paddling well before the half way point. I suppose that they just have a different attitude to us towards the races, but I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t give your all in your only race. Some teams even decided to turn around back to the start after realising they were out of their depth. Pretty pitiful if you ask me.

Morale was high going into the next day, and the second round/quarter finals, but we knew we were in for some stiff competition. In the morning, the mixed team came last in a close race and were hence eliminated, and immediately we knew this was going to be a very different proposition from the first round.

The mens team (with two women) were drawn in a difficult heat, against last year’s champion team. Whilst we were ready for the race, it was a sluggish start from us, and being drawn in the second lane, enclosed on either side by the stronger teams in the heat was unfortunate. As the champions raced ahead, their wake disrupted our movements through the water, and paddling became difficult. While the timing was pretty good, the power in the water became increasingly hard to achieve after both teams reached in front of us. We managed to close some of the distance as the race went on, but it was always a losing battle; such at odds with our success in the first round. In third place, we were eliminated far earlier than we had hoped for, with a time of just over two and a half minutes.

The winners of our heat went on to win the competition eliminating some strong international competition on the way. Whilst I know they were undoubtedly a stronger team than us, I know that with a little luck, we could have made it to the final, so it’s rather disappointing on the whole.

What more is there to say? Dragon boat was an incredible experience and if I get another opportunity, I’d love to be involved again. The support from Shi Da was great, and the team really came together in our final week of training. In the end, we made quite a competitive team, to our surprise!

C7 Speech: Post Mortem

Last weekend, I gave my C7 Speech, which has been a little long in coming.

I felt a lot more comfortable on stage than before, and I think that people really enjoyed my speech on the whole. I got a lot of very kind words afterwards, which was lovely, and the nicest part of being in Toastmasters. I think my confidence as a speaker is definitely growing, and there were areas of the speech where I didn’t feel self conscious at all, and I felt ‘in the zone’ so to speak. I didn’t really feel many nerves during the speech. However, I’m not quite sure that’s a good thing, as I have a habit of moving around unconsciously a little while I’m speaking, and I’m not sure if I’ve got that under control.

I still need to work on my eye contact, because it’s very much a loose ‘fire-hose’ sort of eye contact. I haven’t really been going out of my way to work on it, and I haven’t been able to pick out areas of the room like I’ve been advised. It doesn’t help that I’m always struggling to stay on time. Typically during my practices, I run way over time, even after I’ve cut a lot out of my speech, and so there are moments where I’d like to pause and look, but I’m wary of that red flag.

There was a moment during the speech when I realised my slight lack of eye contact, looked across the room, and saw everyone in the entire room have their entire attention transfixed on me. It was quite a surreal feeling, because I noticed that people weren’t always paying attention during the other speeches (shamefully including myself – I have a tendency both to daydream and worry about my speech). It was in that moment that I realised that people really want to listen to me speak! And so I owe it to my audience to improve myself as best I can.

I feel like I choose strong speech topics, and I always try to work a lot of humour into my speeches. I feel those are my strengths, and I feel like I know what makes a good speech. I need to work on my movement, eye contact and vocals if I really want to make good progress. I haven’t had much practice in doing table topics, so I feel like that’s a better opportunity to improve these skills. Still, I’m happy with my progress.

Originally, my goal was to finish my CC in June, but I’m running out of time. I don’t have many speaking opportunities, and one of my speeches will be based around a book I have yet to read, so maybe I’ll try to hit July. Bring it on!

Dragon Boat Update

I thought I’d write a little about how the Dragon Boat training is going.

Unfortunately, I managed to pull an abdominal muscle last week, which put me out of training pretty much all week. It’s still no better at all, and in fact, it might even have gotten worse over the past couple of days, for no apparent reason. The doctor said I would need 2 weeks of full rest to recover, and that means I won’t be able to participate in the race, but I’m still hoping for a miracle.

As far as the rest of the team’s preparation is going, we’re lacking a little power during the race. The timing is okay, but our form tends to fall off towards the end. However, I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to make a good account of ourselves. It will be very disappointing if we don’t win a few races at least. The Shi Da team has traditionally done very well at the Dragon Boat races, especially the mixed team. However, we’re lacking a few people, and our men’s team will need to contain a few girls, and people will need to paddle twice (in both teams), which puts us at a disadvantage.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to recover in time for the racing, and I feel a little out of shape having not done much training at all. It’s a massive disappointment for me, and did affect my mood and attitude across last week. Still, it’s all been a wonderful experience, and I will miss it once the races are over. I’m definitely glad to have taken part in the training, and I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for the races themselves, which will begin on Friday.

June Rules and Goals

Well, I decided to write out my goals for June! I like to set rules and goals – essentially, the rules are to improve myself, whilst the goals are there to keep me motivated and to have something to work towards. Goal setting is very important after all. This is likely to be a long post. As mentioned in my previous post, I broke many of my rules for last month, which was annoying. Again, these rules and goals pretty much correspond to the five threads in which I’m concentrating my resources. Any more, I believe, is to spread myself too thinly and will lead to a loss of focus.

Rule 1. Wake up before 6.30 am daily, and wake up once a week effortlessly and bursting with energy.

With Dragon Boat finishing next weekend, I’m worried about how my sleep pattern will take it. I have a morning 10am class which should help me to some extent, but I still want to wake up before 6.30, and probably even earlier. Taiwan is getting hellishly hot now, and the mornings are just so much more comfortable. Steve Pavlina made a recent post which spoke about how to create daily habits, which seemed timely. It’s the discipline to sleep early that I’ve been having the most trouble with. It’s hard to make myself sleep early when Taiwan is such a late sleeping culture. As with the programming, I want to create the situation where it’s more appealing to wake up early than to lie in.

Even though I failed last month, there’s no point in changing the goal to something like ‘wake up early just six days a week’ in order to build confidence. I don’t think that really works, especially for sleep, and I did come pretty close to succeeding. So I’ll keep that goal the same, and additionally I want a goal to wake up effortlessly once a week, with a view to increasing the number of days over time. In order to do this, I’ll need to sleep early once a week, and hopefully that day/morning will be so pleasurable in contrast to zombie like, I’ll choose to continue.

I have enjoyed the Dragon Boat practice, so I’m going to run every morning to wake myself up. It will need to be early due to the disgustingly hot weather here.

Rule 2. Surfing the Internet can only be done while standing up

The Internet restriction is something that could warrant a whole article (I’ll probably give a humorous Toastmasters speech about it in the future). Indeed, fairly recently Paul Graham wrote an awesome essay about it. It’s a real problem for many people, so I shouldn’t feel too bad. In addition, I guess I could see it as a good thing that I’m so curious about knowledge (albeit useless knowledge.) Still, it’s something that must be stopped. After last month, I realised that the days I’ve spent without the Internet have been better than the days with it. That’s worth keeping in mind.

A similar restriction to last month is not only slightly inconvenient (since I have to go down to the library), it’s not a realistic option this month. Now I’ve finished the book and will start to write my own programs, I’ll need the Internet as a reference, and so this looks like I’ll be opening a can of worms.

Since I couldn’t think of a clear cut solution, I decided to brainstorm some ideas. Many ideas which sounded good have failed me in the past, so if necessary, I may have to employ as many as I can simultaneously.

To go for an outright ban sort of builds resentment and frustration and isn’t the best route to motivation, as last month proved. The most ingenious plan I’ve thought of thus far is to stand up while I surf. Many people have advocated a chairless office environment, and it builds energy levels, though personally I can’t imagine coding for long periods of time standing up. In order to stop myself falling into that glazed over trance where I browse endlessly, standing up seems like a good way to go.

Graham’s solution (to use a separate computer) seems like it could work, but I only have one computer! In a way, keeping the Internet out of my home, and using the university Internet has been a similar idea, and to be fair, it did work. But as I mentioned earlier, I can’t keep doing that. A similar solution is that I already have a separate user account on my computer for programming, and when I’m switched, I’m pretty reluctant to waste time; in fact, after I switch, I start work pretty much right away. So allowing myself to use that account for Internet and freely too, is another option.

However, since I do manage to work in that account and pretty well too, I don’t want to ‘contaminate’ it with my bad habits.

I think the common idea is to build a different sort of state where you become very aware of your Internet use. Standing up seems the most obvious way to provide this. I want to keep my rule simple, so that’s the final goal I decided on. I feel I’m a grown man, and should be able to use my own self discipline. But if I can’t do it, then treating myself like a child is the way to go.

The other important factor I discovered was that use of the Internet comes when you’re bored. There’s no excuse for boredom in today’s world, and the solution to this is to plan your day beforehand – also an important exercise.

In summary, I’ll keep it simple, as per the rule above. If my plan doesn’t work (i.e. I follow the rules, but still waste time), there’s no point to adhering to it. I will reassess the situation next Sunday if my plan has failed me. This is an interesting solution. I’m looking forward to seeing how it works!

Rule 3. 25 Words in ProVoc daily

I think that I can continue doing ProVoc every day, and that I’m also going to listen to some audio programs while I do it, so this should be a nice morning ‘mental conditioning’ exercise. I wasn’t going to put this down as a rule, seeing as it was pretty easy to keep up, but I could do with a cheap win.

As for the goals…

Star Goal. Program 40 hours this month, with milestones.

The priority is again the programming, and I had trouble keeping up with it last month (I did only 30 hours.) Still, that’s a nice initial target to improve upon. I’m going to try to do 40 hours this month, as opposed to the previous 50. The idea of this is a sort of reverse psychology – I’m going to set a target that I know I can hit, and continue to improve upon that each month in the future. And of course, I won’t stop myself should I choose to work more than 40! This comes from an idea from The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. The ideal is to create the situation where I can’t wait to get back behind the computer and work on my projects. In other words, I need to be in the state where I want to work, more than anything. If that situation never arrives, I can’t see that I can continue this sort of work for the months (or years) that I’ll need to to make a success of myself.

Furthermore, I’ll set a bunch of light milestones of 10 hours of programming a week to work up to the 40 hours, which should stop what happened last month, where I set myself up to do marathon sessions towards the end of the month! It’s a habit I picked up from school! June starts nicely on the Sunday, which is nice for me. Since I’ve finished the Hillegass book, I’ll often need to do planning on paper, outside of the computer. That’s okay, it still counts. Just as an aside, I don’t feel like I’m all that comfortable in Objective-C yet, despite finishing the book. I might choose to work on some tutorials e.g. those on www.cocoadevcentral.com, but I’m not sure if I can work it into my schedule.

Goal 2. Be ready to deliver C8, C9, C10 speeches

Although my progress has been very quick compared to others here, I procrastinate a lot on my Toastmasters speeches. I’m not sure that I’ll have the speech slots to deliver my speeches this month, which is a disappointment. I’m not setting a particularly ambitious goal here, but as the scouts say, be prepared. I’d like to prepare these speeches this month so that I’m ready to deliver them if someone calls me.

Well, I think this is a better plan than last month. It’s obviously not perfect, but I’ll see how it goes!