Bohemian Journey

Mind Map’s mastermind, Tony Buzan, developed the concept of Mind Mapping out of frustration for the ineffective traditional note-taking  which was difficult create and review.  Jotting down speaker’s words line by line or even summarizing keywords are done linearly and chronologically, meaning that notes relating to the speaker’s point X somewhere on page numbered Y can be on another page numbered Z. At the end of the lecture, we might not even remember the connection among related ideas. I have years of collection of useless college notes to backup this claim.
With Mind Mapping, a big-picture snapshot of your thinking process, your brainstorming session or your summary of a topic is laid out on one single piece of paper. Key points and important ideas are recorded  in a way that show their ordered and connection to one another. The seen diagram is a summary of Michael Faraday.

I have applied this Mind Mapping technique to brainstorm my travel, to prioritize tasks for flat moving and to learn the grammar of a foreign language in addition to taking notes of horribly boring technical and procedural presentations at work. My work productivity increases as rehashing my knowledge and looking up forgotten points take only minutes.

The software I currently use are Concept Draw Mindmap, Mindjet Map Manager and free-version web-app MindMeister.

/>> See more samples of mind-map diagrams and view a list of mind-mapping software.

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It takes only sports-specific clothing and confident body language to cause an opponent’s resolve to waver, according to a study in the journal Psychology of Sports and Exercise.

Three weeks ago, I tried out Karate at a friend’s club. Having no uniform, I wore a T-shirt and a horribly long and loose pair of sweat pants. I could not kick nor move properly because the damn pants kept getting on my feet no matter how tightly I tried to fold it above my heel. I felt so embarrased in this piece of clothing that I was not entirely focused on practicing the move, instead I let myself wander to “Don’t look at my feet…Where should I go and buy nice sport clothing?” Fortunately, this was only a casual practice. It would have been a disaster if I had to spar with someone while thinking about the next sporting shop at Wencelas Square. 

It’s true that if we suck at our games, an impressive Wilson and Nike styled clothing closet will not save us from embarrassing defeats. However, if we and our opponents are on the same level, maybe a professinonal brand sportswear will boost our confidence, and this is all we need to win.

My squash tournament is coming in two weeks. Let see if a pro sportswear is going to save me.

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My best friend from high school was a girl named San from Burma. Then I had a crush on a very cute Burmese guy–let call him Y. who later became my boyfriend. I didn’t know much about their country and little did I care. Unlike San who was a legal immigrant, Y. came to the US as an international student. He graduated and went to college for one year before he quited to work full time at a video store which he later bought. He said that due to the recent political instability in his country (this is the late 1990s), his father could not operate his businesses anymore.  The father had to send Y. all the money and asked if can start a business and support the family.

Political problem. This was the only thing I knew about Burma.

Because Y. did not go to school since his father could no longer send him money, he was not eligible for the student Visa and faced the possibility of having to leave USA. He asked me to come to Rangoon. I never said anything but it was not an option for me at the time. Though not a teenager anymore, I knew nothing about the world, scared of going to strange places and living among strange people. Now I wished I said yes.

If you like movie, check out “Beyond Rangoon.” It’s about an American tourist got trap in the fights between the students and the government during her vacation in Burma. Many years later, it was unfortunate that how little thing changed.

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Picasa2 and Flickr are not made for each other; in fact they are the picture-perfect brainchildren of two fierce competitors, Google and Yahoo!.

Picasa2 was designed to work with Picasa Web Albums, a Google web-application with similar purpose as Flickr although the latter is far more superior than PWA. Used alone, these gadgets are superb products, but coupled together, they are a match made in Web 2.0 heaven.

I’ve been using Flickr for years and completely happy with it.  However, Flickr only serves the online need and overlooks the offline part of a complete photo management process. Up until yesterday, I have tried and used other desktop applications, Adobe Photoshop, Gimp and Irfanview to manage and edit my photos. These software are best for viewing and editing , but still leave the organizing of the photos to me.

So when I tried out Picasa2 yesterday, I was very pleased.  Not only Picasa2 has all the necessary, basic features: cropping, sharpening, tunning and filtering, it has the extra collage
feature which proves to be extremely useful for many topics of my travel blogs. Last but not least, Picasa2 acts as photo library and explorer (think Windows Explorer), automatically searching for and collecting images on the computer.

Picasa2 and Flickr combo brings the best of both world: an easy-to-used and feature packed offline photo management tool plus a kick-ass online photo sharing website.