将能ありて君御せざるもの勝つ

Today, I was going through some of my old stuff, and came upon this. It is actually a verse from Sun Tzu's Art of War, the original Chinese text being 将能而君不御者胜. It means that when you have able subordinates, then the path to victory is not to control them tightly. This verse was used by one of my Japanese superiors as his direction for the division. To him, the important thing is to allow us subordinates freedom in carrying out our work, while his job as a superior was to create an environment that facilitates us in doing what we have to do.

Being in such a position now myself, and looking back at his guidance, I can say that this is something that I want to use for my own division now as well. When responsibility is placed on our shoulders, we have a tendency to become control freaks, wanting to know everything that is happening and wanting to dictate everything so that everything happens as we want it to happen. But this takes away creativity from our subordinates, and turns our subordinates into machines that just carry out orders. It stunts their growth and development. We are leaving them no room to grow and explore on their own, for them to learn and gain the experience needed that they may one day move on to greater responsibilities.

It is important to let go, if not to let your subordinates learn and grow, then at least for yourself to have a clearer picture from an outsider's point of view. From there, you can provide better guidance than being in the thick of action yourself. And of course, leaving your subordinates to do their job means that you can have the time to do your job too.

Byakkoutai 白虎隊

This is actually a miniseries shown on TV in Japan. It is about a group of young samurai (18 years and below) formed as part of the effort to defend the Aizu fief during the Boshin War, which took place as part of the Meiji Restoration.

I won't go into the details of the TV show, that you can easily find out either by watching it (there is a DVD out there if you stay outside Japan) or by checking out the show's website. What I want to do is talk about some of the things that this show made me think about.

One of the teachings that samurai in Aizu is taught is that ならぬことはならぬ。This means that what must not be, must not be. Or, we must do what must be done. This is such a simple phrase, yet it sets out the importance of fulfilling one's duty, of having the moral courage to do what is right, of being willing to face up to challenges and not back away when the going gets tough. While some may say that such thinking is outdated in our modern world, a look at how youths are behaving nowadays, and I think, "If these kids are taught all these, would we have the social problems that we have now?" A recent piece of news has a kid from a famous school in Singapore beating up a bus driver. Should we condone such practices ("he is just a kid", "give the kid a chance", etc.) or should we teach the little one (our future generation, our hope for the future) to behave properly, to bear the social responsibility for his own actions?

Another teaching is that one should not cause one's parents to worry. No matter how old we are, we should be thankful to our parents. It is because of them that we exist. And thus, no matter what we do, we should not cause them to worry. While parents are inevitably worried about their children, as children, on our part, we should act in a way that we don't cause them unnecessary worry, that assures them that we know what we are doing, that we know the consequences of our actions, and we are acting in a responsible manner.

立派に死ぬには立派に生きなければならない。To be able to die in an exemplary manner, one must lead an exemplary life. Or, the manner that we live our lives will determine the manner that we die. We can choose to lead an honourable life, and die with honour and be remembered as a person of integrity. Or we can shirk responsibility in all we do, and die being remembered as a coward.

And the sun always appear after the rain. We should not give up hope even when things look grim. All we need to do is to bear through the rough patch, and we will eventually get to better times. The important thing is to persevere and not to take the easy way out by running away from our problems, or a sticky/tough situation.

Aizu produced many good warriors. And I think this could be because they devote time and effort as a whole towards educating their children. Not just sending them to school and teaching them to read and write. But rather, education in terms of inculcating in future generations the correct values. Education is not about learning a skill. It is about learning how to lead life, and includes the skills and values that we need. To produce people of calibre like those from Aizu, we should focus on educating our future generations in the correct manner. While having great engineers and cunning businessmen may bring about economic growth in the near term, to be a great nation, we cannot depend on having the tallest buildings or the biggest airports to survive in the long term. It is the quality of our people that will determine whether we can survive all challenges that the future may have for us.

Byakkoutai on Wikipedia
Fan site

Iwo Jima? Iwo Tou?

硫黄島can be read as Iwojima, or Iwotou, but apparently, from what I know, it was called Iwotou originally. Iwojima is the name given to it by the Americans.

So now, after all these years, it seems that Japan is going to use back the old, original name of Iwotou. So don't be surprised if you start seeing references to Iwotou in the future. It still refers to the same small island.

DNS-312H Network Attached Storage (part 2)

While the NAS didn't work very well back at my previous place (read my previous post), I did manage to set it up at my new place, and right now, it is being used as a central server to store our emails, as well as files that I want to be able to access from both computers. I haven't been able to set up my bookmarks to be loaded from the central server, though.

But with Windows Vista, there problem is that everytime I log in, I need to manually reconnect my network drive. Even though I selected the "Reconnect on logon" option, it is not able to log in correctly. I still have yet to find the reason why... but that is a small hindrance, compared to not being able to access the drive at all. If anyone knows how to solve this, do let me know!

Letter to forum - Thoughts on conserving energy

A letter to the forum page of the local newspaper, written by me and published.

"I recently went to a mega supermarket in the heartlands, and while the temperature outside was a hot 33 degrees Celsius, the air conditioners were making the supermarket much colder than expected. While the fresh food section may require such temperatures, I really wonder if the other sections of the supermarket selling electronics and fabrics really need to be so cold. Is it not a waste of energy to make buildings much colder than they need to be?

A Japanese friend of mine commented about the indoor temperatures in Singapore when he visited recently. The difference between the temperatures outdoors and that indoor is so great, that it is difficult to dress appropriately. Anything worn to suit the outside heat is too thin for the indoor's cold temperature, while anything worn to fight off the cold is probably going to make one sweat a lot more when walking outdoors.

In a bid to conserve energy, and do a little for the environment, the Japanese government has decreed that all government agencies set their air conditioners to no colder than 28 degrees during summer. Workers are allowed to dress down to suit the summer heat. They are not expected to turn up in suit-and-tie anymore; short-sleeved shirts will do just fine. Can we not follow suit and save some energy, and save ourselves from the dilemma of wearing jackets in a country which has summer all year round?"

Our new home - Moved in (part 2)

Here are some pictures of our new home. You can actually see it too at my wife's blog. Below is a shot of our living room.
And here is a photo taken of our first dinner after moving in.
Now, the challenge is to sort out all those things inside the boxes... and to find places to keep all my books, files, CDs and other miscellaneous stuff. This whole weekend was spent doing just that, and I am not even half done. Moving in was the easy part.

Star Wars, Dune, Taiji and the Condor Heroes

I was watching Episodes 1 to 3 yesterday. Phew, spent the whole day going through the DVDs, and was I tired after the movie marathon. Well, here are some more thoughts about the Star Wars series.

First, to do with taiji. "Fear of losing is a path to the dark side." This seems to be quite in line with what I have written in my taiji blog about being afraid to lose. And the more powerful you get, you become more afraid of losing what you have. This is something that we have to watch. The better we become, the more we must be careful not to guard what we have too closely. I recently learnt a lesson from observing a colleague. He was afraid to lose, and ended up losing because his plan was basically one to prevent himself from losing, rather than to bring about victory.

Okay, enough about taiji, if I need to say more, I will talk about it in my other blog.

A similarity with The Return of the Condor Heroes was found in Star Wars. Anakin Skywalker fell in love with someone older than he was, just like Yang Guo. They met when he was still a child, and she was nice to him, just like Little Dragon Lady (aka Xiaolongnyu) was nice to Yang Guo. And similarly, their unions were viewed to be wrong (a Jedi marrying a senator, compared to a student marrying his teacher). And of course, Anakin had his right arm cut off, just like Yang Guo. And both were proud, knowing that they were good in their skills.

And the Kamino that created the clones were like the Tleilaxu of Dune, specialising in making clones. The assassin sent to kill Padme was a "changer", like a doppleganger from Dune, able to shapeshift.

Seems like the movie really does draw a lot of inspiration from different places.