Book Review: How To Take Smart Notes

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking - for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

by Sönke Ahrens

I have spoken a lot about Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes. It is a rare book that have changed the way I read and think.

Its title may sound mundane but mundane it is not. 

Ahrens wrote the book when he found it "too painful to watch others taking notes in the same unproductive ways" he used to take notes himself.

For me, it all started when I was required to sign up for an international HR conference with so many number of sessions that I kinda freaked out.

But I suddenly started thinking - could I listen to these talks and still get the most of out of it? How then can I take better notes? And make the notes work for me?

It was then that I came across Ahrens's book. And again I must say, it has changed a lot of how I now read and think.

How do you take notes?

For me, when I read books, I highlight them in my Kindle and add notes when I have questions and thoughts about it. However, I almost never get back to the highlights or the notes. 

I once remembered one particular item that I needed to refer to. But I couldn't find it. Kindle do not collate all the notes into one place to enable search. I need to know which book first, which I don't. I never found it.

And when I take notes during live talks and especially during sermons preached in church, I would take down notes usually word for word, in phrases. But again, I don't use the notes or refer to them at all.

So why do I take notes to begin with?

It is suppose to help me pay better attention and remember what I read or listen to. But in the end, I don't remember much.

This is where Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten comes into play. 

Zettelkasten is a German word that means slip-box or card index. Ahrens calls is the "gold standard " in taking notes and keeping them organised in an output-orientated way.

What is most important in this note taking method is that you elaborate what you read or listened in your own words by writing in the cards. 

One idea one card. 

Elaborating is important. You do not copy and paste. Elaborating it in your own words will show you whether you understand what you have read or listened to.

You can either use physical A6 sized cards, the Zettelkasten PC software, or like me, the Trello app.

Written notes are placed into two boxes:

1. Fleeting Notes - ideas that you thought of yourself 

2. Literature Notes - your elaboration, references included. 

After a day a two, you are to look into these two boxes and convert, link, combine, or rewrite them to be placed in the Permanent Notes box.

Notes are numbered and indexed.

This is done to help you build a latticework of thinking and ideas of your brain. 

Our mental latticework is the breadth and depth of all our elaborated thinking. It helps us link our past knowledge with new learning. With it, we will continually learn as we space the retrieval of our ideas at different times. We will vary our ideas as we look at it in different contexts. And we will benefit from it as we remember necessary things by chance.

All because we have done more elaborated thinking than before.

And as Luhmann has said, "One cannot think without writing."

I used to say that my phone is my extended brain. Now I say that both my phone and my Slip Box are my extended brains. The phone as the processor and the Slip Box holds my thoughts.

It is as simple as that. It boils down to whether you would put effort into making it work for you.

pearlie

Book Review: The Culture Code

I know I'm suppose to write a review on the note taking book I have read. I know there are some of you who are waiting for it. 

But I haven't found the time yet! That book is so rich and packed with good stuff that I will need time to get back to the notes I have taken to write a fair review.

Moreover, I have not really figured out the numbering system yet, if ever.

In the meantime, this is the second book I read using the Slip Box notetaking method and I was enjoying reading and notetaking so much that I finished the book last night and slept at 3am as a result.

The Slip Box really works. I finished the book at about 2:40am but my brain was so busy thinking and connecting ideas that I had to force myself to think about other things in order to fall asleep.

Well, I did take a cup of tea during dinner, without thinking, that caused my insomnia. And of course I took notes of the connections and ideas before I slept at 3.

Anyway, I was looking for a book to fill my brain with some language and thinking in the line of a company culture to help me get a deck done up for work. 

Which was when I found this...

The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

...and it is an excellent read.

The book is segregated into 3 sections with the first about creating a safe environment in an organization, then about being open and vulnerable with each other so that change can happen and finally gathering together to focus and work on a common purpose and direction.

I learnt that it is not about putting together a group of people with good individual skills to perform, it is not about sitting together to merely come up with a mission statement, it is not about strategizing and coming up action plans to implement them.

It is about using subtle patterns of small behaviours to build a safe environment, it is about giving and receiving honest but sincere feedback, it is about being tough but caring to drive results.

The book is packed with so many good stories that I can really identify with and learn from.

And it's good that my Slip Box is now full of stuff to work on.

pearlie

Stop the race to finish a book

I finished reading Sönke Ahrens How to Take Smart Notes today. And like what one person commented on the book in Goodreads said, "This book is GOLD."!

I will try to do justice in giving it a good review soon, but what I can share now are these two important lessons that I have learnt. 

One, I will stop the race of finishing books. I have started challenges to read a certain number of books every year and even reading beyond that.

And when I read, I did it with two purposes: (1) to learn and gain insight and (2) to finish them to add to the list of books read as an accomplishment.

But after reading Ahrens book, I need to stop doing that. Of course I will still learn and gain insight from reading, but I will stop the race of finishing books. 

And that brings me to the second most important thing: when I read, I will think, elaborate by taking notes and then to connect the notes. And it doing so, I will have a stronger grasp in my learning, thinking and ideas.

This will no doubt take a lot of time but don't even refer to the books I have read in past years, on the 11 books I have read these two months, not counting Ahrens's one, I don't remember much, if anything at all.

So even though it takes a lot of time, it is what needs to be done if I want to read. 

If I don't do that, I had better not read anything at all to begin with because in the end, it wouldn't make a difference whether I read or not, if I don't remember or gain anything from it.

And with that, of all these books I have read this year, I will need to reread A More Beautiful Question. Next to Ahrens's, this is also very good.

But Ahrens did say that it is dangerous to reread books but I have to do it, though I think I will wait it out awhile before I do. 

My project now is to read Daniel Coyle's The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. 

I need it badly for work.

pearlie

Book Review: A More Beautiful Question

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas

by Warren Berger

This is a very good book. If you like to learn how to think well, this would be a good place to start. 

It all begins with E.E. Cummings, "Always the beautiful answer/Who asks a more beautiful question."

Warren Berger started by asking why aren't we asking any more questions. Younger kids ask a whole of them but by the time they started school, they begin to stop asking and when they are at middle or high school, they may stop altogether.

I agree with him that schools are programmed to provide answers and to demand answers, not questions. 

And as we get ourselves into the working world, questions are usually not welcomed. 

I remember my first few days working in a company when I asked a question since I was new to the environment. The looks I got stopped me from asking anymore and go find the answers myself. 

So Berger's book is a much needed one. We need to ask questions again.

I like that he gives us three question starters in how to train ourselves in innovative questioning. It is to ask: why, what if, and how?

The book also explored questioning in business and questioning in life. 

As I read the book, I have begun to ask questions myself and I found two of the most important ones here: "What is my sentence?" and "How might I live up to my sentence?"

Here's an excerpt which I find so profound:

This is a favorite question of the author Daniel Pink, though he acknowledges in his book Drive that it can be traced back to the journalist and pioneering congresswoman Clare Booth Luce. While visiting John F. Kennedy early in his presidency, Luce expressed concern that Kennedy might be in danger of trying to do too much, thereby losing focus. She told him “a great man is a sentence”—meaning that a leader with a clear and strong purpose could be summed up in a single line (e.g., “Abraham Lincoln preserved the union and freed the slaves”). Pink believes this concept can be useful to anyone, not just presidents. Your sentence might be, “He raised four kids who became happy, healthy adults,” or “She invented a device that made people’s lives easier.” If your sentence is a goal not yet achieved, then you also must ask: How might I live up to my own sentence?

Don't you see that it is such an important skill to learn and nurture?

I have made this a required reading for my team at work and we are going to train ourselves in asking.

With that, I aim to read it again in 6 months time to see how we have progressed and to pick up where we lack.

Oh, let me log it into my calendar now. 

pearlie

Book Review: Jesus, Continued... by JD Greear

Jesus , Continued... why the Spirit inside you is better than Jesus beside you

by J.D. Greear

I read JD Greear's Not God Enough, Why Your Small God Lead to Big Problems in October 2018 and I like his writing so much I am looking forward to reading this one: Jesus, Continued...Why the Spirit Inside You is Better than Jesus Beside You.

And he did not disappoint. It is an excellent book about how one can and should work with God, not for God, through the Holy Spirit.

He captured me right from the very beginning:

A few years ago a young man sat in my office feeling deeply frustrated with his faith. Although he knew a lot of truths about God, he sensed very little relationship with God--at least, not the dynamic relationship he wanted. God seemed distant.

It seemed that everything God had done, he had done in the past: he created the world, died on the cross, and then inspired a Bible to tell us about it. then he gave us a mission and left through the clouds. God seemed like a busy teacher who had given an assignment and then stepped out of the room, leaving his students to get it done on their own.

So this guy busy at work, trying faithfully to learn the lessons, follow the instructions, and complete the assignments. He had a "relationship with God" in the sense that he prayed about his problems and tried hard to trust that God was working somewhere, somehow, to help him. Yet he lacked any vibrant interaction with that God.

This was exactly what I felt myself. The trying, the doing, and the striving to obey God seemed distant and as much as I wanted to build a relationship with God, I find it difficult to relate to him in a closer and more meaningful way. Yes, I read the Bible, I pray, I believe, but I knew it had to be more real than what I am feeling then.

Greear reminds us that Jesus told his disciples that he had to go: "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you." John 16:7 ESV

Greear said, "Do you consider your connection to the Holy Spirit so strong and real that you regard his presence in you to be a better advantage than even Jesus himself beside you?"

And that I found is the "best kept secret" though it is never a secret. The Holy Spirit is already in us when we received Jesus into our lives, and we have the power of the Almighty God in us to do the things he commissioned us to do.

And we have the Spirit already in us to enable us to build the very relationship that we yearn to have with him. 

There is also a chapter in there about prayer that I really appreciate. Greear reminded me that God wants me to seek him through persistent, faith-filled prayer. And that is one thing I lacked. I was not persistent enough. I thought I shouldn't need to "remind" God all the time, but that is exactly what God is asking us to do!

Remember the parable about the person who knocked on his neighbour's door for supplies at midnight until the neighbour had to open the door and attend to him? So from now on, I am going to keep asking until God opens the door, but of course if it is in his will and desire to do so...

...but I am gonna to keep on knockin'!

pearlie

A sunburst of musical diamonds

I have always found public praying hard and would rather not do it, but I still have to as a worship leader, and so when I came across this book, I quickly bought a copy and began reading.

Leading in Prayer, A Workbook for Worship

by Hughes Oliphant Old

I have only just started but have already found it very useful. My next rostered duty will be a month away, which gives me enough time to finish reading it.

It will definitely become my reference book from now on when I prepare to worship lead. 

It is also a very good read. Whilst reading the chapter on The Psalms as Prayer, there is a considerable section on singing the Psalms. And I read this line, highlighted here:

I like how the author described it as "a sunburst of musical diamonds." 

Wow, it definitely makes me want to check it out. 

It is indeed lovely and I wish I'll be able to one day sing it in a cathedral with the most wonderful acoustics. 

Check it out, if you do appreciate 15th century high church music, that is. 

pearlie

Why everything matters

One of my favourite books in the Bible is definitely Ecclesiastes, and if you perform a search in my blog, I talk about and quote from it quite a lot. 

Today I felt I needed to read the book again, and so I started to re-read Philip Graham Ryken’s preaching commentary on Ecclesiastes. 

Ecclesiastes: Why Everything Matters

by Philip Graham Ryken

I remember reading the book in year 2012 and six years down the line, it’s time I read it again, and once more learn that whilst everything is meaningless, why and how everything matters. 

I did not blog about this book when I read it then but I did do a book review in 2015 on Thomas Nelson’s A Life Well Lived, A Study of the Book of Ecclesiastes. 

A Life Well Lived, A Study of the Book of Ecclesiastes

by Thomas Nelson

And now that I am reading my blogpost Enjoy Your Life! again, I think it’s time I re-read Nelson after I finish Ryken’s. 

pearlie

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

The Magician’s Nephew

by C.S. Lewis

As a result of going back to reading C.S. Lewis recently, I bought the Kindle version of The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection and read The Magician’s Nephew today. 

I know I read the book before when I read it to my son when he was small, but with me having a short memory and all, I couldn’t remember the story at all. 

What I do remember is that I wasn’t really captured by the story nor could I identify with it. 

But it’s different this time, very different. 

Louis Markos wrote in his book Lewis Agonistes that those “who read the Chronicles as a child solely for their stories, and then read them again as an adult [is] to be stunned into wonder by their deeper Christian message, a message made all the more real because it had already been experienced in childhood in a purely aesthetic way.”

Sadly, I have not read the Chronicles when I was young. I didn’t know about the books back then. 

But now that I am reading it, I am seeing the deeper meaning it holds. 

And whilst I am rarely moved to tears, this one did me. 

I don’t think I can put any quotes here. I will not do it justice. You will have to read it and experience it for yourself, truly. 

pearlie

What are the opening lines of the books you read?

It took me two and a half months to finish reading The Korean Mind, Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture  I can't wait to get it over with so I can get on with life. It was tough and I'm glad I finally flipped the last page. 

With that book out of the way, I wanted to get my hands on a new one. 

And looking at the 19 books I have read so far this year—which is the least number of books in the last 6 years since I went back to serious reading—I have not read a single novel. 

I started hunting for one and happened upon this. 

The End of Your Life Book Club

by Will Schwalbe

I love books about books and as I read it, I also like its voice and feel. 

How could a book lover and avid reader ignore a book that is labeled as "a true meditation on what books can do"?

But as I got on with it, I began to realize that it is not a novel after all, but an account of the writer's last days with his dying mom. 

But I was already invested in the book and could not put it down. 

The novel will have to wait. It will have to come after this, or never, for the year at least. 

One part of the book that I really like was when the author said: 

Mom and I loved opening lines of novels. “The small boys came early to the hanging” was one of our favorites, from Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth. How could you not go on reading? And the first sentence of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” And E. M. Forster’s first line in Howards End: “One may as well begin with Helen’s letters to her sister.” It’s the “may as well” that draws you in—casual, chatty even, yet it gives the reader a strong sense that there’s a lot of story to come.

Obviously I went to check out his first line after reading that paragraph, and it was this:

We were nuts about the mocha in the waiting room at Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s outpatient care center.

I don't know about you but I was hooked right there and then, and didn't even know it. 

But I have always believe in only reading books that start well for me. Only that I didn't really pay attention to the opening lines. 

Now I do. 

pearlie

The Furious Longing of God

I am in Day 2 of my fasting from TV. 

I am reading again. 

I have heard of Brennan Manning and the popularity of his books but I never did find out more about him though I did purchase a few of his book in my Kindle. 

I decided to read The Furious Longing of God, and it was exactly what I needed. 

The Furious Longing of God

by Brennan Manning

Manning was a master and expert on words. He really had a way with it. Mark Batterson who wrote the foreword to the book said, "Brennan has a raw poetic writing style that puts him in rare writing company. His words will gracefully confront the status quo in your life and reawaken a deep desire to know the One who desires you. Brennan also has a way of putting into words the subliminal fears and hopes and desires many of us have a difficult time verbalizing. That’s why his books resonate with readers on such a deep level."

The book touches on Christian Spirituality and how furiously God loves us. 

Both theology, which is faith seeking understanding, and spirituality, which is the faith-experience of what we understand intellectually, offer a glimpse into the mystery. Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles (1 Cor. 13: 12).

The men and women who are truly filled with light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.

However, I find myself getting wary of it getting too loose on the grace of God. The book seem to elevate the love of God without enough mention of the grace of God and how undeserving we are of it. 

Manning said, "if we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image."

It is true that those qualities are not what God wants in our lives. There is after all no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 

Maybe it's just me, but I cannot read the book with reckless abandon, though that was what I felt when I read it - to really immerse myself in the furious longing of God. 

To simply be in his presence all the days of my life. 

pearlie

Book Review: The Korean Mind

The Korean Mind, Understanding Contemporary Korean Culture

by Boyé Lafayette De Mente

I was looking forward to digging into this book when I laboriously finished the last book I was reading, except that I am very, very disappointed with it. 

I have only just begun reading it and I already have four reasons to stop reading but I'm still hanging on, for now.  

One, for a book that is about the culture of the Koreans, I wasn't happy that the author decided to print names in a westernized way, first name and then last name when all Korean names begin with the surname and then the given name. This really irritates me. Thankfully, there aren't many names used, so far, but when they do appear, I keep having to take note and make effort to read it in the proper Korean way. Come on, it is a book about the Korean culture! 

Two, the book presents the subject using distinctive Korean words following the Korean alphabetical order. Well and good except that it would be much easier to read if it were thematic instead. For example, I was reading the section on 암흑기 (am-heuk-gi) The Dark Period and the next section is on 아내 (a-nae) Wives: The Inside People. My mind has to take a few minutes to make an adjustment to move from thinking about the dark ages to thinking about wives. 

Three, the spelling of Korean words in this book is atrocious to say the least. The author made a mistake right at the very beginning in the first chapter when he wrote about fathers. The right spelling is 아버지 (a-beo-ji) but the author spelt it 아보지 (a-bo-ji), which is incorrect. In writing the previous paragraph above, I just found out those two words are also spelt wrongly. I have spelt it correctly above: 암흑기 instead of 암훅기 and 아내 instead of 안애. This is really unacceptable. Would you read a book in any language with multiple spelling errors? 

Four, the author is not accurate in his writing and presentation of facts. He wrote, "This was the infamous k’ou t’ou (kowtow) long associated with China. K’ou means “head,” and t’ou means “bump” or “knock”". He got it all mixed up. In actual fact, it is k'ou that means to knock or to bump and t'ou means head. What other inaccuracies are there in the book that I don't know about, which will cause me to learn the wrong things?

This is the first time I have ever come across such a badly written book, and I should abandon it already. 

pearlie

Book Review: Jealousy, The Sin No One Talks About

Jealousy, The Sin No One Talks About: How to Overcome Envy & Live a Life of Freedom

by R.T. Kendall

I finally finished reading this book today and upon logging it into my Goodreads account, I noticed that the last time I completed a book was 3 months ago! I have really been slacking in my reading, but it's only because I was stuck with not a very good book that I want to finish before I started another one. 

I bought it because I needed it. It is a reality that all of us go through this and I had to admit to myself that I was going through a bad bout of jealousy. 

I went hunting for articles and books to read but they weren't many except for this one that looks more promising. I've read R.T. Kendall before but I don't like his books that much. 

And my assessment was spot on, for me at least. 

The only parts I found useful was the first and the last. I could not agree with his treatment of the subject when he wrote it from the perspective of the gospel in Gospel Jealousy, which in my opinion he belittled the gospel in doing so.  And I do not agree with his interpretation of the Cain and Abel account. 

And of the portions I found useful, he kept repeating himself. But it's good that he does conclude everything in 13 ways to overcome jealousy in the last chapter. 

Here are some excerpts of the better sections of his book:

Jealousy is an easy thing to fall into. This is because it plays into our insecurity. Like it or not, we are all insecure.

The envy described in Ecclesiastes 4:4 emerges in one of two ways (or both): (1) productive envy is the desire to outdo what has preceded you (what motivates vates athletes in the Olympics); (2) counterproductive envy is the wish (consciously or unconsciously) to make another feel envious, although God may overrule and turn this to good.

Counterproductive jealousy is what eats our souls and leaves us bitter and impoverished. It is one of Satan's favorite vehicles by which he brings us to despair and destruction.

This is why jealousy is so bad. It has the very breath of Satan in it.

...the worst thing that can happen to a man is to succeed before he is ready.

Envy is inevitable; jealousy is envy that is manifested. Envy is the thought; jealousy is the obsession. The rule of thumb: deal with envy while it is only in your thoughts. That is the best way forward.

Holy Spirit never promotes us to the level of our incompetence. We may promote ourselves, others may promote us, but not the Holy Spirit. He knows what we are good at, what we are not good at, and what the Father has called us to do. The way we guarantee we will not be promoted to the level of our incompetence is that we truly look at ourselves soberly-with ruthless honesty, knowing that we all have only a "measure" of faith. This means that each of us has a limited measure of the Holy Spirit. You do not have all of God there is. Don't let anybody tell you that you do. Only Jesus had all of God there is (Col. 1:19); only He was given the Holy Spirit without any limit (John 3:34). It is our responsibility, then, to admit humbly to our limitations. Nobody can do everything. Quit trying to do everything! Do not imitate another's ability.

We may be envious or jealous of another's anointing or calling, but if each of us comes to terms with what God has called us to do and accept it without murmuring, we may lessen the likelihood of jealousy. King Saul became jealous of David's anointing (1 Sam. 18:12). And yet, sadly, we all tend to have problems with what God has called others to do. I repeat: Jesus said that it was none of Peter's business how John would die; He replied to Peter, "What is that to you? You must follow me" (John 21:21-22, emphasis added). So it is with all of us. We may ask, "What about him? What about her? What are You asking them to do?" And God says to each of us: "None of your business-you follow Me."

The grass often looks greener on the other side of the fence, but it seldom is.

pearlie 

Book Review: Daughters of the Dragon

Daughters of the Dragon, A Comfort Woman's Story

by William Andrews

I started reading this book yesterday and it was so engaging, I finished it in one go today. 

It is an awesome book. It holds a gripping tale about how a comfort woman survived through years of countless daily rape by Japanese soldiers, whilst trying to barely hang on to the bare modicum of self-respect, and how she survived the shame in the years after. 

It aches my heart to know that this is a story that is based on the real lives of at least two hundred thousand women who were forced into such atrocities. They were brutally raped, tortured and most were subsequently killed when Japan lost the war. 

And I would like to repeat what I quoted two days ago: it's "a narrative that honors the 200,000 sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII, and brings to light this historical, systematic atrocity."

We must honor these women and remember them, for what they had to go through and what they had to suffer in this broken and fallen world. 

pearlie

Book Review: North Korea Confidential

North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

by Daniel Tudor and James Pearson

I have read a few books related to North Korea and with that you can say that I am quite intrigued by this mysterious and fascinating country. And so when I found this book written by Daniel Tudor, who is The Economist's Korea Correspondent, I quickly grabbed a copy. 

It is an interesting read, and it proposes that the lives of North Koreans is not quite what the usual reports or news make them out to be, even more so since the recent devastating famine of the 1990s which became a catalyst for change, with black markets for skinny jeans, homemade beer, DVDs and USB sticks for foreign movies and TV shows, computers and such. 

North Koreans may know more than you think they do and most no longer believe that South Koreans are worse off than them, but are in fact living lives far beyond what they can imagine. 

The authors conclude that, "the most likely scenario for North Korea in the short and medium term is the gradual opening of the country under the rule of the current regime. But North Korea, this profit-driven, feudalistic, traditional Korean “socialist paradise,” has long had the power to surprise. No-one really knows what the North Korea of 10 or 20 years hence will look like. In the meantime, we continue to watch with a mixture of frustration and hope."

If you are curious like me about this country, this is a highly recommended read; the best by far. 

pearlie

We have a language-learning machine hidden in our brain?

Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It

by Gabriel Wyner 

I finally finished reading this book and it is a very, very good book. Highly recommended if you want to learn a new language. I find what Wyner says make perfect sense, and his learning strategy and ways workable. 

He talks about "comprehensible input" and refers to the "language-learning machine hidden within the brain of every child." He says, "Kids don't learn their language from just any kind of language input. The only input that seems to matter is input that kids can understand. In linguistic circles, this is known as comprehensible input. The basic idea is this: kids need to understand the gist of what they hear in order to learn a language from it."

If you try to learn languages in the way Wyner proposes, "you can feel your new language building itself in your mind. Instead of wasting your time on monotonous grammar drills, you're constantly encountering new words, new grammatical forms, and new ways to express yourself--a torrent of comprehensible input that feeds your language machine and helps you understand more and more every day...and you are not working; you are having fun."

Doesn't that sound awesome?

I now understand why I am finally learning to read and write Mandarin in stride. I have come a long way with the HSK decks I purchase that consist of flashcards with Mandarin sentences. I am revising these cards everyday with understanding and comprehension. 

Seriously, I have been trying in vain to learn the language all my life, formally when I was just a 7-year-old kid and when I was in university. After that, it was a half-hearted dabble here and there trying so hard to learn, memorize and recognize the characters but to my dismay, nothing seems to stick. 

It has now changed. I mentioned recently that it have only taken me two weeks to learn up all the 170 characters in HSK1. And given the fact that I have learnt HSK1 a couple of times before and that I have not done any work on HSK2, I thought it would take me much, much longer to master the second set. 

But it has only been 11 days since I started on HSK2 and I already know almost 90% of it. 

This book and the Anki deck really comes highly recommended if you desire to pick up a new language. And the beauty of it is that, as much as it really is hard work, I'm actually having loads of fun. 

Go get a copy of Fluent Forever and read it. Get the Anki app and use it. 

I promise you, it works. 

pearlie

Be both weak and strong

A Place of Healing, Wrestling with the Mystery of Suffering, Pain and God's Sovereignty 

by Joni Eareckson Tada

I knew I was watching too much TV and so I told myself it's a no-TV day today. I did after all purchase two books this morning and thought it'd be good to spend the whole afternoon and evening reading. 

It was a good decision. 

I'm now halfway through Joni Eareckson Tada's A Place of Healing and she already moved me to tears in the first five pages, and more as I went along. She has so much insight in the presence and love of God through her suffering, especially now even more as her body suffers in unbearable pain. 

She made me think more deeply on familiar bible verses that I'm now seeing in different light. 

One that strikes me most is from 2 Cor 12:9-10, "I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me...For when I am weak, then I am strong."

We are usually ashamed and embarrassed about our weaknesses so much so that we rather hide and not talk about it. Here, Paul is not only telling us to talk about it but to boast about our weaknesses. 

To boast about something is to be proud of it, to gladly flaunt it. And the only way I think we can be proud about our weaknesses rest on the hope and suffering of Christ. 

With that, we become both weak and strong.

It is apparent what we need to do in church. We had our second CG session in church this afternoon discussing Timothy Keller's The Prodigal God. 

Someone shared about someone who stopped going to church because she felt so out of place in a church where everyone seemed to have such a good life, with successful jobs, with good and happy kids, whilst she is eking out a living and having challenges raising her own kids. 

We should learn to have the courage to talk about our weaknesses, especially in church, and to divert our focus to the reliance on God to sustain us. 

I really recommend you this book, if you are in suffering or if you caring for someone, especially now that the Kindle version is on sale. 

pearlie 

Can you be gay and Christian?

Can You Be Gay and Christian? Responding with Love and Truth to Questions about Homosexuality

by Michael L. Brown, PhD

I had wanted to know more about the LGBT subject for awhile now. I missed a conference on it once before and so when I noticed this book, I quickly got a copy and dived in. 

I did not know much about it, not about what their arguments were and how they justified and explained their lives in light of Scripture. The book presented it very well with every chapter beginning with a "gay Christian" argument followed by a biblical answer. Brown was fair in his treatment of the subject with grace and compassion. 

He explained the biblical position of homosexuality through context and word study. And as much as the LGBT scholars try to read it positively into God's word, Brown has shown that "every single reference to homosexual practice in the ancient Jewish world is 100 percent negative—sometimes in the strongest of terms—and there is not a single positive reference to be found." 

And I like the way he explained the creation of man and woman. I have never looked at it this way before: "The author of Genesis is explaining to us that because the woman was taken out of the man, the two are now joined back together as one in marital union, each one uniquely complementing the other." Then he quotes A.B. Simpson saying, "Man was created male and female. This does not mean, as it would seem at first from the language, that he created the male and the female at the same time, but He created male and female in one person. The woman was included in the man physically and psychically, and afterwards was taken out of the man and constituted in her own individuality," concluding that "only a man and a woman can be joined (rejoined!) together in this way."

This is a must-read book. You may or may not agree with him, but at least he presents both sides and faithfully explains the Bible as it is intended by the original writers as inspired by God. And most of all, he is firm in his stand that we are all broken people before God and we are all in need of God, as heterosexuals or homosexuals, in need of his grace, mercy, love and redemption. 

pearlie

God is Red, The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China

 

God is Red, The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China 

by Liao Yiwu

I started reading this book a week ago and I finished it today. 

Like I was saying, the book was translated by Wenguang Huang and he noted that the author, Liao Yiwu, is "one of the most prominent and outspoken contemporary writers in China today. His epic poem 'Massacre' composed in 1989 in condemnation of the government's bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square, landed him in jail for four years." He has subsequently been researching the Falun Gong group, and was pursued and investigated by the government as well. He got interested in Christians in China as part of his wider project about people living at the margins of society in China today. He remains an unbeliever, which in a sense made the book quite an interesting read from an outsider's point of view but as Huang said, "the journeys brought him kinship with millions of Chinese Christians who are finding meaning in a tumultuous society."

It is indeed a very good read. The tone is conversational as Liao reconstructed his interviews with the people in dialogue form allowing us to hear them as they are. 

It is also a painful read. I cannot imagine the atrocities, persecution and suffering that they went through. And what I am thankful for are the missionaries who were there with them before they were deported when the Cultural Revolution started. The missionaries certainly plowed and planted and harvested and is now still harvesting many believers in the Lord. 

pearlie 

No TV but Three Books

I stopped watching TV for several days and end up finishing three books today. It wasn't easy laying of TV I must tell you. The pull was there but I held on and read some books instead. 

Visual Intelligence, Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life

by Amy E. Herman

This is a good book but not really that easy a read. There are too many shoulds and should nots, and step-by-step stuff than I would prefer. But it is good that it introduced me to practicing close observation of what and how I see things. It uses art to train us to better see and observe things around us. I really liked the first half of the book. Her second half of the book concerning communication and message is something I'd rather read from other experts. What I would have preferred is more of the first half of the book. 

 My Holiday in North Korea, the Funniest/Worst Place on Earth

by Wendy E. Simmons

This is quite a fun read, not that North Korea is fun. It is a pitiful place and I really feel for the people there who are the most uninformed, inhibited and repressed society in the world. And the sad thing is they don't know it and it's not even their fault. The author tells of her 10-day solo visit to North Korea and how they scheduled, planned and staged her visits to show how great and advanced the country is, except that anyone can see it is not. They even staged a football match complete with spectators in a 50,000-seat stadium just for her at the last minute due to a itinerary change. Simmons wrote, "So was this a real, previously scheduled, Monday-morning-at-9:00-a.m. football match? And had I just been super lucky to have a Monday-morning-at-9:00-a.m. slot on my schedule that needed filling? Possibly, given the damned good luck (knock wood) and propensity for remarkable coincidences I tend to have. Or had a country just pulled together an entire football match (minus a few thousand fans) in less than twelve hours solely for my benefit? It was a thought too absurd, too egomaniacal, too lunatic, and too paranoid, to even consider…right?" I would never have the chance or the the courage to go to North Korea, and so it is good to read about it instead. 

A Thousand Miles to Freedom, My Escape from North Korea

by Eunsun Kim

After reading a book written by a tourist to North Korea, I wanted to read one by a North Korean sharing first hand experience of their lives in the country. Eunsun Kim was just eleven when she nearly died of hunger in a famine, in the mid-90s. It took nine years for her to escape before she set foot in South Korea to begin a new life. It is an amazing story, no doubt about it but the writing was very choppy. She goes in and out of different timelines giving it a very disjointed flow with repetitive sections and statements. But she writes from her perspective, telling her harrowing story from the heart. I would prefer a little bit more information about her perspective and life in North Korea though, but I think that is as much as you can expect from someone who left the country when she was just eleven. Maybe, I should look for a book written by a more elderly North Korean. 

Finishing three books is great but the TV is still beckoning me. I must resist and not submit or yield to its calling. 

pearlie 

How to win people over: The Like Switch

 

The Like Switch, An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting and Winning People Over

by Jack Schafer

My hubby told me quite awhile ago about this podcast in BFM that caught my interest. It is an interview with an ex-FBI agent on how to switch on your "like" switch, to win people over. He wrote a book on it and I saved it in my Amazon wishlist back in July when the interview was broadcasted. 

I was preparing for the final module in the development programme I am delivering at work (and why is the last of things the toughest?) and I was reminded of this book yesterday afternoon and before I left office, I purchased it without much delay anymore. 

It is a good book with a lot of things to learn, and a lot of things that I need to practice on to gain the skills. 

I found myself being more attentive to what I do and say when I'm with people. I was at a synergy meeting and I realized I was doing several things mentioned in the book!

I also became more sensitive to how other people behave and how they say what they say. For example, my staff received a text message from a sales manager of a vendor we were using, and I was able to evaluate it as unacceptable. We have an arrangement to purchase some training materials from Singapore and we wanted to check with this Malaysian counterpart if we can now explore buying it from them instead. The sales manager's reply to us was, "So now you don't have to purchase it from Singapore anymore?", which I found a little condescending. He should have used an empathic statement like, "Oh, are you having some issues with the purchase from Singapore? If so, how can I help you?"

There are more to it in the book and it will definitely become a reference for me as I go back again and again to learn all the different ways and tactics in human communication, building of rapport and relationships and gaining influence. 

pearlie