I frequently mention the importance of communicating with the “self” and understanding the “self” for the sake of personal development. Tracking your assets, liabilities, and cash flow is the equivalent for your personal finance. It is also imperative for solving your money problems and solving your money problems.

When you want to find out the health of a company, a division in a company, a deli at the street corner, or any other business, what do you do?

Interview their executives? No.
Simply observe their customer flow? No.
Based on reputation? No.

Ok, I know you are not that stupid.
You will look at their:
– balance sheet for total outstanding assets, long-termand liabilities, and short-term liabilities
– cash flow for revenue, fixed operation cost, variable cost, and essentially, profit.

If you want to know the health of your financial situation, you have to keep track of the same thing.
To improve your financial situation, or to simply GET RICHER, you have to understand those same parameters for yourself.
Hence, the need to track your assets, liabilities, and cash flow.

If for nothing else, you should at least know your expense and income in order to spend less than you earn, which is the most basic thing in personal finance everyone should be doing, in order to NOT go brankrupt!

You don’t have to keep track of every nickel and dime, unless you want to.

There are softwares out there that can assit you in doing this AceMoney, Microsoft Money, Quicken… convenience includes allowing you to import a file with all the transactions in the month from your online credit card account into the software. It really only takes 5-10 minutes each week if you perform updates weekly.

Otherwise, you can simply keep a spread sheet of the balance of all your saving/loan accounts and major assets, updated on a monthly basis. With the total balance showing monthly, you can compare and see which direction your finance is heading… either be up or down!

The most significant thing that I’d say about this is that it will at least keep you above negative or from going bankrupt, even if you are too lazy to implement any concrete strategy to improve.

Why?

Because when you actually SEE your total balance in real, concrete numbers and it is going downward and perhaps, in the negative, in RED… I’m quite sure 99.99% of you can no longer deny the fact and notice that something’s wrong and something must be changed. Hopefully before you can no longer pay all your bills.

Versus just having one of these thoughts in your head, “Darn, I’m poor”, “Hmmm, I’m spending too much”, “Oh, I think I don’t have enough money”.

That is in equivalence to something I always think –
That if wars are still fought with knives and swords, spears and halberts, people would be much less willing to kill because they’ll actually feel the refuting sensation every time weapon enters the flesh of another fellow human’s body.

Seeing the numbers is kind of the same thing.
You feel the stings and blows every time you see your total balance decreasing.
Worse yet, in the red.

On a personl note, tracking of my expense is telling me that I am spending quite a bit lately, which is okay because I’m still spending below my income and it’s money worth-while to make myself and others around me happy. However, I am reminded that I should buckle down a little.

Let me ask, if you have heard people say…

That’s just me.
It’s just how I am.
I’m just being myself.
Let me be myself.
Just accept me for who I am.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Well, I’m gonna tell you.
We need to stop being ourselves.

So stop being yourself –
When “being yourself” means “I’m always right and everyone else is wrong”.
When “being yourself” means “I don’t want to listen to you”.
When “being yourself” means “I don’t give a crap about other people feel”.
When “being yourself” means “I don’t need to learn something new”.
When “being yourself” means “I just simply don’t want to change”.

I already feel like I want to strangle this person.
Just kidding, I’m very tolerant.

Maybe you believe you are striving for what you desire most, searching for the love of your life, or just trying to be happy or happier.
Or maybe you are just too darn complacent and comfortable.
Or maybe you are just too fearful of changes.

There is time when you need to wake up from “being yourself”.
Stop hiding behind this excuse.

When you feel you just reamin unhappy, unhealthy, unwealthy, unfulfilled, unloved, un-whatever…
When you are brimmed with negativity and are spreading your own negativity into the world of people around you…
And you are doing these continuously…
Maybe it’s time to stop being freakin’ yourself.

We need to be able to acknowledge our problems and accept the responsibility.
When you are “being yourself” but are hurting yourself in process, you are responsible.
When you are “being yourself” but are hurting others simultaneously, you are responsible.

It’s time for a change.
Either stop “being yourself” and change.
Or be ready for the consequence, eventually.

If you get to that point, at least don’t use the same darn phrase as excuse.
If you do use it, I may just have to land my fist on your face.
And smash it against a break wall.
Despite being a zealous pacifist.
Please don’t make me go there.

Enough joking.

Let me ask you:
Should your significant other accept you when you are being your inconsiderate self?
Should your children suffer physical or mental damage just because you are being your temperamental self?
Should your friends accept you when your are being your selfish self, where your actions are causing damage to them?
Should your boss and colleagues tolerate you when you are just being your “unconstrained” self?

And despite you are just “being yourself”…
Do you still insist “being yourself” and remain intractable?
Is the “yourself” what you really want to be?
Do you really know the qualities and attributes of the “yourself” that you want?
Why should you confine yourself for “being yourself”?

I leave you to think and answer these questions.

I wrote two posts before on:
– the tragedy at Stanford about May Zhou
– the tragedy on Virginia Tech

What provoked me to write today is that Mercury News from yesterday provided an update on May Zhou’s incident where they find her death palpably caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, making her death palpably a suicide. I said “palpably” because I’d still like to pay my condolence and respect for her father, who is still pursuing his private investigation…

Disclaimer: The following statements are purely speculative and not intended to provide any “truth” about the incidents. Please read with your own discretion.

Contradictingly, this makes me feel and perceive even MORE of the pain and solitude, which is definitely unimaginable, that May was experiencing. And ultimately, this is where I draw the parallel with the Virginia Tech student, Seung Hui Cho.

Despite the great disparity between the two’s situations and backgrounds, I sincerely believe that both faced the same internal struggle – a sense of loneliness due to others’ lack of understsanding of their true feelings and mentality, as society and others around them are quick to forced upon them pre-judgement and labels. In May’s case, she’s judged to be successful and happy because how she is so very accomplished and of great scholarship. In Cho’s case, he’s quickly identified as weird, queer, “keep-to-himself” most likely because appearance, backgrounds, and association with “mental problems.” Whatever it is, there is this pre-established “lens”, which others ALWAYS perceive them through that is the main cause of dis-communication. These lenses then become an automatic barrier that prevents May and Cho from being understood and communication on a deeper level. As their days go by with such continuance, pain accumulates and the degree of loneliness increases and finally gets to a point when they’re unbearable…

While May’s case requires no “solution”, let me point out how the Virginia Tech panel has just concluded from investigation into Cho’s case, they will not implement “solutions” that involve arming the school with more securities, adding locks on the classroom doors, offering of more mental health facility, etc. Note how this is not the only time that people come up with such “solutions” followed similar incidents.

Ah, their so-called solutions.

All the while, what we need is more compassion amongst ourselves, amongst human beings. What I see is a clear neglect of that in today’s society. We seem look so far and wide and through all these “complications”, then conclusively think by implementing these fancy, superficially sounded solutions will prevent such problems from happening again, meanwhile not understanding the most basic needs of people in general, at a very simple human level.

This, I think is the source of many problems.

Call me naive or foolish, but I think if someone, anyone has provided true regards to May and Cho’s feelings, and genuinly talk to them without prejudice, knowing that we’re all the same human beings, both tragedies could have been prevented.

I see solutions in nothing fancy. Just basic kindness. Just simple compassion.

I talked about reflecting on yourself to become a better “you” as everyday goes by.

I’m not a very political person, but I wonder if our president does any self-reflection.
I wonder if President George Bush Junior ever think to himself:

I’m already the president of U.S., the most powerful man in U.S. and possibly in the world, do I really need more power?
Maybe I should use my power more appropriately, for better cause, and not abuse the darn thing…

Did I really change the government for the better?
Did I really make America a better place?
Have I contributed to the world positively?

And finally…
Am I being a good president? Am I being a good person?

Personally, I’m not sure if he can close his eyes and say with peace in his heart, “Yes”.
But that’s just me.

Do you have questions for our Mr. President?

When you read the title, did you think “So this guy only drink water, what a cheapo”?

Hey now! I am not gonna ask you to never order a soda or other kinds of beverage at restaurants and ONLY drink water. Let me describe what happened:

I was at lunch with colleagues at an Indian buffet restaurant. Being an engineer, I prefer to have some caffeine in my body for the afternoon (I’m an avid coffee drinker, one cup of coffee everyday is not bad for you). So I ordered a coke. To my unpleasant surprise, the glass they use is at most 6 oz in volume and half filled with ice, so I can essentially drink the whole thing w/ one tenth of a breath. I was not happy.

But here is the lesson:
Before ordering drinks at restaurants, pay attention to surrounding tables’ order of beverages. If most people don’t order beverages other than water, follow suit because something must be off. Then check out the glass size they use for non-water beverages, get it if it’s a decent size in your mind.

That’s it for the day…
Oh wait…
What did I say at the beginning?
Or rather, what did I not say?

Why not just drink water?
It’s good for your health.