Brian Keng

  • Beach Snobs

    I had an interesting conversation with a friend I met in Japan.  She was Greek but born in America, currently living in Greece.  She was describing the beautiful landscape of  Greece, painting a picturesque paradise of the Greek islands and how their beaches are among the most beautiful in the world.  With this breathtaking description, she also mentioned how most Greek people are on the beach during the summer with their ridiculously long vacations (at least compared to North America).  She — bringing some American ingenuity — decided to take a different approach: instead of spending all the time on the beach during her vacation, she would just go to the beach right after work.  And why not?  Beaches are plentiful in many areas of Greece — even close to Athens where she works.  In this way, she could have her cake and eat it too.  Enjoy all the beauty of Greece year-round without the need to spend her precious vacation time which she usually spent visiting her family in other parts of the world.

    But as she described this atypical solution, she made a very insightful comment that I didn’t expect, “In Greece, we’re beach snobs.”  She said this in passing as she described her after-work beach as not being very nice (compared to others in Greece).  She continued on about how every beach she goes to, she can point out something that’s better at another beach.  How wonderful it is  that she gets the opportunity to be a beach snob.  Growing up in Toronto, I never had that luxury, although I’m probably a snob at a hundred other different things.  When we’re surrounded by such plentiful bounty, it’s hard not to be one.  But something that we should all remember is just how lucky we really are to be given the opportunity to be a snob.  Because after all, one man’s dirt is another man’s beach.

  • Culture

    As a previous post mentioned, I recently visited Japan and noticed  what most people notice when they go to Japan:  it’s an incredibly clean place, even by Canadian standards.  And the strange part is that there are almost no garbage cans to be found.  That’s probably where most people stop thinking about it.  But one should wonder how they can possibly keep the place so clean with the total lack of garbage cans.  That answer I came to is simpler than you may think.

    Firstly, they do not have armies of people picking up trash.  I would estimate they probably have as many people picking up trash as we do in Canada.  So that doesn’t explain the large difference in cleanliness.  Second, one might come to the incorrect conclusion that they have significantly less trash than us living in North America.  This is far from the truth.  In fact, I would argue that they have even more waste than us.  Take a simple chocolate bar for example.  In Canada, we may have one box containing many pieces of little chocolates.  Sounds reasonable.  In Japan, they still have the one box but it contains individually wrapped pieces of chocolates wrapped up in an appealing foil exterior.  On top of that, they have another transparent plastic wrap for the entire box adding to the amount of packaging.  Sounds like more waste to me.  So it seems that having less garbage definitely is not a contributor to their cleanliness.  So what could possibly be the reason?  The answer to that is simple: culture.

    Japanese people (in general) do not litter.  Even when it inconveniences them, they still do not.  For example, had they bought that same chocolate bar and wanted to throw away the excess packaging, they would carry around the garbage until they reached their home to throw it away.  This may not be too surprising because I know I do that sometimes even in Canada.  However, Japanese people take it to an extreme.  Even for cigarettes, they do not litter.  They have a special little bag to carry around their used cigarettes so they can dispose of it at home.  I don’t know anybody in Canada who would even consider doing this.  And I’ve also heard anecdotally, that after outdoor concerts in a public place, there is no need for cleanup.  It’s just clean because no one litters.  Amazing!

    The paradoxical point about this phenomenon is that even though it’s incredibly inconvenient to do, they still do it.  They’re not forced to hold on to their garbage; they don’t really get any individual benefit from doing so; they just do it.  Culture is a powerful force that can lead to many amazing, non-obvious results.  And it’s easy to see it in full effect in Japan because how else can you keep a country with 100 million people clean so cheaply?  Culture is the only way I know how.

  • Luck

    I’ve always thought I was incredibly lucky.  And not just in the ovarian lottery sense, but in the fact that I have somehow managed to achieve many success throughout my career.

    During high school, I was lucky enough to be able to participate and rank in national chemistry and computer competitions whereas many others didn’t.  A bit later, I was lucky again when I was accepted to the University of Waterloo whereas many others got rejected.  Soon after, I was fortunate enough to receive even more luck by getting amazing co-op placements at ATI, Epson and Altera whereas many others were turned down.  If we’re just talking about odds here, it’s pretty lucky that I was able to achieve these successes when you look at all the people who were in the running.

    But as any analytical mind would inquire, was this just a random string of successes? Maybe.  It’s possible that my successes at the competitions were random and not simply due to my hard work going home everyday and practicing all the previous years problems.  It’s possible that my acceptance into Waterloo was just luck and not due to the fact that my grades were incredibly strong because of the hours I spent studying and doing homework.  And of course it’s possible that I just happened to be arbitrarily placed at three great co-op jobs and not because I treated finding a job as a full time course dedicating intense amounts of time to it.  Maybe.

    Luck isn’t always random and maybe the reason I was so successful was the fact that I worked every bit for my achievements.  And maybe not.  All I know is that my luck never seems to run out when I’m hard at work.

  • No

    No.  An easy word to say and said by many.  But is it true?

    Is it true just because they couldn’t do it?
    Is it true just because they didn’t know how to do it?
    Or is it true because they don’t want to see you do something they couldn’t?

    It’s easy to find people who say no.  Much much harder to find people who say yes.  Who inspire you to do bigger things than you even knew you’re capable of.  When you find people who say yes, hold on to them dearly because those are the ones who will get you where you want to be.

  • Soy Lattes

    I had a soy latte the other day; I didn’t like it at all.  It left a burnt, slightly bitter aroma in my mouth.  This was not helped by the fact that I paid extra for this drink that I did not like.  Worst of all, I was given a little card to indicate that my drink was “clean” of any contaminants such as regular milk (I like drinks “contaminated” with regular milk!).  Everything about it was wrong for me: the taste, the price, the pretension; it didn’t work for me at all.  But I was sure glad I bought it.

    It’s one of those things that you never really know how good it is until you try it.  Like eating that third Big Mac, or fake yawning to put your arm around a girl.  It’s probably not going to work, but occasionally you might hit that home run and eat a delicious meal or get close to that one special girl.  In this instance, my hopes of a delightful beverage turned out to be a repulsive refreshment but that won’t stop me from trying to find that diamond in the soy latte.

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