Kelly Huang

Author: kelly huang

  • Fountain pen lesson 1: insecurity

    The feeling of running out of ink in a middle of a meeting and trying to touch the paper lightly to squeeze its last ink drop is disturbing.

    That made Lamy Safari a fountain pen worth constant revisiting. It’s a bless not having to unscrew the pen and flip it upside down to check the ink level.

  • Life Is Easy by Jon Jandai

    Like many, I watched Jon’s TED talk years ago; before I was married, before I had a kid. I have been feeling trapped, at work and at family, these 2 years. That gave me the motive to attend his speech in Taipei.

    • The meaning of happiness is different for everyone.
      • shopping, traveling, sex, etc.

    Being poor and suffer

    • TV is the first thing that tell us we’re poor.
    • Before, we call it “suffer”, we suffer because there’s not enough food, so we find it in the forest. No enough bamboo to build a home, so we cut it with the neighbors.
    • Because of poor, we must work in the city.

    Poor in the city

    • I worked hard, but I don’t have anything. I only have the money to live day by day.
    • The bird does not have to go to school, no credit card debt, and flies to feed itself. But clever people like me don’t have enough food.

    The system (capitalism) and fear

    • Education and school doesn’t teach us to face fear. If anything, it designed more fear and worry.
    • Objective of business and the system: eat less healthy, eat more.
      • organic food is expensive, so I buy instant noodle. I need organic rice, but I’m tired from work, so I spend it on coffee.
      • this world is full of food, but people live without having enough.
    • Happy people consume less.

    How it started

    1. Went back home, a small land to farm.
    2. Lists out the 50 vegetables I want to eat.
    3. ask for seeds
    4. collect cow poop and fertilize
    5. people think I’m crazy
    6. 3 months later, it grew and it’s more than we can consume
    7. Everyday, I could sell the 20 excess vegetables for money.

    Design my life and self-esteem, confidence

    • When I’m a kid, I know the people and land 2 to 3 km around me. I have no fear.
    • Most people let society design our life, it builds the fear of no choice.
    • Being natural means having no formula, it needs to be designed.

    Living as a community 

    • Living in community is easier than living alone. I only have to cook 1 day a week, my kid is with other kids so I only have to ask “where is my kid?”
    • No leader, no rule, no regulations. It’s not fun to live with dictator.
    • Everyone must take turn do the work: cook, gardening, seed saving
    • this month we build home for this person, next month for another person.
    • our kids learn to be a farmer this month and artist the next month.
      • people never learn from listening or reading (memorize), they must do it (understand).

    Finding a community

    • Reconnect with ourself
      • be with ourselves, don’t run away from our feeling.
      • if I feel sad, then sit down and watch my sadness. How long will it last?
      • When we like it, every problem will be fun.
    • reconnect with people
      • a community is build by a shared space and activity, not particularly land.
      • do we really love the nature? If we’re not sure, spend a month to live there to experiment.
    • diversity
      • Diversity keeps it the society function.

  • The idea of OK

    Recently at work, I found members sitting idle on a task longer than planned. This pattern happens when they’re in a project for more than 2 to 3 weeks.

    During the first few weeks, information pile up quickly. Over flooded with information on the project, judgement becomes more difficult because the considerations increased.

    The idea of OK is not compromise to a lower standard, but to create frequent micro failures that slightly brings up the quality of work each time.

    A 10 minute review is held when a member reached a quality they believe is OK. Not good, not great, just OK. The checkpoint creates an incremental improvement in quality of work.

    Three OK turns it to good, three good turns it to great.

  • Smart watch problems

    They gamified my life and satisfied my OCD of tracking every aspect of my life, although the benefit and medical reliability is questionable.

    The fact it shines every time I turn my wrist is extremely annoying during light out.

    That half second delay between my wrist position and screen display. Maybe my nitpicking is the reason I’m better off with analog, one-function tools.

  • What Shopee recommendation tells me about my recent life

    When I asked my wife whether buying a ASUS ProArt PA248QV monitor for work is out of necessity or impulse, she reminded me the wish list I have recently.

    The list falls into these categories and moments:

    • Laptop – when my MacBook Pro 2015 with 8G couldn’t smoothly play YouTube. Although I’m on my iPad most of the time.
    • Apple Watch – ever since I started wearing Huawei Band 7 again, the health metrics are addicting. Although I hate the fact it shines on my face during light out.
    • iPad – since Freeform constantly crashes my coloring and took the fun of office meeting. Although I haven’t drew anything in the past 2 to 3 weeks.
    • Fuji cameras – when I saw the JPEGs from the camera and the viewfinder. — this is mostly resolved after I bought a 35mm viewfinder from TaoBao.