Memo of "How google works"

Here is my memo note about the book, "How google works", which I happened to find and finish to read last week. The book is written by Erick Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg, who have made Google as it is, together with founders, and the book is about the way of working and management of 21th century with smart creatives, which is what they have figured out to be necessary since they joined Google. In the Internet century, old style management does not work out because it worked for old type people who grew up without the Internet. There are a lot of sentences which I thought is important to remember. Therefore, I tried to list up them with some my interpretation.

• Smart creatives have deep technical knowledge and plenty of hands-on experiences, and don't just design a concept, but build a prototype. Smart creatives are not afraid to fail because they think failure is usually something important which they can salvage.

• The environment is also one of the important factors. Failure is not criticized, but appreciated for exploring possibilities.

• Once you identify the people who have the big impact. then give them more to do. When you put more responsibilities on your best people, and trust them. They will keep doing well. The old quote is true, if you want something done, give it to busy people.

• No is a tiny death to smart creatives. Saying yes begins things, and it is how things grow. Saying yes leads to new experiences, and the new experiences will lead you to knowledge and wisdom.

• A venture capitalist will always follow the maximum of investment in the team, bot the plan because the plan is wrong. Since the plan is wrong, the people have to be right. Smart creatives spot flaws in the plan and adjust.

• Henry Ford said that if he had listened to customers, then he would have gone out looking for faster horses.

• Anyone who stops learning gets old, whether 20s or 80s. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest in life is to keep your mind young by learning.

• If you think your ability is fixed, you'll set for yourself, what is called, performance goals, but if you have a growth mindset, you'll set for learning goals, which will drive you to take risks without worrying how you look like.

• Being a good interviewer requires understanding the role, reading the resume, and the most important thing is to consider your question.

• Supporting every opinion should come with data or empirical observation. Otherwise, it's not trusted at all.

• A candidate's original resume should be kept as it is, so everyone can see the typos, and formatting errors. By doing this, interviewers can see what kind of reports can be expected from the candidate if he or she is hired.

• If your people tell you that they are going to leave for starting own new business, then ask them for their elevator pitch, which is a venture capital word by asking "You have 30 seconds to impress me by your plan". What's the strategy ? Would you tell me if I were your investor ? If the answer is not good enough, then they are not ready to leave.

• Prepare your own elevator pitch for your job. Let's say, you run into your CEO in the hallway, and he or she asks you what you are working on. What do you say ?

• We don't seek to convince by saying "I think", but we seek to convince by saying '"Let me show". Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when relevant information is presented together.

• Conversation is still the most important and valuable form of communication, but the technology makes it happen rarely.

• For something to be innovative, it needs to be new surprising and radically usefull.

• This is by Derek Sivers in TED talk. When creating a movement, attracting a follower is the most crucial step. The first follower is what transforms a loner nut into a leader.

• Too many people are stuck in the old limited mindset. "They are not thinking big enough" is replaced by Larry Page to "Think 10x".

• Coming up an idea is not good enough, building a prototype is necessary to attract people to follow.

• I keep my attention on the question which I need to ask so that I can catch the issue of the future.

• The question to ask is not what will be true, but what could be true. Asking what will be true entail making a prediction, but asking what could be true entail imagination.

• Ask yourself what could happen in your industry in the next five years. What could change most quickly and what will not change at all.

Those are just memos for me to recall the contents of the book. There are a lot to things for me to remember for the 2015. Thinking about them does not make sense, and taking actions based on thouse is necessary actually.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Google-Works-Eric-Schmidt/dp/1455582344

Swallowing Gastric camera (gastroscopy) first time

I would like to share my experience of an examination of gastric camera check which I took last month. I will be happy if I can help those who have not experienced this but need to take this and are afraid of taking this because it is generally believed to be painful. My case was very easy by using sedative which helped a lot actually. Let me tell you from the reason why I needed to take to process of the examination.

Why I needed to take the check

I felt something pain a little bit at the left side of my stomach and back in the middle of last August. This was not chronic, but the pain came sometimes once an hour and continued for a few minutes. As far as I can tell, the pain did not have any correlation with any actions like eating food or drinking water. I actually have felt similar symptom before, especially after drinking alcohol too much, and it was gone just one day. So I thought that the pain of this time was similar as before, because I had alcohol chronically for last a few months before that due to many events. However, I immediately stopped to drink alcohol just in case because it lasted a few days as was not expected, and tried to see if it improves. I felt great improvement soon and I thought that it worked out finally, but I concerned a little bit about that this time and I still continued to stop drinking for complete cure. However, the pain came again one week later after stop of the pain unfortunately, and I also felt strong pain as much as I could not stand it. So I decided to see a doctor in the following day before it became too late. What was lucky was that it was not chronic pain. I suspected that I might suffer from pancreatitis because of parts which hurt and the reason of drinking alcohol by checking symptom on the web. I was very afraid of that by thinking that I would never be able to drink again, and eating habit would be also limited. I saw a doctor in the following morning, and I took a blood test and x-ray check around my stomach. Precisely, those were only tests which could be done at the day because I saw a doctor without a reservation and a referral. The hospital which I visited was large, so test results became available in one hour fortunately. As it turned out, nothing wrong was found, as far as the doctor looked at results, and the doctor proposed a gastric camera check and ultrasound check in order to examine the cause of pain more precisely. I was stuck for a moment to consider whether I should take them or not because I had a prejudice that gastric camera check is painful, but I decide to make reservations for those tests just in case, while hoping that I could cancel them if the pain would be gone later. The hospital is large, so reservations were occupied until one month later, so my reservation became late September. Surprisingly, the pain was getting weaker gradually since that day, and it was gone completely after a few days later, so I once thought I was able to cancel reservations, but I changed my mind and again decided to take them just in case that I might develop initial diseases and could cure them thanks to early finding.

Procedures of the gastric camera test

Here were procedures in my case. My check time was morning at 9am, but I wondered if there is evening check time.

1. Needed to finish dinner before 9pm one day before the check to clean stomach at the examination. Drinking water was allowed.
2. One cup of water was allowed prior to 3 hours before the check. A little water was allowed only to wet my whistle.
3. Drunk liquid drug before the check. I did not know what material this was, but a nurse told me that this was liquid for clear pictures.
4. Took anesthesia sprayed around throat from mouth to avoid pain during the check as much as possible. This turned effective immediately, but the lasting time seems to be short because I felt so, and I asked the nurse if the anesthesia was enough once. She said that I don't have to worry about that, because I would have one more again later just before the check.
5. I entered the examination room and laid down on a bed. It was just around 5 minutes later after the first the anesthesia. I got it again here as was explained. I asked sedative option for this test because it helped a lot, according to the instruction. I had sedative intravenously, and what was surprising was that I fell asleep soon after I got it. According to the nurse, most of people don't use this option. 
6. When I was woke up after around 15 minutes later, the check was over. 
7. I needed to take a rest for one hour on a bed in the hospital because I used sedative.
8. I took one week for the doctor to look pictures again just in case.

What I felt honestly was that gastric camera check is easy if I can expect sedative, otherwise it's painful. That's because I remember slightly that I tried to move my body and and the nurse tried to hold my body during the check. I would imagine that it was painful unconsciously. 

The Result

I saw a doctor one week later. It seems that a doctor who examines result is different from a doctor who actually execute the check. I was a little bit nervous while considering the worst case scenario like a cancer or something serious disease, but it turned out that nothing wrong was found by gastric camera check and ultrasound. The doctor told me that stomach is very clean and there is also no problem by ultrasound, and I would not have to take further check because the pain disappear now. I was relieved to hear that and happy very much. My one month struggling was over at that time.

By looking back last one month

When I felt I needed to see a doctor, I inevitably thought about the worst case scenario like serious disease and concerned what was going to happen in that case and what I should do. For instance, I wondered whether or not I need to quit a job, and if I need to take care of diseases for the rest of my life while limiting food and drink, etc. Nothing was positive thinking actually at that time. I was really negative at that time, to be honest. I guess that this kind of thinking generally comes to mind for those who think that they might suffer from something serious diseases before check result does not come yet. I have done a lot of things for last one month and many things have changed. Most of them have something to do with mental and physical improvement things.

• Consider what happiness is.
  At first, I wondered why I was suffering from this even thought I was still early 30s and why I was unfortunate actually. So I tried to find books about happiness and found "The art of happiness". The book is about happiness which Darai Rama tell and how to deal with unhappiness mentally. A European psychiatrist interviewed Darai Rama and tried to combine western and eastern idea about Happiness, then summarized it in the book. I am going to post the detail later in a different post, but the book changed my mind about happiness, and what is the most important is that it makes me think anything positive and consider others in different point of view with great idea of "compassion". My mental state was weak at that time, therefore it was so impressive and came to my mind deeply.
  
• Walking and jogging
  Exercise was very good to make me feel good and made me feel I'm living. If I say so, many people would say that I was thinking too much and don't worry and I was not going to die. However, I felt that I might be going to die due to some diseases, so small happiness by doing walking was truly good for me.

The fact that I suffered from the unknown pain was not good actually, but it was good during the period that I was able to consider my life, learned happiness, change my thinking by Compassion and be able to go my life positively.

Mental disease : He can start his new life from this month

I wrote this story to help someone help friends, colleagues and whoever could suffer from mental disease against your expectation as is often the case. This is the story about my colleague who I did not think suffered from mental disease, but who unfortunately did suffer for a few years. He is now recovering as much as he is able to start his new life with his new job.

He was one of my senior colleagues by 5 years older than me when I joined the company, and I started to work in a same development team. His way of talking was a little bit childish, and he graduated from a same university, and he is also a person who did not play the old soldier, so I did not feel that he was senior honestly and could get along with him. In addition to his personality, I respected his attitude and his seriousness toward his work. He seemed to be always right about what he did and what he said. He did not like ambiguity so he sometimes fought with someone over its ambiguity. I totally respected him regarding work.

Two years later, we worked together in one project whose schedule was very tight, and his role was to design circuits while discussing circuits' specification with a customer. As is always the case, but the customer frequently added, removed, and changed the specifications until the deadline. This happened for almost half a year, so he came early and left late after twelve. He was like walking dead, but he has a strong sense of responsibility so he finished his work finally. A few weeks later, we went for dinner and he told me that he was burned out due to the previous project and he could not sleep at night. However, I did not take it seriously because I felt that he did not seem to say so seriously. If I look back, he also did not take it seriously. A few months later, he told me that we saw a doctor because he could not sleep and took medication. Even he said so, I did not take it seriously because he talked about it openly to other peoples as well. This was a time when we should have taken an action to take care of him somehow by everybody who worked together with him, but we did not do that because there was nobody who had ever suffered from mental disease around us and we did not know how people suffer from it and did not know that anybody could be a victim depending on an environment these days.

A few months later, I was transferred to U.S office and we got separated, but sometimes exchanged emails to tell how we were doing. One year later, he came to the U.S office to attend a conference and we talked much and he confessed that we were still taking a few kinds of medicine for mental disease. However, he looked ok for me, although he was not actually. A few months later, I was told by a previous boss that he took a long sick leave and did not come to the office. I felt very sorry to hear that, but could not call him at that time because I was also suffering from mental disease a little bit. I did not have room to take care of others honestly.

When I came back to the Japan office one year later, he also recovered from the disease and was able to come to the office. He invited me for lunch and we talked about what was going on him so far. He said that he was almost like a wreck due to medicine when we was during sick leave. At first, he took one tablet of medicine per one time but there was a side effect of that, so he told his doctor it then his doctor increase one more different table to alleviate the side effect. And this repeated a few times and he took four kinds of tablet one time. It is obviously wrong to do this, but he did not doubt this because he suffered mentally. One day, he seemed to realize that something was wrong to increase medicine more, so he asked his doctor to reduce medicine. Since that time, he can gradually have reduced the number of tablets per one time. He is now taking only one table.

I got an email from him last month, and he was still in a long sick leave. He asked me to call him soon. I called him and asked him what was going on. He said that he got a new job and he was going to quit the current company and join a new company. That company is small, but he was appreciating that the company hired him even though he confessed that he still suffered from mental disease but gets better day by day. He seems to recover as much as he also be able to work again.

When I heard this, I was very happy as much as I could cry even over a phone. And I still feel responsible about his sick because I was not able to notice that. If I could had noticed that, there is a chance that he would not have had to suffer from it. 

I wish the all the best for his new endeavor.

Make it stick : The science of successful learning

Here is my short summary of "Make it stick" which I finished last week. Authors firstly point out that what is generally believed is not a right way of learning and tell us how to learn efficiently based on experimental and statistical facts which many researchers have investigated so far. The way of learning presented in the book can be applied to any people from school children to elderly persons because learning is never ending process of our brain.

According to authors, mass practice makes sense in short term memory but not in long term memory. For example, many people might experience this in school test, and the established memory by mass practice is gone soon no matter how hard your work before tests. The book says that proper learning basically consists of retrieving, reflection, elaboration, and spaced learning in order to put what we learn into long term memory. Retrieving practice needs recalling idea, concepts or events from your memory regularly. Reflection and elaboration practice are processes that let you relate what you retrieve and what you have learned so far, and attach the new memory to the old memory. These additionally allow you to think what you should do next time better than it is now. For example, if you think that you fail to do presentation well, you need to reflect on what is wrong and consider improvement based on what you did and reflect it on next presentation. This is a point whether you are a good learner or not. Elaboration practice needs struggling process. For example, when you try to solve difficult math questions, you would struggle to solve them by retrieving what you know and relate what you retrieve to questions. The more you struggle, the more ways of solving remain longer in your memory finally, whether you can solve them by yourself or you look answers finally. The process of struggling is very important and it strengthens connections of neurons by synapse in your brain. Explaining what you learn in your words is also elaboration process. Spaced training is basically a repeated learning over many times. Repeating a few days would be better. Repeating a few hours does not make sense and is almost same with mass practice.

That's just small summary, but authors present a lot of experimental and statistical facts in the book to strengthen their claims. There are a lot of intriguing experimental facts, but here is one which is very interesting for me.

Intellectual ability is not fixed when you are born, but it depends on you to a large degree in your hand. There is a experiment that some students are praised for being able to solve problems (performance goal), but some students are praised for working hard for trying to solve problems (learning goal). What happened was that people with the performance goal unconsciously limit their goals by choosing solvable problems from next time because they are unconsciously afraid of failing to solve problems. On the other hand, people with the learning goal challenge even difficult problems because they are trained to be praised for working harder. With proper learning processes mentioned above, the latter group is likely to grow more than the former people.

Authours mention deliberate practice of 10,000 hours rule a little bit, but the right way of learning presented here is obviously related to it.
From my experience about my job, the right way of learning perfectly makes sense and it does in terms of 10,000 hours rule which is equivalent to 10 hours a day for three years. My MS degree is of theoretical physics, so the current job, circuit design, was pretty new for me when I joined the current company. Physics, of course, is fundamental to all science and it helps me a lot to understand new things soon. When I look back the past, the way of learning about the job fits the way of learning mentioned in the book. Every morning, I used to present and explain what I learned from a circuit design book to senior designers and get my misunderstanding corrected and get feedback. In the daytime, I apply what I learn to real circuit design and explain it to seniors and get feedback. I used to repeat this for a few years. In addition to these, I personally do study and reflect on what I did and consider how to improve it. This process obviously follows the processes mentioned in the book. Three years later, I could say that I could become an expert of this job because I did not need any help to proceed the my job and I could even teach something to others. This was also close to 10,000 hours. 

The point in the book is that there is the right way of learning and what is generally believed is not efficient. Additionally, it is pointed out that we can learn forever as long as we want to do that.

A reluctant job eventually helped me grow

I'm going to tell the story that reluctant jobs could grow you if you do your best, which I have experienced so far.

Last year, I was assigned to one job which I thought is reluctant for me at that time because I thought it just seemed to be hard and not to be what I wanted to do. Another colleague was also asked prior to me, but he denied it, so I was not able to deny it because there is no one but me to be able to that job. This job was technical customer interface to one customer in English. My job was to discuss what the customer wanted, what could be possible and what schedule could be satisfied based on the customer's requirements with the customer by tell conference. First a few months, it was very painful mentally while realizing that what I was doing was very important for our company. However, I did my best to do this in order for both success because my policy is to do any job without cutting corners. Every day, I asked myself if this was what I had to do and struggled to consider what I was going to do. However, as I got better relationship with the customer, I came to feel happy to do this job more that ever, although I still thought what I needed to do was more technical jobs. When our sales manager visited the customer, the customer appreciated my work very much, and the sales person told me so. When I heard of this, I thought what I did paid off finally and felt that any reluctant jobs could be interesting depending on how I work on that. 

Now I acknowledge that this job made me grow more than ever and more than I expected. A lesson which I got is that any jobs could make me grow and whether I can grow or not depends on how I work on that.

I suddenly developed an allergy to shellfish

I might develop and have an allergy to shellfish unfortunately. This reminds me of the moment when I realized that I have developed an allergy to pineapple two years ago. Am I going to develop more ? I don't want to imagine this future, but this makes me afraid of that. I suppose that this is not the case only for me, so I want to share my story of why I came to conclude that I had the allergy to shellfish.

Two weeks ago, I had sushi lunch with my wife's parent on Mother's day in Asakusa. A restaurant at we enjoyed sushi has a long history and is very famous as well as authentic sushi in Asakusa in Tokyo. There are several courses for lunch and we chose $70 course. That's expensive actually, but that was ok because this was kind of once in a year experience. Sushi was so tasty and it is worth the price, and I totally enjoyed sushi. The problem happened about one hour later when I was on a train to Yurakucho to buy seasoners. I suddenly felt throwing up and stomachache lightly. I was lucky because it was almost close to the destination station, and I could get off the train soon when I felt so. At first I thought that it was due to cool temperature in the train because my stomach has intolerance to cool temperature, which sometimes happens to me, and I hoped that it improved soon after getting out of the train. This feeling became stronger even thought I was walking outside in a sunny day. So I realized that something was wrong and unusual, and I tried to find a bench and took a rest. It took around two hours to recover from it completely. I was wondering what was wrong and suspected raw shellfish sushi which I usually don't eat because I just don't like it. I, however, ate it reluctantly because that was a part of the course. I had not been sure about that until yesterday.
Yesterday, I ate vongole bianco for lunch at home, which is basically clam pasta with garlic. I like the pasta and I sometimes enjoy it. Furthermore, I like clam miso soup and clam chowder. So I did not have an allergy to clam. After lunch, I headed for Tokyo to enjoy new beer which became available as of yesterday. When I got on a train, I again felt that something was wrong in my stomach lightly and it became stronger when I got to Tokyo station. It was just one hour later after the lunch. I felt throwing up and suffered from stomachache and diarrhea, which I didn't have any clue for that. I didn't think properly at that time, but my wife pointed out that this must be due to clam because my symptom was similar to that of two weeks ago. It might be true, but I couldn't believe and did not want to admit that because I like to eat clam and have eaten clam a lot so far. I checked if someone have experience like this while sitting on a bench on the station to take a rest, and I found that many people suffer from the similar symptom and figured out that it is not unusual to develop an allergy to shellfish after turning adult. Rather, it is usual to become intolerance to some foods at adult age. I might be able to rule out food poisoning because my wife ate same one.

So .... I don't want to make a conclusion, but I seem to have the allergy to shellfish now even though I did not have it so far. What I want to know is if a matter is an amount or if even small amount matters. Anyway, I should avoid shellfish as much as possible from now unfortunately.

Salary for happiness

How much salary do you think people feel happiness most with ?

It seems to be around $75,000 statistically according to the research which was done in U.S. When I heard of this, I thought that it makes sense to me even in Japan as average value, but it depends on where you live and how old you are when it comes to know detail of breakdown, which was not described there in a reference.

From my viewpoint, $75,000 would not be enough for living around Tokyo if you have a family with children. Especially housing cost is much higher in Tokyo than in other places for sure as it is same with the San Francisco bay area. I would say that $75,000 might be good enough as an average number for a man who is around 35 years old with a wife and two children in other places .

As is always said, there are two aspects which make you feel whether you are living happily or not. Those are definitely personal life and work, but I have to admit that these two things are related and affect each other actually. If you feel stress in an office or if you make mistakes, it definitely affects your personal life. Vice versa, practically. Depending on people who especially think negatively, once something negative happens either personal life or work, negative feedback loop also happens and people feel stuck. 
On the other hand, people who always think positively don't enter the loop. Amazingly such people don't take negative as negative rather positive.

I have watched a documentary video about happiness in Netflix before, although I forget the title name. The documentary focus on what's keys for people who say that they are happy, how happiness affects human life and finally try to understand how people living longer think. The summary of the document which I understood are three points.

• Try to eat healthily
• Try to think happily
• Try to think positively

These look simple and obvious, but it's not easy to make these habits. Making them habits is very important point.

Regarding work, there are different perspectives with which people feel happy, depending on people. If there are 100 people, there might be 100 ways of thinking.  I personally have three things of which I feel happy.

• Autonomy
• Purpose
• Progress

I feel happy when I do work autonomously with having purposes and feel progress as a result.

Psychologically, there are 5 hierarchical of a pyramid to define human need. It says that human satisfaction has 5 levels in our daily life and it gets difficult to satisfy yourself from bottom to top. First level is basically what people need to live at least. Level 2 is also what people need to live normally. Level 3 is relationship satisfaction. Level 4 is esteem like how you are regarded and respected. Level 5 is top one and what successful people need to satisfy themselves. You can associate personal life and work life with those levels.

I would say that I'm in the middle of level 4. From my expectation for myself, I'm not happy about that, but I have to take this positively.


Reference
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

She might be suffering from epilepsy

This is a story which I have experienced one month ago in a bus.

It was the early February and was very cold evening around 8pm. I just came back to a station to which I live close, from the dinner with my wife in Roppongi, and we decided t use buy to go home because it was very cold, even though we usually walk for 20min to my apartment as an exercise. When we got on the bus, there were not so many peoples in the bus and the bus closed the door and left the started the bus station. Just after the bus moved, I heard yell from the front place in the bus but did not know who yelled. It was not a word but yell just like animals. Soon after that, I noticed that a girl sitting just behind the driver seat showed something wrong at first and her body was getting cramp from her head to her foot. I immediately felt that I needed to help her and unconsciously came to her and supported her boy and asked the driver to stop the bus immediately and to do emergency call. She actually frothed at the mouth when I saw her face. I'm actually used to emergency situation from many experience, but the driver was a little bit panicked unfortunately, but he managed to be able to call for an ambulance. Fortunatelly, there is a hospital close to the station, so it just took about 10 min to come. While we were waiting the ambulance to come, I thought that we had to contact her family to tell her condition and know what to do just in case that this was chronic situation for her. When I opened her wallet, I soon recognized that this was unfortunately chronic because she had a card which tells an emergency contact phone number of her mother in the case that she has something wrong. In order to contact her mother, I found her cell phone and checked the history, and found her mother number easily because she just called her mother just 30 min before. I was supporting her body,s so I asked my wife to call to her mother. When my wife called, her mother soon answered and told my wife that she has family doctor just exactly at the hospital which is close to the station and her mother would go there soon. When the ambulance arrived, she had already stopped cramp, but she still looked like unconscious but looked fine at the same time. 

At that time, I did not know what she suffered from, but it might be epilepsy by comparing her condition and what I checked in the internet.

What was the saddest thing after that is that her mother tone was as if she was sick of her daughter's condition according to my wife. 
This world is not fair from the time when we are born as it is recognized by many peoples. I was born healthy, but she was born with a health problem. She has to live with it forever. Because of that, her activity would be limited to fear that the cramp happens. I personally admit that our life is determined to some extent by the condition with which we are born. If you are born in poor family, there is a less chance that you would be able to get a good education. 

I'm still wondering who helped her if I had not been there. At least nobody tried to help me support her in the bus.

How unfair this world is.

Business trip to San Diego

I lived in San Jose in California before and I thought that it is great weather there, but it is so as well in San Diego. I had a colleague who used to go to San Diego every weekend and said that San Diego is the best place for living. Now I understand it a little bit.

  
I had been to the San Diego airport, but it was just transit. I went to San Diego finally last month by business trip for two days, but I felt that the weather was great more than I feel usually because I stayed at San Francisco before going to San Diego and it rained and it was cold. This was business trip so I did not have much time to enjoy San Diego, but I had a chance to go out for lunch for almost two hours and enjoyed a good lunch at a restaurant close to a beach. I thought that if I got used to this weather, I would not be able to live in Tokyo in terms of weather. 

However, I saw a dark side a little bit when I came back to a hotel. It was just before the sun set and was not dark yet. When I got out of a rent car and waiting for my colleagues to do something, I felt someones get close to me. A woman and a small child came to me and I soon realized that they were homeless and would ask me money. My thought was true and she said something that she needs money indirectly, but I said that I can not help you and didn't give money. I'm not sure what's right or wrong regarding this, but I'm still wondering if I should have given money to her because she looked so desperate and sad when I said so unlike homeless peoples in San Francisco who are very aggressive to get money. If I came back to the time when I said so, I would call her when she showed her back to me and was about to go somewhere ,and give her some money.

Water hole in dam : Bing screen

Have you ever seen a hole like this before ?
I had never seen this until I saw this on the screen of Bing.

Bing is a search engine of Microsoft (probably), and is naturally the default search engine of the Internet Exploer. I'm using Chrome at home and Firefox at the office, but open IE once a day for work to fill in what time I come to and leave the office every day with an internal web page. This kind of internal pages usually works only with IE. My IE setting is default setting and don't feel like customizing it, so I see the screen of Bing every day when I do daily work for that. I, however, like one feature of Bing more than any other search engine. My favorite feature is that Bing shows us a daily picture with some explanation, and this picture is usually amazing picture which I have never seen until I see it on the screen of Bing. I found the most interesting picture on the daily screen last week, that is the picture shown above. This seems like a hole in dam to adjust the amount of water because water is usually adjusted by opening and closing the gate of dam. I'm not sure why this image intrigues me, but it might be because this look like mysterious hole which never exists naturally and I would never be able to come out once I fall. I found the video of the hole below. It's worth watching how it works.

Did you watch this ? 
It's super scary for me just by imaging falling into this hole ...

Picture link

Cell phone battery consumes faster in a bullet train

My friend told me that he turned off his cell phone purposely because a battery of cell phone consumes faster in Shinkansen.

Japan is the new year holiday season from the end of December to the early January. This is also the time when people come back to their hometown and stay with relatives and friends. One of my friends also came back from a place which is far from Tokyo by using Shinkansen which is very famous bullet train all over the world. I met him at the Tokyo station and talked a lot about what we did in the 2013 at a beer bar. It is always fun to meet people for a long interval. On that day, we were going to meet around 6 pm at the station, and I sent an email to him to make sure of it around noon, but I did not receive the reply even after a few hours. So I was wondering what's going on him and I finally called him even by considering that he might be in the train, but what I heard was a automatic guidance saying that his cell phone was turned off or he was in a place where signal is not available. He responded back my email just one hour before the time. What is interesting to me was that he turned off his cell phone purposely and turned on it again after he got off the train. According to him, cell phone battery consumes much faster than he usually uses it. It is coincident because I have study the modern communication system recently by myself and just understood how moving mobile phones stay connected with base stations and how it works technically.

We basically call to somebody and send date like email through base stations which manage much traffic on behind. Each cell phone has to be connected to base stations anytime in order to work properly and base stations have to know how many users there are, how far they are and much information which is necessary for optimized communication. As the figure above shows, each base station has own cover area, and mobile users in, for instance, area A are supposed to communicate with the base station in area A. In order to stay connected together, mobile phone and base stations send and receive their information even though users don't use cell phones unless cell phones are turned off. If users don't move much, then their communication environment doesn't change much, so cell phones and base stations does not necessarily communication much. However, if the user moves fast, what happens is that users go through ares of base stations much, and cell phones try to connect to a new base station every time when users cross a boarder from one are to adjacent area. Precisely, connecting to the new base station is relatively much burden on mobile phones because it takes much calculation in order to estimation transmit path information together with the new base station. It means much power consumption. So that's why battery consume faster in a bullet train. 

This is my understanding.

The picture is from
http://www.odec.ca/projects/2007/hopp7m2/Cellular_Phones.html

Why did you come to Japan ; Japanese TV program

"Why did you come to Japan" is the name of Japanese program of TV station, "TV Tokyo". This is the program which I like to watch most recently because it's fun to watch. The content of the program is to understand on what purpose people visit Japan from foreign countries. In order to do that, TV crews randomly interview people who just come out of the arrival gate at the Narita airport, and ask them why they come to Japan. And if the interviewer thinks it becomes fun to follow, then ask them where it is possible to follow them to film what they are going to do.

This is one of examples of the program. If you type "why did you come to Japan" in YouTube, then you will be able to find many episodes. This program used to be a 30 minute program at late night as far as I remember, but the content is fun to watch, so it has become one hour program and the time slot also moved to the evening time so that many people are able to watch. What makes Japanese people feel like better about this program is the attitude of foreigners who come to Japan. Basically they like Japan or have an interest in Japan at least. Only this attitude is good enough for people to feel comfortable to watch. In addition to that, we are surprised to hear reasons for visiting. They have different viewpoints which does not come out from people who live in Japan for a long time and which Japanese don't have. This is the discovery program for Japanese to look Japan again from a different perspective and find new things in Japan. 

It's worth watching the program if you have an interest. Languages are half and half in Japanese and English.