Why people hate cherry

One thing I like to observe when people are eating is the stuff they love and the thing they hate. My friends, not limited to guys or girls, love to go for Ice-creme.  They crave for it. My favorite choice is iBerry, where I order Kraton almost every time. My friends' choice is Swensen's, pretty common favorite for most Thais. 

Most Swensen's ice-creme will come with cherry toppings. I found that many hated cherry badly. I personally like cherries and have no reasons to ignore it. While observed that cherries being disliked by friends over and over every time we go to Swensen's, I then stared to think of a good reason why they hated cherries.

My assumption is that cherry's flavor is associated with medicine. Perhaps a syrup kind of medicine when kids take at young age. We know how kids hate medication, such a painful process. So at first, from the fact that kids hate medicine doctors have to come with a solution to trick kids in taking them. The solution was to give a medicine a flavor, a flavor which is to be loved by children, something sweet, something fantasy. And there goes a cherry flavor. Till now every medicine for kids come with this lovely flavor. 

But, things won't forever work that way coz' we human can learn to evolve and mutate. What kids hate will forever be hated, it's unavoidable. The trick to give a lovely flavor to a medicine now back fires. Not only that kids hate medicine now they hate anything associated with it. And the lovely cherry is an unavoidable culprit. This hatred of cherry essence stemmed from a child through adult age. Now we can take pills without monkeying around coz' we had grown up, and afraid of dying but the fact that as a child we remember taking them was painful, and full of cherry essence, now haunt back the memory of the old day. 

So I concluded that, cherry is a victim for its good intention. Cherry, a good girl, is meant to give a nice taste for medicine which kids need to take to fight with diseases, the bad guy. Now it turned out sadly that people hate this good hearted girl, cherry. We disgusted her and ignore her without realizing the benefit she gives for the mankind.            

"We should give and forgive. Not to get and forget."

Inside Steve's Brain

Inside Steve's Brain is a book written by Leander Kahney. While some books like to portray the dark side of Steve especially how his "Reality Distortion Field" works. This book presents Steve in a business view, a more like management lessons. How he got everything right by doing everything in a radical approach, which some said wrong. How to control people and use them to their full potential. How the Apple culture works.

I recommend this book, especially for people who want to start doing something great. Lessons learned from Steve have been explain and listed systematically through series of events, from the making of Macintosh, Steve's departure, NeXT, Pixar, to iPods and iPhone. One of the interesting issue is how Steve's decisions had rescued Apple.

"I want to put a ding in the universe."

-- Steve Jobs

Apple become a very successful company thanks to Steve's return. Now many are worried about Steve's health and the future of Apple. His management style is unique, his charisma is strong. Every time I watch his keynote, I felt like he's a leader of a religion. A leader that loves to amuse the crowds. Steve is irreplaceable.   

Teaching in English

Currently I'm working as a teaching assistance (TA) in the Database lab at Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology (SIIT), the place where I was graduated. Roughly two years ago I attend this lab as a student. 

Now being a TA. This gives me the opportunity to see a different view, a teaching view. Teaching is both art and science. Not only that you have to understand the subject matter precisely and clearly but also you need the ability to express the message so that students will understand easily. 

Though many people said having a subject taught in English is a major challenging factor for them to understand. In my opinion, English should not made the subject difficult. A treatment to difficult subjects is proper English. English is undoubtedly universal, therefore expressing a message in English, gives senses of smoothness and purity in words.

Imagine explaining something in Thai language and you can't avoid English words. Flipping back and forth between Thai and English destroy the beauty of both languages. English terms are meant to be described in English. As you would dress your sushi with soy sauce not with fish sauce, tomato ketchup or anything else. I would called this approach a purist style.

But who knows, mixing two things could be more meaningful than using one alone, if we can understand perhaps 90% Thai and some 40 % English, by expressing 100 ideas using both maybe we might get more ideas understood than totally expressing them in one language. So this is a fusion approach. 

The lesson learned is that language should be made simple, since the subject itself should be the primary actor. Let the subject be the focus, make it big, so big such that one could not see that you are describing them in English or Thai. Make them understand the subject from the essence of itself.