Jing Zhi introduced me to this book: The Man Who Lied To His Laptop

I think it is an very interesting book briefly explaining human psychology by using experiments of human-machines interaction as/to support his hypothesis. Some valuable things I've learnt is firstly, english vocabs:

Calumny: The making of false and defamatory statements in order to damage someone's reputation; slander.

Exacerbated: Make(a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling)worse.

Some nice intro he had is the experiment concerning the evaluation of the performance of a computer. When the evaluation is done on the same computer itself, the evaluation is higher that the one on a piece of paper of another identical computer. This demonstrates the innate politeness we possess, we minded others' feelings.

Next is criticism, I've learnt to always give criticism then praises, just as what we do in letter writing, this is due to the fact that despite praising one for the past 10mins, one statement of criticism will devastate the person. As such, we prefer flattery despite despising it verbally. However, there is a balancing scale of 'kind but clueless' and 'blunt but wise'.

Also about team building, I found out that team building games are waste of time, it only helps to strengthen not to make, because due to our first impressions, during the game, we might dislike that particular person in the team, therefore treating the person similarly before or after the game. An effective team building is the implementation of a common identity, the sense of belonging, like how facebook attracts or the college uniform or the TOSTED~!! haha. Label is important. The labeling is the one that will shape the first impression and to judge the influence of your words. I remember ZhiYu being very proud and tried to fulfill his 'back leader' job as they walk to their school. This is why degrees are important, to established a certain image of you first. However, remember, pursue excellence, success will follow, pants down.

Then again, there is a section about misery loves company, this a valuable lesson, so I will know how to chill a person next time, we should join them, just slightly better, so that they will have a common topic to moan first, and then gets more optimist as we progresses in our conversation. So I still find no harm joining the kids' tone of speech and choices of words, we should blend in with them as one first, then we influence. Oh well, I'll keep my attitude and thinking, they'll keep their ways of governance, we'll see how it progresses, though mostly I should lose out since my style works only in the long run. =)

In a nutshell, it's a great book, interesting book, due to the experiments, since most of the 'lessons' we should have a rough idea beforehand already. Skilfully, the lesson on self-criticism is used by the writer himself, he often states how he failed first then tell us why so such that we might find the book slightly more engaging. Awesomeness!