Deep Learning & Deep Change
On my Happy Day, Friday 24 April 2021
From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Some years ago, I was online reading an article from the Church website that can be read by clicking the photo above or here. I was impressed by this paragraph, "The learning that allows each of you to rise “to the full stature of your divine potential” is what I will call deep learning: learning of the whole soul—the mind, the heart, the body, and the immortal spirit. Deep learning applies to every kind of knowledge, whether spiritual or secular. Learning is deep when it increases your power to do three things: (1) to know and understand; (2) to take effective, righteous action; and (3) to become more like our Heavenly Father."
In 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown started in March in Malaysia, I had just completed the renovation and furnishing of a new office at Blue Boy Mansion and moved all my books from home to the book shelves at the office. I've certainly kept a life long habit learning from books!
With advanced technology of our cell phone, I started reading Gospel lessons online from Church that were introduced to members world wide in January 2019 to be really useful in our pandemic times when it started a year later. To read the full lesson above, click the photo above or here.
I still have a preference for reading thick books than the online ones. The online Church lessons were shorter to read as only one for each week with interesting videos too that were entertaining as well! I would continue reading books by taking a number home from the office library to be read over time and one of them is seen above entitled, "Deep Change" by Robert E. Quinn. This book had captivated me to read slowly as it was indeed a deep subject with many follow-up exercises for reflection after each chapter that took time to finish the whole book. As I have always been involved in business & management strategies, I was fully impressed by what I was reading and it took me months to finish as I generally kept a busy schedule every day despite the pandemic! The author's profile had also impressed me.
Now I started this online post only after I was reaching towards the end of the book to be at page 177 to read this one line from a paragraph that aroused my curiosity, "When I was in college, I attended a talk on leadership given by Gordon Hinckley." The name of the speaker he was listening to was a former President of our Church and I just had to search online to find this post to be delighted to know the author is also from the same Church! From there I could use the internet to check our Church website that he was also a senior respected member of the Church to be called as a President to serve in the Australia Adelaide mission.
Naming the 7 days of the week with a theme for each day
I therefore felt inspired to create this journal that co-incidentally will fulfil my promise made in my Facebook post a day before where I had named the Thursday as my "Super Deep Thinking day!" Now one might ask me why did I name Thursday as such? Well this naming sequence started a week earlier when I named last Friday as my "Happy Day", then Saturday my "Adventure Day" to be followed by Sunday my "Holy Day." Monday became my "Preparation Day" coined from my mission days! I then named Tuesday to be my "Behavior First" day. Wednesday became my "Follow-up Action" day. I only named Thursday, the last name to be given as "Super Deep Thinking" day as first it was my 2nd grand-daughter's birthday where I and my bears were all dressed as Superman plus I was so caught up in Deep Thinking solving some land phone internet problem connection to have also wrongly sent my superman doll present to the old home address of my daughter's! Anyway it all turned out well as the following photos depict:
The internet problem was solved to enable our online meeting and Anya received her present too!
I had spent the whole day out on my bike on Thursday after the zoom meeting to get my car that was ready from the mechanic. It rained on the way so I made 2 new friends in two stop overs for the approx 7 km ride.
I made it without being wet, happy of another simple Superman feat I often experience in life, to be happy that this mechanic whom I used a long time ago when our family were living close to the Ampang town, could fix and service my old Audi!
After putting my bicycle into the car, I dropped by the home of a nice old friend who is a very intelligent well read retired psychiatrist with a packet of fresh coconut juice bought from Ampang. As usual, she had a lot to talk about and so did I so our casual get together lasted till about 10pm. For me, I'm the self made para-psychologist learning from my conversations with professionally qualified people like her through the process of 'interactions' of my life better explained here.
To be continued and edited as it's 6am Sat 25 Apr 2021 in KL already, my "Adventure day", and I'm off to my early morning planned activity!!!
I arrived early at 7am at the bridge at Kg Kasipillay for a cleanup activity by the sides of the Klang river which parallels a good part of Jalan Ipoh. At a quarter to 7am. I was at the start of Jln Ipoh opposite the Sentul police station to message the member in our WhatsApp group named "Make Bukit Bintang Green Again" who publicized the activity and I committed to participate.
I decided to drive there instead of my original plan of riding my bicycle there as it was drizzling!
It was about half past 9am when volunteers from the Josh Litter Club showed up. I believe they were all meeting in a shelter somewhere. I ate breakfast from a stall nearby and went into the car to catch some sleep!
I partnered with Josh seen on the far left who is from New Zealand who started the 'Litter Club' focused on doing community service by helping to clear litter!
After about 2 hours work of picking up litter by the riverside, everyone gathered together to put their collected rubbish bags by the roadside for the public garbage trucks to collect them.
Event in roughly the same location at Sg. Batu, Kampong Kasipillay on Labor Day 1 May 2021
Drone used for aerial view.
SUSTAINABLE and STEM education
These are the world trends I consider as part of Deep Learning & Deep Change
Happenings in Malaysia:
21 May 2021
About a powerful "y'all" woman named Heather Way, from the Southern States of USA.
On Thursday, I decided to follow up on an American woman who was not my Facebook friend but she did a "like" on my post which usually never happens. As one who has no fear to interact with anyone, I posted her on Messenger, "Hi there, just noticed you visited my latest post. Do we know each other and I apologize if we do as I have a poor memory!"
Her response, "Yes sir! We met about five years ago at the charolette or La airport. You interviewed me for your family blog and I played let it go from frozen."
With that response, my poor memory certainly couldn't recall. It is for this very reason that I started writing journals over forty years to be able to pull out this journal of our family trip to US in 2016. It was a busy trip with a baby blessing event, family reunion, a wedding and also some interacting activities I was doing on live camera like this one below:
However I know I didn't do a live video interview of her at the airport and reviewing this photo of LAX airport area where I was waiting for my plane and her Facebook posts of her writings, I began to recollect some lost memory.
As shared above, we talked about an hour and she even played her guitar with the music from the Walt Disney movie "Frozen" shared below. I recall from my poor memory that I had arrived early at LAX and when alone, I would always strike a conversation or interact with anyone close by. I believe as she was a "Southerner" and I've never really known or talked to one before, except to watch the Dallas TV series in my younger days, I mentioned I wanted to interview her to record an experience in my journals! Some how when I got home, I didn't record the 'interview' in my journal, nor took any photos or videos which may be why the story never appeared in my journal!
Click here to jump start to the "Bahasa Malaysia" version as I chose this popular musical sung in multiple languages of the world!
In our online conversation she made this comment, "That day in the airport...was the start of everything! God has done so much!!" I responded, "Start of everything? You must tell me the story! I love stories which is why I have been writing so much in my journals! I don't think I got any story at the airport right? ... or I forgot to publish when I got home. Sorry if I missed out!"
She told me she would tell me the story and that I could also read it from her blog! She mentioned she had a blog but never gave me any reference to it. Later I found it in her Facebook post. It's very touching and certainly God had been with her to go through so many challenges to finally become on top of everything! I asked her permission for me to share her story in my journals so this is why I can share it here today. Her style of writing on her blog is different from mine with a lot more deep feelings shared. It starts from latest here and goes backwards. The blog is found in her Facebook where when I first visited, I left three comments on her FB posts:
In this photo she left this comment, "I am behind in responding to y’all’s questions and messages. Many of y’all have asked what I wanted for graduation... and as a quick thinker I left my response in her comments section, "Haha the y’all accent reminds me of the Dallas Cowboys series I used to watch over in my country here when I was a kid, yes Dad the KL City Kid https://bit.ly/3hGeHp5"
Recently I noted that a group I created in Facebook had surpassed 1k of members. I felt impressed to change it's name to "Power of Purpose." We are in an era of the world where the importance of finding meaning and purpose in life becomes of greatest importance. The center of my initiative comes from my office at www.BlueBoyMansion.com which is located in the largest district of Kuala Lumpur city named as Bukit Bintang that covers the Twin Towers, Bukit Bintang street, Petaling Street with a tunnel walkway soon to join to Mid-Valley also in the same district for future development. We are attracting the world to visit Kuala Lumpur or move their regional office to be located in Malaysia.
Power of Purpose
Why this sudden change in the name of my Facebook group? Before it was like an exclusive club that only members of our Church who served as a missionary to preach of Christ would be included. After years of my research on the topic of Human Consciousness, I learned many things about how to be more OPT, i.e. to be an Optimal Performance & Thinking person. This meant I sought in life to be one able to do my best in performing or carrying out an action as well as be a good thinker who can solve life problems in the best or most optimal way.
That purpose seem to have stuck with me to become a person who never stops learning or changing.
If one doesn't have a purpose, he or she may just glide along life aimlessly. Now in these modern times of our free world, the younger generation may question, "Is there anything wrong with that?"
My simple answer is if the person doesn't mind where he or she ends up in, I guess it's okay not to have any purpose. I relate it to the Story of Alice in Wonderland, “Which road should I take from here” she inquires of the cat? “Where do you want to go” asked the sly cat, to which Alice replies “I don’t know”. And here is where we learn how wise and perceptive the Cheshire cat is; his reply is simple “if you don’t know where you want to be then it does not matter which road you take”.
When I was young, as the youngest of seven, I was one who really didn't know what I wanted to be! It just felt like I had a ladder to climb to be where my parents or older siblings are. There appeared a hierarchy of needs where after meeting an easy one to achieve, we need to work on the next one and the next till we reach some point of satisfaction. Does the image below make sense?
In my life, I guess I developed according to my priority of needs that started from the bottom as in the pyramid above. As I got closer to the top, I found myself requiring Deep Learning not in a physical or intellectual sense but a spiritual sense that was new to me before I was baptized into the Latter-Day Saint Church.
I was glad that this young woman was inspired to find me five years later to share the spiritual experiences of her life. I had interacted with her at the airport in the summer of 2016 to learn of the life of a southerner in the US as in my over 25 trips to the country at that time, I visited mainly the western and northern part of the country with just a few trips to major cities in the east like Washington DC and New York city and a short weekend visit to my client's office in Florida.
The short interaction I made with her years ago brought me unexpected spiritual blessings and awareness today, just a week after I decided a major change of name of the Facebook group to allow all who believe in Christ to be able to interact with one another in the Group I created. She and many others who may not be from the same Church as I am, will be invited to join my Facebook group that seeks the common purpose to live a Christ like life. You can watch the video she shared with me online to know why I nicked named her a Superwoman!
After my wife passed away in 2012, I decided to update my knowledge in Science that I majored in at middle school but left it in 1976 to switch to a business program in Australia. I was fascinated with the new science of Quantum Physics that became a major topic in recent years. As I had done a major in Computer Science besides all the other business subjects of economics, accounting and business law that I had to study, I became very adept to use the computer and the world wide web of our modern day to carry out my personal Deep Learning goal to study the latest science.
The goal really was to unravel the challenging topic of the modern day which is trying to explain Human Consciousness! I believe I had an advantage to make a breakthrough to solve this puzzle as I am in the rare 1% of the population in the world to maintain written journals of my life. I followed the base of Plato's knowledge who identified the tripartite nature of Man to use the term Appetite, Reason and Spirit that the world today commonly call the Body Mind Spirit of Man.
It was a long journey for me to catch up with modern science again and thanks to what I call a pattern of my mind that I developed while journaling, I could make simple some of the technical scientific terms used in the field, namely the "Force" like how the Star Wars Movie relates to. All I had to do was Google it to find the simpler word description of it as "Interaction". What a profound discovery for me to realize that this simple social habit of mine interested to interact often with Family & Friends had blessed me with amazing knowledge or "know-how" besides increasing my numbers of "know-who" that essentially allowed me to solve many problems or answer questions as a professional consultant during my life time! I could also optimally teach, train coach not just my own family members but could do it with all the organizations I was involved in whether it was for my internal staff or external clients or even their customers! As long as we have good "Interaction" the Force will be with us, even the Power of Interaction!
Now "Deep Learning & Deep Changes" is definitely vital during this pandemic era of our world. To me, it is an education, warning and test for Mankind to see how vulnerable we are or capable to "Choose the Right" among all the positive and negative forces we are exposed to. I created www.AbacusToCloud.com to merely share what I discovered in my own life time of theory and experience, in hope that we can first and foremost be more aware before we can embark on Deep Changes needed to save the world and ourselves too of course.
