New Years 2007 in Beijing, China

It's always strange when one night you go to bed and the next morning you look out the window and world has suddenly turned white. On December 30th the snow began and ended December 31st. Suddenly Beijing looked as cold as it felt. I have never seen snowplows or snowblowers or trucks that pour salt on the roads in China. People get out their brooms and shovels and go to work. I see men walk around with bags of salt throwing it on sidewalks. Another indicator to me that human labor is one of the cheapest and most readily available resources here.



The snow also doesn't stop the daily grind of people having to go to work. I have never heard of a work stoppage or school closings due to adverse weather conditions here either. But I think Beijing generally doesn't get that cold or so much snow.
On the first day of the New Year, it is usually my practice to try to have a good and somewhat productive day. I think it also bodes well for the rest of the year to have a good start.

Before the new year, I had already started implementing some New Year's resolutions. Over a week ago, I began doing exercises every morning as soon as I woke up. I find that if I do exercises first thing in the morning, I don't have to think about getting them done the rest of the day or skipping them altogether if I get busy. I want to ensure the quality of my health for the long run, so I decided that daily exercise was a priority. The exercise also gets my blood pumping so I'm ready for the rest of the day.



Another resolution is to create a daily routine. The exercises come first. Next, I need to eat some food. Before I do anything else, I want to next study Chinese for about 1 hour. The minimum is to learn 10 new words everyday. I am in China for crying out loud and I need to study Chinese at a minimum or 1 hour and 10 new words a day or I am wasting a major opportunity. So getting myself back into studying Chinese regularly is another top priority.

Another resolution is to study math about 1 hour a day. On top of my recent considerations to going to business school, I think improving my math skills will benefit my life and business. Thus, it makes sense to try to improve this area of my skills and knowledge. I got started implementing this resolution last week and I already learned something valuable. Math is used to communicate. It communicates knowledge and information. Math is used to quantify things, rather than qualify. For example, if I say "Yesterday the temperature was hot". Then today I say, "Wow, today the temperature is really hot", or "It's hotter than yesterday!". What does that mean. Well, without real numbers that may not mean a whole lot to anyone.
So math is useful to quantify, to use numbers, to communicate information. It is also standardized. The temperature was 60 degrees yesterday and 90 degrees today, carries more information than saying it was hot yesterday and hotter today. Actually, 60 degrees may not even be hot to people in Hawaii, but it might be to Eskimos. So math is used to communicate, to quantify things by using numbers. That is one reason we use it and it is valuable.
Take these examples. If someone said these things to you, would you want them to quantify it?
You just won the lottery, you're going to be rich! You're going to prison for a long time. Your stock just took a tumble.

My question is always going to be, how much? Numbers help me to quantify information to make it understandable and relative to me. So numbers and math are helpful. But by how much is it helpful you say? To help quantify this answer, the math book I bought says that students with a solid math background earned, on average, 38 percent more than their peers without such a background.
To wrap it up, the comprehensive goal of my New Year's resolutions are to create a daily routine to use time and energy effectively and efficiently to achieve the successful fulfillment of my priorities and objectives. Wow, could I have written that any more duller? How about this: I started these New Year's resolutions to accomplish my goals of starting a successful business and having health and happiness. That's a little better...
Happy New Year!!!