Last summer\u00a0while travelling between home and Denver for the USENIX Annual Technical conference, I had a wonderful companion, Ernest Hemingway’s A Movable Feast. Since then, I have read probably another dozen of books and there is one message\u00a0from that book coming back to me frequently: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” \u00a0A different message at a completely different setting today prompted me to think about it again.<\/p>\n
It is wonderful to be back at school, especially while the subjects are\u00a0invoking the neural activities of usually under-utilised brain regions. What is the smallest thing that I could do to…? Every one has his or her own ways of filling in the dots when\u00a0being asked this question. What is the smallest thing that I can do to (do something good for people who are disadvantaged or less privileged)? That came to\u00a0my mind. However, for this particular setting, I need to work out a more concrete business idea rather than a philosophical one. I learned from one of my lecturer: do small things, talk to people, find out what you are passionate about in the process; From another\u00a0lecturer: It is not about knowing, it is about doing. You never find a thing that you are passionate about by thinking about the question alone.<\/p>\n
There are many unknowns and it might be a small consolation that I am aware that I do not know. \u00a0“Keep on asking those questions” was a great piece of advice from\u00a0a wonderful colleague and mentor of mine.<\/p>\n
To me, all these three messages are the truest sentences, although they did not come from me originally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last summer\u00a0while travelling between home and Denver for the USENIX Annual Technical conference, I had a wonderful companion, Ernest Hemingway’s A Movable Feast. Since then, I have read probably another dozen of books and there is one message\u00a0from that book coming back to me frequently: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. … Continue reading The truest sentence<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paFL7T-7a","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dongpingzhang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}