Monday, October 28, 2013

SUCCESS - Part 2 By Crystal, Tiffany & Alan

Successful is a term many people strive to become, a way of life that people do outrageous things for, or simply a level of respect gained from others. Being successful can be determined in many ways, seen in different perspectives, and so called “ achieved” with extremely different methods.

In our modern and current ways of life, we are showered in luxury, blessed with modern technology, and raised with life being relatively easy. Given that we don’t have to work hard for our resources, our bond and connection with reality and mother nature gradually gets fainter and fainter. Speaking in the perspective of a 12 year old, life philosophies and life experience is not what we’re most familiar with, this road trip across Canada has taught us and prepped us with what may become of our future. In other words, the first steps of life experience.

As we travel along the way, we see many wonders of mother nature. Wonders and stories of mother nature that constantly lectures us intimately, how is your future going to be like? How is everything going to fall into place? What kind of precautions and contingency plans do we have to look out for? Life is like a hike on the glacier lakes, you don’t know the fixed variables, you don’t know what’s potentially harmful, you just get what you think you’d need, and set off along the adventure. Keeping this in mind, backtrack yourself along the trip. The scenery, the wildlife, the trails, and pieces of history.

Go back to the very first moment we began our expedition. That time where all the sprinters were white, clean, and brand-new. Then think of how the sprinters look like now, dented, scratched, dirt-feasted, but still running perfectly fine. When the sprinters were nice white and brand-new, they represent the beginning of it all, the polished prepped and comfortable start. The dirt on the sprinters now represent the pain gained along the way. Then we come to a stop somewhere unexpected, and get a chance to wash it all off, a brand new start. Going back to the scene of the glacier lake, the vehicle is just like the shoes we wear as we hike. They start out brand new and dry, but as you go along the way and encounter unexpected events, and you get them wet, you get them dirty, occasionally you break them, but with all this in mind, they never complain a bit. They simply suck it up, and go.

Think about the train you saw crossing, with the nearly 2.5 kilometer long cargo trailer packed behind it. It went relatively fast, with a stability of a normal car. But how? With greater power, comes greater responsibility. Think about how much weight and stress is linked up with the train, how many tons of weight, how many potential accidents, how much responsibility is placed on the train. But the train still carries on its duty, with its great strength, it keeps the entire cargo train going. This is like your backpack when hiking. Its your ultimate responsibility, the consequence is unbearable as it is your only source of food and survival equipment. With more supplies and greater comfort comes a bigger responsibility, and a bigger chance to fall and injure yourself. As a leader, you must be capable, capable to carry the weight, the responsibility of the team with the team trusting him/her. Just like that head of the train pulling the rest of the cargo with great might, also carrying the strength to support it all.

Look up to the sky, remember that flock of migrating birds? Travelling in a synchronized group, in a very accurate V formation. They follow their leader, move as a synchronized group, and do everything as one. How? Because the leader leads by example, with the team’s great coordination and team work, succeed in carrying their important task, migrating. Why do they travel in a V formation? As they are also intelligent living beings, they travel in a V formation to ensure everyone has their eyes on the example, their own safety as a group, to back each other up when in need, just like our convoy.

Recap to the moment where we arrived to Inuvik, go through the moments where we communicated and social with the locals, where we learnt about the group contingency plans, their activities as a community. See how they support each other using their diversified professions? Their contingency plans are evidence of their efficiency, their teamwork. Basically structures of brilliance that first, keeps the community going, second considers everyone’s benefits, and third, becomes a indestructible wall that reinforces the safety of the community. For example, the police officers ensure the discipline of the group, the execution of the members. Then the different position such as engineers, cooks, entertainers, catholic sisters, crafters, mayor, etc. they all support each other when in need, the cooks ensure the stomachs of the community to be full, the entertainers and artists help improve the local economy, the engineers fix and invents things to help better the community, the mayor is in charge and makes sure everything is functioning and make decisions that are benefitting the community. This is equivalent to the different responsibilities and jobs given to the team crossing the glacier lake. They carry different duties to backup each other, to increase efficiency and execution to the plans.

Step back and look at the big picture. Remember all those small and big mistakes you made? Those are small marks of experience, small marks of knowledge. Just like the unexpected slips and slides along the hike., As you continue to hike, you start to understand which rock is going to slip, which rock is going to sink, becomes more predictable over experience. There has to be slips, slides, for you to improve and learn. But unpredictable and unknown obstacles will and could come ahead when you least expect it. whenever a obstacle hits you, stop, think, observe, and plan. Step back, look at the big picture, and think of the next step. How are you going to get there? A rough route idea? Should you show your group the big picture to lift up their hopes?

Think about New years, remember the fireworks? That moment where the gunpowder just shoots up to the sky and blasts into many small fragments that creates an ultimate picture. A beautiful show. Then think about the bullets used to penetrate goals, hitting a target, completing a task. These items are both made from the same material, gun powder. But how are you going to mold and use these materials to create the appropriate show or appropriate solutions. Different situations, different solutions. This is all about flexibility, how are you going to be flexible and adapt onto the situations? Refer back to the stepping stones, how are you going to cross as a group? How are you going to adapt as a team and perform diversified? Adaptability, flexibility, and divertive jobs.

Leadership is what people need to hike up the road towards success. Success is like once said, what people crave for, something many die for, something people work till death for. As for this trip, we’ve done a lot. We crossed Canada, went up to the furthest point on Canadian roads, crossed a glacier river path, seen almost everything, all a gift of mother`nature. Purpose? to experience the possibilities of life, the possible screw-ups, the possible failures, the success, the accomplishments, the possible considerations. A lot of symbolic and deep meanings, just like how the flock of birds gave us inspirations, the trains giving us endless thoughts, the glacier hike symbolically showing you life… etc.

You might think, how does this relate to success? Well, its as simple as such, the vehicles represent the tools and equipment you use, but also the attitude of sucking it up, taking the unexpected obstacles coming ahead without complaint, just like what a leader should do.

Then, we have the train, representing the strength and power used in pulling the entire group. The responsibilities given, the risks taken in benefit of the team, carrying responsibility and weight. Being able to take the consequences.

After, we have the synchronized birds, representing the communication excellence and synchronization within the entire operation, how the leader leads by example, and how the followers follow with absolute trust.

Then we have the Inuvik operation, with the diversified jobs and ability to adapt.

All of these steps and inspiring thoughts are results of what we’ve learnt so far. How we think the road of success should look like, how to work as a team, as a group to do so.

Successful is a term many people strive to become, a way of life that people do outrageous things for, or simply a level of respect gained from others. Being successful can be determined in many ways, seen in different perspectives, and so called “ achieved” with extremely different methods.



Friday, October 25, 2013

SUCCESS - Part 1 By Crystal, Tiffany & Alan

Success. A name people long for, a path people die for, something achieved over years of tears, blood, sweat and experience.

Picture yourself on a long road, going 50 kilometers per hour, leisurely travelling. All you see is a blue sky, a distant road, and a lonely path, unsure of your future but sure of what comes shortly ahead. You have no idea, you have no experience, but all you have is courage. You have a bag of talent and potential, and in approximately 300 meters, you see the first Monticle. Your start.

Trans Canada is our start, our first taste of what may become “our future” or simply reality. Over the past seven days, we were challenged to organize a trip. A trip to Inuvik, Arctic. The first few days were rocky, we had no idea. Just like all our first times. Our first bike ride, our first rollercoaster, first skate on ice, first day of school, over time and experience we know how to improve, we learn our mistakes, and get better after each failure, each drop. Trans Canada allows us this opportunity to do so, to screw up, to fail. But simply to have an idea what may be ahead, to prepare for the long run.

Day 1, we meet each other, break the ice. We begin the planning, but ran over schedule. As we came up with ideas, but it simply made things more confusing. Just like you trying to climb a hill, with ropes, occasionally tangling yourself and causing further delays. You sit there wondering what to do next, when you begin to think of solving this problem, you start exercising the critical thinking part of your brain, enhancing its ability to help you.

Day 2, we continue the planning, we do a test. We head under the sun for the entire day, see the reaction of teammates. Practice and get to know the physical needs, the techniques of wilderness survival and simply the personality and “leading style” of each other. Think of this as getting to know your partner, getting to know your teammates, the people who are going to support you along the road. Your true friends, your competitors.

Day 3, the expedition begins. Action. It was time set off onto our journey, what we planned for, the first test of water. Waking up at 3:00, everyone packed, loaded up and experienced the first delay of the entire trip. After the arrival to the campsite, efficiency began to lower. People were running overtime, showers were taking too long, quantity of food was overestimated, traveling schedules messed up. The first delay, is equivalent to the first little bump that shocks everyone, but tells you what to take caution on, what to prevent , and basically, the brief sight of reality. What could possibly happen next? A flat tire? A engine malfunction? System overheat? Many many things you have to begin to consider as a team. Team captains and 2Ics experienced a somewhat “wake up call”. How long would a shower take? How do we equally distribute man power? How do we diversify and increase workspeed? How would the efficiency of building tents increase over time? Questions like such begins to flow into your mind.

Day 4, we experience the first few hiccups. The navigation plan is beginning to get confusing, are we really going to be able to travel that far? Is it really necessary to stop so many times? Questionable decisions are made, overtimed pitstops, undisciplined timing, messed up time management. Our leader, Billy, then tells us where we made mistakes. He asks us questions, questions that reflects the duabiliy of our plan. From the original individual team plan, the team leaders made a decision to combine all three groups to make one big cooperative team. But here comes the questions: IS it really going to benefit the team? When one person runs in a marathon, they can go fast, but they can’t go long. If two people run together, they can go long, but not fast. Now duplicate the 2 by 15, we have 30 people, how are we going to manage it? How are the cooks and navigators going to communicate between vehicles? What is the contingency plan? That, is the phase of the road signs. They tell you what may become ahead, what to watch out for, and what you are doing wrong. They guide you along the road, helping you as you go, but don’t tell you or give you the rightful answer.

Day 5, We begin encountering further considerations, wet gear, time consuming pitstops, far away gas stations. But a grasp of hope flutters across the view, as we cross the boarder and got out of Ontario. How are we going to solve such problems? That is the phase of the fogging window. Things begin to get in your way, fogging up your window, blocking your view of success, when suddenly it rains. The small breaths of hope clearly up part of your window, allowing you to continue but not see the entire picture. As you continue along the road, circumstances get harder, tougher, and most importantly, different.

Day 6 , The big charge, we took a deep breath and traveled 1000 kilometers. From Manitoba we passed Saskatchewan and reached the “near” boarder of Alberta. With everyone so tired, the drivers suggested a rest before continue trip. So without a choice, we stayed at the Walmart parking lot, and spent the night there. That is the long run, where everyone takes a deep breath and charges beyond expected areas, then rests in a least comfortable place to save time, money and effort. At times in need, you have to sacrifice, you have to extend and challenge yourself to a point that you simply cant do it no more. Think of the road is general, instead of what you may think is appropriate simply regarding the first 100 meters of your road.

Day 7, communication. Going through a whole day of driving, rain began to pour onto the mud making it mushy and squishy. Communication between members is needed when we were expected to arrive inside the house without making a mess, getting any dirt in, but just your luggage, your daypack, no more. Communication between members is crucial to organizing the entire operation. How do you know what the others are doing, how do you know whos not doing anything, how to diversify man power in a orderly fashion? How do you organize everything without overlapping jobs with others. Communication is the solution. Just like the frequently told tale of the tower of Balbare, when iseralities tried to build a tower that reached the heavens, at first everything went quite well, going smoothly and efficiently, but then the lord changed all their languages and they weren't able to speak to each other. That ended the entire idea of building the tower of Balbare, nobody knew what to do, how to do things, instead just became a bunch of extremely confused people.

Over these seven days, we came across many different problems and same time lectures. Day 1, getting to know each other. Day 2, planning and brainstorming beforehand. Day 3, experiencing the problems, the challenges, getting a brief idea about the long road ahead. Day 4, unrealistic plans, contingency plans, change of plans. Day 5, a grasp of hope to keep everyone going. Day 6, pushing the limits, but not bursting the envelope. Day 7, communication, how do you talk to one and another, to create a more efficient surrounding for everyone. These are basic first stages of success as far as we know. In order to succeed, we must do all those things. If one of them goes missing, the others wouldn’t work. Go back to that picture of a lonely empty road, you hit a speedbump, you slow down, reflect on what you’ve done. You check the road signs for help, you look forward to see what may possibly come ahead. You take your time to recap everything, change whats wrong, and step back on track. Take a step back, look at the big picture, communicate, experience, recap, brainstorm, push the limits. The first few steps we’ve encountered so far, the first few steps of success. In order to get to the point of success, we must experience the screw ups, the failures, or frankly the experience of critical thinking.

Put yourself back into the picture of that road one last time, you see the bag of talent and potential beginning to shine brighter and brighter. You notice that the road ahead is smoother than it used to be, you look up the sky and see the happy birds flying across the big blue sky, the car is moving smoothly. At approximately 400 meters, you see a glowing bag of bright lights. That’s experience.

As Success is a name people long for, a path people die for, something achieved over years of tears, blood, sweat and experience.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

RESPONSIBILITY - Part 2 By Michael Fung, Howard & Jason Wong

Responsibility is inevitable. Some might hate it, some might love it, but it is, in the end, simply inevitable. In our reminiscent point of view, from the very first day we could barely see that Billy had as many responsibilities as he had had in the past courses. This is because Billy had arranged six leaderships to organize a plan with the rest of the three groups, namely Alpha, Bravo and Charlie. We needed to plan where to stop for each day, which highways or routes to take, what contingency plans for both vehicles and participants, food, accommodation, etc… The HQ team was, on the other hand, in charge of the inventory, the trailer and other mechanical equipments. At that point, we really felt that we were the planners of the trip, or at least that we planned for most of the parts of the trip. Billy himself even said that he was only here to offer his experience and not to plan the expedition.

However, when reality came to check on us, we realized that we were not, in fact, planning a working trip. After all, we only had 2 days to plan out a twenty-eight-day expedition for thirty people with different medical concerns, different personalities and different needs in terms of education and inspiration, to travel almost one third of the Earth’s circumference. Among these youngsters who were making an extremely immature and rough plan, none of them knew how to drive, what vehicle equipment is used for what purposes, what medications needed to be brought and how they were used, or even the gas stations and landmarks along the route… As we listed more and more flaws that we all had, we realized that the only qualifying planner was, in fact, Billy. Billy is one of the chief instructors, with 46 years of life experience, 19 years of serving the army as a medic, has several driving licenses and hiking/climbing experiences, great physical and mental qualities, and credit cards, toughbooks, and all of the equipment… It became painfully clear who was truly responsible for the entire trip.

As mentioned in the last one-thousand-five-hundred-word essay talking about responsibility, the more power or abilities one has, the more responsibilities one has to carry. If someone asked us if we feel ashamed by the fact that we came up with a failing plan, we would definitely answer that we do not. As Billy told us along the trip, we were paying money and time to make mistakes and learn from them. Billy will be the one who guides you and leads you out of darkness created by your mistakes. As being a group of youngsters, our responsibility is to learn and pack experiences into our life. Whenever you are not requested to perform particular tasks, but to stare at someone else handling it with Billy, do not blame yourself and think that you are a scrap metal or something. A real life example experienced by our team members is such – at once we had our trailer’s left tire gone flat and totally damaged. Sparks were created when the ream created friction with the gravel road. We were forced to stop right beside the highway when we planned to travel to Fort Nelson from Tombstone. Once the Sprinters stopped, Billy quickly called all the so-called big and strong guys to get out of the vehicles and help the HQ team to lift up the trailer in order replacing the tire. None of us were called to be there and help. Michael Fung/ Mich. F came down after the helping team had lifted up the trailer, but still… we knew the reason behind such arrangement because we were not those physical guys. Yet, Billy told us that everyone has their own beauty, or in other words, personal strengths. Some of them are physically capable and thus are employed as labor workers, some of them are mentally capable and thus are employed as thinkers and planners. Well, people who are capable of both sides would be optimal, but, in the end, we are human beings who are known to be imperfect. As long as you know your limits and how your personal beauty works, you should not be blaming yourself and drive yourself into irreversible darkness or depression.

So, why not just be oneself and learn from Billy as he tackles his countless responsibilities including education, food, accommodation, inventory, mechanical, driving, photographing… Learn from the best, don’t stress oneself, and eventually become the best.

As well, tying back to the idea that the more power one has, the more responsibilities they have, one’s responsibilities correspond directly to their abilities. For example, Billy, who is, without a doubt, the most capable out of all of us, has to deal with the most responsibilities. Black shirts, who have the most training, must obviously have more responsibilities than Yellow shirts who have only basic training. While raising in ranks may seem like a good thing, one also has to prepare for the increase in responsibilities that he or she has to face. In addition, one’s different abilities also can mean different responsibilities. If one person has a special talent with cars, it wouldn’t be very illogical to put him/her in charge of vehicles rather than in charge of cooking. And if somebody is really knowledgeable about streets, it would be strange to put a wonderful photographer in charge of navigation instead of him. Overall, one’s responsibilities stem directly from one’s abilities for the sake of maximum efficiency.

Speaking of which, another responsibility that we’ve learnt that leaders must have is observing their followers and finding their strengths. On our way back from Inuvik, the leadership were in charge of assigning people to different jobs for the day. To do this, they would have to observe and closely recognize the student’s different strengths and weaknesses. Who is good at cooking? Who can discipline the others? What about cleaning? The leadership had to everyday place people in different jobs and then evaluate how someone did at the job to know if they should be put in the same job again or if they might do better at a different job.

Also, as a leader, one has to be first in and last out. Whenever we arrive a place possibly available for accommodation or camping, Billy always sticks with the first-in-last-out philosophy – he gets out of the car and ask the rest of us to stay in the vehicle. He then walks to the reception area to deal with the accommodation arrangements and payments. Then, he will browse around the living area (regardless it is a campground or motel or hotel) and make sure he knows the fire exits, facilities, services, culture, people who are living nearby and so on. Last-out seems to be a little bit indirect or vague, but we can still learn how Billy follows the last-out philosophy. Last out in our opinion is last out of danger, or last to reach safety. Billy is always the last person to go to sleep at night despite having to suffer through more crazy driving in the morning. He has to deal with all the administration work, read all the blogs, make sure all the photos have been uploaded and backed up, answer any comments or questions from parents, deal with his company’s issues, plan out tomorrow’s activities and even more that us students don’t even know about. Because he has so much experience and abilities, he is able to lead us all and still stay behind to wrap up.

The purpose of this essay is not to list out all the responsibilities that Billy has to take and show the readers how Billy is such a capable and qualified leader whom we rely on. The purpose of this essay is to reveal how we learn from Billy in this trip about responsibilities. We definitely can not change ourselves into another form of Billy right after the trip has ended. We need patience, perseverance and time to learn exactly what Billy has told us. Billy learnt from the very pains that were perhaps considered as typical in his generation. We, however, learn from an environment in which we are protected by safety nets. We do not necessarily need to be ashamed of sucking what Billy sucked in the past to learn the same stuff as long as we try our best to fulfill our mission and carry out the responsibility of learning and enriching our lives, then it should be very fine. You do not need to compare thyself to others, but to be yourself. Everyone has their own responsibilities simply because they have different abilities.

In conclusion, responsibilities are equivalent to one’s abilities. As one grows over time, one’s responsibilities are bound to grow in proportion. However, one should not stress their self to be someone else to face their responsibilities. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses which correspond to the responsibilities that they must carry. 

Monday, October 21, 2013

RESPONSIBILITY - Part 1 By Michael Fung, Howard, & Jason Wong

‘More power, more responsibilities.’ Jason Wong, Howard and Michael Fung are here to talk about the importance of responsibilities with experiences within Days 1 to 7. Even though we were not in the same vehicle until Day 7, we will still try our best to explain responsibility and its importance in shaping perfect leadership with one thousand five hundred words.

Firstly, we are here to declare that we are barely as powerful as Batman, who receives the aforementioned advisory quote in the movie. Yet, we all have responsibilities since we are born. We need to go to school on time and receive proper education; we need to brush our teeth and shower daily to keep up our personal hygiene; we have tons of responsibilities. But, the size of responsibilities as well as their qualities vary along with our power. Michael Fung is one of the leaderships within Days 1 to 7. According to his rank and abilities, he should have enormous or gigantic responsibilities. For example, he needs to be in charge of the After Action Report, communication between cooks and navigators, discipline and morale of the Alpha team, meals, cleanups and organization of the three teams’ activities. To underscore the genuine fact about power and responsibility, we will borrow Billy as another example. He was the person in-charge of the 14-day Alpha course. He needed to plan and cook the meals for more than twenty students, arrange accommodations and activities for them, fuel, inventory, safety, lectures, all those stuffs. Basically there were almost no any other instructors who had a chance to share the responsibilities with him merely because he has the ability to suck them up. For the Arctic Expedition, he also did the plans beforehand and keeps on driving for us as the leading car. Yet, he also seemed to have himself laid back and unleash part of the responsibilities to the leaderships and the students. As a matter of fact, most of the leaderships felt somehow unexpectedly exhausted, even though there were six of them sharing only part of Billy’s sole job.

Well, benefiting from hindsight, we thought that it is natural to have such phenomenon emerging out for the first seven days. All the leaderships have the potential to be good leaders, yet what differentiates between them and Billy is experience. Billy has been a medic for almost 20 years. He received trainings for military actions, medications, psychological operations, cooking, camping, hiking, driving, biking, management… almost anything you could name. Those trainings and experiences make him become naturally the Chief Instructor of Monticle (or in other words, the ‘Monticle God’), a military medic and one of the seniors of Lampo. Before we departed as a group for the Arctic Expedition from the HQ, he did not even have a single minute of sleep or rest because he was busy on handling administrations and safety for all thirty of us. He also had his wife, his dog, equipments, sprinters, trailer, maps, so on so forth to be in charge of. Comparatively, we are just students who usually have the responsibilities of going to school, complete exams and homework, not watching televisions and playing video games in an uncontrolled manner etc. Technically, we are green in the realm of cooking, navigating, safety and all other jobs that are mandatory and fundamental in this expedition. Before the summer, some of us (including Michael) have domestic helpers to do the job for us. In other words, they do not need to wash the clothes and dishes by themselves, cook for themselves, do inventory for themselves etc. Basically we sometimes rely too much upon them. We do not even need to worry about school fees, tuition fees, the fee for this trip, the fee for accommodations, for fuels, terms and conditions of insurance, vehicles and books. We feel that we also have a back up because we are young. But that should not be the way how we are nurtured.

Like wild animals, we should be trained to be familiar with the lifestyle of living upon oneself. Any predators are born and nurtured by their mothers (some of them are taken care by their fathers). They get breast milk and then food from their parents when they are still young. Yet, when reaching to maturity, they receive preliminary trainings such as having them hunt by themselves. They are given room for their brain’s region of creativity to burst out brilliant and perhaps unprecedented ideas and solutions. The surviving ones are basically those who are capable of producing and/or applying appropriate (not necessarily brilliant, but the more brilliant the better) ideas. Similarly, as we are reaching maturity, we should be given room to experiment our abilities and ideas. That is exactly what Monticle is doing. In this trip, we are spontaneously doing time management (for example, dealing with the assemble and dissemble of 6 tents altogether), preserving discipline and orders, as well as planning for meals and pit stops. We really feel that we did not have any safety nets when Billy announced that he would let the leaderships do the planning and see if they really work. Unless the plans are almost non-workable, Billy would not interfere much.

Responsibility is usually determined by your abilities. Based on our observation, Ryan is not one of the six leaderships, yet he is one of the most prominent and capable members for handling tents. Therefore, the leaderships made him the person in-charge of dealing with tent matters. In fact, under his guidance and tutorials (together with Jason the junior), setting up and dissembling the tents were unexpectedly efficient. More importantly, their instructions were made so clearly and definitely, hence everybody (including the English-as-second-language students) was able to perceive the message so quickly and accurately and get the job done. Rains and thunderstorms made the tents so cumbersome to be set up and down. Yet, we could still be able to complete the task of dissembling 3 Algonquin tents and 1 root tents within an hour and 15 minutes. This proves not only that the power you have, the more responsibilities you carry, but also the fact that you carry the responsibilities according to your abilities.

How about abandoning your responsibilities? Do you think the team could still survive if we are not carrying any responsibilities? What are the consequences of abandoning them? To what extent should we abandon them?

Literally we agree that the team could still survive given that only a minority of us are abandoning our responsibilities. Sloth or laziness is one of the seven sins of human beings. In other words, it is usually inevitable. Yet, we three reach a consensus about laziness and responsibility – it is alright to have an insignificant range of laziness while performing our tasks and responsibilities. This is because we are all human beings and we all need rests and reliefs. A very simple but frank example of such is that Billy could drive 39 hours non-stop, and Billy has the responsibility to drive the Sprinter from HQ to Arctic Circle, and from there back to HQ. However, he is not able to drive us 24-hour non-stop to Arctic Circle, right? (that is why we have more than three drivers instead of three for three vehicles – this arrangement allows drivers to take turns and drive well. As long as the progress is on track, then why not give some room and some easy-offs for them?) Hence, I wish any reader of this essay to take everything easy for a bit. It is not a wise idea to put yourself under stress for your whole life, we guess?

What if we just take another perspective to view about taking rest? For instance, let’s say that taking rest is also a responsibility of a driver. Does it sound less guilty and less related to laziness? Try to learn the trick of viewing or interpreting responsibilities in an alternative or positive way (or even in an out-of-the-box way) if you can. But still, we are suggesting you to also take another complimentary responsibility when you suddenly have an idea of taking a rest – the responsibility of telling other drivers about your idea.

Communicating clearly with others is considered another vitally important responsibility. People with great powers do have great amount of responsibilities, but they can not handle everything on their own. President Obama, just like many other leaders of any dynasty, have their own privy council, who help them. However, working with others is much harder than working by yourself. Thus, it is the responsibility of the leader to communicate with his followers in order to get a task done.

To conclude, we have discussed about the direct relationship between responsibility and power. Monticle, so as many other schools and universities, are microcosms of the real society. Any student or a member of these educational organizations and institutions should cherish their opportunities to enjoy how to know their responsibilities and handle them properly. Thank you for your attention.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

MOTIVATION - Part 2 By Quince, Kathy & Matthew

Monticle, I think we will remember this name forever. We enjoy ever minute in this 28-day-trip, everyone did a good job. In the camp, we not only improved ourselves but also had fun, and met new faces as well. Between these days: we became a big caring and cooperative family; we work and laugh together; we lived together from stranger to becoming good partners and friends. Time passed so fast for this family. We will finish our trip in just a few day. It felt just like yesterday when on the first day we all walked into Monticle. Looking back on our trip, we had good days, we had bad days, we met happiness, sadness, surprises and disappointments head on. Sometimes we faced problems we would never expect. But we got motivation to deal with them. Motivation is the most important characteristic that lets us overcome the harsh realities the world has to offer to us. Billy used to tell us that we’re just like the vehicles, which carried us from Toronto to Inuvik. When we got to the location they were really dirty; there were a lot of mud on the surface, even the colour change from white to black, and we couldn’t see the pictures on the trailer anymore. But when we’re on our trip back home, we went to clean them. After washing, the mud “feel off” like a blanket, the vehicles came back to becoming white. Although the vehicles were covered in fatigue on the surface, they’re still the same on the inside. We came Monticle for training for improvement, to change bad habits to make ourselves better. It just a motivated teacher like Billy to clean out our bad habits into good habits. Just like cleaning the mud outside the vehicles. Those are the motivations that we won’t give up to.

The drivers must be the most tired people out of all thirty people. There is a long distance from Toronto to Inuvik. In order to arrive back in time, we needed to arrive there at least a few days earlier. Most of the days we would travel more than 10 hours a day. It is because we were all motivated to reach Inuvik as quickly as possible with in our 14 day time frame. So on the way back we could do a bit of sight seeing or go hiking on a mountain. We had three vehicles and four determined drivers. Although they had some rest time between their work, it is still very hard to drive along boring roads that look the same most of the time. Besides it make people tired. Except Billy, all the people who did a driver job in HQ team, so they also need to do some other works, even if they did the hardest work, they felt tired, they couldn’t give up. They needed to drive all of us all the way and drive us back to Toronto safely. That was their job in teamwork, they must finish. But they are so important without them, We couldn’t get to the location without them he couldn’t finish our trip, we must say thank you to them. In our trip we need to do most of the things ourselves. Lucky for the HQ team, everybody had to contribute to the expedition by doing different jobs, include the navigator in last 10 days. The navigator also wasn’t allowed to sleep. This showed to the drivers that we really wanted to get to our destination and also showed them that we understood what they are going through by staying awake while they were driving all of us to the destination. Cooks need to cook the food for thirty people at not very long time in most of days. Every time when were we at the supermarket they would go with Billy. Then if there were enough time, they could buy other things for themselves. Cleaning team needed to wash plates and utensil for thirty people and cooking items as well in a short time, At some place, the temperature would dropped at night, and they still need to washing in cold water. Sometimes the place we could water was far away from the place we camping, sometimes. there were lots of mosquito flying around while they were washing. But the team would never give up to a punch of inferior bugs and they would finish cleaning the plates and utensils efficiently and effectively. Vehicle assistants, needed to clean windows when we arrived at the gas station, and they needed to clean the vehicles at most of the days when we achieved campground or motel. If the weather turned bad, the ground would be wet, so the vehicles will be dirty inside, or if somebody eats or drink something inside the vehicles and drops on the ground, vehicle assistant’s work would be much harder. Both navigator and co-driver were not an easy job as well. Both of these job couldn’t sleep on the car and needed to tell the driver about the information on the signs they passed along the road. For example street names or the speed limit. It is not easy to stay awake when all the people except driver are all fast asleep or when you felt sleepy. If you are a navigator, you should know where the gas station are; how far we are from the location today and also need to choose which road to drive by the map. Don’t think that leadership is a easy work. To lead a small group is easy, but it is not easy to lead a big group of thirty people the leadership team would decide a lot of things until late at night. Thinking about a lot, especially considering peoples benefits and did planning for us. They always slept last and ate last, they always needed to had a meeting until midnight. We are a team, everyone is important nobody did an easy job, nobody is useless. Everyone has there flaws, no one is perfect. If we want to work better as a team, everyone should work much harder. That’s teamwork, that’s motivation for us to finish our job, and try our best to did the work much better.

During the trip we met heavy rain on the road, we happened on trouble maker, we put down the tents in rainy day, we slept parking lot and also saw double rainbows and full rainbow, saw a lot of wild animals, on the way, saw good view as well. We got a lot money in the trip, both good and bad. Many years later, I think the most deep things I remember will be the hiking time in day twenty-one. We went to Edith mountain and had a about four and a half hour hiking on that day. The mountain isn’t very high but there aren’t any roads leading up it and the steep incline is not easy to walk. But everyone cheered and motivated each other. There aren’t any steps, just the road full of mud and rocks. With the sea level higher and higher, the road became much, much harder to walk. At half of the way we climb up the mountain, here was a much more dangerous road in front of us. The road just one-meter-wide and on a very high position, but most of us were scared of heights or we would give up our hiking on the halfway point. In truth, nobody wanted to give up. Not even the people who were suffering from the constant temperature changes. We were divided into smaller groups and continued climbing to the highest point. Since the girl group went first, I guess that motivated the rest of us to hike the mountain or else it would be very embarrassing that the girls could do it and you couldn’t. We wanted to see the view at the highest place we could arrived, it became the motivation let us be brave when we face to the enemy. At last, we did it and we did it faster than Billy’s expected timing. We should learn from the vehicles, they carried us from one city to other. They became dirty but they never gave up, they still keep working. At the highest place, we lay on the ground relax the silence, we heard wind, we water, we were very tired, but we were so excited. We need to say good-bye to everyone after just a few days, maybe we meet each other again in next camp. I will miss the friends in Monticle, the life here, the days we work together, and how we tried our best to finish everything. Many years later, there will be lot of difficult problems waiting for us, if you feel you are out of energy, believe yourself, think about many years of the life in Monticle, the things we learn here when you’re still a teenager, those can be the motivation to help to deal with everything. 

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

MOTIVATION - Part 1 By Quince, Kathy & Matthew

We need motivation to do things, even simply to live. Everyone has their own working needs, their own personal needs to be done, so that everything in our life can continue functioning. I thinking it’s just like teamwork, all parts are important, the team cannot function with a missing part. We want to finish the work perfectly and efficiently; it is the motivation that does the work behind the curtains. Everyone works much harder, with motivation. It’s the same way in like, the motivation can be everything, such as our parents, our friends, and also yourself. With the time passing, we improve ourselves as a person, to make life much happier and hopeful. In 7 days we stayed in Monticle, all of us had already learnt something, and we will learn more in the next 21 days. We all know Monticle is really different from other normal summer camp. We came here not just for fun, it simply wasn’t enough. We attended Monticle to improve ourselves as a human being, also to do training, teamwork training. So we may happened on such different things or the thing we never happened on, but we have confidence that we finish all the things, we won’t give up anything and try our best to finish them. We learn things that’s why we are here at Monticle. We want to improve that’s the motivation we done everything.

In Day 1, we started our camp. At that time, some of us didn’t know each other, and maybe shy to introduce ourselves. We just stayed in Monticle and learnt some skills that we need to use in next 27-day-trip. We were in different teams and did different jobs. Some of us prepared the cooking food we need, some of us helped to clean inside and outside, some of us be the navigator to discuss the lines we will drive. We did everything ourselves, it was so cool and tired as well.

In Day 2, we were told to get up at half pass three in the morning. It was so early but everyone did it, nobody late at that day. In the afternoon, we learned to make the camp. The sun shone brightly outside at that day. Camp would be the most important things in our trip. We would spend most of the nights in it. So we practiced again and again under the sun. It was really hot, but nobody said they wanted to stop to have some rest. In truth, we tried our best be made the camp much better and much faster. All of us join in practiced making the camp, because we knew it would be the most important skills that made us work much hard, it was the motivation not let us give up.

In Day 3, we started our across Canada trip. It was the first day that we just stayed on the car, so long time, we felt boring, and want to change. We haven’t got many things to do, because we hadn’t known each others yet. But if we wanted to make the teamwork perfectly, we must talk to others and understood others. So we try to introduce ourselves to others, and try to commented more.

In Day 4, we happed on the heavy rain. We had to put down the wet camp. It was much more difficult than put down the dry camp, and we hadn’t got chance to practiced it ago. What a terrible beginning at that day. It was our first time, so we cost a long time to finish the work. And we believed that we could did better next time.

In Day 5, we wouldn’t camping again. Instead, we lived in motel today. In the afternoon, we played some games on the car, we knew each other much better. At night, we had the dinner the cook team cooked. They cooked much better than the last two days. They needed cooked 30 people’s food each lunch or meals. I thought it was really difficult, but they did it and did much and much better, they were really hardworking with the food they cooked. After dinner, the washing team should washed 30 plates and forks and also other cooking items. The temperature dropped down so much, so the water that they washed the things with was really cold. But they said nothing, just washed the things in the fastest time, and clean the things as clean as they can at the same time.

In Day 6, we started to have special training in the morning. At that day, we did some training that should be done in teamwork, that taught us to communicating with others so that we could finish some special work. All the training haven’t cost a lot of time, but truly taught us something. One thing was, we should communicating when we were in trouble. Other one was don’t give up just try it, and also when other people have some problems, we should help them as much as we can.

In Day 7, we went the mall to buy the things we need. After then, we enjoyed ourselves in the mall. Some of us had some food, some of us went skating, and some of us went to join in some activities in the mall. We spent 6 hours in it with our new friends, talking about the things we like and playing together. It was really good. Time past so fast, that we have already pass 7 days in our 28-day-trip. We started our trip in Toronto and when we get to the North Circle we will back to Toronto. We had already happen on something we never knew and the trip will be much harder than before, I think we can deal with every different things, because we wanted to improve ourselves, that’s our motivation. When we happened on the heavy rain, in reduce. Some new trouble, we finished the job at last when we had to sleep at the parking lot, it was really cold outside, nobody said anything. When we should be moving our things in the rainy day at night, everybody who needn’t cooking helped it, nobody just stayed inside and did nothing. When we had some special training, for example, if someone is hurt during the mountain climbing or other time, others should carry the hurts. It was really hard to someone, but nobody give up, and some groups went to help others as soon as they finish their own job.

Because of the motivation we should always improve, we won’t say ‘give up’ to any troubles and difficult things; since “give up” is not in our dictionary of motivation. We are all motivated to do our best and to motivate others. We will not give up and we will try our very best and if we do not do that we will have failed to accomplish our mission of success. We have learned many things from our intelligent and motivating leader Billy Lui. We learned to never have people idling around, not doing anything, learned how to adapt to situations such as cold and wet climate and learned as a team that communication is key to understand each person personality and their health conditions especially. It is just like a boss in a company. For it to be successful and for it to flourish, the boss must now everyone employees ability to work and as well as the machines. If there is a flaw in one of these things than the company will not operate very effectively. For example if an employee is sick, the boss may have to give that person’s job to another person to handle. If it was a machine that was broken than the boss would have to fix it before the workers started using it. There are also more to a company for example using ads to expand your company’s presence. Just like Mcdonalds, everyone knows who they are and knows what they have to offer, either bad or good. But luckily everyday in these companies there are always motivated people to help make these companies successful. But of course the boss plays a big role of choosing his employees that help make it successful. Motivation plays a big part in life, to keep you going. A leader is a dealer of hope, and motivation giver, the person that keeps the entire cooperation moving, functioning, and maintaining a happy and decent environment. A world without motivation is a dead and spiritless world, there’s no point to look forward, no point to look ahead, as everything is dead, no motivation. Hopeless.

There are many things that our intelligent leader has taught us and if I were to list it out it would be endless. But the ones that I have mentioned are the key things in this camp. We have already and will continue to learn important life philosophies from Monticle.

We need motivation to do things, even simply to live.

Friday, October 11, 2013

INTELLIGENCE - Part 2 By Marco, Roman & Justin

Everyone has got their own description of Intelligence. Some people believe that if you know more knowledge than your peers, you are intelligent. Others believe that if you can problem solve and adjust to your surroundings, you are intelligent. During our Trans Canada West Expedition we saw intelligence not only among ourselves, but also in the places we visited. For example the people up north know that during winter the ground would freeze for meters below the surface, and that means the pipes would freeze and there would not be any plumbing and water for month! So they decided to put the pipes above ground, that way even if something does go wrong it could be easily noticed and repaired. The people have used their knowledge and their problem solving skills to figure out the best solution to their problem.

When we were climbing Mount Edith we were constantly thinking about how to connect hiking with intelligence. Many people do not believe muscle builders and athletes have to be intelligent. They believe that all you need to have are enhanced physical abilities and sometimes have a great look. They also believe sportsmen do not do anything creative because they follow a bunch of rules that have been written for them. I think these people are just jealous because they think professional athletes make easy money. And just because most athletes workout, these people automatically put them in the same category as those big, dumb, muscular guys in the comedy movies. I do not agree with their stereo typical thinking.

Firstly the creator of a sport must have been intelligent. In order for a sport to be successful it needs to be entertaining, to have a logical objective and to have a fair set of rules. Now days there are lots of “main stream” sports. The reason why sports like basketball, soccer and baseball are most well-known is because they all contain the things listed above. These sports are exciting to watch and participate in; some people even play sports for a living. They have been played worldwide for decades and will be played for decades to come. Secondly athletes need to be intelligent with their body. Most athletes play sports for a living. Why do athletes need to be intelligent with their bodies? Construction workers need their tool belt to do their job, but if the tool is broken or missing they cannot go on with their job. Same thing goes with athletes, they need their body to play the sport and if their body is broken or mistreated they cannot go on playing. So they have to be intelligent and find ways to protect their body or at least reduce the damage. A lot of the time, this is the exact reason why some athletes’ career last longer and are more successful. Injured and broken body parts have forced many professional players to retire or find another profession. Lastly the most intelligent athletes are able to make sports more interesting. These athletes are able to create new moves, style of playing and even making the sport easier but still follow the rules. Having one of these smart athletes on your team, they will make the sport much more intense to play and watch. There were also times in history where the rules of sports have been changed because of these players. But intelligent people are always able to change according to the surroundings. The new rules were nothing to the players, they have quickly found other ways to play around with the rules. And when we climbed Mount Edith we all got a hiking stick, the hiking sticks have made our hike much easier. And when we were going downhill we went down side ways. This way it is harder to fall, but if we do fall we would not fall face first down the steep hill. These are simply two of the things that some intelligent hikers have come up with to make hiking easier and safer.

I believe that most professional athletes are intelligent. Sports have become a great part of our daily lives. Almost every school has their own sports teams. There are huge gymnasiums and hokey arenas built in almost every community so people could participate in the sport they love. Sports have also brought many people jobs, and the intelligent people even started their own sporting goods and clothing companies. Now days sports is not only a competition, it is also considered a friendly way of connecting with each other. Sports have even allowed different places to understand each other’s culture and believe.

During this expedition we were put into teams/ groups. A lot of the times competition occurred between the teams, but how come one or two team would always get things done the best. What do you think makes a better team, a team that is composed of fools or a team that have composed people with great intelligence? The answer is obvious, is it not? It would be the team that is composed of intelligent members and leaders.

But think again more carefully. Even though intelligence is no doubt an important key to a team’s success. There are also many other components: co-operation, good communication, hard work and as well as the profound understanding of other fellow team members, intelligence is not the one and only key to success. The efficiency of a team depends on how well each team member works together, how well the leader controls the team and how much the members trust the leader. The level of intelligence of a team does not mean everything.

Intelligence can sometimes be the burden of a team. Our experience tells us that most intelligent people are not able to work well together, they are far too proud, carrying too much pride to be humble, to accept different opinions and criticism and to follow instructions or obey orders. They all want to be noticed by their leaders, and they all want to be confirmed the most intelligent member of the team. The greatest flaw of intelligent people is their faith in themselves, their belief in the power of an individual is stronger than that of teamwork. They think people who are not as intelligent will slow them down and cause them to look slow and dumb. They are wrong.

There is an old saying in China, it says “Three fools are far smarter than a wise man”, intelligence is almost never a work of a single individual, it is a collective work of many people. Research, think, discuss and making decisions. This is what your team is there for, to discuss and to give you their own opinions. This is why intelligence under a good leadership is both a precious gift and a heavy burden.

A strong and successful organization should be composed of people of different mind sets and abilities. The intelligent ones and the foolish one are equally important, both are valuable to a team. And that means no body’s opinion should be ignored. Sometimes, the solution to a problem is stupid. As people who are intelligent always view matters in a more complicated way, sometimes turning a simple problem into numerous, far more complicated problems. On the other hand a person that is not as intelligent thinks more simply and sees things in its original form, he can use a rather simple but more efficient way to tackle problems. The reason behind this is the intelligent people think and consider too much, they have too much worries, they handle things more delicately and do not believe in solving a problem in a simple way. But sometimes what you really need is a little complicity to you answer.

However, as intelligent people are more thoughtful and considering, they are often the ones in a team that can find out problems in a seemingly flawless plan, they can for see problems and prevent mistakes before they can give you the final result. This is especially important to a team. A leader’s plan to success and victory is like travelers planning their long and challenging voyage, every stop and step must be calculated and planned extremely carefully. Weather forecast, equipment check must be done before the trip. Let’s say an accident occurs on the way, for instance, a flat tire, the impact of the accident must be minimized to as little as possible. The key to that is to think and act fast. The situations do not allow slow thinking, every second is precious. At times like this you need fast and effective problem solving.

In conclusion intelligence is not always a blessing. Everything has its pros and cons. So do not be so prideful because you are the most intelligent, and do not be discouraged because you are not the brightest. You will find a place for you to shine. So learn from your mistakes and become truly intelligent. And remember: intelligence is knowing that you’re not the most intelligent.






Wednesday, October 9, 2013

INTELLIGENCE- Part 1 by Marco, Roman & Justin

Even though it’s only been seven days since the first day of the Monticle Trans-Canada Expedition, we could already tell that intelligence is a vital part of leadership. As an intelligent leader you need to co-operate with your fellow followers, know you followers, remain in power by showing you are the most intelligent

On the first day we stayed at Monticle Head Quarter, the thirty of us were organized into three groups Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. Each team consists of people with different mindset, abilities, back grounds, and experiences. Every member of the team, including the team leaders, know their jobs inside out and know they are fully aware of what are expected from each and every single one of them. Such well organized teams could not have been created without a great deal of intelligence. Our intelligent leaders know our weakness, abilities to assign us the most suitable job. Later that day, after the job allocation, everyone was working on their assigned jobs in prepare for our journey. Deciding how much resources to bring with us is the most challenging task of all. Excess resources will always be a waste, so we don’t want to bring too much; but we need enough resources so that we would have enough for the entire expedition. We must calculate exactly what we need. The supply must meet the demand exactly. Fortunately, with our intelligence, we were able to estimate how much resources we need and use them wisely. Making sure not even a grain will be wasted.

On the second day, we did not depart as scheduled,. Our leaders showed us how to set up a tent. After all, intelligence has to be demonstrated. Intelligence was shown in the setup of the tent. Every thing, from the pole to the strings, are the key components to the setup of the tents. If a tent is not set up, they are just a bunch of useless stuff inside a bag. The same applies to our intelligence. If intelligence and knowledge are hidden deep within the mind. Even the intelligence if no one knows its exist? Without others acknowledgement, intelligence is the same as stupidity. The sole purpose of intelligence is to bring benefit and help the others, it is to do the deed of good. If intelligence cannot provide help, bring benefit or is used in the wrong way, then intelligence is not so intelligent.

The real intelligence is to possess it as well as the power and the ability to wield it. Intelligence is like a blade, it can be used to slay the evil or to slaughter the innocent. Having great intelligence is not always good, whether it is good or bad depends on the way people use it and present it.

On day three, our journey finally begins. On the way to our first destination, we had to search for accommodations. It is no easy job, we had to find a place that is well-maintained and have good facilities as well as a reasonable price. To start, we have to search for information about accommodations near our destination. Searching for information itself was not difficult at all. It is to select the right and useful information that is difficult. People that are less intelligent will take all information they have access to with a single thought. On the other hand, people that are more intelligent will consider carefully and think thoroughly on what information to select. As intelligent people know, too much information will bury the truly useful information, they will be a distraction to the most important information, the most valuable information may be ignored. Therefore, we must have a clear aim and vision, we must know clearly what we are after.

A leader should always be intelligent, so that he/ she could stay in power or get in power. Intelligence is not only knowing the answer to 12345 x 54321, it is also knowing to plan ahead… On day four we did the exact opposite. The night before we planned our the route and destination, but we did not call the camp site to make sure they have available camp sites. You could say: we were being careless and lazy! We decided to call them only a few hours before we get there, but as we pulled the phone…. there were no service! There is nothing we could do about it. We could only test our luck and ask for vacant camp sites when we get to Rainbow Fall Provincial Park. Turned out they did have around a dozen camp sites available. We are lucky, if they did not have any camp sites for us then we would have to drive around a around a hundred kilometers to the next Provincial Park.

We experienced a similar situation the next day. At around 6:30 in the afternoon Alpha Sprinter was running low on fuel. We only had one bar of gas left, and with the trailer the gas should only last us maximum one hour. After twenty minutes we began to worry, what if we ran out of gas before we find a gas station that has diesel? We started to think of what to do what if we actually ran out of gas… most of all we regret not learning our lesson from yesterday. Just as we were about to run our of gas, we found a Shell gas station. Even though we found a gas station and fueled up, we are just plain lucky, again it was luck that saved us all. Today reminded me of the story of the monkey and his house. All of his friends have a house somewhere safe, in case of floods. Monkey always thought he did not need a house because he slept in the trees. But under peer pressure he decided to build one any way. Even though his fiends kept telling him: Hurry up! There is going to be a huge a huge hurricane and flood. But he had ignored all their friendly warnings. When the hurricane came he stayed on his tree, but he got blown off and washed away with the flood. We are like the little monkey who think he has everything under control. Our headers are like his friends, telling us to do what is right. We should have listened to them in the first place and plan out our gas stops. Because in the end the only once getting hurt are us.

It is not easy to be intelligent, you may think al you need to do is go to school, read books, and watch documentaries. Here is an example from day six, we were supposed to push to Edmonton and stay outside Edmonton Mall, but we were not being intelligent with time control and stopped to long at every pit stop/ gas station and we did not do any thing about it. So we had to stop at a Wal-Mart is and sleep on the parking lot in the cold and windy night. Lesson learned. Intelligence is not only thinking of good ideas, it is when you think out side the box. Like the example above , we never thought we will not make it to West Edmonton Mall. Hopefully such things will never happen again. After all there is no point of repeating mistakes.

We finally arrived at West Edmonton Mall on day seven. Once the largest shopping mall in North America. There are numerous amusement parks, ad hundreds of stores and restaurants. Shopping in this gigantic complex is not easy. With all these stores and limited time, we have to plan out what we need and where we will get them in advance so by the end of the day we would have spare time and money. Now, we have to decide what is on our shopping list and what item we want the most. With so many entertainments in the shopping complex, Water Park, Amusement Park, we have to decide the right place to go so that our time would be spent wisely. Moreover, the prices there are not as cheap or attractive as expected. Sometimes we need to utilize intelligence to figure out which shop has the best price for the same products (i.e. we need to do calculations and comparisons between shops about bug nets or jackets). Moreover, the Water Park is not really that attractive because you are technically paying 36 dollars to get wet in a big giant pool together with a hundred people or more at the same time, feeling some regular waves. Therefore, even though it is more of a recreational purpose, we still need to utilize intelligence upon shopping in that gigantic mall.

This is basically hat we did in one week. We made so much mistakes that are not really intelligence in the first week, we sure are going to do better in the future weeks. By the end of the expedition, we would all be really intelligence. Thanks for your time.

Monday, October 7, 2013

GOALS - Part 2 By Jason Wang, Alvin & Mickey


Life, some may call it a circle, a timeline or even a river, flowing from place to place in an ever continuing current with many different paths to take. All of these are correct to some extent, but there will never be a perfect analogy for life. However, if I were to use an analogy for life, I would call it a one way road trip. This is because we all are born or start the trip or journey, and we all die eventually, inevitably, which is where the journey ends. But, the road trip is not about the beginning or the end, it is about the journey, the events along the way, the people, locations, and deeds you have done before getting to the end. Every choice you make can be seen as an exit, a turn, branch or a fork in the road,

Most people, alone or in a team, (or following my analogy would a lone car or a convoy) wish to achieve or get things greater than what they currently have, such as wealth, skills, abilities, or intellect while on this long road trip called life. Leaders or the lead vehicles in the convoy must go through a lot of planning to decide on what paths to go on. To decide and plan to go on specific pathways and roads of life are all considered goals in some way shape or form. Goals are objectives individuals and groups with to accomplish or gain. Whether these goals or objectives are long term or short term, they require much planning and motivation, as well as the courage to act upon and execute the plans to be successful, allowing the team members to reach their objective.

Goals, whether it be setting them or wanting to achieve them, is part of our human nature and it is impossible for the average human being to avoid. Due to that feeling of “want” people have, having these goals and having the abilities to plan and set these goals are important for leaders and followers alike as they give them a direction and purpose to work towards. These goals can be big or small, but all these goals are potential achievements that someone can learn from and take pride in while working towards them or in the future, looking back upon it.

For the last twenty eight on this Trans-Canada 2013 Arctic expedition, we have had many objectives and goals that we wished to succeed in. Goals that we have achieved, goals that we have reached, goals that we have successfully completed, as well as goals that we have failed to pull off. But through the good and bad, the thick and thin, the rough back roads and the smooth paved highways of life, we have learned, grown and matured from these experiences, as a great man and great leader once said, “Good days, good memories, bad days, good lectures”.

From day one, July 14th, 2013, there were hiccups, we were unprepared for the tasks that were given to us, and when we thought our planning was working, it failed, causing our trip to be delayed for another day, thus we failed our goal for that day. But, we learned from that experience and we were able to successfully complete our planning on the following day as well as our preparation and load up, allowing for us to leave early on the following morning.. On the first day on the road, July 16th, 2013, or day three of this expedition, we went camping at Pancake Bay provincial park. The ground was rocky and hard, the campgrounds were swarmed with insects with a passion for human blood, the students were inexperienced with the tents, and worse of all, there was a massive thunderstorm at night, causing the pack up on the following day to be chaos, further delaying our already day late schedule. However, from that ordeal we learned the importance of teamwork and communication, as time carried on, we learned more and more, through both successes and failures alike.

While going along these road ways of life, planning, setting, achieving or even failing goals will put strain on both the body and the mind. Back to the road trip analogy, the driver of the car is like your mind and the car it’s self is like your body. As you may have noticed on the blogs, majority of the damage is received on rough roads such as the Dempster highway rather on smoother highways such as the Trans-Canada highway. Damage and strain on both the drivers and the Sprinters. On the road trip the driver or the mind may not get much rest, may not have the chance to stop for proper accommodations, and will end up stressed and tired. While the vehicle or the body is put through majority of the physical damage, with mud, dirt and blown out tires. But, with the proper care, cleaning, and fixing up the damaged can become as good as new again, with even more experience than before which you can learn from and apply to problems you have in the future.

As we learn from problems, situations and events, we learn how to deal with similar ones in the future. Similar to the stepping stones across the glacier streams at Tombstone Mountain which we encountered on July 29th, 2013 or day sixteen of our expedition. As we began walking and taking steps we learned to watch for unstable rocks, slippery rocks, and potential paths to take as well as who was the best at finding those previous conditions and should lead the group. The further we walked, and the longer we walked, we were able to use recent knowledge to plan each and every following step. Each step, once again is a choice and like life, we learned from each and every one. Through the successful steps we took taught us what we should do to reach our goal with the minimal number of mistakes. While through the failures such as the slips and falls, we learned what not to do and what we should avoid while planning our pathway to reach our goal. From these mistakes, these slips and falls, we also learned an essential part of life; it doesn’t matter how hard you can take the hit, it just matters if you can move on afterwards. As when we fell down, simply needed to pick ourselves up and keep going, even though we were wet, and dirty we continued towards our goals.

As we remain moving towards our goals, a leader must decide on how to tackle and reach certain goals. Either using his or her man power as a bullet, concentrated with force, or as fireworks, scattered, spread out tackling many parts of a problem or situation at once.

Similar to the fireworks display we saw on August 7th, 2013, or day twenty five of this expedition, a great leader must aim or set a goal like an artwork, such as a musical masterpiece. The leader acts like a musical conductor. The conductor may not be the best piano player, violin player or drummer, but the conductor must be able to control and utilize the skills of all his or her musicians and know when they should play and when they should rest. Simply put, the leader of a group must be able to utilize the man power available and the skill sets that they bring to the table to the highest degree of efficiency to reach the goal that they have set, lesson that every leader should know and follow, now and forever, after this trip.

As our trip comes to an end and as we work towards our goals in the future, we should never lose sight of what we went through to get there, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror, if you will, as it is where you come from, what you have done and what life you choose to live that defines a person. We will always remember our successful goals, such as climbing Mt. Edith, making it passed the blistering cold Arctic Circle, watching the midnight sun. But we should never forget the failures we have had, and the lessons which we have learned from them. As we continue down the roads of life, we will meet others, affect their lives in some way or another. All we need to remember is that our goals that we meet, reach, and achieve will influence others in the world, some will journey on after your journey has ended but your legacy in some way shape or form will continue indefinitely as the goals, what you’ve done along the way on your road trip of life will contain others which will in turn learn from you or with you and pass that knowledge down for we are forever students, followers, teachers and leaders at the same time, but a great teacher and a great leader’s legacy is infinite.


Friday, October 4, 2013

GOALS - Part 1 By Jason Wang, Alvin, & Mickey

Goals.

The first step of success, is setting out goals.

Imagine a world without goals, people without direction, people who are living on this world without consideration of their future. A world where there is no self reflection, no self discipline and no self direction. But simply a spiritless person who only cares about the temporary comfort. Someone who can survive by living in a virtual video game for the feeling of success.

What is a goal? A goal is a statement or noted action that should be taken in the future. For example, a certain amount of weight loss, a grade to achieve, to finish something in a certain amount of time. Well, at least this definition is what we conccluded with so far. 

Your going on a long boat ride, all you have is a compass, a pen, a notebook, a map, and a bright mind. You have 1 hour to figure out where you want to go, or your map would be blown away or your compass would break. You take out a the pen and notebook briefly write down what you would think is nessesary:
   
    Reach XXX island by noon.
    Finish deck cleaning by 3:00
    Come up with a route to escape the wrath of time wastment.
    Etc.

You then come up with a way to achieve it, no matter smart or not. As long as you finish everything by the noted time. This is how you get things done. This is how you move on without stopping for stupid and unnessesary breaks. This is how you grow closer and closer to what may be considered the “big” and “success”’ goal. 

Over the past seven days we went through many many drills involving goal setting, target planning and simple time management drills.

Day1, people begin to crowd in. New people that we’ve never met before begins to flood the HQ. New members, new ice to break. Its 9:30 in the morning, you have finish certain tasks by the end of the day in order to leave the HQ the next day. We then needed to think of ways to accomplish the many navigation tasks in time. How are we going to do things like such? Why? All considerations made when setting goals.

Day2, We have a testing day, we have a list of things needed to accomplish before the day ends, we have a full 24 hours to do so. As everyone has a paper and a pen, people began to plan time. We have to finish XXX by XXX within XXX minutes. Etc. That was the day delays began to pile in. We received small failures, hour delays, logistic issues, mostly delays. Problems begin to occur, if we delay so much, are we going to be able to reach the artic in time?

Day3,  we headed to the campsite. We arrived at approximately 6:00 and began to set up the tents. It took up 2:30 hours, cooking alone took 2 hours. Our entire time management plan failed. All because we didn’t set the rules staright or plan the goals. We didn’t set goals. Leading to unefficient timings, schedule delays, and so on so forth. We then learnt the importance of planning and time management. To stay on task, to work hard as a team to accomplish the goals set. But how do we enforce it? How do we keep the plan going? We’ll needd time to figure out.

Day 4, We continued on our journey with several navigational hiccups. Where were the pitstops, how long were we going to stay, why etc. We also encountered meal problems, running overtime. All because we didn’t have reinforced goals. How do we improve, what do we improve? The team just sat down with their notebooks out, and began to plan.

    We have to reach Alberta by XXX
    We have to pass Regina by XXX
    We need the XXX by XXX to do XXX
These goals guide us to our planned destination. In our case, to reach the Arctic.


Day 5, Far away gas stations, planning failure, we begin to get on track and farmilliarize with the different scenarios going through our minds constantly. We are farmilliar with the variables, the possibilities, the “reality” of things to make a relatively close judgement.  We begin to get on track and learn from our mistakes. Things change into a somewhat good start. We know the drills, we know the daily needs, the daily requirements the daily goals. Its all about self dicipline. You need to dicipline yourself to know the requirements, the expectations.

Day 6, the big challenge. With the main goal of reaching the arctic, we come up with small goals to gradually build up to the big goal. The ideal example would be day 6. The day we reached 1000 kilometers. We set a goal of 1400, but we try our best to reach it. We may not be capable of reaching the goal, but we can try our best. Asreality crept forward, we noticed that 1400 isn’t a realistic distance and decided to come up with a plan B. We got to the nearest civilization and stopped to find motels, keeping in mind that our goals would be Edmonton, west edmonton mall to be precise. We found the nearest carpark and spent the night there, without heisitation or further consideration. We have a goal, and no matter what, we have to reach it.

Day 7, we came up with a goal of reaching BC in time, while Calvins family nicely treated us to dinner and a extremely comfortable shelter. When you have a goal, and you’ve done nothing but pressuring yourself to reach it, its appropriate for you to have a nice shelter, or simply treating yourself to a nice dinner, you deserve it. If you know better. Communication between goals are also important. Imagine a board of members. One cook, one navigator, one math genius, one art freak, and one language snob. Would you question the math genius’s calculations? Would you question the art freak’s sense of taste? This is all regarding the idea of comminicating to come up with the ultimate judgement, the judgment made by many of the experties, all simply to reach the goal, and make the goal appropriate. You have to learn to push the envelope, yet not burst it. Because being a leader is like a rubber band, you can push real hard, but you can decline real small. It all about flexibility and adaptbility.

Overall, we’ve learnt several realistic judgements along the way. How is it going to help you? How is goals going to help you and guide you to your destination? That a question we just answered. As you follow the assigned tasks, you gradually build yourself up to  standard not far from the target. For example, we began in tonronto, then targeted thunderbay, then Winnipeg, then Regina, and so on so forth. We gradually get closer to our ultimate goal, the Arctic. How? Because we had goals. The pace and efficiency between goals increases over experience, we learn from the failures, the mistakes, but continue to push on as we already have a basic data base located within our brains. Just as people say, practice makes perfect, experience brings wisdom, and knowledge guides us to our destined land with the help of goals.

Self dicipline, self direction and self awareness is the key, you see what youre  doing, why you’re doing it and see how you can improve. Maybe from the point of view as a follower or a leader. Goals, is so important to the human race that without them our world can hardly function. Everyday you see presidents, Concierge, leaders of our world stand out and talk about what they would do to help, why they would do so to help. This is because they want to tell you that they have goals, goals and a direction they want to follow, so that you would agree and help them to it.

Over the years, the presidents and leaders of our world start their job, their oath is all about the goals in their future. How they will accomplish it, why they would accomplish it, and maybe how they will accomplish it. Their self dicipline guides them along the way, their self direction, and their self awareness. Is it completely nessesary to do such thing, is what I’m doing beneficial to the team, so on so forth. Etc.

The first step of success, is setting out goals.

Imagine a world without goals, people without direction, people who are living on this world without consideersation of their future. A world there is no self reflection, no self discipline, no self direction. But simply a spiritless person who only cares about the temporary comfort. Someone who can survive by living in a virtual video game for the feeling of success.

The first step ahead on your long journey ahead, is to plan, plan and investigate, jot down notes, write down goals.