From December, 2016, I started a test for Forex trading based upon a kind of self-designed algorithm. And this version was already updated from that applied around 2011 t0 2012. To my surprise, this newly upgraded qusi-robot trading system worked very well and within 4 months the profit rose up to over 30%. And just before I initiated preparation for celebrating the success, the market ripped up all my dream within one week after Mr. Macron won his presidency. The direct reason seems to be that the Euro rocketed up without too much looking back and this trend is in my algorithm but it overrun the range I predicted. After profoundly analysis of my fault, another mistake was found and I think it would assume more than half of the responsibility for failure this time, and it is that I changed some parameters key to trading volume not in accordance with the standard I set originally but with my greed expansion caused by the smooth profit earning, in another word, I broke the principle, discipline and the law set to trade. And these rules were drawn and formed based upon previous failure and “bloody” experiences and should be more rational and scientific than those generated by me on the spot. However, most fortunately, I quit the trading timely and decisively when I found the trading process was going out of my designed risk range and major part of my capital was secured, and this decision was also made upon the experiences years ago. Sober reflection, especially after a crushing defeat, gives me more references for future amendment and updating to the trading system. Additionally and most importantly, I have to remember deeply in my heart: once a system has already been set on a rational algorithm, any temporary and unproved amendment/update to it would mean a risk which might lead to a disastrous consequences. Therefore, the most important factor for success, either in the field of Forex trading or in our life, does not lie with the preset parameters or standards, but with to what extent you can perform a self-control. When a person has clearly recognized the relations between self-control and success, his/her dream for any kind of freedom, including financial freedom, will not be too far.

The last blog I wrote is on Sept. 18, 2016. During the past five months, so many great things happened to my life and work. I could not stop myself writing a blog today, because I felt that I will break down if I cannot pour out my feelings and emotions. I am quite clear that this will not help me a lot, but just to release my pressure a little bit and perhaps the tips introduced by me hereunder may help those with similar troubles. Every working day, I wake up before six o’clock and arrived at office before 7 and then leave office normally around 6 o’clock. After coming home, I have to help my wife preparing stuff for cooking. At weekend, washing clothes, cleaning rooms and doing shopping and going to see my mother in law, etc fill the whole day time. After having supper and finishing dish-washing, then it is my rest time. Closing my eyes, I adjust my breath for several minutes, then focusing all my attention on feeling the feeling of every parts of my body and the reflection in my mind. The body and brain has very subtle sensation and can let you know what they are feeling on the condition that you are willing and ready to listen to, feel and communicate with them. For example, if one part of my leg feels pain and then I would talk to it silently:”I am sorry that I did not take good care of you and made you suffer so much! Now, don’t worry, this is the time to recover together with me and if you need, I can massage you, if you can recover from this tiredness, instead of illness, then next morning when I wake up, you must stop pain, otherwise, I will deem you are sick.” One special way I invented to fall asleep quickly is to keeping your attention away from any ideas that shifting from one to another. The key point is: keeping away form any ideas that appears in your mind, leaving it alone, not trying to catch it and follow it, always reminding yourself consciously of just watching your ideal come and go as you are watching the pedestrians in the street without following them. Day by day, after some practices, this can work very well and shorten the time into sleep. Besides assisting sleep, this method may help one meditate. I had ever tried to meditate with the same method and it also works.

I have been perplexed recently by more and more quarrels among my family members, especially after Gaokao. In fact, our family only consists of we three: parents and daughter. It would be reasonable to have less things to worry about after Gaokao, but the real situation is contrary. Before Gaokao, most of our attention and time were focused upon our daughter's study and classes in and out of school, and fewer contradictions occurred then, even we did have different views, we had less time or energy to argue with each other. Therefore, we can say that life at that time is tight, simple and quiet. However, after that, as we have expected, we had more time to be together, either in the long summer vacation or at the weekends, and reasonably, we should have enjoyed the gatherings which seemed precious and short before Gaokao, but the reality is not like that: while we have more time to communicate with each other on the one hand, on the other, more problems occurs: instead of urging our daughter to study as we did before, we often fell into disputes over how to allocate the housework among us, or whether agree to pay the on-line shopping items, so and so forth. All trivial matters like these seems continuing everyday, making me headache. I totally and thoroughly understand that life cannot not be without problems, no matter how rich or poor a family is, and every family has the similar phenomena, but I must find a way out. It has become a big Project for me to solve: can I find a better way to deal with these annoying issues and bring more happiness and enjoyment to my family? I'd like to hear the suggestions and proposals from our friends in the CD blog who have the similar experiences. Based upon my situation and analysis by myself, I may carefully observe and improve in the following aspects: 1. Introspect whether I showed enough respects to my family members in the daily life? If not, this is a must to improve, because mutual respect is a key factor for starting and maintaining good mutual communication. This is a common sense both for keeping relations within a family and among states in the world. 2. Introspect whether I have given sufficient patience in listening to their voices? 3.Self-reflect whether I could stand in their shoes while facing disputes, disagreements, or conflicting with them? I had ever read a very inspiring story and I retell it briefly as follows: Once there were two neighboring families, one of which was often thrown into serious conflicts between the spouses, while the other was always in peace. One day, feeling very curious about their neighbor's permanent peacefulness, the spouses of the first family went to ask their neighbor about their knack in keeping family peace. The couple's reply was very simple: the know-how to keep good relations between us is that we are always thinking that I myself is the bad person who made the mistake. For example, one day, I held a flower basin and while I turned around quickly without noting my husband was standing besides me and the flower basin fell onto the floor and broke into pieces. At this moment, my husband said immediately that he was very sorry and it was his fault that he did not let me know he was standing near me; and hearing that, I said it was my fault that I did not pay enough attention while turning around. You see, he said he was the fault or trouble maker, and I said I was, and both of us express sorry to the other party. What would you do if this happened to you? The other lady said that if it happened to us, firstly, I would shout to him and blame him for not opening his eyes while walking around; and it is sure for him to lose his temper immediately and push all the responsibilities to my side, because both of us are always good people and act right without making any mistakes. Undoubtedly, the story tels us that "bad" couple has peacefulness, and "good" ones has not. Why? The logic: Admitting oneself as "Bad"--taking responsibilities proactively--saying sorry--peacefulness;Labeling oneself as "good" --taking no responsibilities proactively--blaming others -- unpeacefulness. So, it seems to be an awful conclusion: Peacefulness can be easily achieved while "bad" people live together; However, it is difficult to have peace while "good" people stay together. Dear friends, I am looking forward to receiving your suggestions and proposals for which I thank you very much in advance.

Do you feel that? Good people nowadays always feel insecure and on alert every second, trying to avoid being cheated of money? How many telecom fraud calls you receive everday? Don't you feel that you are almost being besieged by them? After calculating the number of those perpetrators, you may be frightened. How dare they be so rampant in committing such crimes? Don't they know "karma" (causality)?

Toady, I just tell two scenarios I encountered while shopping in a supermarket. After selecting all the foods and other necessities, I pushed the trolley towards the cashier and then I saw in front of me a tall mid-aged thin man took a small handful of stir-fried sunflower seeds and gave it to a little boy of about four or five years old, which I deemed should be that man’s son and said, “eat it”. I found that the little boy was already eating something before that man gave him sunflower seeds. Why? They were then near the stand of nuts and seeds. I could not make any judgment on this scene, but it reminded me of one of my own past events: one time while shopping, I got so thirsty and I could not resist grabbing a bottle of mineral water and quaffed it immediately, and afterwards, I paid it with the empty bottle. Was it possible for that man to pay with the emptied seeds’ skin? I shook my head and said to myself: whatever, forget it. After checking out, my wife and I came out of the supermarket and then she went to KFC to buy some chicken wings leaving me waiting for her outside. Just then, a trolley passed by me quickly and then stopped abruptly a few steps away. Before making clear what had happened, I heard the lady who held the trolley shouted at a girl standing in the trolley, “why did you drop that bottle on the ground?” At this moment, I noticed there was a small plastic bottle of lactobacillus near the trolley. “Go and picked up and throw into the trash can”, ordered that lady sternly. I could be sure that she was the mother of the poor little girl. The girl, who looked like three or four years old, jumped out of the trolley obediently and picked up the bottle and run to the trash can. I nodded my head several times silently in their direction.

Nearly two months has passed since my last blog dated May 28, 2016. During the past days, I accompanied my daughter's whole process of Gaokao, China's yearly national college enrollment examination. I got the web-published letter of admission for my daughter from a language university in Beijing yesterday, and this may mean a temporary rest for the past 12 years march for my daughter and our family. I thoroughly understand all the families who had just experienced the same physical, mental and psychological tests, which featured as China's nation-wide complex. At this moment, I feel a little bit relaxed and have a impulse to express my greetings to my friends here share some stories. Using this blog, I just make a brief record of my experiences in the past months and I am sure this may also reflex those who have similar situations: To start with, I'd say I dreamed more than one time of my Gaokao while waiting for my daughter's from May 28 to July 18, 2016. My Gaokao, which took place exactly 30 years ago still hang over for the past decades. The scenes related to Gaokao could clearly and repeatedly appear in my dreams which projected great stress and anxiety upon my in-dream life and daily routine. I often talked to my wife about this spiritual tortures and not to my surprise, such scenario happened to her also. The deepest root reason for this had never been officially analyzed by the experts. Personally, I sincerely hope that our country’s related authorities may make an official study on this phenomenon, which I belive it is not rare and individual, but popular and common. I myself had ever conducted some initial and surficial analyses and made a conclusion. The major elements leading to the periodical dream for Gaokao may includes but not limited to: 1. Gaokao, as the Keju(科举) system adopted by our past dynasties for selecting talents for the nation, assumes a heavy historical task both for the country and the attendees. For us, Gaokao is a fatal process which can determine a person’s destiny. Taking myself as a example, my hometown is in the countryside where was then poor and backward economically. If I could not passe the Gaokao, it will be sure for me to follow my parents and siblings’ fate: devoting my whole life to the farmland. 2. The hardship in preparing Gaokao for more than ten years and expecting the admission letter coming out is an extremely excruciating and grueling memory. Without any doubt, it had been rooted in your mind, the bottom of your mind and soul, or even had been planted in our genes which may affects our descendants in a visible or invisible way. Just the above two factors, it is quite enough to influence a person’s life, including his/her night’s dream and daytime routine. Secondly, I’d say, we tried our best to diminish the negative experience which might be had by my daughter. The measures we took in the past two months consists of ample and healthy foods, reasonable timing for her study, exercising, sleep and socializing with classmate and friends (at my Gaokao time, almost no other activities except study). The most important arrangement may be reserving a hotel room for the two examination days. We, by referring to my colleague’s advice, ordered a hotel room over ten days before the Gaokao days, and this plan guaranteed her cozy and full sleeping time. Of course, the expenses, you can imagine, was much higher than its normal rate. Ok, today, let’s stop here.

Part 6--Some Changes Needed for Our EducationIt is the last topic, but not less sensitive.From the kindergarten, preliminary school, to middle and high school through to the post-doctoral eduction, in China (not dare to say World), I am certain that nearly none of our textbooks had ever addressed the “death” as a special topic, let alone as a special subject. Say another word, exceptions may exist in the religious schools, colleges and universities.But human life is also a kind of life, going through birth, aging, ailing and death. It is a pity that we were rarely given lessons on how to perceive the life cycle, how to perceive the afterlife, how to deal with death.We are customed to see the death of other creatures and even extinction of other species, may also had experience of our relatives or friends’ death, have we ever thought about ourselves’ death? Should we have some preparation for that moment? What is your view on afterlife? How will you face that moment, in an easy and joyful way, or in an apathetic way, or in an fearful and suffering way?I heard that “In life, it has no more important things than birth and death”. Everyone of us can see how solemnly and happily we welcome a newborn life to our family, but can we also transform the sorrow and pain in the funeral to joy and happiness? I am sure it is possible!But this transformation will cost a lot and involves many aspects of our life and society, in terms of time, mindset change, social education and public opinion. Among them, the social education and public opinion will be the most significant factor for realizing that transformation.It means that a nation or a group of people should first form a commonly accepted view on death and on afterlife. And this agreeable view will be able to lead not only to a happy end of our life but also to the happy afterlife. Only in this way, can the sorrow and pain brought by death be replaced by joy and happiness. However, everyone can understand that in such a materialism-dominant world how difficult it will be to address such topics, let alone forming a commonly accepted view leading to a happy and joyful attitude toward one’s last moment. So you can see the least possibility of educating the public in a public way.Fortunately, while mass education seemingly impossible, self-education or minority education can still be a possible option, the reality is that many masters and sages in the past and today have always been exploring ways for our sake, to which our greatest appreciation must be given. For us, the only critical problem is whether we are ready to accept, to learn and to practice their teachings. [ The End ]

Part 5--Experiencing Death While AliveThough Death is a taboo, it is not absolutely untouchable.Recent media reports both from abroad and home have shown that an increasing number of people are pondering, studying and even “experiencing” it.“Simulated Funeral” in Korea has come into vogue and many young student showed great interests in it. The study shows that death experience effectively boost the experiencers’ reflection on life and have obvious positive influence on decreasing suicide rate, and their attitude to life grows more proactive and optimistic.Two megacities of China Shanghai and Shenyang (northeast of China), are also conducting similar experience, though there is some differences if terms of format and procedures between the domestic and abroad. The experience in foreign countries allows the participants to experience in a form of game, or focus on the farewell ceremony for the dying person; while in China, these activities attach more importance to the plans for self-improvement after death experience, to assistance given by the mentors through follow-up days, to implementation of the psychic gains into the life reality.The following is a good summary for these trials (From Baidu):“Death Experience (DE) provides you a new approach to view the world, yourself, things and life from outside of the world. It serves a fresh and efficient way or road leading to your own inner world to search and explore self and recognize life. If we take the daily pondering on life as a gradual course, then DE must be the sudden-enlightenment course, enabling you to have a bigger recognition of life within a very short period of time.“After all, Death Experience is a totally newborn thing, while bringing a fresh and weird experience to the bold testers, it also developing a special social organizational form/platform to try to unveil the mysterious mask of death, to help society to re-examine the issue from a common person’s daily life point of view, and further to inspire some people to perceive it from the religious and philosophical angle. The final purpose of these experiments, in my view, is to provide us a brand new method to face it, to think about it, to help us pursue a better life in a more optimistic way. These courageous explorations reflex that some insightful people are working for this aim, can the normal social educational system also play some role in it? In Part 6, I’d like to discuss about it.

Part 4--Which Theory Is More Reasonable About Life & Death? As a common person, I am quite interested in reading books on this kind of subjects. The Bible, Koran and many Buddhist Sutras all expound their theories and doctrines on life and death.Based on my own personal comparison, not on rigorous theoretical study, I am more likely inclined to think that Buddhism is more close to truth, because I think it reasonably interprets the reason for life and death and the sufferings accompanying our life and also paves the ways for us to solve this problems.In order to enable us to have a big picture on this issue quickly, it is better to introduce several Buddhist concepts regarding this .Samsara: The continual repetitive cycle of birth and death is defined as samsara. The reason why the ordinary beings are permanently trapped in this cycle is that they tightly grasp and fixate on a self and experiences. From this definition, we can easily understand that life will never ever end finally, it just change from one form to another form, namely, going through the wheel of karma, experiencing the six realms.Nirvana: In Buddhism, Nirvana is described as the extinguishing of the fires that cause suffering and rebirth. ”These fires are typically identified as the fires of attachment, aversion and ignorance. When the fires are extinguished, suffering and rebirth comes to an end.” (From Wikipedia)The Pure Land:According to the Pure Land Buddhism, if you have faith in Amitabha, and accept Amitabha’s deliverance, and can recite Amitabha’s name single-mindedly, and also aspire to be reborn in Amitabha’s Pure Land then you are sure to be delivered to Pure Land when you come to the end of your life. In the Pure Land, you will never experience the cycle of rebirth again, and from where you will become Buddha one day. Generally speaking, the Pure Land school teaches you a way to transcend Samsara.It is the above three basic concepts that affect my world view, value, and view on life and death. It shows us not only the reason (attachment to “self”) why we are constrained in the cycle of rebirth and suffering, but also the ways (Nirvana, or Delivery to Pure Land by Citing Amitabha) to transcend this cycle. According to Buddhism, it is definitely ourselves, instead of any others, who determine our life and death and our fate. As a normal person, we normally don’t think or plan to "experience death" besides reading or listening to these theories and stories. But it is true that some of humankind are doing so. Let’s have a look in Part 5.

Part 3--Afterlife, Perceived from Common SenseIt is uneasy to clearly demonstrate the variant viewpoints on afterlife, so I simply sort it out on the ground of common sense.Very roughly, the viewpoints could fall into two categories or schools: one believes afterlife exists; another one does not. In the first category: Christians believe that they can go to heaven after death if they believe God and commit no sins. Buddhism disciples believes that if one cannot transcend the samsara, than a being will be trapped in the cycle of life-and-death endlessly.In the second category: Materialism denies the existence of afterlife. According to my observance and knowledge, those who believe afterlife may face death in an easy and natural manner, as they know they are not really stop being a being, but transform into another form of being. Therefore, they are not afraid of death, but to some extent, welcome, expect and embrace it warmly. On the contrary, those who don’t believe afterlife will have an absolutely distinctive reflection: they, as was told that there is only this one life, are always worrying about losing it. And this may bring them two opposite attitude to human life: either treasure it and live a life carefully and kindheartedly; or spoil it as they need not to care about the next one second after death. And the latter may lead to devastating aftermath, disaster and calamity either to himself or to the outside world.Now, let’s move from the viewpoint of personal common sense to a relatively simple theoretical exploration in Part 4.