Happy Holidays

Dear KosNet Friends

It is hard to believe it is already December. 2012 has been a good year for me in many ways. I would like to inform you good news. Kos Ishii Graduate Fellowship Fund at Stanford is now supporting two students in ME department in this year. I received lovely letters from two recipients. That was a great gift to me!! 

So, at the end of the year, I would like to share my goal statement with you. Using ME 317 Design Tools, following is my goal statement.

TO Design the Best and the Happiest Life System that brings mental, physical, and financial happiness to me

BY living each moment to the fullest, being open in choosing the most value added action

USING ME317 design methods with “Receiving Theory” as an operating system

WHILE also exploring other methods

AS MEASURED BY the quality of my situational emotional state of being and the length of it

TO exceed beyond my own expectation

“Receiving Theory” is my best friend Dr. Jeannie Kahwajy’s theory. I hope I will have another chance to share her theory with you, but if I do not have such a chance, following is her web site and you can google her to see many presentations she made.  And indeed, this year has been “beyond my own expectation”. Have a wonderful holiday season!! Thank you for your friendship.

Naomi

http://www.effectiveinteractions.com/

Visit to Japan

Dear KosNet Friends

I spent October in Japan. It started with very hot days and ended with beautiful fall days. I had great time meeting many friends and family members. This time I traveled to Kyushu to visit Kos's friend and my cousin, then visited Hiroshima for the first time. I have to confess that I never fully realized the magnitude of atomic bomb until I visited peace memorial museum. My head may have collected a lot of knowledge about atomic bomb but my heart has not really understood. I have to say that I am still digesting what I saw and learned. I also visited Osaka and went to Expo park. Let me share the picture of Taiyo-no To I took in Japan. I also enjoyed attending MML VIA Alumni luncheon. It was really heart warming to know that Kos's spirit is still alive in many people.

Summer went by quickly

Hi KosNet Friend

Again, sorry for the long silence. It was not that I have not done anything, but rather I did so much and too busy to organize myself to update Blog.

From mid June, I spent one month in Sydney Australia, visiting John's family. John is Kos's best friend from high school. We went to his wedding and John and Robyn came to our wedding. They have four wonderful boys and I had no problem finding my date for jogging, hiking, shopping and various other activities. John's hobby is Kayaking, and I fell in love with it!! Kayaking is a wonderful sport to enjoy beautiful nature. Only thing is that it was winter in Australia, so it was COLD!! I visited many memorable places; Kos's school, Kos's house where he grew up and various other places we went together in 2006.... I have to admit that it was not easy. Tears came out without reason. At the same time, I am grateful that Kos left me so many great memories and great friends. Let me share with you couple pictures from Australia.

Then after I came back, I had another MML student wedding. It was wonderful to catch up with other MMLers. Summer was busy with parties, visitors, golf etc. Most memorable visitor was my best friend Akko from Sophia and her daughter. We felt like we were still teens, but the reality is that we met each other at her daughter's age!! So, I had wonderful summer.

Now, I am spending October in Japan. I will share with you about this trip in couple weeks!!

Naomi

It's almost August!!

Hi KosNet Friends

Before I noticed, it is almost August!! Wow, more than two months have passed since I reported winning the golf tournament. Well, I am playing a lot of golf in summer, but my score is not really good these days. I guess I got one chance and I took it.

The biggest news is that I gave a talk in ME317B class on June 4th. The title of my talk was "How to build the best and the happiest life system using ME317 design tools". Bold title, right? I wanted to share with students how I am using design tools Kos taught to maximize the value of my life. Yes, I use goal statement, customer value chain analysis (CVCA), structure tree, function tree, priority matrix, voice of customers (VOC) and other tools every day to choose the most value added action to enhance the value of my life. After all, who is the customer of my life? Me, right? So, I need to use design tools to listen to the voice of me, in other words, what my heart really wants.  I also thank to my friend Jeannie for her "receiving theory", which I use as my operating system. I made power point slides for the first time in my life by myself!! I am most grateful that students liked my talk. Yes, I now firmly believe that design tools exist not only to make good products, but also to make good life. I enjoyed the final presentation by students on June 6th and dinner afterwards!!  Now the quarter is over, I am trying to catch up with many administrative things we have been ignoring. One of the projects is to digitize Kos's library, and I am working on that!!  Well, I also had good trip to visit my friends.

So, I was not in cave and did a lot in past two months, and I am grateful for that.

Naomi

I love Golf

Hi KosNet Friends

I would like to share a great news with you. I won the Handicap Tournament at Stanford Women's Golf Club on May 12th. This really means a lot to me, since my name will be engraved on the glass board in Golf Club. It was a three day match tournament and my opponent at the final was D, who is my best friend at golf club. She, her husband, Kos and I went to Hawaii together in 2006. So, I felt that either she wins or I win, I would be happy. Well... I should be honest. I really wanted!!  But more than anything, I am happy that I was able to do my best. It was a really close match and I was always behind and finally caught up on 16th hole, tied on 17th.  On 18th hole, I was very lucky to sink a long put. I am grateful to D for such a great friend and a great competitor. She and I actually are taking lessons together, so we both are thankful to our coach.  I thank Kos for teaching me how to play golf and grateful that university gave me widow survivorship for membership. Initially, golf was such a frustrating sport for me and I did not like it.  I now love playing golf. It helps me to learn humility, though it will take a long way. I shot 89 two weeks ago, but yesterday, I shot 104!! So it comes and goes. I will keep on practicing!!  

Naomi

Visit by VIA

Hi KosNet Friends

 On Wednesday 2nd, we had a surprise visitor to ME317B. Sam!! He was a VIA (visiting industrial associate)  from N company in 2005 to 2006. He came JIT (just in time) to rescue me for changing the wipers. I did not know how to change it, so I have been using the original one for 6 years!!  No wonder it had squeaky sound. And where did we go? Of course, it is ZOTTS. Kos loved this hamberger place. When we were students, we went there many times by bicycle. It is famous for rectangular shape berger. Of course we had boat of fried potatoes, too. Sam then helped me with book project. Since we no longer have laboratory space, we are intending to digitize books so that we can save space. We have more than 30 boxes of books, you know. I found the company called 1$scan, that scan 100 pages for $1. But in order to bring books to this place, I need to go over each book to take out any post-it and erase pencil marks. Well, we went through about 100 books together. It was interesting to see what kind of books Kos liked. It seems numerical formulas were not his favorite. His favorites are more for ideas, design and inspirations. Thank you Sam for helping me. Without you, it would have been a very boring work.  

http://1dollarscan.com/index.php

Kos Ishii Fellowhip

Dear KosNet Friends

I met the first student who received Kos Ishii fellowship. He is a ME student with emphasis on design of Robot. I was able to visit his laboratory and see the work he is currently working. He is designing Human Friendly Robot with professors in Computer Science department and ME department. I am happy to find that he is interested in adding human element to the robot. I am sure Kos is happy to have him as the first recipient.