I'm pissed! Of late, all the nice pretty signboards put up by the local council are defaced by stickers offering money lending services by Ah Longs who operate around KL. With the Government fast terminating the mobile phone numbers found on the stickers that deface and litter public as well as public property, it's amazing why these people keep coming back for more.
It's either they are trying to tire down the government or they are really hard up for business. Nevertheless, I don't think it's right for them to do such things! I'm really pissed when I can't read the roadsigns especially at night. If I can't read it, it means the people who come and visit me cant as well. So what gives?
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Boxing day! Happy Belated Xmas to all!!!!!
Xmas came and went in a blink of an eye but not without the fanfare and celebration. This year I noticed alot of different things unique to the coming of a new decade. The first thing was, a radio station, which happens to be the one I listen to the most, took the initiative to put up a xmas tree. It wasn't any simple xmas tree, but one where listeners could donate toys and other essential items to put up on the tree to be donated to a children's home somewhere in KL.
I didn't really follow up on the development of the tree but the last I read the deejays' blogs, they mentioned that there already were stuffed toys, food items and even 2 television sets and dvd players. Now what amazes me was that, the first toy was donated by a malay guy and so was a few other items that went up on that tree. The point I am trying to stress is that, coming of age, xmas is not only celebrated by christians alone but of all races and religions.
As a non-christian, I have came to accept xmas as being not only a symbol of religious significance (in this case a milestone in the history of Christianity) but as a symbol of unity amongst all races and religious believes, I dare say this in the context of being a Malaysian and my ideas may not be correctly intepreted outside my own country.
The weekends leading to xmas day had seen mainly shopping malls decking out their centre spaces with ornate and unique xmas decorations and setups. Everyone was seen trying to capture perfect shots of the xmas decorations with or without themselves in them, busy buying gifts of chocolates and whatever nots for their loved ones and friends and going about their so called xmas shopping. At the Pavilion mall in KL, half of these people were from the Middle East, and the rest of them consists of the 3 major races in Malaysia as well as other Malaysians.
Which brings me back to my point, xmas today, as compared to many years ago has become a Malaysian thing, not merely a christian thing cos everyone gaily celebrates this holiday and find ways to make it a special part of their lives.
As for me, we had a cozy little barbecue at my girlfriend's place on xmas night and I really had a good time and non of us are even christians.
In the spirit of 1Malaysia, I'm happy at how this holiday went by leaving everybody happier and closer to each other and the level of acceptance (not merely tolerance, as previously used in the media to describe a peaceful inter-racial society) that we have came to have of each other. I am so proud to be Malaysian!
I didn't really follow up on the development of the tree but the last I read the deejays' blogs, they mentioned that there already were stuffed toys, food items and even 2 television sets and dvd players. Now what amazes me was that, the first toy was donated by a malay guy and so was a few other items that went up on that tree. The point I am trying to stress is that, coming of age, xmas is not only celebrated by christians alone but of all races and religions.
As a non-christian, I have came to accept xmas as being not only a symbol of religious significance (in this case a milestone in the history of Christianity) but as a symbol of unity amongst all races and religious believes, I dare say this in the context of being a Malaysian and my ideas may not be correctly intepreted outside my own country.
The weekends leading to xmas day had seen mainly shopping malls decking out their centre spaces with ornate and unique xmas decorations and setups. Everyone was seen trying to capture perfect shots of the xmas decorations with or without themselves in them, busy buying gifts of chocolates and whatever nots for their loved ones and friends and going about their so called xmas shopping. At the Pavilion mall in KL, half of these people were from the Middle East, and the rest of them consists of the 3 major races in Malaysia as well as other Malaysians.
Which brings me back to my point, xmas today, as compared to many years ago has become a Malaysian thing, not merely a christian thing cos everyone gaily celebrates this holiday and find ways to make it a special part of their lives.
As for me, we had a cozy little barbecue at my girlfriend's place on xmas night and I really had a good time and non of us are even christians.
In the spirit of 1Malaysia, I'm happy at how this holiday went by leaving everybody happier and closer to each other and the level of acceptance (not merely tolerance, as previously used in the media to describe a peaceful inter-racial society) that we have came to have of each other. I am so proud to be Malaysian!
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
The most disgusting thing ever!
I really dunno whether I should write this here or not. It's disgusting! I thought of writing it in Experience Project so that nobody will know it's me! hahahaha... anyway this is the story:
Yesterday I decided to ride my motorbike to work to avoid the crazy jam. At 5:30pm it started to rain heavily so I hung around the office a while and decided to brave the rain and ride back after wearing my raincoat and jacket. Halfway home I smelt Satay Kajang, something I haven't had for a long long time already. This satay stall in the highway rest area is the famous 1 in kajang, Haji Samuri Sate Kajang and it happens to be my favorite! So I ordered 10 sticks and just when I was about to sit down and eat 1 stick, Kev called and asked me to go to Cheras for dinner with them. So I decided to eat only 5 sticks and tapao the rest home.
A little about satay kajang is that, many people have been talking about them adding women's sanitary pads (which is some sort of black magic used by bomohs in Malaysia to make people get addicted to stuff - so I was told lah) into the kuah (curry) of the satay so that people will get hooked to it and keep coming back. Because I love satay kajang, I think what people say is all total bollocks, besides, why would they do such a thing and tarnish their own image? They are a franchise now.
So that aside, I went to have dinner with Kev, his wife Eve and his housemate Ah Soon who couldn't walk for the past 2 months after a motorcycle accident left his leg broken and he had to use crutches. After the dinner I took my satay home (in a white plastic bag)and left it on the kitchen counter and went to sleep, cos too tired and all drenched by rain on the way back from work earlier.
The next morning I woke up and decided to finish up the 5 sticks of satay cos the kuah couldn't be kept long and will become stale. I opened up the plastic bag and u know what the hell I found? A used condom with spunk inside! What on earth?! Then all the stories about bomohs and black magic quickly flashed in my mind, u know lah if you are forced to wake up for work at 6am and u see something like this, u will be pissed too. I didn't think much about it and took it and flushed it into the toilet bowl and I finished up my food. Actually the condom didn't touch my food lah cos my food was in separate plastic bags, the white bag was only to carry all the separate food plastic bags.
The whole journey to work I was disturbed by what had happened earlier, I totally had no idea what happened. Then I remembered the night before the guy renting the room from me had a female guest overnight at his place. So I smsed him asking him if he had mistook my plastic bag of food for a garbage bag, which is common cos we all mostly use white plastic bags for our garbage around here.
He said oops, he was having drinks last night and could have threw his used "...." inside my packet of food! And I was like... WTF!!!!! of all the possible people this kind of things could happen to and it had to happen to me! Luckily my day at work was pleasant if not I'd be kicking some ass already. Anyways my friend said he owe me a nice meal. Now ain't that disgusting!
Yesterday I decided to ride my motorbike to work to avoid the crazy jam. At 5:30pm it started to rain heavily so I hung around the office a while and decided to brave the rain and ride back after wearing my raincoat and jacket. Halfway home I smelt Satay Kajang, something I haven't had for a long long time already. This satay stall in the highway rest area is the famous 1 in kajang, Haji Samuri Sate Kajang and it happens to be my favorite! So I ordered 10 sticks and just when I was about to sit down and eat 1 stick, Kev called and asked me to go to Cheras for dinner with them. So I decided to eat only 5 sticks and tapao the rest home.
A little about satay kajang is that, many people have been talking about them adding women's sanitary pads (which is some sort of black magic used by bomohs in Malaysia to make people get addicted to stuff - so I was told lah) into the kuah (curry) of the satay so that people will get hooked to it and keep coming back. Because I love satay kajang, I think what people say is all total bollocks, besides, why would they do such a thing and tarnish their own image? They are a franchise now.
So that aside, I went to have dinner with Kev, his wife Eve and his housemate Ah Soon who couldn't walk for the past 2 months after a motorcycle accident left his leg broken and he had to use crutches. After the dinner I took my satay home (in a white plastic bag)and left it on the kitchen counter and went to sleep, cos too tired and all drenched by rain on the way back from work earlier.
The next morning I woke up and decided to finish up the 5 sticks of satay cos the kuah couldn't be kept long and will become stale. I opened up the plastic bag and u know what the hell I found? A used condom with spunk inside! What on earth?! Then all the stories about bomohs and black magic quickly flashed in my mind, u know lah if you are forced to wake up for work at 6am and u see something like this, u will be pissed too. I didn't think much about it and took it and flushed it into the toilet bowl and I finished up my food. Actually the condom didn't touch my food lah cos my food was in separate plastic bags, the white bag was only to carry all the separate food plastic bags.
The whole journey to work I was disturbed by what had happened earlier, I totally had no idea what happened. Then I remembered the night before the guy renting the room from me had a female guest overnight at his place. So I smsed him asking him if he had mistook my plastic bag of food for a garbage bag, which is common cos we all mostly use white plastic bags for our garbage around here.
He said oops, he was having drinks last night and could have threw his used "...." inside my packet of food! And I was like... WTF!!!!! of all the possible people this kind of things could happen to and it had to happen to me! Luckily my day at work was pleasant if not I'd be kicking some ass already. Anyways my friend said he owe me a nice meal. Now ain't that disgusting!
Sunday, December 06, 2009
On second thoughts...
On second thoughts, I think I will continue to update here as well as in wordpress cos the wordpress blog buttons and dashboard is too difficult to understand, it will take me some time to do so.
Anyway, here's a video from my last visit with Lions Clubs International to Ti-Ratana Children's Home in KL. Its very cute! Enjoy!
Anyway, here's a video from my last visit with Lions Clubs International to Ti-Ratana Children's Home in KL. Its very cute! Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
What are the rules of the game-Part 1
What are the rules of the game? If you want to play to win then you must know the rules of the game. In every game there are rules. Be it a game in sports, politics, work, life or even relationships, it doesn’t matter, as long as we are going to play it, we have to know the rules.
Knowing the rules of the game doesn’t mean we have to follow them in order to win. Remember what I said in the second sentence, if you want to play to win then you must know the rules of the game. Some people win by playing according to the rules, while some others win by breaking the rules. It all boils down to what our individual definitions of winning is. For each and every one of us, winning can be different things. For me it may be having a lot of money to spend when I am old and for Tiger Woods it may be a hole-in-one at the US PGA championships.
The universal first rule of any game, in my opinion, no matter what game you are playing is, to make a commitment to participate fully and wholeheartedly and not quit until the game is over.
Knowing the rules of the game doesn’t mean we have to follow them in order to win. Remember what I said in the second sentence, if you want to play to win then you must know the rules of the game. Some people win by playing according to the rules, while some others win by breaking the rules. It all boils down to what our individual definitions of winning is. For each and every one of us, winning can be different things. For me it may be having a lot of money to spend when I am old and for Tiger Woods it may be a hole-in-one at the US PGA championships.
The universal first rule of any game, in my opinion, no matter what game you are playing is, to make a commitment to participate fully and wholeheartedly and not quit until the game is over.
Some of my previously unpublished thots #4
Like most KLites, running the rat race doesn’t leave me much time to think about anything else besides myself and those who are important to me. I have wanted to give back to the community for as long as I could remember but when it came to actually doing it, there are a million and one excuses I can conjure for not doing it. Sounds familiar? Sadly, giving back to the community to many of us is nothing more than what we confess we never could find the time to do.
Fortunately, last week my girlfriend and I, we were lucky enough to have both the time and opportunity to actually do our little part in giving back to the community and it was an eye opener to the both of us although what we did was what many may consider insignificant. Yet we were happy that we managed to do our part.
I recently joined a KL chapter of a club (LCI) which focuses on doing social and community work. On a rainy Monday evening, inching through the rush hour traffic which had just started to build up, we made our way to Brickfields accompanied by 2 friends who were visiting KL from the UK we had just met at a Deepavali open house the night before. It was around 5pm and the rain wasn’t showing signs of stopping anytime soon. We arrived at our destination at the Railway Club building behind the YMCA in a part of town I swear I had never set foot upon before.
To describe how I felt then, maybe it was the damp weather, everything looks a pale shade of gray, the neighborhood looked tired and sad and there already was a line forming outside the building. We were there for the LCI’s feed the needy which some of the members try to run everyday at 5-6pm on weekdays. About 20 minutes later, one of the member’s car pulled up at the entrance and popped his trunk. We wasted no time distributing Styrofoam packets of food to those who were waiting in line to receive them. These Styrofoam packs contain rice and a few vegetable dishes cooked by our fellow LCI members.
One member told me that those who receive these packets of food were mostly the blind working in massage parlors nearby, ex-drug addicts, physically challenged individuals, beggers and those who looked really and desperately poor and the both of them (a couple) have been doing this for so long that they have memorized most of the names of those who come and collect their food packets daily.
This experience has taught me a few important lessons in life. The first is to be happy with what I have and never ever complain that I don’t have enough because there are those who are far more disadvantaged than me. The second is the importance of giving back to the society and community because what goes around comes around. Our act of giving back to the community may not reward us with monetary gains but it may reward us with happiness and contentment that we have played our part in making a difference in someone else’s life.
Fortunately, last week my girlfriend and I, we were lucky enough to have both the time and opportunity to actually do our little part in giving back to the community and it was an eye opener to the both of us although what we did was what many may consider insignificant. Yet we were happy that we managed to do our part.
I recently joined a KL chapter of a club (LCI) which focuses on doing social and community work. On a rainy Monday evening, inching through the rush hour traffic which had just started to build up, we made our way to Brickfields accompanied by 2 friends who were visiting KL from the UK we had just met at a Deepavali open house the night before. It was around 5pm and the rain wasn’t showing signs of stopping anytime soon. We arrived at our destination at the Railway Club building behind the YMCA in a part of town I swear I had never set foot upon before.
To describe how I felt then, maybe it was the damp weather, everything looks a pale shade of gray, the neighborhood looked tired and sad and there already was a line forming outside the building. We were there for the LCI’s feed the needy which some of the members try to run everyday at 5-6pm on weekdays. About 20 minutes later, one of the member’s car pulled up at the entrance and popped his trunk. We wasted no time distributing Styrofoam packets of food to those who were waiting in line to receive them. These Styrofoam packs contain rice and a few vegetable dishes cooked by our fellow LCI members.
One member told me that those who receive these packets of food were mostly the blind working in massage parlors nearby, ex-drug addicts, physically challenged individuals, beggers and those who looked really and desperately poor and the both of them (a couple) have been doing this for so long that they have memorized most of the names of those who come and collect their food packets daily.
This experience has taught me a few important lessons in life. The first is to be happy with what I have and never ever complain that I don’t have enough because there are those who are far more disadvantaged than me. The second is the importance of giving back to the society and community because what goes around comes around. Our act of giving back to the community may not reward us with monetary gains but it may reward us with happiness and contentment that we have played our part in making a difference in someone else’s life.
Some of my previously unpublished thots #3
I’ve lived in KL for the past 7 and a half years. Hailing from Penang, I still miss my life on the island much more than in the big city. If it wasn’t for my commitments here in the city, I would have moved back a long time ago.
During my time here I can proudly say that I have managed to achieve what most young people who move to the big city from every small town and village in Malaysia have achieved and more. You may call it the Malaysian dream if you like. Frankly I’d like to see it as the Malaysian dream as well, a house, a car, a stable relationship and a promising career.
However in the past 2 years I have come to challenge my beliefs about what this all meant in the long run. Will we be truly happy with what we have achieved so far and is it able to sustain us in the long run?
Recently the government announced that the poverty line for Malaysians living in KL is RM3,000 per month. I am no statistician but I assume that not less than 70% of the 4 million or so KL residents fall within this category with no certainty that their fate will be much brighter as the days go by. Coupled with inflation, the rising prices of goods, the uncertainty in the world economy and million other considerations, what is there not to challenge about our social beliefs? But yet many of us still go thru life on auto pilot everyday working harder and putting longer hours in their jobs hoping that one day, maybe one day something unexpected happens and their lives would be changed forever.
Today I read in the newspaper that a man who has been buying 4D numbers for the past 20 years hit the jackpot of RM9million. I’m both envious and really happy for him but how many of us will ever be as lucky as him? It’s a one in 26 million chance ratio! For the rest of us, it’s back to work at 9am tomorrow morning or our bosses are more than happy to show us the door.
I believe that most of us are in the situations we are in because we are not aware enough of the world which is revolving around us. Yes, I meant what I said. Even I am guilty of that. We are too engrossed in ourselves that we fail to hit the ‘pause’ button and look around and feel our surroundings. Hear the sounds, see the sights, smell the air, feel the reality of being in the present. No, I am not Deepak Chopra or talking about the ‘Secret’. Rather, the order of nature is what goes around comes around and we need to constantly circulate around what we want to receive eventually.
Let me explain what I mean by this. I am just like any other person on the face of this earth, someone who has to constantly look out for number one and find every way to survive each day just to see the next and put food on the table but I find that the harder I try to chase something, wealth, health, career, relationships the further I find myself away from it. After a while, I, like any of you start to question whether all of this is worthwhile. I start to question my methods and the way I think and act and came to this conclusion. When I stop thinking about me and start to think of things bigger than myself, everything I have been worrying and stressed up about start to take care of itself in a way.
I started to really embrace the way of life where in order to receive, first I have to give. Years ago I attended a seminar and the speaker talked about HAVE, DO, BE and BE, DO, HAVE. To many, including myself, the mindset is, when I have the time or the money or whatever then I will do the things which I want to do, be it a business, social work, charity, chase dreams, go on a holiday and so on and thus, I will be happy or rich or whatever emotions or gratification we normally attach to achieving what we set out to do.
What about the other way round? Have we ever given a thought to that? To be, charitable, or satisfied with what we already have or happy then do the things that those emotions or state of mind allows us to do and have the rewards that comes with it at the end as a result of it. This is the most powerful 3 words that if embraced right, are able to determine the outcome of our lives but first, we need to really appreciate the meaning of it and get it in the right order.
Not many people are able to put their lives at a total halt and take a timeout to check the map and see if we are going in the right direction or chart a new course and follow it if the destination we are heading towards isn’t the one we want to follow but changing the way we think with the guidance of the 3 little words Be, Do and Have can make a profound difference in a person’s life. I call it synchronizing our beliefs to our actions and following through while checking our progress each step of the way.
Will the outcome be what we want it to be? Then it boils down to our principles and what we stand up for or what we see ourselves to be. Will we have more money, more time, more satisfaction, more love, more happiness, more health to do the things we want to do?
During my time here I can proudly say that I have managed to achieve what most young people who move to the big city from every small town and village in Malaysia have achieved and more. You may call it the Malaysian dream if you like. Frankly I’d like to see it as the Malaysian dream as well, a house, a car, a stable relationship and a promising career.
However in the past 2 years I have come to challenge my beliefs about what this all meant in the long run. Will we be truly happy with what we have achieved so far and is it able to sustain us in the long run?
Recently the government announced that the poverty line for Malaysians living in KL is RM3,000 per month. I am no statistician but I assume that not less than 70% of the 4 million or so KL residents fall within this category with no certainty that their fate will be much brighter as the days go by. Coupled with inflation, the rising prices of goods, the uncertainty in the world economy and million other considerations, what is there not to challenge about our social beliefs? But yet many of us still go thru life on auto pilot everyday working harder and putting longer hours in their jobs hoping that one day, maybe one day something unexpected happens and their lives would be changed forever.
Today I read in the newspaper that a man who has been buying 4D numbers for the past 20 years hit the jackpot of RM9million. I’m both envious and really happy for him but how many of us will ever be as lucky as him? It’s a one in 26 million chance ratio! For the rest of us, it’s back to work at 9am tomorrow morning or our bosses are more than happy to show us the door.
I believe that most of us are in the situations we are in because we are not aware enough of the world which is revolving around us. Yes, I meant what I said. Even I am guilty of that. We are too engrossed in ourselves that we fail to hit the ‘pause’ button and look around and feel our surroundings. Hear the sounds, see the sights, smell the air, feel the reality of being in the present. No, I am not Deepak Chopra or talking about the ‘Secret’. Rather, the order of nature is what goes around comes around and we need to constantly circulate around what we want to receive eventually.
Let me explain what I mean by this. I am just like any other person on the face of this earth, someone who has to constantly look out for number one and find every way to survive each day just to see the next and put food on the table but I find that the harder I try to chase something, wealth, health, career, relationships the further I find myself away from it. After a while, I, like any of you start to question whether all of this is worthwhile. I start to question my methods and the way I think and act and came to this conclusion. When I stop thinking about me and start to think of things bigger than myself, everything I have been worrying and stressed up about start to take care of itself in a way.
I started to really embrace the way of life where in order to receive, first I have to give. Years ago I attended a seminar and the speaker talked about HAVE, DO, BE and BE, DO, HAVE. To many, including myself, the mindset is, when I have the time or the money or whatever then I will do the things which I want to do, be it a business, social work, charity, chase dreams, go on a holiday and so on and thus, I will be happy or rich or whatever emotions or gratification we normally attach to achieving what we set out to do.
What about the other way round? Have we ever given a thought to that? To be, charitable, or satisfied with what we already have or happy then do the things that those emotions or state of mind allows us to do and have the rewards that comes with it at the end as a result of it. This is the most powerful 3 words that if embraced right, are able to determine the outcome of our lives but first, we need to really appreciate the meaning of it and get it in the right order.
Not many people are able to put their lives at a total halt and take a timeout to check the map and see if we are going in the right direction or chart a new course and follow it if the destination we are heading towards isn’t the one we want to follow but changing the way we think with the guidance of the 3 little words Be, Do and Have can make a profound difference in a person’s life. I call it synchronizing our beliefs to our actions and following through while checking our progress each step of the way.
Will the outcome be what we want it to be? Then it boils down to our principles and what we stand up for or what we see ourselves to be. Will we have more money, more time, more satisfaction, more love, more happiness, more health to do the things we want to do?
Some of my previously unpublished thots #2
Have I been living under a rock all this time? I have been too engrossed in living my life here in KL that 2 years and 8 months have passed since I last went back to Singapore. Where did all that time go to? All this while I thought that ‘how time flies’ was just a figure of speech!
I also just found out today from the ICA website that I have not kept my end of the bargain in the 1 year minimum requirement for me to stay in the island state. With 4 months more to go before my permanent residence in Singapore expires, I am not so sure whether or not the Singapore government will consider renewing my PRship.
On the other hand, my life hasn’t been all that smooth sailing in the past 2 years and 8 months as well. The only thing that went well for me was my MBA which up to today, I have managed to finish 8 out of 9 subjects and now left with 1 more subject to go and a thesis before I can finally add that 3 alphabets after my name and start chasing bigger dreams, dreams I had wanted to chase in Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom or even in the United States.
I was there over the weekend, accompanying a friend to a job interview he setup with a new company based out of Singapore. After the Star Cruises experience last year, I had came to realize the importance of going with conventional wisdom and mainstream choices when it comes to choosing which field you want to be in when you were in Uni or in school.
When I was in Uni in Australia in the 90s, all I thought of was taking the easy courses so that I could do my best not to drop out and graduating as soon as possible so that I could go home to see my family a few thousand miles away. Since we were studying the easy courses (business!), we used to have a good laugh at friends who were struggling in their engineering or architecture or even accounting courses, burning the midnight oil trying to stay awake cramming for their examinations. Look at where they are and who they are today! At this point I wish I studied finance or some useful degree back then.
Specialist skills is just as important as wearing a condom if you are not expecting a kid. If I were wise old sage talking to young kids while seating atop a very high mountain in Tibet I would say this: “Don’t listen to the wanker who tells you that you should follow your dreams and go to university to study business, or commerce or management and marketing as a degree.” What you have to go thru the next 10-20 years after that might just be what I am going thru today, totally unsure about the future.
Unless you are lucky to become somebody famous like my Uni mates Joey Yap, the famous feng-shui master or Kid Chan, the celebrity photographer, chances are you’d have to work your ass off from a very low place in a company who wouldn’t understand why they need to pay you the one thousand bucks extra a month just because you graduated from an overseas university when they can pay 2 ‘O’ levels grads to do the same job as what you are doing.
Courses like Accounting, or Finance or Banking or even Electrical Engineering never sounded cool back when I was in university. To us they were reserved for geeks and nerds. Well if we only knew what would happen 10 years down the road, we wouldn’t be thinking the way we did back then.
I am not saying all that overseas education taught me nothing, after all, I was in a managerial position in my last job, I was just not satisfied with the choices that were made back then. And we thought we knew it all!
I got this from the Straits Times in Singapore. It was an article by Su Guaning, the president of Nanyang Technological University in his address to the Student Network Forum.
I would like to share with you this view of employability by the founder of Visa International, Dee Hock:
“Hire and promote/First on the basis of integrity;/Second, motivation;/Third, capacity;/Fifth, knowledge;/And last and least, experience”
“Without integrity, motivation is dangerous;/Without capacity, understanding is limited;/Without understanding, knowledge is meaningless;/Without knowledge, experience is blind./Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
Your time in university is about acquiring knowledge to help you in your chosen career. Do not simply become a passive recipient of knowledge. Isn’t that meaningful? I wish this guy had came around 10 years ago and told me that.
I also just found out today from the ICA website that I have not kept my end of the bargain in the 1 year minimum requirement for me to stay in the island state. With 4 months more to go before my permanent residence in Singapore expires, I am not so sure whether or not the Singapore government will consider renewing my PRship.
On the other hand, my life hasn’t been all that smooth sailing in the past 2 years and 8 months as well. The only thing that went well for me was my MBA which up to today, I have managed to finish 8 out of 9 subjects and now left with 1 more subject to go and a thesis before I can finally add that 3 alphabets after my name and start chasing bigger dreams, dreams I had wanted to chase in Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom or even in the United States.
I was there over the weekend, accompanying a friend to a job interview he setup with a new company based out of Singapore. After the Star Cruises experience last year, I had came to realize the importance of going with conventional wisdom and mainstream choices when it comes to choosing which field you want to be in when you were in Uni or in school.
When I was in Uni in Australia in the 90s, all I thought of was taking the easy courses so that I could do my best not to drop out and graduating as soon as possible so that I could go home to see my family a few thousand miles away. Since we were studying the easy courses (business!), we used to have a good laugh at friends who were struggling in their engineering or architecture or even accounting courses, burning the midnight oil trying to stay awake cramming for their examinations. Look at where they are and who they are today! At this point I wish I studied finance or some useful degree back then.
Specialist skills is just as important as wearing a condom if you are not expecting a kid. If I were wise old sage talking to young kids while seating atop a very high mountain in Tibet I would say this: “Don’t listen to the wanker who tells you that you should follow your dreams and go to university to study business, or commerce or management and marketing as a degree.” What you have to go thru the next 10-20 years after that might just be what I am going thru today, totally unsure about the future.
Unless you are lucky to become somebody famous like my Uni mates Joey Yap, the famous feng-shui master or Kid Chan, the celebrity photographer, chances are you’d have to work your ass off from a very low place in a company who wouldn’t understand why they need to pay you the one thousand bucks extra a month just because you graduated from an overseas university when they can pay 2 ‘O’ levels grads to do the same job as what you are doing.
Courses like Accounting, or Finance or Banking or even Electrical Engineering never sounded cool back when I was in university. To us they were reserved for geeks and nerds. Well if we only knew what would happen 10 years down the road, we wouldn’t be thinking the way we did back then.
I am not saying all that overseas education taught me nothing, after all, I was in a managerial position in my last job, I was just not satisfied with the choices that were made back then. And we thought we knew it all!
I got this from the Straits Times in Singapore. It was an article by Su Guaning, the president of Nanyang Technological University in his address to the Student Network Forum.
I would like to share with you this view of employability by the founder of Visa International, Dee Hock:
“Hire and promote/First on the basis of integrity;/Second, motivation;/Third, capacity;/Fifth, knowledge;/And last and least, experience”
“Without integrity, motivation is dangerous;/Without capacity, understanding is limited;/Without understanding, knowledge is meaningless;/Without knowledge, experience is blind./Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
Your time in university is about acquiring knowledge to help you in your chosen career. Do not simply become a passive recipient of knowledge. Isn’t that meaningful? I wish this guy had came around 10 years ago and told me that.
Some of my previously unpublished thots #1
Things get better every day because we make it better. It is not because of some higher power that dictates how our lives are lived or events in our lives unfolds. I should know better because I have been blaming that higher power for every miserable thing that had ever happened to me in the past 5 years. Now I know that I myself hold the key to my own happiness and my own destiny.
What we get out of life is proportionate to what we put into it. Like in computing terms, garbage in-garbage out applies to every aspect of our lives as human beings. I realize that the root to all results is our belief system. We are what we believe we are.
Isn’t it true? The children of people living in slums believe that it is their reality and continue to live there for generations without ever finding a way out of it. We see it everywhere, Brazil, India, The Philippines, Indonesia. Even if these people are thought that the predicament that they find themselves in isn’t their reality and they have the power to change it, they might not consciously choose to take action because they have been ‘programmed’ for generations that they cannot change their reality. However occasionally we find that there are rare jewels amongst the haystack that stand out and go down into the history books as someone who made it from rags to riches but how often do things like that occur? It takes incredible will power and determination to do even a simple thing as to choose one’s life outcome.
But, in my experience, when we consciously make the decision to actually do something about our reality, it takes even more work to follow through with our choice and to really see things work out the way we want it to. Thinking is the hardest thing to do, that’s why so few people engage in it. It’s funny, we think that we are thinking but in reality most of the time we run our lives on auto-pilot. It’s easier to sit back and relax and drift through life hoping that time will go by faster and everything will fall into its place eventually and cross the bridge when we get to it. That way we can blame it on God or ‘the way life is’ for the unfortunate things that happen to us.
What we get out of life is proportionate to what we put into it. Like in computing terms, garbage in-garbage out applies to every aspect of our lives as human beings. I realize that the root to all results is our belief system. We are what we believe we are.
Isn’t it true? The children of people living in slums believe that it is their reality and continue to live there for generations without ever finding a way out of it. We see it everywhere, Brazil, India, The Philippines, Indonesia. Even if these people are thought that the predicament that they find themselves in isn’t their reality and they have the power to change it, they might not consciously choose to take action because they have been ‘programmed’ for generations that they cannot change their reality. However occasionally we find that there are rare jewels amongst the haystack that stand out and go down into the history books as someone who made it from rags to riches but how often do things like that occur? It takes incredible will power and determination to do even a simple thing as to choose one’s life outcome.
But, in my experience, when we consciously make the decision to actually do something about our reality, it takes even more work to follow through with our choice and to really see things work out the way we want it to. Thinking is the hardest thing to do, that’s why so few people engage in it. It’s funny, we think that we are thinking but in reality most of the time we run our lives on auto-pilot. It’s easier to sit back and relax and drift through life hoping that time will go by faster and everything will fall into its place eventually and cross the bridge when we get to it. That way we can blame it on God or ‘the way life is’ for the unfortunate things that happen to us.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Mitsubishi Lancer Restoration
Finally after 3 years, my vintage car restoration has been completed. However, the car is still in the workshop to fix a broken door window which I broke trying to open the door which locks got stuck last week. The restoration could have been completed sooner had I the funds to do so. However, I think I'm pretty satisfied with the way it is now.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
My review about P1 Wimax
Kelvin my neighbor who stays 3 floors down from my apartment called me up this evening and asked me to meet him at the lift lobby cos he was going to pass me the new P1 modem to try out in my unit. The P1 coverage map shows that 1/3 of my apartment block is within their coverage area and so happened, my unit is slightly out of the coverage area. Block B which is right next to our block is totally out of the coverage area range. I wonder why they plan their capacity in such a way. This apartment has over 550 units and most of the residents here are young working adults and families which I believe can potentially become Packetone’s long term customers but yet so many months after their launch, nothing is being done about the coverage for the whole apartment complex. Furthermore, my apartment is located within the inner KL city limits, which is 10km radius of KLCC.
When I got the package, the first thing that struck me was the product itself. It’s matt black finish and compact size is really compelling. As compared to Maxis broadband’s ZTE modem which I signed up for 2 years ago, this modem has much more appeal! Furthermore the blue neon indicator lights is really cool. It reminds me of the new Hyundai Elantra speedometer. Their P1 logo right in the middle of the modem body on one side also lights up when you turn on the unit. I couldn’t locate any on/off buttons on the set though. The whole product design is actually quite simple, and it reminds me of a mini ionizer!
Basically the indicators are simple to understand. Just picture a traffic light. Red, amber and green light. Red being the worst coverage, amber is so-so coverage and green is excellent coverage. When the ‘traffic lights’ are blinking it means there is no or limited connectivity and when it stops blinking it means there is signal strength.
Unlike the ZTE modem, this unit doesn’t have a slot for you to insert your 3g simcard as it runs on wimax. This evening when I got the package, plugged it into my notebook and ran the speedtest available at http://speed.p1.com.my the first reading I got was 266 for DL speed and 100 for UL speed. I ran a second test right after and got 400+ for DL speed and the same UL speed. If you are paying RM49 for the most basic package, I think this speeds are quite reasonable to accept. However I’m not very clear about the fair usage policy. I need to go to P1 to get further explanation about this. 5GB limit for home user sounds a little bit to little. I wonder if I use it for normal surfing, chatting with my friends, updating my facebook page etc would 5GB be enough? Would they cut me off after I have used 5GB? Is 5GB of usage per day or per month? So many questions, so little answers!
Now it’s 11:30pm, the red light has been blinking for the past half an hour and I couldn’t access any of my websites, it alternates between red, amber and even a few seconds of green every minute. Right now only it has kinda settled down a little. I wonder if we will get that every time we attempt to use it. My friend told me that I can hook up a wireless router to it and use it wirelessly without having to plug the thing into my notebook and be stuck in one place. I definitely gotta find out more about that.
Finally, this is a great product if you know where to place the modem to get the best coverage. I live on the 11th floor of an apartment complex which has another 5 storey of car park. That makes it 17 storeys high but I still don’t face the problem I previously faced when I was using Maxis broadband, which when I called their customer service hotline was told I need to be 5th floor and below to get the best results, what about people living on the 30th floor of their condo? Does this mean that I am not a valuable broadband user?
I still have my slight dissatisfaction about not being able get full coverage inside my apartment but so far it has been quite stable. Since I am only going to get to use this modem for 1 day, I wouldn’t know what the long term service quality is going to be like unless I sign up for a package myself.
When I got the package, the first thing that struck me was the product itself. It’s matt black finish and compact size is really compelling. As compared to Maxis broadband’s ZTE modem which I signed up for 2 years ago, this modem has much more appeal! Furthermore the blue neon indicator lights is really cool. It reminds me of the new Hyundai Elantra speedometer. Their P1 logo right in the middle of the modem body on one side also lights up when you turn on the unit. I couldn’t locate any on/off buttons on the set though. The whole product design is actually quite simple, and it reminds me of a mini ionizer!
Basically the indicators are simple to understand. Just picture a traffic light. Red, amber and green light. Red being the worst coverage, amber is so-so coverage and green is excellent coverage. When the ‘traffic lights’ are blinking it means there is no or limited connectivity and when it stops blinking it means there is signal strength.
Unlike the ZTE modem, this unit doesn’t have a slot for you to insert your 3g simcard as it runs on wimax. This evening when I got the package, plugged it into my notebook and ran the speedtest available at http://speed.p1.com.my the first reading I got was 266 for DL speed and 100 for UL speed. I ran a second test right after and got 400+ for DL speed and the same UL speed. If you are paying RM49 for the most basic package, I think this speeds are quite reasonable to accept. However I’m not very clear about the fair usage policy. I need to go to P1 to get further explanation about this. 5GB limit for home user sounds a little bit to little. I wonder if I use it for normal surfing, chatting with my friends, updating my facebook page etc would 5GB be enough? Would they cut me off after I have used 5GB? Is 5GB of usage per day or per month? So many questions, so little answers!
Now it’s 11:30pm, the red light has been blinking for the past half an hour and I couldn’t access any of my websites, it alternates between red, amber and even a few seconds of green every minute. Right now only it has kinda settled down a little. I wonder if we will get that every time we attempt to use it. My friend told me that I can hook up a wireless router to it and use it wirelessly without having to plug the thing into my notebook and be stuck in one place. I definitely gotta find out more about that.
Finally, this is a great product if you know where to place the modem to get the best coverage. I live on the 11th floor of an apartment complex which has another 5 storey of car park. That makes it 17 storeys high but I still don’t face the problem I previously faced when I was using Maxis broadband, which when I called their customer service hotline was told I need to be 5th floor and below to get the best results, what about people living on the 30th floor of their condo? Does this mean that I am not a valuable broadband user?
I still have my slight dissatisfaction about not being able get full coverage inside my apartment but so far it has been quite stable. Since I am only going to get to use this modem for 1 day, I wouldn’t know what the long term service quality is going to be like unless I sign up for a package myself.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Transformers 2 premier thanks to DHL Express
Why thanks to DHL Express, we managed to catch Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen at GSC Mid Valley in a sort of exclusive i-booked-the-whole-cineplex kinda way. This is something I must say is pretty awesome! Incidentally it coincided with the opening premier of this much anticipated movie.
To tell you the truth, I was excited all morning through to evening about watching it today, before anyone else. I have been anticipating the movie since its trailer started screening a couple of months back and the funny thing was it was heavily advertised by Energizer which gave out discount coupons for battery purchases. The surprising thing was, my girlfriend was even more excited about the whole thing! (And I thought I was a great big Transformers fan…) I reckon that made 2 of us.
DHL Express rented out 2-3 cineplexes for their clients I reckon as a thank you for your business gesture. Somebody’s somebody couldn’t make it at the last minute and here we were with 2 free tix for the movie.
However, getting to mid valley itself was almost a high drama plot. Lydia called me at about 5pm and told me bout the free tickets so I said I’d fetch her at 6:30 from work around Times Square and we’d drive to Mid Valley to get the tickets before 7:45 from one of the Managers at DHL at GSC.
At 6pm it started to rain cats and dogs. On a clear day I could see the entire KL skyline from my apartment window right over to the mont kiara hills and slightly beyond. North I get a good view of Genting Highlands right up to the red ‘GH’ logo on top of the hotel. At 6, I couldn’t even see the government clinic located right below my block! In fact, I couldn’t even see 2cm beyond my window. That was how bad the storm was. I notice we seem to get a lot of that these days. Is this wat they call mother nature’s fury for screwing up her beautiful planet?
I drove out from my apartment to horrible traffic jams everywhere, caused by flash floods (everywhere!) The road which usually never retains any water looked like lake Toba! The storm drain which is normally below normal levels were bursting at its seems and if it rained another few hours I reckon it was going to spill over. It was going at a rate that would damage the cops speed cam. That was how bad it was. Not to mention all the stalled vehicles on the roadside unable to start their engines cos their exhaust intake had too much to drink.
Anyways, after all the drama, we managed to reach Mid Valley in time to grab the tickets only to be told at 7:30 that the movie starts at 9:30. Try to beat that! Thank god the tix were free.
The movie was great! I’m not gonna give away any details here that’s for sure. Go catch it yourself! One thing I can say is, it was freaking 2.5 hours! We had a big bag of popcorn, big cup of coke, baloney breath sweaty corporate executive next to me who laughs out loud everytime the transformers move their bodyparts and ensures the whole Cineplex knows he is amused, fidgety senior citizen who yawns out loud next to Lydia. The rest of the experience was pretty normal. It ended at 12:10am!!!
One thing I wanna comment bout the movie was, there were too much foul language from the bots. Are you sure this is a U rated movie? If I had kids, I wouldn’t bring them to watch, dude! What’s up with that Mr. Bay? As if we don’t have enough foul mouth kids running around swearing at anything that walks. The movie reminded me a lot of Nicky Cage’s National Treasure 2. Watch it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Another thing about the movie was, the fighting scenes are really fast! Too fast for my Pentium 1 brain to process. I reckon if I were watching a pirated copy, my notebook might just fry trying to accelerate the graphics from the fighting scenes. No wonder Mr. Senior citizen next to Lydia was so fidgety. He’s probably still trying to figure out why he found himself in GSC in the first place. Maybe Mrs. Senior Citizen dragged him there. She fell asleep 2 seconds after the movie started and didn’t wake up till the end. It must have been the noisiest 2.5 hour sleep she ever experienced in her life. Not to mention her husband yawning out loud every 25 seconds. I should have reached over and offered him some popcorn!
Well, that concludes my little movie adventure for today. I’m not much of a movie buff, the last movie we caught at the plex was Vin Diesel’s FnF4 but experiences like this really gives us stuff to talk about in the days to come. Great movie, great storyline, great action, a 7/10 from my scoreboard. I’m definitely gonna watch it again.
To tell you the truth, I was excited all morning through to evening about watching it today, before anyone else. I have been anticipating the movie since its trailer started screening a couple of months back and the funny thing was it was heavily advertised by Energizer which gave out discount coupons for battery purchases. The surprising thing was, my girlfriend was even more excited about the whole thing! (And I thought I was a great big Transformers fan…) I reckon that made 2 of us.
DHL Express rented out 2-3 cineplexes for their clients I reckon as a thank you for your business gesture. Somebody’s somebody couldn’t make it at the last minute and here we were with 2 free tix for the movie.
However, getting to mid valley itself was almost a high drama plot. Lydia called me at about 5pm and told me bout the free tickets so I said I’d fetch her at 6:30 from work around Times Square and we’d drive to Mid Valley to get the tickets before 7:45 from one of the Managers at DHL at GSC.
At 6pm it started to rain cats and dogs. On a clear day I could see the entire KL skyline from my apartment window right over to the mont kiara hills and slightly beyond. North I get a good view of Genting Highlands right up to the red ‘GH’ logo on top of the hotel. At 6, I couldn’t even see the government clinic located right below my block! In fact, I couldn’t even see 2cm beyond my window. That was how bad the storm was. I notice we seem to get a lot of that these days. Is this wat they call mother nature’s fury for screwing up her beautiful planet?
I drove out from my apartment to horrible traffic jams everywhere, caused by flash floods (everywhere!) The road which usually never retains any water looked like lake Toba! The storm drain which is normally below normal levels were bursting at its seems and if it rained another few hours I reckon it was going to spill over. It was going at a rate that would damage the cops speed cam. That was how bad it was. Not to mention all the stalled vehicles on the roadside unable to start their engines cos their exhaust intake had too much to drink.
Anyways, after all the drama, we managed to reach Mid Valley in time to grab the tickets only to be told at 7:30 that the movie starts at 9:30. Try to beat that! Thank god the tix were free.
The movie was great! I’m not gonna give away any details here that’s for sure. Go catch it yourself! One thing I can say is, it was freaking 2.5 hours! We had a big bag of popcorn, big cup of coke, baloney breath sweaty corporate executive next to me who laughs out loud everytime the transformers move their bodyparts and ensures the whole Cineplex knows he is amused, fidgety senior citizen who yawns out loud next to Lydia. The rest of the experience was pretty normal. It ended at 12:10am!!!
One thing I wanna comment bout the movie was, there were too much foul language from the bots. Are you sure this is a U rated movie? If I had kids, I wouldn’t bring them to watch, dude! What’s up with that Mr. Bay? As if we don’t have enough foul mouth kids running around swearing at anything that walks. The movie reminded me a lot of Nicky Cage’s National Treasure 2. Watch it, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Another thing about the movie was, the fighting scenes are really fast! Too fast for my Pentium 1 brain to process. I reckon if I were watching a pirated copy, my notebook might just fry trying to accelerate the graphics from the fighting scenes. No wonder Mr. Senior citizen next to Lydia was so fidgety. He’s probably still trying to figure out why he found himself in GSC in the first place. Maybe Mrs. Senior Citizen dragged him there. She fell asleep 2 seconds after the movie started and didn’t wake up till the end. It must have been the noisiest 2.5 hour sleep she ever experienced in her life. Not to mention her husband yawning out loud every 25 seconds. I should have reached over and offered him some popcorn!
Well, that concludes my little movie adventure for today. I’m not much of a movie buff, the last movie we caught at the plex was Vin Diesel’s FnF4 but experiences like this really gives us stuff to talk about in the days to come. Great movie, great storyline, great action, a 7/10 from my scoreboard. I’m definitely gonna watch it again.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Birdie fall from a tree
Tell you guys something weird that happened to me on friday 29 May 2009. That morning I went to my gf's place as usual to fetch her to work by motorbike, cos KL traffic in the morning, u know how its like lah. So here we were leaving her residential estate when suddenly out of nowhere I felt someone hit my chest real hard. I wasn't wearing my riding jacket at that time so it hurt real badly. it was like someone punching my ribs in and the impact is really strong.
It all happened really fast, so riding at 40-50km/h my first reaction was to avoid touching whatever object that fell on my chest and let the damned thing fall to the road. I stopped the bike after about 1 meter from the object cos I was stunned bout what happened. And the pain!
I turned my bike around to the spot where the object fell down on the road after hitting me and saw a little bird. I can't say it's a baby cos its wings and feathers have all been developed, only not fully developed. I think i'd stick to the term 'juvenile bird'. haha...cos thats what it seems to look like.
The bird was panting like someone who just got off a treadmill with its eyes half open. Can u imagine? I dunno what to make of it, confusion? shock? i didn't really know what to do bout the bird lying there then. what u supposed i was supposed to do? give it 'kiss of life' like the park ranger and the penguin in madagascar 2? remembering h4n1, i wouldn't even dare lay a finger on it. it might have da flu!
by that time my gf was reminding me how late she was for work so i left the poor fella there to hyperventilate. or whatever he/she was doing.
well the sad part bout this story was, at night when i passed that way again, the juvy bird, together with his/her sibling has now been reduced to a pancake or roadkill that needed to be scrapped off the tarmac. well it's a pity...
I guess what happened was the birds were attacked in their nest by other birds or predators. u know how it's like in the animal kingdom. eat or be eaten. and da poor fella didn't even learn how to fly yet.
all the while i was thinking to myself, how da heck does a bird fall out of a tree???
It all happened really fast, so riding at 40-50km/h my first reaction was to avoid touching whatever object that fell on my chest and let the damned thing fall to the road. I stopped the bike after about 1 meter from the object cos I was stunned bout what happened. And the pain!
I turned my bike around to the spot where the object fell down on the road after hitting me and saw a little bird. I can't say it's a baby cos its wings and feathers have all been developed, only not fully developed. I think i'd stick to the term 'juvenile bird'. haha...cos thats what it seems to look like.
The bird was panting like someone who just got off a treadmill with its eyes half open. Can u imagine? I dunno what to make of it, confusion? shock? i didn't really know what to do bout the bird lying there then. what u supposed i was supposed to do? give it 'kiss of life' like the park ranger and the penguin in madagascar 2? remembering h4n1, i wouldn't even dare lay a finger on it. it might have da flu!
by that time my gf was reminding me how late she was for work so i left the poor fella there to hyperventilate. or whatever he/she was doing.
well the sad part bout this story was, at night when i passed that way again, the juvy bird, together with his/her sibling has now been reduced to a pancake or roadkill that needed to be scrapped off the tarmac. well it's a pity...
I guess what happened was the birds were attacked in their nest by other birds or predators. u know how it's like in the animal kingdom. eat or be eaten. and da poor fella didn't even learn how to fly yet.
all the while i was thinking to myself, how da heck does a bird fall out of a tree???
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
More on life...
What possibly could be the remedy of a lifetime of mistakes and bad judgments calls? Envy of others is the only words that comes to my mind whenever I think of my peers who started out at the same time with me on a level playing field whom today can lay claim to being ‘somebody’ either in a certain social circle, profession, achievement or circumstances. This feeling of envy of course is only directed towards those who have achieved rather outstanding outcomes in the same amount of time I took to become who I am, or who I am not, today.
Don’t get me wrong. I am extremely proud of them. The feeling of pride only a friend can have for another whenever he or she achieves a certain outstanding milestone in their lives. I can consider myself privileged to have crossed paths with some of the great individuals of my time. From outstanding athletes to brilliant academicians, well groomed and learned professionals to individuals whom have successfully raised beautiful children whom will one day inherit this beautiful world we live in.
As I look back, I could find many things that I would have set the record straight about given a chance to go back in time. However I also believe that, the choices which I had made at one point or another in my life had lead me to where I am today and to get to where I want to be tomorrow, I have to make choices today which will affect a favorable outcome. I don’t know if there is such a thing as too little too late or being too old to do something to become successful.
Whenever I get that thought, my mind will immediately do an auto search of my mind’s archives to retrieve the story of Colonel Sanders which at either 60 or 70, who got 1000 doors slammed in his face in the process of selling the rights to use his KFC chicken recipe, didn’t give up and became a screaming success after the 1001st client said yes and believed in him.
I remember being in a client’s office 9 years ago seeing a poster I never would forget. It said in bold letters ‘THE 3 SECRETS TO SUCCESS!’ 1.Think Big! 2.Work Hard! 3.Never give up! How many times have you heard of that before? If you’re like me, hearing it for the first time, I’m sure it’s definitely advice worth its weight in gold. However, 9 years down the road, I still don’t reckon I have achieved success yet.
However, have I ever considered what I consider as success? What benchmark or acid test do I apply to say my situation is a lost cause? I reckon I have set a very high standard for myself to achieve, that’s why even after numerous successes in life, I still find that I really am lacking something. But what is it?
Let’s do an inventory check, a nice apartment with a 360 degree view of the city, a car, high education with another kick ass degree on the way, a loving partner, parents and siblings. For the ordinary person, I reckon it can be more than anybody can ever ask for. In fact, if I were to compare myself to the average Malaysian, income wise earning 3k and less per month, which I’m sure represents about 80% of the entire workforce in Malaysia, I’m way better off. This would put me in the top 20% of the workforce. Now I’m not talking about the population in general. I think if I were to rank myself against the general population, the calculation would probably be like this: assuming KL population is 4 million, which is 15% of the entire 26 million people in Malaysia. Assuming I put myself in the top 25%, I would be in the top 5% of the Malaysian population earning a good living and living a good life. I wonder if I’d achieve that kind of success living in another country, like in Singapore or Australia. Although these places are excellent to live in and promise great job opportunities and quality of life, I’m not sure I will be able to be in the top 5% of the population there. In today’s world, where you rank is all that matters. To achieve success, it’s paramount that you know where you stand and implement changes your circumstances and make better decisions to get to where you want to go to. Clarity is power!
Ok this is part 2. To tell you the truth I took so long to complete this blog entry, I kinda lost my train of thought somewhere along the way. In the past 24 hours I did take the time to ponder about what I wrote here last night and it got me thinking. Am I really there yet? As in the top 5% of the entire population in Malaysia. I wonder what kind of benchmarks I would use to gauge that. Or maybe I’m not? I could well be swimming in the bottom 95% of the gene pool and quite contented with it.
Then I came to this conclusion. Life could be simple it could be complex. So far I have chosen the it to be complex, which is good from where I am, now. And then what? Is running a race your whole life and still running past 50 great? I know I wouldn’t wanna be running a race my whole life and wake up 20 years later telling myself, u know what? Maybe I shouldn’t be running like this after all.
It’s all about the choices we make and the actions we take. We have been conditioned from young that there is a fine line between right and wrong, so, when we do stuff right we get rewarded and when we do stuff wrong, we get punished. So we go about our lives trying our darnest not to fail or do the wrong thing. Which, in the end, could end up wrong as well. Perhaps its our fear of failure that lead us to failure in the end. What say you?
Don’t get me wrong. I am extremely proud of them. The feeling of pride only a friend can have for another whenever he or she achieves a certain outstanding milestone in their lives. I can consider myself privileged to have crossed paths with some of the great individuals of my time. From outstanding athletes to brilliant academicians, well groomed and learned professionals to individuals whom have successfully raised beautiful children whom will one day inherit this beautiful world we live in.
As I look back, I could find many things that I would have set the record straight about given a chance to go back in time. However I also believe that, the choices which I had made at one point or another in my life had lead me to where I am today and to get to where I want to be tomorrow, I have to make choices today which will affect a favorable outcome. I don’t know if there is such a thing as too little too late or being too old to do something to become successful.
Whenever I get that thought, my mind will immediately do an auto search of my mind’s archives to retrieve the story of Colonel Sanders which at either 60 or 70, who got 1000 doors slammed in his face in the process of selling the rights to use his KFC chicken recipe, didn’t give up and became a screaming success after the 1001st client said yes and believed in him.
I remember being in a client’s office 9 years ago seeing a poster I never would forget. It said in bold letters ‘THE 3 SECRETS TO SUCCESS!’ 1.Think Big! 2.Work Hard! 3.Never give up! How many times have you heard of that before? If you’re like me, hearing it for the first time, I’m sure it’s definitely advice worth its weight in gold. However, 9 years down the road, I still don’t reckon I have achieved success yet.
However, have I ever considered what I consider as success? What benchmark or acid test do I apply to say my situation is a lost cause? I reckon I have set a very high standard for myself to achieve, that’s why even after numerous successes in life, I still find that I really am lacking something. But what is it?
Let’s do an inventory check, a nice apartment with a 360 degree view of the city, a car, high education with another kick ass degree on the way, a loving partner, parents and siblings. For the ordinary person, I reckon it can be more than anybody can ever ask for. In fact, if I were to compare myself to the average Malaysian, income wise earning 3k and less per month, which I’m sure represents about 80% of the entire workforce in Malaysia, I’m way better off. This would put me in the top 20% of the workforce. Now I’m not talking about the population in general. I think if I were to rank myself against the general population, the calculation would probably be like this: assuming KL population is 4 million, which is 15% of the entire 26 million people in Malaysia. Assuming I put myself in the top 25%, I would be in the top 5% of the Malaysian population earning a good living and living a good life. I wonder if I’d achieve that kind of success living in another country, like in Singapore or Australia. Although these places are excellent to live in and promise great job opportunities and quality of life, I’m not sure I will be able to be in the top 5% of the population there. In today’s world, where you rank is all that matters. To achieve success, it’s paramount that you know where you stand and implement changes your circumstances and make better decisions to get to where you want to go to. Clarity is power!
Ok this is part 2. To tell you the truth I took so long to complete this blog entry, I kinda lost my train of thought somewhere along the way. In the past 24 hours I did take the time to ponder about what I wrote here last night and it got me thinking. Am I really there yet? As in the top 5% of the entire population in Malaysia. I wonder what kind of benchmarks I would use to gauge that. Or maybe I’m not? I could well be swimming in the bottom 95% of the gene pool and quite contented with it.
Then I came to this conclusion. Life could be simple it could be complex. So far I have chosen the it to be complex, which is good from where I am, now. And then what? Is running a race your whole life and still running past 50 great? I know I wouldn’t wanna be running a race my whole life and wake up 20 years later telling myself, u know what? Maybe I shouldn’t be running like this after all.
It’s all about the choices we make and the actions we take. We have been conditioned from young that there is a fine line between right and wrong, so, when we do stuff right we get rewarded and when we do stuff wrong, we get punished. So we go about our lives trying our darnest not to fail or do the wrong thing. Which, in the end, could end up wrong as well. Perhaps its our fear of failure that lead us to failure in the end. What say you?
Thursday, May 21, 2009
The long way home...
When you can’t seem to find what you want to in a certain place no matte how hard u look for it, is the thing you are looking for misplaced or are you looking in all the wrong places?
That is what I have been asking myself for the past 9 months since I left the cruise company after finding out they were going to pack up and leave for another country.
I keep asking myself where I went wrong. I keep improving my methods, my techniques and my game plan but it seems like the more hope I bank on, the more disappointed I get. Am I kidding myself?
This town didn’t work for me before. That’s why I left in 2002. What made me think that I could make it work this time around? Was it because I have been away for a while and now I’m back and wiser? Well right now it seems like the wiser I get, the worst my situation gets in tandem.
No wonder my best buddy left. It was perhaps the best decision he made in his life. Look at where he is now, a bright future ahead of him. It didn’t matter where it took him, even to a god forsaken place. My gal was right. I’m too choosy! But you would too if you were me. We need to set a certain standard for ourselves in this world right? It’s all about wanting the best for ourselves. Isn’t that what our parents wanted for us while we were growing up? But look where all that brought me? Nothing but one frustration after another.
Like everyone else, I don’t know who I should start blaming next. The government? The global economic meltdown? Paranoid companies? This day and age? Religion? I think I’m all over spewing my unhappiness over all of the above. Its about time I get a mirror and take a long hard look at who I really am and who I really want to be and what I really want to do. But… do I really have the luxury of that? Do we all? My dad used to tell me that we rarely get to do the things or become who we really want to be in this lifetime. Life is all about grabbing whatever we can get our hands on and making the best out of every moment we can.
Which brings me to another question… Have I been taking all the wrong advices? Have I been following all the wrong principles?
What would I do if I know that I couldn’t fail? I’ve read that sentence somewhere in the tons of books I own and tons more in the libraries I go to frequently. What would I do? Is this a trick question? Do I have to delve deep inside my soul to find the answer to that or is it something superficial which escaped my eyes? I don’t know if there is more to this life than what have been served to me thus far or there is a more simple answer to all the worries and suffering of everyday human life.
I mean, life should be simple, right? I mean, it really could be. We humans take something as simple as life and complicate and mess it up so badly that in the end we don’t even know what it is all about anymore. Its like we thrive on chaos, complication and uncertainty.
This is exactly what I am going through right now. If I didn’t put my hopes up too high, aim for the moon, expect more from myself and complicate the shit out of my simple existence, I wouldn’t be in such a predicament I am currently in. If everyone is a big shot doesn’t mean I have to be one too right? I could be a Mr. Nobody and still be happy and contented. I dunno why I can’t bring myself to accept that for a fact.
But, it isn’t such a bad thing after all. Look at what I have achieved in this life so far. It far exceeds even my own expectation in such a short period of time. If it’s that good, then what do I still want? What else is lacking in my life? Why can’t I accept it for what it is now? I keep thinking in terms of how it could be like, what it is like when its done. The end justifying the means. I’ve been so obsessed with the end result, I can confidently say that, I’m not sure what I had expected the end result to look like. For all I know, I have already achieved that result!
In all the frenzy of running the rat race, always thinking in terms of tomorrow and what if, I have kinda lost touch with some of the things which exists in the present. I’m sure I have. I find myself doing less and less of the enjoyable things I used to engage in before I started worrying about the future and how to get there. It’s true! I don’t hang out with my friends like I used to. Even if I do, I seldom reminisce about the past with them the way I used to do before. What we talk about is always about whats ahead and what we’d like to be or like to have or what will be. What a drag! I used to enjoy the simple things in life.
I think my problem is, I do more of the planning for life but less of the living of life. Well I’m glad. I’m glad I finally see what I have been denying myself of seeing. I fully understand it now. Live every moment as if it was your last. Live as if you’re gonna die tomorrow. Life is simple, why complicate it? But where should I start? When is a good time to start living my life? When should I live like I am dying? When should I love like I never loved before? When should I start planning my life and start living my life? Today? Tomorrow? Right now?
I have made a decision not to worry so much. Not to fear so much and start to live my life for the present. Yesterday is in the past. Tomorrow is too far away, today a gift, a gift from the Almighty, I think that’s why it’s called the present.
That is what I have been asking myself for the past 9 months since I left the cruise company after finding out they were going to pack up and leave for another country.
I keep asking myself where I went wrong. I keep improving my methods, my techniques and my game plan but it seems like the more hope I bank on, the more disappointed I get. Am I kidding myself?
This town didn’t work for me before. That’s why I left in 2002. What made me think that I could make it work this time around? Was it because I have been away for a while and now I’m back and wiser? Well right now it seems like the wiser I get, the worst my situation gets in tandem.
No wonder my best buddy left. It was perhaps the best decision he made in his life. Look at where he is now, a bright future ahead of him. It didn’t matter where it took him, even to a god forsaken place. My gal was right. I’m too choosy! But you would too if you were me. We need to set a certain standard for ourselves in this world right? It’s all about wanting the best for ourselves. Isn’t that what our parents wanted for us while we were growing up? But look where all that brought me? Nothing but one frustration after another.
Like everyone else, I don’t know who I should start blaming next. The government? The global economic meltdown? Paranoid companies? This day and age? Religion? I think I’m all over spewing my unhappiness over all of the above. Its about time I get a mirror and take a long hard look at who I really am and who I really want to be and what I really want to do. But… do I really have the luxury of that? Do we all? My dad used to tell me that we rarely get to do the things or become who we really want to be in this lifetime. Life is all about grabbing whatever we can get our hands on and making the best out of every moment we can.
Which brings me to another question… Have I been taking all the wrong advices? Have I been following all the wrong principles?
What would I do if I know that I couldn’t fail? I’ve read that sentence somewhere in the tons of books I own and tons more in the libraries I go to frequently. What would I do? Is this a trick question? Do I have to delve deep inside my soul to find the answer to that or is it something superficial which escaped my eyes? I don’t know if there is more to this life than what have been served to me thus far or there is a more simple answer to all the worries and suffering of everyday human life.
I mean, life should be simple, right? I mean, it really could be. We humans take something as simple as life and complicate and mess it up so badly that in the end we don’t even know what it is all about anymore. Its like we thrive on chaos, complication and uncertainty.
This is exactly what I am going through right now. If I didn’t put my hopes up too high, aim for the moon, expect more from myself and complicate the shit out of my simple existence, I wouldn’t be in such a predicament I am currently in. If everyone is a big shot doesn’t mean I have to be one too right? I could be a Mr. Nobody and still be happy and contented. I dunno why I can’t bring myself to accept that for a fact.
But, it isn’t such a bad thing after all. Look at what I have achieved in this life so far. It far exceeds even my own expectation in such a short period of time. If it’s that good, then what do I still want? What else is lacking in my life? Why can’t I accept it for what it is now? I keep thinking in terms of how it could be like, what it is like when its done. The end justifying the means. I’ve been so obsessed with the end result, I can confidently say that, I’m not sure what I had expected the end result to look like. For all I know, I have already achieved that result!
In all the frenzy of running the rat race, always thinking in terms of tomorrow and what if, I have kinda lost touch with some of the things which exists in the present. I’m sure I have. I find myself doing less and less of the enjoyable things I used to engage in before I started worrying about the future and how to get there. It’s true! I don’t hang out with my friends like I used to. Even if I do, I seldom reminisce about the past with them the way I used to do before. What we talk about is always about whats ahead and what we’d like to be or like to have or what will be. What a drag! I used to enjoy the simple things in life.
I think my problem is, I do more of the planning for life but less of the living of life. Well I’m glad. I’m glad I finally see what I have been denying myself of seeing. I fully understand it now. Live every moment as if it was your last. Live as if you’re gonna die tomorrow. Life is simple, why complicate it? But where should I start? When is a good time to start living my life? When should I live like I am dying? When should I love like I never loved before? When should I start planning my life and start living my life? Today? Tomorrow? Right now?
I have made a decision not to worry so much. Not to fear so much and start to live my life for the present. Yesterday is in the past. Tomorrow is too far away, today a gift, a gift from the Almighty, I think that’s why it’s called the present.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Foodcourt encounter!
Something inexplicable happened to Lydia and I this week. We went to this foodcourt along the 3 ½ mile of Jalan Cheras. This foodcourt has been around for some time, around 8 years. Its inconspicuous and kind of hidden from view from the mainroad. The people who eat there are mostly regulars or know where to find it. I used to be a regular there years ago when it was still new but now it’s a bit rundown.
They hire a lot of foreigners to serve foods and drinks, and some of the foodstalls even have foreigners running them. I had just fetched Lydia from work at around 8pm and we were heading home. We decided to have dinner nearby as it looked as if it was going to rain. So I pulled over to this foodcourt off the mainroad as I remembered they used to serve good food back when it first opened.
We sat down outside and while deciding what to eat, the waitress came and asked what we would like to drink. We asked for Chinese herbal tea but the waitress who served us didn’t understand Cantonese very well so she called her colleague over to ask us what we wanted to have. We repeated ourselves and she rushed to the drinks station to get us our drinks. We were too busy chatting with each other that we didn’t really notice anyone around us, let alone the waitresses, lottery and dvd sellers.
When the drinks came I asked the waitress how much it was, she said RM2.00. I pulled out RM10 from my pocket as I only had RM10 and a RM1 inside. She gestured that it was too big a note that she had to get it changed at the counter, so off she went. When my food arrived I didn’t have any change to pay for it, so I told the Indonesian or Thai waitress to wait till the drinks waitress to bring back my change.
After a long while, we realized that the drinks waitress had not returned, so I went to the counter to ask if the waitress had forgotten the change for my table, #18. The cashier gave me a blank look and the drinks supervisor came and asked me what’s wrong. I told her what was wrong and she asked me, “Did u remember how the girl looked like?” At this section of the foodcourt we got 4 people waiting tables including me. She was a local Chinese lady while the other 3 are thai nationals. I said “I’m sorry I didn’t notice” and she said “Then I’m sorry I couldn’t help u”. I was thinking whether it was a ploy to cheat unsuspecting customers of money and if it was, the method was really sleazy and unethical. But yet again, would u expect a foodcourt operator to be ethical and clean?
So I went back to my place and Lydia asked me “How did it go?” I said “Not too well, they asked me if I could remember the waitress’s face. I couldn’t, Lydia couldn’t too because we were to engrossed in chatting with each other. The hawker we ordered food from was still waiting for her change and I went over there and I said, “Nevermind I will pay you first” remembering I had another 3 pieces of RM50 note in my wallet.
I opened my wallet and there it was, tucked neatly inside was 1 piece of RM5 and 4 pieces of RM1 including the RM1 I already had in my wallet, together with the 3 pieces of RM50 I had inside. I asked Lydia, “did u see the waitress return me the change?” she said, “She left with your RM10 and didn’t even come back!” I was like, erm…. So I went and asked all the waitresses who delivered our drinks but none of them admitted to even doing it. What a weird encounter at this local foodcourt! Spooky!
If you guys wanna know where this foodcourt is, its along the 3 ½ mile of Jalan Cheras, opposite Brunsfield’s City View Condo where there is a Perodua showroom. The foodcourt is called Payathin (Pat-yeh-theen in Cantonese), the same row as a furniture shop and a Nissan showroom.
They hire a lot of foreigners to serve foods and drinks, and some of the foodstalls even have foreigners running them. I had just fetched Lydia from work at around 8pm and we were heading home. We decided to have dinner nearby as it looked as if it was going to rain. So I pulled over to this foodcourt off the mainroad as I remembered they used to serve good food back when it first opened.
We sat down outside and while deciding what to eat, the waitress came and asked what we would like to drink. We asked for Chinese herbal tea but the waitress who served us didn’t understand Cantonese very well so she called her colleague over to ask us what we wanted to have. We repeated ourselves and she rushed to the drinks station to get us our drinks. We were too busy chatting with each other that we didn’t really notice anyone around us, let alone the waitresses, lottery and dvd sellers.
When the drinks came I asked the waitress how much it was, she said RM2.00. I pulled out RM10 from my pocket as I only had RM10 and a RM1 inside. She gestured that it was too big a note that she had to get it changed at the counter, so off she went. When my food arrived I didn’t have any change to pay for it, so I told the Indonesian or Thai waitress to wait till the drinks waitress to bring back my change.
After a long while, we realized that the drinks waitress had not returned, so I went to the counter to ask if the waitress had forgotten the change for my table, #18. The cashier gave me a blank look and the drinks supervisor came and asked me what’s wrong. I told her what was wrong and she asked me, “Did u remember how the girl looked like?” At this section of the foodcourt we got 4 people waiting tables including me. She was a local Chinese lady while the other 3 are thai nationals. I said “I’m sorry I didn’t notice” and she said “Then I’m sorry I couldn’t help u”. I was thinking whether it was a ploy to cheat unsuspecting customers of money and if it was, the method was really sleazy and unethical. But yet again, would u expect a foodcourt operator to be ethical and clean?
So I went back to my place and Lydia asked me “How did it go?” I said “Not too well, they asked me if I could remember the waitress’s face. I couldn’t, Lydia couldn’t too because we were to engrossed in chatting with each other. The hawker we ordered food from was still waiting for her change and I went over there and I said, “Nevermind I will pay you first” remembering I had another 3 pieces of RM50 note in my wallet.
I opened my wallet and there it was, tucked neatly inside was 1 piece of RM5 and 4 pieces of RM1 including the RM1 I already had in my wallet, together with the 3 pieces of RM50 I had inside. I asked Lydia, “did u see the waitress return me the change?” she said, “She left with your RM10 and didn’t even come back!” I was like, erm…. So I went and asked all the waitresses who delivered our drinks but none of them admitted to even doing it. What a weird encounter at this local foodcourt! Spooky!
If you guys wanna know where this foodcourt is, its along the 3 ½ mile of Jalan Cheras, opposite Brunsfield’s City View Condo where there is a Perodua showroom. The foodcourt is called Payathin (Pat-yeh-theen in Cantonese), the same row as a furniture shop and a Nissan showroom.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Happy CNY 2009 to all!
What do u know? It's 2009 already and it's the 2nd day of the Chinese Lunar New Year or the spring festival. 4 days ago I spent 5 hours instead of the normal 4 driving back from KL to Penang. The highway was literally full of cars and at certain spots it was really jammed up. Well, after it all, I'm quite glad that I made it home in one piece and only 30 bucks of petrol! Talk about fuel savings! With savings like that, who wouldn't want to drive back to their hometown often huh?
Its always relaxing to be home with your family ain't it? Well, there isn't much to be said here as I am enjoying my holidays now in Penang! All I wanna say is Happy CNY 2009 to all, and may the year of the ox bring you and your family prosperity, happiness, wealth and health!
Its always relaxing to be home with your family ain't it? Well, there isn't much to be said here as I am enjoying my holidays now in Penang! All I wanna say is Happy CNY 2009 to all, and may the year of the ox bring you and your family prosperity, happiness, wealth and health!
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