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.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Some of my previously unpublished thots #4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.
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