Chronicles

Ah, to give it all up

2009-04-19T18:52:00.002+08:00

Whenever people tell me what makes them happy, it gets me thinking about what makes ME happy.

Apparently not much. Surrounded by those whom I love, great friends, a satisfying job that pays more than enough, good health, some time to exercise, good food, etc, that should be great. Free from the worries that plague other people, like financial or health, and definitely in a position that I am sure many others would readily swap places with in a heartbeat. Not that I am boastful, but just appreciative of my circumstances.

This is the perfect life. If you want steady stability, this is it. A permanent secure job with a blue chip employer who pays you (for what you do and have experience with) much more than the market equivalent, so you can basically settle down here, and follow the crowd, i.e. work hard at the career, get a promotion every couple of years, buy a house, a car, have a family, etc. Get a pet dog. Excellent.

So why is it that when I read Bryson's books, every single time, I will end up re-examining the above lifestyle? I don't think there is a problem with the lifestyle itself, but geez, I do so want to hike the Appalachian trail too! And I do so want to travel around Europe, and stuff like that. I guess that's what good writers do, put those kind of thoughts in your head. It's not impossible for me to do so, but it IS impossible to straddle both at once; after all, what kinda job would let you go off on a multiple month sabbatical to 'discover myself" or "see the world" etc. We've got to be realistic. Of course, at this stage, some people will go, why is dreaming so unrealistic? What makes THIS realistic? Isn't this an artificial cord we tie around ourselves and hence we can never takes risks and let go and THEN in 30 years we'd look back at this pivotal moment and go GODDAMN if only...

Anyway, I won't prattle anymore. But his stories and the settings do appeal. I would never hike the trail alone, of course, as I'm too cowardly, too inexperienced, too ill equipped and way too imaginative, but it'd be nice to hike around a bit within my limits, and exercise my imagination. Was this spot ever a resting place for a tired Mohican? You know, fanciful stuff like that. Perhaps THAT spot over there was the scene of a dramatic parting between 2 lovers of the rival Cherokee and Iroqois tribes? Ahh...But I could never do Europe backpacking the way he did it. Sure, it holds its appeal, and I'm sure plenty of travellers vouch for it.

But I'm old, pampered and petty, and I shall make no pretenses and be the type of backpacker who isn't really a backpacker but just wants to do certain elements of it just to say they backpacked across say Scandinavia. Nah, either you do it properly and call yourself so, or you don't do it or don't call yourself so. At any rate, I want nice hotels, nice travelling conditions, and certainly, not much alcohol. All I'd reallly like is warm jackets, scarves, music player, notebook, camera and a nice thermos to store hot beverages.

Trust yourself

2009-03-27T19:22:00.001+08:00

People say one should always have a positive attitude and demeanour. Agreed. People also look at successful people and say, well, so and so was a positive person, hence he is successful.

Really?

How hard is it to be positive when one is successful? By that point, you can say anything you like. How about those who started off being positive, tried to remain upbeat despite less than positive circumstances, but still didn’t end up achieving the ideal outcome they wanted? Does positive attitudes really lead to success? I find it hard to believe that people can isolate 1 trait and pinpoint success down to 1 factor. A positive attitude definitely helps, but only in tangent with other attributes, will it be tangibly beneficial. One should always try to be positive, but when things are not going well and one finds one’s well of optimism is drying up, don’t let that turn into a domino effect.

When things are not running well, what does one do? Does one lose heart, lose hope? Well, one should trust oneself, right? That one is making the right decisions, have faith in oneself. As Eric Musselman says, are you willing to bet on yourself? When the going gets tough, are you willing to bet on yourself? If you are a leader, you must be willing to bet on yourself – or else, how else will you influence others to follow you? Are you willing to place your money on your decision making skills? You never know what will happen. A lot of times you just make the best analysis you can with the given info you have, made the call, take a risk, and see what happens.

But we have to trust ourselves, and our instincts. As Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote Blink, said, we’ve got to trust ourselves and our instincts. Too often, people doubt and don’t trust themselves and their intuition, preferring instead to rely on so called logic and facts. But sometimes, our intuition is running completely opposite to what the logic is telling us. So what do we do? Is it that much harder to trust ourselves?

The value of hard work

2009-03-27T19:21:00.002+08:00

I am going to draw again upon yet another parallel between sports and real life.

How many of you, in the course of your daily life, have encountered people more talented than you, but delivering mediocre performances, and vice versa? Are they luckier? Are they more ‘suited’ to something? Or are they simply more hard-working?

When I was growing up, various experiences led me to strongly believe that I was special, different, gifted, blessed, and more intelligent, could never fail and superior to other people. Of course, while growing up, these falsehoods were repeatedly asserted into me, and I lost that confidence, but remained much humbler of my capabilities and more respectful of others. However, eventually it dawned on me that there are others much more talented than me. And there was only 1 way to outperform the more naturally gifted than me in every arena: I had to outwork them.

Everyone has talent. What truly separates them is how hard they work. Michael Jordan was famous for having a practice regime that bordered on maniacal. Many can jump like him, shoot like him, drive like him, play O and D like him, but no one does it night in and night out, achieves the same level of stellar play on both ends of the court, and sustains it for as long as he does, and definitely not many people can reinvent themselves to remain dominant when their body starts to age. He did, and there was no blind luck involved. That is why he is the best.

When asked recently what makes someone a champion and not another, Arnold Schwarzenegger replied:

"It's drive. It's the will. There are certain people that grow up with a tremendous hunger and it's usually kids that have struggled when they were young. When you grow up comfortable and in peace and happiness, all those things will produce a very balanced person and a good person, but it will not create the will and determination and hunger that you need to be the best in the world."

The most successful people work hard. That’s the 1 constant. Their motivations might be different. Jordan grew up in a relatively financially comfortable family. His drive came from ego, wanting to be the best, and hating to lose. For Arnold, it was a relentless desire to be the best in the world. For others, it could be to escape an impoverished upbringing and to escape into a cushier future. It doesn’t matter the motivation. What is important is hard work.

After encountering a recent reminder that the true differentiator between the successful and non-successful is how hard someone works, I have decided to dedicate myself more to my job, just to see what kind of benefits I will derive. In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he mentions that 1 of the success factors of successful people is that they have spent 10,000 hours honing their skills to become top performers in their field. After looking at the statistics of world class athletes and the years of experience after when they arrived at the peaks of their careers, the numbers bear out this argument. According to Gladwell, this argument holds up well when applied to Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, etc as well.

This runs totally counter to those financial people who thrive based on who can use the least time to swing the biggest deals. Which leads to integrity, principles and controls being compromised. Which leads to the current economic and financial crisis but hey, that’s a story for another day.

You are not a quitter

2009-03-27T19:21:00.001+08:00

When is it time to quit? How do you decide whether or not to soldier on at something? In my previous job at EY, I was presented with the option of joining my present company. It was a tough decision, and being slightly indecisive and wishy-washy, I agonized over the decision.

We will never know whether we have made the right decision. Some we know immediately after we make it, like ordering a dish and finding out it tastes bad. Some needs middle term retrospective inspection. Some are long term, by which point the consequences could already have affected your entire life and it is too late and most of your life is gone.

They say for a woman, the most important decision is who they marry, and for a man, it lies in choosing his career.

Well, choosing who I marry is probably the most important thing in my life too, but since I already know the answer, the part left unanswered is my career.

There have been occasions that I have never felt gladder that I was out of EY. Yet there have been times that I have regretted deeply. What’s right, what’s wrong, how do we know? The only way we can be sure is if somehow we are able to view our life and see how it pans out had we taken this or that alternative route, just like the movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow.

A lot of people (like these) successful in their fields tried quitting, but ultimately gave it another shot and ended up excelling. How many people gave up before becoming excellent? How many people would not have been had they given up? Are people who quit really ‘quitters’? Is there an unproportionately negative response and stigma to the term ‘quitter’? Based on the connotations to the meaning of the word, should the word even exist? How many people have slugged on with mediocre results because of the fear of being labelled a quitter?

When and how do I know whether it is time for me to move on?

And the end goal is...?

2009-03-27T19:17:00.000+08:00

They say near death experiences changes your life.

I’m getting to the age now (mid twenties) where it is getting more and more imperative to find meaning in my life. To find a passion, a direction in my life, that can inspire me. I want a career that I enjoy, that I am good at, and that is reasonably financially rewarding. I need to make my plans now. What will I be doing in 2 years? In three years? Where will I be? Why will I be there? These are all questions that every man has to answer. We cannot drift aimlessly around in life, not knowing that we want, not knowing where we want to be, coz we will end up with nothing in nowhere. For men who intend to get married or who are in stable and long term relationships, such certainty of knowledge is only fair to the other party. Knowing what their man’s plans are, knowing that they are aligned with hers, gives the woman a sense of security and provides her with an anchor and a perspective and context from which she can develop her own plans and expectations.

The problem is that I don’t have much certainty yet. A lot of people are in the same boat as me, but that is scant consolation. I need to know what is it I want, and make a focussed, concentrated beeline for it, and not waver and beat around the bush wasting time. That will ensure that everything I do is accumulative and leading to my end goal. But what is my end goal?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who has survived pancreatic cancer, had this to say in a commencement speech he gave at Stanford in 2005:
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

I need to listen to my heart and intuition, and drown out all other noise, dig deep, and find out what I really want. Then, I can assure my partner, and we can both plan and align our lives to ensure that at the end of the day, we want and are working towards the same goals. That will give us a sense of security and peace, and allow us to happily feel that sacrifices are worth it, as we see ourselves inching closer to that professed joint goal.

Picking your moments

2009-03-27T19:16:00.001+08:00

Often times, there are parallels to succeeding in sports and succeeding in life.

When in sports, we have to be able to ‘read’ situations. Situations in this case here means simply more than reading what is going on on-court, being able to read what kind of offensive and defensive schemes the opponent is trying to pull on you, and being able to react. You have to be able to sense and fear the mindset of your opponent as well. Is he intimidated? Is he selfish? Does he have a big ego? Will he be easily goaded into a 1 on 1 game, which is detrimental to his team? Is he disciplined and patient? These things translate into real consequences, and are as important as any physical or technical skills he may possess.

But the really useful skill to possess is killer instinct. This separates the champions from the pretenders. When you face certain players and teams, and you start gaining an upper hand, you move in for the kill. You can sense and smell it. If you are leading, you don’t let up, don’t release the foot from the pedal and you don’t take it easier. You push harder, increase the score differential, and drive your scores up. This will squish the hope from your opponent, and persuade them to give up, because the going just got harder, and the journey to catch up just got that much harder. You don’t let your opponent hang around; you finish them off, step on their desire and mindset and make them not want to fight back. You want them to think that there is no chance and that they can’t be bothered to fight back.

Of course, in the real world, that is what businesses do. When you sense you are gaining an advantage on your opponent, when you feel that a certain law can be moulded to your advantage, you seize it, and you use it to differentiate yourself from the competition. You use it to squeeze them out of the marketplace.

You can also apply it to your individual work environment. If you think that you are on a roll, and that you have done some good work that you think might impress your manager, you should show it to him. I used to think this was blowing my own trumpet, but as I mature, I realize, how else is he supposed to know what I am up to? If I was a manager, I wouldn’t go up to each subordinate and ask him what he has done recently. I should know on a day to day basis what they do, but any initiative and new ideas they have or want to implement would be unknown to me. The onus is on them to bring to my attention their merits and achievements.

Hence if you feel that you have done some good work, go ahead and step up and show him. Demonstrate your capabilities, step on the pedal, and while his impression of you is improving, take advantage of that, and push some more. Don’t let up. Of course, it takes savvy to do this, as it is not just a matter of shoving your achievements down his throat. You have to know when to stop. But if done the right way, once you see an opening, seize it and imprint in your boss the fact that you are a capable person. You will be amazed at the positive difference it makes.

Minority Report

2009-03-03T20:24:00.002+08:00

In the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise, he had the ability to foresee who would become criminals in the future, and hence he'd arrest them first. I stumbled across an interesting article with a list of NBA players who have been arrested and charged before. It is an amazingly big list, with drugs/domestic abuse/drunk driving/carrying a weapon the most common charges.

If all these statistics could be analyzed across society, we could theoretically and statistically determine who are high probability future criminals, and monitor them closely. The only drawback is that this would make ME also a target, being young, male, and a baller.

There is no way to really tell who would become a criminal. Circumstances are fluid and dynamic, and circumstances really do determine our actions and fate. So if we could control our circumstances, knowing that our morals remain constant, that'd be the best way of ensuring we are getting the outcome we want.

Gosh, that might not make much sense. I'm tired, time to go home!

As I've always said...

2009-02-27T18:18:00.003+08:00

...the safest jobs in the world are the ones whereby you are actually making something.

Well, no, not really, because the safest professions are doctors and farmers. Regardless, people will still fall sick and people still need to eat. But besides that, I have long espoused the importance and usefulness of a practical job, that actually delivers something that one can touch and see and feel and smell etc.

That is why I have never had much respect for professions that dabble in the virtual and intangible, though quantifiable (even the quantifiability is suspect, as virtual figures that can't be physically verified can be manipulated and massaged to reflect something other than what is is). Key examples of such jobs are those in finance and banking, professional services, etc. As is expected, in an economic downturn, those are the first to go. When push comes to shove and people want to tighten their belts, the first jobs to go are those that aren't necessary and don't add value to the economy in any real sense. I am wholly unsurprised by such a turn of events, and the recent news and headlines about massive layouts have just confirmed my sentiments.

Being from the manufacturing industry, I am of course somewhat biased. But people still needs goods and products, albeit necessities and not luxuries, unless your product is something that is addictive. Highly debatable, in my case. Anyway, it is lamentable and a pity that some of the best people (yep, those in manufacturing) are the next in line to get the axe, if they haven't already gotten it. A key culprit is of course the lessening demand for luxury goods and products, given the harsh economic clime, but a strong and undeniable factor is definitely the rise of developing countries with an educated and cheap workforce (both skilled and mass unskilled) that can offer a cheaper cost base from where to operate, hence providing a competitive advantage that would be hard pressed to overcome in a developed country with much higher costs of living and where the rights/laws add additional costs of operating. It is sad that those in manufacturing, who really produce with their hands and whose work efforts can be tangibly seen, have to be laid off.

A side effect of the current economic crisis, and mind you, from all the figures I've seen and definitely from the very real impact that it has on my company, we are in a crisis, is the affirmation that the end is nigh for the out of control and insufficiently regulated finance and banking sector, putting a much overdue end to a period first started 20 years ago and defined by the jet settling and lavish lifestyle of the privileged top few which hardly translated into real earnings for the average mum and dad. Those who have put their money, hard earned savings, retirement funds, because they trusted the slick talking and smooth talking financial product salesmen, many of who have little understanding of their product except the commissions they stand to gain, and have their hopes so cruelly dashed, will have little to show after decades of slogging, and most likely will have to go through their retirement years much les gloriously than imagined. Of course, many of these people were betting, were ignorant, ill informed, or were greedy, and for these, there is not much to say. But to those who were ignorant, but who trusted the banking and financial institutions, because they had government backing or were too big to fail, this must have been a bitter lesson. Not to mention a blatant breach of trust.

To the many thousands around the world, the financial workers, the bankers, professional services people, who were riding the wave for the last 2o years, the bubble has come to an end. To everyone who dreamt of getting rich quick, of doing work that cannot be seen or touched, who thought that they could take a shortcut and bypass the factory workers, who could get by by manipulating numbers, taking advantage of people's desires/greed/ignorance/insecurities to fund their own lavish lifestyles, who thought they were cleverer than the rest, who stifled their own conscience to push financial products they barely understood, who flaunted their wealthy and lavish lifestyle, this is a time for reckoning. There really is no short cut to getting rich. Analyzing stuff, preventing risks, all that fancy shmancy stuff, has proven to be truly ineffective. What is the point of having analysts, ratings, risk managers, product managers, investment bankers, blah blah blah, when almost every such instrument has failed to prevent the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression? You'd expect, with the technologies at our disposal, we would have been able to spot/prevent/rectify this a mile off, instead of waiting til we are drowning in it. Had someone had more brains, more foresight, more balls, perhaps the damage would have been less. I do not have much sympathy for those who have greedily fed the vicious machine, encouraging and feeding it, thinking they'd be happy doing a 9 to 5, saying they work in a 'firm', wearing their sharp snazzy suits, marching around with their heels and briefcases, talking about clinching multimillion dollar deals, arrogantly describing themselves as traders/bankers/whatevers, who are addicted to the glamour of the corporate world, and who reject the honest work-with-their-hands types as lowr class denizens. Looking at the gazillions of commerce graduates, and especially with an eye towards the cocky and arrogant classmates I had back in uni, I can't help not feeling sorry for them. It'd be more correct of course to point out that not everyone working in those industries is like this, and that I'd be guilty of gross generalization by tarnishing everyone with the same brush, and risk my entire tirade being dismissed, hence I shall include that disclaimer.

If I sound bitter, yes I am. Perhaps it is the residual effect of feeling first hand the arrogance of such people, the constant overlooking of people who do not work in glamorous jobs, the second class treatment, the fact that people close to me have suffered from the activities of such people, and the feeling of injustice I feel for my co workers who put in a good hard day's work and yet are regarded as lower than and earn less than the cockroaches who have contributed to this crash. Life is not fair, and people say 'accept it and don't fight the system'.

If we really wanted to prevent ourselves from getting into another crisis in the future, really, we just need a few simple rules. (i) focus on manufacturing (ii) focus on delivering higher value added products/goods/services/propositions (iii) have stringent regulations (iv) reduce the insane executive payments to weed out the incompetent (everyone's greedy, let's just weed out the incompetent and greedy).

Back...! With[out] a vengeance.

2009-02-20T17:00:00.002+08:00

Ah! After many months, I am back, to stake and reclaim my place as one of the world's foremost irregular bloggers. Having said that, I think I am edging away from blogging so rapidly that soon I may be able to shut this down for good. On the still-numerous occasions when I have something to say (noteworthiness of the said stuff is another matter entirely) I find it quite easy to brush it aside and continue living, whereas back a couple years ago I would have tried to post it asap.

Life is still on the regular, coz it's just been a few months, and nothing is gonna change THAT much. But there HAVE been changes, too much to describe in a post.

I probably wouldn't be posting for the next few days, there you go, on again, off again, because I am off to Singapore with some friends to do the OCBC Cycling Challenge. Finally, the race is here! We did not do much preparation, definitely not what is required for a competent participation in the event, but whatever light training we did should suffice in terms of getting us to the finish line.

Having wasted (omg, the final ominous signs are here, I am describing time spent blogging as wasted) 5 mins on the last few paras, I think it's time to check back out of this temporary online reprieve/pit stop of life and rejoin the main race, as I do still have a few errands to run before embarking on the trip down south.

Adios amigos.

Oh wait, just before I go, I would like to say, please take care and enjoy ur life and appreciate all those around you who love you and treat you good. Life is short, unfair and unpredictable, no matter how you try to control the controllables, sometimes it is the more powerful uncontrollables that really get you. Appreciate everyone and everything. Don't let the small stuff get in the way of the things that really matter.

An unexpected joy...

2008-12-17T22:55:00.002+08:00

...came in the form of an unexpected pay increment today.

I was summoned to the Director's office, and handed a letter, and when I examined it, it was a 6% increment.

Quite unexpected, but quite pleasing.

I guess thats more money in the bank every month!

Definitely not complaining in this day and time.

GAMES!

2008-12-17T22:38:00.002+08:00

Recently, I've been hearing shitloads from Prim about how his Nintendo WII, his XBOX and his PS3, and how much fun he has doing what he does. Its gotten me really amped up about buying a gaming console for myself too...but they cost RM1k! So I guess I should be sensible and wait..for...my...bonus.

Anyway all of which got me thinking about my gaming lineage. I got my first console, an Atari, when I was a kid, and quickly moved onto a...cannot remember what. Both were quite shortlived, and although offered lots of fun, they were nothing addictive. It was just revolutionary because it was a novelty. The most outstanding games I remember on these machines are the old Mario Brothers, where the stuff you could jump and hit with your head were "bricks", and the easy bad guys were flat mushroom like creatures who moved sideways and had squinty eyes, Bomberman, and, Contra, which was my fav game because I was really good at it. It was basically you commanding a Rambo like guy who collected weapons, health, and shot up all sorts of bad guys. Cool stuff. Played with my sister, who sucked at it, and I had to revenge and rescue her all the time.

And then my mum bought me the Super Nintendo. And a whole new world of gaming emerged, where I became a fanatic, and the first signs of my hyper competitiveness started to make itself known to the world. I quickly conquered and mastered Super Mario Brothers, to this day the BEST Mario game in the series, where I happily killed all of Bowser's' musically named offspring. Ludwig's Castle, Wendy's castle, the Star dimension, Yoshi, all these are happy memories indeed, and I happily spent hours and hours immersed in this universe. I became very attached to Yoshi and hated to 'abandon' him, which was occasionally necessary. Then I had NBA Jam, which got me started on the road to real life basketball fanatic. You know it's an insane arcade game when you have Ewing nailing threes as long as you time his release just right. Then there was StreetFighterTurbo, with the 12 'original' characters. I was the indisputable champ at this, and used every character to finish the game just to watch the ending. It was this game that first brought out my competitive streak, where I would stay up til dawn honing my skills just to beat the computer. Eventually, none of my real life friends could beat me in this game, and my cousin even almost got to trading blows with me. I didn't care how I won - as long as I won. Then there was Super Mario go Kart, where I obsessively, pursued the unrelenting singleminded focussed mission of setting and rewriting all the circuit records, and whenever someone else broke my record, I had to reclaim it. It was a mission to ensure that all the record lists were populated only by my name. Yeah, what a freak right? Then it was Mortal Kombat, where I relished doing the Fatality finishing move. And not to forget, the fantastic Double Dragon, which, occupied me and my cousin for hours and hours. Even my aunt got involved in it, to the point where she was begging us to accompany her to play.

Not to mention the computer games. Besides being a loyal NBA Live fan through the last 10 years, I also played Day Of The Tentacle, loved it, Indiana Jones, Worms, the 11th Hour, Time Crusader, and all sorts of other RPG games. There was Wrestlemania, X-treme Sports, etc. And the unforgettable, Fifa, World Cup, Actua Soccer...

Funnily enough I never liked all the shoot em up RPG games like Doom Wolfenstein Quake Duke Nukem etc... got a headache from watching it.

Today I stumbled upon an article in the age, on the 10 most influential games. Take a look, see if you can talk a walk down memory lane like me, and see where your favourites rank.

You know it's going to ...

2008-12-16T09:51:00.002+08:00

...be a long day when you start off feeling slightly upset.

Ah well. That's life, some days the cookie just doesn't crumble your way and we have to be mature about things and move on. We can't all always expect everything to go our way, and really the secret to happiness is knowing when/what to give and take.

I never wished to break my hiatus from blogging with such a mundane post, but hey we've all gotta start somewhere. OK, I'll continue this later, in a little bit.

Fat Cats

2008-10-21T12:00:00.002+08:00

The Australian Government is mulling over a plan to increase the tax rates for high net worth indivs to 50% of every dollar that make once their income passes the 1 mil threshold.

Now, waddaya think of that? Fancy, the Aussies coming up with a workable tax system! What a load of crap.

The reason for that is because they reckon that being the creme de la creme, we can rake a litle bit more off of them. Yup, agreed. But the 50% rate is going to deliver v marginal returns to society. Why? Because if a guy earning 2m can be paying the same tax rate as the guy earning 40k, then something is obviously not right. Obviously, someone is taking advantage of tax loopholes. So unless you scrutinize their returns and close those holes, they can still get away with it, even if you increase the tax rate to 80%. And if you issued a blanket tax that way, no one would have the incentive to try to get very rich, or to be as successful an entrepreneur as they might be inclined to be. If I am already pulling 900k, why should I strive to expand my business and increase my income to 1.2m, when the result of all that labour is that the Govt will take 50% of my marginal increase anyway?

In that case, the economy loses out on its potential, along with all the potential consumers and employees who might otherwise benefit.

- - -

If you look at the way Westerners, and Australians, manage their finances, you start to feel really good about yourself, and pat yourself on the back for the genetic advantage that you have; after all, it is a known fact that Asians are more prudent with their cash. Luckily for us, the Asian financial crisis and its subsequent reforms have buffetted us from the fallout this round. I reckon the West is in for a really hard landing, inc. in Australia. Their constant self delusions that they are insulated by being so far away is an illusion, a very dangerous fallacy. The only silver lining in this cloud is that it's a good time to invest in the Aus dollar.

- - -

I've always maintained that the best jobs are jobs where you actually perform a real exchange or either a product or a service. In the financial sector however, its an exchange and trading of a lot of hot air and virtual money. Thats not for me. It never could be. Really, when they run through their investment software and models, what are the assumptions, the business information, the data, they feed into such systems? There is an interesting article on precisely this. I reckon its a good wake up call. Its not just over optimistic; it is feeding a system an entirely wrong set of data and assumptions. My friend Rand has been hyping up his own simulation model that has supposedly been outperforming the market consistently for the last one year. Well, lets see how he fares these last and next few months. If it really works, I reckon he is a genius.
- - -

Wanna buy a home?

2008-10-21T11:54:00.000+08:00

I don’t suppose anyone is really looking into the phenomenon of “30 being the new 20”. This basically means that people live with their parents well into their 20s and 30s in today’s era, compared to our parents’, where children move out in their 20s. A big part of the reason is the affordability of a new home now compared to our parents’ generation.

If one looks at the cost of a home now, a reasonable dream house is really priced out of the average consumer and the average Joe plumber wage earner’s means. When one pulls a couple k a month, and the cost of an entry level property is a couple hundred grand, ranging from 350 to 500k, the prospect of owning that home is so unreal that there is little real incentive for our yuppies to seriously cobble together a financial plan to try to reach for that home. Hence they choose to indulge in lavish short term lifestyles, figuring that a few hundred dollars splashed on a Kontiki trip or a luxurious spa treatment does not really dent their chances of owning that dream home down by the beach.

This post will not be debating on the virtues and the general spending habits of the 20 something age group, and definitely will not criticize the debt laden culture that so commonly inflicts those of this generation. As an aside, did you know that the average American carries 13 credit cards? What is the implication of that?

At any rate, I’ve been looking at homes here in KL, and it is still affordable to a certain extent, but definitely not for those who are earning an average salary. Over in Australia, where house prices have been fluctuating wildly, it seems that for an average couple starting out, trying to find a reasonable property in Melbourne and Sydney is quite an impossible task, unless one is prepared to stay at Werribee. Werribee! That’s a couple hours train ride from the CBD! What next? Will we be taking planes to work next on a daily basis, sometime in 50 years? Seems like there are no more affordable and reasonable housing left on the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney – and KL.

Imagine the social costs of housing affordability. We are seeing it already – fathers renting rooms closer to their workplaces to save the hour long drive to work and the hour long drive back home, in their bid to provide a bigger home for their children to play in. Heavy traffic jams, productivity being affected, time spent on the road instead of enhancing family welfare or contributing to the economy via their work, and people being more stressed out, having to sleep earlier and wake later…etc.

We really should address this issue. If I was in Government…

Perverts are everywhere

2008-10-21T11:52:00.001+08:00

When one walks down the street here in KL, or in many other Asian or Middle Eastern countries, for that matter, he or she will be acutely and hyper aware of the many lustful, sinful and other less than pure glances and outright ogles from the men in such places at females who wear clothes that show a bit of skin.

Such females usually can be divided into 2 camps. Those who are ignorant and unaware of themselves being disrespectfully looked at, mentally undressed and whatnot and those who are aware/have been told etc but who insist upon it as it is their right and hence they should not curb their own wants since they do not suffer real harm or indignity. Aside from this fact, which I shall not debate, there is also a subtopic of whether or not the cultural, religious and societal norm of a place breeds the sexual health and nature of its men.

One would be tempted to think that in such places, where women are usually required to cover up, a bit of skin could well create some excitement due to the fact that these men are a bit backwards and the sight of something which they rarely get to see gets them to lose all sense of being civilized. However, this argument is sorely tested when one comes into contact with news reports and incidences of peeping toms and other perverts in Western countries, where it is the norm for the females to prance around in very revealing clothes, partly because of the safety and security they feel in wearing such things there, as the men are a bit more refined and refrain from outright ogling at bits of exposed female flesh.

Cutting costs with human lives

2008-10-21T11:47:00.000+08:00

I was watching the movie The Towering Inferno the other day. It exposed me a side of construction and architecture that I was never really aware of up until then – how cost cutting, shoddy workmanship and ‘creative get-around’ methods are employed by builders when building properties, which are in essence, death traps.

Then I read about the fire at Bourke St. (Myers), which is the 2nd time in 2 months. It just makes me think that in their greed and quest for profits, all these developers putting people’s lives at risk just makes me sick. I feel almost sure that they employ vastly different standards of qualifying in building their own homes. My family being in the construction business as well, I am privy to some info on the safety of some of our homes today as well.

It is a common occurrence to replace high grade materials with lousier materials, or even different specs that were originally drawn up by architects. Architects also are under pressure to reduce costs while maintaining certain expensive features, such as attractive looks, hence safer but more expensive materials will surely be sacrificed. An example is our tarmac: although we are supposed to use high grade, high concentration tar with a certain pebble density, we are using something much cheaper. That’s why a section of road on our North South highway en route back from Penang to KL is especially slippery during heavy rains. It just makes you wonder 100 years from now, what will be the condition of some of our landmark properties.

Bike rage - the new rage

2008-10-21T11:46:00.000+08:00

Cycling is one of the best and most enjoyable sports around. I love it. It’s fun, it is healthy exercise, it is environment friendly, it is not noisy, it is much cheaper than driving, and there are lots of instances of bonding with fellow riders, and you can talk to each other as you cycle. In short, it is really one of the best activities that we can engage in. Back when I was in Melbourne, I used to take the bike everywhere, if it was within a 20-30 min ride. Since returning to KL, I’ve been mostly transporting myself via my car. However, now that I have bought my bike, I do intend to make more use of it, and cycle to places within a 20 min bike ride radius, such as supper, breakfasts on weekends, The Curve, etc. It is very heartening and encouraging that The Curve has bike racks for people to lock their bikes to. Hence I can cycle 20-25 min there, have a workout, and cycle back again, which would give me both cardio and resistance. What a great idea!

However, we have to co-exist with other road users, namely cars and motorcyclists. In my opinion, the more dangerous ones are the motorcyclists. Long being the ones intimidated/bullied/picked on by cars, they are now no longer the last item on the road food chain, and hence have decided to take their frustration and newfound sense of superiority over the latest additions to the road chain – cyclists.

Other road users have to realize and understand and accept that cyclists are here to stay – and we are only growing to increase in numbers. The Malaysian government has to make our roads more bike-friendly, have more cycling lanes to accommodate cyclists, in our bid to be a world class city. Being world class does not merely mean having high concrete towers.

There is a new term coined for road rage against cyclists: bike-ism. And as this article shows, it can have dire and possibly fatal consequences too. There is a new an alarming trend of backlash against cyclists. Knowing how our drivers are here, the Government needs to do something to educate and ensure our drivers do not behave in dangerous ways towards cyclists. This is an opportunity to Malaysia to really take a lead in Asia and make a name for ourselves as being a pioneer here in being cyclist- friendly, and showing the path to an environmentally conscious nation.

Estrangement

2008-10-20T19:04:00.003+08:00

It is my conjecture that kids don't leave parents. It is, on the contrary, parents who drive away kids.

Which kid emerges into the world doggedly determined to get the hell as far away from the parent as possible?

The thing is this. Kids actually want to be good kids. We want to be good sons and daughters. And we DO understand that when they restrict what we do, it is out of what they perceive as 'for our own good' and towards our betterment, and that it is out of love. That is why, when we want to do something they oppose, we are open to the idea of neogtiation and discussions. We don't mind sitting down and hearing their side of the story, and then trying to compromise or find a middle ground. But we must talk logically and calmly, we must be rational and make a case for what we are trying to do and why.

Likewise, they have to do the same. They don't want us running ahead yelling and hollering that we are going to do it we are going to go ahead with it so fuck you. They likewise must not do that. All I am asking for is that you rein in and control your emotions. Let us sit down and talk properly, like 2 mature adults. You state your case, I state my case, lets understand each other, compromise and find a middle ground. You don't want me emotionally yelling and bulldozing my way through, so why do you then go and do that? So if you want to do that, does that mean I can do likewise? All I am asking for is that you rein in your emotions, control your goddamn outrageous emotional outbursts, and talk rationally, calmly, composedly. I really hate it when women react emotionally and just lose it, and start blabbering. Some colleagues are like that as well, and it makes me want to slap them to shut them up and bring them back to their senses. There is absolutely zero point in getting carried away, crying and wailing and all that. I mean, can't you build your case? Must you resort to just issueing blanket emotional demands?

We mean well and want to be well. What you need to do is to sit down calmly and we can talk about this rationally. If you insist on approaching conflicts in that manner, then you will definitely have to deal with the consequences and ineffectiveness of such a solution. It is as if making a rational case is beyond them, and they just have to resort to some sort of emotional hysteria and psychosis to threaten the other person into submission.

And I just won't have it. I am not curbing my life and its freedoms for some silly unfounded emotional hysteria. Just because an accident on the road on a motorbike happened to someone close to you 30 years ago, does that mean that forever I am banned from being on the road on anything 2 wheeled? Do I really have to curb my life to that extent? Well, people die from all sorts of things everyday; should I then also refrain from exposing myself to all that? Get a grip, get a life, get some perspective, before you chase everyone else away.

Why are some kids so hell bent on migration or getting away from their country? It's to get away from their parent/s. Oftentimes, a parent is so tunnel visioned in using whatever means to manipulate their children into behaving in accordance to their wishes, that they totally lose sight of the fact that their children are indivs with their own opinions too, and by doing this, they are flatly forcing the child into a situation where they have to lie, or they just have to get away from the overbearing, dominant, controlling parent, who insists on having almost blanket access into every part of the child's life.

Sometimes, parents just have to learn to let go. By doing so, they are in effect, pulling their kids closer.

An exciting weekend

2008-10-20T18:55:00.002+08:00

This last weekend was very exciting. I always crave to be out, in the outdoors, as much as possible. I really hate being cooped up in my office, stuck at my office job, chained to my desk, everyday playing with SAP. Everytime I'm at my desk, I look out the only window there is in the office, a small square slab of glass 10 feet high, where I can only see blue sky and bright sunshine. And everytime I see that, I gaze out wistfully, longing to be out there, amidst the woods, forests, rivers, streams. Well, last weekend, I got a major dose of that!

First of all, we went white water rafting, then we went climbing through some caves which opened out into the highway, then we showered at a natural mountain side spring, then we did a flying fox from 100 feet up out of the cave, and finished off with ghost stories around a campfire. The next day, I did several ropes based obstacle courses, which was carried out 20 metres up in the air, and involved a real leap of faith in the middle of the air. Then on the very next day, the 3 of us went offroads and again did a 6 hour cycling trek through the forests of Kiara, ending up at the BK Equestrian Club.

Thats how life should be lived!

Cycling again!

2008-10-20T18:44:00.003+08:00

Ever since my very first BMX as a tiny tot of a boy, I have been an avid cyclist. After about 2 hours of cycling with the stabilizing wheels, I dismantled them, hopped on the bike, fell off maybe once or twice, dusted myself off, and resumed cycling, and have never looked back since. That led to a second and a third BMX bike, and then one day, I was gloriously presented with my very first MTB, a green 24” Montana with real Shimano shifters (18x) and V brakes. It came with real road-ready tyres, with threads that extended all the way to the sides of the tyres, making it possible to do daredevil turns at high speeds.

Well, with the BMX bikes, my repertoire was limited mainly to tricks and ‘joy’ cycling. Once I had the road-ready MTB though, I took to the roads. That led to my second bike, a 26” Blue MTB, with alloy wheels, and a slanted frame that allowed me to do climbs and attempt crazy slopes and hills, no longer afraid of bumping my nuts on the horizontal bar of my previous MTB. The alloy wheels proved lighter, did not rust, and the bike overall was lighter. Armed with such a machine, I began to (hey, why not make use of it right?) mix with the neighbourhood boys and we cycled in light forests, over gentle streams, carried our bikes over logs and pipes, and went on neighbourhood terror rides, and formed our own bicycle gang. I won’t elaborate on what we did as that outfit, coz some of it isn’t legal!

After a multi-year cycling hiatus, due to distractions, I popped over to Australia to further my studies. In first year, I bought myself a blue 26” MTB, a solid bike that was sturdy, strong but heavy, meant for light road cycling. Hence on, I engaged in only a very few cycling expeditions, some uni-organized, some with friends.

Since returning back here, it’s been one dreary working day after another. I look longingly out the window at work all the time, wanting to be out in the outdoors. So, instead of merely wishful longing, I actually bought myself another MTB, this time, a BH Diamond frame, with Shimano Deore 27 speed shifters, V brakes (disc ones are slightly unnecessary and costly at this point). He is called Bumblebee, because of his colours, after the Transformers character. I’ve been hitting the trails recently with my buddies, at Kiara Hills, and it has been really fun, addictive and wonderful. First of all, the experience is wonderful, there is thrill, spill, adrenaline, adventure, physical challenges and toughness galore, equal parts grit, mud, endurance, strength mental strength, sweat and blood. Second of all, it is good exercise, a healthy getaway from urban life, just me, my friends, my bike. And every inch you go, you have to earn it. There definitely ain’t no free ride. And the thing is, even if the first hour is very hard, we just have to be mentally strong, and fight on, and eventually, we’ll overcome it, and be glad we didn’t succumb. You’ll prolly encounter more cycling posts later.

Wasteful Society

2008-10-13T18:40:00.002+08:00

I reckon society and mankind is really heading towards self destruction mode. Back when resources were plentiful, I can understand why the world evolved that way, but now when resources aren't plentiful, I reckon mankind is on a Ferrari speeding down a slippery slope, and the brakes aren't working.

For one, they should make non-essential to human survival/quality of life jobs like finance/investment/banking (which only serve Greed) become very unlucrative, and jobs like cleaning of roads, developing of clean energy sources, cleaning up the rivers and oceans, unclogging of drains, recycling of plastic wastes, things like that, more lucrative. These are the services essential to mankind. We pay a road sweeper like 5 bucks an hour, but if he doesnt sweep the roads, the drains become clogged with leaves, the drainage becomes clotted, and the roads become flooded.

But we pay the banker millions, and all he does is...help others lose money.

I'll elaborate on this later; for now, it's time to go.

Which subclass of man are you?

2008-10-11T11:02:00.001+08:00

In society’s never-ending bid to categorize and classify people into neat little squares, and in the evolution of the moden man, we have in recent years been introduced to the fancy concepts of heterosexual, homosexual, metrosexual, ubersexual, SNAG, bi-sexual etc. You know, in the days of my dad, you were either a fag or you weren’t. You were black or you were white. There was definitely no 5 shades of grey to make excuses for insufficient blackness, if you get my drift.

Part of the problem here is that men are allowing society and women especially to paint them in a certain light, to classify them into neat little square boxes, and worst of all, then going out and living in such a way that these phrases become self fulfilling.

What happened to the quintessential bloke? Now I don’t mean one who regresses to drinking beer, belching every 5 seconds, whose main reason for being alive is pizza and football and the monthly issue of Playboy. A guy who is tough, strong, not afraid to get down and dirty, but also is capable of showing emotion.

As a digression, my understanding of heterosexual is: a guy who only wants women. Homosexual is a guy who only wants guys. A metrosexual is some guy who knows his toners, color coordination of clothes, knows his moisturiser, 5 step face maintenance routine or what have you, knows his perfumes, dresses in fitting expensive shirts and trousers, nice belts with shiny buckles and pointy leather shoes, ubersexual is the backlash movement by men in response to the increasing feminization and stripping away of their masculinity by being very stereotypical male, to the point of being homo averse and threatening. SNAG is a soppy wimpy type who is ultra sensitive, thoughtful, caring, cries easily, soft, but that does not mean he likes men. A bi is basically a slut who will shag whatever moves.

Why can’t we just drill them down to just 1 definition. MAN. Simple, easy. I mean, after all, that’s what we are. We all got 1 cannon, and 2 cannonballs. I reckon we shud just call ourselves a MAN. Mature. Able. Noble. Tada!

It takes maturity to know what to do in any given circumstance. It takes the ability to do it as well. But the clinching factor is, is the guy noble enough to do it?

At any rate I reckon men are just becoming confused. Society, and women in particular, love shoving em around, in and out of boxes, and create new stereotypical labels. But the fact is, life ain’t that easy. Those obviously gay types on Sex and the City are obviously TV characters, dramatized and sensationalized for effect. Those like that platypus mouthed Carsson from the 5 gay me makeover (and wtf is that show about anyway, Give ME that budget and I bet I could do better, and come on, I don’t appreciate you coming in trashing my room and ridiculing my collection of soppy sentimental junk even though they mean something to me). So this carsson guy, probably has some playacting in there to boost his image.

In real life, most people don’t fit the stereotype, and there are several shades of grey. Some gay men behave straighter than straight men. You cant tell. Men are being confused. I have these elements. So am I a uber? But I also have A B C elements. So am I a SNAG? And so on it goes.

Come on guys. Where are your testicles. Stand up and be what you really are. show what you are made of. Stop bending back stop fitting into society's stereotype of you. So what if you are neither here nor there? So what if you are soppy? So what if you are unable to articulate your emotions? If thats you, thats you. And people who care for you and love you will accept you are, and the rest, just ignore em.

So I reckon we should just cut the crap and make life easier on the 21st century male.

Cycles

2008-10-11T10:26:00.003+08:00

Have you noticed that the release of good songs comes in cycles?

You might have a dry period for a few months where you don't hear any nice new songs released, and then you'd have a few months where you hear a lot of them.

Currently HOOKED on Coldplay's Viva La Vida, The Script's The Man Who Can't Be Moved, Pink's So What and Jason Mraz's Lucky, Paramour - That's What You Get

Coldplay - Must be played loud. The ending bit, with the Ohhh in the background...is the best!
The Script - The beginning, the lyrics and the chorus ... is the best!
So What - The MTV Video Awards live show...the best!
Mraz - Lucky...unique tune.
Paramour - Blast it loud on a roadtrip!

*Resorted to this to cheer myself up in light of tonight's cancelled Beyond concert.

Mega Disappointment

2008-10-11T10:19:00.002+08:00

I am utterly disappointed and sad.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a huge Beyond fan, and have been so since Pri school.

For 16 years I have been their staunch fan. And when I heard that they were coming to do a concert in M'sia the last time around, I was still in Melb. So 2 months ago, when I heard that they were coming down for a concert, I snapped up the tickets, the most expensive ones, and went downtown to see them in their press conference. Among the handful of fans there, I did not have to jostle with too many people and was absolutely overjoyed when I got to stand right at the front of the stage, just a few feet from the band themselves. It was a nice moment. I also got to shake hands with them, exchange some words, and get them to sign on my poster.

I'm still high over that.

But I've been sent cruelly crashing down to earth by the announcement that tonight's concert is cancelled!!!

WTF.

How much is your time worth?

2008-10-11T10:16:00.002+08:00

So you think yo uare brilliant. You have aced your high school exams, you went to a good college, easily procured a spot for urself with a top uni, worked hard and graduated with good grades, secured yourself a job with a top MNC, and now rake in relatively big bucks, as much as it took your parents 10 years to make when they were your age.

Great. You've achieved what you've always wanted.

Now, if you were in a hugely satisfying job, and got immense satisfaction from teaching little kids, thats GREAT. The problem is, what if you are not quite sure why you are in your current job, and you cannot say with conviction that you love this job, and there are days where you just tell urself it isnt worth it. What if you are getting tired by all the deadlines, quotas, stress, pressures, targets, KPIs, meetings, projects, deliverables, presentations, business cases, explanations, reports, politics, being cooped up in an office while gazing wistfully at the sun outside? Did you really go through the last 20 years of education for...this?

You spend hours and hours a day at work. You work from 8, 9 til 8, 9. Not much time for much else. Can't dictate working hours. Have to put up with other people's moods and attitudes.

On the other hand, you could quit, and set up your own business. Open a restaurant! Sell something simple, even if it is just chicken rice or bak kut teh. In M'sia, you can keep your overheads low by not emphasizing the packaging, because we just care for the taste. You can be your own boss. You dictate your working hours. Don't feel like working today? Feel like starting later? Go ahead! Hire someone else to run your shop for you, to collect the money. So, while your shop and hence you are raking in the cash, you're out there enjoying the sun and a good book.

That operates on the concept of passive income. For us in our 9-5, we have to work to pull in the cash. Once we stop, we dont make anything. We are trading our time, our youth, our passion, our adventure-time, for some money, a shitload of stress. Thats active income. Passive income is like when artistes sing 1 song or writers write 1 book, and sit back, and keep reaping the revenue generated by that few hours/months of work. So if we had our own stall, we could operate on that concept. The stall will run and generate profits while we are in the cinema.

Isn't that great?

What else...we could skip the whole run of the mill degree-uni thing, and just go to tradeschool. Or become an apprentice. Did you know in Australia senior bricklayers get paid 1 buck per brick laid? Plumbers, mechanics, air cond repairmen, these guys make shovelloads, and they have a union. These guys rake in more dough than the typical accountant, professional, exec, white collared paper pusher doing the dirty down in the city.

Or, you could get yourself an education until you finish high school, then go into an apprenticeship or tradeschool, from 17 til 30. And all the money that would have been spent on your education post high school would go into a fund since you were 17 and earn compound interest. By the time you are 30, you'd have more than 10 years of trade experience, and 1 million in the bank, easy, to start your business with.

I wish I had done that! With my good character, smirk, I'm sure my customers would love me and keep returning.

So, you wanna travel?

2008-10-11T09:51:00.003+08:00

You do, huh?

In this day and age, everybody wants to travel. There are, generally, a few distinct types of travellers. Let's not talk about the groups of travelling families, middle aged people. This post is about the 17 to 35 year olds.

Most people in that age group, either:

- want to travel solo to some place, or around the world, to experience different cultures, and coz they need to get out of their current routine, or coz they just want to constantly be on holiday. or they want to see someplace, which has previously only existed in their dreams and imaginations.

- want to travel solo to some place, or around the world, and also to live for a short period of time in 1 place. In order to do this, they work part time, or do a travel-work thingie, or embark on a vocational course. This is to experience the culture, get away from what they have been used to, and because they want to live life in that place as how they imagine life in that place is lived, in their dreams.

- want to travel solo to some place, or around the world, experience new things cultures people etc, meet people. Perhaps, to meet someone special and enjoy that feeling of amour. To meet the type of people they dream about, that cannot be found where they currently are.

Whatever it is you want, there is no wrong in that. If thats your dream, if thats what makes you happy, well, go for it, if you find that it is worth leaving behind whatever you are leaving behind. If you feel that that helps you recapture your youth, or gives you a sense of romance, or a sense of freedom, or a sense of empowerment, then, go ahead. But if you are travelling alone, especially for girls, you have got to grow up, be sensible, be realistic, and not be naive. Many a time a girl has gotten in trouble in their search for fun, excitement, and that bit of adrenaline. They think that as long as they are in control, then they can get as deep in as they want.

The problem is, they are NEVER in control. The fact is this: you can rave all you want about feminism and all that, but the fact is, you are vulnerable. The trick is to seem non threatening, to let the girl feel like she is in control, to let her feel like she is calling the shots, that she is dictating how deep in she is going. Let her feel like she wants the drink, and make her think that she is still sober, and can call it off anytime. And that you will be willing to roll with it. Once she thinks she is in control, she will let her guard down. When the timing is right, you go for the kill. And by that time, she will realize that the control is just an illusion. And by then, it is too late.

Many a girl-just-wanna-have-fun moment has resulted in horrible consequences. And when that happens, besides rape, besides being drugged with devastating effects on the body later including affecting her ability to reproduce, you also get deaths. And these are the reported ones.

This article about the recent disappearance of Britt Lapthorne in Europe, the Australian girl, just drives home that fact. She was just out to have fun. To her, she was just being friendly. But in the minds of the guys there, although not conveyed to her, she was viewed as easy, promiscuous, etc, and her body has just been found. Such dumb, naive, stupid and selfish acts basically have led to her family being the ones who are the real victims, who are left to pick up the crumbling pieces of their life, forever wonder and regret, to deal with the insinuations and whispers about their loved one's moral decisions. As the author herself recalls and admits, when a young girl travels solo, more often that not, it is with God's good grace that she returns completely unscathed.

People can be horribly naive. Just because something is not in their horizon of consciousness, it doesn't mean that others will not act upon it. There are still many parts of this world, even in civilized areas, where people disappear. They don't realize, 6 girls are no match for 1 guy. A guy can take several hits from several grls. But one punch from a guy, can knock a girl out cold. You can rave and rant against this unfairness and whatnot, but thats reality.

So, the point is, if you are a girl intending to travel solo, go for it if thats what you dream. But whatever you do, it is not excess prudence to let your imagination run a bit, take extra precautions, be very careful, and not be naive, do not take risks, alwiz think of your family, and most of all, are you REALLY in control?

Money Smarts

2008-10-11T09:32:00.003+08:00

Well, in line with my latest attempts to start acquiring some financial smarts and being more fiscally responsible and prudent, let me attach the below link. It's written by Scott Pape, the author of the Barefoot Investor.
Caught my attention several years ago in uni, and writes very handy, practical and down to earth advice, instead of the typical run of the mill rich-dad poor dad crap that spouts rhetorical nonsense without providing real world tips.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24475836-664,00.html

It does contain some really good tips, some basic fundamental stuff we all should know. If you are between 25-30, have had barely any savings, try to read through some of his previous articles as well.

I've got a very basic plan to get back into financial health.

- Settle all my credit card debts, keep one just for petrol and other expenses, and the other for non essential items, e.g. dinner, entertainment. Thats it. Carry just 2 cards.

- Submit my claims to the company. That comes to a few k.

- Collect debts from friends.

- Hence forth, keep a running balance of about 3k in my savings account, which generates negligible interest anyway, for use as petty cash and to pay off expenses. Keep another account, an FD, and stick everything else in there, and when I get my salary each month, stick the balance in after topping up the expense account. Although the FD account only generates 3.7% interest per annum (compared against the real inflation rate of 4 to 5 %), it is still better than other packages out there. This is because other funds require (a) a certain minimum deposit amount (b) insurance packages which I don't need and am already covered for (c) are either very risky or long term (d) tie me down, which is not a good idea at this point until I have a more stable cashflow (e) are essentially gambles, like in shares or unit trusts or other managed funds, which I do not have time to monitor yet or to figure out my investing strategy. Once I have a stable cashflow, and excess cash leftover after a 6 month buffer at current salary, then I'll use that to invest.

- When the Aussie dollar looks to have fallen as low as it can fall, quickly deposit as much as I can afford into my Aus account, so that I can benefit from the inevitable rise back to the 6 plus percent interest rates it was although this might take 1 year.

- Have my eyes on a few local and Aus shares. When the drop seems to be levelling off, not anytime soon I'm sure, I will snap up some.

- Right now is not a good time to purchase property. Perhaps in a year or so, when prices bottom out. When prices bottom out in a year or 2, I'd be in a stronger position to purchase something as significant as property. Although changing a car is a freat and attractive idea, at this point, again, it is definitely not something I want to do, given that interest rates on cars just increased, the economic situation is dubious at best, and that I might not be around in M'sia after next year.

At this point, this is the best plan I can think of, unless better ideas are encountered.

What's your plan? Time to start drafting one!

So you think you want a credit card?

2008-10-10T17:41:00.002+08:00

If you want to get a credit card, you must be

- disciplined
- organized
- careful.

You have to be disciplined in sticking to the original objectives of the card, and not simply use it and end up incurring huge debts. You have to be disciplined in ensuring you settle your obligations on time, and meeting your mothly repayments. The trick that they always leave in the very fine print is that not only is there a minimum monthly repayment charge (and the associated late payment charge, suspension if this is not paid, and fee to reactivate it) but on top of that, you are charged a % of whatever your balance is. You have to spend and use your card in a disciplined manner, and make sure you pay off ur obligations. Once you get in debt, these banks, which are similar to legalized loan sharks, will charge a hefty interest on you and you will end up paying through your nose. A credit card can give you great convenience, but is also the fastest way to financial disaster.

You must be organized and keep your records. Any statement/PIN sent to you, must be filed away. Reason being, it is not uncommon for fraudulent transactions to take place on your card, or for mistakes by the bank. You should keep all your statements to and check them and do reconciliation to ensure the totals tally and that no one is shaving a couple of bucks off you every month. If you ever suspect there is something amiss, and mind you, there are lots of seemingly suspicious signs in this day and age where it is part of life to make credit card transactions via the Internet, and you want to refer back to your statements, it costs money to print out each sheet of paper, so you could be paying up to RM100 for a whole year's worth of backdated statements. If you believe you paid off your balance but yet it is not reflected, you at least have your receipts and statements to back it up.

You must be careful of fraud. Do not simply use unprotected websites and internet facilities and disreputable websites. Also, websites without the Verisign securelock feature are to be avoided. Just carry some common sense, dno't leave your card lying around, don't even let others take ur card away and return it to you for signature as restaurant-goers often do, because the waiters could use your card for fraudulent purposes too. And just y'day I received an SMS by one of my credit card supplying banks telling me to call them back for some purpose related to my cc. When I did call them back, a lady answered the phone and kept giggling, in the most unprofessional manner, and straightaway asked for my IC number. After reading about 3 or 4 digits, I became suspicious of her and asked her how for some verification. She instantly hung up.

When I was in uni, and was studying Telecommunications (which by the way is one of my all time favourite and coooolest subjects), which dealt with cyber crime, hacking, etc, we learnt a lot about how the Mafia and organized European, Russian, etc syndicates have got computer security specialists planting trojans and other spyware and keystroke recording software into other people's computers and steal their passwords. Cybercrime today is a v serious business, taking on a very organized and sophisticated face.

So guys and girls...be careful, be very careful.

So you think your job is bad?

2008-10-10T17:24:00.002+08:00

Well check this out. This email was written by 1 of my best friends to the rest of our gang. Names and details changed to protect privacy of those implicated.

- - -

for the last one month i have been chained to a wall and fed sh*t and ask to do work on an impossible time line! Everyday in [Insert Name of his client] untill no time go check mail man...
Wah i've been reading all your emails from two months ago slowly la! wtf is happening man! i can slowly see the descend in to despair and madness!
First everyone very happy very good, some of you say going to UK for holiday, some still asking me to sign up credit card, some looking to go holiday, then slowly come from back UK not happy, wan to quit job, job very sien, then descend to job very sh*t kena frame, wan to change job, girl problems, then fu-k-ing go down untill wan to OPEN BAK KUT TEH SHOP?
hahaha
damn funny...
anyway in line with the latest email who is idiot i bet i'm the biggest idiot! [insert name of his employer] got firm approved leave last friday cause earlier in the year we didn't get a public holiday so they replace with last friday so can get wednesday to sunday long weekend!
Starting from Wednesday i was working trying my best to finish, each day more and more crap keep coming up, by thursday i was still working till 3am everday, i tot can faster finish by friday so i can at least enjoy the weekend... BY MONDAY 3am this morning I"M STILL WORKING MAN!!!
From wednesday to Sunday suppose to be MY HOLIDAy! MYYYYYYY HOLIDAy! MINE OK! MY FREE TIME! i had to do this stupid [insert client name] job! with no OVERTIME! or extra pay! So looking forward for this free time and i hadwork every god damn day!
Remember how i used to complain to u guys i have to work untill 3am? 4am? What happens when u get more work? Extend dateline? Get more staff to help you? NOPEE. The answer is DON"T SLEEP! Thats right fellas i've hit a NEW LOW.
Now a days its so damn crap that we don't sleep for 2 days in a row. Work two days in the a row. Sleep one day. Work two days in a row, sleep on day!., I woke up during Sunday 11am. I have not slep untill today nonstop working. But i don't care la i took about 2 hours off to play game yesterday... hahaha 2 hours of my time! take that !
my hands are shaking man... i can't stop them shaking... eat so damn alot of sugar.. coffeee + sugar... sweets ... choclates arghh... my head hurts too man
there is really so damnm alot of work. now a days not only do we have to be [insert his profession], we munst be industry specialists man. Basically i have spent the last 4 days analsying the whole f-earking [stock markets in a certain region comprising several countries] write analysis on what went upa nd down and WHY! WHy did this counter drop by 2 dollars [insert his name]? tell me why! .... HOW I KNOW WHY! BECUZ SOME IDOIT WAN TO SELL LA! sigh...i have to go research the guy's annoucements, balance sheets, ratios, news and market forces and write why.... call becuz we wan to make sure my client,... the [an establishment] gains on disposal of shares is correct...
GHEY! just check the selling contract against the purcahse contract the difference in price enough la! CHeck already! but nooo not enough.. .the partner wan me to do research to see if qualitatively it is correct also....

ahhh ok ... i feel better sorry guys just needed a place to rant... so damn frustrated with my job. i think i'm going back early to sleep today la dont' care man... going to crash my car if i continue like this. i'm just so damn angry becuz i was so looking forward to my holiday! and turned our i didn't even enjoy one day man! i couldn't go out and watch a movie.. or just go out and grab somethign nic eto eat! its like u try to rush ur work and suddenly its SUNDAY NIGHT and u're so pissed off...
- - -

2 days later, we received this email:

- - -

anyway i think to top it all up, i finally succumbed to my work man, yesterday (Tuesday) i was checked into the hospital for exhaustion man.

I woke up during 3am on Tuesday with very high fever, headache and joint pains man. Very dizzy cannot breathe properly and my lower back damn pain. So my dad drov eme to the hospital near my house and my fever damn high man around 39 degrees, basically just exhaustion my body couldn't take it just broke down man. So ordered by the doctor to just sit there on the hospital bed do nothing for one whole day man... ask for one book to read also kena scolded man... just got one intern nurse fresh from nurse school can hear the experience nurse outside the door telling her "so this ur first time giving injection in a public environment don't do it wrong ah, im giving u chance to experience".. chan hai cham man.. then see her very shy ask me pull my pants abit down to poke my ass but she [insert race] so cannto pull to far so she f-e-arking poke damn high up there man near the hip! damn pain man! keep asking me pain or not DIE LA U!
The funny thing is i thougth finally i got chance to make my boss feel guilty la treat me like a slave so i call her/him (two of them) and told them the news. So they wer elike "er.... like this ah... dateline is on wednesday wor.. nvm u take ur rest first". so i tot wah ok , then my colleague call me later and told me she heard about me and ask if i was ok then she said "wah i heard your boss talking about you then u know what they say they said they think [insert friend name] cannot handle late nights le not strong enough for this job"
chan hai man! my plan backfired now i look bad infront of my boss alreayd man! instead of them feeling like maybe i work this guys tooo hard give them some slack let them at least sleep everday for 3 hours, instead they think i can't handle this man! haih....
so still haven't ok yet but i'm back at work today man... now i got more work to do

- - -

He has been sending us these sorts of mails for the past 2 years. And mind you, he doesn't make great coin, but above average, to be sure. So, you still think your job is bad?

Have > Want + Need = Happiness

2008-10-10T17:06:00.002+08:00

Take a good look at the formula above.

Have > Want + Need = Happiness.

Hence the only way to be happy is either to increase your have, or decrease your want+need. Increasing your have will mean working really hard and being really stressed out at some high paying job. You will end up trading time and health and investing in relationships and activities you like doing. Hence, alternately, you can reduce your wants and needs. Some will depict that as lowering your standards. Some will say why do I have to tone it down. If I can go for a spa massage that charges RM300, or a Chinese traditional practitioner who charges RM35, why should I settle for the Chinese one if the spa one is more relaxing and enjoyable?

Well they really have no choice, rant argue rave rail all they want, thats the reality of the situation. Either you push yourself to the limit and earn a lot, or, you want less.

If you think about it for a second..we were happy in uni. We spent much less. We were happy in high school. We spent even less. So why must our spending increase proportionately as we increase our earning capacity? The trick to good financial sense, is to earn/have more than what we want + need. Bills, petrol, necessities aside, we just need to keep our spending low. Eat well but not too well, but give ourselves weekly treats, don't need to buy new material items regularly, and just be prudent and sensible. I think thats the trick to financial health.

We really got to think about our finances, I reckon. If we retire at 55, and want a modst RM2.5k a month income, and live til 80, that is 2.5 X 12 X 25 = 750k. That excludes sudden expenditure increases such as medical bills and travel, and given inflation today, 750k is really cutting it close.

I guess just have to make a disciplined and concerted effort to live within our means.

Of cats and dogs

2008-10-10T16:55:00.002+08:00

I am not an animal hater.

I love dogs.

So I am getting quite upset that I recently saw 2 dogs, at different locations, lying beside the road, with what looked like faint red markings on the ground next to their heads, something that I take to be blood.

Rigor mortis had already set in.

It made me really sad. And then quite angry.

Can't something be done? Why must we have so many strays all over the road, and then have them knocking each other up, leading to a whole litter of puppies born, innocent, and then either left to starve or grow up and continue this vicious cycle, and then the DBKL comes along, and shoots the dogs, or they eventually rot and die and their carcasses feed the friggin crow population, and they get knocked down by cars, fall dead roadside, some with their innards spilling out, and then we see rigor mortis set in, and then we see maggots appearing. It's like watching Discovery Channel live.

Once upon a time, that dog was also a cute fat puppy, just born into the world, warm ,soft fat cute, squishy, innocent, pure hearted, loving, just waiting for an owner to pick it up and love him so it can also love the owner back with all its longing puppy heart.

Maybe we should stop importing and selling dogs until every single stray is off the street. Then we need to take care to register each dog and its births etc to monitor n control the stray population.

Which begs another question. What happens to dogs left unsold in pet shops? I mean, at a certain age it surely becomes unprofitable to keep the dog. You can't keep em forever, esp if it isn't bought and it is almost an adult. So what happens? Where do they go? The dog pound? The RSPCA? WHAT is actually happening? Is it really the cruel harsh reality that at the dog pound they are put down, and then their remains mashed and grounded and turned into dog food?

Which by the way is exactly how cows got Mad Cow Disease. Apparently, what they are fed is made of mashed up pieces of dead cow remains. How much of this is true is unknown, but thats just food for thought.

Gymergy

2008-10-10T16:48:00.002+08:00

What is gymergy?

Simply put, it is energy generated from gyms. If you look at all the work (in the Physics sense of the word) done in the gym, the amount of energy generated has high potential (there, another Physics term). Look at how many people run on the treadmills, attend the cyclic studio, do the stair workout, and various other forms of weightlifting. I am pretty sure there is energy there to harness, clean energy (in the environmental sense of the term) that puts to good use what is generated, instead of letting it dissipate into thin air and being wasted. The energy could be used to operate the various electrical facilities at each gym facility, and if there is excess, sold back to the national grid.

Otherwise, what a waste of all that running and cycling.

- - -

A friend is going into business providing en mass those solar grids to put on houses to capture solar energy and utilize this energy to power the house, and if there is excess, again, sell it back to the national grid.

I think it's a fantastic idea.

You know, something else to think about...during in x-rated activities, sports games, I'm pretty sure a lot of energy is generated as well. If we could but harness this for recycling, we'd go some way towards saving the Earth..

And give people excuses to have indulge in more x-rated activities!

The financial collapse

2008-10-10T16:12:00.003+08:00

People are saying that this is the biggest downturn and crashlanding faced in the global financial markets since the Great Depression. Apparently house prices are dropping, interest rates are being slashed, share markets are crashing, currency values are tumbling, people and companies and now even national economies going bankrupt etc. There's been all sorts of hyperbole, reports, blah blah, which I will not go on about.

I haven't felt anything. So far, there's only the petrol price increase, and the associated costs of living that goes with the territory. I don't dabble in the share market, I haven't bought a house recently. In fact, it is good news in a way because when house prices have fallen enough, and if there really will be a recession as predicted, in the next 2 years I can afford a better place. Similarly, share prices are cheaper to pick up, and since they will then keep going up, I guess it's a good bet for some gains.

What keeps me laughing though, are the news reports of all those Wall Street types who have lost their jobs, those banks and bankers who are eating dirt now. And all these investment bankers and so called bankers and richie rich people having to eat humble pie.

What makes me bitter?

Well, what I do for work, is we are involved in producing something, an actual physical product, and we have to sell it, and the consumer is able to touch/taste/see/feel/hold it, and then they pay us for it. So we are making something first, and then selling it. It is hard work, but it is honest money.

In the case of all these people, a couple of bad experiences have forever made me think a certain way of them. #1, most of these people are cocky, arrogant, and think that they are better than the rest of the world because they make more money. Well, it is not honest money. Selling financial products is like hot air; when the crap surfaces, the product is not even worth the paper it is signed on. Selling virtual numbers, dealing with virtual numbers, where fortunes are made and lost with a key stroke, not dealing in something SOLID. When I was in uni, and taking commerce subjects, you should see the arrogance and disdain the commerce/finance people had for engineers. Sneers and stifled giggles were not uncommon. I was asked a fellow basketball player what he worked as. He looked at me slowly, gave me the once over, and cockily said, 'I'm a banker'. And proceeded to ignore me. Well, in the interest of being friendly, because everyone in the group was chatting about our work, and I did not want him to feel left out, I asked "So what do you do for the bank?". I mean, you could be a cleaner, or teller right?

And he paused tying his laces. Turned his head slowly to look at me. And repeated, like I was a dumbo, "I'm a banker. You know what that is?". I was so incensed I proceeded to give him a couple of hard forearm shivers and kicked his ass. You meet a lot of guys like that while playing basketball in PJ. Cocky, arrogant, educated, thinking they are God's gift to women just because they can speak good English, were educated in the UK, and work as an investment banker. Oh puh-lease!

Then there were those uni-mates who graduated, worked in banks, and now everyone talks of them in such wide eyed respectful gushing tones, about how much money they are making...doing what? Being high class salesmen who flaunt pieces of paper at rich men with disposable incomes, in return having a smoke and a drink. No dignity, if you ask me. Everyone is just doing the paper chase. Everyone wanting to get money with minimal work but not by using their brains. Just pushing whatever product their boss tells them is the flavor of the money, with scant regard to what happens once the deal is done. Thats exactly how my mum lost about 20k Sing dollars. And these are the same type of products that banks are trying to sell to me.

Basically, buy this unit trust. It's good. But we don't monitor for you, so if you don't monitor it, there is a possibility the value might drop to zero and you lose your capital. WTF? If we were so free to monitor it, we neednt buy it from you - stupid. It's not that I am venomous towards bankers. Far from it. Those guys who actually do the qualitative and quantitative work, I have respect for them. The back end guys, the operational guys. But please don't try to tell me how respectful and wonderful and intelligent investment bankers/currency traders are. I will never be able to respect guys who sell pieces of virtual paper. If you are going to sell something, do it the old fashioned way, mate - make em, then sell em.

I just hate people who think that they can jump queue and one up the rest of us and are better than us, purely by participating in what I see as not much more than a get rich quick scheme by the greedy, for the greedy.

The only tragedy here is that while the top echelon of these types, the head honchos at Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, etc are walking away with literally hundreds of millions either in savings/payouts, the life savings, the tears+blood money of all the Ma and Pa investors who were merely trying to procure some insurance for their kids' college education funds, are now left in the lurch.

It was absolutely disgraceful and disgusting that Hank Paulson wanted that 700bil bailout fund. Ultimately, the big guys at Wall Street are now insulated, and used that money to fund some private champagne celebratory parties, instead of using those funds to guarantee or at least liquidize and pay back some of the funds to the Ma and Pa investors. And, these are taxpyer monies. The next step, mark my words, will involve wholesale guarantees of bank savings by governments.

Sharks...the whole lot of em.

Random droppings..

2008-10-03T13:01:00.002+08:00

Everyone who knows me knows that I'm the biggest KFC fan. I can wolf through 5 or 6 pieces easily in a single sitting, and if I have just come off a sports game, I can take even more. But here I have met my match. Just take a look at this article, 2 ridiculous women eating 5000 calories and over 10 pieces between them. I concede defeat in this one, but goodness, someone needs to tell her to cut down her food intake.

On a side note, I reckon I should cut down on my chicken intake. I am a bit worried that they might lead to me developing breasts. A VERY scary thought.

KFC really is a great meal. It is a male favourite. Tastes good. Filling. Simple and easy to eat. Affordable. Lots of meat. Quick. Can be eaten anywhere. Nothing beats that...so never get between a man and his KFC.

I remember the days when it was called Kentucky Fried Chicken, when the OR tasted better, and it wasn't all painted bright red (the signs, not the chicken).

Just read a most entertaining interview with Noel Gallagher. Been an Oasis fan since early high school, and really enjoy their songs. Have always wondered how 2 brothers who purportedly can't stand each other can work together to produ ce so many great songs. Most people are not like that; they would not put aside petty personal differences to make something good that others can enjoy.

And just to spoil my day, here is yet another example of those dumb tourists encroaching on wild animals' habitat, and securing a swift and utterly undeserved death sentence on the animal. Makes me sick, it does.

OK, off to the Eye Specialist now.

The best looking sportsmen are...

2008-09-19T16:45:00.004+08:00

Without a doubt, basketball players.

Tall, lanky, muscled, athletic, quick, strong, well-defined. Indisputably, basketball players are the fittest in the world, with the best physiques. Followed by soccer players (the amount of running they do will ensure they burn off all the calories, hence they all have lean physiques). I'm continuously having this argument with other non-basketball fans, especially soccer fans, who claim that being such ardent and avid fans, they are entitled to an opinion which to them is based on facts. Well, I disagree.

At any rate, in the US, the most popular sport, where the players are revelled, celebrated and idolized, is baseball. This is a photo of the rookies for this season's St. Louis baseball team.

And this is a photo of MJ.

Come on. There's no contest, it's not even close! Case closed.

Annnnd....I'm back.

2008-09-18T12:08:00.001+08:00

Well, it’s really been quite a long while since I last blogged! July, and it is already September. 3 months…! But it’s passed by really quickly, in the blink of an eye, amidst plenty of upheaval and change in my personal, professional and everything-else life. Relationships have come and gone, colleagues have come and gone, projects, work, & assignments have come (and are still coming and ain’t stopping).

By the way, the word blogging is so new, that back when this version of Word was created, it wasn’t even around yet, yet its now part of our lexicon, something even my mother now regularly spouts in her daily diatribes on politics. And she doesn’t even know how to switch on my PC. At any rate, when I type that word, in this Word software, you can see that red squiggly line underneath it, because it is un-recognized.

So, since I got in to work this morning, I have been busy with work, and finally decided to take a breather and check in on some news. 3 items immediately grabbed my attention:

The first basically revolved around an int’l student choosing to focus on his studies instead of taking his dog (with broken legs) to the vet. He was dobbed in by the real estate agent who was checking his rented unit. 2 things jumped out at me from this article. Firstly, there should be some kind of background-suitability check when 1 purchases a pet. Does the purchaser fit certain objective criteria, such as financial stability, empathy, etc. Because currently anyone who can afford it can basically walk into a shop and buy a pet, and then proceed to neglect it, mistreat it, etc. This practice has to stop. No one is protecting the pet. Should not the RSPCA look into this? Once the owner walks away, no one knows what will happen to the pet. Will it end up in the cooking pot? Being tortured to satisfy someone’s sick fantasies? We don’t know. There was a case once, in an expensive serviced apartments (very popular with students) where a dog was left behind by her owner, an int’l student, who went back to her home country for vacation, and when she returned, the dog was dead, on the floor, rotting amidst the stench and waste of excretion, faeces, etc, and there was blood and scratches on the walls and door where the dog must have tried to escape. The dumb bitch basically put enough food and water for the dog and left, totally ignorant of the fact that dogs can’t ration themselves, and would probably gorge itself silly initially and then starve to death eventually. No one should get a pet just because he or she feels like it. They have to be acutely aware of the responsibility, the requirements. When you are trying to sleep, and it is late and you have an important presentation the next day, and at 3am your dog starts whining for no reason, uncontrollably, what do you do? Things like that. The second thing that occurred to me was that the real estate agent was a bit of a long-nose, to stick her (long-noses are usually female haha come get me, you feminists) nose into others’ business. This was so typically Australian. But for once, this person had a just cause.

The second article that leapt out at me was this one about a woman who was killed while cycling along Swanston St. I must have cycled up and down this street a trillion times in my half decade there, including the exact spot where this unfortunate cyclist met her demise. Reading the description of events, it was a highly probable scenario, based on first hand experience. Certain streets in Melb, when you cycle, the cars pass by so closely that their side view mirrors are inches from your handlebars, and often, you could reach out a hand and very easily touch the sideview mirrors or shake the passing passenger’s hands if you so intended to, without any discomfort or much stretching required.

The third article was about the high rate of depression and stress among law students and law practitioners (should I say readers?). This is one of those professions where you respect the brains and mentality of the more competent practitioners, but only those of the highest morals deserve respect. I can’t say I feel much sympathy or empathy for lawyers, same way as how I feel towards investment bankers who claim to be under a lot of stress. Most people of this type basically know from day one that they want to be investment bankers and high flying corporate lawyers, all earning tonnes of cash. And they also know the pressure and stress that comes from this, and yet they chose to go into it, so it’s a case of you made your bed, now go lie on it mate. You chose that path, so don’t go grumbling, you greedy sod. Everyone knows lawyers and investment bankers make a lot of money, are under high stress, and usually do not have much aversion to subversing their moral and ethical stand in order to reel in a client. This is pretty obvious today if you look at the global financial markets’ situation, especially in the Silicon Valley of Finance, Wall Street, where Merrill Lynch is in trouble, JP Morgan as well, Bear Stearns, FM, FM, LTCM, Lehman Bros, and now AIG. And this morning I read Morgan Stanley as well. All this mess was basically triggered by greedy bankers and financiers, in their gluttony, approving loans left and right, with nary a consideration for the value of the borrowers’ collateral, financial history and ability to repay, leading to the sub prime mortgage, and the writing off of trillions of dollars. Never have trusted a banker, never will. Lawyers, how many of them really have a good heart? How many % of lawyers do pro bono cases? You have to be jaded. If you reduced the commission for the lawyers, how many of them will still fight tooth and nail for your class action suit, because they care that ‘you are now suffering due to having once worked with asbestos’?

OK, that was a good 10 minute breather. Gotta get back to work now.

I'm Alive...!

2008-09-11T21:12:00.000+08:00

But only barely so.

The Last of the Mohicans

2008-07-21T15:15:00.001+08:00

Taking a break from my hectic day, I will give myself a quick breather in the form of a quick post, a slight and indeed now rare indulgence. Time affords no such luxuries nowadays, although, to be fair, it could be attained if I sacrificed some other aspects of my life, which I am wont to do.

There was a period of time in my college days when I was heavily invested in the American Red Indian; his culture, his habits, his habitat, his ways, his looks, his warrior image, and, their vaunted wisdoms. I bought posters of Red Indians, played with my “pencils”, drawing up magnificent landscapes for my various tribal factions of pencils to fight in, amidst rivers, streams, valleys, mountains and forests. I became infatuated with the North American bald eagle, one of their emblems, and was in awe of their mastery of the forests.

But what first fuelled such an interest, one might ask, in a boy born and bred in modern day KL?

It all started from a soundtrack! Yes you go that right. I heard the OST to the Last of the Mohicans from Darr, borrowed it, and as I sat in his living room (as a high school kid), both of us shoulder to shoulder head leaning back, the very music conjured up images in my mind, fancies that were built entirely on my own imagination mingled and fuelled by that OST. After that, I just had to get the movie. And I have since watched it several times.

Let me first state here that one of the best movies I have EVER watched, is the “Last of the Mohicans”, starring Daniel Day Lewis. Even though he was one of the heroes, the movie was definitely enhanced by the superb effects, wardrobe and acting of those who acted as the Red Indians, mainly Magua, Incas and Chingachgook. It really helped that these 3 men really did look like Indians themselves (and after research, I found out that they really had Red lineage).

The acting was superb and first class. The wardrobe of the whole ensemble cast, down to the last Red Indian and British soldier, fed the imagination and lent an air of real credence to the scenes, making them believable. The scenery really took your breath away. There is a part where one of the scouts says they do not need Bibles to believe or validate the existence of God; the hidden hand of God is in all of creation for us to see, and the only evidence that one who spends his time out amidst nature needs, is nature itself. Agreed!

The actors looked like Indians themselves, drawing us into the plot deeply until we forget that we are watching a film. I admired the stature and the physiques of the Reds, sinewy, lean and athletic, running through the forests silently, tracking, scouting, leaving trails, following routes, hunting, fishing, experts with the tomahawk and with the knife, their way of fighting and hunting, their knowledge of the wind, the sun and the natural elements. They scouted and tracked by feeling the direction of the wind on their cheeks, the light of the sun on a tree bark, the effects of an echo. I was fascinated by the reading of signs of routes taken, the meaning of a twig at a certain angle of another twig, etc.

The OST to the movie is definitely one of the top 3 OSTs ever to grace the big screen, or, for that matter, the small screen. The promontory, the elk chase, the pipes, “I will find you”, and the fitting accompaniment to the movie scenes played by the music, at once enhancing and elevating the movie and the emotions they stirred. The various subplots (no spoilers here), and “I will find you” coming in at the exact correct timing, the build up to the climatic finale, which the hype of the OST built up to, was not let down and was delivered by the movie.

Currently I am, for the first time, reading the original and unabridged version of the story written by James Fennimore Cooper. I recommend you to watch the movie before you read the book. Michael Mann has really brought the movie to life, and enhanced it. It’s the best movie you’ve never seen, if you haven’t. You’ve got to see it. The cinematography itself is worth the price of a DVD (you cheap wretches).

For those of you who have not seen the movie, please exercise some discipline and stop here and go and get it. Spoilers lie ahead. For those who already have seen the movie, check this out, which features the second best scene in the whole movie, bound to evoke some memories and emotions and a very apt build up to the finale. When DDL goes “UNCAS!!!!”, you can really hear the emotion in his voice. To appreciate the whole scene, you need to watch the film in its entirety, but since you’ve already watched it before, let this serve once again to remind you why this is one of the top movies you have ever watched. One last point, before I let you to the scene itself. There is romance, romantic scenes, and there is ROMANCE, ROMANTIC scenes, like this one. This is the sort of lovemaking scene (eluded to very briefly in this clip, but very gripping in the movie) and experience that I sought after! If I was a single lad of 22 years old now, ok, after this, I would cast aside my corporate life and go and live in the wild, awaiting the day I rescue a damsel in distress and fall in love with her and then we do what alice and uncas did amidst the waterfalls. Ok go enjoy.

And after you see that link, you definitely would want more, and this is the best part, the finale, together with the climax, the fitting theme song building up the hype. When DDL goes “UNCAS!!!!”, you can really hear the emotion in his voice.

And now, I must slowly dial myself down from this emotional pedestal I have worked myself into, and get back to work. And reality.

New objective in life to add to current list: visit Native Indian heritage and historical sites in America.

The world around us

2008-07-10T18:20:00.002+08:00

Everyone knows that the world is facing climate change, and that the environment is rapidly changing for the worse as a result of Man’s activities, and that we are very near to if not at/over the tipping point. Several factors have been blamed.

But one of the most baffling, and recently gained much public attention, factors, is the methane gas produced by cattle farts. I shall pause a moment to let you digest that sentence. Yes ladies and gentlemen, while we are enjoying our steaks and chops, the cattle is having the last laugh – yup, eat me if you want, but my flatulence will slowly kill you anyway. Over the life of cattle, from birth to death, it would have released a significant enough amount of methane into the atmosphere. That’s just something really odd, to ponder over. Those cute harmless, white, furry animals playing king of the hill just beyond the stiles, who look so nice dotting the countryside on rural drives, yup, they are slowly strangling us. And who said eating cows is cruel because they do nothing to harm the human race? We have to redefine ‘nothing’. These guys are the real poker masters and assassins, for while we fawn over their cuteness and make furry soft toys in their likeness, they can look us in the eye, while chewing cud, knowing that they are secretly planting poison in the air that will kill us.

It gets personally worrying & irritating when my job prospects and livelihood are affected by factors that were not at all attributed to anything I did. Due to escalating costs of living here, unstable politics, and safety issues, I have been seriously considering taking advantage of my PR and moving back to Australia, and am just awaiting the timing. However, recent unemployment reports, wages snapshots and economic assessments in Australia are not so rosy either. Australians are abandoning home ownership dreams, and the previously already hefty price of homes has increased again and looks set to continue. The petrol prices are inevitably rising everywhere, with the bad news that it is also rising in Sydney, and in Malaysia would also raise eventually hence the Government has to remove the subsidies anyway. Demand for managers in engineering and IT are declining in all Australian states, except for WA and Queensland, which are very resource based, as opposed to corporate. Jobs overall ARE increasing; it’s just that the right sectors aren’t particularly growing. I guess at this time everywhere in the world is shaky now, and we might be jumping from the pot into the frying pan. I guess if one is stable and secure in where they currently are, they better wait it out for a bit.

Assume there is a lottery prize to be won. There will DEFINITELY be MORE than 1000 people vying for 1 prize money over the course of the week. That makes the odds of claiming first prize roughly 0.1%. And that’s a very optimistic calculation, obviously. And loads of people gamble for that 0.1%. Assuming that the odds are now raised to 6.5%! Suddenly, the chance of winning the top prize in the lottery has jumped by 6500%! Hence if I now told you that there is a venture that has a 6.5% chance of making you a billionaire, would you jump at it? Well, 6.5% of the world’s billionaires were school drop outs. That means most of you reading this article right now would never be in their class, as I am pretty sure we are all tertiary educated. At that point in their lives, all they had was passion, courage and a certain amount of idealism. At one point in our lives I am sure we all encountered the same thing. What stopped us? Pragmatism? Insufficient confidence in ourselves? This has really got me thinking hard. Is it too late then? [A post for another day.]

Proof that increasingly, we are pairing up with the wrong people. Partner hopping is on the rise, and the oft floated suggestion that cohabitation earlier results in more successful marriages later is being turned on its head. Personally, partner hopping is something I don’t quite like. It suggests sexual experience, promiscuity, a bigger number of ex partners to possibly be compared to, an inability to settle down, some other deep seated issues which resulted in break ups previously, and a higher propensity of the same thing recurring. People getting together without being mature enough about relationships, people misreading signals for love, and people being too self centred, and people wanting love and relationships more than they are ready for it, these are some of the myriad causes of this phenomenon. On a side note but related, we should be having babies earlier if we can afford it.

This is just bizarre. Boys arrested for attempted necrophilia. That is rampant enough in morgues, especially to young female victims. What is really disgusting about this is that the female accident victim, all of 20 years old, was buried a week before. What if she had started decomposing? Which brings me to another point: can one catch diseases, e.g. STDs and AIDS, from having sex with corpses?

A Toyota engineer has collapsed and died. This is yet another case, and highlights the working culture in Japan: long hours and high stress + high living costs. No wonder so many Japanese are going mad. This is just more proof that one can really work oneself to death. Toyota has a famed manufacturing system, the Toyota Production System, which is the envy of all manufacturing establishments and held in high regards. Perhaps they should now start focussing on employee welfare, instead of merely on quality, cost, productivity etc. It just makes me feel really bad and reconsider when buying a Toyota car, when I think that each dollar I pay will have a certain % going to the families of engineers who died on the job.

OK, enough for the day.

Relationships today are weird

2008-07-04T16:10:00.009+08:00

There are some things I will never understand about relationships. Anne Hathaway, the leggy beauty in Get Smart, apparently dobbed in her boyfriend of 4 years for doing illegal con jobs. Scams. Anyway, she apparently realized what he was up to, struck a deal with the cops to escape, and then they arrested him.

I don’t know, I could never dob in any ex of mine if all they did was some con job of some people. Its not like he killed someone, or cheated some poor old pensioner of her life savings. He just ripped off rich but wanting to be richer (read: greedy) people.

And I’m sure we’ve all heard of people who take thrills in watching their partners in bed with other people. That, I really cannot fathom. I reckon those couples will not last. It is dysfunctional. It is definitely not encouraged in the bible. The bible says 1 man 1 woman, 1 woman 1 man. So when this article popped up about the rampant practice of swinging in a major Australian city, it really blew my mind off. What in the world is the world coming to? How can people exchange lovers? Even if its, as the article alleges, only for a weekend?

Thats y I know i couldnt ever marry an actress. i'd be mortified when i see the scenes of her being in love with someone and all that hugging and crying and worse still, the kissing, and heaven forbid, any lovemaking scenes. i'd run on set and strangle the shit outta the actor involved, beat the crap out of him, set fire to his corpse, and burn down his house, kill his family and eradicate all his pets, including the goldfish and the pet persian.

thats y i know i couldnt be an actor either. imagine coming home to a sulky wife who says "well, that kissing scene you had with brooke..was a tad too real wasnt it?". and then banishing me to the couch.

Who is your leader?

2008-07-04T16:10:00.004+08:00

I have been watching the West Wing. And I am extremely uncomfortable with the fact that our national policies and what is allowed, disallowed, legal, illegal, etc, are decided by a small select group of people. This group of people, who are human just like the rest of us, and are just as liable to make mistakes, are imposing what they deem acceptable or not, based on their own morals.

Their own morals. That’s a bit hard to accept, when flawed humans are dictating to the rest of us what is black and what is white.

We should have our best brightest and smartest running the show, but we end up having the most corrupt doing it.

In our country, the daily soap opera being acted out on the highest political stages are a source for amusement, if it wasn’t so serious and had such deep reaching implications. I am genuinely concerned about this place. However, it IS quite entertaining, if one is to just sit back and let the drama unfold, without worrying too much about the consequences to ourselves. This country is being destroyed.

Anyway, below is an article that just goes to show how stupid we are. We allow someone else to use our facilities, and then we have to beg them to let us use a slice of it, and then, because they wouldn’t allow us to, we are forced to inconvenience our athletes, forcing them to settle for a crap training routine. Well, no surprises if we wouldn’t even make the tiniest literal splash in the pool in Beijing. Whoever drew up such agreements should seriously consider switching careers.

And we want to position ourselves and market ourselves in the world as technically competent people, a genuine partner in the ongoing global storm of outsourcing. Well, no one is going to find us attractive anymore, after this. Aircraft maintained by us are shoddy and are not world class. Are we still going to fly MAS and AirAsia?

Is this yet another case of our Education Ministers sending their kids not to local schools to undertake the education curriculum they designed and endorse, but to international schools, and not to local colleges and universities, but to academic institutions in the UK and US? For the record, our current DPM’s kids both go to the same high school I used to go to, which is an international school practising the IGCSE Cambridge curriculum, and which costs A BOMB. Well, well. Telling.

1907 vs 2007

2008-07-04T16:10:00.002+08:00

Yes, in the last 100 years, the world hasn’t advanced at all, as a race.

What is the world coming to nowadays?

What was said 100 years ago is true today, revealing that the human race has not done much improvement and evolution in the last 100 years. If anything, although our scientific knowledge might be at its peak, the human race as a whole, is nowhere near as enlightened, classy and innocent as it was in days of yore. Gone are gentleman, classy women, and educated people, and not just in the academic but also the cultural sense. Greed has become the number one emotion among human beings, with the chase for the green overriding all other concerns, ranging from the ethical to the environmental. Everyone is fighting to put themselves in their kids in the position to make a lot of money. The richest institutions are banks, and the biggest investors are banks. The richest paid jobs are banking jobs. But what do bankers do?

Bankers sell you crap financial products that you either do not need, or that are bad for you, all just to earn the commission on that. Insurance packages are designed to frighten you. Everything is designed to strip you of your hard earned cash. Nobody pays with what they have. Everything is done on credit, on loan, and when there’s nothing to borrow or sell, they sell trumped up marketing products, and long before the general public knew of the sub-prime woes that are today besieging the global economy, bankers already knew, but were still selling anyway. It is consumerism and capitalism at is frenzied peak. Buy, and if you can’t afford it, borrow!

"Modern man drives a mortgaged car over a bond-financed highway on credit-card gas."- Earl Wilson 1907-, American newspaper columnist

Institutions are all about making money. Trying to afford an education is getting harder and harder. It is probably more worthwhile financially to send your kid to TAFE than to university. At my alma mater, they are having an accommodation crisis, where university students are hot-bedding it, which basically means they take turns to sleep on the same bed.

We are hot property. Institutions are scrambling to decode what is in my head. Everyone wants to know what I am thinking. Everyone is trying to strip as many dollars from me as possible. As a Gen Y (is that even me? At 25 years old?) member, I am merely a statistic, a cross section of the socio-economical fabric of the population, and am targeted as a hot marketing prospect, an eager beaver consumer. Everyone is trying not to understand what makes us tick, how to harness our energy, how to make the world a better place with us, what is screwing us up, what makes us happy, what motivates us. No. everyone, every research dollar is hell bent on squeezing every drop of blood from us, and when we are broke and bankrupt to our knees, they will conveniently dispose of us, and move on to Gen Z.

Y'day, we fought over land. Today we fight over oil. Tomorrow, we will fight over water and food. Mark my words.

Yes, in the last 100 years, the world hasn’t advanced at all, as a race.

Wishful thinking would...

2008-07-04T14:57:00.007+08:00

...have me going back to uni all over again. In the UK this time.

What sparked this post? Well.

Read in The Age that the Fremantle train line will be closed.
Now, that’s sad. Remember I used to take that to the Showgrounds for my uni exams. Or was that the Epsom line? I remember very clearly visiting Fremantle when I was in Perth, so maybe this is a different line haha.

Hm.. it was fun to sit on the train gazing out the window confidently en route to the exams while everyone around me tried to do last minute cramming, and I just listened to my Discman while watching the world zoom by outside the window trains. One moment you’d see the sign for, say, Malvern, and the next, you’d be in a dark tunnel gazing at your own reflection, and then you’d see the sign for Croydon, then you’d see graffiti, then you’d be in a tunnel again.

And it was fun on the way back feeling confident while the people around me chatted and discussed what they answered wrongly, beat themselves up over wrong answers, or did over the top celebratory gestures (read-emphatic fist pumps). I always thought that was rather pointless as we can’t change anything anymore anyway so let’s just chill and enjoy life. Be cool. That was my motto. Even when wearing my beanie, blowing on my cold hands while fervently clutching my Discman. Be cool.

Anyway, as a kid, perhaps due to all those Enid Blyton books, my favourite country was England. It still is, due to Roald Dahl, and very significantly, my History lessons. I always thought I’d go there for my overseas education, but due to the economic setbacks of the late 90s, I ended up going to economically sensibler Australia.

Even now, I harbour the occasional fleeting thought of going there, and this is stirred up whenever I come across any reminders. I’ve never been, but I can already imagine it. I really envy those people who can say they’ve been there, and on weekends they’d take the train down to London, and then hearing them throw out names like Picadilly and Soho and the thousand other places you read or hear about, especially in Tony Parsons’ books. I wouldn’t talk about this anymore, but, really, that’s a big wish of mine. I want to visit the Tower of London, Big Ben, go to Salisbury Plain to see Stonehenge, go to Hampton Court, rent a car and drive from Scotland to the Lake District (Darren did it, so I can too), visit Bath, stand on the Cliffs of Dover, touch a part of Hadrian’s wall, visit Westminster Abbey (where Kings and Queens were crowned and buried), take the tube, explore the backstreets, go to Liverpool, go to Bristol where Joanne spent a year, want to see Stratford upon Avon, visit the Globe Theatre, stand on London Bridge, throw a pebble into the Thames, use the phone in one of those red phone booths, take pictures on top of a red double decker while the wind is blowing my hair back, touch an old fashioned postbox, walk on the streets when it snows and everyone is rushing to do their Christmas shopping, experience Christmas there, visit Townsend court, visit Sevenoaks, gaze upon a real castle or two and imagine this was medieval times, the Middle Ages, and a siege was taking place.

I want to live in the country for a few nights, take long walks, over hedges and stiles, see the farming fields and the knitted patterns on the fields, see Longhorn cows, visit Nottingham Forest, and be able to paste photos in my travel diary of me standing next to signs that read Brick Lane, Camden Town, Jermyn Street, Marylebone (that’s from Monopoly), Bonds Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street…such wonderful names, you definitely don’t see those in Melbourne. I want to see what is this Strand, Savile Row, Leicester Sq, Elgin Crescent…such names that evoke stirrings in your imagination. I want to go to Trafalgar Sq (though I hear Lord Nelson has been besieged by significantly fewer pigeons then in older times). I want to go to Hastings.

Whenever I hear about or read about university life there, my mind stirs up scenes conjured by the words from the books I have read. Is it the same as in Melbourne, with uni students standing on platforms, red cheeks puffed out, blowing and huffing on their gloved hands to keep themselves warm, stamping their feet, while waiting for the train to come in? Do they really have dinner together at those dinner halls, and call it something college? Ah…

I probably can’t finish it all in one holiday. I’d probably have to do the working holiday thing there, which Teong is hoping to do. I wish I had a career that was much more mobile than this. I guess those who have been there probably can tell me it is nothing like how I imagined, but I rather find out for myself.

A turntable, & some records, please

2008-07-04T14:57:00.005+08:00

I’ve always toyed with the idea of owning a record player, those that uses needles and looks like a gramophone, and plays vinyl tracks, and we can use terms like layering, spindles, grooves, records. Really cool.

I imagined I’d have a room with a single light bulb on top, with low wattage of course, and I’d come in here to play old Frank Sinatra classics on my record player, and dust off dusty sleeve jackets and pull out a treasured and scratched copy of the old classics, perhaps something by the Beatles, or Cream, or Dire Straits. Just for that old, classic quality.

So, now that I’m no longer a dirt poor student trawling the junk markets of Fremantle and Camberwell looking at and letting go of dusty old LP jackets that have ]loads and loads of extra information about the artistes included], I might consider buying one here. Just did some research, and here’s a bit of info I will store here and perhaps print out when I go a-hunting for one.

Records
Always try to buy a record of an artiste from the artiste’s country of origin. This is because the artiste’s label will have access to the first generation master copy, from which other LPs are cut.
Look at the spindle marks (the hole at the centre of a record) and condition of the record. Scratched records and ones with numerous spindle marks will indicate how frequently they have been played.
Go for widely spaced grooves on records (which means records with minimal playing time per side). Widely spaced grooves sound better.

Turntables
Choose a belt-drive turntable over a direct-drive as it sounds better.
The turntable’s tone arm should have anti-skating compensation device to reduce tracking error.
Get an MM (moving magnet) cartridge, as it is easier to achieve good sound because it is more forgiving compared to an MC (moving coil) cartridge.
Opt for a turntable with 33 1/3 and 45rpm playback capability.

Where fact is stranger than fiction

2008-07-04T14:57:00.004+08:00

There’s a reason why I hate Courtney Love. I believe that had she been a better wife, Kurt Cobain would still be alive, and we’d all have spent our 90s in our rooms as teenagers smoking while listening to the latest incarnations of Smells Like Teen Spirit, Lake Of Fire, Come As You Are, Lithium, About A Girl, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, Never Mind, Dumb…instead, our last album is From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah. That woman single-handedly destroyed the rock and music dreams and the vehicle of escapism for light rock/ grunge rock fans, and not just in the Seattle area. Other pretenders like Pearl Jam, Guns n Roses, can try to emulate them, but no 1 can top Nirvana.

We cannot include Metallica coz that’s a whole different genre.

At any rate, she was fat during her Hole days when Kurt killed himself, and she looked like a whore. Now apparently she has slimmed down and is drawing alarmed responses from people around her. Perhaps, just before she hits menopause and starts wilting, she has decided to improve her looks. Well, she can try but ain’t certainly going to endear herself to the millions of Nirvana fans.

In the same article, apparently everyone’s favourite Friend, Rachel, aka ex Miss Pitt, aka Jennifer Aniston, is opting for a major, and I mean MAJOR, surgical overhaul of her body. She thinks she is a bit too lean for her younger boyfriend, John Mayer’s tastes, and needs to add some voluptuousness to herself. If you read the procedures she intends to go through, seriously, you’d tell her that it’d be much easier to dump him and get a new boyfriend. And after knowing that this is how John Mayer is like, you know, it kinda throws severe credibility issues on the lovey mush crap he sings. Which is fine coz he isn’t much of a singer anyway.

In other BIZARRE news, apparently this MAN* is now pregnant. Note that the ‘man’ has an asterisk next to his name. Why, you might wonder. Read it! I literally felt weak kneed and had my stomach churning as I read the article.

Are you miserable?

2008-07-04T14:57:00.001+08:00

Well, in my ongoing quest to figure out more about what makes people happy, I stumbled upon this article. So apparently, 25% of Australians are miserable and lonely. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised. With the cold dark gloomy weather during winter, especially in Melbourne, it CAN get rather depressing at times, and as one who is easily influenced by the weather, I can vouch for that! In fact, statistics and science have irrefutably proven that depression/suicide incidences in countries with cold climes far exceed those with hot climes, and such incidences spike typically during the winter months.

A fortuneteller (if you buy that stuff) once said that I'd flourish in a place with lots of sunshine.

At any rate, volunteering and doing charity work might not necessarily make one happier. That is something I have always maintained – people who do the above 2 activities to make themselves feel better at the end of the day aren’t doing real charity, and they aren’t doing it with charity in mind, but are doing it for self interests anyway.

Here’s a secret: socializing with extended family, friends and neighbours is a good and happiness inducing thing, apparently. What I didn’t realize was that taking an active interest in current affairs actually makes us not just more knowledgeable, but it also makes us happier. Time to get out from your silos, people.

Freedom of choice

2008-07-01T14:16:00.001+08:00

Happiness…

…is invariably linked to freedom of choice. Linking back to my previous post yesterday to how freedom of choice is but a perception in today’s world, in this post, I’m writing about the direct correlation between freedom of choice, represented by a true democratic government, and the happiness of a country’s citizens. Realistically, the results of such exercises are shaped heavily by the relative wealth of the country’s citizens. At any rate, the study reveals that Denmark is the world’s happiest country.

And in one of the all time most memorable quotes of the century, the political scientist behind the study said, and I quote:

“I strongly suspect that there is a strong correlation between peace and happiness”.

Right.

I also strongly suspect that Bill Gates wakes up every morning and goes “I’m such a lucky sod.”.

At any rate, in all seriousness, freedom of choice is really an illusion, and a perception. If you want to bring it up to a higher level, in some religions, our lives are already scripted out, and there is an element called Fate. In ancient Chinese customs, their belief is that somewhere out there, our entire lives are already charted out in some Book up in the Heavens. In Christianity, it is believed that everything works out according to God’s grand plan. That is why the terms destiny, pre-ordained, etc, even exists in our vocab.

I love that strip where Calvin says to Hobbes that he likes the idea of there being some fate/destiny and how everything is written in the stars, as it is far nicer to believe that one is not really responsible for one’s actions.

Of course, that is manipulating and twisting the concept, but no1 has really been able to, thus far, come up with a coherent and convincing argument that really explains everything properly and I guess until then, we live on faith.

Anyway, yes, we do not really have freedom of choice. Name me 1 thing that you do that is not to some extent shackled by some constraint or other. A more succinct way of describing our existences is that we have freedom of limited options.

Today tonight around us

2008-06-30T15:45:00.006+08:00

Being away for a few days, now that I am back, I was compelled to quickly scan the headlines of some major papers, now that lunch is over and I have cleared the pressing and urgent issues. A few that instantly caught my eye are below. Let's reflect on what we were doing, went through the last few days. We are often so caught up in our own myopic worlds, we lose track of what else can be happening around the world, that there are real people out there who go through what we do, who we both are not aware of the others' existence. Anyway, bad English aside, let's move on...

This article is about companies that handle daily mundane tasks that people outsourced to them, tasks that people either can’t, won’t or do not have the time to do. 1 such task was breaking off a relationship and another task involved a man asking someone to clean his ears for him. Seriously, you can’t find the time to do THAT? But on another note, it got me thinking, and there’s really a lot of stuff that could be done that way, for example, if I’m out doing some grocery shopping, and someone in my neighbourhood needs to get his laundry, and someone else needs to pay his phone bill, I could, en-route home, do their tasks for them, and get paid to do so. This reduces the number of cars on the road, thus easing traffic jams and petrol usage for everyone, saves time, and gives me a little pocket money earned that required not much effort at all. However the article goes on to say that people could outsource tasks like booking a restaurant, researching a holiday…I think stuff like that should still be done by us. It retains the ‘personal touch’, and makes romantic gestures that much more meaningful, as well as allowing for greater control.

In another article, I read about a Vogue model who committed suicide and died. Now, the article does not state why she committed suicide. But it just reminded me of how the constant striving for what society deems aesthetical beauty is really going too far, and is not only affecting very normal, healthy, good looking young girls, and spoiling girls’ self images, and making them insecure about their looks or unable to recognize it when they are in fact pretty, but it has now come to the point where it pushes people to extremes that now include not just anorexia and bulimia, but also death. I really hate how society does this to otherwise perfectly pretty girls with absolutely wonderful bodies. They just can’t stop thinking that they look less beautiful than what they really are, and it can be quite frustrating. To some girls, in the bid to make them more beautiful, they end up going too far, even to the extent of sleeping around just to attain the reassurance that they are desirable. Admittedly, such girls’ behaviours are the manifestation of a deeper psychological problem, but this affliction also infects girls with stronger constitutions than that, just in different ways.

How many of us really believe that there is freedom of choice in today’s world and that we are all completely in control of our own behaviour? IF you think you are, then you are deluded. Everyday, there are many instances where what we think/do are subliminally controlled or influenced by the environment around us, cleverly manipulated and designed by marketers or lobbyists. For example, I strongly believe that smoking is a personal choice. And given that some people do not like cigarette smoke, it is correct to gazette smoke-free zones. But you can’t take this too far. Why not let entertainment establishments decide for themselves whether they allow smoking in the joint or not, and trust that people can choose to decide for themselves whether to patronize the joint or not? I hate it when anti tobacco lobbyists, in their overzealousness and whatnot, ban smoking here there and in pubs and bars. What makes them think they know better than the people themselves what is good for them? Let people choose, give us freedom of choice! If you are going to ban tobacco smoking on the grounds that it harms others, well, why not ban alcohol as well? That affects far more people, from spousal abuse, familial neglect, rowdy behaviour, being nuisances, broken bottles in public places, drunk driving and its associated accidents etc, and the list goes on.

A lot of us have the same thought of going backpacking. We have all entertained ideas of making like those Canadians, Europeans, Aussies, and go backpacking around the world on a shoestring budget. The closest I’ve done to that is gone to Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef with Sze. I must say it was a nice experience. But I’ve hardly ever read about tourists’ backpacking experience in Malaysia. This is 1 account. I’m sure there are many more. It does make me wonder, perhaps I could start a back packer’ establishment here in Malaysia, with reasonable rates. After all, for a tourist, what better than an English literate, honest, local guy who can give you some good recommendations, and who is just an internet click away, and who won’t lure you into some dubious tourist scam?

Post Redang Blues...

2008-06-30T15:45:00.002+08:00

So, finally, we are back! From Redang.

It was a wonderful trip, full of scholarly jokes, laughter, fun. Haven’t laughed that hard in a while. That’s what happens when you throw the 9 of us together.

The first 5 hours in the Innova was choc a bloc with great songs, singing at the top of our voices, while we sped along the East West highway in the middle of the night.

Usher just gets better and better, and he has done it again with In This Club. Jet as well, with Shine On, has made it to the top of our Must Sing list. Another tune for humming along to is Jesse McCartney's latest. But the staples, as usual, were U2, Jet, Keane, Snow Patrol, Linkin Park, MCR, Muse, just to name a few.

Redang photos coming up.

But for now, it is back to the hellish grind and bustle of daily life again, back to the grinding mill. Work work work.

Back at work with a slight tan and a lobster-red face.

I WANNA BREAK FREE!!

2008-06-24T18:02:00.001+08:00

This job of mine, which I’ve been doing for the past 6 months, is not bad for the work in itself. It involves lots of number crunching and statistical analysis, and you can spot trends and stuff, which is pretty cool.

The problem is, the effing problem is, that it basically involves me sitting at my table for the entire day, the only exercise being the clicking of the mouse.

Now, anyone who knows me, will know that this is just not me. I made my name here as a dynamic, active person, always on the move, on the go, on the ball, and scooting around the production floor, marching from machine to machine, inspecting things and talking to people.

Now, I basically sit at my freaking desk, and people who walk past and see me here, always come up to me and express their sympathies. And everyone says, it is just so not me. Which I totally agree! Everyone thinks it’s a waste and a pity that I am slowly wasting away here, in this inactive state.

I hate walking in, pulling out my chair, and staying rooted to the same spot, and not moving throughout the entire work day, and just sit there. Which is why reading my basketball news online occasionally is so important, as it is my only way of tapping into something that remotely resembles sports. And sports is in my DNA.

It’s tough, it really is. This makes me really look forward to my basketball sessions, my (trying to re-kickstart it) gym sessions, and most of all, being able to just chill in the sun. That’s all I want, is to lie there in the sun, and chill, and feel the heat on my back. Really, and read a book.

I can feel myself becoming weak and falling sick. I can feel my myscles atrophying. This is a slow painful death. You might as well just slowly start stabbing me to death with a dessert fork. I NEED an active lifestyle.

Old CDs...

2008-06-24T10:10:00.002+08:00

This morning, dug out some of my old and oft listened to CDs to bring to work to listen to while working.

Started off with one of my all time fav Beyond CDs.

Now conjuring up images of me walking around campus defiantly, or at the gym, or trudging around in the cold and dark…I love that solitary feeling, me against the world, holed up in my own virtual reality and secluded by my earphones.

Love it.

Citybaths memories tumbling down now.

Scholars Road Trip, 2008!

2008-06-24T10:10:00.001+08:00

The countdown begins!!!

It is now 10am. In approximately 36 hours, will come the 2008 edition of the multiple-yearly scholars’ trip!

This is so exciting I am shivering and can hardly wait. Finally, after much hoo hah, after being postponed from last year to this year, after much ding donging and tick tocking, we have finally managed to confirm and book things.

Initially it started out as a very ambitious long distance road trip involving 1 van and 9 guys, to Vietnam/Laos. However, due to logistical issues, mainly attributed to the inability to obtain the required leave duration, we scaled it down to just Bangkok. However, as the duration available was shortened even more, we scaled it down again to just Haadyai. Eventually, some got wimpy and pointed to various security concerns, and ultimately, it came down to just 2 nights at Redang.

But it is still better than nothing!

Not much else beats this…surrounded by my 8 fellow scholars, 3 days of no work, no thoughts, no pressures, just me, friends, sun, sea, sand, surf, kayaking, snorkelling…can just bask in the warm sunlight, read a book, and since I am on the East Coast, watch the sun rise.

Only something like PLR with the gf can beat this. Or any other holiday with her, for that matter.

But for now, this is really something I am looking forward to.

A versus B

2008-06-23T20:23:00.001+08:00

Besides boyfriend girlfriend, how else can 1 describe one’s that person?

Not yet married, so not spouse, nor partner. Then…?! BF/GF is too … does not do justice to the relationship, since so many shallow relationships are labelled as such.

Anyway…

In the eternal question, it seems to be increasingly people are confronted with choices of whether to choose boyfriend/girlfriend or career/lifestyle.

Invariably, it seems that at this age, the latter usually wins. Perhaps when people are older, have had more under their belts and all that’s left is to secure a good future with the former, that is when they are more ready to settle down. There is difficulty in choosing a certain path, and then when people choose a path, if their minds are not settled, they’d forever be wondering what if what if.

It’s better to let em go, let em pursue their dreams, and if love truly exists between both, then they will wait.

Is that right?

I think I’m the sort of dude who prefers to settle in one place. I’ve got feet of clay.

It’s not fair either to clip her wings and force her to stay beside you though, right? What IS fair, what isn’t fair? They say all is fair in love and war. Fairness versus rightness.

OK, a bit distracted…I think I better get back to work.

What does it mean...

2008-06-23T19:54:00.001+08:00

…to be a modern man?

It used to be easy. All you had to do was (i) Take spear go out, grab a few male relatives, go kill mammoth, har har har, split mammoth between hunters, play dumb joke with tusks pretending to be male anatomical parts, har har har, club a guy softly on the head with a mammoth paw, take mammoth portion home. (ii) give all meat to wife n daughters to store away. Sit down, eat food that has been cooked. Draw on wall about today’s hunt. Feel masculine for being successful hunter. Hence…(iii) go to wife. Poke her shoulder. She turns around. You grunt. She nods. You retreat to back of cave. Blow out fire. Sniff her a bit. Paw at her a bit. Ravage her. [Censored].

From there, we evolved into this that this that and then there was honour there was gentlemanliness blabla.

Just 50 years ago, we had the tough macho man, he who never winced/cried/felt emotion. The guy who stoically goes about building cities, homes, butchering meat, who fixes things at home. Then we got the namby pamby new age guy (who later turns out to be a closet gay), the dandy, then all these terms get bandied about, metrosexual, SNAG, blab la. So what the hell?

I guess the best barometer is to be true to yourself, operating by an objective set of standards that is not reliant upon societal definitions of what it means to be a modern man. But when you are so, and then it is pointed out to repeatedly that what you are is not right, it’d a bit bullheaded and foolhardy to doggedly pursue this line of character. OK, I get it. So there are aspects I need to change.

But heck, what if there are issues that I have, and it really is bugging me, and it is stuff that is quite normal and I might not be big hearted enough to deal with it.

Annoying stuff, this.

I wonder if women have to deal with this stuff. I’m pretty sure they do. Just as it’s hard to be a man nowadays, we are expected to put up with what our gfs wear, what their hobbies are, how they think and approach certain things, to bring home the bacon, and a lot of it too, be strong, be smart, be sensible, be wise, be handsome, be mature, be forgiving, be well built, be brilliant at work, have lots of free time, can fix everything. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’d be a tough job. Similarly, it must be tough to be a woman. You gotta be able to cook well, look good, know what to say, know how to act, be a great mum, an understanding gf, a filial daughter, compete in a world where men are paid more, have a good body, blabla.

Why is this so? How come in prev generations this wasn’t so?

Maybe it’s the media influence, the proliferation of various bits of media that constantly pounds into us this is good that is good, and raises societal expectations, play along people’s greed to have it all and have it now.

The best thing as far as I’m concerned, is to have zero expectations, have it fair, and (if you have a good parent), use your parent as a starting point role model, and then, things will be rosy and peachy.

Just the basic: understanding, sweet, kind, gentle, looks healthy, sense of humor, quite intelligent. Tat’s good enough.

That kind of day

2008-06-09T16:13:00.000+08:00

Well, it’s been THAT kind of day.

You know, the truly fucked up type, from morning til the afternoon. Tried to stick on a good face so as not to treat the undeserving with undeserved behavior, very tired now, must be the long weekend, but just received another shocker.

I hope I’m not ‘all the king’s horses and all the king’s men’, couldn’t patch back together the shells of a broken egg.

But it’s ok. I will keep trying.

Blog more later.

On Blogging...and the end of Chronicles

2008-06-06T14:56:00.001+08:00

It used to be that last time, I looked forward to and enjoyed blogging, and when I didn’t blog, I felt an itch that needed to be scratched. At times, I poured out my emotions through my blog. In the past almost 1 year, I have been blogging very intermittently and sporadically. There have been moments, I wont deny, that I have had the itch to do so. But the itch is gone very soon, and thoughts that I wanted to blog about but has escaped me does not make me feel weird until it has been blogged down. Basically, not blogging makes no difference to me.

I think I might be growing out of blogging. I’m not so partial to venting my emotions here anymore, coz it is more productive to just handle the issue, and not talk about things. That’s my style. I think when I get married I will stop this.

Reading my old, old posts, I actually get embarrassed at how I handled things and how I felt. Moving on I think my emotions and moods are stabilizing, where the extremes are not so extremes and are better handled. When I read blogs I previously used to haunt and stalk, I see that many of the blogs I used to read are still the same, talking about the same things.

It seems that in this time, the person hasn’t really grown much or developed much. We should use blogs as a reference path down memory lane and then can chart our progress and what else needs to be done. Seriously, in life, there’s a lot more to it. And a lot of our problems are dramaticized, exaggerated by us. I think there is a part in all of us that likes to taint our life with a touch of tragedy sorrow and injustice.

Our love for drama and theatrics needs to be infused with a healthy dose of reality, and we should learn to recognize this trait and separate the actual situation. Then we don’t confuse truth and fantasy and end up messing things up more. When we try to view our lives through rose tinted glasses, there are actually many worthy roses to smell, and things are never as bad as they seem.

Beyond beyond beyond!

2008-06-06T14:56:00.000+08:00

Wow, it has been a Beyond fever fortnight.

At work, everyday has been mind numbingly, frighteningly full of figures, numbers, Excel, SAP, DWH, formulas, etc. Normally what gets me through the day is being able to very quietly listen to my beloved Beyond.

Top 5 rock bands in the world. Ever.

But my new colleague YP has turned out to be a v v knowledgeable and enthusiastic Beyond band as well, and she knows all the old songs as well, even songs that r terribly obscure that no true Beyond fan would know. So I’ve been able to ramp up my volume a tad, which makes for a good working environment. It’s always good to work with someone who also likes the same songs you listen to while working.

Then I found out that for one of the videos they used on Astro to raise money for the earthquake victims, they used a Beyond song as the theme!!! They just changed the lyrics, and all the HK artistes, the notable who’s who, all sang in it, even those who were criticised incessantly by Beyond. And this is 15 years after the demise of WKK.

Talk about lasting effect right? And then the other day, my friend who don’t really listens to Chinese songs, smsed me telling me he caught himself actually listening to and bopping along to and humming to a Beyond song on radio.

That was awesome. Converting friends, and knowing that even today they still play their tracks on radio. Very warm.

Reading character at the gym

2008-06-06T14:06:00.001+08:00

So now with sports events all coming up, with the way I am wired, I am becoming more antsy and the adrenaline is pumping again. Unable to actually play those games, yesterday night I decided to pop by the gym (my first time in like…many months).

[Beat L.A! Beat L.A! the Boston Garden is alive! The parquet floor is shining again!]

So, everything seemed quite familiar. It was nice to soak myself in the familiar and the known, and I rather liked dispensing my energy in this manner, attacking the weights with gusto and working myself up into a sweat. It also reminded me a lot of a certain phase in my life, which I really enjoyed. And comparing now and then, it was disheartening to note that I had not progressed much. It was a soul searching moment (how many guys do that in the gym!?), during which I had to deal with certain resolutions I had failed to keep and that I must now kickstart vigorously and with gusto. But, in remembering an article I had skimmed through very cursorily earlier, I observed something noteworthy.

They say you can identify the type or character of a guy by the way he works out, and I think this is very true. Of course, this is not THE barometer to be used, but it does help if you are a female on the prowl and your jungle is the gym. Actually, you shouldn’t be doing that.

Anyway.

Guys who spend a lot of time at the free weights area are vain. No ands ifs or buts about it. They usually primp and prone a lot, and are often observed ogling at themselves. If these peacocks strutting about are so preoccupied with their looks, you can rest assured he ain’t gonna be think about you much. These are the insensitive pricks. And lo and behold, a chance to test my theory came into play. The guy beside me dropped his ring, which he didn’t realize. I helpfully picked it up and passed it to him. He took it from me, did not look at me nor grunt nor assent nor say a word, put the ring on, adjusted it, and then picked up his weight and continued lifting and grunting while not taking his eyes from the mirror. Wow.

In the course of working up a genuine sweat, you are bound to occasionally let out some sounds or grunts. That’s fine. But there is a line that one should not cross. Maria sharapova sounding like she is having sex on court? Fine. Mr Big arms+Big belly-in-tight-shirt-with-popping-veins-bulging-thighs-in-undersized-tights-dripping-sweat sounding like he is in the middle of orgasming? DEFINITELY forgivable if someone (maybe me) decides to “accidentally” drop a 55lbs dumbbell on his crotch. These are the look at me types, who want the world to know what they can lift. They are normally loud dressers, who like to boast about their achievements, and who attain material things as status symbols as well. Fancy a boyfriend like that?

Then there are the quietly competitive types who keep sneaking peeks at the people around them to gauge how far ahead/behind of their competition they are, to either feel better, or to increase their weights. These types usually load more than they can lift. You can notice these because they spend a lot of time sitting watching and not doing much, and their weights seem too much for someone their size, and they lift just a little bit. Cant move it much. This is the sort of guy who will bite off more than they can chew just to keep up with the Joneses. Very risky to have a guy like that, more preoccupied with his self esteem and self conceived inferiority issues to feel secure enough in himself to focus on you.

Then there is the sort who do their workout, but constantly goes for drinks, reads magazines between sets, type messages, etc. This type does not have mental stamina and staying power to complete a task, and is the worst sort of employee or boyfriend. Once he loses interest in you or decides he does not want to push himself to meet objectively reasonable and admirable standards, he will bail. Is not persistent, not determined, so hence after a long time in the gym, you will see that they have not made much gains. They are not focused, not mentally tough, and easily give up. In a boyfriend, you want one who faces adversity head on, and rises above circumstances, not get sucked in by them.

There is another type, who is very disciplined. They go about methodically, never varying or changing their routine. You see him coming in at similar times, and doing the same workouts, in the same sequences. He diligently writes down his sets, his reps, keeps track of and monitors his progress, and even if it is absurd that a guy his size is lifting something very light, he is not afraid to do it. This is the type who is very disciplined, but without much creativity. They are very conservative, and are afraid to take risks or step out of line. They are hardly ever rich, but are never mediocre either. They are also sticklers to plans and schedules, and do not embrace spontaneity or unpredictability, and are not very flexible with their plans. But they do have several good traits.

The last type, is the best type. This type is embodied by me, but hey, that’s a story for another day, and besides, self praise is no praise.

Sports sports sports

2008-06-06T13:27:00.001+08:00

Fittingly enough, in my first post back after a long hiatus I will be talking about sports and more precisely, the NBA Finals. Now, as most people who know me reasonably well can tell you, I am a rabid sports fan. I love intense thrilling competition, being involved in something exciting, adrenaline inducing and balls shrinking. In short, I am a testosterone junkie. While other like minded souls who are wired the same way would get their indulgences from racing cars, living life dangerously and recklessly, womanizing, I get mine almost exclusively from sports. The thrill of being in a tightly contested game, where the score is tied 10-10 and the first team to win by a 2 basket margin wins, and everyone knows what everyone is going to do, and everyone tries their best to pull out all the stops to stop everyone else, and then, in spite of them trying their utmost to stop you, you still do what it is you do, and then you beat them, and rip their hearts out in the process. That’s what it’s all about.

The mental state that I can get into while in the midst of a furiously paced, action packed, physical, toe to toe, evenly matched basketball game is addictive, is high and often times, an aphrodisiac. Hmm… if I can’t get my sports, I also like to get into adventure sports, with a fair amount of unpredictability and muscles involved, like white water rafting and abseiling.

But I digress…the most exciting event in the yearly calendar is back!!! Ladies please excuse your boyfriends for a bit. It is the NBA Finals, where the best of the best, the world champion, is truly decided. In this year’s historic matchup, we have the Boston Celtics against the LA Lakers. Now, I won’t expound on this too much, but c’mon, does this not evoke in one memories of Larry Legend and Magic? It’s too exciting! I miss my Astro. Reading about the espn online account of the games was enough to evoke goosebumps and enough adrenaline to send me soaring. I am itching to play, right now. The drama, the subplots, the matchups, the deserving Big 3, and I hate LA!!! Beat LA…goes the famous Boston chant, now taken up fervently by me.

Best sport in the world

On a slightly different note, how can people say football is better than basketball!? Well for one, if you want excitement and unpredictability, ok, then maybe football is more exciting to watch because the games hinge on just 1 game. The outcome is decided in just 1 game. But in basketball, the champion is decided over a series, with the first team to win 4 games taking it all. Isn’t that fairer, and a better way of establishing unequivocally who the BEST TEAM is? I mean, when you are trying to decide the best team, obviously winning 4 games will really require that you ARE the better team, and hence, you are deservingly crowned champions. Whereas, in football, the winner is only who was the better team that day.

So flukes can determine the winner. And that is not how we should determine the BEST TEAM. One has got to sustain their winning ways to be a champion.

At any rate, in a recent poll that espn conducted, and let us be very clear that ESPN screens about 22 times more football programmes than basketball programmes, the results indicated that among professional athletes themselves, they rated basketball as the more demanding sport, and as the sport with the fittest athletes. There you go!

In basketball, you are literally sprinting up and down the court for the entire game, with no rests. In football, the players around the ball are the ones mainly involved in the action. In basketball, you have only 5 players on the court from any team. That way, your contribution is vital and every move is critical, and any mistake magnified.

Anyway, Euro 2008 is starting soon, and I am getting caught up in the fever of it. Laid my bets. The 4 semifinalists will be Germany, Spain, Netherlands and the last one is a toss up between Portugal (if Christiano is on form…watch out), Italy (no Cannavaro) and France (dark horse).

It’s great to live in the world of televised sports!

Stress!

2008-05-27T17:07:00.000+08:00

OK I really shouldn’t be doing this. I should not be blogging right smack in the middle of my work day.

But…had stressful meeting! With the Project Board and ended up caught off guard and was put on the spot by being asked to present certain things that I had no idea I was presenting and thought had previously agreed not to talk about first.

Word of advice: when working for certain bosses, please, be prepared for the worst and unexpected.

You never can tell.

But never mind…back to work.

Want to make it in time for my basketball later.

6 months away

2008-05-27T11:13:00.002+08:00

Of course, in the corporate world, until you receive the offer/confirmation letter, there are no promises. Not until the money is banked into your account are you sure that you are getting what you were promised. Hence, one should not make rash and potentially high consequence decisions based on verbal promises and words, as from my miniscule experience, I have come to realize that managers will say what they reckon are the right things to certain people in order to push the right buttons to achieve their personal cause. There is nothing wrong with that, but we just have to exercise caution and not believe everything we hear.

However, this particular manager, is a highly reputable and straight-backed man, a Christian (who smokes, gambles and plays pool, but hey, don’t we all) and a very decent person who would rather be short-changed rather than to join the integrity-less masses in the hope of accelerating his way towards a more rewarding goal.

And he has promised me that a promotion will be coming my way between the year end and the 1st Qtr of next year. Now, any other promotion would be quite ordinary, but this particular one will be very welcome and attractive indeed, as I know the position I will be moving into, as well as the accompanying base salary. I am not that much interested in the title, but the salary that comes with that position is really attractive for a dingbat like me. For a start, I believe that for someone in my industry, with my age and experience, I’d be one of the highest earners then, and that would enable a lot of things that would be quite important at this juncture in my life. For instance, it’d make buying a house much easier, I will be able to have some investments and have a sounder financial plan. Great! Also, if I do intend to leave this company, I’d be set to move to green pastures rather than leaving while in my current designation. Additionally, the new position would really push me to gain more experience and knowledge fast, and expose me to higher level management thinking, for whatever its worth, in this company.

However, as with all such incidents, we tend to focus on the commensurate benefits first. There are a few drawbacks. Firstly, I know the expectations, stress and deliverables will be magnified like never before, and I will definitely be under the spotlight. Can no longer fly slightly below the radar any more, and it’d also be payback time, for some managers stuck their necks out to push me into this role. Secondly, work life balance will be severely affected, as the volume of work will demand much more time invested at work. Well the good news is that with more money, more time at work, that means less time to spend it on, hence equates to more savings. Lastly, by the time the promotion kicks in, I will have passed my deadline for returning to Australia, if I do intend to service my PR.

Decisions, decisions…give it up and go anyway…or stay on and go only after I get the promotion? The thing is, if I do go once I do get the promotion, it is not likely I will be able to get similar positions outside due to my lack of experience at that position, having just come into it.

Never mind… I will park these thoughts aside for now. Time to focus on work again…a lot of it… and need brain work to do. Let’s do this right.

Of sea dives and sky jives...

2008-05-27T11:13:00.001+08:00

Reading a bit of news this morning, and came across this article about a couple who went diving in Queensland, surfaced too far from their chartered boat, drifted in the seas for almost 24 hours, and were finally rescued. Luckily for them, they were rescued. I watched Open Water a few years ago, right after my trip to the Great Barrier Reef, and was slightly haunted by it. In Open Water, the couple who also surfaced too far from their dive boat were never seen again.

The places mentioned in the article, the scenarios here and in Open Water, are eerily similar, and what makes it so scary, is that I can really relate to it, based on my trip to the GBR while I was at Cairns, a few years ago. The fact that it is so highly possible, out of such ordinary circumstances, is what is chilling.

At any rate, I really think that if you do go diving, please, do not for the sake of adventure, lose sight of your chartered boat. Watch Open Water…the helpless fear, sense of regret, feeling of responsibility for the demise of your loved one who trusted you to guide them back to the boat…it is all too much.

Kinda depressing…so, for some slightly more upbeat developments.

If you think the hot hunk 2 rows in front is hot, next time you find yourself on a plane, you can actually sms him and flirt with him. Have you ever wanted to do that? Do you wonder how you can do that? Well, wonder no more, for the idea is finally executable. Apparently, people can do that on NZ Airlines nowadays.

Well, that certainly floods my head with ideas and possibilities.

And I don’t really agree to it. The best response, if someone tried that with me, would be to ignore it. I wouldn’t even bother replying. I’d just ignore it, and if I seem rude, then so be it, or the person can just assume it’s a malfunction. I dare say no female would be as forthcoming as to walk over to me and tap my shoulder and go ‘hey mister…’, and I dare say no female would march up to the air stewardess and complain that her system isn’t working coz apparently I’m not responding. That’d be the case, whether or not I am single, because I don’t think that is a decent way of coming on to someone; why not just march up and say ‘hi’?

But it’d be a good way to test the loyalty of one’s partner, don’t you think? So, if you know your boyfriend is flying Air NZ on flight X, get a hot female friend to get on the same flight, test him out, and have her come back to report to you on his responsiveness.

Random news

2008-05-12T14:56:00.000+08:00

Wow what a whirlwind day. Coming in to work, still hung over from the chillax pace of weekend life…I decided to scan the headlines of the Herald Sun and The Age, a habit (the scanning of Australian newspaper headlines online) which I have not been able to kick. So, many worthy stories aside, I have distilled down to a few of the more interesting ones, though, mind you, some narrowly made the cut over other similarly worthy news items.

First up…we have the story of the sick Austrian man who locked up his daughter when she was 18, in his dungeon, and then, repeatedly returned to rape her over the next 20 years. So this girl was basically locked up, had no sunlight nor rain for 20 years, no exercise, NOTHING, and was basically just kept for disgusting sex reasons. What an animal. And then, he goes on to father 7 of her children, a few of whom he took back to the outside world, gave them to his real life wife (the mother of the victim) and claimed that their daughter had run away to join a cult and left those 3 on their doorstep. Of the remaining few kids, 1 or 2 died and were incinerated, and the others were living in the dungeon. This is just so twisted and sordid. What kind of sick animal of a man is that? To make things more baffling, how on earth could the stupid dumb moron of a mother not figure out, over 20 years, that her own missing daughter, was merely 2 storeys below? I mean…seriously, how stupid is she? And to make things more baffling, this guy rented out his ground floor to tenants, none of whom stumbled onto anything dodgy. If the fricking guy had died, for instance, the hidden daughter, and her kids, would have starved to death. This is a sick tale, and sometimes, fact is stranger than fiction.

In another sordid tale that speaks of the capacity for mankind to commit heinous acts on each other, we have this tale of women (albeit mentally handicapped) in wards being abused and assaulted by other patients or even by hospital staff. The first tale tells of a man who coldly calculated and planned and perpetrated his crime. This tale tells of hospitals who are aware of the sordid goings on but do not take sufficient steps to prevent these things happening. Such a departure from their duty of care should cause them to be sued to high heaven. This tale reminds me of stories and photos I have seen of women in normal hospitals, who while sedated, were abused and assaulted, and even of young women in morgues who were subject to the same treatment. Male nurses should be restricted to handle male patients only.

And in other news, here is proof that today’s children are becoming more stressed and burdened with higher expectations and tougher means of achieving these expectations. Life is no getting easier, inspite of the fact that we are materialistically better off than our parents. We might be materially better off, but we are increasingly stressed and under enormous amounts of pressure. We really should be doing what we can to give them a proper childhood, keep them happy, and not have them worrying over such adult bread and butter issues such as unemployment and housing affordability. I wonder what does it mean, when society evolves to this point. At which stage do we consider that there has been a breakdown in society, a failure on the part of adults to provide them with a comfortable, slower pace in which to grow up, one which we ourselves had.

This article confirms what we men have been feeling and saying for some years now: that the pressure, expectations and demands on the modern male have led to abnormal physiological reactions. Apparently a new study confirms that men are just as baffled as to why their libido is on a steep downward spiral, and what is more baffling, is that they don’t seem particularly bothered. Now THAT is definitely cause for alarm.

And in this bizarre occurrence, a large party of people were partying in a packed balcony area one night when 2 of them got to schmoozing, shuffled too near the edge, and fell off the balcony. The man was fine, but the woman is in critical condition. I wonder what kind of kiss that was.

1 week ago...

2008-05-09T18:20:00.005+08:00

OK. I think I am nostalgic, sentimental etc to a fault. I have this habit of constantly thinking ok, what was I doing X days ago, X weeks ago, X months ago, X years ago. Exactly on this date. Then I find myself wandering back to whatever it is I was doing.

But fault or not fault...I nostalgically look back upon a week ago. And I was at this very spot, looking at this sight.

After paying shitloads for a wonderful spa experience, I think this is my favourite part: on a hot day, going for a cold dip. Definitely didnt harm my fertility ahem.

The landing platform. Good to take a dive off of. Reminds me of the jetty at Cairns, where I saw a large sea turtle.

Ahh...come, it's the weekend now. Time to go off work and... make more memories!

[Hello again, it's you and me...- Bon Jovi, Make a memory]

Latest [dumb] trend

2008-05-09T18:20:00.000+08:00

Apparently, the latest trend to hit the streets is for girlfriends to bite their boyfriends.

What the heck?

After going for lunch with my bunch of colleagues, that is what I have gathered. I am the ‘elder’ among them, like the Eldars of Elvandar. That’s coz these guys are really young and have just a couple months experience. So apparently among these 23-25 year olds and their friends, it is quite a common practice for girlfriends to vent their negative emotions on their boyfriends by biting them.

Some even drew blood! Some have blue black. Actually, it is not just among 23-25 year olds. Word, and evidence, has it that even 27 year olds do it.

I don’t really quite understand how biting helps. I mean it is not like biting removing the source of the negative emotions, so after biting, you still got to face whatever it is that bugged the heck out of you.

Perhaps they get an ego boost by thinking that their boyfriends love them enough to put themselves through this kind of experience. If that’s the case, it is really dumb. I can appreciate gentle gnawing, can even understand if one gets suddenly very ‘yook kan’ and bites slightly harder. But to bite til you draw blood for the sake of feeling better is just plain childish, selfish and not facing full on your main issue.

Which could be a need for psychiatric help.

PLR Part II

2008-05-08T19:06:00.003+08:00

The place is magnificent. This is the infinity pool, which is supposed to give the illusion that the pool and sea is joined, as one, and when you swim towards the horizon...it is infinity.

And that is me, Joanne, and our room.

And this is out in front of my room, with a splendid view by virtue of the fact that our villa is situated at the highest on the island.

What a wonderful holiday. Raring to go again! And learnt many new things too during our jungle walk with the resident professional naturalist. Did you know, for instance, that male cicadas stay dormant for 7 months, underground, appear, make a shitload of noise over the next 2 weeks, breed like crazy, and then drop dead? Did you know that when they emerge, they leave behind a plastic like brown shell, moulded into an exact replica of a cicada itself.

Actually it is a weird existence. You basically hibernate for 7 months, show up, breed like mad, and then die. WTF?!

OK..enough about this hols...Got to run! Maybe more next time.

Playground of the rich & famous

2008-05-07T20:23:00.005+08:00

Ladies and gentleman, please take a good look.

Welcome to Pangkor Laut Resort - Playground of the Rich and Famous, though I am neither rich nor famous. So last Friday, having taken leave, I was instructed to get meself blindfolded, fold my long muscular frame (I am in a good mood, please do not burst my bubble, you realist you) into the car, and instructed me to go to sleep. After drifting in and out of a forced/induced sleep (which troubled me because I kept feeling the car swerve, followed by a loud vicious and angry horning sound from other cars) while my Joanne drove, suddenly I was instructed to get out of the car. So, ok I removed my (muscular and long) frame from the car, and, still in blindfolds, was led protestingly to...somewhere. After various pleadings, bleatings and protestations of feeling really silly, I was finally allowed to remove the blindfold on the condition that I can only look down. Well...here I was, at the office and departure point to the privately owned PLR!

A few sips of something really nice later, and the both of us were on the ferry, happily blasting our way through the choppy seas to the private island. Upon arrival, it was paradise itself. The scenery was first class, the vaunted Emerald Bay (though falling a bit short of the hype) was fantastic, the whole operations of the place fell into place like tumblers of a giant gear mechanism. The service and people were fantastic. The rooms were great, and we got the highest rooms, the Hill Villas, where we were just a (albeit very very strong) stone's throw away from the sea eagles' nests. The bathtub in there was first rate, the deco was excellent, and they even had Astro, where I, for the first time in years, watched a basketball game (though only for half a quarter, which makes it roughly 10 minutes). The bed was inviting, the lighting classy, the aircond just right.

There was a free shuttle service (i.e. your personal van) taking you to and from. I was really touched by Joanne's initiative, to surprise me and drive me all the way there. To top it off, she paid for it too, and I know it cost her a bomb. To even things up, I paid for our spa, which cost me close to an arm, a leg, and a couple of hairs.

The whole holiday was really really nice...I enjoyed our swims together on the 'horizon pool' (or so that's what my Jo told me!) and the spa and the food and the nature walks and we even saw a snake (no, not the type who works in Marketing/Banking).

There's so much more to say...nvm, in posts to come, shall stick on photos, including of Vietnam. My my, you readers are in for a treat. I am jealous already. How come other blogs don't tease me like this? Btw...the spa is really REALLY cool. Just wait for the pics...

Where is this place?

2008-05-02T10:44:00.003+08:00

It seems like I've been working hard and playing even harder lately. Holidays, trips, excursions..it seems like before one is barely over, I am planning for another one.

Having just returned from Vietnam, I am already planning a major road trip with the scholars in June that will take us to 3 different countries.

But this is getting too much! Now, it has gotten to the point where I am on holiday without even realizing it.

This morning was awakened rudely by an alarm clock at 6 30am, chucked into the shower, bundled into the car, blindfolded, ordered to "keep quiet and don't move" for an indefinite amount of time (which later turned out to be 3 hours), and then was ushered out of the car, still blindfolded, and now I am standing at the reception lobby of some spa like place, and I hear people talking about ferries, islands and whatnot...I have packed for 2 nights and 3 days and I still don't know where I am or what is happening.

We shall find out.

Vietnam 1

2008-04-09T11:29:00.000+08:00

Last few months have been rather hectic. I was contemplating last few days were pretty busy, but then it seemed like the last few weeks were, and when I thought about it a bit more, it seemed like the last few months were hectic. I decided to stop there, because, in reality, the last few years have been pretty hectic.

Anyway, since I am not in much of a serious and methodical do-work frame of mind, I have decided to unlock the mental shackles on my fingers and just let them type away, free from the limiting biddings of my uncreative brain.

Well! I just got back from Hanoi! As you may have observed, this page is slowly moving away from putting up photographs, but I’ll try to stick in a few in my next post. I think Hanoi can be effectively summarized by the following sentence:

“It is like a slice of France mixed in with a dash of Thailand and a sprinkling of China in the heart of South East Asia.”

Those words, and that description of Vietnam, were immortalized by none other than the infamous author, Alex W. That was his pen name. Until today, no one really knows who he is or what his real name is. Such an enigma…

Vietnam is an interesting place. The Vietnamese are an interesting people. They are hardy and practical and do not waste anything, are resolute and stubbornly persistent. I think they are the only country that the United States have been unable to claim complete military victory, and 30 years down the line, the mighty United States are still licking their wounds from this war. Shameful in defeat and withdrawal, despite leaving the country filled with landmines and with the horrific victims of Agent Orange, amidst other horrors such as military chemical warfare experiments, the Vietnamese have risen and are now proudly taking their rightful place as one of the up and coming success stories of South East Asia. Their never say die attitude, resoluteness and practicality resonate in every fibre of their daily lives, as can be witnessed if one is observant enough and spends some time there.

My trip there could be summarized into 5 themes. 1 = Food. 2 = Halong Bay. 3 = Traffic. 4 = Shopping. 5 = Culture.

In my next post, I shall expound briefly on each theme.

Teacher's Day

2008-03-31T11:28:00.002+08:00

Dear Jeanz,

Well, how long has it been? More than 10 years, our friendship. Spanning the day we knew each other as little small people (face it, we are both rather small) in high school, through the time when we graduated from high school together, graduated from Trinity together, and all those shared Melb experiences...

And now, on your graduation day, let me wish you many many congratulations! After all those years of study, trduging around mother-henning your little kids, congratulations on your graduation! As you continue down this path you have chosen to embark on, may you experience much success and happiness.

And never forget that teaching is noble, don't forget why in the first place you did it, and you have a very important role to play in forming the foundation of kids' characters.

ps: Please find the cutest chubby boy, and pinch his cheeks and bite his arm for me!

Stereotyping the banker

2008-03-26T16:45:00.002+08:00

While eating with my best friends last night, both of whom are bankers, our conversation turned to, naturally, banking, and it evolved into a discussion on the common types of banking people. Of course, we were not saying that all bankers were encompassed in our deductions, but that it was more of a general stereotype observation.

In banking, we realized that yes there were some people who were really passionate about the concept, who were really committed to and dedicated to their jobs and growing their clients portfolios.

But by far the most common type you will meet is the horny male banker. This is the sort who craves money, wants money to attract girls, and is girl crazy. They can be slightly cocky, arrogant, and their knowledge of things is on a superficial level. Some members of this community though are good at what they do. The best part is, none of them actually appear obviously as a horny money hungry male banker, at least, not until you get to know them better, and you definitely wont be seeing these sides of them unless you are a like minded male friend who wont blow their cover. Otherwise, you’d not recognize these types.

The other common type is the hot young female banker who thinks her looks will get her ahead, and sadly so, they do! In a certain well known international bank operating here, their Management Trainee/Associate program actually accepts probably 80% females, all of whom are considered way above average in terms of their attractiveness, when gauged against conventional and objective criteria. Their level of knowledge is often superficial, and shaky at best.

The worst part is, these people do make a lot, not by virtue of talent and hard work, but by virtue of being in banking. And they do think they are very clever, as society does hand them that title on a silver plate, as we deem people by how much they earn.

Immature as it is, I do take this personal and anyone of these people who tries to get cocky with me will get sharp words and a not so subtle put down. If you are in it for the money, admit so, and don’t hide behind any façade and please get off your high horse. People who are flattered by their own salaries and consider others inferior to themselves do disgust me so.

Political Commentary

2008-03-26T16:45:00.000+08:00

For all his and his administration’s mistakes, excesses and various wrongdoings, one thing that history will look kindly on our current Malaysian PM on will be the freedom he initially gave to the press. I say initially because by and by, as his hold on power became increasingly faced with criticism, and his tenure became more shaky, he succumbed to the same mentality adopted by previous insecure leaders of other countries: he clamped down on freedom of information. The press duly became extended PR arms of the ruling coalition, license and permits to speak were not granted to certain charismatic personalities (who would be able to spill beans on the government) and bloggers were taken to task.

This is not to say that they were not successful; instead, the more the government tried to clamp down on normal media as well as the mass media spinning their content, the more the people turned to the alternative media, i.e. cybermedia. (Let it be remembered that I coined the word here first). And the cybermedia is bereft of controls at this point in time in Malaysia, and hence, the momentum gathering against the government was able to gain more momentum.

It is still early days, but the previously opposition coalition must prove that it is a viable government. The next few years will be critical. It is bad luck that the next year is forecasted to be a tight one economically, but if that is the card we have been dealt, then that is what we must contend with. If the coalition can rule the 5 opposition held states well, there is no telling what will happen at the next GE; perhaps the toppling of the BN. In fact, as it is, the BN is close to its death throes. MCA MIC and Gerakan have had their balls cut off. UMNO is facing a strong internal challenge from KuLi and its strongest ever Opposition, helmed by its most viable and threatening leader ever, the former Education/Finance and Deputy PM.

2 things we need to do when we reflect on this election results. One. The groundswell of anti BN movement was made possible by the PM’s more relaxed hold on the press compared to his predecessor. The same sentiments prevailed under Dr M’s time, but without a channel to be expressed through, and with the Net still in its infancy here in Malaysia, Dr M’s iron grip was able to suppress all this. With everything clicking at the same time however, Badawi had not a chance. Second. We must remember that Badawi inherited a government that was rotten and corrupted. But in good times and amidst a rolling economically progressive era, Dr M was able to get away with/suppress all this. Come Badawi’s time, he was not a strong enough PM to repeat what Dr M could do, and could not control his underlings. Given all this, and his inability to clean up what the previous administration gave him a huge mandate for promising to do (i.e. clean up the government he inherited), he was bound to go.

In the future, all eyes will be on the newly won states for the opposition. In Perak, the new MB is holding tremendous goodwill and support from the people, of all races. As his recent forays into speech making has shown, the ability to converse in 3 Chinese dialects, Tamil, English and Malay has won him the hearts of the people. In Penang, the new CM also has the people eating out of his hands. This is a great start and a wonderful new mandate to work with. The only things to watch out for are the bad debts, loans, and legal liabilities inherited from the previous administration. This is in abundance, as the empty offices that they walked into have proven, having had all files and papers shredded away.

In the still government controlled states, the BN is also experiencing a battle on yet another front; the Rulers. Perlis has successfully installed a Ruler’s choice MB over a BN choice. But in Terengganu, where there is much misdoings to cover up, Badawi is still fighting hard to install his puppet Idris. If the Ruler’s man gets the job, it will be tough to cover up all the misdoings that have been going on. So, it remains and exciting time ahead, as new developments continue to unfold.

Random musings throughout the day...

2008-03-25T19:00:00.002+08:00

It isn’t very easy being a guy, especially a guy with all the articulate abilities in the world to jabber on about a host of stuff except for the stuff that really matters, the feelings inside.

It is not so bad if I was generally inarticulate, but what is the point in being articulate about things that don’t really matter?

I’ve been commended at work for being clear, concise, logical, but what is the point when the methodology applied to achieve those results cannot be replicated across to the emotional standpoint?

***
The desire to quit and resign still stands, and still burns strong. This weekend is going to be a time for resume writing, and do or die I will finish it this week and start my applications next week. Anything in Sydney or Melbourne would be fine, although of course I prefer Melbourne, it being in my blood and all. However, as I will likely be seeking an internal transfer to our company in Australia, which is based in Sydney, it is highly likely I will end up in Sydney.

What is there to look forward to in Sydney? Well, I guess the ‘overseas working yuppie’ thing does seem slightly attractive, although I’d have to be disciplined not to fall into the student living environment trap.

I think I’d like my own small little cosy comfy apartment. It’s got to be a minimalist type of setting, without much fuss. A painting here or there adorning the white walls, a big window/screen door that slides open to my balcony. That would do just fine. With my basketball posters here and there, and blown up and developed glossy photographs that I have taken on my various travels. A nice sound system.

Airy, bright, spacious, with a masculine bathroom.

What is a masculine bathroom?

Dark blue towels, navy blue, white towels, grey towels, lots of them.

Well it is good to embark on this kind of mental soliloquoy, because I am feeling a little apprehensive about working with Australians again. Living with them is one thing. Working with highly opinionated, often immature, somewhat judgemental etc Australians, especially those in the commerce industry, would be quite a put off.

Of course, for those already working there, they’d deny this, or it’d make them seem a certain way if they admitted that they felt this yet stayed on. But there is always hope, and I have met my fair share of the good people, and let’s hope that that goes on.

Looking young is also going to be a problem. Rats… I think I look 18 to these people.

It is of the utmost importance to come home to a lovely home.

***
T’was a good day at work today. Everything clicked and fell into place, and the presentations I had to produce from scratch and present to other high ranking stakeholders and get their buy in went well. Well, more work for me and more credit to my superiors, I suppose. The pressure is getting really intense and the spotlight is definitely squarely on me. It sucks that others’ of my designation don’t have this much pressure/expectations/responsibilities/accountabilities but at the end of the day, it is what it is and we just deal with it.

Looking on the bright side, always view this optimistically, as if this is an opportunity and it is one way I can rise faster than them. This has always been my mentality and it has brought me some measure of success, but the passion to do so and the willingness and desire to continue to throw myself into this is less, hence accounting for the increased annoyance at the status quo.

At any rate, the good news is that I suddenly received a significant sum of money out of the blue from the company. Always a good thing.

Mood is not bad, hence the impulse to sit here and type away and blog.

However it is tempered by some insecurity, which I will master and control. Will not let irrational reasons sabotage good things.

***
They say men suffer from higher and more severe incidences of depression and suicide. I can relate to it. I think it is a potent combo of inability to express coupled with the expectation by society to accept expressions of anything less than a strong and tough constitution and emotional makeup plus other pressures placed by society which men do not have any form of support group for.

Of course, objectively, this can also be said for women.

Anyway, thank god for sports and exercise. I use sports and exercising as my means of destressing and relaxing, and I’m not sure whether that is a good and healthy (mentally, emotionally, character wise) way to exhume pent up frustrations or not. Maybe it is not the right way, and the right way is to de-create the frustration in the first place by not letting whatever circumstances are causing our frustrations to allow us to feel that frustration. However in the absence of that means which I would love to discover, sports come pretty close.

***

I just love this lyric:

This innocence, is brilliant.

I hope that it will stay.

This moment, is perfect.

Please don't go away.

I need, you now.

Hold on to it, don't you let it pass you by.

Perhaps it was the circumstances surrounding my awareness of the song's existence, and what happened thereafter...but its definitely poignant and significant to me.

Yoou make me happy!

2008-03-15T19:42:00.003+08:00

Love. Recently been receiving much news of marriage proposals, upcoming weddings, receiving a few invitations, generally hearing all round good news. Which is great. And also a few sadder stories of other relationships being rocky, having problems, hiccups, or being on the brink of incompatibility. Also been reading John Gray’s Mars and Venus on a date. Which is a pretty good book, except for certain parts which PISSED the hell out of me, but I digress.

An often overlooked but VERY critical aspect of love, is love. Huh? Whats that, you say?

Well. I was referring to the physical act of love, of loving. To love, means being in love (the feelings) AND the verb, the physical action of loving someone. Please, Alex, make some sense.

People generally think that love is a feeling, which they cannot control. They think, they don’t choose to fall in love with someone, but they do, and that’s that. And that feeling governs their actions. So as long as they have that feeling, they are happy to do things for that person, e.g. make sacrifices, do nice things, give surprises. But once that ‘feeling’ dies, they cant do those things anymore, and they think we cannot be together already because don’t have that feeling anymore.

To a certain extent that is true. But my argument is that love is something we can control. For instance, initially, in the “sparks of romance” period, we can choose to stifle it, not respond, or, respond. There is no such thing as ‘I just fell in love with so and so, I couldn’t help it.”. Nobody suddenly falls in love. You exist. You meet someone. Over some time you realize there are sparks. So you know that if you continue, you will feed the flames, and if you continue to fan it, it will blossom into more. And if you make the decision to go for it, then you cannot claim that you just happen to fell in love.

Ok, so now you are ‘in love’, what next? Is it a matter of the feelings being some inexhaustible supply, an eternal fossil fuel, that you can reach into and inspire you to do lovely and loving things? Nope. If you dont constantly do things to feed build up maintain n nurture that well, eventually, it dries up. You need to constantly love the other person, do loving things, commit acts that require you to give, without taking, and do things purely for the simple unadulterated fact that it would make the other person happy, regardless of whether there is anything in it for you. It transcends ‘I feel something for you so I do this for you’ to also ‘by continuing to do this for you, I constantly get reminded of what a privilege this is and how happy it makes me just to see you happy and your response makes me love you more’. You might be real tired, but you stay up for that extra hour to listen to the other person, you drive the extra mile to get her that ice cream she likes, you make the effort to bring her to a place she would enjoy, things like that. Acts of giving, my friend. When you find that you can still do acts of giving, there is hope. Try it. Do something that has absolutely nothing in it for you, but gives the other joy. It works. By doing so, somehow, you end up loving that person more.

There is a scientific explanation to this, as I JUST realized from reading John Gray’s abovementioned book. In it, he says, the way guys are wired, is that we want to know that we can meet a woman’s needs and that we can make her happy. We like to feel useful and needed. So when we do things that makes her happy, the reward is not getting something in return, but that we made her happy and that we have the ability to do that. It is an intrinsic reward, quite high up Mazlow's needs traingle. It is very crucial and critical for women to let their men know that they do indeed make them happy.

You guys should be paying me for this stuff.

Forgiveness

2008-03-15T18:54:00.004+08:00

The Bible says we must forgive others for what have been done to us, and forgive ourselves for what we have done. In order to move on in life, we have to forgive others, and also to forgive ourselves. Until we can truly look back on events without any negative emotions, can we claim to have truly let go and have forgiven ourselves and others.

I have no problems with forgiving others. Really, when I look back, I do not feel the negative emotions, only the logical deductions of their actions. For instance, when I look back at a boss unfairly withdrawing promised support of me and leaving me out to dry, I no longer recall the feelings of disappointment, let down and betrayal. But I do remember the lesson learnt, the message, which is that among other behavior of his, this leads me to conclude that I can no longer work for him. This is not personal, just a reflection of a mismatched style and expectations. Hence, in this case, it is better for both parties to move on.

But for my personal life, it's tough trying to forgive myself and reconcile myself to the damage, hurt, loss/alteration of dreams that I have caused onto others. Due to my own immaturity, lack of wisdom and misplaced self belief (that my way of handling is best), I transgressed onto others. This is not something that can be forgotten easily or undone. It can never be undone or forgotten. The only way for them to move forward is to accept and forgive, which is a tough call. And I hate having put them into this situation. Because it is hard to forgive personal injustice, and either they have to do the difficult, i.e. forgive, or they are now sinners, i.e. unforgiving people.

I rationalize. I tell myself that we reap what we sow, and as long as we have given others an opportunity to match our expectations, as long as we articulate those expectations, when things don’t match, we can state a reasonable case to move on. And I thought (as it turns out, wrongly) I’d be able to accept such a situation as well if it was me. And we do what we can to lay down expectations, give chances when that is not met, and up to a certain cut off point, we draw the line, do what we got to do, and walk away, and that in itself is closure and the other party will be able to realize ok, hence, game over, asnd they'd be able to accept the logical reasons for the decision as well. I thought I was very logically driven.

But I have misread the human mind. When put into a similar situation where my repeated failure to meet expectations and ultimatums finally caused me to sow what I was reaping, I could not take it. Although the mind took it well, the heart couldn’t let go. And although I’m on a new lease of life, given a new opportunity to show who I am, I know that no matter what, I have caused Joanne’s first (and from now on, only) relationship to have such a terrible beginning. I have robbed her of that beautiful beginning. I can make the middle and the ending great, but the undeniable fact is that the beginning was not pure white. The only silver lining is that it taught us both many things. Situations like this either draw us closer, or create a wedge between us that we can try to bury but ultimately might rear its ugly head to tear us apart due to the lack of trust from her side, her different opinion of me, her judging my character based on a period of time where I was not myself, and perhaps her forgetting of the person I was before I made my mistake in life. I hope these don't happen.

At the same time, though I gave HY much chances as well, and laid clear to her my expectations, and I know I am not to blame for her taking it badly, I feel guilty n concerned. Is it not hypocritical of me to ask from one what I wouldnt give to another? Although, I did give her chances, and now, I must be fair to Joanne.

So I need to learn to forgive myself for my transgressions onto others, which is easier, as it is basically a matter of rationalizing to oneself. And that is much easier than others forgiving me, which is out of my control.

Time to go..all good things, must come to an end

2008-03-15T18:48:00.002+08:00

Collectively, all the pressures and issues burdening me down have really stressed me to a burn out point. I have been trying hard to be strong and remain impassive and calm, collected and in control of the situation, not letting it show, not worrying and burdening those around me, but I feel that it is time to take action.

Right now, the most pressing is work. At work, for the last 2.5 years since I joined, I have been a loyal soldier. I have been an exemplary employee, winning awards and praise along the way, being regarded as a star performer. The future for me here is bright. But recent events, departmental developments, and a series of unfortunate events (quite unlike that of Lemony Snicketts’) have drove home and highlighted to me that the timing is ripe. If my intention is to develop my career here, I will be a fool not to tolerate this for another year, as I will definitely be promoted then, which would cause my salary to be put in quite a comfortable zone for someone my age. However, since I have been considering moving to Australia, I now find it a very attractive option to go back there and service my PR before it expires. I do not want to go into detail, but after talking to a few people, and sitting back and taking stock of my situation from an entirely objective standpoint devoid of emotion, I have concluded that I want to leave as soon as possible, and since a 3 month notice is required, I will be tendering in April.

It is not easy making such a decision, especially walking away from a company that I have invested so much into. I have learnt a lot here, made some lifelong relationships, and meaningful friendships, spent many a significant moment there, enjoyed some of life’s milestones there etc. When the day comes, I will be very sad, but a man has to do what a man has to do.

Looking to the future, I am filled with doubt, but which successful venture has started out with a guaranteed knowledge of the outcome? Nothing worth doing is easy to try. We have to break from our comfort zone. First up is the industry I want to go into. Secondly, what job? To answer these, I have already narrowed it down to 3 industries. Within those industries, I will apply to whatever I stand a chance with, and from the process and outcome, I hope to be able to discover which exactly I want. I have been deciding for so long now, that it’d be insane to continue what I’m doing and yet expect the results to be different. Might as well try and start applying to all, see the responses I get, and from there, I can know better my chances and interests, and hence eliminate options and depending on the offers incoming, perhaps something will jump out at me.

The next worry is the Australian work culture. Having been there for 6 years, I can state that I do have a real fear of fitting in. In the engineering industry, I don’t expect to have a problem, but when it comes to commerce, I am worried. I have to confront the different mentality and culture that is inherent in members of a different industry, and also deal with cross cultural issues. Over here in Malaysia, the racism is such that they think you are better and hence they need to clip your wings. Over there, they think that they are better and hence you don’t even have a chance to show you have wings. And having managed several projects during my industrial training, I have to say that Australians respond to a very different type of management style compared to Malaysia. Anyway, time will tell, and if I decide to move, when in Rome, I will adapt, be a chameleon, and act like the Romans. I just hope and must believe (and pray) that I have it in me.

Of course, one way to think about things is that regardless of the outcome trust that God will not let me bite off more than I can chew. That there is a grand plan behind this all, that he is using me for his reasons. And that I can rest assured that if I submit to him, all these human feelings will be lessened. Getting a job probably wouldn’t be too difficult; securing the right one might be tricky.

There is another big insecurity with moving to Australia, totally unrelated to my work, haunting me which I cannot say, but must dealt with myself. It is a mark of immaturity or perhaps some sort of inadequacy buried deep inside, and that must be courageously faced and tried to be dispelled with.

GE 08 (A new hope for a new beginning)

2008-03-15T18:45:00.001+08:00

You honestly wouldn’t expect me to go this long without commenting on the recent 12^th General Elections, 2008, would you?

Last Saturday marked a historic occasion, a milestone, in Malaysian history, from any angle you look at it, not just political. For, and as we all have heard numerous times by now, the fat cats of the ruling coalition, who have way overstayed their position, were summarily and categorically defeated in a very real and significant sense, literally and figuratively. The signals heralded by this defeat can not be understated. Although they still retained their simple majority to hence hold power in Government, they can no longer wantonly make changes in their favor to the Constitution, to the law, and to the Election Commission. So, in summary:

Fact:

The BN lost their 2/3 parliamentary majority.

The BN lost 4 more states, to bring to a total of 5 states now run by the opposition.
The loose coalition have been now given a real mandate and opportunity to prove to the people that they are a very real and viable alternative government and no longer just effective as watchdogs who protest and oppose.
The results show that overall, 51% of the Malaysian voted for the ruling coalition. Of this, the vast majority came from East Malaysia, which statistically reveals to house the most number of Muslim immigrants/immigrants turned Muslims in the last half a decade.

Implications:

The people have spoken. This is more a damning rebuke of the BN government then of a resounding approval for the opposition. Hence the BN should consider this as a warning served that unless dire changes come from within, it will no longer remain relevant and stand the chance of being pushed out of government in the next GE, marking the first time since Independence that Malaysia is not ruled by a national alliance of some sort.

The threats, scare tactics and intimidation of racial riots, bloody massacres and drawing Chinese blood have backfired entirely. Malaysians have moved beyond communal politics, and are now ready to vote based on party policies and ideologies. This marks a transcendent moment in Malaysian politics, and marks the hitherto unknown maturity of the Malaysian electorate.
Although there were high suspicions of vote rigging, phantom voters, the usual unfair elections accusations, with even the Election Commissions chairman coming out to state that the job of the EC was to keep the ruling coalition in power, the results themselves demonstrate that democracy is truly alive, well and kicking at least in an effective form today. For this is a victory to the Malaysian people, that democracy here exists, albeit in an infantile form. Added to that the highly suspicious last minute removal of the indelible ink fiasco, although one wonders whether the results were fixed and if so, what is the true extent of the defeat, there is reason to hope that the elections process were reasonably fair this time around.
When Malays and Indians came together to state that ‘Chinese blood’ would be shed over their dead bodies, and that they would protect their brethren, it showed that race based politics is over in Malaysia. Playing one race off another, a delicate and very volatile act at best, is no longer effective. When DAP is voted for by Malays, and PAS by Chinese, when there is no racial riots or bloodshed and the election process smoothly took place, we can now claim that perhaps racial integration is further along than we previously dared hope for. In our region, how many countries can lay claim to such an outcome in such a major governmental upheaval?
For all his flaws and remarkable incompetence, the PM has at least opened up the country to more freedom of information, and loosened the tight reins imposed by his predecessor. This election results would never be so if not for the part played by Youtube, the Internet, blogging, SMSes, etc.
The Malays themselves are leaving UMNO in droves. They are fed up with the NEP existing to serve only a few of the privileged. Nationally, people are fed up with the policies and are demanding for a change.

The Future

The country has a palpable air now. There is an anticipation of change, the excitement of the future to look to. There is hope. With the voting in of the new representatives, this is a golden opportunity for the opposition to seize the time to make good on their electoral promises. If they fail, the blow delivered to them will make it highly likely that opposition politics in the country will never again rise to any significant level, and will fall further than ever before. If they prove they can deliver, in the next GE, they will be returned with even more powers than before, a fatal blow to the current coalition. These next 5 years will be closely watched. New representatives, seize your chance! These 5 years with such powers might never be replicated.

The remaining members of the major ruling triumvirate need to honestly look into themselves. They might never recover, unless they are willing to admit to past corruption, money politics, excesses, arrogance, ignoring the people, etc, and make bold cuts and changes to correct the situation. The MIC and Gerakan is as good as irrelevant, and the MCA is not much better.
Already the opposition is showing signs of dissent and quarrel. How they behave will really seal into the minds of the voters whether this is a viable alternative government, or whether they are replacing a red fox with a brown fox. It is time for the opposition to really walk the talk, put behind them egos and petty squabbles, let bygones be bygones, and work together.
Old policies such as the NEP cannot be dismantled overnight. We have to be patient. The ruling party is already bribing non BN parliamentary members with anywhere from RM1m to RM10m per head to defect over, in a bid to regain its 2/3 majority. So far, they are not succeeding. We hope this to remain so.
Anwar will most likely regain a PKR parliamentary seat in his next party by election. We shall await and see if he has really transformed into a youthful ultra pro Malay activist and main culprit for the racially segregated education system, into a Western style modern day political crusader.

The future fills me with hope that we can really be on the path to national revitalization. Otherwise, if the newly elected fail, Malaysia will truly be a lost cause. It is indeed an exciting 5 years ahead.

By the way, congrats for reading this far. Didnt think you'd make it.

A break...that's all I ask

2008-03-07T18:34:00.003+08:00

So, after being tormented, worried, confused, and driven insane with mental wonderings and questions, fears, doubts, insecurities, and sitting around in my car aimlessly, I finally decided to drive myself to the nearby cyber cafe. A couple of admin things to follow up on.

- Check emails which I havent done for 2 weeks.
- Check anything from HSBC (Aus) or not.

Been really annoyed. First, there's been no internet access for the last 2 weeks thanks to Streamyx's as usual periodic breakdowns. Secondly, I am being driven nuts by the fact that I made an AUD16,000 transaction and for the last 2 weeks it has not gone through and it is driving me nuts and insane with worry. I've called and called like 30 times, and from morning til afternoon til evening til night til midnight and somehow the blooody problem cannot get resolved. Thirdly, the work Lotus Note has been acting up and is all screwed up, which needs to be rectified. Again. Talk about bad luck coming in threes, right? NooOooo...

Theres also the mother to think of. Her ill health in recent times has gotten me really worried. She is aging in front of my very eyes and her hair loss has gotten me v concerned. It makes me feel guilty to think of migrating and her being all alone here. I really really wish she had remarried when she was younger. Guilt is worse than being potentially mistreated by a stepfather. Coz when he grows old I can get him back. But you can never repay or be good enough to your mum for beinging you up alone.

And then there's work. I cannot even begin to describe the expectations, stresses, pressures placed on me. Dilbert said it so true when he said that in the corporate world, we are often told to make this n this project work, to cover up for the fact that the project was badly started, and we are just saving our boss' ass. Furthermore, there's so much demands, and there's more audits coming up, and finally...let me give some background. Already I handle 70% of VMI work for the company. My counterpart handles the other 30%. However, this colleague has resigned, and left, leaving an ad hoc committee of 3 people to now do her 1 person's job. In our inability to find a suitable replacement, now I have to double hat. Let me tell you, the work and pressure is not insignificant.

Additionally, I am having serious doubts and worries about my career path, job selection in the future, and the important question of what do I want has yet to be answered.

Read a book last night, which basically said ask not what I want, but what God wants for me, which would make it easier. So Joanne's way of abiding by the above is to apply for everything that appeals, and whichever job we land, would have God's hand and seal of approval on it. Because I do not have that faith, I am now worrying bout the strength of my faith, and it really disappoints myself, and steps will be taken to address it.

Added to and above all this, there is the spectre of the constant worrying, stressing, fearing, being insecure, and the tormenting confusion and perpetually expecting something terrible to befall me.

Now we are here, now we are gone

2008-03-03T15:29:00.005+08:00

As the GE draws near, and the inevitable resounding defeat of the Opposition once again looms large, it is being driven into me yet again the likely hopelessness and vicious downward spinning spiral that this country will sink into. This will likely be the trigger that pushes me deeper into the ‘have to leave this country soon’ mental zone. Although I hate to think of it as a rat deserting a sinking ship, I can’t help disassociating myself with such sentiments. Where previously while I was away, I was desperate to be home, and when I was home I was ecstatic, I had reached a point where I was fed up and ready to go. However, now that the hour draws near, it is without a lack of nostalgia and sentimentalism that I mentally prepare to leave.

Today, I…

Worked until about 1:15, drove to the nearby coffee shop which was a 5-min drive, ate while reading my book…always a pleasant experience, this. Moments of quiet solitude and being alone are much under-appreciated. So after eating, with time to spare, I hopped back into the car and continued with my book. After another 20-min reading session with the AC on at full blast, I drove back.

These fruitful lunches and sessions of quiet solitude to reflect on things and wallow in my immediate surroundings that are devoid of any pressures or other seemingly relentless demands would be much missed. As much as the being-alone is important, I guess the feeling that you’re never too out of place and hence somewhat belong, more so than say if you were surrounded by people of a different race, might play a part.

I think these sentiments were brought on by the couple of expatriate men sitting beside me, who were conversing about their life here, at a volume that I couldn’t help but overhear. Hearing them describe simple everyday things like popular local entertainment spots and everyday places that I take for granted was a refreshing perspective on life in KL, and of my potential future life in some other part of the world. It was entertaining and amusing to find them being delighted or shocked or surprised or appreciative of certain things that I have always taken for granted and that us locals would not bat an eyelash about. Sometimes, what we overlook, are really the little things that impresses others.

I wonder if perhaps the fact that I grew up with my own house, without a need to share, and always solidly rooted to more or less the same geographic area, has any influence or impact in my sentiments and opinions about leaving this country for good. I’ve noticed that people who have spent their life moving about never really develop much of a strong affiliation to any location, and are much more wont to be bitten by an extensive travel bug that makes it hard for them to settle in any one spot, although this is not to say that those of us who were brought up in an otherwise environment are not partial to extensive travel.

Well, time to stop day dreaming, lots of work to get done.

Recognition & Acknowledgement

2008-03-03T15:29:00.004+08:00

This week’s sermon was quite interesting and arresting. A late night before had taken its toll on me and unfortunately, I am ashamed to admit that I fell asleep for the first bit. However, his second bit captured my attention. In telling us that we ought to be this and that, I found that much of what he said we should behave like (from what he gleans from and how he interprets the Bible) are already character traits that I have tried to inculcate in my behaviour from a young age. I find that when I was younger I was perhaps more disciplined and led a much more character-ed life. However, as it is, I think recent years have just served to bring out and display the worst in me, and not just bring out, but possibly develop it as well.

At any rate, two things he said stuck. All men have a need to be acknowledged and to be recognized. If at work, fair enough, because it translates into one’s income. However, off work, it is vital to remember that either you don’t do something, or you do it out of love, and if it is done out of love, it is the outcome of your act that is important, hence one should not need to feel appreciated/loved/acknowledged for that deed. If one feels somewhat unappreciated etc, then one should re-examine one’s true intent for performing that deed. That sort of response is welcome, but if it doesn’t come, one should not dwell on it at all. The second thing is that people always threaten colleagues with quitting. That is a thought that I am guilty of. The knowledge that they need me more and that I can just walk and THEN we’ll see where they are, and the capacity to utilize this negatively, is a very bad thing to use as a lever, even if kept to myself.

Must endeavour to lead a more principally correct life out of a genuine desire to be that sort of person, and not just because the Bible says so. Fear of God is fine, but I rather be a good person out of being a good person, rather than because of a fear of God’s retribution.

"Noble" professions...

2008-03-03T15:29:00.002+08:00

*Sparked by JB's teachers are noble [agreed.] post*

When I was a really little boy, I was really cute. No, that’s not what I was meaning to say, although that sentence IS true. What I meant to say was, when I was a little boy, I wanted to be a policeman, and a soldier. I thought it was cool and fun and I got to play with guns and hide behind walls with my gun ready to fire, I got to shoot people and arrest bad people, and I got to search people. I would have smart shiny uniforms and wear a cool cap and flash a badge. And then I wanted to be a taxi driver because I thought playing with manual gears for cars was a very cool action. Then, due also to my mother’s preference, I wanted to be a doctor. She is from the generation that highly respects doctors, so she wanted her son to be in a respectable and reputable profession. However, 1 additional thing we both shared was that we both wanted me to be a good doctor. My dad died because of a doctor’s lack of professionalism. We both wanted me to be the type of doctor who would never cause widows and fatherless families.

I am sure there are lawyers who start off wanting to use their knowledge of the law to do good deeds, to fight for the poor and downtrodden, the ones who have been victims of injustice, to be a champion for the rights of the repressed. We all have something in common; we started off wanting to be a member of a profession with a long and distinguished history, to do good deeds for society.

Along the way, unfortunately, some people become sidetracked. The policeman realizes how being corrupt can suddenly increase his income exponentially. The doctor realizes how being unethical can give him a healthy side income. Undeclared, of course. And the lawyer realizes how he can sell his conscience to the highest bidder. So along the way the greed of man will over come and over ride the original noble intentions.

There are also those who started off only being after the money in the first place.

West Wing

2008-03-03T15:29:00.000+08:00

Been watching the ‘West Wing’ TV drama series, about what goes on behind the scenes at the offices where work the men and women behind the US President’s decisions. Basically the running of the government is done by a group of people, and not by the President himself. He is merely the figurehead. This is probably true all over the world and no more than in Malaysia today. At any rate, for the US Presidential Elections, the candidates should just shut up and let their respective teams slug it out in various live debates on TV. After all, if the voters are voting for the entity whom will be making decisions on behalf of them, it only serves to make sense to listen to the support staff, as they are the ones who influence the president.

Furthermore, I find it vaguely disturbing that much of what is subjective are dictated by the subjective whims, mores and various other variables of a small and select bunch of men and women.

Losing masculinity

2008-02-26T16:14:00.002+08:00

I think in this age, we have too many chemicals and processed food floating about. It is messing with us guys’ hormones, seriously, I swear.

30 years ago, when food was more natural and less processed etc, male hormones were more or less intact. Hence males retained their masculinity.

Today, with the abundance of hormones, chemicals, processed food, preservatives, etc, male hormones and various trigger switches are all going haywire. Guys are no longer as hairy, we are no longer sprouting beards and whatnot, our voices are less deep and are squeakier, we are more moody and whatever.

Just the other day my basketball playing friends were telling me, and mind you, these are big tall strong guys, that they were feeling, and I quote, ‘hormonal’. I’m like, WTF? The consequences of urban living. Hormonal!

Must better start eating less chicken rice and more natural foods. Best to go live on a farm. Even so, with the fertilizers and pesticides, there are no guarantees.

Childrening

2008-02-26T16:14:00.001+08:00

The worst thing is feeling guilty over one’s treatment of one’s mum. Sometimes I just wish my mum would stop inadvertently, unintentionally, annoying the hell out of me.

I know she means well. I know she cares. But why can’t she obey certain instructions I have, instead of just bulldozing her way through?

I want to, and try to be a good son, but I always end up having that strong guilty feeling. It really sucks.

When you have just 1 parent, it puts so much stress and pressure additionally on you. For instance, when you are married, she will have to stay with you. What if your spouse also has just 1 parent?

And how do you control your temper when she does not act rationally or sensibly, or does not take care of her health?

They say parenting is a tough job. I agree. But so is being children.

I hate ulcers

2008-02-26T16:14:00.000+08:00

I hate ulcers.

It is bad enough I look like a frigging idiot, as it were. Bad haircut, terrible features, everything bad aside, to add to it, I’ve got, for the past several days, the worst and most painful ulcer on my upper lip. It’s on the left side.

Just the other day, Joanne remarked curiously and in a state of genuine interest, “Ooh, your upper lip that side is curiously shaped!”. She was mildly excited, the poor girl. But I think she was just being polite, because it sure as hell looks hideous. It’s not obvious, not visible from the outside, but it has rendered my already swollen lips to golliwog proportions. This is so not funny or sexy.

It isn’t how it looks that really bugs me. After all, another spot of ugliness wouldn’t have much effect. It is like just another drop in the ocean, you got my drift? It’s more like…the crappy feelings in incites, the annoying ouch factor whenever I eat or as much as have anything come into contact with it.

The most comfortable position is to just sit there with my mouth slightly agape, lips not touching, to avoid the pain, and just watch as the drool slowly drowns myself.

To make things worse, I somehow, don’t ask me how, scalded my tongue, so that it is perpetually dry and feeling like it needs water.

This is a sucky situation to be in. May I ask that time fast forwards to 2 months from now? Please?

Get a job..really.

2008-02-26T15:41:00.000+08:00

It is the fervent wish of everyone that they may be able to excel in the profession of their choice, preferably, interesting, socially useful, financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating, held in high esteem, etc.

I am suddenly, at this very minute, in an extremely and unaccountably frivolous mood. Hence, I shall indulge.

Most young male blobs today would choose professions in law, finance, banking, accounting, and for the less greedy, though not necessarily less ambitious, engineers. Let us pretend for a while that we could indeed have the profession of our choice, any choice. Let us remove the cloaks and gloves of propriety and social mores, and hence expand our scope of choices to more than what is merely ‘the best and sane choice among my limited options’.

I’ll start!

I want to be either an All Star (oh, only the top 30 best players qualify) professional basketball player in the best professional basketball league on the planet (if you don’t know what I am talking about, here’s an idea: Walk to the seaside and tie approx 1 ton of bricks to your foot, no make that feet, and then plunge in.), a member of a successful rock band (MCR would do just fine, thank you very much.), or, and get this, it’s a radical departure from the above 2 flamboyant choices, a popular and much read professional writer. I’d pick basketball player first, writer second, and rock musician third.

Snapping closely on the heels of the above of course would be that of self serving entrepreneur yuppie, most likely a free lancing IT consultant who lives in a block of refurbished and highly exclusive dwellings along the docks with a fantastic and splendid view of the river or seafront, with a sleek noiseless sports car powered by a twin turbo engine with a dual shaft top rotating twin cams and in-car surround sound system. Naturally, the apartment I live in would be outfitted with surround sound systems in every room, all remote controlled by a controller that I can pick up and utilize to activate my chosen play list every time I walk into the apartment. Naturally, it’d be decorated with sleek, plush, dark grey sofas, the floors would be spotlessly white, there’d be big screen doors overlooking the sea to let in lots of natural light, the bathrooms would have masculine black towels, un-named dark pastel coloured ceramic jars and bottles containing various toiletries, and a bath tub with Jacuzzi functions. I’d also be that sort of IT consultant, who gets to kick back and travel a bit, and write books in his free time, and pepper it with lots of lines like ‘in my consulting work, I … $20m dollars…45% reduction in…with a correlating 40% improvement in…’.

Yeah right.

More likely, I’d be that type of backroom number cruncher type who labour for hours in a dark room, with 5 other guys all hunched desperately over their keyboards, trying to hack together a complicated ERP program, for which our company can bill the client RM12m (please add another 15% for after sales support and service) and give us our paltry salary of RM2.5k a month. And we would not be allowed to see sunlight at all, nor are we allowed out for lunches, and our meals would be passed to us through a flap in the door, not unlike a cat flap. And then we’d all leave work at 11pm and take our little motorbikes home to our low cost flats and spend a further 30 minutes scratching our heads and calculating how to stretch our dollar further and whether we can meet the next instalments on our car and home mortgage payments, not to mention the normal bills, saving for the kids’ education, insurance, and a host of other expenses which frankly speaking, when totalled, is enough to send me into a pit of depression from which suicide is the only way out.

But come, let us away in haste from such morbid thoughts, and back to the pipe dream.

So, professional basketball player. Money. Check. Do something I like. Check. Not environmentally and socially destructive. Check. In fact, as a form of healthy entertainment, it probably is socially constructive. What is not to like? You get professionals taking care of your fitness regimes, your nutrition and diet is professionally prescribed for you, you are paid millions and millions, you get to do a job that you’d gladly do for free at the local playground anyway, you are good and recognized at it, you get to travel, and you get to retire in your mid thirties, rich and comfortable.

Writer. I’m the first to admit I have no talent for it. None at all whatsoever. Short stories? I got no plot. Novels? No stamina. And no plot. I guess the only shot I’ve got is to be one of those National Geographic writers, or freelance travelling journalists. But no, I won’t risk a slow death in Iraq on international TV. And, no talent. Perhaps I could be a travel writer. Hmm…but seriously, as a writer, you basically book yourself a few months in some remote place ‘for inspiration’ (but you are, in fact, taking a holiday), walk around, poke around, do nothing much, have long seaside walks, put your feet up by the fire, then get down to it and write a couple hundred pages of your observations and various other bits, get a sucker to sell it, put it in nice packaging, bribe someone to write good reviews for it, and add at the back endorsements like “Best book I’ve read since Feb 2008. Hilarious, had me up in stitches. – Peter Tan”, or invent some white guy’s name, since Peter Tan doesn’t seem to carry much literary weight, hence “An absolute must, a can’t put down, one of the truly star writers of the generation. – Phillip Forest”, or some other equally posh name. Of course, any endorsement from something with a “Daily” or a “Journal” or a “Times” would help. Additionally, while we are at it, let me make another one up: “Great book. Best for reading when you’ve got nothing to do while shitting and you have read the obituaries 16.5 days in a row – Some-guy-who-is-shitting-and-has-read-the-obituaries-16.5-days-in-a-row”.

Ergh, got pulled from this excellently amusing activity to go and do some real work. Gotta stop here.

Bad Hair Day? Try 2 months.

2008-02-26T12:14:00.003+08:00

Just when you think the ugly cannot get uglier, they go for a haircut.

Now, already as it is, my looks leaves much to be desired, hence, I need to hold together and desperately hang on to every little thing that could possibly create an illus ional and misleading effect that deludes people into thinking that I look better than I really do. So, forgetting that important point, I marched into the hairdresser’s yesterday, intending to obtain for myself one of those very close cropped crew cuts. You know the kind that closely resembles a very short military buzz cut (without the flat top), that many footballers sport.

I thought that it would make me look younger, smaller, and perhaps, more like a little round monk. But most of all, I just wanted the practicality and neatness.

So I jaunted into the joint, threw myself into the specified chair, barked out my instructions (in a very polite and kind way, of course) and settled back happily, and dived straight into the arresting Bill Bryson book that I’d brought. I was happily immersed in it when I happened to glance up while flipping a page, about 15 minutes later.

I glanced up and saw a stranger looking back at me. Now, for some odd obscure reason, I had no idea what a stranger was doing in my mirror, but I dismissed it and went back to my book.

For 2 seconds.

When I realized that the ugly mug belonged to me. And it definitely was neither a GI Jane or Sinead O Connor.

It was more like… what the fuck!?!

So I very demurely gulped, counted to 10, clenched my fists, and then asked in a very controlled manner, excuse me, is this the haircut I asked for?

Response: Yes. You wanted short n round all over right? And you wanted blah blah..x x.. blah..xx… right?

At this point I was visualizing an eternity and lifetime of squawking around in those brown paper bags with 3 holes cut in for the eyes n mouth, and perhaps, rearranging the neat little face of my hairdresser. What I wanted to tell him was ‘you sorry fishhead, you waste of earthly resources you, I wanted a close cropped crew cut, not a whatever hack job you call this is, you sorry wimp, don’t take your personal life crisis out on ME, you flipazoid!’.

Instead, what my real response was: Ah, but of course.

Don’t think I didn’t catch you, wiseguy. Perhaps my guy was distracted coz he was alternating between me and the leggy girl in very short shorts sitting directly diagonally opposite me, displaying her long legs very distractedly.

Luckily Bill Bryson is talented and funny, and I much preferred to focus on his talents. But I am afraid to say I cant say likewise for my hairdresser.

Nevermind.

I look like a Chinese coolie now. It is not so much a matter of vanity and of looking like a pimp. It is more a matter of not trying my damdest to sabotage myself further and further destroy all chances I have of emerging on the streets without incurring a snigger or 2.

I will b washing my hair everyday and soaking it in beer from now on. [Its been known to stimulate follicle growth.]

Speaking of which, I think my experiment to grow out a baby goatee has come to an unseemly end as well.

From strangers to friends to [you decide]

2008-02-26T12:14:00.002+08:00

It is vital for a couple thinking of engaging in a romantic relationship to start off as friends. I can, on the spur of the moment, think of 3 reasons.

One, it is wonderful to slowly find out, later on, how the development occurred from friends to having feelings, on the other party. And it is wonderful to learn how that concurred with certain phases you yourself was experiencing.

Two, occasionally, you can always look back at these times, and realize how back then you never thought you’d be together, and be reminded of the ache of that prospect, and that makes you all the more appreciative of having each other.

Three, it helps you to learn more about the other person as a person, as a character, and if the relationship breaks down, you are stepping down from the podium to a level ground of friendship, and not 2 strangers brought together just by feelings.

It is equally important for a young and growing couple to experience some growing pains, some misunderstandings, etc. It is at this stage that they are learning more about each other, discovering each other, and can still make the choice and decision of their compatibility, rather than waiting until the emotions get more complex and withdrawing the emotional stake would extract more from them. Also, if they pull through, they can always look back on this time as inspiration whenever they encounter cogency issues down the road. And finally, they are hence not painting a false and unrealistic expectation of eternal perfection, and when cogency issues surface down the line, as they are bound to, they are well versed in expecting and handling it.

As I always say, you choose to stay with who you stay with.

Male - O Grams - Attraction

2008-02-26T12:14:00.000+08:00

Attraction is a very odd thing.

Some people say that for men, first there is lust, and then come feelings. Hence, men never fall for women who aren’t gorgeous and beautiful. And also this is no good, because the foundation of their feelings is lust, hence once they no longer find her attractive, they no longer have feelings for her. They say that when a man says that he has fallen out of love, he basically firstly thought that she was no longer physically desirable.

I beg to differ. There IS a legion of us out there who are more honourable. Granted, please do remember that most of the men you’d meet nowadays will belong very at home in the above paragraph, but there are, not many, granted, but there are, a few of us who befits the below descriptions.

Say Jack and Mary are friends. Initially, Jack probably never thought much more of Mary than as a friend. She was neither exceptionally drop dead gorgeous, nor was she ugly. She was a very normal girl to him. As friends, they spend time hanging out, doing things friends do, getting to talking a bit. So over time, when her personality and character has imprinted themselves on him, he begins to feel a fondness for her. It is at this point Jack starts to realize that at times, Mary is actually quite pretty and that at other times, she looks much better than originally thought. He attributes this to the fact that he never paid much attention to her, and now that he does, and has spent more time with her, he is able to notice her attributes. As time goes by and their relationship develops some more, this feeling also becomes deeper. Now, when he thinks of Mary, it evokes in him feelings of attraction and of wanting physical contact, such as stroking her hair, smelling her scents, etc.

Say by now Jack has strong feelings for Mary. He cannot help feeling the instinct to look after and protect Mary, to make her happy and to provide her needs and wants as best he can. Additionally, he is very attracted to her, and thinks that she is gorgeous and beautiful, and he can’t help thinking and feeling so. He thinks she has such great this and that and doesn’t see any flaws. And he can’t help articulating this to her, that he thinks that she is beautiful.

Some argue that had he not thought she was pretty, he wouldn’t have felt anything for her that was of a romantic nature. But that is wrong; because that assumes very cynically that every step of feeling along the way was deepened after a realization that she was prettier and prettier. This does not take into account the possibility that the feelings can happen in parallel that first the feeling comes, and then he finds her attractive. And as long as he continues to have feelings for her, and continues to love her, also in the verb sense of the word, he will continue to have wild desire for her and to think that she is very attractive.

This helps to explain some issues.

It is a strange human phenomenon that those whom we once found irresistibly attractive can fall by the wayside when we no longer have romantic feelings for them. Secondly, it also explains why it is difficult to feel strong desire for those who might be objectively and commonly judged as ‘better looking’ than our loved ones.

These 2 facts, and the possibility that they may be true for some men, are immediately dismissed from the word go, merely based on the fact that we are men, and are hence unfairly lumped into the same category as 90% of the other slimy specimens who unfortunately also occupy the same category.

Election

2008-02-21T13:28:00.004+08:00

Most readers upon seeing this blog title, up til a fortnight ago, would instantly think of the HK triad movie which was a recent hit.

However, this post is not about that.

The upcoming Malaysian general elections will determine our government for the next 4-5 years. We deserve the Govt we get, some say. In the past, usually the Malays voted strongly for the national alliance party, and the other races against. However, in the last election, a significant portion of the Malays voted against the ruling party, but this was offset and more by the other races all jumping on the national alliance's bandwagon, thus giving the ruling party a victory by its biggest ever mandate.

It was a stupid move to make. The ruling party, already entrenched in corruption, incompetence and racism, took this to mean that their previous divide and conquer ways were succeeding wildly, and that their shameful system of modern day apartheid, disguised as 'helping a certain race' (really, what could be more shameful than that? They might as well wear bright coloured underwear on the outside proclaiming that this is an admittance of their failure as a race) is well favored, looked upon and endorsed. With this mandate, they proceeded on a free for all, further depleting the country of its resources.

However although I do not condone it, I can understand why those who voted for the BN did so. Triggered by fears of a racism driven backlash and a new wave of violence, cowarded into believing that their ricebowl was under threat and that only the BN could sustain their way of living, and afraid of an unproven Opposition, they decided to stick to the known evil.

However, in the last 4-5 years, things have gone from bad to worst. Cost of goods and essential items are rising at an accelerated rate, an unsustainable rate, if you look at the income of the majority of the population. [Granted, it is a time of global turmoil, fuelled further by the oil price instability and rise that is sparked and controlled by the shadow puppets and oil and weapons companies' moguls that dictate and pull the strings of the US President]. Race tensions are high, dissatisfaction is rampant, crime is strife and has surpassed despicable proportions, FDI is on the downward trend, foreign companies are pulling out their Msian operations, there is too much red tape to doing business here, confidence from investors is low, neighbours whom we used to be leaps and bounds ahead of are now our benchmarks, SMEs are struggling to survive, businesses are folding, the economy is stagnant, and the fat cats up there are getting fatter and bleeding the country dry, moving their own assets overseas.

This time round, sentiments are changing. The currents are moving and we can feel it. The agents of change are all busy at work. There is increased awareness of the state of the nation. There is a surge of anti govt sentiment from the ground. Many Malays are sick and tired of being used by the government to further keep the NEP around to enrich those in power or with connections, but not for them, the common man on the street, and they don’t get much of the trickle down benefits. Furthermore, to add insult, this implies that they are incapable of standing on their own two feet, and paints a picture of them as useless sods who stand around with outstretched arms awaiting govt handouts. Many Malays are saying enough is enough, lets compete on level ground. Of course, there is still a bunch who are happy to rely on cronies and easy money and have no pride. And these are the ones the govt loves, because as long as they exist, the govt has a reason to keep the NEP around, so it is a case of continuously giving them fish so that they can’t fish so that they can justify the existence of the fish-giving programme. Which is actually state sanctioned apartheid, a heinous and ridiculed act which they keep well disguised from the global view under a variety of names, none of which masks the fact of what they truly are.

At any rate, the govt is getting worried. As the recent Bersih and Hindraf movements have shown, there is a huge anti govt movement, gaining momentum and continuously pulling in more into their ranks. This is giving the govt cause for concern. They are clamping down on all freedom of information, arresting people left and right out of paranoia, and even announced an early election, in order to go to the ballot box before the eligibility of Anwar Ibrahim to contest, such is their insecurity. By right, the election should be held in 2009, but being held in early 2008 shows that the govt knows it cannot hold onto power much longer the way things are rolling, hence it is better to vote earlier while the wool is still covering most people’s eyes.

They are resorting to the same tricks. The newspapers are chock full with articles extolling the current government, and various comments by people on the street praising the government (you will hear nary a peep of any semblance of anti govt sentiment). The govt is handing goodies and freebies out left right and central, and suddenly various Malay federations are being given time and an audience with the powers that be, together with various incentives, in order to get their members on their good side. Previously, an audience with the powers that be comes with a minimum RM100k price tag to the 4th floor boys. The MIC, 2 months prior to the GE, recently held a day in Klang to register all those without valid ICs and birthcerts. In their years in power, they do it 2 months prior. They think we are idiots who can’t see through their blatant transparency.

The above tactics, which would work on the masses, who are basically gullible types who care only about bread and butter issues who accept their lot in life (hence a freebie can easily win them over), unaware that things could be so much better, together with various other means and ways such as phantom voters etc, will ensure that they will still capture a high number of votes. Furthermore, aware that there is a huge number of new-registered voters (who are anti BN, and have finally been pushed to the point of doing something about it), they have been holding back the assigning of these new registrees’ polling stations (perhaps til after the GE) so that they can’t even check where they are supposed to vote under.

At the end of the day, the above tactics will have a significant impact on the results. If you take into account as well that the placement of candidates and eligibility of certain parties’ voting locations and the voting split, you will realize that the breakdown is in such a way that the BN will definitely not lose. It is a guarantee.

The fact that many cowards are afraid to vote for the Opposition and rather remain status quo because ‘at least BN allow me to find food and survive’, and never take into account the others who are made worse off by this apartheid system, will also play a major role. Ultimately, it is the fence sitters, the non voters, and the brave, who we need to win over and deny them that two thirds, so they can no longer steamroll the Opposition and push through unfavourable motions with impunity without regard for the masses. That is all we hope for.

And if we still cant deny them the two thirds this time around, one thing is for sure: we never will. And I for one, do not deserve this government, so it will be off to other pastures I go. However, those who have ever griped about this govt, this is their chance to vote. This time round, either vote for the Opposition, or never voice out your complaints again.

We got what we deserved last time around. Lets not repeat the same mistake.

Radio Humor

2008-02-19T12:35:00.001+08:00

Heard on the radio this morning by a popular regional entertainer that 1 of the problems with men and their wives is that wives love to talk, they talk a lot and very fast, ask questions, and then reply them themselves. And they talk without punctuations. Just talk talk talk, everything is talk while the guy is given no chance to talk. And he said the perfect marriage is between a blind woman and a deaf man.

Whoa!!!

That implies men will get uglier when they get older. Paunchy belly and all.

That will not be me. I can already notice though that many of my peers are developing or showing signs of starting that journey to middle-aged-man body. I must never allow that to happen.

Then another caller said men never listen, and that everything she says, is treated with a blank look. Unless she relates everything she says to cars, which is something he really loves. And deep inside men are like little boys, and they need to be loved as such as well.

Are we really like that?!

Letting Go

2008-02-19T12:35:00.000+08:00

Came across this article recently.

Anybody ever held onto something for longer than they should have? It could be a share, a fund, a job, a car, a friendship and even a love-relationship.

And have you tried to let it go or considered letting it go, to no avail?

Good news folks. Don’t blame yourself. Well, part of it is a lack of self control and super discipline. So it is ok. There is a scientific explanation to it.

Apparently, it’s all psychological. Hmm…isn’t it all?

I suppose Western researchers from the scientific community just keep on looking for new ‘scientific’ reasonings to explain why we do the (negative) things we do. While those with a shallow and superficial knowledge of religious faith will attribute events to God’s will/grand plan for us.

Either way is not right as it partly takes the blame and responsibility for our actions out of our hands. That way, we are merely making excuses, and eventually get to blame everything on everything else but our lack of self control and flawed decision making process.

There was a comic strip (Calvin n Hobbes...my favourite!) where Calvin and Hobbes were discussing how there was a grand plan by God and there was a concept such as fate…hence it is good to know that we didn’t CHOOSE to do the bad things we do, just that it was part of some plan or fate…hence we cant be punished for it as it wouldn’t be fair. And he said it is reassuring to know that.

Early morning

2008-02-19T08:05:00.000+08:00

It's early morning, 8.05am, and I am off to work!

Must be full of zest for life.

Got up at 6 plus to send off the sister, felt melancholic, buried myself in various blog posts, exercised a bit (modestly, in the room) and now I am off to work.

Although it IS a bit of a zinger that my right thumb is barely functional as a result of a severe hit y'day while playing ball. Now, I've always been known to be one tough ass nut, but this was really painful. A re-summonning of an old injury.

I hate being hit. On the bright side (today everything must be viewed from the bright side) I accept that as a result of being so fast, so skilled, and so accurate, that this is what my opponents need to resort to do in order to contain me. *smug grin*

If I was single...

2008-02-19T08:00:00.001+08:00

...I'd remember this website.

Note: If you are travelling solo, please be realistic and do not take risks with your safety!

IS he/she into you?

2008-02-19T07:46:00.003+08:00

When you log into MSN, sometimes you get interesting articles. I seldom read it, but this one caught my eye. Let me do a test for you then. What a great service I am providing.

Is he into you?

If he is, he...

1. Closes the distance. YUP. But some men do this anyway to show alpha-male-ness and to impress girls. Esp true for Western values guys who sometimes don't understand the meaning of personal space and takes advantage of this being their 'cultural norm' to get cheap thrills.
2. Speaks softly. YUP.
3. Rounds his posture. YUP. Unless he is naturally rotund.
4. Talks slowly. YUP. Unless he is an engineer, in which case all bets are off.
5. Can't take his eyes off you. YUP but the desire to is there, but I don't actually keep staring, though I know many who do. Just be able to spot the diff between admiration and wanton lust.

If he is not, he...

1. Stands four feet away. Shy guys will do this naturally anyway so, not reliable.
2. Stands at an oblique angle to you. Again, shy guys might not even look at you.
3. Sounds like that guy in accounting. He might really BE an accountant...or engineer.
4. Stares at your mouth. Get out. Quick. Now! He is either avoiding eye contact or he is imagining obscene scenarios involving said body part.
5. Not in sync with your body language. Get out! Either he is so dumb, or he doesn't care.

Is SHE into you?

If she is, she...

1. Tilts her head. She does? I thought it was just a neat quirk! Excellent.
2. She takes a sip when you do. Isn't she just being polite so we finish our drink at the same pace?
3. She twirls her hair. Wow! Thought it was just another adorable habit. Excellent.
4. She gets a glow. Hmm...isn't it like the alcoholic drink, the lighting, or perhaps I annoyed her? Interesting.
5. Her pupils dilate. Never noticed.

If she is not, she...

1. Crosses her arms.
2. Places her bag between you two.
3. Speaks very fast.
4. Gives chin up smiles.
5. Strokes her neck.

Hmmm.....

Freak accidents

2008-02-19T07:41:00.003+08:00

Of all the freak accidents that occurred, 2 come to mind instantly.

First one: A few years ago, I read in the papers of 2 French (I think) women who were outdoors and got caught in a lightning/thunderstorm, and sought refuge under a tree. Lightning struck, and both were fried to a crisp. Cause for death: the lightning had hit the metal lining wires of their bras. Key Learning: Girls, don't wear bras with metallic elements. Guys: Don't wear bras.

Second one: Did you know poop and piss that we discharge while on flights can actually be discharged from the plane while in mid flight, get frozen by the atmospheric conditions, and land on the ground and hit someone!? I never believed my mum's talk on this phenomenon until I read about it actually happening. Cause for death: Fortunately, none. Key Learning: It happens.

Crime Today

2008-02-19T07:21:00.003+08:00

Crimes are always bad. Thy always leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth. Of course, with crimes, there are different levels of brutality and consequences. But certain types of crime sickens me most. It sickens me to my core when I hear of sex related crimes, crimes perpetrated on the young and helpless, on little boys and girls, and grown females who cannot defend themselves.

Read about this incident where this taxi driver in London picks his victims up and then rapes them. So far he has perpetrated this 35 times. 35 times! I hardly even dare ask whether he used protection and/or impregnated any of them. Can you imagine the horribleness of it? The poor girl, having a child in her that was conceived by this scum, and in that way.

And this girl who was walking home in London, and at her doorstep was stabbed to death and then raped multiple times. The disgusting thing is that the man charged in court with her crimes used, as his defense, the claim that he had sex with her when he thought she was merely unconscious, and not already dead, and that fact was only impressed upon him after the act. Furthermore, he went on to claim that he was interested only in Asian women. WTF?

And the multitudes of crimes that go unreported? Especially involving tourists in foreign destinations? Some people think that these are statistics, and that chances are it won't affect them. But isn't that what everyone thinks, until it happens to them?

Closer to home, we have always heard of sex crimes, and I can already rattle off 5 from the top of my head. And these are merely the higher profile ones. And recently, this sick conduct has infiltrated playgrounds and young girls are going missing, with their bodies being found later with objects stuffed up their rectums. I had a lecturer, a very nice and pretty young lady, being a victim of an attempted rape, and when she fought back, she had a large stone smashed against her forehead. She was left mentally, physically and emotionally scarred, and has since become a recluse and has never been the same again.

If I ever lay hands on one of these perpetrators, I will make him wish he was dead.

The common thread running through these acts is that the perpetrators are never caught. In the high profile Cannie Ong's case, because of a legal technicality that the defense managed to find as a loophole, the guy may be walking free very soon from a dramatically reduced sentence. There is no conviction yet for the Mongolian woman's case. No justice. Nor is there any for Audrey Melissa, the high school girl who was brutally stabbed and raped in a tunnel while walking to school. Or the Malay lady in Hartamas who was found tied up and stabbed to death after various heinous deeds were committed on her. Or the Malay engineer who suffered a similar fate after a bus ride. And the 2 little girls who were kidnapped. And the recent cases where 2 young ladies were kidnapped in broad daylight in front of several witnesses.

The country is not safe. Crime is rampant. Law enforcement and vigilance and punishments are viewed as so poor that criminals openly scorn and disregard the law this way. Our life is really in our own hands. We cannot rely on the government or police force. Once a criminal attempts to commit a crime, physically, even a few girls will not be enough to fend off one man. Prevention as much as possible, and applying one's intelligence to be realistic and actively take one's own wellbeing into one's hands is the only way left to us, and if it means we have to cut down on our freedoms then unfortunately, that is what we must do, for if a crime does happen, regret is too late.

Family

2008-02-19T06:45:00.000+08:00

Family is important to me. I am who I am as a result of a large influence on my upbringing by my family and extended family. We are a close bunch. We try to make each other better people although we ourselves might not necessarily be so, and thats what families are like.

The last few months was good. My eldest sister came back to stay, with my most beloved and wonderful niece. My youngest sister was back on holiday from her Masters in Perth. My second sister came back several times. And this being the month of Christmas and CNY and the NY, we had lots of family gatherings, which was great.

And now life returns to normal. The eldest has gone back to Beijing, the second is off on her travels with SIA, and the youngest is about to leave the house to the airport and go back to Perth. It's back to being just me and my mum.

I really wished I had spent more time with them. I wanted to, but that being a turbulent and whirlwind few months in my personal life, I didnt get to spend as much time as I wanted to.

The house is quiet again.

Living with my mum would be good if only she didnt get so difficult at times. I receive flak for being perceived to be unfilial but unbeknownst to all, is the fact that I indeed turned down job offers back in my beloved Melbourne, and also delayed my previously planned move to Singapore, in order for her to not be left alone. And in my other ways, I do care and let it manifest. For example, in influencing her to have a healthier diet and lifestyle. None of this is known, seen or understood. It's ok. I can take the fall and bad rep. At the end of the day, it is her not being alone that counts, not the perception of me. But the trouble is, she has to be easier to live with, which she isn't.

Regrets

2008-02-12T14:32:00.001+08:00

Sometimes we reallly regret what we did, but what was done might be unforgivable and even if forgivable, not forgettable, and will forever be a thorn in our spouse's side, and then we wont be enjoying the kind of rship both should have and want. Regrets...

Did you hear about the HK celebrity scandal? Where EC went out with all these girls (not in one night of course) and then took photos of himself with each girl in all sorts of compromising positions. And then he got his computer serviced, and apparently, someone got hold of those photos and is now slowly releasing it to the press. So EC had to come out and apologize. And the girls, who I shall not name, had to initially deny it was them and then when it became clear that it WAS them, later on had to admit it was indeed them and had to apologize.

As a result of this, one of the girls, BBC, had her upcoming wedding called off by the fiance’s family, and another girl, CC, has so incensed her husband (another famous HK celebrity) so bad that he reportedly threw his wedding ring away in public and she fell on her knees to beg him back.

Lets examine this on a superficial level shall we. But first lets all acknowledge how dumb EC had been. Ok, now that’s out of the way.

I have been hearing 2 sides of the argument. Conducted a mini survey of sample size less than 10. From that unrepresentative sample, generally people fall into 2 camps.

1- The guys should not blame the girl and dump them because that happened in the past. They are theirs now, so if they didn’t cheat after they got together, then what happened prior should not be an issue. What he is now and where he is trying to go is more important.

2- Cannot. The fact that she has that personality/characteristic of sleeping around so much prior and has the personality that allows him to take all these photos of them is unacceptable and the fact that now the whole world has those photos of your spouse with another in those scenes is too much of an embarrassment. And, unspoken but it is there, is the fact that you will always be thinking whether she is still thinking of those encounters and whether you are being compared to her previous lovers.

Point #1 is true that yes she didn’t cheat on him after they got together, and yes, what happened remains in the past, BUT, point #2 in my opinion reins stronger. I find it harder to accept what is said in point #2 than point #1. this might be one of the only times that men think with their emotions and not with their heads.

So, whats your stand?

"Professional" attire

2008-02-12T14:32:00.000+08:00

Professional attire. What the HELL does that mean?

It pisses me off no end when I think about the corporate world. I know I am supposed to change what I can and accept what I can’t. Well, I am not perfect, and am still in the process of mastering my emotion. At least I channel it here and not on others.

Ok, Alex, you tantrummy boy, what is it that pissed your royal ass off today?

OK. Why is it that girls have to dress a certain way in corporate circles in order to be passed off as ‘professionally attired’? ok, I have no problems with professional attire, but where is the line between professional attire and slightly too revealing? Is slightly revealing a precondition in order to qualify as professionally attired?

i mean, for guys it is pretty simple. A working shirt (not a t shirt, coz your not a slob) tucked in (coz ur not sloppy) to a pair of trousers (not too baggy, we aren’t teenagers) in to a pair of dress shoes (not slippers, we aren’t in the bathroom), will do. No tight shirts, no open buttons, no tight trousers.

But for girls? They have to wear a dress…a fucking DRESS?! That has a low neckline and high hemline? Revealing too much chest and too much legs. For work? Ok fine, that is an extreme example. How about fitting clothes, that are so tight. Why is it that straightcut grey slacks are not ‘professional’ but tightish pants which shows off curves are? Why is it that the top buttons must be undone in order to be considered professional? Since when did curves and all help to do the job? Why must clothes either be low cut or unbuttoned or figure hugging or short skirted or high side slit?!

I can understand if we are in certain industries. But hell, not in mine! And if it is a male boss, I can also see why she might be tempted to dress so. Although it just goes to show her character, as well as the company culture, and what they define the word merit as. But if it’s a female boss? Hell, whats her problem, is she a les or what?

Come on lets not claim ignorance here or whatever. Fact of life: girls look at cute guys. Fact of life: guys look at exposed flesh. i guess it is a valid point to desire to wear whatever one wants in the interest of not clamping ur style just coz of others' perversions, but does this not mean that ur ok with being oggled n lusted over? and knowing that that male colleague is peeking in places where his eyes are not supposed to be?

why must damn female bosses be so damn fussy? why cant they just let their female subordinates get away with long skirts, not tight clothes, and not revealing necklines?

Ok. This is doing nobody any good, so the ranting stops here.