June 16th, 2010
Recently someone working in the same building as me shared with me some experience about his life and how he has developed optimism in life and faith in God.
When he was young, he was a bad boy- he was involved in gangsterism and have beaten people up. He had also done a short stint at the jail.
Later he went into business and was very successful. At the top, he was bad tempered, drank alcohol, smoked and was all high and mighty. He had the life of the rich where he could buy anything his heart desires.
Then as quick as his business rose to success, it suddenly ran into difficulties and was forced to close down. He incurred a lot of debts and hit rock bottom.
In that darkest period of his life, he found God and became a Christian. Because of his strong faith, he got up, dusted himself and decided to overhaul his entire life.
Instead of going back to business, he went and work as an employee. Because of his education level, he was not able to work in a white collar job. But he always dresses well and he is a valuable employee because he is good at what he does and fixes.
I took the chance to ask him some questions and the conversation went something like this:
Me: You seemed perfectly contended that what you are doing. Don’t you want to go back to start a business or something?
J: Perhaps later when the time is right. But now, I look forward to valuing, relaxing and enjoying life. I had been there before and I can tell you that being rich does not mean that you are happy. I was terribly unhappy that time. Now, I am happy with the way I am and smile a lot. I am in my mid forties and don’t want to waste my life being unhappy….
Me: But you don’t look your age at all….
J: The secret is being happy, maintaining a positive outlook in life and smile always! You know, I never realize that smiling and being happy can really make you look much younger until I hear it at a radio show this morning. During weekends when people see me dancing (a pastime that he really enjoys) for few hours non stop, they are very surprised at my stamina. Even the younger ones find it hard to keep up
(really, I’ve never seen the guy tired- he’s always walking around with lots of energy- even at the end of the day. Outside work, he is involved in voluntarily community service and socialises with friends).
Me: Honestly, don’t you sometimes wish that you can afford things that you once could?
J: I’ve seen so many high income earners paying the price with their health. Because the pressure to keep that income or want to earn more pushes them to work themselves too hard with no life. What’s the point of being so rich if you can’t really enjoy what you’ve earned? Anyway, at least I’ve known how it was like to be really rich and that experience is good enough for me.
Me: And aren’t you worry that you may need more money? With the pay, you may not be able to cover for emergencies.
J: I have complete trust and faith in God. I know that no matter what, God will take good care of me. That day, someone asked me for help to climb a high place where the structure is quite weak. I did it but before I do, I say a prayer to God to ask for protection and then a prayer of thanks after that for being ok.
Good and bad things happen but we can choose to be happy or miserable. It’s really a choice and it’s up to us. When bad things happened, there’s no use in dwelling on it. Life’s too short- we really don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
Categories: Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: choices, determination, happy, unhappiness, work
June 6th, 2010
The article below is written by Mr Lau Bing from Subang Jaya to The Star paper under “Your Opinions” section published on 17 Dec 09. I tried to find the online version but unable to find, and so I typed out the entire article because Mr Lau has presented a very good food for thought for organizations to consider:
With ICT services available worldwide, people can now tab its facilities to do many things which were impossible in the past.
They can now do this at their fingertips, cheaply and faster, so long as there is an online or Wifi Internet connection to let them contact the person at the other end. The best part is that this is virtually free.
Needless to say, you can do all this right at your own home.
All you need to do is to allocate a room for office use in the house, and then equip it with a complete computer system with a webcam and printer.
Usually employers will take care of all the expenditures and other office supplies as well, because the company can save thousands over the long term by having the staff working from home.
You are now ready to start, provided you are the boss of the company, or you are asked to do so by your employer. If employees work from home, it would also help the company cut down on office rentals which is getting costlier through the years.
With sales and marketing staff working from home, the company could give up the rental of a complete floor of a building it currently occupies on lease.
This could mean tremendous savings on rentals for the year and could help keep administrative costs down, which is good at a time when companies are looking for ways to cut down on operation costs.
Traffic flow during rush hour will also get better with fever motorist on the road, when a large number of employees work from home.
That means staff don’t have to show up at the office anymore, except on certain days to forward their reports. Of course, if they have to get in touch with the management at the office, they can do so via teleconferencing at home or in a “kopitiam” via Wifi.
It doesn’t matter how the messages get through so long as they do.
The other benefit is that nobody needs to double-park in township areas anymore, because they can have their lunch at home.
That means there would be ample parking lots available for other motorists to park their cars during lunch breaks. Last but not least, this would also help create better family ties.
Categories: Entrepreneurship or Small Business
Tags: family, work
June 4th, 2010
If you dress in a style that you are comfortable with, you will not be so self conscious- and therefore gives out an aura of self confidence and self assurance. But if you choose to dress according to what fashion is dictating,
First, you will probably be pinned with heavy credit card debt and broke before the middle of the month.
Second, people can see through your self consciousness- constantly fidgetting at the blouse, adjusting this and that…
Sommerset Bay store
You need not dress in expensive clothes to look good. But it should be a style that you are comfortable with. For instance, a retiree I know always enjoy picking up good bargains in sales. Because of her small size, she could buy lots of nice clothes that is usually available in size S or smaller at about 70% or more on discount. Her clothes are dirt cheap but bought from reputable department stores- they looked middle class. Once, I remembered she bought a brown colour pants that at first glance, looked hideous to me. But when I saw her wearing the pants at the function, it actually looked okay- because:
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Categories: Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: choices, creative
June 2nd, 2010
I will always remember my Primary Six teacher who taught us Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language). Her name was Puan Norhayati. Before she taught our class, I took no motivation in the subject of bahasa. And in primary school, I used to fare badly anyway.
But this teacher was different- she waltzed in, with her golden coloured hair (it was not common those days for ladies to colour their hair so she always stood out because of her golden curls), taught us and end everyday with homework.
Everyday, she made us do revisions and exercises. Almost everyday, she will prepare homework for us to do, containing grammar and vocabulary exercises. She used the school’s photostat machine and it was on paper of very poor quality. Then the next day, she would have us mark the papers- the students just passed the paper to another friend- so each one of us mark our friends’ paper.
Most of my friends go for tuition classes after school, so the extra homework was a burden to them because they already have homework from their tuition teachers. But because my family could not really afford to send me to tuition until I was in upper secondary, I really appreciated the effort this teacher had made.
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Categories: Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: childhood, kindness, memories
May 30th, 2010
Many seniors are at loss of what to do with their lives after retirement. Especially loyal folks of the workforce that stuck with the same organization through thick and thin for many years (like both of my parents). Work and family are usually their only priorities in life. So when it comes to retirement and the children are leaving hometown in search of better income in the cities, they suddenly find themselves with too much time on their hands and do not know what to do with their time.
Astro (local cable TV) realized this and uses advertisements targeted to pull at the children’s heartstrings- the clear message…the kids are in town and the parents are lonely in the village. So why not get them cable TV so that they are happy…and the advert ends with the faces of happy parents watching Wah Lai Toi (a very addictive Chinese movie and drama channel).
Honestly, to work all your life looking forward to retirement only to spend literally all your waking hours watching TV (time away are only to sleep, toilet and go out to get food) is little sad, don’t you think so?
Hopefully our idea of retirement does not involve spending time in front of the TV, eating takeaways and dwelling on the outcome of the next episode in the soap drama series. If we do not wish to have that kind of life, we should not wish the same for our parents either.
To get an idea on what to do, I want to share with you on how Mr Foo, my friend’s father :
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Categories: Creativity, Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: creative, Creativity, hobby, parents
May 27th, 2010
Reading the article What Popular Bloggers Got Wrong – And How You Can Get it Right by Skellie really opened my eyes about the widespread practice by most bloggers today- work day and night to churn out endless posts to build up search engine rankings and attract more subscribers, then plaster the blog all over with Adsense and other affiliate links. Each time a visitor responds to the ad, the publisher or blog owner earns.
Black hat strategies
Some will create 100 blogs or more with content- some original, mostly scrapped from other legitimate blogs and have them SEO optimized keyword cloaking or by links via spam comments dropped in blogs using robots. The more traffic that comes in and the more clicks, the more money they make. The plan is to make 100 sites that brings in $1 in daily clicks. So they earn on average about $100 per day- ideally.
White hat or legit strategies
Some will work hard on a single blog or two- day and night to write good content, tweak their sites, promote it with all gusto until eventually as the blog becomes an authority on a particular topic or niche. Then it drives in tonnes on traffic and with more traffic, the higher the chances the visitors will click on the ad coz it’s a number’s game. Of course, regular visitors have learned to be ‘ad blind’ so there are various bloggers writing on methods to increase ad conversion.
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Categories: Blogging
Tags: Blogging, monetise, website
May 25th, 2010
Text-link based advertising like Infolinks are used as part of income generating revenue in a blog. It differs from Adsense because the ads appear within the contents written by the blogger- anywhere from the sub titles, side bars but mainly within the blog post itself.
Once, I have signed up with Infolinks to increase my earning potential of the blog as I felt that Adsense is delivering less revenue even for the same number of clicks.
When I google about reviews on Infolinks, most of them were positive and a number of bloggers said that Infolinks give them quite a pleasant side income.
So I set up my Paypal account (luckily Malaysians can now register for Paypal account), registered for Infolinks, add my blogs to it- and wait for a few days for the approval. At first, when the approval did not come, I send them another email and the friendly staff at Infolinks promptly replied and activated my blog. With just inserting a simple script along the sidebar, I am up and ready to go.
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Categories: Blogging
Tags: blog, Blogging, monetise
May 22nd, 2010
At times when we feel alone and lost, we are most often tempted to go out and party all night. Go to a pub, disco, hang out with friends and have free flowing booze…to fill that emptiness and to drown that feeling of loneliness.
Anything, but to spend time alone because often than not, we do not enjoy our own company enough- the quietness of the four walls makes things worst for us.
Recently, while sharing with a friend, she told me that sometimes, she would just rather spend time by herself rather than going out partying. She confirmed what I’ve suspected a lot of other people feel all along- that when you feel alone, you can go out and enjoy, dance, get drunk and party all night. But she comes back late at night or early in the morning feeling more empty, hollow and lonely than before.
But in the aftermath, when you come back once again to your home, you will feel worse, and more empty that before you went out. The sudden silence and emptiness that fills your heart can be a terrible, horrible feeling.
Don’t worry, if you feel that way, there’s nothing wrong with you…it’s something that a lot of people go through but don’t talk about it.
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Categories: Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: alone, friends, inner peace, unhappiness, work
May 19th, 2010
Period of prolonged stress and pressure robs even the most optimistic and cheerful person the ability to smile. All of sudden, the world seemed to be a depressing place with all the blood sucking vampires wanting something out of you.
Sometimes we give and give and when things do not come back as expected, we become angry, frustrated and resentful. We feel everyone’s taking from us. After a while, we feel so hollow, tired and drained inside.
We feel that there’s nothing left inside us to give….and we have nothing to offer to anybody anymore.
Many of us are familiar with this feeling at some points of our lives. But after a while, the period seemed to have passed and the world is back to being okay again….until the next wave of ‘people who take and take’ starts coming into our lives.
Andrew Matthews made quite an interesting observation in one of his books- that when we give and we have expectation of an outcome or reward in return, that’s not considered as giving. That’s measuring and there’s a difference…..
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Categories: Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: anger, choices, happy, stress, unhappiness, work
May 16th, 2010
Sometimes we feel that our parents have wreck our lives because they are alcoholics, promiscuous, divorced, etc…..and cannot forgive them because (our story here-) ‘that is because of them that I am an alcoholic/cannot commit to any relationships’.
Using conventional psychology and Freudian to analyze the situation, we may have reasons to thank our parents for a number of the screw ups in our lives. That’s where conventional psychology is not that effective because they still point the cause to an external factor.
That is why I have known since I was in my teens that over reliance of conventional psychology will not work. Because the cause of the problem is always attributed to the environment, parents, teachers, etc….and so by doing that, the person develops the ‘victim’ or the ‘poor me’ syndrome.
The only way to get out of any problems in life is not to psychoanalyze and then point fingers at others. This may temporarily soothe our ego and sense of self-righteousness. It still does not solve the problem that our lives are screwed. We can continue feeling sorry for ourselves for as long as we shall live but it will not make things any better.
Learn to forgive- everyone makes mistakes, including us. Nobody’s perfect all the time. Don’t let our stubborn ego ruin our lives …when we stubbornly try to justify our lives by not talking to our parents, or even people who once meant something to us- children, mother, father, best friend, because that person had made a mistake that justifies eternal punishment is a bit far fetched.
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Categories: Career, Tis Thing Called Life
Tags: anger, child, choices, forgive, happy, parents, work
:)
