Friday 27 June 2014

Uncle Life.


Life delivers a pretty unique ways of handling our affairs. You know, when you think you had the hardest time ever in your life, it added yet another challenge for you. When you are happy and in a celebrative mood, it hit you with a bad news. When you believe that you had been doing good, it continue to throw you challenges to fail you one after another. Don't you guys agree? He is just so unpredictable.

Ladies and gentlemen, please say hi to uncle Life!

He is an important part of my journey here on earth. I have numerous encounters with him and one more to add lately. He just told me a bad bad news. Well, the catch, fortunately, is the words "if" and "might" embedded into his message to me.

That's great news isn't it?

If the "if" and "might" did not materialize, then the message is as good as null. Hey, time to call for a celebration, don't you think so.

Maybe I had been bad, that's why Uncle Life has been very active with my life. Well, he can do what he wants. Who am I to dictate what he should or should not do? As if I am bothered about his intervention. I can either cry, worry and/or feeling frustrated about his action, or I can continue to live my life till the day comes with the bad news.

Give me a tiger! Nope, not the one that eats meat, the one that is yellow and serve cold. The beer!

Oops... just remember I don't drink beer. Give me a cup of tea then. 
;-)

Friday 20 June 2014

Who should be my friends?

Dear 小tz,

Now that you are into the next phrase of your life, it sort of gets me worried.

With less than an hour with you each weekday and 2 full day of weekends each week, after taking away time I needed to work late, time I needed to work over the weekends, time you spend on travelling, school, swimming, dancing, enrichment class and sleeping. You likely spend more time with your friends than with me. 

If I guess what you may be thinking, based on what I was thinking when I am at your age, friends are likely more cool than daddy and mummy added together. Right? For one critical consideration, while both parents and friends can be fun to be with, friends at your age will hardly tell you off when you did the wrong things. How then can friends not be cool? It's fun, fun and still fun! 

I thought it would be good at this phrase of your life that I share with you, my definition of a friend. 

A friend is someone that enjoys your company. A friend will treats you well. A friend will share the good things with you. A friend will care for you. A friend will want you to be good. A friend will help you when you call for help.

A friend will not only come to you when they needed something from you. A friend will not take things from you without asking for your permission. A friend will not steal your things. A friend will not lie to you. A friend will not keep asking things from you without sharing what she has. A friend will not tell you to do the wrong things. 

Having said that, I am not telling you that whoever that doesn't meet the criteria of your friend become your enemy. It is not meant to be that way. Anyway, it is not good to have enemy. They are not helpful and contribute to your worries, anger and frustration. Remind me to talk about it the next time when we wait for your bus in the morning. 

I have friends and enemies. I have enemies who I tried not to be bothered or forget. I also have classmates when I was studying, teammates when I was volunteering and colleagues that I work with while I am at work. Not all of those people are my friends as they did not meet my criteria of a friend. However, I don't call them my enemies as they did not hurt me in anyway.

So you see, not everybody that I know and knows me are my friends, and it's totally fine with me. People my age no longer threaten to not friend me if I do not do what they wanted me to do. However, that happens frequently while I am your age, just like what you may be experiencing now or you will likely to experience soon. I have very few friends since young till now, as I have strict criteria in selecting friends. I only have a few but good and trusted friends that I can depend on in needs. Do I feel bad for having fewer friends? Nope, in fact I feel better as I don't need to struggle whether to make a friend happy or do the right things in life.

Please remember my sweet princess; if a so call friend asks you to do a wrong thing and you get into trouble, he or she is unlikely to come to your help. You will have to face the punishment for doing the wrong things. Do you still want this type of friend?


Love,
Your crazy and caring daddy.

Friday 13 June 2014

The hindrance against conscious and logical thinking.


Are we moving in the correct direction? 

Ever since mankind becoming better equipped with knowledge, skills and tools for our so called enhanced quality of living, we saw the constant creation of laws, SOPs and guidelines. The number of those laws and SOPs just keep increasing. Everything was covered to guide us in our daily and professional life, and state consequences for violation.

Did we get better with those guidelines and had crime been substantially reduced?

I think not. I did not do any research on this. However, I got a strong feeling that if we gather the total number of crimes committed and plot them against the total population, the stories say otherwise.

We got so used to following SOPs that we try searching for one when we are faced with issues. When there are none, we are quick to create one to ensure we have all situations covered. We are so dependent on the SOPs that we are unable to react appropriately when there isn't a SOP to guide us in that situation. We lost our ability to apply logical thinking and develop immediate strategies to solve the emergency we encountered.

Then the problem came about with the laws and SOPs used as a yardstick to measure against conscious and ethnics. When a person committed a crime or an offense, laws and SOPs were used to determine if the person is guilty. We had through the years saw cases of how an individual managed to twist in the interpretation and use of laws to escape judgment. As comprehensive as the laws and SOPs can be, even after gaps were filled with an addition or amendment, its effectiveness lies on the person who enforce it. When one justified that he or she did not violate any laws or SOPs, it not necessarily means that he or she is conscious clear. Only the person will know. Well, perhaps the person may not even know or be aware that what he or she did wasn't ethically correct.

I am not against laws or SOPs; there is a need for them to be there to provide guidance and as a yardstick for our life and work. However, they should be simple and short so that one can remember during an emergency, giving critical outcomes to be achieved and not steps to be followed. They should not attempt to provide detailed procedures for every single situations, but required outcomes needed for emergency so that it encourage critical and logical thinking during an emergency, instead of flipping through the laws and SOPs for a solution.

While we are working on refining of laws and SOPs to cater to the changing needs and environment, we should not neglect in instilling good morale and the ability to apply logical thinking in us. Without a good morale and the ability to apply logical thinking, laws and SOPs only serve as an excuse to do the wrong things and prevent us to apply quick critical thinking in solving issues and save life during an emergency.

Friday 6 June 2014

I think too much.


Saw an ex client I supported previously walking towards me. While waving to him to say hello, he suddenly stopped. I waved to him again and signalled him to move on, thinking that he might be worrying that I will tell him not to pick up trash. He smiled at me, hanged his umbrella on the railing, raised his leg then tied his shoe laces. 

I am thinking too much, I said to myself. 

This, I agreed. However, there are times when we pointed out mistakes committed by another person and they turned around to say we are thinking too much and had over reacted. 

What rights do those people have to put in such a comment without strong evidence to prove their point? Ethically, they don’t have that right. In fact, they ought to answer to their conscious for the wrong doing. That's ethically and in theory on the assumption that everybody has equal rights. 

Well, that will never happen. I will be kidding myself if I believe so. I did not believe in such a theory but anyway, I continue to point out what's wrong. I got my head banged and unwillingly pulled along a few others to suffer with me, for many times in my life. I have no regrets as I can answer to my conscious and sleeps soundly every single night.

Adding on, even if I am, how can I not over react when things happened again and again. Where is the reassurance for me not to over react, if I did? 

I bless those who are still in their own world to be awakened, to see for themselves the outcomes of their act. 

_/|\_