End of Year 2007

Well the year is coming to an end soon. 2007 only left 4 days! Looking back at the year there are two significant happenings. One of them is I change my job and another is I have started studying the history of religion. But one major happenings I am waiting for it to happen for many years, have yet to happen. Hopefully 2008 would be the year.

Changing a new job was good, because it was just before my research centre go under revamp in the human resource issue. And things at the research centre is too slow, the only reason why I did not want to leave so soon is because of the nice people I met there. But since I was 'forced' to leave so life moves on and I found this new job.

And the new place I got in have many things to learn, opportunities and it is a place I wanted to work in since I graduated from university but did not get it because of the bad economy then. Now the economy is good, I manage to get to where I want to work in. Let's see what will transpire while I am there. And what is my 'purpose' there and how I value-add when I am there. :)

Another significant happening is me taking up another area of interest and that is studying the history of religion. Religion to me has always been very foreign and only when I start studying and questioning then I realise that this world has many misunderstanding and and misconception about religions. Why I started studying because I believe that religion are created by humans, so I want to see how and why human created religions, how and why misconception come abt. It is an interesting study and I hope to have a deep understanding of all the major religion at least. But that means adding another area of interest in my many area of interest. Oh well, at least I know that I am growing intellectually and spiritually. And such an area does not get the interest of many people. Studying it also makes me more unique than many other people :P And I believe I have reach a level of maturity that allows me study this area in a non-bias way.

Well today is ending soon, just another hour to go. This year has less than 97 hrs left. My next blog entry should be coming out next year. Wishing all readers a happy new year! And may 2008 bring u good tidings, immense happiness and great health!

Cheers!

Where is time?

Well I am on leave today. Was planning to go to the nearest park to enjoy a leisure morning and so I did. The weather was great this morning, with light breeze and the golden sunshine that brightens the morning. I was having my favourite breakfast at the fast food restaurant, yes the one with the golden arches. Big breakfast with Iced Milo!!! BEST!!!

So I enjoyed a slow breakfast, and read my newspapers. Finally I can take my time to enjoy the newspapers not like any typical working day where I have to rush through the headlines and reading those that I feel are important. I was able to absorb more information from the newspapers compared to other days. I guess that is the benefit of not having the constraints of schedule.

It was a working day so there was not many people at the restaurant anyway, but there are many interesting observations. I shall share them as and when I deem fit :) But I thoroughly enjoyed that leisure morning. After the newspaper, I am able to sit down and read a book proper, enjoying the occasional morning breeze that caress my hair :P, sounds like something from a shampoo commercial. I strongly urge every readers to take the opportunity to really take a leisure morning, not contrained by schedule, worries and life. Just sit there and enjoy each and every moment of that morning. I guarantee it will rejuvenate you to the fullest. At least I know I did and I am glad that I did it!

I think in life, we are so conditioned to working and making money, we forgot to sometime slow down our pace and enjoy the life that we are having. I totally agree that we should learn to earn money and one must not forget that why we want to earn money is because we want to enjoy life. Enjoy the family that we have, the things that this world can offer. But when is money enough anyway. Sometimes we can take the simplest and cheapest pleasure immediately, if we are aware of the opportunity for instance like taking a stroll in the park or be inside the park and read your favourite book. It is very cheap, well the nice breakfast costs me around $7. But considering the amount of leisure time that I thoroughly enjoyed which is around 3 hrs, it is very cheap already. :P Best value for money!

Anyway, just want to remind the readers that we need to earn money but we also must learn to enjoy life as well. And enjoying life does not require much $$$ if you are aware of what you want. So seek within you what you enjoy to do and does not require much $$ and take the opportunity to do it as and when possible! Remember the world can offer you a lot of good things and it is only whether you want to take it or not.

Cheers!

Memorable and Tired Day

Yesterday, our company have an offsite meeting. During such a meeting, it is usually to update people in our department by the management, what directions the department is heading towards to and so on. Well, it is an eventful day for me. The meeting place is inside a hotel. I asked my colleague which lives near me if she wants to go together and so we went. When we were near the hotel, her shoes broke! So early in the morning, we are going to be late and there is no way she can get a pair of new shoes so early. But I guess she is lucky I am with her. I notice the area have two shops that are opened (surprisingly). One is a pastry shop and the other a florist shop. Without too much thought I went to the florist and ask if they have any joining agent, and it happened that they have a super glue gun. Well don't ask me to describe, this is the first time I come across it also. Anyway, thank goodness, we are able to fix her shoes as a stop gap measure.

So that was an episode for the offsite meeting. For a moment I thought I might have to piggy back her. :S Doubt I have the strength. Haha! Since we were late, we sat together during the meeting for the whole day. Surprisingly, we sat together during lunch and dinner as well. So I got a chance to know more about my neighbor and colleague, which is good because she has been in the department for a while so I can know more about the workings and history of the department.

Oh dinner was a at Japanese Restaurant near Clarke Quay. It is a restaurant that is similar to Seoul Garden but I felt that they keep on piling the food on our table so much so that it was very cluttered and the whole cooking affair is messy. But it was good food, with beef, cow tongue, chicken, vegetables, scallop, squid, lamb, stew, kimchi, corn, prawn and many more. All paid for by our senior supervisor. Haha!

Following dinner was a great movie, National Treasure 2. Great plot and the sight of Mount Rushmore, inspired me to put it as a destination that I must go before I die. Strongly recommended for anyone that likes history.

After the movies, it was very quite late already so my neighbor and I went back together. (Of course lah, live so near to each other.) But I think both of us still felt that the night is still young so we chatted near her void deck about the offsite meeting, the department history and workings and the coming projects we are working together till the wee hours.

An eventful and tiring day, that I will not forget for a long while definitely. I am glad there is a colleague who lives near me, so the neighborly ties add an additional layer of affinity. Such affinity can make my work at a new place easier, since we tend to help those that we are close to.

I guess I am a lucky person because I have two days this year that wrote two beautiful chapters in my 'life' book. Cheers!

Are you happy helping me?

Well recently, I have been helping someone quite a lot lately. I admit that the reason why I want to help, part of it is because I genuinely want to help someone who wants to help herself. Another part is because I hope that through helping, I am able to achieve good feelings.

Currently that person have a bf, so I did not and would not make any move as yet because I know that I do not have superficial beauty, only inner beauty (Hahaha, I can imagine someone starting to puke already), so start of as friends is better. I have a strange gut feel that she might be the one. And I feel really comfortable and at ease when I am with her. The 'worst' part is that when I talk to her, my 'defence' and cautiousness is thrown out of the window. But then again, instinct can only go so far to convince someone especially when we talk about relationship. Anyway, one of my best friend advice me to 'play' by ethics which I always bear in mind when I am with her.

But looking back at how I help her, there was this occasion that I trouble two of my best friends to help her. Honestly, I felt really bad to trouble my best friends on such thing. Especially at the end, there is a possibilities that I might not get anything back. Apologies to my best friends for the trouble I have caused and greatly appreciate the help you have rendered me.

Yes, in helping her, I have gone out all the way and I really mean ALL the way, as usual. These few days, I have been wondering, is it all worth it? At the end of the day, there might not be anything rewarding at the end of the rainbow. After given much thought to the issue, I realise that as long as I feel happy helping a person, it should not matter at the end of the rainbow whether there is anything rewarding. The happiness that I gather when I have helped someone is rewarding enough. At least I know I am making a big difference in her life. How I know? Well, she takes my advice now and always ask my opinion of things. I also get to learn from her experience as well as I ask her to update me her progress.

So worth it or not? If you look at the happiness I derived, I guess it is. I am practising the buddhist principle of going with the flow (as much as I am mindful of) and see where the flow of things would lead me to. As for the pot of gold, let's just treat it as a bonus, if it comes, otherwise I still benefit from her friendship.

The message I want to bring across here is. Many a times, we are asked or volunteer to help someone and some of us would have this question in our mind, "Is it worth helping?" My answer to the question is, if at the end of the day, you feel happy and comfortable you have help the person, it is all worth it.

Cheers!

Contagious Happiness

Ever heard ofa young child's laughter before? Somehow or rather, the kids' laughter is able to rub off some happiness to you. At least that is what happen to me on Sunday.

I was on my way to an appointment when I met this young Indian kid around 1-2 years old. She was having a lot of fun and was laughing and laughing. His laughter resonates with me and I feel happy.

Such an incident actually caught my attention. Let’s look at it this way. When we hang out with friends, we do share a bit of laughter and smiles. That is because we are laughing at the same joke or things. But this incident is different. I have no idea why the kid is having so much fun, but I know he is having a lot of fun through his laughter. Even when we are on a bus or walking along a street, when we hear people laugh, usually the next response that we have would be to criticize the person as ‘cuckoo’, ‘gila’ or ‘siao’ to name a few. The person’s laughter does not make us laugh at all. It does not resonate with us.

Why such a big contrast? Both are laughter, comes from human but one resonates and bring joy and happiness and the other only invites criticism, destructive some more. After much thought I finally know the reason, or I think I know the actual reason.

For the kid, who is only 1-2 yrs old, he is not burdened or conditioned by the society as yet. His happiness is genuine and it is a full release of his emotions. This is why one can sense that he is happy through his laughter and we all know genuine laughter and happiness is contagious.

For us adults, we are already conditioned by the society, we have burdens to carry and so on. So much so that we are so stressed, we do not know how to have a genuine good time. Our laughter contains the stress and burden that the society has given us thus it is not able to rub off on people. And we usually do not let our happiness show fully in our laughter because most of us do not want to be labeled as ‘cuckoo’, ‘gila’ or ‘siao’.

Maybe it is time that we really think about it. Does it matter what label that we have as long as we can feel our happiness and joy fully? Does it matter that people who do not have a stake in your happiness should control how happy you are?

Burden and stress are something that we cannot get rid of society, so why not learn to let go and be able to live with it but not let it affect what is good for us and that is having genuine happiness.

Cheers! :D

Some Songs to Share

可惜不是你 - (梁靜茹) Fish Leong



接受 - (梁靜茹) Fish Leong



暖暖 - (梁靜茹) Fish Leong




普通的人 - 陳偉聯



Sometimes when you listen to a song, part of the lyrics would capture your attention and you realise that the song describe your situation very aptly and immediately you fall in love with the song. Well, I have two of them in the list of four that is reflecting my situation very aptly.

Apologies to any readers that do not understand Chinese. But music is a universal language, hope you like the songs listed here :)

Cheers!

Aiyah, so close yet so far!

In life, we sometime miss out something by a little bit. For instance, I lost out to a good friend of mine to top a particular subject in secondary school. How much I lost? Well I lost to him by only 0.1 pts. He got 90.0 points and receive the top prize for that particular subject while I only score 89.9. I forgotten what is the prize anyway. So can you remember such a instance where you miss out by a bit?

Another great example would be buying lottery and you miss out by only one digit. For instance, if you bet on 1234 and the top prize turns out to be 1239. I am sure a lot of you would jump up and down, but the best thing is that you would jump even higher if the winning number turn out to be 1233 or 1235. Get the picture?

If you look at it carefully, every time you look at your 'close' encounter and lament that you miss it by just a little bit, you get fustrated, angry, sad and all the negative emotions. The higher the frequency of thought on the 'close' encounter, the more intense these negative emotions are and the more you make yourself feel lousy.

And if you look at the whole picture, you actually feel more lousy than someone who bought the number 1290. Haha, that guy will just say, "Oh well, buy again tomorrow! Someday I will strike." So he still feel good about it and the small ray of hope keeps him hopeful and feel better.

Whereas you who missed out by just a little says, "Why why, like that, why missed out by just a little bit!!!! WHY!!!?!?!?!??!?!" and the more you think about it, the more lousy you get.

So how do we make ourselve feel better if we do have such an encounter? Well first thing first, you must realise that miss by a millimetre is still missing from top spot. Miss by a metre is still missing the top spot. It is the past and cannot be changed anymore. Once you realise that such thing cannot be changed anymore, it is useless to think much about it. Because everytime YOU think about it, you make yourself lousy without having the chance or capability to change the fact that you miss it! Smart people should be able to see that it is a losing proposition and being rational human beings, especially if you are a Singaporean, you sure would not like to make a losing proposition right?

So don't focus your thoughts on the 'close' encounter, learn to let it go. Acknowledge that it is the past and there is no way you can change it and focus your thoughts on what you are doing in the present moment, do the best you can in what you are doing presently so at least when you look back next time (if there is a need) you will not regret because you are mindful that you done your best during that moment.

Cheers!

We are all equal

I am currently reading a book called "The Art of Happiness" written by a psychiatrist but with contributions from Dalai Lama.

In the book, Dalai Lama mentioned that actually for all human beings, after stripping all the labels and titles, and the material possessions that we have, we are really all equal. We have needs to satisfy, we seek happiness, we want less (or in fact, totally no) suffering.

If you truly sit down and think abt it, it is really true. If you agree that such a fact does exists. It can really serve us well. First thing first, we are able to be more compassionate about others. Be understanding of others, why they took up certain actions and so on. Such compassion and understanding help us to be a better person, to see things in a better perspective and thus we will be able to rid one source of discontentment. No idea why? Well keep this in mind, and when the times come, you will understand what I mean.

Since we are all equal, it also becomes much easier to make friends. Why? Very simple, if we are equal, we have common topic to talk about. We all have needs to satisfy right? A simple question to start a conversation with someone you do not know is, "What is your occupation?" or "What do you do for a living?". And there you can start the ball rolling. Another common question is "What you have for dinner/lunch/breakfast?" Another common topic to talk about again, glorious food!! So yes, since we are all equal, definitely we can find some common ground to talk about and slowly branch off to our differences. Not to argue about our differences, but to understand that there are differences between individuals. Understand the differences, because it can teach you to look at things in more perspectives, be understanding why they look at their perspective and many more advantages. :)

So we are all equal. :)

So what you have for your dinner? :)

Cheers!