Sure, I strive to be as good as I possibly can but I know I will never be perfect. Just like I know that ..
Like I said earlier, there is so much things to write but I can't seem to put them together properly. Nevertheless, I am thankful to what I have .. a wonderful wife who I love with all my heart, the two most adorable and wonderful boys that no words can express how much I love and care for them, my true friends who have seen me through difficult and happy times, and of course, my simple yet interesting worldly possessions that help me keep up with my daily life. So yes .. my glass is definitely half full! Alhamdulillah!
Today marks our 11th anniversary! In contrast to the celebrations we've had before, it's becoming more of a family affair.. As in with kids in tow. But, we feel that the anniversary marks the birth of this family, and hence, the celebration should include everyone that is part of this family.It wasn't anything spectacular... Just dinner, with the boys, both of whom were feeling under the weather, but happy to be included nonetheless. To be honest, it wouldn't have been the same without them along. Today also makes me look back at the road that both Jasmine & I have taken. It has not been easy, and neither will it be easy from here on. The future is uncertain, and I for one have been having doubts about a number of things, mainly professionally. As I silently watched my kids and wife tonight, there were mixed feelings.. Fear and panic was one.. for would I be able to provide for all of them in the years to come?
However, I was also infinitely grateful for my brood. For it is the single thing that grounds me, and makes me want to go on. The smiling faces of my wife and children serve as affirmation of the reason I'm alive. More so, now that No.3 is well on the way. I know, whatever happens, they will be there for me.. to save me. So this note is a tribute to my tireless wife, my personal confidante, my patient lover, my beautiful protector, my hero, my saviour.. I may not be the easiest person to live with, but I promise to try to the day I die .. Come what may, whatever life may throw at us, whatever obstacles crop up.. at least.. I got the girl.
5 things I would do if I were a billionaire in € and nothing less
5 of my bad habits : I abstain courteously once again.
5 places I am living in : What!?!?
10. Extremely Good Looking.
09. High Starting Salary.
08. Free Body Diagrams.
07. Help with Your Math Homework
06. Find Out What Those Other Buttons on Your Calculator Do
05. Know How to Avoid Friction with Mom and Dad
04. Can Handle Stress and Strain in Relationships
03. The World Does Revolve Around Us ... We Pick the Coordinate System
02. Parents will Approve
01. Always Willing to Experiment
I bought this t-shirt in 1992 during my freshman year about 16 years ago. I wonder if I knew what I know now, would I have bought this t-shirt and wore it so proudly then?
Just going through the list made me think that I am actually 'positive' on 5 out of 10 items listed above. Pity my brain ... I have not been taking good care of it. Now a healthy body can definitely lead to a healthy mind. I just need to pay more attention to my soul / spirit now. Totally abandon it for a very long time. Schade!
Picture taken from http://europe.theoildrum.comPlan before you drive to your destination. In other words, don't be in a rush in which you tend to be more heavy footed on the accelerator (hence more fuel consumption), don't get lost and avoid roads with the most traffic (start - stop motion). So if you are riding your bicycle, you will most likely choose the shortest path to your destination with less hills, obstacles and traffic along the way. And you tend to leave earlier with the bicycle so that you can take your sweet time cycling there without breaking too much sweat.
Set off without carrying unnecessary load. So take out all unused and unnecessary items from the trunk and from the roof rack before you make your trip. If you ride bicycles before, you will definitely know the importance of not having unnecessary additional weight on you or on the bike.
Check tire pressure frequently. If you have ever rode a bicycle with insufficient tire pressure, you would know what I mean.
Drive soon after you start your engine. The longer you idle, the more fuel you waste. If you understand Brake Specific Fuel Consumption (BSFC) graph, you would notice that most engine are not fuel (BSFC) efficient at idling speed. If you have not driven your car for a few days or it happen to be a very cold day (-20 C), you can leave it idling for maximum 30 seconds to ensure that the oil is distributed well inside the engine before driving off. It is similar to riding a bicycle, I am sure no one will want to pedal when the bike is stationary. It would be just a waste of energy
Depress accelerator slowly for eco driving or don't be heavy footed when driving. A rough guide, according to Toyota, is to reach 20 km/h after 5 seconds after starting. When accelerating, shift up gears as early as possible. Using higher gears normally means lower fuel consumption. Just like riding a bicycle, you would not want to pedal like a mad man in the beginning after starting in order to reach a certain speed. You would want a more smooth and fluid change of gears towards achieving optimum motion with less effort.
Keep smooth running at economical speed. Driving at constant speed (avoid fluctuation) of 40 - 50 km/h on ordinary road or 80 - 100 km/h on highway is said to be good. However, you need to need to test this out yourself because every car is different due to the different efficiencies of powertrain (engine + transmission) and drivetrains. So please take care of your oil level for both engine and transmission to ensure that friction is kept at minimum. And don't drive like you are programmed with binary numbers. I know some people drive like that .. full throttle until vehicle reaches certain speed and then release acccelerator to slow down vehicle and continue to accelerate again in order to reach desired vehicle speed. One can get nauseated in such jerking driving style. This is bad for the passengers in your car and also bad for fuel consumption.
Release accelerator as soon as possible before stopping or slowing down. In other words, don't wait until the last minute to brake before a red light. Be alert during driving and anticipate the traffic condition in front of you.
Stop idling as mentioned in item 4. Stop your engine is you stop more than 1 minute. Modern engines enable you to get in and go relatively easy unless you did not take care of the car in the first place.
Finally, please check out this video posted by Eutube below for more information on eco driving.
Picture taken from www.ecofriend.orgStage 1 (Day 1 - 3 post op) - MODERATE pain. I think I handled the pain well even without taking the pain killers. It is getting bad but I am still able to dish out this blog.
Stage 2 (Day 4 - 9 post op) - Moderate to SEVERE pain. I cannot imagine what is going to happen. All the posts I read in the internet indicated having pain killer medications that one takes orally in order to alleviate the pain. My doctor prescribed medication that I have to take it up my ***. I am dreading this moment.
Stage 3 (Day 10 or thereabouts) - Moderate to minor pain or discomfort. Anyone knows how to time travel??
A close friend told me a story that one of his room mates during college didn't want to go strawberry picking with him because he was too short. What???? How could anyone be shorter than a strawberry plant .. okay maybe in Japan where the strawberries are planted on a 1-meter high counter / table. Anyway, if anyone want to give excuse not to go strawberry picking, please do not use the excuse that he / she is not tall enough. As for me, I don't need excuses - I love picking and eating fresh strawberries from the farm early in the day.
Here in Austria, strawberry picking season normally begins in May and ends at the end of June. This summer the weather has been quiet cold and the picking season just recently begun. So my family and I decided to go strawberry picking on a lovely Sunday morning. It is good to go early in the morning because you get to pick big sweet juicy strawberries because most people tend to do that and if you come late morning or afternoon, you are left with the small ones. Since kiasu is my middle name, I would not even consider eating small strawberries when I know the big juicy ones are simply heavenly to eat.Anyway, I have no idea why I wrote this piece. I actually wanted to write about the recent fuel price increase and its non-relation to PETRONAS. However, every time I do a research on it, I find too many idiotic comments by the Malaysian public on how to tackle the recent fuel price hike in Malaysia with PETRONAS in the equation. Strawberries are so much easier to digest.
ontrol and development can co-exist in harmony. Recycling waste in Switzerland is a habit rather than a chore. Companies and individuals in these countries alike practice commendable environmental awareness compared to developing countries. Personally, I think European countries are the frontrunners of sustainable environmental management, even when compared to the US, and are much advance in inculcating such practice in their communities, and I have decided to further my studies in Europe to learn and to understand how to implement suitable and improved policies that will bring Malaysia closer to sustainable development towards developed nation in 2020.Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you.So I started thinking, how often do I let Garbage Trucks run right over me? And how often do I take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home or on the street? It was then that I said, “I don’t want their garbage and I’m not going to spread it anymore.”
So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me. You’ll be happier.
In the first two month of joining the gym, I was working out at least 3 times a week but from the third month onwards, my shadow was never even within 50 meters from the gym. Motivation was overwhelmed by mental exhaustion. In other words, I always had excuses not to go to the gym.
Well, thanks to those innovative Japanese working at Nintendo, I have found the right combination of stimulation and excitement with a dash of 'kiasu'ness in Nintendo's Wii Fit and Wii Sports as I pursue health and fitness.
As silly as this might sound to non-believers of Wii, I have lost 1 kg (to be exact 900 grams) since getting the Nintendo Wii. The combination of of Wii Sports and Wii Fit is simply exhiliarating. However, I cannot give a proper evaluation of the product yet because the outcome can only be seen after a couple of months. I will be combining my gym workouts and swimming (starting soon) together with daily dose of Wii-ing in the morning and again in the evening. I am not sure how effective will the Wii be in actually reducing my weight but the gaming is surely revolutionary and would definitely spice up my quest to lower my BMI to ideal again. And it really does improve balance through its Yoga Exercises and Balance Games. I will update more on my quest with Wii Fit by my side (under my feet to be exact) when I get results worth sharing.
Today many people spend much of their time and effort at work in search of better life by having larger paychecks. These paychecks (including bonuses) are usually determined based on one's work performance and contributions to the company. It is very seldom that someone who produce less impressive contributions for the company will be rewarded for their average work performance. So honest people tend to work harder and spend longer hours at the office or workplace in order to accomplish the target given to them by their bosses. After a gruelling long day, these people go back home physically and mentally drained. This is when the two worlds collide just as the sun totally disappears in the western horizon.Planning and managing expectations.
Networking.
Time and development.
I am sure there are more items to consider but I am too tired to think and write all of them down in this blog. Personally, I think it would have been much better if we spend most our time with our family when we wake up in the morning. We can spend time with our family during breakfast and lunch, the two most important meal period. We start work at 3 pm so if we are tired and stressed out from spending too much time with family, we can scream and shout at strangers and co workers at the office and not family members. Finish work latest by 11 pm because even the boss would not want to stay longer at the office. And most importantly, the best transition from work to home is sleep. Imagine sleeping 6 - 8 hours is enough to erase all stress and frustration from work. Why can't we do that???
I grew up wanting to be a superhero that can save the earth from power crazy villains. However, the catch was not to be too prominent so forget about Superman, Spiderman, Batman and etc. I preferred the superhero from the TV series 'Greatest American Hero'. Of course, we all know what happenned to that series. I think it got cancelled after 3 seasons and my superhero worshipping didn't last long. I went back to idolising great football players like Pele, Zico and Maradona. So every 4 years or so, my friends and I went beyond our normal evening soccer escapade and started calling ourselves by our favorite players' names and went kicking balls around the field and of course, a few shins. Ouch!
Then came Avatar: The Last Airbender. Okay, the first time I watched it and I thought how could anyone watched those shows. It was ridiculous and of course watching the show in German just made in worse. Nevertheless, my son was hooked on the show and you need not to remind him to come home and take a shower in the evening as he somehow brought himself back in time to do all those daily chores just to watch that show. Normally, I have to scream and shout to get him back to the house. What shocked me the most was my wife was also into watching Avatar. I had to reconsider my initial judgment and I decided to watch the show from the beginning and most importantly in English. Half way through the first episode, I was also hooked and wanted to watch more. 
In this show, the Avatar, Aang, who is supposed to be a savior for the four nation needed his compadre to defeat evil or in most cases to survive long enough for him to master all bending skills. As silly as this might sound but this cartoon actually teaches the idea that even great people need to work in a team to ensure success. This is especially true when each of the team members have their own unique strength that on their own might not be enough to ward off evil but together they form a very potent force to knock evil off its feet. Then the ultimate lesson is that in order to seek for knowledge one must be able to get out of one's comfort zone in pursuit of knowledge that can restore harmony to the four nations. Of course, telling my son all of this would just fall on deaf ears. So I simplified the lessons for him as listed below.Nevertheless, hero worshipping a fictional character may not be good for my son as he grows up into a teenager. He needs to learn to hero worship a real person but he needs to decide who that person is. It could be Prophet Mohammad s.a.w or it could be President Abraham Lincoln. To name a few - Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Bono from U2 and Nelson Mandela. As long as he can remember the lesson to take what is good and to leave what is bad, insyaAllah he will turn out great himself maybe not as a superhero but a hero to the people that he cares for, saviour to his community and a protector of the world's harmony. It is now up to him and his 'compadre' to make the journey into the great unknown. Wallahualam.
The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well
I just got two questions to ask: what is the real impact for world leaders to boycott the opening of Olympics with respect to China to improve their human rights records? Doesn't anyone remember the phrase that Rome was not built in one day?
'Green' earth in the palm of my hands! Okay, okay, okay! I am not going to write about saving the earth and so on. Please look a few posts below and you will see that I wrote about my weight challenge about three weeks ago. The target was to lose 1 kg / week and by end of March I should reach 80 kg.
Quoting from the movie Ratatouille, 'Change is nature and it is the part that we can influence. It starts when we decide' I decided that it is time to change, be healthy and look good. 
So I went out to Toys R Us store sometime in December last year to get him the Monopoly Junior. He was thrilled with it from the get go and started playing it on a daily basis until he is really good at it. The rules are simple and obviously, it is does not have the same rules as the Standard monopoly. Anyway, the rules are meant for kids between the age of 5 - 8 years old. So who cares, right? So day in and day out he went around bugging everyone to play the board game with him until ...
comes to playing Monopoly. He has beaten me twice fair and square since we started playing it according to the official rules. And whenever I do beat him, he thinks that I put some sort of mambo-jambo on the dices so that I always get both Parklane and Mayfair. I wonder where he picks up such statement!?This is the Age of Entitlement. She [I] does [do] not mean entitlement only in theOkay Roving Soul seems to get it based on the comment in this blog but I am divided on this subject. I could be dead wrong and would not want to generalise such issue but somehow I think those (people I know, of course) including myself who were born between 1970 to 1974 are in the grey zone. It seems those who were born from 1975 onwards have a strong inclination towards demanding entitlement as compared to those born before 1970's.
sense of the belief that one is entitled to a government handout. She [I] also
means [mean] entitlement in the simpler sense of the belief that one deserves
to get exactly what one wants - regardless of the law and despite the public good.
Jack attributed his success in life to always doing the best job possible. Jack told me (AEI editor) that this message is one that he communicates in his numerous speaking engagements, particularly to college students: "Take the hand that is dealt to you and do the best job ever."
This philosophy is not unlike that of my own father's. He constantly reminded me and the rest of my family members that, if you do the best job possible, you will ultimately be recognized and rewarded. Be rewarded with more responsibility, more authority, and more money. I always believed that self-interest was better served by doing good work than by getting good things. Too many times I see in younger generations the desire and need for immediate reward. Too often, it seems, our youth is unwilling to accept special assignments or take on additional responsibilities unless these are accompanied by immediate reward. Entitlement is a word that I never grew up with, yet now I hear it all the time. Interestingly, I searched for the word in my 1960 edition of the Webster's Dictionary, and found that it did not exist. In my 1998 edition, however, "entitlement" was an entry. I
believe that this relatively new concept has been born out of the drive within
organizations to empower people. Some individuals clearly equate "empowerment"
with getting what they want.
Okay, the reason why I mention I belong in the grey zone is because I have witnessed and also gone through both experiences as written by AEI editor above. At work, I would do my best in everything I do as I know that it will make me stronger and better at my tasks. When I happen to stumble upon spare time, I would volunteer to do work that are beyond my job scope to broaden my experiences and of course, I would not hesitate to work with all sort of people regardless of rank, gender, race, level of education and age because the experience gained will nurture me into a better person personally and professionally. At the end I know all that I have gained so far will make me a better leader and person for my family, friends and people I work with. Instant reward was never an issue but, I do expect recognition, respect and trust from them.
Sadly, in place there is the performance appraisal system (when it is not done correctly) that to many people at my workplace replaces the human interaction from superiors to/from subordinates and co-workers to co-workers, as it is done at most twice a year. This is simply insufficient to nurture positive values amongst employees which makes it even more difficult to manage expectations. It cannot replace the simple pat on the back when one does well, reassurance for another that his/her mistake is a learning experience, the advice and moral boost amongst fellow workers i.e. the human touch part of it.
On one hand, one may feel that he/she is doing very well only to find out six months or one year later that he/she is merely meeting expectations. Wassup!?!? On the other hand, one may feel that he/she deserves to get good appraisals just because he/she did a token more than the previous year without considering his/her actual contribution to the company.
Mr. Paulo Coelho, the author of Alchemist, wrote, "... everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action." I know that there are people out there who work because they want to make the world around them a better place. I hope I have the strength and will to be one of them and not be sucked into the vortex of entitlement. Don't get me wrong, I would like to be rewarded as a recognition for all the great things I have done so far but not just because ...
