Friday, October 31, 2008

Hope is dangerous. Sometimes.

Hope = Dreams = Aspirations = Ambitions
Being more than what you are
I had a long night last night, preparing for a client presentation for this afternoon and doing social work again. This time by phone, to my friend's father in Singapore.

I've blogged about it before, about a family deep in trouble over debts with the father valiantly but hopelessly trying to raise money via bookies. When you owe $300,000 and all you have is $100 in your pocket and 14 days to pay, I guess the last place you look at to raise money is fixed deposit or mutual funds.

I won't go into the personal details of this tragic case, only to toss around this thing called hope.

There's something about hope that makes us walk with purpose. A new child is hope to a parent (my opinion, correct me if I'm wrong). Its the Parent version 2.0. Its a new beginning, a chance to do it again without all the mistakes, gaffes, and missed opportunities. Who doesn't want a second chance.

The same manifests in business, friendship, lifestyles. Its in our nature to be forward looking, positive thinking and hope for the best. Sometimes our dreams come true and we live happily ever after. But sometimes....

Truthfully I have mixed feelings about hope. I'm not anti-hope but social work lets you look beyond the fairy tale setting. Show me any case and I can tell you it all started with hope. A guy mortgages his house because he hopes to make a million in the stock market. A lady marries a loser because she hopes he could turn around. Parents send their son to an expensive school because they hope he could become a great person. Noble visions that turn out great lives if successful.

Then there's the flip side. A conman hopes no one will catch him ripping off retirees. A vengeful person hopes something bad will befall on someone he has a score to settle with. A gambler who puts down his last $100 on a bet hopes he'll roll it to a sum big enough to pay off his $300k debt. And the bookies who take the bet hopes the odds will stack against hope.

If you take away the judgemental aspect, hope is what keeps all these people moving forward.

But misguided or not, we humans cannot live without hope. If I tell someone, "Uncle, please don't gamble away your last $100," he will probably say, "You are killing the last hope I have. You want my life to be hopeless is it?"

Yes, you wouldn't condemn someone to a life without hope would you. I've asked this question before - which would you prefer, an uncertain future with hope or a certain future without hope. And I think I know your answer to the question.

But hope is innocent. Its what you hope for that matters. Unbridled foolish hope can only be reigned in by something we youngsters loathe. Its that most uncool, unhip, wet blanket thing called wisdom. Well we are only human so when faced to choose between wisdom and ignorance, what do you think we'll choose?

I dunno about you but you have to admit there's something about watching giggling people bungee-jumping off a cliff (obviously hoping to get an adrenalin rush), the cable snaps and they plunge head first onto the rocks at 200 km/h. Splat, hahaha, shrugs. Let's hope the next one is funnier.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Chance

A fruit seller decides to stop at a highway layby for a rest.

A stranger comes along and offers to buy a dozen fruits.

As he drives to the next city, he finds one overripe fruit and tosses it into the dustbin.

The garbageman takes the garbage to a landfill.

A bird comes along and pecks on the fruit.

It flies over a field the next day and passes out the indigestable fruit seeds.

A fruit seed germinates and grows into a fruit plant.

The fruit plant, rare in that area, attracts some nearby residents who like the fruit.

One of the residents hit on a bright idea and thinks he can make money by farming the fruit.

3 years later, his fruit farm turns into a thriving business that attracts tourists.

The tourists attract hawkers, coffee shops, a bus station.

10 years later, what was once a barren field is now a busy commercial center with housing villas, schools and shopping centers.

Nobody knows what every seed, thought, or action might lead to.

We seem to be products of chance.

The realities of the world seems random.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Young and invincible (or why we don't listen to advice)

So why don't people listen to advice?

Let me ask you, was there a time in your life when you believed that advice was for sods who couldn't think for themselves?

We've all had our moments when we're convinced we have all the answers. Mine started when I believed I was Superman. I must've been 5 or 6 years old. I leapt off a swing and fell flat on my chest. Caused a mild panic at the playground.

My mom and teachers had always warned me not to play Superman that way but would I listen? Nooo... of course not. I was convinced I could fly and nothing in the world would've stopped me from taking that lesson in gravity. It just had to happen.

As a kid I've always wanted to be a champ and being a champ was all about finding your own way, proving you are right and others wrong. Its an identity thing. Identity's like the clothes you wear. Once your parents or teachers starts dressing you, you are not you so you train yourself to reject all these opinions that people were imposing on you. You'd say they were cramping your style.

I've wised up a little since but I don't think anyone had ever really gotten over their identity crisis - the idea of "me" that's causing us to stubbornly cling to our beliefs and opinions in spite of good advice from others. We need our convictions because they give a solid body to "me"-ness. We need it to feel alive.

And what of those who would risk everything including their lives to prove a point?

Thankfully I've never reached that point before. I suppose if my sticking up for something is purely for a sense of satisfaction or self-fulfillment, like insisting that my car can kick your car's ass, lets race, then I probably wouldn't bother. Not that I don't have pride or think there's nothing worth defending but I've learnt one thing. Proving myself right is not always what it promises to be. I mean, how many decisions have you made that seemed so right at one time now seems so wrong?

So my take on why people don't listen to advice is simple - fear. The fear that accepting advice diminishes our individuality, the precious thing that makes us unique. The less mature we are, the more identity matters and the stronger you can expect the resistance to programming via second-hand "advice".

Friday, October 24, 2008

Conscience

Someone takes your property right from under your nose and later denies it. Cuts queue and makes like he or she has done nothing wrong. Puts melamine in baby food knowing full well it destroys kidneys. We ask why.


Remember the movie Alien (1979)? You might recall this conversation:

Ripley: How do we kill it Ash? There's gotta be a way of killing it, how, *how* do we do it?
Ash:
You can't.
Parker:
That's bullshit.
Ash:
You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert:
You admire it.
Ash:
I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

That last line was the kicker to me. Ash the android describing purity as a state of being "unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."

As a trained programmer I can relate. A computer will do anything you program it to do. It is not hamstrung by tradition and opinion. It is not judgemental or indecisive. Look at the primitive mindless animal. 100% sharp teeth and survival instinct. It bothers with no pretensions of right and wrong.

Xen wrote a piece about PRCs (Mainland Chinese nationals) swarming over Singapore creating havoc. Housewives and cabbies swear they have no conscience, only one objective - to take what belongs to you, never mind that homes, families and fortunes are wrecked in the process. Ash would admire the ruthless "purity" of such single-mindedness.

Well, having met a few PRCs myself, I know that not all of them are like that but it did make me think. If you've ever rubbed someone the wrong way, you'd know that an adversary without conscience is the most formidable kind there is. In Alien, Ripley found that out the hard way. We too are finding out the hard way, this whole melamine episode being one.

People with no conscience don't recognize value systems. In a study of serial killers, it is thought that this is due to some neural dysfunction in the frontal lobe, the part of the brain that controls ethics, morals, manners and social responsibility. Damage can be caused by things like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or a sharp blow to the head and can lead to nasty personal disorders like narcissism.

But the conscience-challenged often do understand one thing - punishment. So much so that if they avoid doing something bad, it is out of fear of being caught rather than an appreciation that their action is hurting others. So they'll tell you its okay to do whatever. Just don't get caught.

Sound familiar to you?

(Edit: I just discovered a Washington-based organization called CREW - Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. Singapore might be able to use something similar. I wonder if they'll call it SCREW.)

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Seeing things



No I've not gone evangelical.

If it was up to me I'd name Pillars of Creation "Badly-made Yau Char Kwai (Chinese doughnuts)" and the Eye of God "Stove Flame with Faulty Vent".

I'm just fascinated at how we like to use divine-sounding names to label wonderous phenomena. I'm not sure if anyone has ever seen god to know what his eye looks like.

Btw a nebula is just a bunch of interstellar gases heated up by a cluster of stars at the core.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Unhappy? Then create your own reality.

My trip back to Sg felt a little different this time. What can you say when your friends start saying:

"If I sold my shares today, I'll lose 40% of the money I invested."
"I'm not buying any more gadgets.'
"I don't know how long my job will last."
"I can survive until next month. After that I just don't know..."
"I am stuck."

Seems that happiness and money go hand in hand and few people are more aware of it than Singaporeans.

Malaysia's not that far off either. Okay, maybe its more dire because of other "extra" issues that I won't get into. And everybody knows America's not in the best of shapes too.

You know how people say that for whatever pickle we're in, we're responsible for it in some way? I think there's a lot of truth in it. I've always believed that the decisions we make are like the white ball on a billiards table. Strike it and it knocks around some red balls. These balls in turn knock around other balls and so on. Sometimes one nudge is all it takes to change the entire picture.

And that's what decisions do. A decision to go out for a stroll could result in bumping into a friend and subsequently a decision to buy shares or take up a job that will take us in directions we never dreamed of. It would be easy to say that like the red balls, we're hapless passengers caught up in a train wreck but that's where the billiard ball analogy ends. The difference is that billiard balls can't generally think and decide how to respond to an incoming ball. We can.

There are people who (still) believe the world is flat. Everyone's entitled to their opinion and we too have our own preferences that make us unique. Its another way of saying our reality is shaped by what we choose to believe in. Implication: it is very important to choose what to believe in.

If we decide to believe we can't be happy unless we're swimming in a pool filled with hundred-dollar bills, then we will have to deal with the good and bad consequences of that belief. If we choose to believe in the opposite, we also have to face the consequences of that belief.

So back to my dear friends in Singapore. What's done cannot be undone. You cannot un-invest in a bad investment or un-apply for your job. There's only one path left - ahead. If you're unhappy with this reality, you can always create a new reality by letting go of things that aren't working and choosing a path that leads to a different reality. Even at the cost of losing doting friends and a branded lifestyle. And that's your biggest challenge - letting go. And learning the Newtonian art of understanding how action-reaction works so you can spot a train wreck before it happens.

You can see that while I'm acutely conscious of the financial and social mess in the region, it doesn't bother me much. That's because a different mental formula keeps my eye on a different ball. A disaster in your reality is a nice sunny day in mine and maybe vice versa. I'm still learning but my hunch has always been this: happiness is having few needs.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Joe the Imaginary Friend

My mind groans as America gets caught in yet another stupid spin cycle, this time entitled "Joe the Plumber," recently created by John McCain.

It does not matter that the guy's first name is Sam, not Joe. It does not matter that he's not a real plumber. It does not matter that by now, everybody in America knows that none of this "Joe the Plumber" business is actually real.

But why let reality get in the way of a good cry. The Republicans think they have a superior tax policy. They need to put a face to it. For the tv cameras, of course. So they find this guy out of nowhere, wrap the scenario around him, breathe life into him by calling him out in a nationally televised debate, and then sit back and watch it snowball into a monster.

And America loves it. I have a sick feeling that from now until November 4, Joe the Plumber, previously known as Joe Sixpack, will dominate the news cycle. Everyone will be asking him hypothetical questions, feeling sorry for him, producing skits about him from SNL to Youtube, even though they all know its just a charade.

We all love our imaginary friends. They make our problems and sorrows seem real, our actions justified. We get to dress them up like a Ken or Barbie doll. And we get fiercely protective of them.

Sometimes I ask myself, am I in a loony bin?

Life is like a ...

Robert Mager: Life is like a pinball machine. It throws events at us and flips us in one direction or the other.

Forrest Gump: Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

Damien Tan: Life is like a Chinese finger trap. Sometimes the only way to break free is to let go.

What is your favorite Life is Like?

Last post of the week before I disappear back to Sg for the weekend.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

The phone trader

You are having a meal at a restaurant when a phone salesman stops at your table and starts promoting his product. He's a young man, well-dressed, looks fresh out of college, looking like he's just trying out his luck. You have no intention of buying his product. What would you do?

1. Ignore him as he talks
2. Cut him off and forcefully tell him to go away
3. Let him finish what he wants to say and then tell him you're not interested
4. Ask him to sit down for a drink

This is what I notice.

Malaysians tend to do (1).
Singaporeans tend to do (2).
Americans tend to do (3).

I tend to do (3) even though I spend more time in Malaysia and Singapore these days. Once in a while I do (4).

I guess we all have our reasons why we do what we do. Mine is this.

We all eke out a living by the grace of those kind enough to give us money, even though we complain about it.

The guy hawking his wares table to table under the sun and rain probably has to work 20 times harder than I do sitting in a comfy office to make the same dollar.

He too needs to go home and feed his family. He chose the dignity of work rather than stealing. The least I can do is say thank you for his effort, wish him luck and not slap him in the face for ruining my nice evening.

I've seen the rich turn into paupers overnight, now groveling at the feet of those they once despised.

Life is uncertain. Death is certain.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Conservation


Must be nice to swim all day.

Pic source: www.whale-images.com

Migration

I hate to do this but I'm left with little choice but to migrate my blog out of Multiply after losing a bunch of draft entries there. The latest incident happened this morning. A casualty of their recent back-end applications upgrade I suspect.

That reminds me of an old IT programmer joke. Pay us or we'll upgrade your content management software. Hehe. :D

I'm going to miss Multiply's network and contacts features. That's why its a tough decision.

My gratitude to LC Teh for introducing me to that platform where he has a blog and where I've picked up a few new online friends. You guys can always come to this new blog and visit, right?

I'll still keep my Multiply account and visit your Multiply blogs but my new blog entries will be published here in Blogspot from now.

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