The Path of Time

This guys walks into the bar, looks like every other ordinary guy on the street, mid 40s, wearing a spectacles, dangling a guitar around his back except for one minor detail - he suffered from polio and he walked with a pair crutches. His name is Frankie. He was tonight's singer at the bar. I was having a quiet usual drink by myself for the weekend like I always do - a usual practice for me to recollect myself and get my own me time. And no, I am not an alchoholic. Unfortunately, the bar wasn't so quiet tonight. Probably the eve of Malaysia's independence day so it gave many citizens license to drink on a Sunday night without having to worry about having to wake up with a hangover on a Monday morning since it is going to holiday tomorrow. While I was assuming my drinks for the night just enjoying the time for myself, Frankie was setting up his music equipment. I saw him doing some test strums on his guitar, some mic test. When he was finally satisfied with the sound system,...

Rain...... that's what most of us in this part of Malaysia has been facing for the past four days. "I hate blasted rains", those were the thoughts of Paul. The rain reminds him of the time his father passed away 3 years ago. It was a tough reality of life he had to accept. His father was his only family after his mother left the family when he was only 3 years of age. The rains only reminded him of how painful it was to lose his only family and how much he hated his mother who left the family because his father's business did not do well. His father told him his mother passed away when he was a baby. Paul found out the painful truth after he read his father's diary he found while clearing his father's room after his father passed away. Strangely, his father never blamed his mother for leaving, and still wrote about how much he loved her. Paul never truly understood his father's feelings for his heartless mother. He pretty much spent his childhood in his fa...

Over the weekend I read a book that said, "If you wake up every morning to go to work simply because you have to, and wait for your monthly pay cheque, you are not even living. You are merely existing." It was a reality check right in my face. The words were throbbing in front of me like a red flag showing conspicuously placed in a mine laid field! Those words really got me thinking about me. It got me thinking about what I was doing now - existing or living? Embarrassingly, I really think I am existing. Merely existing isn't difficult to achieve in this overpopulated third rock from the sun. I don't think I'd be wrong if I assumed a good 75% of this world exists and don't really take a crack at living. I mean really living - waking up in the morning knowing there is a purpose for the day, a real purpose in what you want do in your living wake. I can't help but think there has to be more than just waking up, getting dressed, rocking up to office, going hom...

Only days ago, I wrote something about arguments. Ironically two days ago, I had to go through the very unwilling feeling of being told I was wrong at work. Wrong over something I was actually correct from the start. Like any uncommon situations, that conclusion was derived with a load of information assymetry. It is not uncommon that we all sometimes say things that could be detrimental to ourselves and to those around us due to the lack of information (i.e. you would have said something else had you known more about the situation). That's probably why so many fights and quarrels break out every now and then. I had to take a step back and ask myself, "am I really wrong?". I looked, re-looked and re-looked again at the situation to really do an assessment. Contrary to trying to see if I was correct, I earnestly wanted to know if I was wrong. I had to know in all possibilities that I was wrong. I had to make sure I was wrong for the right reasons and that it wasn't a c...

I can still remember it vividly. It was 4 years ago, back when I was still in university. Oh wait, college (my family couldn't afford university). I had a really lengthy debate with my lecturer over my dissertation. Like all other debates and arguments, we could not see eye-to-eye on the subject matter. We were arguing over the methodology that I wanted to use for my research. I wanted a 100% qualitative research methodology but she wanted me to have both a mix of quantitative and qualitative research methodology. Being who I was then - young, energetic, gung-ho, I had a point to prove. I wanted to be right. I wanted to be different. While the whole class decided to do a quantitative research because it was old-school, time-tested and proven method, I wanted to be different and I wanted to show I was number 1! Eventually she gave in and I had my way on the methodology. But one thing was clear after I had finally got my way. There was a touch of resentment in her facial expression. ...