Old folks' home, a necessary evil?

Paid a visit to my grandmother today and she currently lives in an old folks' home. I know it may not necessary be nice to place her there. I have had many friends asking me why she's been place there? Apparently, most people think it's cruel.

On the contrary, I personally think the old folks' home is a necessity in this time and day. Don't get me wrong because I am by no means giving a reason for anyone to ship their parents into an old folks' home.

My grandmother now lives in an old folks' home due to her stubborn personality, not wanting to live with her children. Last time she stayed with my family, she felt scared being alone my house because my family never came home until 9 to 10pm during the weekdays due to our busy schedule with work.

Along the way we tried asking to stay with some of my uncles and aunties, then she decided there was no place like her own home. Finally, we gave up and she got her way. She may have enjoyed staying in her own home but we were worried. Worried because she was all alone ever since my grandfather passed away a few years ago. She was in her early 70s then and someone in her 70s would be pretty cumbersome and most importantly, fragile.

Without the luxury of time, my family and I travel to visit her at most once every two months. Well, my family lives about 2 hours drive from where she lives since we are in different states.

Our worse fear materialised about 4 years ago, when she slipped and fell down in her home. Thankfully, my aunty found her on the floor in her home when she was paying her a visit one weekend. Had my aunty decided she not going to visit her that weekend, my grandmother would have probably been on the floor for God knows how long!

That's when a collective decision was made to have her live in an old folks' home. Today, she lives amongst many other old ladies in an old folks' home that separates men and women. There are caretakers who are around 24 hours a day to make sure everyone is fine.

The folks there get 4 balanced meals a day, and if anything happens we get a phone call from them. In the old folks' home, she gets to interact with the other folks around her and even if she doesn't really talk to them, at least she is around a crowd. I personally think, it gives her some form of mental comfort to know that they are others who are in the same position as her or worse off.

Ultimately, I get a peace of mind, my family and relatives get a peace of mind.

As much as the general mindset is that an old folks' home is a place to boot old folks who are deemed a burden to family. I personally think it provides a safe haven for old folks, a place where they are taken cared of. It is no form of replacement for family love but it does keep the old folks safe from harm.

Call it a necessary evil...................

The kid with the motorcycle

This morning I went to fill my car with petrol. I went in to the petrol station counter to pay for the petrol I was going to pump into my car. Right before it was my turn, there was teenager paying for the petrol to be filled up for his motorcycle.

He looked young, probably only 18 years of age. This kid tells the guy at the counter he wants 5 Ringgit worth petrol for his motorcycle down at pump 5. Then I heard a pause and he then said, "Sorry, make it 3 Ringgit instead.". That's when I noticed him looking into his wallet and I saw it was close to being empty. I think I only saw 2 Ringgit left after he paid for the petrol.

There was no doubt that he had to gingerly reduce the amount of petrol that was going to go into his motorcycle. He was probably thinking of how much mileage he could get from 3 Ringgit worth of petrol. I don't know how far a bike can go on 3 Ringgit because I never owned bike before but one thing I knew with certainty - he definitely wasn't going to go further than 5 Ringgit worth of petrol.

While most of us out there are always dreaming of 'upgrading' to bigger more luxurious fuel guzzling cars, this poor bloke here was lucky to even get some petrol into his bike. As much as we all dream about having nice cars and to be able to boast how much horsepower it packs or its hand made leather seats, we often forget how lucky it is to even have an engine and four wheels that gets us to work and back home safely.

My workplace recently had a bout of salary increment to those who qualified and it triggered quite a fair bit of displeasing sentiment in view of the relatively low increment. There were a lot complains and disagreement with the lower increment this year compared to last year.

As much as it is good to dream about all the luxuries money can bring, one should not forget that one should count one's blessing for a roof over one's head, food to eat, water to drink, a car. While most of us just swipe our credit card at the petrol pump and go "Fill her up!", the kid on the bike had to fracture how little he had in his wallet to make sure he some dough left for other things..........

All it takes is a little encouragement

"A Life at Work" by Thomas Moore is currently the book I am reading. I have reached about half way so far and it has really given me a lot of in sight about my destiny or at least pointers to get me on my way to figure out what my life work is (i.e. your ideal work, work that fulfills you from the inside, food-for-the-soul kind of work). It's still a work in progress thing for me; a long way from reaching the full discovery point (if I ever reach it).

Your life work can be as simple as helping old folks in need in a nursing home to something as simple as being a life guard. Simplest of work can be the most rewarding to a person's hear that's deep down. Of course, there's no denying that it is different for everyone.

But sometimes, if not all the time, all it takes is a little encouragement from the people around you. Sometimes it is as simple as, "a job well done chump!" or "way to go bud!" or "you hit the home run mate!" or even "great job!". And sometimes, these words mean more than a billion dollars to certain people. It's the joy of knowing someone out there thinks you have done something worth appreciating.

I personal experienced it. It's a wonderful feeling because I feel like I have made a difference in someone else's life. I am not talking about making a life defining moment in another's life and neither I am saying that I made a difference in another person's life. What I am saying is that someone out there in this world thinks I am good at something.

I experienced it via this small, humble blog of mine. I have had people giving negative comments on my posts and sometimes positive comments but I take it at a stride and see if I can learn something new from the comments I get. Yesterday, I had a multiple strings of negative comment about a post I wrote recently. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel offended but what I realised was that it was only one person's opinion as compared to the other many positive comments I have received thus far.

In fact, on the same day in the night one of my online friends said to me, "I really like your blog. You are really good at writing. Don't stop writing.".

And that made the difference. It gave me a ray of hope that tells me to keep on blogging. Most importantly, I recognised the fact that I don't need big, material rewards to encourage me and keep me going. Even small gestures of appreciation is all it takes to give other's a little encouragement.

turnaround effect

Today was one hell of a day for me. So bad that it left me with a spinning head for a good three quarter of the day.

It started off as a pretty good day at work not until I made a few errors. Errors that were down right silly and should not have been made to begin with. Like any other errors related to work and official documents, there are bound to be a repercussion. I got apprehended by my boss. Big boss to be precise. I am fine with the apprehension since a mistake will be a mistake - especially MY mistake.

More often than not, silly errors are the ones that leave you feeling really sore about yourself. Especially the ones you don't expect to make. It is embarrassing to say the least and it paints a really bad image about me.

As much as a small error can leave me feeling crappy about myself, similarly a small good deed left me feeling good at the end of the day.

Before going back everyday, I need to line up in front of an auto pay machine to settle my parking bill for the day. An expensive RM9 for your information! Anyway.... forget the price but there was this middle age man trying to pay via the machine and judging from the frown he wore on his face, clearly it was his first time trying to pay his parking on the machine.

As he spent time figuring out how to pay on the machine, a line was forming behind him. I heard him mumbling something about not having small change to pay. He didn't realise the machine accepted notes.

The ironic part is, as he stood there for almost 2 minutes figuring things out, no one took the trouble to tell him the machine took notes. A girl on the machine beside his just giggled. I didn't think it was funny. The girl behind him just stood there like a log. Probably hoping he'd figure it out faster. Guess, she never thought if she bothered to assist him she would be already be on her way home!

So, I just walked up to the man and directed him how to work that machine. He paid his parking without any trouble and thank me. By the time it reached my turn to pay, I did the necessary and walked myself to my car. As I was opening my car door, I hear a car stop in front of my car and the car gives me a quick beep. It was man I helped at the machine. He said thanks again and gave me thumb's up. It made me feel warm in my heart............ I felt good.

What a wonderful turnaround effect!

ugly truth~

Friends will always be friends, or so that's what most people tell me. What about times when friends just can't be friends anymore? Ever come across such a pinch?

You probably wouldn't be surprised that there are many things in life that can make friends and quite easily break friendships. You and I would have made and lost many friends along the way of growing up. That's part of growing up and maybe, maybe it's part of learning to differentiate who's your friend and who's not.

A lot of things can happen in between friendships - work, money, love, etc.

Money........ ahhhhhhhhh, the ultimate evil of all things if I must say so myself. People all around the world of different races, skin colour, nationality. Anyone can fall prey to the temptation money has to offer. I too fall prey to the temptation of money sometimes..... The flesh is weak after all.

Let me just take it one step further. When I think about money, I think career as well. Career is the driving force that brings money. Good career = good money (that's what we like to think).

Mix those two elements up, and you get a pretty good concoction that can really blow friendships to kingdom come especially when your friend is a colleague. They are some who would do anything to get up the corporate mountain peak inclusive of sacrificing friendship.

Trust me, someday you'll probably face it or probably already faced it. What would you do? It's walking the tightrope because career progression always sparks envy and it is bound to create some friction between friends whether any of us like it or not.

It's sad to a certain extent because it just affirms the fact that even humans like you and I who are considered to be the top of the food chain will still succumb to the ugly truth of the vicious life cycle - when one rises, another shall fall............

the invisible thread that binds us

In an old Chinese folk tale, it is said that when one is brought to this world, we have the love of our life waiting for us in this world at a time and date set by God. In fact, our destinies lies in a red thread tied to our pinkie finger. That red thread is then tied to another person's pinkie finger.

It is said that you and that person will be an item in your lifetime. That's the story at least.......

Many a times I have seen couples asking one another, "do you love me?" and, "why do you love me?". There will always be answers to those questions like "you are nice, pretty, blah blah blah, etc........." you know the usual mushy answers you'd expect to hear.

But do we really need a reason to love someone? Seriously?

I saw The Ugly Truth last night. It's a romantic comedy movie that really gets you laughing from start to finish. I am not going to write a review of the movie but I'd rather focus on one line from the movie that I found very profound. At the end, the main actress finally asked this guy, "Why do you love me?". The guy looks at her with the most clueless look and just go, "I don't know!!!" and they finally kiss each other.

Maybe that's what love is all about. Don't need to over analyse anything, no need to think about what sort of a person you wish to have as a life's mate, no need to think about one's personality or background. Just go with the flow of what your heart thinks.

I was silly enough to follow my curious instincts to ask couple friends of mine to me what is it that binds them together. In the mix of these friends were married, new couples or about to get married. I am blessed this time that my honest curiosity did not get me killed.

What I found out from my conversations with them is surprising to say the least. They couldn't really pin down how they became attached to each other.

"When it happens, it just happens. You can't really control it or predict it," said one of my friends. His spouse agreed with him. "Maybe we were already predestined to be with one another according to a time God thinks is right for us and then it just happens," said another friend.

One thing's for sure - you can't really explain the complexities of the human emotions and this feeling of love and affection. Or it is probably a concoction of certain chemicals in our body that creates this feeling of love.

Some of us grow old never finding the right one, some find the right one at an early age, some find the right one when it's a tad too late. Maybe all this have been predestined by the red thread tied to our pinkie finger when we are born to this world.

people

We are in the 21st century and the progress of technology brings us smaller, better, more sophisticated and even smarter robots and nanomachines. Only five years ago I was using a Pentium 3 desktop, now we have moved into the quad core Intel processors that make Pentium 3 look like it is sleeping on the job.

Technology is a wonderful thing. There is absolutely no doubt about that obvious fact staring at all of us in the face. Just a week ago, I saw a tv programme on the National Geographic channel that featured a group of really smart professors in the US trying to design and create a robot that can do house chores - autonomous robots.

Wonderful as technology may seem to be and how much research is going into trying to make artificial intelligence, what most of us call AI, you'd realise that achieving AI is going to one hell of a task. At this point in time, the possibility of a full blown AI robot with its own intelligence and a mind of its own seems remote. Remote but the possibility is still there.

Through the path of time, humans have proven to be very agile at evading disaster and surviving millions of years since the dawn of time. Great dinosaurs perished in a cataclysmic mysterious manner, great beasts like the mammoth perished along with time, yet humans have evolved from ape-like beings to beings like you and I.

I can't help but think there must be a reason so many living creatures have succumbed to the ravages of time yet we, humans have survived for so long and at the same time brought about revolutionary ideas and solutions - Benjamin Franklin discovering electricity, Alexander Graham Bell who brought us the telephone, Henry Ford who brought us the car, German Karl Ferdinand Braun invented the cathode ray tube oscilloscope and a whole plethora of other inventions by extraordinary people out there.............

Ever wondered what the world will be like with AIs around? I think it'd be scary. A world filled with emotionless metal bonded robots running around doing stuff we do. Makes you think about those movies where robots take over the world and turn humans into slaves right?

As much as I appreciate what technology has done for me, I do not wish for the world to have sophisticated human-like AIs. In my opinion, technology will never be able to replace the causal ambiguity and ingenuity humans have - emotions, feelings, compassion, empathy.

I am not surprised that famous businessmen in the past as early as the 19th century foresaw the dawn of technology and coming of the era of mechanisation. But machines can never replace the human emotions and mind.... too unique to be replicated.

Andrew Carnegie, the founder of Carnegie Steel understood all too well and once said:

'"Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory."

Amazing words of wisdom that tell me people are the essential element of this world we live in. You can have all the riches in the world but without the people to share your happiness with, it is of no use. Have the most sophisticated piece of machinery but no one to man it, you have pile of scrap metal. You may create AIs but you can never create the human emotions.........