keep looking upwards, you'll only get a neck ache

Looking up to someone, admiring someone, yearning to be that someone, working towards being that someone is a wonderful thought don't you think so? Every now and then, we find ourselves procrastinating about how nice it would be to be a high flying CEO, CFO, COO, partner of a law or accounting firm, big time entrepreneur. It can be rejuvenating and at the same time motivating knowing that some day, some time in the future, all your back breaking effort and hard work will finally pay off.

On the flip side, we can find ourselves stopping at the procrastination part and not moving forward. That is to say, mere thought with no or little follow through actions.

I find it very common among my peers to talk about some of the following topics:
1. That someone really got up that position fast.
2. That someone is the youngest person to be made partner.
3. That someone drives a Porsche to work.
4. That someone has a yacht.
5. Somebody, somewhere has something (you know what I mean from hereon).

You would likely find it common that the people who say those things above are the same people who find themselves in the everyday rut wondering why they never seem to progress or the whole world seems to be plotting against them. Yet, it is either that they choose not to admit it or they are simply naturally ignorant to the fact that they are not doing what is needed to be that someone.

One does not become the next Yo Yo Ma by merely playing simply cadences or practising a mere half hour a day. One does not become the next Roger Federer by hitting tennis balls aimlessly without proper technique (putting aside talent). One does not become a Sebastian Vettel hopping into a race car and flooring the accelerator. Some of these people are the product of dedication, self belief and most importantly, repeatedly doing what needs to be done to differentiate themselves from the world at large.

The best example I can give you is Rafael Nadal. Some of you may not necessarily agree with my views and please do beg to differ if you do feel the need to. I started following Rafa's progress in the world of tennis when we beginning to move the rank. In the initial years, he would always get whooped by Federer in many Grand Slam finals and eventually he would overcome Federer. The one thing that set him apart from many including the great Federer is the fact that in every match Rafa always ran down every ball, every shot giving all he could to retrieve every ball that came into his side of the court. Another one thing was that he never changed his coach, Uncle Toni despite certain moments in his career when everyone, including me thought he was on the downhill. Not changing his coach meant his uncle has spent so much time with him to know his match temperament, techniques and shortfalls. Basically Uncle Toni knows the good, the bad and the ugly of this game due to sheer time they have spent together and the bond they have formed.

Rafa's rise to fame and the many wins he has secured is the product of him looking upwards at someone he wanted to emulate but at the same time looking in front of him, clearing one hurdle at the time. For someone like him who looked up and looked forward at the same time, what he got was a linear growth.

For the ordinary people like the most of us who always procrastinate more than getting down to the action, we are stuck in the looking upwards mode. Only problem is, if you keep looking upwards, you'll only get a neck ache......

knowing you did something about it

There are always those unmistakable moments when you take a pause in your life and you'd say, "I should have done it!". I think it's common for most of us because of mistakes we make and sometimes, the indecision that tends to hinder our decision making process.

Let me tell you about a real experience I had with a close friend of mine. For anonymity sake, let's call him Eric.

Couple of years back, Eric was battling out a business law suit that nearly shattered his business and his family. I knew Eric through my lawyer friend who was handling his case. I used to help out at a small law firm to earn a couple of bucks to add a bit more to my miserable bank account balance. And that's how I knew about Eric and his unfortunate law suit.

It was a tough 6 to 9 months for Eric and us, battling out the case. It was a tough case and and uphill one at that. The cases were against us, Eric dropped the ball at the early stages of the trial and due to the legal system here, the law was simply against him from almost all angles. To make matters worse, his was also battling out the prospects of a divorce with his wife who didn't think he stood a chance in surviving the law suit. Not very nice of his wife, if you ask me.

Anyway, we spent many weekends working the case out at the small legal firm premise, running through cases and cases and stacks of cases plus discussion with Eric to make sure we got the affidavit as concised as and as accurate as possible.

After all the tiring weekends and long hours of discussion, the case was heard by the judges, plenty of hours of debating facts and the law. Eventually, Eric won the case as the plaintiff could not prove that Eric indeed committed an act of criminal breach of trust. It was great! I mean Eric finally went back to business as usual, kept his marriage going, the firm won the case and I got my pocket money.

Through it all, I actually asked Eric what would he have done had he lost the case?

"Honestly, when we finally go to the hearing stages of my case, I wasn't certain what to make of it. I mean we came this far in preparing for the case and I'd be lying if I said I didn't hope to win the case. I guess, I already money set aside for the kids and my wife. If she insisted on a divorce, I doubt I could stop it from happening. Not everyone can live we being associated to a bankrupt with a CBT label over his forehead. But I don't think it's all about winning the case but deep down, I merely need to know that no matter the outcome, I can look myself in the mirror and firmly tell myself I knew I did something about it.

Having gone through this moment in my life, I can now honestly say that not matter what you decide to do, you just have to make a decision move on with the decision and never look back. Because some day, some where, you are bound to make decision that could change your life forever. And when that day comes, you want to be in a position know you did something about it irrespective of the outcome."

Enlightenment Part 2 of 3: Buddhism in Yogyakarta

The highlight of the Yogyakarta was the awe-infusing marvel of the Borobudur temple located about 2.5 hours drive from Yogyakarta city. I have been to Angkor Wat in Cambodia so I have had experience with ancient Buddhist relics and amazing Buddhist temples inscribed with pin hair detailed carvings.

From the trip's itinerary point of you, I visisted Borobudur first but I decided to talk about Hinduism first to talk about Yogyakarta's religious transition from the sequence of which religion influenced Yogyakarta first from a historical perspective. Hence, Hinduism and now Buddhism.

The plan was to wake up at 3.30am in the morning so that we would be there by 4am to witness the scene of a beautiful rising sun from the pinnacle of the Borobudur. Unfortunately, the weather was less forgiving given that it rained from the day before right up to 3.30am when we woke up for the sunrise. So, we did not get to witness any beautiful sunrise and there definitely was no "egg yolk" in the horizon from atop the Borobudur. It was slippery, cold and cloudy throughout the morning.

Despite the rain plus all the other inconvenience the rain brought along, Borobudur was still worth the visit and the walk up the slippery steps. On that note, the rain was a real pain for me when it came to trying to set up my camera and the tripod to capture a good shot.

The Borobudur was designed as such that you have to walk all levels of it from the bottom to the top and it signified the path to enlightenment. If I recall correctly, you are supposed to walk in a clockwise manner all the way to the top. Each level signified a specific level of the enlightenment process and each level had different carvings on the walls to tell a story. It ranges from Buddha's path to enlightenment to the different folk stories of how sin would ultimately be returned in internal suffering in your second life.


The rain threatened to ruin the trip but the luckily it was all but drizzles throughout the visit and I still got some good picturesque shots..........

Enlightenment Part 1 of 3: Hinduism in Yogyakarta

Enlightenment - that was the big ticket item I took home from my recent trip to Yogyakarta, Indonesia last week. Before I go into the enlightenment bit, please let me express my envy for Yogyakarta for it is a state filled with abundance of cultural and historical landmarks. The advent of these landmarks is due to the major fact that the state transitioned itself through 3 different religious monarchy - Hinduism, Buddhism and now, Islam. Touring through the 3 different religious footprint in the state for 4 days was my enlightenment in the state.

Over the course of 4 days, I learned a fair bit of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam in the context of Yogyakarta. As part 1 of 3, I shall begin with Hinduism!

Hinduism, during its reign over Yogyakarta brought forth the belief of a myriad of Gods / Goddess. There is Brahaman - the infinite manifestation of the universe, Vishnu - the protector, Shiva - the destroyer and many more of which I couldn't remember as my tour guide spoke to us about the deeply etched Hindu beliefs in Yogyakarta. The best part was, I got a crash course of the history of Hinduism in the state at a UNESCO world heritage site - the temple of Prambanan built around 850CE (also the tallest Hindu temple in Yogyakarta).

Before even reaching the entrance of the temple's complex, I was already awed and amazed by the size of the temple. Big would be common adjective to describe it but above and beyond being big, it was majestic and there was hardly any lack of mystical atmosphere surrounding the temple complex. Stepping into the temple complex was like having just exited from a time machine into the past.

There were 3 main temples in the complex, each devoted to an individual God / Goddess - Shiva, Brahma an Vishnu. In each of these temples, there are well carved statues of each of these God / Goddess. Unfortunately I could not catch the statue of Vishnu because the temple was restricted only to external viewing due to restoration work and the fragile state of the statue.

Each temple was the epitome of artistic carving prowess, showcasing a plethora of carvings of Hindu folktales narrating the most of notable tales of Ramayana and Krishnayana. The intricate carvings was the avid display of devotion, belief in the religion and fear of the higher beings. Reading the carved folktale required readers to go around the temple in a clockwise motion in an act of circumambulation. It was history at a mind blowing level!


The other temples in the complexes displayed carvings of deities surrounding the respective temples as celestial guardians of the temple. In a nutshell, the construction of the temple was the display of monarchy prestige, display of monarchy powers, religious belief and a strong devotion to celestial beings that would bring forth peace, prosperity and longevity to the ruler.

It starts with belief

Coming out of injury and trying to go back at doing the things you like doing is a stressful process mentally and physically.

Right now, I know I feel stronger and I know I am definitely stronger than before I got injured, having been working out twice a week in the gym for the past 5 to 6 months.

But despite all the iron pumping and effort, there is this nagging fear in the back of my head that continues to linger. That uncomfortable thought lingering at the back of my head is the fear of injuring myself again. Having had multiple injuries over multiple times, the fear does get to you and I know recovery rate for any person will slow down as you age. I may not be that old but I can definitely know the difference.

In order to break that barrier and try to make up for lost time, I engaged a trainer who helps with my workout for twice a month. He designs the workout for me and makes sure I get my technique right when I workout whilst the rest of the month I just continue the regime that he has given me.

At this point in time, I got to admit, progress is less than satisfactory but at the same time I have to accept the fact that I only have the weekends to workout because my weekdays are jam packed with work and I am most of the time too tired to do any workouts after work anyway. So when it comes to the weekend, I really try to give myself 100% when I am at the gym.

So today, when I was working out at the gym with my trainer, he was starting to increase the weights quite dramatically to increase muscle strength to get me in shape for upcoming squash tournament in a few months time and when I saw him adding up the weights I unconsciously mumbled, "uh oh!".

My trainer heard it and he went, "Don't worry bro. I gotta believe in yourself because I believe in you. You can do this. Come on!". Call it placebo if you may but his encouragement went a pretty long way to spur me on today's session. At the end of my session, whilst I was catching my breath from the weight pumping, my trainer had a grin on his face as he said, "Told you that you could do it! You have to believe in yourself and then you can do it. If you trust yourself, you have already admitted defeat before you even lifted the weights man!"

Whether it's weights, running, swimming or work, you have to have that self belief, knowing you can achieve whatever you are planning to do. Because setting a goal but not believing you can achieve it is already admitting failure before you even pursued your goal. Placebo or no placebo, self belief goes a long way in getting you to your goal.

softer touch to a problem

Last week, I had a fair bit of trouble trying to fix one of my car door locks. One of those central locking systems when you lock the driver's side, all the doors in the car are supposed to lock. Only this time, one of the door lock refused to go back down everytime it popped up. I won't go into the details of how the mechanism in the door works to unlock (pull) and to lock (push) the car door but basically there is this little magnetically driven mechanism that does the unlocking and locking.

It wasn't the first time it has happened to me and all this while it simply involved tightening the screw that held that mechanism in place thinking everything that ages (especially a 24 year old car) will always have a bit of loose screws here and there, which simply requires a bit of tightening. Going on that mindset, I got home from work one evening, pulled out the mechanic portable light, opened up my toolbox and got down to removing the necessary door panels to see what was causing that little mechanism to not work.

Released a couple of screws, pulled out the panel, and I was now looking at the inside of my car door, observing the linkages that set the motion of locking and unlocking my car door to see where was the loose end to the entire mechanical loop. After about half an hour, I finally found out that a particular screw holding the mechanism wasn't holding its place and thus causing the door to be unable to locked itself everytime I used the central locking system. So, when there is screw not holding something in place and you are holding a screw driver, the most logical thing to do would be to tigthening the screw right? So that's what I did, I grabbed my screw driver and tried tigthening the darn screw that was making me go through all this trouble!

So by the time I thought I had tightened the screw, I gave the system a shot and found it working. Satisfied, I put back all the panels, screwed everything back on and gave it another try. This time the door refused to lock itself again. After almost an hour by the time I had the door back in its original state. Fuming, I spent the next hour or so repeating the above steps only this time I realised I think I spoiled the screw. No matter how hard I tried to tighten the screw, it just wouldn't tighten. It pretty much became and infinite screw loose. It just kept turning, turning, turning and turning without tightening.

The next 15 minutes went to searching for a new screw in the pile of spares in my toolbox. Eventually, I found one of the right size and I took a deep breath, thought about it carefully and then tightened the screw but this time, I didn't screw it in too hard but sufficiently hard enough to hold the screw in place. Did a couple of testing and put everything back on the door and tested it again and WOALA! It worked.

Sweating after all the effort in the middle of the night (by the time I was done, it wasn't evening anymore), it dawned on me that not every problem or glitch can be fixed with just hard, punching solutions. Certain things can be dealt with with a little bit more delicate touches instead. Fixing a problem isn't like boxing where you just keeping throwing hard punches, and sometimes even in boxing a light punch can deal a killer blow if you hit your opponent in the right spot.

goodness in simpler things

The Chinese New Year season typically signifies the few things below:-
1. Ang Pow;
2. Plenty of eating and drinking;
3. Gambling; and
4. Companionship, meeting your relatives  and friends after a long while.

Over the last couple of weeks, eating was one of the main things I had been doing. It was always nice, fancy, lavish dinners. As much as I don't get to eat fine dining very often in my daily lives, it was in some way pretty surprising to note that I don't really having lavish dinners in restaurants despite the nice ambiance, service and food - I mean really rich food.

It was nice in the first week, eating some long 8 to 10 course filled craftily served chef's specialty touches and so and so forth. After that, I started to get a little bit dull from all the restaurant food. Not that it didn't appeal to my taste buds. I did but I quickly realised too much of richness in my food, for too often quickly led to a bit dullness in my food tasting experience.

I found myself missing the simpler dishes - prawn mee, friend kuey teow, beef ball noodles, nasi lemak, and the list of local delicacies may well go on. I mean those meals are not cooked up by highly celebrated chefs and neither will you find them in restaurants but these were simple meals. Meals that everyone of every stature and walks of life can enjoy.

What I realised lately that our generation of people are becoming more sophisticated. Eatery places didn't only need to have good serving food but it required the right ambiance and all the other finer details to be matched. In fact, I find it quite surprising that there are some who are willing to pay the extra for what they'd call a "dining experience".

Maybe I have a difference interpretation of the term "dining experience" but enjoying my dinner simply meant, I could wear anything I felt comfortable without any "blink blink" (decent of course) and eat the food I order and not be bounded by massively regulated table etiquette. And most importantly, I'd very much like to see myself giving a good, "aaaahhh!" after finishing my meal.

Not that I didn't enjoy all the fine dining I had over the span of Chinese New Year, but after having all the fine dining meals that didn't come cheap, it was refreshing to know I could find goodness in simpler things in life - cheap, good 'ole hawker food!

Money can indeed buy you good service, expert presentation and chef craftsmanship in the dish that is served to you but when you reflect on your daily lives, you will quickly realise that you can still find similar goodness in simpler things - you can't deny you still love the bowl of prawn mee you order from an old uncle who's probably been running the stall for decades, sweat while you enjoy the spiciness, taking a cold drink to quench your thirst from the sweating and spiciness and it'll only cost you at today's inflation adjusted price of maybe 5 Malaysian Ringgits! That's goodness in simpler things!