Monday, May 28, 2007

Random thoughts... again.

Face it.  Nobody lives by those God given rules anymore.  In fact, since Adam.  He's supposedly the reason for all our current sufferings.  I may be Buddhist, but I've heard a lot about him.  And he blamed the woman too.  Precisely what our MPs who talk about rapes, sexual harassments and leaks, do all the time. 

But then, there still are rules.  And if you don't want to live by any of them at all, please get up, desert your family and go live in the jungle (as if you can find a real jungle nowadays).  If you're as tough as you think you are, you'll survive. 

If not, and you still want to give civilization another chance, be nice and live by some of the rules.  I mean some.  You can't survive either if you want to live by all the rules.  After all they're all man made.  That's right, man.  Mostly one-sided, right?  And if men can't really follow all of them what do you expect of women?

We all need a practical balance to live and survive with the rest the two-legged species and you can't have it all without giving some of it back.  In fact, you'll have to give it all back when your time's up.  That's why some people like King Tut and Shi Huang Ti, who thought they had it all, refused to go.  So they tried to find ways to live forever.  Some people are still trying to live forever.  At least they behave like they do, especially those who sit in high places.

If you believe in re-incarnation, you'll still come back as a totally new setup.  If from the Karmic point of view, you try not to behave like a pig for fear that you'll come back as Porky, or not mistreating your maid otherwise you'll turn up as a maid working for a witch next time around, then perhaps you'd better behave now.  Otherwise I think it's a waste of time thinking about this aspect.  For one thing, if you can't remember anything from your past lives.  So what's the point of believing in this thing? 

Anyway they'll juggle all your atoms and even revise your DNA.  By the time your brain's fully made up and you realized yourself as yourself, you'll only be aware of your current conditions.  Your memory?  Forget it.  That hard disk's a brand new one to you.  They don't recycle Hdds.  Totally new format.

Ok, back to the rules thingy.  There are of course some rules where human lives are concerned you must follow to the letter.  And there are others most people just ignore and the law will close one eye until other people make noise.  And then there are those rules which , no matter how hard you try, some people will just tell you you've broken them.  And you're guilty no matter how you argue.  But you got to know the difference.  Just follow conscience.  Otherwise play smart, get good lawyer... If you want to break law, I got one eye closed, the other shut.  You are old enough to do as you please. 

Friday, May 25, 2007

Use Spell-checker lah...ok?

Got this stray message in my e-mail which gave me a real guffaw....

                       * * * 

Subject: RE: Silicon Switch - 90 074 007A A2C52093789

Dear Alls

For your information and action, i'm not able to get anyone to evaluate the changes and update the drawing for the improvement part from Supplier. The designer Mr Fuck is found in the company contact list anympre.
 
SV Rubi and SV Brazil have approved the part based on their internal testing without changes the drawing.
 
What is the decision from PD and QM side? This involve D18D and WRM, SRM,,,,,
 
Thanks
 
Xxxxxx

                       * * * 

For the life of me I can't understand why nobody bothers to use the spell-checker that comes with the outlook software when the company has already paid for it all. 

Man, if you can't get your bl**dy grammar right, at least check your speeling....(oops!) and not to screw up somebody's nice name at the same time.

 

Finger Signals

 

It is often discussed

Among the circles of the learned

That the knave who steals from his master

Is the one who points the first acusing finger

Away from himself

Not realising that

For every finger that points away

Three others

Point towards himself

Not forgetting

there's a thumb

That points upwards

To One who sees it all

 

And then there's the signal

From one middle finger

That speaks a whole load of words

Of disdain and disgust

With incivility


Which often results

In totally unexpected reactions

On the high road of reason

Thursday, May 24, 2007

A fool never learns

 
This is often said but in different ways:

Better risk being a fool to learn

than be a bigger fool by thinking you know it all.

Acknowledge your ignorance if you must

but be smart enough to know

when to keep your folly to yourself

For no one will be judged worse

than the fool who advertises himself.

If you think I am one, then you're bigger one than me...

Monday, May 21, 2007

To Stop Or Not To Stop?







Year: 1987. Time:
about 6.00 pm. There was a commotion near a junction in
front of a school. I was on my way home
after work and the first in line at the T-junction. As soon as I turned out to the main road I
was waved over by a policeman. He
indicated to middle-aged woman lying motionless by the side of the road and
mumbled something. She appeared to have
been hit by a car, but there didn't seem to be any motorist around looking like
he/she was responsible for that accident.



Two male passers-by carried the woman to my car. One said if I hurried, I could possibly save
her life. My mind went over several
questions. How far is it to the
hospital? How long would I take? Will she survive? They said she was still breathing.





I told them to hold on.
I opened my boot and pulled out a large sheet of plastic to cover my
back seat. They laid the woman down and
closed the doors. I stepped on it for
the all that one liter engine Mazda Jumbo was worth. On the way the woman sat up suddenly. I had not expected that.





"What's happening?" She asked.
I told her what happened.





"Who got in an accident?"





"Where are you taking me to?"





Confused, she repeated the questions while I tried to
maneuver through the traffic and find the most appropriate answers.





I knew from personal experience that sometimes accident
victims don't realize what happened to them as soon as they regain
consciousness. I said as clearly as
possible what happened to her and where we're heading. I told her to lie down and not to move
about. She blacked out again when we
arrived. Two attendants came out of the
emergency section and carried her out of my car with the help of my plastic
sheet and loaded her onto a stretcher.
It was good bye to my plastic sheet.
I'll have to get a new piece for my boot.





When I got home I realized there were a few large patches of
bloodstains on my cushion covers. They
needed a good washing anyway, but I can't remember whether I got them washed or
threw them away.


Year: 1992. Time:
about 8.30 pm. I was on a dark stretch of road and it was
raining. Cold and hungry, I'd been
driving for more than 45 minutes on my way home. There was a single spot of light moving ahead
in the distance. It appeared to be that
of a rear lamp of a motorcycle. By force
of habit I checked my speed. When I
looked back to the road, the single spot of light suddenly disappeared. I sensed something wrong and reduced speed.





When I got to the scene I tried to find a way to drive
through. I wanted just to drive by and
get home, but my conscience didn't allow that.
I stopped my car in the middle of the road and flicked on my emergency
lights, hoping that traffic behind would notice and stop in time. There was a man lying on the road, eyes
closed, jaws clenched and limbs jerking.
I was helpless. I didn't know
what to do. I noticed a van with some
people in it on the opposite side of the road.
The driver was missing. The front
corner of the van was badly dented. I
asked if anyone had a handphone. Nobody
answered.  Handphones weren't widely used then as today.





Several men were carrying a girl from the side of the
road. She was wet from the rain and
covered with mud. They carried her to my
car. I barely had enough time to cover
the backseat with a plastic sheet which I pulled from my boot. I noticed her thigh, in her long pants, was
bent in an awkward angle. They bundled
her in and waved me to move on. We were
about twelve kilometers from the hospital.
I couldn't risk speeding in such weather. I kept thinking about the guy with the
jerking limbs.





Several minutes later, she asked me what happened. I told her.
I said we're on the way to hospital.
She asked me why we were going to hospital. I had to repeat several times until she
realized what had happened to her. She
said she couldn't move her leg and it was very painful. I thought it looked like it was broken but I
didn't tell her that. I kept
talking. I told her to lie still and not
to move. When she finally got it in her
head, she said thanks. I asked her about
the guy. She said he was a friend. She asked me what happened to him. I said someone else was sending him to
hospital. I didn't know actually, but I
had to tell her that. She blacked out
again when we arrived outside the emergency ward.





The next day I took out the back seat cushions and washed
out the mud stains.






I just read Palmdoc's Road Traffic Accidents: To stop or
not to stop?
which reminded me of the above two incidents. We are not all doctors. And given the notorious response of our
ambulance services (in this country), what would you do if you find that you
are the first to arrive at the scene of an accident? And if sending the victim to hospital is the
least you can do, would you? You
wouldn't want to hope for someone to return you the favor someday but no matter
how careful you are, you just can't foresee what can happen on the road.





Meanwhile blogger Kenny Sia got involved (in a way) in another
accident
and had his ethics questioned by readers.





As for accidents on an expressway, that will be another
subject another time.






Tuesday, May 15, 2007

A Collection of Mishaps


Apart from the Home Made Explosions our hubby/wifey team created recently, I must have run up a record of sorts in home-made incidents.  Alas, good sense as I've found out, normally stays too relaxed on weekends when most home accidents happen to me. 


 


One fine morning wifey was doing the washing.  'Washing' usually means the clothes as well as the floor of the kitchen.  I needed the bathroom.  I stepped barefooted down the eight-inch step on to the kitchen floor to reach the bathroom door.  I reached the far side of the bathroom door on my behind before I knew what was happening.  My super-speed forward propulsion was stopped only by my shin against the hard tiled edge.  By the time I got up and looked at my throbbing shin an ugly purple-black V-crevice was forming.  I almost blacked out from the searing pain. 


 


I had to limp around for a while. That one hit took more than a month to heal.  Now I make sure I wear non-slip-soled slippers at home.  But I often wonder why they call them 'slippers'.  I had a phobia for that word for a long while after that.


 


* * *


I was once fixing a double-edged slicer on the blender.  The razor-sharp blade nicked my palm.  While I was looking for some plaster, wifey took the blade and wanted to fix it herself.  Obviously she didn't want to let me cut myself again.  Unfortunately, it slipped out of her hands.  The thing bounced off the floor, slashed my left shin, dropped and bounced off the floor again and made two more cuts on my right toes.  I quickly bandaged myself up and drove to the clinic.  Luckily there was our regular doctor who was open on Sunday.  I requested for priority because the pain was beginning to register in the brain.  It probably works slower on weekends.  I mean the pain receptor in the brain. 


 


The slash on the shin required 4 stitches.  The doctor thought I was still lucky.  It closely missed the artery and the shin bone.  That would have been a real mess.  While he threaded on my skin with his needle he opined that the blade could have bounced higher and caused even more damage.  I glanced at the smirk on his face and thought of Hannibal Lector.  If he wasn't the company panel doctor I'd have stayed away from him.


 


* * *


On another occasion, I was back-washing our Hurley filter with some hot water.  I tried multi-tasking.  My mind was elsewhere on some other thing I was doing at the same time.  So I balanced the container of hot water on a stool placed near the kitchen sink and connected the tube into the filter outlet.  Before I could walk away, the container come down on me and scalded my chest.  At home in this tropical weather, I seldom wear a shirt unless I get visitors.  It was a direct hit.  When I got to the clinic, I asked the reception for priority.  I earned an MC from work for two days.  My boss asked me what happened.  I said I had a hot bath.


 


You know; if you're a fixer you just can't stand by and do nothing if something in the house needs fixing.  I used to get up on the roof and fixed leaks myself.  It took me years to fix them after we'd moved into our current home.  Those people called in by the contractors who're supposed to guarantee a leak-proof roof never did a good job of it.  If you call them when it leaks, they never show up.  Reason?  It's raining... Of course we're not helped by our kind of monsoon rains which are never predictable in spite of their description; those leaks are equally unpredictable in their locations.


 


Now, since we extended our car porch to cover the whole of our front yard, I can't reach the roof with my 10-foot step ladder anymore.  I had to give up my rooftop expeditions altogether.  Which is high time too as I'm not getting any younger, so I learned.  No one knows when I'd get too familiar with all that gallivanting around on the roof.  I might just get too relaxed and then....


Well, I'm not a fiddler.  Besides, my insurance guys wouldn't be too happy if they found out about my hobby.


 


But the huge drawback is that whenever it rains heavily and something gets stuck in some down pipe and the water runs to where it's not supposed to, I'd be wringing my hands and cursing under my breath, the contractor or whoever I deem responsible for the messy job.


 

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Home Made Explosions





Wife wanted to heat up some cold curry with eggs in it from
last night and she wanted to do it fast.

She managed to create an explosion.



While she got busy cleaning up the mess, I suggested cutting the eggs in half to prevent another explosion. The moment I dig in the egg with a knife I created another one.

It created another mess. It scored a direct hit on my right hand. I went for the Aloe Vera Gel.

A few hours later, I earned this whopper of a blister...

Lesson:
If you want to cook eggs go conventional.
Or cut your eggs first. Not immediately afterwards.

Don't play-play with Microwave.
And don't try to do things in a hurry. Bad for health...





Thursday, May 10, 2007

Mother of Mothers


A Mother's day dedication
Before the funeral services began every son-in-law was given a black umbrella. As the youngest son-in-law, I took my place among my brothers-in-law standing to one side, while the eleven children of the deceased knelt before the casket. Vegetarian food, fruits and floral offerings decked the table before it. The Buddhist priest and nuns chanted solemn prayers to the tinkling of bells.
The morning started slightly cool and breezy but as the funeral service progressed, dark clouds rolled in overhead. When the rains suddenly pattered down, each son-in-law stepped forward, umbrella in hand to try to shield those kneeling from the rain. We were joined by friends who had come prepared with umbrellas. It was only for a short while but it came like a test of devotion. She could now rest in peace knowing her children and grandchildren would be well taken care of.
She had shown us all by her example that devotion is what counts the most to carry a family through thick and thin, from one generation to the next.
* * * * *
She had lived her teenage years doing odd jobs around the neighborhood, like pounding rice from the husks in exchange for some of the rice. Their mother passed away while they were still too young to know. Their father went blind. Though she came 2nd, when the father passed on she took over the responsibility of fending for the family.
The two young brothers they had didn't survive their childhood through lack of proper care. It was understood they died after falling sick having encountered some evil spirits on an evening while bathing at a remote well near the jungle behind their house. Piped water was unheard of. They couldn't even afford to dig their own well.
The 3rd girl was given away to a rich family when she was eight years of age as a ‘little daughter-in-law.’ But she worked the household chores day and night like a maid. Such was the custom in those days. Whenever there was a chance for her to return home for a visit, there would always be a tearful parting again on the very same day. In their poverty they accepted all as their fate. In time she was officially to become their daughter-in-law. By then, the parents were gone. But if wealth were of any comfort, she could now afford to send food, money and other offerings for prayers during their anniversaries.
When they grew up, there came a suitor for the eldest girl. Her older sister had the audacity to turn him down. She didn’t like his looks. To avert the embarrassment of the suitor she accepted the proposal in her sister’s place. Thus while still a teenager of eighteen; she was given away in marriage. Her entire trousseau was a blouse, a sarong and a pair of shoes.
For her humility it seemed the Goddess of Mercy saw fit to smile upon her. In the little town where they settled, there were two brothers who shared her same family name. The elder ran a rubber trading shop while the younger owned a petrol station. They came to her like the reincarnations of the two brothers she had once lost. They adopted her as their sister and took it upon themselves to help her start a sundry shop business and also bought a few Relongs of rubber holdings in her name.
In time, the family grew to eleven, of four boys and seven girls. They continued to prosper, and the sons grew up and took over the running of the shop and the rubber estate. Having done all her share of menial labor, no task was too lowly for her. She continued to work as hard as anyone else, in the shop as well as in the kitchen or out in the back-yard feeding some ducks and chickens, and even planted flowers and herbs.
She was soft-spoken and gentle to a fault and never used a harsh word on anyone. The end of each year would see her boarding buses in turns, in various directions, bearing gifts of eggs, chickens, fruits and other foodstuffs and clothes to her sisters who have by then married and raised families of their own. She took it upon herself to visit each and every one of them to keep their ties intact in accordance to her father's dying wish.
They owned a car. In those days this little 'one-horse town’ was where you could count the number of cars on the fingers of one hand. If the occasion coincided with their regular trips to buy goods in the next town or city, she would rather let neighbors hitch a ride in the car, while with the youngest daughter in tow to help her carry her things; she'd quietly board public buses whose attendants know her by name.
Year ends would also find her traveling to all the temples that housed the deities from whom she had occasion to ask for blessings, cures and protection for her family throughout the year, bearing offerings of food or cash for charity and prayers in thanks-giving for the blessings she had abundantly received.
Poor neighborhood kids would not go hungry as long as she knew about their conditions.
At times when their next-door neighbor found it hard to make ends meet, she would quietly passed bags of rice through a side door without her husband’s knowledge.
She would make sure that any visitor to the house would have enough to eat and have as comfortable a bed as her own children if they choose to stay. And much to the chagrin of the children, many an occasional visitor, related or otherwise, could stay as long as he/she needed.
* * * * *
From the very day that I had spoken for her daughter she had treated me like a son. And all would attest to the fact that she valued every son-in-law like she would her own flesh and blood. By then, she was of the age when her legs were not as strong and steady as they used to be, which was not helped by her failing eyesight, and I, when I could afford a car, was only too willing to drive her to wherever she wanted to go.
Because it was my wife being most available to attend to her needs and being her closest confidant that she chose to spend her last days in our home. We had hoped that she was trying to recover her health, but it seemed apparent she was already prepared to go. Somehow, I felt I could have done more for her in her final days.
It was but after the funeral, when we’d returned from the cemetery and the last of visitors and service people had left, that I sat down in a state of numbness in the hallway, when it finally came upon me like there was an immeasurable emptiness inside my chest that my inconsolable emotions gave vent to an undignified torrent of tears.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Random thoughts 6




Saying it right.


It's not just what you say but how you say it that's important. Take the case of our school principal many years ago when we were in school.


One day, the Agong passed away on the throne. The principal announced that on the PA system. That was fine, until he immediately proclaimed with the next sentence, 'tomorrow is a public as well as a school holiday". The whole school went, "Yyyyyyeeeeeaaaaahhhhh!!!!" You know how kids are…

We couldn't see the principal's face, but we could imagine the color. After a slight pause, he came back with all the ballistics he could muster. The whole school went deadly quiet.



That reminds me of the story of the blacksmith who was showing his apprentice how to forge a tool from a piece of steel. He gave the apprentice a hammer, grabbed the piece of red hot metal from the fire and and said to the young man, "Ready? When I nod my head, hit it."


He waited until the metal changed color, then nodded. The young man hit him on the head.



Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Slow Down Culture





Just got this e-mail from a friend... which seems like an antidote for the rush culture we're experiencing daily, what with some people working themselves to death , rushing to complete assignments, projects.  Others trying to keep up with the Joneses, attaining the 5 Cs, etc,


Read it and rush along if you're in a hurry....  I won't keep this here forever. heheh.


-----------------------------------------------------


An interesting reflection: Slow Down Culture


It's been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It's a rule.

Globalize processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results. Therefore, we have come to posses a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.

Said in another words:
1. Sweden is about the size of San Pablo , a state in Brazil .
2. Sweden has 2 million inhabitants.
3. Stockholm , has 500,000 people.
4. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, Nokia are some of its renowned companies. Volvo supplies the NASA.

The first time I was in Sweden , one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn't say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, "Do you have a fixed parking space? I've noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot." To which he replied, "Since we're here early we'll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don't you think? Imagine my face.

Nowadays, there's a movement in Europe name Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.

Basically, the movement questions the sense of "hurry" and "craziness" generated by globalization, fueled by the desire of "having in quantity" (life status) versus "having with quality", "life quality" or the "quality of being". French people, even though they work 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 28.8 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity been driven up by 20%. This slow attitude has brought forth the US 's attention, pupils of the fast and the "do it now!".

This no-rush attitude doesn't represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the "now", present and concrete, versus the "global", undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans' essential values, the simplicity of living.

It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do. It's time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.

In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there's a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, "I can't, my boyfriend will be here any minute now". To which Al responds, "A life is lived in an instant". Then they dance to a tango.

Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

Congratulations for reading till the end of this message. There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this globalize world.



Source : Forwarded by my friend via email.

Friday, May 4, 2007

Those Self-Help Books





Zig Ziglar, US
Anderson, Irene Kassorla, Maxwell
Maltz, Dale Carnegie, and Napoleon Hill.
What do these people have in common?
They are motivational experts. They
are very rich because we all subscribe to their philosophies. And we buy their books.





They were a huge influence in my life. They showed me how to survive by thinking
positive thoughts and that all things are possible if I think so. Some of them taught me how to feel rich even
without the huge filthy sums of money in my bank account, or floating around in
the stock market. Most of all they
taught me to get through with life, even when things looked so bad I felt like
I was in a hole in the ground.





That wasn't all true though.
I wanted to be rich by thinking like Napoleon. But, sheesh, it was the earlier Napoleon that
kept creeping into my mind. You know,
the guy who they said was "born apart", the one who allegedly said,
"Able was I, I saw Elba…" I guess if I had kept at it I'd probably have
ended up in St Helena.
Only I was a few hundred years too late.
Probably that saved me.





But about being in a hole in the ground, I did find myself,
several times. Somehow those lessons
helped. But I'd rather think the thing
that got me out of those holes was the upbringing and survival instincts I
inherited. The same thing that kept my
grand-father in the boat from China
until he landed here and then kept going until he cashed in of old age some
time before the Japanese landed in Malaya. At least he was spared those crazy times. And it was the very same thing that kept my
dad going, working the land to keep eight kids fed, clothed, and schooled.





Anyway, some of these guys taught me to work hard. So I did.
I spent a whole part of my youth working my ass off, sometimes right
through the night. OK that wasn't
totally true either. I tried to avoid
working late whenever possible. I noticed
what happened to a cousin of mine who was constantly doing that. He succumbed to stomach cancer at the age of
40. I blamed that on his staying up late
and going on without proper nutrition too often. He never smoked and never drank. What else could he blame it on? It wasn’t inherited.





On my part it wasn't voluntary. I hated having to stay up all night just because
my boss had to show his boss that his team of people could work right through
the night if necessary. I zombied along
and grumbled all the way home to bed the next morning. That wasn't working smart. That was stupid. Any kind of accident could happen when you're
tired. We only succeeded in letting him
know that he could further exploit us, and we'd let him do so willingly. Since we didn't have much choice those days,
I stuck with that boss until I couldn't take it anymore. Then I quitted and started from scratch.





Then I read Robert Ringer's "Winning through
Intimidation".





This Ringer guy didn't mince his words. He advocated that if you work hard you only
end up getting old. Not rich, just
old. He gave me his 'Uncle George"
theory. He said probably every one of us
had a relative or at least know someone who worked hard all his life keeping
his nose to the wheel and who only managed to get old. I said, Hey!
Here's one book which dumped all my past lessons and turned them all
into cow pie overnight. Overnight was
how long I took to read that book. I
then took the next few days to digest it.
Luckily it didn't taste like cow pie.





I found out that the Ringer guy was teaching me how to
intimidate my way to the top of the pile, which means going into money-grabbing
ventures and getting away with the dough.
I thought that if everybody were to follow that philosophy then there'd
be a whole lot more of aggression in the world, because everybody would be
trying to out-intimidate everyone else, because nobody would want to lose face,
and least of all, money.





And what he did was, he blew all those success philosophies
to smithereens. Like, working hard, for
example. He managed to convince me that
most of those who became rich were actually embarrassed about how they made
it. So they settled for some standard
formula; something that could sell, other than luck and chance. These philosophies don't sell.





Upon further reading, I decided that I could use those ideas
effectively; I only had to learn how to recognize those trying to intimidate me
into giving them something for nothing.
That means; not working for free, not paying money for nothing or
substandard things or service, and not giving in to demands for my time when it
doesn't benefit me. It also tried to
tell me not to negotiate myself into a corner.
I said 'tried' because it didn't succeed. I didn't manage to use it to earn and receive
any substantial income. I blame it on my
honesty. It (honesty) was too deeply
entrenched in my head by my upbringing in the missionary school where they
indoctrinated me with honesty being the best policy. There you go.
Just how easy in life it is to blame someone or something else.





Later, after all these I decided to follow Michael Korda's
advice that after 40 I could either dance the night away or sleep right through
it. I guess that advice didn't catch
on. I couldn't find any of this advice
printed anywhere in the websites that feature his works. I guess taking things easy seems too cozy for
those under 65 nowadays. Besides, it
doesn't sell either. Anything that
people value nowadays is something they have to pay for. They get them for free; they think it’s too
good to be true.





Now back to those self-help books. What did they really do for me? They helped me feel good in whatever I wanted
to do. I get to pick and choose what I
want to believe and follow. That was all
the good they ever did for me. I did all
the fumbling right through life and came out with all those scratches and
scars. I still thought some of it was
fun. And I'm still proud that I did it
my way. That wasn't my favorite song
either, I just happen to like it because Frank Sinatra did it quite well.





When they asked me if I'd like to Think and Grow Rich, I
asked, "Do I have do that all day?"
I'd like to think about lots of other things as well. Like love, like hobbies, doodling and taking
photos, having fun and spending time with family and watching my kids grow up
and graduate.





While some say, enough is not enough, I'm happy enough. It could be better....but that's life.