positive thinking

I have started a new job about 2-3 weeks ago after coming back to HK and the ride hasn't been smooth. I have been assigned various tasks and my big boss pretty much hasn't been all too happy about my performance each time I gave her my work. While it is understandable for any new hires to learn a new company's system, the feedback I have been getting has been "you need to use your brain / common sense more". For a person who is pretty proud of his intelligence, these past two weeks has been a complete negative reinforcement for my theory - my personal record of most times being called a dumbass was probably broken in the process too.

Now, for those of you who are not too familiar with the Chinese / SE Asia system, bosses / mom & dads basically have a free ticket to yell at you at anytime they want. That has changed recently but the majority of the older generation still beats you down like a dog if you mess up. I was initially pretty thrown off by it to be honest and felt that I was being treated unfairly since a new hire couldn't possibly meet all the expectations set. Then as always, there is always the flip side, where you see the boss who hired me has a legitimate reason to be upset since the things I messed up is considered as common sense to the boss. It is usually a tough boss, not the one who smiles at you after you fxxk up, that trains a good worker. While I really don't have support for this theory, I think this constant push for me to better is a good way for me to get out of my work rust. On top of that, I usually do even better when the pressure is on.

...it would still be nice if some of the criticisms are not as harsh and that my salary is a tad-bit higher

Listen

i really admire those who work a full time job and still manage to have enough brain cells to write a full blog. doesn't their brains get tired from facing a computer all day already? onto today's topic...

Sales is definitely the most important job in mankind's history. Everyone has to be a sales at one point or another, whether it is selling yourself in interviews, selling ideas, products, or even selling you to be someone's boyfriend/girlfriend, but not everyone is a good sales. Confidence, quick thinking, common sense, using your brain, understanding who you are selling to are all basic skills needed to be a good sales.

If it is so easy, then why aren't more people good at being a sales? Confidence comes with knowledge, quick thinking comes from experience, common sense and using your brain can be trained, but understanding who you are selling to is what most people have problem doing. For some, it is because they are too busy trying to convey the message they want to sell and fail to realize what the customer really wants. I am sure everyone has faced this issue one way or another with people who just say what they want to say, argue their points and never compromise. Words go into their ears but not into their brains.

More and more people are like this and this is a trend that doesn't seem likely to change...

P.S. just a follow up to my first sentence, my English really is a lot worse after spending a day working...

A Short Story

A little story to spice up everyone's bump day

Once upon a time, there was a clown.
He laughed, he made people laugh.
He smiled when people were sad, he jumped when people were afraid to.
He wasn't rich, but had enough money to live a fair life.
Then one day, he had a change of heart.
He went to the magician and told the magician that "he had decided to sell his happy self, in exchange for a lifetime's worth of money, to get rich"

Do u see the irony?
Money isn't happiness, for him at least.
The two are complete opposite otherwise there wouldn't be a tradeoff between happiness and money. Yet, he chose money.

...That clown is me

On rumors...

rumors are funny. one of the first that I was ever involved in (10+ years ago) was started because people thought I hated someone that has the same name as me... the funny part comes in when people couldn't tell me why they thought i hated that person or how they came to that conclusion...

case number two... hkmom is close friends with one of the singers from her age. so naturally, hkmom would send her friend some good luck gifts before her concert. the funny part comes in when paparazzi found it newsworthy to use that as a sign for some good lesbian news of 2 fifty year old.

Rumors and gossips have become a big part of everyone's lives... The office (US episode 1 of season 6) actually have an entire episode centered around rumors and gossips... with the focus on what would happen if everyone believed in these rumors. It is a bit sad but everyone just believes rumors and never bother to check and see if they are real - it just seems like these gossip magazines at the newsstand has trained us to believe anything people say, regardless of how silly or untrue the news it. Granted, I am sure that a fair percentage of these gossips are true but would it really be that much of a trouble to double check if what you heard is true? directly from the people involved? and if i deny these rumors, it means its either not your right to know or it really isnt true. I for one dont spend anytime to talk about these rumors... at least not until I have some way or form to confirm it.

it just seems like the world we live in trains us pretty hard to be stupider by the day.

Luck

I guess a small foreword is needed for this topic. It has been a relatively unlucky month for me - my car broke down and needed $11k HKD to fix, my computer broke and needed to hire a guy to recover + fix my comp, then hkgirl has been beating me 5 out of 6 nights on our nightly gambling games... and all these are happening within the week that my credit card paid all the fees from our europe trip and no response from companies. I dont have any official statistics but I am fairly confident that most people would consider this past week of mine a very unlucky week and so did I. I told hkgirl that I need to stop gambling against her because it just reminds me every night at how unlucky I am.

The funny thing is... after not thinking about this for a day, Mr Logic within me started realizing that all these is just a product of my previous actions. Both my car and computer broke down because it didnt start up at all in the past few months and they both die quickly from inactivity. The credit card bill part is bound to happen every month, I cant exactly call one week in every month unlucky just because I have to pay my bill, right?

It is actually quite natural that I have found a logical explanation to my recent occurrences... since I am usually not that superstitious of a person anyway. I like to consider myself 50% logic and 50% romance (or fantasy)... but yea back onto the topic, it seems that many times when good or bad things happen we seem to put too much weigh on luck and ignore the cause of why certain things happen. I mean... if a bird shat on you X times within a day, yea we can call that unlucky, but when there is an obvious cause to why things happen (like my car and computer breaking down), we need to actually look at what made it happen and then learn from it.

NOW... WITH THAT SAID...I still think hkgirl winning my money 5 out of 6 nights is pure luck. Gambling is like 95% luck based and 5% skill based... right??? RIGHT???

P.S. - ...Luck or no luck... I need to stop losing my phone ever 8 months...

Passion, Motivation, and Success

I have been looking for a job ever since I returned to Hong Kong after my MBA. The overall job hunting process is pretty similar to my previous job search - prep CV, find companies to apply, write cover letter, and send them out. In my last 2-3 job searches, I basically just applied anything within the industries that I wish to work for, partly because fresh grads and people with 2-3 years experience doesnt really have much of a choice when it comes to who to work for... its more about who is willing to take you. So with more work experience and a different perspective on life, it is perfectly natural that I am now pickier when it comes to choosing a company that I apply for, with the biggest deciding factor for me right now is how passionate I am about the job, its responsibilities and the industry.

I dont know how much of this is common sense but it never occur to me until recently that passion is such a big factor when it comes to all sorts of things. Motivation can be caused by different reasons, but a person with that "passion fire" inside them will have sustainable motivation. Motivation gives you the energy to finish the goal but passion is a fire that starts from the roots of your emotion. You will go all out and do everything that is possible to succeed if you are passionate about something. To use my own posts as example, the Ants post is a topic that I am truly passionate about whereas the spoiled generation post was just something I was motivated to write, and I will be the first to admit that the quality of the two posts was differrred by the amount of heart I have towards the topic.

While I am not saying that passion = success (brain, experience, and luck matters too), the biggest success cases in this world started from that fire from within (or as Rocky Balboa said in the last Rocky movie "the stuff down the basement".)

...now if only the companies I want to work for accepts me

the spoiled generation

I really dont know where this world is heading towards. about a week ago, there were news saying that at least one 12-year old was caught doing Ketamine, a drug if you are not too familiar with the name, and that is probably one out of the thousandSSS who's sniffing. I am not exactly an anti-drug person but 12-year old? Really? Is it because the time we live in is so peaceful that drugs can make it exciting? I suppose this is kind of true since there never was any drug or alcohol problem when there was a war.

Our generation and the people younger than us are really spoiled with all the peacefulness around us. Financial Crisis? pffh... most people my age or younger just lived on. We wake up, go to work / school, and then go back to sleep. All the fun in the middle is just temporary - everything comes so fast and easy (especially with the internet) that we dont learn to cherish what we have. Instead... we find our lives boring and go all out for excitement. I for one, is exactly this type of person, except i am sane/insane enough to understand what I can do (a very good topic that I havent found a good angle to write about). But for many minors with some bad influence... you get a 12-year old kid snorting shit. This is something totally unheard of in my parents or grandparents time - people usually spend their time working hard trying to accomplish something. I really think we need to have a closer look and find out why kids nowadays are so bored with their lives that they would go sniffing drugs when they are not even a TEENager.

Seriously... I dont feel comfortable raising a child in the world that we live in now

Ants

(Foreword: this is actually a topic that depressed me a lot back when i was 15-18... just never expected it to come back to me, maybe i am just a bit sad now that my vacation with hk girl is over now)

Do we humans see ourselves as too important? or is our perception of the world too small? Our lives will always be focused with our own issues and our goals, our past and present, basically everything is about us. Its about what we want, where we want to be be, how we want to do it, who we meet and talk during the day. It never occurs to us that we are all just a tiny piece of the puzzle. In the grand scheme of things, no matter how important we think our issues are, it probably doesn't even have a 0.000001% significance level. (i am using this as an example and it may be exaggerating a little bit), but even global warming and earth's problem is really nothing when we look at how small earth is comparing to the universe. Its the insignificance of my life that used to depress me.

hk girl hates it when i bring this up but i really think its ok to die when we are all just ants in the universe, repeating our daily lives (work - eat - sleep) pretty much the same way ants repeats their lives. I mean, we dont moan over stepping over some ants so why should humans be different, given we are all equally insignificant. Out of the entire human timeline on earth, there are probably less than 10000 people whose lives will be talked about forever (people like lincoln, george washington, julius caesar, confucius, and even michael jordan to an extent)

10+ years after being depressed over this issue and I still don't have a true solution on how to make the most out of a human life span (without being evil), which is why I am perfectly content with being happy everyday and not worry about the rest.

Michael Jackson

Its been a while since I have felt so strongly about something so its perfect blogging time.

I was never a big fan of Michael Jackson, never was and probably never will be, which is why his death means nothing to me. Yes, he is an extremely influential figure, but I am just not a fan. I have pretty much the same feeling as if a stranger died - I feel nothing. What i cant stand is all the hypocrites popping up, people who joked about him, people who disliked him, all facebook/twittering the fact that they are sad, they are crying, and they will miss him. WTF? I thought you dont like him.

Another thing, do we really need to have Michael Jackson related news shoved down our throat? and whats the purpose behind a memorial show? Out of all the performers, who really misses him and who is just there for publicity?

just another thing i dont understand about the world we are in today

The emptiness inside

schoolwork has been absolutely busy for the past month. for example, my schedule for this past week has been:
9-5 product development class
5-6 homework for product development class
6-9:30 project that was due this friday
10:30-1am other work

so you probably figure I would go get pissed drunk after the project was over right? wrong.

I was so used to slaving myself day and night that it didnt feel comfortable not having any work. Now that I have finished this big project, the purpose or drive in me for the past week is now gone and I feel empty. I didnt want to celebrate (partly because our work was average), I didnt want to eat, I didnt want to play games, I didnt want to youtube. Youtube-ing is nowhere as fun when you dont have work and the only thing i wanted to do was to either stare at the sun or sit and stare at the wall. And you know something is wrong 90% of the time when a person just wants to stare at something for a longed period of time.

This is probably the feeling people get when they retire. Empty... which is probably also the reason why people get older a lot quicker after they retire

...It took me one afternoon but luckily Camden Crawl has gotten me somewhat back to my groove

Pointing finger at MBA..???

A survey recently asked some MBA students why people like me want to take an MBA:

Increase in salary
Open new career opportunities
Extend personal network

Up until university, all of our education has been about... EDUCATION. All other masters degree are there for educational purposes. Only MBA is for something different. Is that the reason why MBAs are the ones to blame for this financial crisis?

Further reading: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/business/15school.html

Dreams

Dreams is such an intriguing topic. There are some people that you can go talk to about your dreams and they can interpret the meaning behind because "our brain is a lot more powerful than we know". I also find it rather interesting that 1, i never knew what color my dreams are. Black & white, colorful, or just plain color. 2, i never "remember" my dreams 5 minutes after i wake up, and 3, most of my dreams never really have an ending. I can live with the first 2, but interesting fact 3 bothers me the most.

Maybe because of my love for food, about 50% of my dreams are about traveling the world and eating different things. The problem is, I spent 99% of my dream traveling and meeting random people en route to food but I NEVER EAT. It is like a movie building up to this climax just to have the screen goes black and lights turned on. Think Sopranos ending when you keep thinking something is going to happen just to find out that the screen goes black and the series is over. On a scale of 1-10, I would probably give this experience a 0.5 in terms of frustration goes but having the same 0.5 frustration happening 3 times a week is no fun.

If only some of these dream readers can tell me the meaning behind this...

P.S. - I never EVEEERRRR had wet dreams in my life due to the same reason too.

The cycle

There was a time back in university when I really wished to be in school forever. Imagine how life would be. No need to worry about jobs & money, living in an all expenses paid for life. I remember at some point, probably when work started getting really crazy, I gave up that thought.

After working for a couple years and living off that silly salary, the school > work thought came back. Wouldnt life be great if i can just get paid for reading books? Then MBA came along, it was all good and fun UP UNTIL NOW. UP UNTIL NOW. when I have a ton of paper / presentation / BLAH BLAH BLAH to write.

Job > School

humans... we are never satisfied with what we have

A new kick for your morning!

I have been meaning to write this since Monday but school work has just been horribly busy so I have to wait until a nice Friday evening to finally get a chance to write.

Unless you are one of those people who just take things for what it is, chances are that we always find way(s) to improve the efficiency and/or quality of the things we do.

A medium (or grande) latte at a coffee shop usually costs about 2-3 pounds. We will use 2 just for this example. Did you know you can now get a gram of cocaine for just 20 pounds? Dont believe me? See here:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4602051/Cocaine-cheaper-than-lager-and-wine-as-drug-price-falls-by-half.html

A gram of cocaine can be split into 20 lines with each line having a stronger "wake you up" effect than your medium latte, which means you can do a line of cocaine for 1 pound vs buying a latte for 2! Oh wait, this just in, cocaine price set to drop more!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7898087.stm

The choice is very simple, do cocaine!

...and this is another reason why we shouldnt have kids.

P.S. - no i dont do cocaine... not unless they start doing hazelnut flavors of them

getting 10000000 pages of reading assigned with (24 - 8 hrs of sleep - 2hr class - 2hr gym - 1hr cooking - 2hrs other work - 1hr laundry - 1 hr lunch break = 7) 7 hours to finish is seriously fucked up

Another alcohol related topic

Alcohol is such a fun topic to write about. It can be 2060 now and i can probably still find new things to write about alcohol.

Alcohol brings out the best AND worst of everybody. There are people who are completely normal and classy but gets ultra slutty & horny after some booze. There are your loud and talkative people who gets louder AND more talkative. And of course, the classic case of someone quiet and calm getting all violent and picking fights.

None of the above ones are the worst. Hkgirl and I are really the worst type of drunks. We want more. The one thing alcohol does very well is that it turns off our brain. In our case, the internal alcohol inhibitor turns off and we just keep asking for more; next thing we know, we are at home not knowing how we got back. BUT (and this is a huge but) there is 1 big positive that I can extract from our drinking habits. We dont get drunk anymore. Last friday the entire MBA class (well, 95% of the MBA class) went out for drinks and I must have had like 8-10 shots of tequila/vodka. Guess what? I was only tipsy. I was surprised myself. I even got bored with the drinking and went home early.

Seriously, WTF is wrong with me?

Self-Torturing

Food and Sleep. The two most basic human needs in life. Everything else we claim we need are just things we do for better quality of food and sleep. Most people probably dont care what they eat and how long they sleep but we all enjoy doing it one way or another. I will continue on with this point later.

The invention of youtube, blogs, online gaming has made our lives more enjoyable. People rarely feel bored since they always have internet and playstation to fall back on. It is especially nice for students like me because this is the only entertainment we get after a long day of work. The only issue with all these entertainment is that they get addictive. See where i am going with my earlier point yet?

I love sleeping. I love to have at least a minimum of 7-8 hours of sleep and my problem is that I havent been able to sleep more than 6 for a while. The main issues lies within the fact that I havent been able to control my youtube / gaming time every night. I know i have to be up by 8:30am and i am just torturing myself by messing around till 2:xx.

... and I know posting this issue online doesnt help my situation either!

Who we are

It is a subjective world. All of our judgments and decisions are made based on our perceptions of right and wrong, good or bad. For example, people from some countries finds death penalty is worth keeping while some are strongly against it. The problem is, our perceptions change all the time due to the situation presented to us. Most people probably wouldnt think of stealing something but when you have no money and have been starving for 3-4 days, you would probably try to steal something. It is really the situation around us that makes us.

In a simpler case, you may have a very good friend. But the moment you find that he betrays you, your feeling towards him changes. And maybe, just maybe, you will never trust someone as much ever again. We learn from experiences but we also change who we are in the process, which is why you often see friends who are very different if you dont see them much.

Like i said before, people generally get less and less happy as they get old but eventually gets content with what they have by the time they retire.

I personally just hope that I stay happy... and i wish the same for you too.

Be responsible

I dont quite remember which beer ad it was but the slogan was "Drink Responsibly". Most people fail to realize that they should drink responsibly not only for themselves, but for everyone else who drinks as well.

Had Van Gogh hadnt cut his ear off after getting drunk on Absentine, it would probably still be legal. Had the Hooligans think a little more because causing such a riot, we would still be able to drink and watch football at the same time. Enough examples yet?

We are much more important than we think. Every fuck-ups that we make from drugs and alcohol, every bit of inconvenient we cause from smoking, every homework you didnt hand in because of Playstation, gives the powerful people around us a reason to tighten our freedom. Simply put, if we dont mess up, we have freedom.

Its time for us to all start taking responsibility to stop tightening our own laws and boundaries.

Iron chef!

The last time I lived alone was in my university days in the US. The interesting bit about US is that no matter how poor you are, you will still have a car. Why? Well the closest supermarket to my apartment was a good 10 minute drive away, thats why. Work was a good 45+ minutes drive and movie theaters were another good 20+ minutes away... well big cities like NYC are obviously exceptions but you get the point.

I must say one of the things I like the most about my living conditions in London is that the supermarket is only a 5 minute walk away! Then again... I do travel 20+ minutes to get some nice food also but the main point is that through these 5 months, I can "somewhat" confidently say that I have gone from hobby cooking to semi-skillful cooking.

I started with only grilling meat in september and I am now making orange sauce duck, seafood pasta, bacon wrapped scallops, etc etc. I am truly, truly enjoying this. I guess the scientist inside me never quite went away. Why? To start... it takes a great amount of courage to cook day after day when I was cooking was just horrible.

Take my seafood pasta for example, it has been too spicy, salty, tasteless, watery... everything that could have went wrong happened at least once. But the hkbomber is persistent. Time after time and I cook and cook. Now? I am giving myself a B-. Pretty good improvement from D and F in 5 months.

To further proof my confidence, I have already sent audition tapes to gordon ramsey's show, top chef, american idol (who said idol can only sing?) just in case my career after MBA doesnt work out. Yes I can!

The Pursuit of HappYness - part 2

I wrote about this exact topic almost half a year ago. Needless to say, I feel like writing about it again today.

Last time my point focused around smiling more and focus more on the positive aspects of life. The key word this time is "accepting". Whining and feeling like shit doesnt make our problems or issues go away. We live in a time when everyone is brought up to say no.

Some studies have shown that 80+% of the people find no a lot easier to say than yes. Of course! Dissecting and criticizing is far easier than appreciating.

Statement 1: "My boss is giving me more work again, seems like I wont leave work on time tonight."
Statement 2: "My boss is giving me more work again, its my opportunity to show what i can do!"

Much easier to think of statement 1 than 2. Much easier. What i am suggesting is that, everyone needs to start accepting the fact that things we dont like happens. We can go onto the internet forum or to your friends and bitch all you want, but the problem is still going to be here, so? Accept it. We might not solve the negative issues with a positive attitude, but at least we are happy in the process.

Slowly then... we can all learn how to ignore (accept) the negatives and focus on our positive energy.

...now if only I can source my positive energy to finish my 40+ pages of reading...

Been trying to scavenge something to write about all week but when all that is happening over the week was jetlag and coughing a lot, there really isnt much worth writing about. The quality of my blog shouldnt be lowered just because I feel the need to update.

Here are some quick album recommendation if you are bored"
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
TV on the radio - Dear Science
Metronomy - Nights Out

Until next time

Kind of old news by now but I twisted my ankle fairly badly 2 weeks ago. Once again, it wasnt until I was limping badly until I realized how important my legs are.

How many times have we go through "no cherishish something until its not there" (is there an actual phrase for that?), we still do it. Taking things for granted is the default thing we do.

Here is a homework for everyone. Start showing more love.

Happy New Year?!

another year has passed and its time for everyone to get a fresh start in 2009.

i am obviously the minority here but aside from the crazy partying, i am not a huge fan of new years, why? i can honestly say that i have had some quality times for the past 4-5 years. for those of you follow my blog, this is because I prefer focusing on the positive aspects of life and dont let the negatives affect me. with that said, every new year still has the potential to ruin my string of consecutive good years.

the probably is low but the chance of a lot of crap happening within 1 year is bound to happen sometime for everyone, who is to say it wont be 2009?

Happy new year~