特區官員十大金句回顧

10: 煲呔「起錨!」
9: 葉劉「如果我連髮型都捍衛唔到，又點捍衛香港治安？」
8: 發叔「或者隻狗被困多幾日，冇嘢食會瘦番啲，可以走番出嚟」
7: 林公公「政改方案，雖然不是全餐，但已經是常餐」
6: 老懵董「無講過，即係唔存在啦。」
5: 唐唐「嗰班友「條屌揈」喺街...」
4: 煲呔「我唔想同人狗噏辯論……」
3: 雞珍「我日日都食雞，大家唔好驚。」
2: 老懵董「一個天真的人很 naive，一個膚淺的人很膚淺。」
1: 唐唐 "Ngon Ping Sam Luk Ling"

Bonus Track: 董太「你知唔知我係邊個？!」

Honorable Mention:
唐唐 「I am 8 Kua」
李X章「聽野係用耳仔、打機係用手去打」
古SIR「OKOK! HAPPY NEW YEAR!」
張X鈞「一直以嚟北極都係一個非常之寧靜，人少企鵝多嘅地方。」
遊行人仕「我睇開陳奕迅演唱會, 你無啦啦叫我去睇林峰，咁冇關係嘛，你應該退錢」

I am not one who places too much emphasis on luck but last Saturday’s poker night has proven to be our (hkgirl & I) luckiest night ever. Based on my 20+ years of gambling experience, I have never won money. I lose the big hands and win only the small hands. The best I can do is break even for the night. But then last Saturday happened. It started with hkgirl getting a 4 of a kind hand and a straight flush within a span of 10-15 deals. An hour later, I had my first ever 4 of a kind hand and started winning money. Then the night passes by and we are at the final hand.

Final hand. No holds barred. I had a 9 and 5 suited in hearts. The order might be a bit off now but the flop completed my flush with A 3 and 4 in hearts. I forgot what the turn was but guess what the river came out to be. 2 of hearts. Straight flush. My first ever straight flush hand. Same night as my first ever 4 of a kind hand. And also the same night it happened to hkgirl.

You go look at poker probabilities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability)
Straight Flush 0.0311%
4 of a kind 0.168%
and you cant explain / describe the scenario of getting all 2 straight flush and 2 4 of a kind hands in the same night other than one word – luck. It feels as if the powers that be decided to pay back all 20+ years worth of luck debt in one night.

I was going to write a bit more on how you need skills to utilize luck but then when you are that lucky, why does skills even matter?

For the sake of completing the story, my straight flush won me the hand over someone who had an A K flush and thought he had the winning hand (99% of the time he would be correct to assume that). I still feel terribly sorry for make him lose that big hand.

...in the same time (given my history of bad luck in gambling), I also see myself losing in similar fashion within the near future

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