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