The Asian Parent that We Should Be

The issue with Asian parents is that many people have too many issues about them. Before I talk further, let’s make it clear that I’m not saying that western and other region of parent have less or no issue at all. I believe all type of parents have own sets of matter to talk about but as Asians, we all live under the general perspective of Asian parent’s mindset and we will, either doing it or going to be, live and practice our life as Asian parent to tutor and mold the perspective of next generation.

Perhaps talk about the main purpose why I want to start this topic. You see, many Asians are successful when comes to old age. Success in our mindset does not always referring to wealthy and famous, but Asian’s mindset has a set of guideline to do to make yourself think that you are successful. This is good, although it’s sort of like hypnotism that possess you for life. But in order to do that, you have to live in pain.

We are generally convinced that to achieve success, we must go through suffering and pain, but we MUST achieve success. It’s totally different from putting extra effort and time to achieve more. By all means if restless night and working when we are sick able to ensure continuous productivity, that is what we have to do. As long as we have sufficient money and able to take up loan to contribute to car and house, and continue our career. We will eventually be convinced that we are successful at a certain degree.

To argue about this mindset is out of the question because our grandparent gone through the world war time when starvation and lack of job is a common symptom in life. When the war time is over, our grandparent focus to ensure our parent able to obtain education and get a good job and life, and try their best, even if it’s mean the harsh way, to make our parent understand the importance of success that eventually lead to good life, and never ever go through the suffering life like war time.

This mindset is generally agreed and practiced in our parent’s generation but for our generation, we are exposed to wide range of options and worlds that telling us that we don’t need to be successful and the most important thing in life is happiness. The conflicts occurred when we grew up with the perspective of our parent (need to be successful, need to go through pain, etc) and as we became adult, we learnt that actually the world is quite different with Asian perspective that we had been taught. That is when, the older we are, the more we have things that disagree with the Asian perspective.

The bigger issue results in the individual that are taught in an Asian way. Because the main idea of Asian mindset of a person growth does not involve much about happiness. We are convinced that we need to be fierce, cruel, strong and etc in order to face this world and create your own path of success. But this idea is just a mask, we wear it because our culture say that we have to. In the inner side of our personality, we somehow built a strong resistant to it even if we follow the ideal without questioning much. And that results in negative impacts such as low confident, insecure, self-denied and etc, because we frequently have conflicts between things we think should be done, and things that telling us that we have to follow without questioning.

Regardless if we are comfortable with how we are living right now, the undeniable fact is that the world is changing. People in the modern city no longer need to live to be competent, afraid of starvation and have to go through hardship in order to live. We are given more options by the outside world as of how we want to live and what we want to do. We can also involve ourself in volunteer and working for NGO that contradict with the definition of success in Asian’s perspective but that’s how we see life should be.

You might want to be the same as how typical Asian thinking is, but we don’t need the next generation to be the same type as how we are: focusing on career to ensure success, live with pain and suffering to achieve what we want, think that if we don’t achieve success means we are nothing, and so on.

This is why the following advice is mainly for our generation who are going to be, or is currently, parent that responsible to guide and shape the mindset of our next generation.

1. Encourage Hope and Belief

This world is cruel. There are a lot of tragedies that we see but we can’t do anything about it. There are all sort of disasters and human-created injustice happen time to time and all we could do is just think about it and hope that we will not fall into the tragic fate. In the end of the day, what we are able to do when we think of it is just a mere thoughts. We usually don’t think too much about it, forget about it and move on with our life.

But our thinking is just stopping people from growing and allow tragedy to happen continuously. We even convince ourself and people that we should not do anything about it. The good thing is, we can avoid ourself and people to face any tragedy and risk their life for something that might not bear any fruit at all; but the impact is, more and more people is not willing to do anything because they are convinced that since most people are not doing anything about it, tragic is always tragic when it happens but actually that’s not the case.

There are many ways to stop tragedy from happening without us realizing it, especially when we are leading a better life compare to many people in this world. Many people around the world are doing it. It might seems insignificant but if you look up to the latest news around the world, there are activities that changing the world slowly and becoming better. Because people have hope, and they have solid belief that changes are possible and the world can be much better instead of just sit back and let the world change by itself. And they are able to see the belief in actual

We are lacking of this power, unless we change how we think about the world and our capability. If we are too possess with our usual living, and many people around us need us to continue what we suppose to do, we can entrust the importance of hope and belief to next generation. At least, teach them to think that people are capable of changes, this world is not hopeless, they can build and use their power to enrich themselves, the people, and the world. Let them know there are unlimited possibilities that they can depend on.

2. Success and Achievements are small step at a time

Success will always be part of our desire, and it’s not just for Asians but for the whole world. This is something that is practiced globally regardless of races and nations. But what I want to emphasize is the perception when we look at success. Most of us think that success is one big thing. It’s like we got it means we got it all. But when we are asked to defined what is success, or what type of success we want, it can take years for a person to identify the type of success they want.

Especially for Asian mindset, success is always set as later stage like you gotta be at least 40 or 50 to talk about it. The problem is, before that age of success, people are considered as inexperience and immature, because they are not at that stage, yet.

This is not true at all, age should never define success and maturity, it’s defined by your knowledge and what you capable of. Furthermore, this world has multiple millionaires at the age of 30 and before. If that doesn’t consider successful, what would? This is why, we should not persuade people to think that success is one big thing. Before you achieve it, you are nothing. It’s a long road, and you need to have the courage to walk on it. Even before you reach the destination, walking on the road ensure you are on progress. Without the final success, you are building your capability and skill, you are definitely something once you started walking on the road.

3. Dare to ask Why and Know Why to ask

When you question an Asian “Why” on a certain subjects that they used to do it on regular basis, you can get a lot of interesting reply and reaction from them. Frequently, if you notice, when you question why they would think like that and what’s the reason behind their behavior, sometimes you can see that they would stunned for awhile and need some time to think before answering your question. The issue with Asian perspective is that we always follow. There are times when we know why, but most of the times we don’t know or unsure about it. We follow because our culture asked us to do so. While we can reason that we are right because the culture and mindset usually has nothing wrong. We are just doing what others think are right.

The problem with this approach is that we do not truly understand why we suppose to do something. The mindset of Asian told us that we need to get promotion in our current job position. If you ask your friend who is working at a higher position in a company, try to ask why they need to get into that position. It’s quite often that you will get answer that is not related to his/her own will. In other words, he did not choose to get into this position at his/her own will. He/she do so because he/she has to.

This can ensure walking on a solid path because you are doing what other’s had proven to be right. The only problem is you didn’t give yourself a chance to think in another perspective and ask yourself “Why”. Why you have to achieve a higher position? Why you want to own a bigger, better properties? Why you want to practice this type thinking? Not only start to question yourself with “Why”, you need to think what’s wrong with the opposite site, as in so what if you did not get into a high job position, own bigger & better properties and so on.

Many people did not realize, asking “Why” is the way to open up a new path and solution. Because we dare to imagine and look into alternate idea, whereas many people don’t do that because they want to stay in a comfort zone. Teach your child to be curious and identify the true reason of anything they encounter, encourage them to think what could be wrong with current approach and grant the capability to identify the right path and create solution for the most ideal approach that we did not think of.

4. Being successful is not a result, it’s a mindset

As an Asian, we frequently talk about how successful other people is based on the type of results that they had achieved. For instance, we like to talk about how someone attended a business meeting that only people with specific qualification and position will be invited. We envy their qualification and position, we wish to have the same type of qualification and position they are in. This, somehow, create another problem.

Many people, not just Asian, think that successful is a result. The problems occur when we want to show people what we are capable of. This apply to us who want to purchase larger and better properties so that people would know that we are capable of this. And also visiting restaurants and food places that are considered expensive because we could afford that, and our inner conscious want to disguise ourself to be somebody who can afford all these luxuries compare to those who can’t. When you post on Facebook and people know that you visited some expensive restaurants, they envy of you and think you are doing really well, and you are quite satisfying because what other people think convince you that you are good and getting closer to success.

But unfortunately, you are not as successful as how others think you are. You are just obsess with the general Facebook Image Crafting, a concept where you create a great impression by using the best and greatest event in your life with the mask of internet to let others know you are doing excellently. If you take a good look in your actual life, how much financial burden you need to deal with time to time with such spending?

Rather than depending on result to beg people to think that you have an excellent life, teach the next generation to think that you need true mindset that want actual success that determine by everything you do, you can do excellent work and produce good result. Not just excellent by materials and surface, but incapable of dealing with the after-impact.

5.Motivation and Inspiration > Pain and Suffering

Delivering pain and suffering so that people would listen and follow what you want is one of the concept during war, but is totally cruel and the main impact that carve into people’s heart is not the message that you want to pass them, is the actual pain towards their body and mind that develop throughout their entire life.

Even at modern days, there are still parents, which including young adults, believe that canning and causing pain and fear to their children is an effective way to teach and discipline them.

Result wise, yes we can achieve the desired result that we want using canning, scolding, and whichever way to make them follow what we want. But in the end of the day, it’s highly likely that they would learn that they have to do something because if they don’t they will have to experience pain and suffering, but do not understand the true reason to do something.

Think in the future when your children grew up and became parent of their own child, do you want them to cause fear and pain to their own children so that their children should just do things because of fear? Don’t you think it’s a better idea for them to learn how to teach their children and influence others to know how to do things for good reasons?

6. Stop Following Other People’s Footstep

If you have Asian parent, it wouldn’t be weird when they often saying things like: “You see XXXX, they are so good at XXXX. You should be like them!”. As the common perception of Asian often involve following, we are always expected to just follow the path that most people walked on to ensure that you can achieve a good result. Why? Because someone else follow the path and they did it! So following the same path means definitely will become successful like them right? WRONG! Who says that following people path definitely achieve good result?

I’m still unsure on the source of this belief, but I have to be firm on this: Nope, following other people footstep just means you are following, not achieving. Imagine this, when you follow other people footstep, where would your eyes concentrate in order to follow their path? It’s the footstep, which means you are staring at the floor all the time. But how do you ensure what lies ahead? I often got frustrated when I ask people why they want to do something and they answer something like “Because other’s doing that!”.

Stop following other people’s footstep is not the same as stop walking on the path that people had walked on and they consider that as path of success. You can still walk on it, BUT knowing where are you heading to. In other words, lift your head, look what’s in front, and know if you are walking on the path that you want. Know if there is alternative and better path, create your own path if possible, and tell yourself where you are heading to. Simply put, when you are doing something common that people doing, know what you are doing. Don’t do it because others are doing it.

7. Do things because of reason, not because you have to

After you learn and determine that you are walking on the right path that you want, you need to know the exact reason why you are walking on it. We don’t want the following generation to do things because they are asked to. We don’t want them to achieve things and do everything but in the end of their life, they are unsure of what are they trying to achieve.

The idea is similar to encourage them to ask “Why”, which is a really powerful word as you can see. When they are asked to do something, make sure they know the real reason behind doing it. Don’t study because other kids are doing it, let them know the reason to study is because they need to gain true and useful knowledge, not vaguely about sitting in exam to get good grade, good looking qualification, better job and better life.

8. Be brave and learn to say sorry

This is, again, not only the issue with Asians, many other people from other races and nations also have the similar issue. But I’m not sure if it’s just me, my experience dealing with people from other nations is quite different because they seems to have no problem saying sorry. In my usual life and experience dealing with my friends here, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word” - Elton John.

This always make me recall some of the actions that I know from Asian parents. When parent did a mistake, you can’t expect them to say “I’m sorry for causing this….”, you can get any type of response except that. In certain case, and it’s quite frequent, they might blame something else and in the end, their main point is just representing that they are not at fault. This is how egoism are built and practiced. And also influence the younger generation to perform the same behavior and say the similar things when they realize that they are wrong instead of admitting mistake and saying sorry.

Saying sorry when you suppose to is the key to avoid conflicts and make things better. In an usual case, I seen generation Y have serious issue admitting their are wrong. It’s like saying sorry means his/her entire life is worthless. We need to teach the younger generation to understand that sorry doesn’t crumble our life, it doesn’t means we are totally sinful and everything is our fault. We need to be sorry for the exact thing we did wrong, know what we are sorry for, know how to accept our weakness and improve ourself from mistake, so that we no longer need to stay with the same wrongful behavior and mindset.

9. Remember, we are Role Model, and everyone will eventually turn into one

“I don’t care how others think about me” is a brave thoughts. Able to live with it give us the idea and courage to do what we truly think is right. We no longer live in other people’s perception. In modern days, its quite often that our action and mindset is being denied without proper reason. The only thing we know is just people don’t agree with it, that is why we should not do that. Able to persuade our own path with the despise and disagreement of others is not a totally wrong idea. People denying you doesn’t mean they are always right, they just having their own reason. As long as you know what you are doing, you have the rights to put your action into test. You probably can guess what I’m going to say: this (again) create some type of problems.

In our generation, we have an extremely strong desire to do what we want and go all the way with our own ideal, even if many people have something to say about us. There are times when we can find people to agree with what we are doing. But there are also times when people are totally against it. With or without reason, it’s not surprising that we occasionally turn a deaf ear when people said something that against our liking. This further transform us into a being that is not willing to listen to others and just do whatever we want without caring of how others think and feel. It’s alright to do it because you have the choice but that is not how we want the next generation to think and behave, and we don’t want to future generation to focus on doing whatever they like without considering that younger generation will always learn from older generation .

Like it or not, younger generation will always look at us. How we think and behave will eventually influence them. They will follow what we do, just like when you admire someone and you wish to be like them. That is in a good way, but it also occur when they see people treating a waiter/waitress badly and they thought it’s okay to do so because others are doing it. WIllingly or not, our behavior will carve into their mind and always reminding them how others did in certain situation, and they might do the same when they do not know what is right and wrong.

This is why, remembering that you are a role model means you need to behave properly and give them a good reason to follow what you are doing. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if they understand why you are doing this, if you are being a good role model and they follow you, eventually they will understand the good reason behind doing it.

10. Remember to Balance Out Happy Life and Tough Life

Unlike the old times where people struggle all the time to get a good job and a proper life, modern people are really fortunate. Most of the people in developed countries don’t experience starvation and the type of life where we would afraid that we couldn’t get a job and live in a proper house. Most of the people nowadays are more than enough fortunate, especially if you are at least able to access the internet and read this blog. They also have access to lots of luxury lifestyle and materials. Which is why the pain & suffering in the old days are not visible and understandable for many people, and telling them about those tough days can’t help much to make them understand that life was tough back to those days.

The younger the generation is, the more they do not understand tough life, as well as not willing to accept it. But I do see parents trying to make them understand how life supposed to be and bringing up all those true experience and events that once happened in the past. Of course, what parent said is real, but it’s just no longer apply to our current life. Modern people are obsessed with happy life, instead of understand how life was tough, they are more interested to life can be much more happier and better.

This is how people want life to be nowadays, so telling them that life is tough only make them felt that what you said is totally unrealistic. Instead, you need to make them think that life should have happiness, but it also need to go through hardship in order to learn and live to see the world, not just have fun all the time.

11. Life is not all about Own Self

Lastly, I think the most important thing is to realize that living is not all about keep on enriching your own life. Don’t focus on giving all the best for yourself and put all the time for your own personal life.

As the technology grew to be much more powerful and capable, people have access to the internet anytime they want and we can travel to many places when we want (and when our financial allow), we are getting more sources for access to activities and things that take us further away from our friends and family. Well, there are times when you can’t have your friend’s and family along when you travel, and accessing internet usually is by our self, not with friends and family.

In another perspective, it’s not just about friend’s and family, it’s also about the society and people around the world. Teach them to know the importance of living for the society and help out those who are poorer and need helps from others, just like when we need help when we are incapable of solving our own problems. We might think that we do not need to help others as there are always other parties who are willing to help, we only notice its importance when we are in the situation that desperately need helps from others. Don’t let the younger generation take things for granted, live for everyone and live out the best out of life.

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How to Walk Properly In the Crowd on a Daily Basis

Never expect that I would need to post something like this. But well...

"How to Walk Properly In the Crowd on a Daily Basis" is not a basic guide for babies to learn to walk from crawling around, it's mainly for adults who have no problem walking. Hope I made myself clear.

If you ever find it difficult to walk on the street or anywhere full of people, specifically being blocked frequently or realizing that you keep on blocking people only when you realized it, that could be a sign that something not right with your walking habit.

This is not something to complaint about but it's good to know how you should practice a good walking style in order to ensure that you are not causing an obstacle or trouble to others who happen to walk around you. And imagine if someone walk in the problematic or weird style as mentioned below, you won't feel good about it.

1. No Crab Walk

Crab is an animal that born to walk (crawl) side way. They don't walk straight because that's how they are. But human are definitely born to walk straight. So don't do a sudden crab walk and assume that you definitely won't block anyone around you.

2. Turn Your Head, Checked, Make the Right Turn

If you are a driver, you should know really well that whenever you need to turn to left or right side, always check if there is any vehicle behind that direction, make sure the path is clear, then turn to right if you want to turn to right or turn to left if you want to turn to left.
Give a signal by turning your head towards the direction you want to turn at least 3 seconds before turning so that people behind you know that you want to turn to that direction. And don't ever turn your head to the right and make sudden turn to the left. You are going to have an accident if you haven't experience one yet.

3. No Gorilla Walk

Don't raise your shoulder, widen your arm and walk like there are too much of space for everyone. Straighten your body, put both of yout hand beside you, walk straight. No crab walk, starfish walk, drunken cat walk.....

4. Walk with Your Backbone

Again, straighten your body, walk in a straight line. Don't ever give up utilizing your backbone and make a sudden float to the right or left like your bone suddenly soften. Always ensure you are not causing trouble to people near you before you lose your backbone.

5. Don't Swing Your Hand

Understanding that swinging your hand is a sign of relaxing, and if you are in the middle of talking, moving your hand could be a sign to emphasize something or visualizing. But, duh..... you are not doing a presentation. Just walk and don't always assume your hand won't touch or hit anyone.

6. No, No Sudden U Turn

Turning back is easy as 1 2 3. Unlike driving, you need check if there is any car on your back, stop at a proper location that won't block any vehicle, wait until no vehicle would block your way to make a U turn, and that's it. But there is always a safety reason for such measurement. If someone is right behind you and just make a funny 180 degree U turn, you know what would happen.

7. No Sudden Stop, Please

The path is usually wide, people usually walk in the middle. If you need to stop for whatever reason, make a proper turn and stand on the side. There is no reason for you to become an obstacle in the crowd.

8. Don't Stand in Group to Block People Way

Having a few more friends or family with you is the easiest way to block people. Whatever reasons you have that all of you need to stand there and stop moving. First, make a proper turn and stand on the corner. Second, avoid standing in a circle because you definitely able to block someone. Third, don't do any crab walk, make improper turn, gorilla walk, losing your backbone, swing your hand, sudden U turn, sudden stop..... Just don't do anything funny and remember there are people who are around you and they need to walk properly.



You probably realize, walking is somehow similar to driving. You don't make any turn or driving towards any direction without taking safety measurement. Of course, crashing into someone is nothing serious between vehicle and vehicle crashing, but it's nothing usual or fine about practicing a problematic walking style.

Always remember this, if you don't want someone to do the same to you, don't do it at the first place. Even if people still do it, don't follow their incorrect path.

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Malaysian Style: How to Save & Utilize More Precious Time

Summarized Version

In Malaysia, many events and activities on a daily basis make us waste our time instead of allowing us to spend our time in the meaningful way, or the way that we want. Despite that, many events that waste our time are unavoidable such as traffic jam, queue, and waiting for many things.
Rather than complaining how much time are being wasted due to uncontrollable circumstances, it's best to consider how to save and utilize time out of the busy schedule and squeeze time from those unavoidable situations. Here's are some tips that help you to know how to utilize more precious time for yourself.

1. Reduce activities that don't create value which also refer to things that you do but you know it's differ from making your life any better. You have a dream, but not everything you do in a day contribute to achieving your dream. This include all your hobbies that you do for pleasure and enjoyment. Learn to control the time you spent on those activities and set the priority to do so AFTER you done with your important tasks.
2. Identify what's truly important in your life, and why. Because we are forgetful. And we sometimes stuck in the situation where we forgotten our passion in starting something at first. This is why we need to keep track on why we start something and always remember what we trying to achieve in the end. When you know the important value in everything you currently doing, you won't need to spend time rethink about it later or risk giving up in the middle of doing it.
3. Learn to make quick decision because hesitation in decision making is often wasting unnecessary time, as you are going to achieve one final decision anyway. The moment you go into deep thoughts to consider massive amount of choices, your time going down to drain and those time can be used for your beneficial activities, so you are indirectly wasting your precious time in hesitations.
4. Utilize your time in non-working environment. As mentioned earlier, there are lots of circumstances that you are stuck on a daily basis that waste your time a lot, and you can't control or avoid sometimes. Such situations include: waiting for your food in restaurant, waiting for someone, in the public train or bus, in the queue, and in the traffic jam. You can always take out your notebook to read or write something for your planning and working stuff, instead of doing nothing and wait for the situation to take away all your time.
5. Setup tasks schedule. We probably have a schedule in our mind, but it's not that useful if you don't write it down as clear as possible and follow according to the schedule. Following a well planned schedule ensure that you keep on with your tasks and ensure you have a proper direction, so you don't need to think what you suppose to do at certain time.

Full Details

In Malaysia, there are three main thing that usually happen in a daily basis that kill our time: Travel, Queue, Waiting time after ordering food. Best of all, we usually can't control or relief the situation no matter how much we complain about it or trying to make a difference (provided that you really did), because these three will go on and on for uncertain amount of years, and continue flushing all our precious time down into drain.

If you are a person value for your own time, thinking that you can use tons of your time to do something meaningful, or wanted to make more time for yourself, you probably found that lots of events and activity in Malaysia can waste your time a lot. Which include walking from one place to another which usually takes 5 minutes, but end up taking 10 minutes plus because there are lots of people blocking your way, or there are 'incident' appear along the way that can't make your journey go as well as you expecting it to be. This is because there are too much of things going around that, without intention to, but would kill lots of your time.

Rather than focusing on things that we could not change, it's wiser to consider how to squeeze more time and utilize every single minutes or even seconds to be used into activities that produce good value in your life.

All of us are granted with 24 hours each day. Let's assume that we spent average of 8 hours for sleep, another 8 on our usual routine for study or work, 8 hours remains to do things that we are conscious about and what's really make us feel like we are living. The bad news, we usually spent the 8 precious and valuable hours for others, for waiting, and for nothing. What truly left is 1 or 2 hours to do things that we really wanted to. Just a word of advice, it's definitely regrettable living to spend only an hour or two every day to do something that you like.

This guide is created after I had gone through lots of struggle trying to understand how my time is being spent and wasted, and why I always felt like I had gone through an entire day of more than 16 hours but couldn't recall what I had actually achieve. Of course, I can come out with a summarize list of what I had done from the moment I woke up until the moment before I'm going to sleep. But what had I lived through the day that make my life meaningful?

I believe many people had the same question in mind. And this guide is created on the purpose for people to realize that even in Malaysia, we can live through the day feeling more concious on what we want to do and how we spend each moment or hour, and crave any meaningful activities or experience you had.

1. Reduce Activities that Don't Create Value

Sounds simple but this could be really hard. There's probably activities in your mind that you want to get rid of, but there are also lots of activities that you are used to it and like it really much but at the same time, you should understand really well that it doesn't make your life better other than pleasure and entertaining.

The list include scrolling on your Facebook page, watching your favorite Hong Kong/Korea/Japan drama or movie, playing games (ouch...), and the list goes on with all the activities that you enjoy but you know it's not making your life any better, or such activities has nothing to do with achieving what you want.

Try to summarize up your day before you sleep and see where most of your time are spent on a daily basis. Note down as much activity as you could, then you will know where most of your time are being spent. The next step is to consider how much time you suppose to spent on your routine or usual activities. It could be difficult and not getting used to it when you try to change. You probably spend a little more time as planned at first because you are not used to it. But do remember that following the plan with perseverance and good determination is the key.

Another important thing to bear in mind, reduce your favorite activities doesn't mean you need to eliminate them out from your life. Just that you need to remember that the activities that you enjoy suppose to come after you had done with your important tasks and work. So it should not be something that you set as priority in the morning or middle of the day.

2. Identify What's Truly Important in Your Life, and Why

All of us have idea of what's important in our life, what we want to do or what we want to have in our life. But if you sometimes wondering what you should do at a certain moment or situation, then you are probably not having a clear and determine thoughts of what you truly want.

When you have a clear idea about what's important in your life, you won't risk spending your time thinking why you want this, or what's so great about it. It's important not only to avoid spending extra time on hesitation, it also keep you motivated and keep going on.

The risk of not having a clear idea of what's truly important in your life is sometimes, you keep on thinking why do you want to continue doing something. Let's take example of writing a story. Your expected end result should be completing the entire story and attracting numbers of readers who can feedback on your story. But the process of writing the story can be long and not as enjoyable as what you thought.

You might have a few chapters that you really enjoy writing because that's where your great idea are. But you still need to write numerous chapters that connect these big idea into one final story. When you are stuck in writing the chapters that not in your enjoyable moment, it's easy to get bored and you might ask what's the point of creating all these while there are more enjoyable things to do? That's when you start wasting time in hesitation, and the greater impact is that you might think that completing the entire story is not so desirable.

Identifying the important things in your life not only require you to think and think and that's it. You need to write it down because we human are naturally forgetful. We don't remember every single thing that we thought of even though it's really important. This is why you should write it down in a notebook or diary for all the important thoughts you had. And note down as soon as you can before you risk forgetting them.

Create the notes at somewhere that you can easily reach so that you will able to read back what you wrote even if you forgotten about it later. I used to write notes and idea of what I want to do or something that make me feel interesting in Words and save it in one of my desktop folder. When I clear my desktop folders and files, I'm able to read back what I had wrote and what I had planned to do. In that way, I can regain my forgotten thoughts and remind myself again on all these things that I wanted to achieve.

3. Make Quick Decision

Everywhere is full of choices. When you need to decide where and what to eat, which clothes to buy, which road to pick, what to do now or later.... This is something that everyone will face on a daily basis. You might not notice it, the amount of time you spent in hesitation and indecisive can be summed up to a great amount of time that extend the spending time in a single activity, and add up into the total amount of time you wasted in a day.

For example, you walk out from your place, you wonder if you should take your lunch at cafe A, or cafe B today. After some brain war to compare between cafe A and B. You finally decided on cafe A, so you walk to the direction where cafe A is. When you reach cafe A, you think about what seat you should take. Should it be near the door, or inside? After a short while, you chosen your seats, so the waiter bring you the menu. Then you look through the menu, and consider if you want to take rice, noodle, or other option. If you choose rice, which rice you should take... and if you choose noodle, what noodle is best... and finally, you decided to order the particular food. When you done with your meal, there is no waiter around, so you probably consider if you should keep waiting until someone is around so you can call the bill, or go to the cashier counter to look for someone....

The above scenario is something really common and could happen to anyone. If you consider the whole process, from the time when you consider which cafe to go, which seat to take, which meal to take, how to make your payment.... all these small activities and behavior are full of hesitations and indecisive. Each of them might take few seconds or minutes, but when you add them up, your hesitation time might double up the amount of time you out to take your lunch until you back to your own place.

In order to learn to make quick decision, you may take some time to search on Google to find article about quick decision making. This article, "5 Tips for Lightning-Fast Decision Making" by Ericson Ay Mires pretty summed up all the great tips to make quick and smart decisions so that you won't need to spend your time in hesitation which in the end, you can save the necessary time into doing something that create better value.

4. Utilize Your Time in Non-Working Environment

Now this is my favorite part and it's the most practical method. Above list are thoughts and idea that is appropriate for your mind. But having great wisdom itself won't make you a highly knowledgeable person. In the end of the day, you need to know how to practice the knowledge and wisdom.

Bear this in mind: Every single seconds you spent on doing nothing that related to making your life better is wasting your time. now, you need to identify the moment when you are not in the situation of working on your desire tasks and the way you can perform to do something beneficial and meaningful instead of wasting the precious time, like the situations below:

• Waiting for your food in the restaurant. There is no absolute answer on how long your food going to reach your table. Even if the serving time is fast, you can spend the few minutes to do some reading or writing that is related for your stuff. Best thing in this situation is, you have a table. So utilize this great and comfortable opportunity.
• Waiting for someone. The worst case could be standing & waiting for someone beside the road or under the hot sun. You don't have any chair or table so it's not gonna be comfortable. In this case, you can utilize your brain to perform some planning and thinking that is related to your stuff. If you used to bring a small bag, keep a notebook with you (conventional notebook made from papers, because it don't consume battery and you don't have to risk doing other things) and write down your thoughts. Just avoid being too focus and always becareful with your surrounding.
• In public train or bus. Let's skip the moment when it's too crowded and you can't do anything but standing and beware of your belongings. During the non-peak hour when you get the chances to sit down or stay away from the crowd, that's the time when you can utilize your mind to do some reading, thinking or planning again. Better than just looking around and waiting to reach your destination.
• In the queue. This might not be a good time to do something thinking or planning because you need to beware when people trying to cut queue (too common in Malaysia) or try not to miss your turn if you have a queue number. High focus thinking or planning can make you miss your number, so better not. It's still good to do some reading or writing to spend time.
• In the traffic jam. I'm not encouraging you to lose your focus while driving on the road. Stuck in the traffic jam is something that you wish, but can't really help to change anything. You can't do any reading, thinking or planning because you need to focus driving on the road. You can still listen to some educational channel or CD, which means you need to prepare it before you get on the road. But if your music player is spoiled, too bad then.

5. Setup Tasks Schedule

Another practical method to make sure that you are working on your desire stuff. To do this, you will have to make some planning to know what you want to do, and how you want to practice in your life to make things come true.

When you successfully come out with a list of to-do stuff, you need to fill them into your life and execute your plan.

Here's an example of how I setup my schedule with my to-do tasks in a week:

Monday	Research & Writing Blog
Tuesday	Research & Documentation
Wednesday	Study list of food that benefit body system
Thursday	Practice dancing
Friday	Read Novel

When I have a fixed schedule, I print out and stick the paper on my room table so that I know what I'm suppose to do today. Better than hesitating what I feel like doing now or which task I should go for. You can have your own version of time schedule in any way you like. And it's best if you can list down as detail as possible so that you can just follow according to the plan. You can perform the same tasks continuously for few days before you start another task.

Always remember that the key is to have a proper plan before you create the time schedule and follow the plan accordingly. Do not attempt to skip it as you like, and do not risk forgetting your task schedule as time goes by.

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First experience dialing 999 for emergency

Case Date: 28th September 2014

Today when I was around Kuen Ching high school walking to Tun Sambathan monorail to head to Timesquare, I was about to reach the bridge where it connect to brickfields and monorail station, one malay aunty walked down from the bridge looking worried and tell me: "Boy, ada satu lelaki baring atas jambatan macam sudah mati o... Nampak macam kena pukul tetapi dompet dia masich ada... banyak darah kat badan dia..". Then I said I will go and take a look, as she seems rushing back or too afraid to do something. It's also understandable that the people here prefer not to involve them self in such business. Especially after so many cases of fake injuries to rob and harming people.

When I walk up the stairs and reaching the top of it, immediately i see one man lying on the floor near the staircase. Both of his eyes wide open and lying there, emotionless, without any sign of breathing and no movement at all. Then i thought to myself: "This time kao lik holy liao.... a living salty fish in front of me....". Before I finish thinking that line, his eyes suddenly roll to my direction and look at me. At first I felt like a creepy dead eyes staring at me but soon after that I know he is still alive.

I didn't see any fatal wound on him at first glance. Just abit of bruise here and there. Probably got hit by something or fall down. I found a wallet beside him, not sure if its belong to him or what. Quite a lot of bloodstain around him. Most of the bloodstain are dried so it seems he was there for quite some time.

I ask him what happen and is he okay or not but it seems he is not listening to me. At first he try to get up, so I lend him a hand. Then he stand there like not sure where he want to go. Then i notice there are bloods coming from his foot. Base on his injury, I think i should call the police. Since he is not answering me anything and I can't be with him for few hours. So I took out my phone from my pocket and before I manage to turn on my phone, he suddenly lost his balance and bang on the floor. I failed to hold him because I was trying to use my phone. Then, he still try to get up after that and seems the bang on the floor is nothing to me. I try to ask him to lie down and don't move but he still not listening. He try to grab on anything he could to maintain his balance and stand up. He even grab my hand very tight and his nail left a scratch on my skin. I was afraid that he going to attack me or some sort.... Luckily he didn't.

I don't think I have other choice but to call for help. So i go to the monorail station and look for police bantuan since I saw few of them there sometimes. When I reach the station, there is no police there. So i inform the worker that I found one injured man and I need police to help on this. Then the worker call the police bantuan. Apparently the polis is not in the station but somewhere around the area. Later, the worker tell me that the police bantuan is in charge of the monorail area, they don't have power to do anything. I was like.... okay lo.... I was expecting that the polis can at least call for help even if he don't have the power at places other than the station. Then i return back to the place and make a call to 999 and immediately got respond within seconds (Who says calling 999 no one pick up eh?). I explain the situation and request for ambulance for that man.

After some time, I was still standing at the bridge near to the man to observe him. The monorail worker bring a police bantuan over to the place and check on that man. That man still repeating the same behavior: get up. try to stand still then bang. At first when the polis bantuan arrive on that spot, he look around the scene and I was telling him not sure what's happening to that man. Then the polis bantuan told me he got attack on his forehead by wine bottle because there are a few wine bottles around the stair, and his leg got injured and bleed because of some glass bottle pieces on several spot of the floor. I gotta say that's really impressive because I never notice that after standing there so long.

I was asked by the dont-know-who-and-which hospital people to wait for the ambulance at the monorail station since it's easy for vehicle to reach there. So I wait there for like 15 minutes........................ lol. Then the ambulance came and do their stuff. The police bantuan also call for other police to help before that. While I was waiting for the ambulance, the polis bantuan was there watching that man. He told me that the man repeat standing up and falling down for 4 times. That's kinda make me wondering, why the polis don't do something about it?

The paramedic (not sure if this is the right word, referring to the people from the ambulance with medical equipment) try to talk to that man but he received the same response. The paramedic ask me to talk mandarin with the man so I did, but still result in same thing. The polis and paramedic discuss about something in which I'm not sure what they are discussing about as I'm not good with the typical malays conversation, I just heard something like chit-chating and joking before the other paramedic from the ambulance bring over the some-kind-of-bed-for-injured-person. It wasn't too difficult to put that man on that thing because he was lying on the floor that time.

So the police bantuan and the paramedic tied the hand and leg of that man on that something like a bed with bandage to stop him from moving and trying to get up and bring him over to the ambulance. That man didn't struggle when he was being tied but he lift up his head and like wandering what's happening. Then, i thanked the people around there and case closed.

One thing I learn today: You don't play prank call with 999, they can tell you your full name without you mentioning any details of yourself.

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Unhealty Food & Beverage Strategy in Malaysia

I am a frequent outside-food consumer due to work and other social activities that I need to perform outside, so I rarely have the chance to cook or taste mum's cooking, and I had lots of thoughts and opinion on the outside-food that I experience. But let's not talk about how much MSG or any unhealthy method that the food maker practice, you can read tons of them with Google search.

I call myself some kind of health conscious person. However, I don't avoid fried or oily food, or any form of unhealthy food that I know at all cost. I do consume them but I always limit how long I should stop taking fried food after I had it once, and I consume a drinks that has maximum 30grams of sugar per day. For my usual practice, I usually think about how much protein and fats are contained in the food before I order them. But I won't go to the extend to check how much grams of protein or fats in this steam chicken, vege, favor rice.... then sums up the amount of the protein, carb, fats, and calories I had consumed. I just study a little on information related to healthy eating and the type of balance meal we should consume in a daily basis to ensure our body can have sufficient energy source not only to perform our daily work and activities, but also to ensure we can maintain a healthy body as we ages instead of the other way round.

Obviously, the reason why I created this post is because I realize to achieve a healthy & balanced meal in the outside food environment is a huge challenge for consumer. If you are an outside-food consumer who wish to look for good food that consists of good quality and worth, I believe you are very familiar with the experiences below.

The ingredients are there but the portion.....

"Image/picture is for illustration purpose only". I don't recall seeing this text printed on the menu in most restaurants and cafe, but this is the first thing I had in mind when the actual food presented on the table in front of me. Follow by a great disappointment that the image/picture is too much differences in reality. Although I am, just like you, used to it as it happen at least two times a day for casual outside-food consumer.

It's not only the matter of size where the image/picture shows that the meat stick is suppose to same length with the plate but the actual food turns out that the meat stick is as long as a thumb drive, it's also really common to order a chicken ball noodle that has half a bowl of chicken balls in the the bowl and it turns out only two chicken balls are given to you; A salmon butter teppanyaki that turns out only consists of one 0.5cm height salmon slice with no butter taste, and much more. Believe me, the meat stick as short as thumb drive, two chicken balls, and 0.5cm salmon slice with no butter taste is my true personal experience.

The problem? We are indirectly cheated with the illustration that given to us before we see the actual portion. Especially in the case where we order salmon butter bento where the salmon is the main dishes in this meal, yet it's only 0.5cm with some rice and tiny little side dishes, and it cost around RM15.90. If you order chicken rice out there with RM15.90, you can at least confirm that you are full and chicken give you tons of protein, while tiny slice of salmon don't give you much omega 3 and fish oil. So in the end, if you measure by both cost and worthiness (feeling full or not), it's not worth

Healthier Meal = Higher Cost

When I started my budgeting plan to reduce unnecessary spending in my daily life, I also tried to plan for a list of food I should consume for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks in a daily basis. All the food in my list not only need to be less expensive, but also need to be healthy or at least not-so unhealthy. And I spent tons of effort and time from that time until now, which a few months had pass but I still failed to come out with an expected list. Because eating healthy and cheap food is really challenging here in KL.

Say, if I ask you to recommend me a place to get cheap and healthy sandwich. What's your best reckon? I know sandwiches are available in too much of places such as 7-11, Jusco, bakery shops, and even restaurants. But if we talk about healthy, the sandwiches that you can find contain of two tiny slice of bread, and some tuna or egg in the middle. The cheapest I could find is RM2.00. Let's save the calculation part. How worthy it is for two slice of bread with little content in the middle where we can always pay a few ringgits more to get all the relevant ingredients to produce more than three sandwiches with more stuff in it? Not to mention the tuna or egg can only be seen when you look at the middle part of the bread but not the other side. And it's even cheap and can be considered couldn't get any nutrition at all. I can get a mixed rice by adding two ringgits.

Of course, it's nonsense if anyone here expecting to eat really great food as in healthy and tasty yet really cheap, especially for those restaurant, cafe, and any food stall in the shopping mall and having their own shop. They need to pay rent and spend for supplier, maintenance..... to cut things short, they are setting their price in a way where they could afford to continue their business while earn a little more for their own life. But I still need to emphasize that, despite understanding their difficulty of expenses on all those expected and unexpected stuff to ensure their business could continue, me as a consumer just find it not reasonable and sometimes ridiculous that if I want to eat healthy meal, I have to go to expensive restaurant such as vegetarian shops (which are way more expensive that non-vegetarian shop), Subways, Simple Life, Beyond Veggie and other businesses that promote food for various health benefits. It's really difficult for people with average income to take "healthy" meal here once in a week. What's more, our primary school text book strongly emphasize that we have to take healthy meal everyday.

Furthermore, the so-call healthy meal we can find out there, what so healthy about them? I'm a usual customer for Subways especially breakfast. White bread or any other bread with various nutrition for your selection, choose your lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onion, pepper, pickles, olives, and then the sauce. It's true that the bread and veggie provide lots of nutrition, but adding the sauce increase your sugar intake and other stuff in the sauce. It's true that you able to consume various nutrition with such meal, but if measure each ingredient by grams and calculate how much protein and carb you can get, the figure is really small and it's definitely don't worth RM10++. Of course, the problem don't exists only in Subways, if you have few dine in experience in other restaurant that promote healthy life and meal, you can find many things that actually contradict with their initial idea. In the end, cost is still a major issue.

Too much of unwanted ingredients

This issue is quite different from what's mentioned above because I consider this one quite serious as it directly related to how much our body receive the adequate nutrition and benefits to support our body system. I believe there is no problem to find a restaurant or cafe that can easily make you full in an instant. No matter how big or small the portion is. If you take closer look and taste on the food that you eat, it's always full of taste but it's not the real taste of the food. It's the taste of something else that add much more taste into the food.

We all love tasty food. The tastier, the better. But natural food can't be tasty, so adding lots of spice, soy sauce, salt, sugar and etc is a convenient and standard way to make food more tasty. But all these are also well known for causing diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart attack, and all those common thing we will face as we ages. It's safe to consume very little of it in a daily basis, but the amounts of those food being added into the food out there are too much.

Not only that the overdosed of unhealthy ingredients produce certain damage to our body system, the usage of butter and other less well-known spices also used to make us feel like we had enough of our meal, not because we are really full but because the spices are reducing our appetite to continue eating. That's why we easily get hungry a few hours later. In the long run, we are not consuming sufficient food for our body, and we are consuming more on the spices, butter, and oil that give more bads and goods.

As usual, I do not have any statistic of how much unwanted ingredient and spices are included in outside food, but I believe you have many chances to taste it.

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The Typical Breed of Malaysia Public Transport Passenger

Taking on the Rapid Bus, Monorail, Starline, Putra LRT, and especially KTM, can be an extremely dynamic experience that save us from the need of riding roller coaster in the theme park. Personally, KTM is my favorite. No matter how many years have passed, KTM is still remain the same thing for me, which is known as Kenderaan Terlambat Malaysia (Malaysia's Slowest Vehicle). Even after their upgrade...... Oh wait, I'm not here to talk about the quality of services and the way their manage the schedule and so on. My bad......

I'm a common passenger of public transport. Public transport in Malaysia is consider good in the sense that you can reach all type of places and you can depend on public transports to go from north to south, then to the west and east, and make another huge turn to repeat the same thing, and in the end you had travel to so many places. Traveling to many places are good, and the best part is you also meet different type of passenger. The more you have experience being a passenger of different type of public transports, the more you see how dynamic it is as all ugly behavior are being practiced in a daily manner.

You probably encountered them already, or being one of them yourself. Either way, we don't want to consider the passengers below to be a good role model for the next generation to follow.

1. The Pole-Leaner

There exist a certain type of beings that immediately look for a metal pole and "attach" on it with his/her back when they get into the train. It's not a big deal to them if someone or many people need to grab or hold on the pole. No matter how crowded the train is, this being will stick to the pole closely for the entire journey and only "detach" from the pole when they need to get out of the train or, finally some empty seats are available. But that's only provided they desire to sit on the first place.

2. The Side-Queue

At the two appropriate queue line, it's common to appear another side queue all of a sudden. The (initially) correct double queue line then result into three to six queue line in an instant. If you have not meet this type of queue, it's either you are too new in Malaysia, or you are one of them.

3. The Side-Queue Supporter

How do you call those people that stand behind those who take the first action at the front line? Same concept.

4. The Early-Bird

This type practice the mindset of those who take the first action win. But for this one, it apply to people who are suppose to wait and let the people out from the train before dashing in. Look closely, you definitely find the people outside the bus/train to take the first step into the vehicle when the door just open. A crowded train or not is not an issue here. It just happen.

5. The Door-Admirer

What they always do right after they pass through the door and get into the bus/train, they are in complete standstill. I always think this to myself: "There is no crowded bus/train in Malaysia. There are only people who are not willing to move away from the door". It's too common for me to have too much space while looking at the bunch of door-admirer sticking with each other around their idol. One disaster is when the Early-Bird turn into a Door-Admirer.

6. The Unofficial-Pusher

This is suppose to be the practice in Japan and China only. But these type suddenly occur, usually without any true knowledge and not hired by any official group, use the unprofessional pusher method to make sure people in the front will be forced into the vehicle at all cost. Any injury? No insurance claims for that.

7. The Virus-Broadcaster

It's always common to get ill and unable to control your cough and flu, yet you got no choice but to take the public transport. It's just different when these kind practice an uncovering method to spread their cough and flu virus freely in the public transport closed area with extra loud announcement with free atomic rewards to everyone.

8. The Absolute-Defense

An "Excuse Me" do zero damage to their defense. They notice the tiny obstacle trying to break through but they are just in their usual post and behavior: Defend their position no matter what or who trying to get through.

9. The Heavy-Blocker

A suit case or a huge plastic bag consists of unknown stuff is the common blocker. It's just there regardless of the discussion of a much suitable place for these stuff to be placed so that other passengers find it easier to get in and get out. A Heavy-Blocker turning into an Absolute-Defense and/or Door-Admirer is another disaster.

10. The Fast-Seats-Filler

Seats became available when the vehicle reach a certain destination. When the people trying to get out from the vehicle by walking straight to the door, there exist one or a few kind walk past the door to block those who are getting out or going in for the main goal of filling the empty seats as soon as possible.

11. The Anything-Seats-Filler

Destined to be twin with the Fast-Seat-Filler, they put whatever stuff they have on the empty seats to proclaim that their stuff are contain of high value. Even if it's just a small plastic bag of pisang goreng.

12. The Make-Myself-At-Home

"No matter what position is this, be relax~~" is the usual practice. No matter how crowded it is, there are still spaces for them stand like Michael Jackson's Moonwalk post while playing with their smart phone; Or stand and shake with their body in any way they desire even if it means causing more discomfort for those who are feeling really packed. Oh and, don't be surprise to see someone or group of people playing invisible guitar, drum, or any type of instruments.

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