Fight Email Addiction - Take a Break

When I worked for an MNC, I used to have 100+ emails everyday. So much so that psychologically I equated my ability to respond to all emails by the end of the day as being productive! At one point, I felt I was not living if I wasn't reading my emails - this feeling was strong during the weekends. This syndrome is bad and is widespread. Google engineers got enough feedback to put up a feature to enable you to take a break from email (Google's Gmail), see here.

Last Lecture of Randy Pausch - a Must-see

On September 18, 2007, Carnegie Mellon Virtual Reality professor Randy Pausch delivered his last lecture that made a lot of people rethink their lives.

I watched the full length video and was deeply touched. I remember a saying: it is not how many years you live in your life, it is how much life in your years that matters. This is the man who have lived his life to the fullest. He has a lot of learnings to share.

See it here.

Randy died recently on July 25, 2008.

Growinglane: A Fast Lane or Slow Lane

If you are familiar with the motivation industry, you should know how the "motivators" pump you up and get you to set extraordinary goals. You probably have demanded yourself to earn one million buck within one year (despite the fact that you only earn 3,000 bucks a month), have effortless "passive income" going into your bank in two years, and then retire and do whatever you like by the age of 40. If you don't impose yourself these goals, you are deemed hopeless and have no chance to "make it" in your lifetime.

A case in point: If you have not watched "The Secret", you must have been living in a cave for the past decades. See how the authors make you believe that you can make your fortune by just believing.

As this motivation industry flourishes, there are a lot of people who have gone through the "workshops" or "seminars". So there are more and more people setting audacious goals.

However, not many of them realize that to achieve something, your need factors (a term used by economists), or conditions (a term used by Buddhists), or blessing (a term used by Muslims, Christians, etc). You can put in a lot of effort, but if the factors are not there, you just won't make it. Okay, the motivational speakers have asked you to push yourself. So you do. You jump into fields that you are not having any strength. You start selling insurance, mutual funds, option trading, or some MLM, or some forms of "get rich quick" schemes. You start online businesses, blogs, hoping that you will make it big one day. You rush yourself through, and neglected your health, your spiritual life, your family a long the way.

Many people get stuck.

Success doesn't come with force. It comes when you and the factors (or conditions, or blessing) are ready.

Over the years, I realized that the biggest factor required for success is time. Your skill need time to develop. You need time to build your products and services. Your customers take time to get familiar with you and have confidence in you. You need time to build your marketing channels. The list goes on. So you need time.

So if time is required, then don't rush it.

We have at least two options: (1) rush it, because you need to retire at 40, doesn't matter if you ruin your health, since you will have all the money to treat your failing health after you "make it";  (2) take your time, enjoy the journey, take good care of your health, and live long enough so that you have more time to grow your wealth, and to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

For me, I will take the second option on my growinglane.

UPSR-TODAY is 1/2 Year Old

We started UPSR-TODAY.com in June this year. It was an experimental web site, with no big expectation. We initially wanted to share our thoughts on how we go through the life as parents of UPSR-bound children.

The web site picked up quite a bit a of traffic during UPSR exam in September, and even more when UPSR result came out early this month. Looks like the web site is worth something.

A big thanks to the chief editor cum administrator Ms Tan, and other contributing authors - Jimmy Keng, Jia Xin, Dr Chee, etc.

The Dark Dragons

When a nation grows, it grows in all directions: good and bad. And the fastest growing nation is China.

No doubt Chinese has made significant progress in its economy, sports, etc, but its dark sides show an equal amount of progress as well.

Now Chinese accounts for 67% of the web sites in the world that have malicious software, those that try to steal your personal data (details here). These 'malwares' put a small piece of software into your computer (through your internet downloads), collect as much information from your computer, and send back to the site owner. Then the information is used for fraud purposes. People who put malwares in your computer are robbers and thieves - period.

If we translate this virtual crime into real-world one, we can say that 2/3 of the thefts are committed by Chinese - this is something that shames the Chinese. Or put it another way, China has 1/6 of the world population, but 4/6 of the thieves are Chinese.

This is not something that we can take lightly. Just because cyber crimes are not easily punishable, it doesn't mean that it is OK to commit those crimes.

Chinese has one big problem: its absolute admiration of secular values. Everything is measured by how much wealth you have. Everything else is secondary.

Someone, be it government leaders, or NGOs, or concerned social reformers, have to do something to halt this trend. How? I don't have an answer. May be you do.

Holding on and Uniting for Life

Just before I took a sip of water from my glass, I observed that there is a piece of black 'dirt' in my glass, floating on the water. Driven by curiosity, I looked more closely.

It looks like a few dots of dust, not moving. Then I realized that the dots are actually small ants, holding on to each other, keeping each other afloat.

This reminds me of the scene in which people are struggling to survive after their ship sank, where they hold on to each other, hoping that the rescue team will arrive soon.

With the hope that these ants are still alive, I quickly took a piece of tissue paper, and scooped them up. They immediately start crawling on the paper. I then put them into a dry place, and wish them all the best.

The Key to Spiritual Growth - Take Up Some Practices

Religion means different things to different people. Regardless of what religion you believe in, there is one thing in common: you benefit from it the most if you seriously pick up some practices.

A lot of my Muslim friends, who take fasting seriously during Ramadan month, have strong realization about life through the practice of fasting. During fasting, they really feel the spiritual uplifting at the 'gut' level literary - instead of just intellectual understanding about their religion.

With the liberalization of our society, many people take a casual attitude towards their religions, therefore we have many "Christmas" Christians, "Wesak Day" Buddhists, "Thaipusam" Hindus, etc. If we see our religion just as rituals, or seeing them as mere intellectual philosophies, then we won't benefit from them much. Without personal experience at the 'gut' level of our religion, there is no spiritual gain. Therefore, I would say that taking up religious practices is the key to spiritual growth.

But we have to understand that the practices are not the end itself, they are merely path to spiritual growth. I took up a few practices some 20 years ago: vegetarianism. abstain from killing - including mosquitos and ends, and not taking liquor. I knew at that time that these practices themselves will not make me wise, but their side effects will. Such practices demand strong mindfulness of my physical and mental states. When I stop taking meat, I need to be mindful of what I eat. When I stop killing, I need to be mindful of my spontaneous response to events like mosquito bites - which usually is giving the mosquitos a slap and kill them. A stronger mindfulness has helped me tremendously in my life for the past many years.

Other people who took on practices like daily prayer, meditation, long term commitment to charity and disaster relief works, chanting, celibacy, etc, usually has a lot of great personal experiences to share.

You may ask: is giving donation a good practice? My view is that it is definitely a good practice. Just that we need to do it regular enough and do it with compassion rather than with intention of getting name and fame. Practices are not one-off action, but a repeated and conscious and habitual action.

So, the key to spiritual growth is taking up serious religious practices.

讲座：攀登人生大山 （谢丽华博士）

如果您要活得精彩，那您就必须爬每个人的生命中都有的那座山。且听谢丽华博士为您分享她爬山的艰辛与喜悦。

时间：25/7/2008 星期五 8:00pm - 9:30pm
地点：槟城 Beach Street 静思书轩

Attention: the Currency of Livelihood

Ayya Medhānandī last week talked about Right Livelihood during a meditation class. She pointed out the currency of our livelihood as a practitioner of the dharma is attention. Just as we need dollar or ringgit to support our lives, we need attention to support our spiritual lives.

I think the fact that attention being the currency of livelihood goes beyond spiritual life. Over the years, I have repeatedly noticed that how much I can accomplished, be it at study, at work, or in relationship, entirely depends on how much attention I can give to the task on hand. Without focused attention, things takes much longer, and sometimes failed, to bear fruit.

No wonder we need to pay attention, just as we pay the currency (or money).

Test posting

Just a test posting