Grateful to My Primary School Teacher

I wrote the short paragraph below to thank my teacher, who played a big part in making who I am. It’s the time of teachers day, and I think the paragraph is still relevant – so I publish it here again.

Having gone all the way to doctoral level in the journey of study was never easy. A lot of people have supported me. If you ask me who I would thank the most, I would date it back all the way to my first 3 years in my primary school in Mantin, Negeri Sembilan. My form teacher then was Mdm Luo Ai Qun (罗爱群老师). She took care of me, advised me, and inspired me. And I still remember she pointed out to me how much I must be grateful to my mother, who worked on two laborious jobs at that point in time. “Express gratitude to your mother by studying diligently.” She said. For the next 30 years, I did precisely that.

I have made a card (see below) to thank her.

Structural Approach

Life is fluid.

That fluidity creates ambiguity, uncertainty, confusion and loss of direction. The solution to fluidity problem, in engineering, as well as in life, is to put in structure. Just like civil engineers put up structure to fix the positions of beams, wall and floors, structure in our lives fix many aspects of our lives: time, space, social interactions, as well as other aspects of our activities.

The way structures work is quite simple: it limits choices – time, space, people and ways of doing things.

What? In this age of freedom of choice, who want to limit choices? You say.

Wait, please hold your horse. Let’s not get into the negative sides of structure. You probably will appreciate its values as you starting to see my points.

In fact, structure is very much in all aspects of your life: (1) you are in a family structure. That limits what you can and should do to your parents, children, etc. Their expectations towards you is quite firmed up; so are your expectations toward them. You have promised (if not vowed) to your spouse that you won’t do something that will destroy your relationship. So your family function properly. (2) You are in an organization, a company. Your role is prescribed. Your deliverables are specified. Your working hours are stipulated in the employees’ handbook. You follow the Do’s and Don’ts of the company. (3) You probably have promised your priest or master that you will be a religious person. You won’t kill, steal, lie, commit adultery, drink, smoke, etc. This community structure keeps you being good.

So do you still think structure is no good?

Yet, you may say, we need freedom.

Fair enough, but you need to do it wisely. How?

You use structure to your advantage. Here are few ways that I have done it and I find it useful to help me:

1. When I wanted to become a vegetarian, I simply told everyone I know that I will do it. I established a structure of expectations. So becoming vegetarian was never a struggle. You can use this structure if you want to quit smoking, gambling, or any other kind of small or big vices
2. I got married early. I cemented the commitment from my wife. Therefore eliminating major sources of doubts that we are not meant for each other. Then we focused on building our family and bringing up our next generation.
3. When I decided to go for my doctoral study. I told my lecturer, friends, family members. I told them them when I am going to start, what will ensue and what kind of support I need from them. I set off the journey and completed the study. I survived because I have put in the structure.

In fact there is an entire discipline of applying structure to organizations, called organization theory. It is a boring subject, really. I studied it, and even taught it. It is only when I apply to my personal life, the meaning of structure comes to life.

Theory of Constraints

Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a philosophy of management and improvement originally developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. A trained physicist, Goldratt became and “management  guru” with his book “The Goal”.

Goldratt probably was laughed at by his academic peers, for coming up with such a simple idea. The theory didn’t even have an equation – quite a shame for a physicist.

But Goldratt’s shame in the academic world turned into fame in the practical managerial world. I wasn’t accidental. The theory, which I think is more like a principle, works.

Not only it works in the job of a manager, it works almost everywhere. It works for a student, a parent, a worker, a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, even a priest.

The TOC simply instructs us to find the bottleneck to our current performance, remove it, then work on the next bottleneck. Then do it again, and again.

The key value of TOC is not what it tells you to work on, but what not to work on. ie., don’t waste time on non-bottleneck.

Simple, right?

But how many of us are just so undisciplined to keep work on non-constraints?

Why? Because bottlenecks are often where our weaknesses lie. It is where our fear is. In short, it is the place where we have avoided – often unconsciously.

Take an example, if you are afraid of public speaking, it will drag your career down for years, until you decided one day to face it and make a breakthrough. Otherwise you get stuck forever.

The Weighty Seven Pounds

I don’t watch movies often nowadays. Even less often is to watch a movie that really move me – the ones that keep me thinking about it hours or days after watching them. To me, good movies are the ones that make me think about life more deeply.

Seven Pounds is one of those rare movies. To me, it is the best I have watched.

The writer, director and producer have pushed to the limit how extreme guilt and compassion interplay and make a person extraordinary.

If you have not watched it, you should get one now. The key is don’t find out what the story is about before you watch it. Just watch it, you deserve a good movie like this one.

让舌头打结的绕口令

My Friend Lilian wrote an interesting article in UPSR-TODAY.com,

要学好华语，不仅是要懂得写、懂得读，而且还要读的标准。这可不简单。汉语拼音有时真叫人头疼，特别是翘舌音、平舌音、前鼻音、后鼻音等。什么时候念要翘舌音，什么时候要念平舌音，都给混淆了。这也因为是我们的懒散、不认真的学习态度，往往只是得过且过，不多思想。。。

Full text here

Announcement: Recycling This Sunday

Event:           Penang Desa Relau 1 Recycling Program

Objectives:   To cultivate caring and harmonious community via recycle & sorting activity.

• Date: 8 March 2009 (This Sunday)
• Time: 9.00 am - 12.00 pm
• Venue: Desa Relau 1
• Organizer: Tzu Chi Foundation

You, Yes YOU, are invited to come join us.

Bring along your old:

1. Paper ( Newspaper, books, etc)
2. Plastic
3. Cloth
4. Glass ( bottle/tins)
5. Aluminium cans
6. Metal cans
7. Electronic waste ( computers, printers, etc)
8. Battery

No Shortcut - It's 5 Years

Short-term thinking - or short-termism as some call it - is prevalent nowadays.

Many four-year degree programs in Malaysia were shortened to three years because 'the labour market' needs more graduates. Not many people attend Sixth-Form anymore - it is deemed a waste of time. Many people hop jobs to get pay rise and promotions as frequent as every one or two years. Many businesses were started with expectation that they can become wildly successful in just one or two years.

If you have been reading advertisement in the newspaper in recent months, you would surely saw a lot of 'get rich quick' schemes - through options trading, internet business, etc - which supposedly give you tens of thousands of Ringgits within few days or weeks.

The net results of short-termism were apparent: many failures, and long term success forgone. It is like plugging fruits that are not ripen - the fruits are not edible and you lost the chance to taste the nice ripen fruits in the future.

How long should we take to do something well?

I would think five years would be a reasonable time frame. I took 5 years to get my first degree in engineering. And another 5 years for a doctoral degree in management. Yet I still feel that I am just touching the rudiment of the subjects. Most doctors takes 6 years before they can practice medicine. A few successful friends of mine took 5 years to have their companies stabilized and made profit.

In spiritual practice, novice Buddhist monks have to practice under a teacher at least for 5 years before he is allowed to be independent. Many successful spiritual teachers in the West has practiced at least 5 years in the East before they went back to the West to teach.

Even great thinkers like Peter Drucker took three to four years to learn a new subject:

Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject, but they are enough to understand it.  (Requoted from here)

Jim Collins and his team took 5 years to fully understand what makes great companies and report their finding in the book Good to Great.

In Germany, many graduate students refuse to graduate until they fully understand what they study - and that usually take many more years than the average period of university programs. I am amazed by their serious attitude in learning and their willingness to spend time to master their knowledge. This is the type of attitude we should emulate.

There are not many 5-years in our lives. Assuming we live 50 adult years, we probably can do about 10 things really well throughout our life time. This means we have to consciously choose things which are important to us and spend a good 5-years on each of them.