Happiness or Success

Late night on Tuesday, 27/11/2007, I was watching the movie “Devil wears Prada” which prompted me to write this post. What do we choose or want in life, happiness or success ? According to Wikipedia, happiness is an emotion in which one experiences feelings ranging from contentment and satisfaction to bliss and intense joy. Where as success is a level or social status or achievement of an objective or goal.

Some of them don’t want success, they only want happiness. They say, I don’t care whatever, so long I’m happy, I’m fine. I want to live a happy life. This group of people are contented with whatever they have achieve thus far and not eager to achieve more. They enjoy life, going to movies, concerts and listen to lots of music. Can this group be categorised as mediocre in life.

The other group want to achieve success. They work hard towards this. For them success will bring happiness. This group, so-called high achievers will work through all obstacles and normally don’t rest or waste time on things they feel unnecessary. For them going to movies or hanging around at mamak restaurants are futile things to do. Reading quality books and talking about things of substance do matter a lot.

If you ask me, I want both. Achieving the objectives of my life will bring happiness and joy. I feel a combination of both happiness and success should be a good choice for life. You can’t be on the extreme sides of either happiness or success. If you are hoping too much to always be happy u can’t, coz there will be at times u r sad, feel down and frustrated with life. The same thing you can’t be always successful in life. Sometimes u will encounter failures. How to deal with those failures in order to achieve success will be part of the happiness in life.

Note: what’s your choice?

Why support the inefficient and ineffective

Talking about organisation, everybody wants an efficient and effective organisation. If it's a private sector organisation, efficiency and effectiveness will increase productivity which leads to higher profits. In a public sector organisation, it will improve service delivery to the general public. Efficiency means doing things right and effectiveness means doing the right things.

Having said about efficiency and effectiveness, things just work the other way round. The inefficient and ineffective ones are getting all the support. I wonder whether they will improve and get better or become further inefficient and ineffective. Organisations obtaining things easily will never try to improve themselves. The saying goes, if you get things easily in life, you tend to take things easy. On the other hand, if you have to work hard to get things, then you tend to appreciate and work even harder.

Another aspect is benchmarking. Organisations need to benchamark themselves against the best in the world. However, organisations in Malaysia tend to benchmark themselves against the other players within the country and claim to be the best. You can be the best but what does it mean if you are the best among the inefficient and ineffective ones.

The way decisions are made need to changed. If we are talking about high performance culture and competitiveness, why we continue to support the ineffcient and ineffective ones.

Timeless World

Thomas L. Friedman in his book “The World Is Flat” wrote how globalization had made the world so flat. If it’s night in the US and people sleep over there and the people in India, China and Malaysia will be working. This can be used as an advantage in reducing high cost of production or cost of living. For example, medical bills are exorbitant in the US. The doctors in the US can take x-rays or medical tests of a patient during the daytime (night in India) and transmit via internet to India where the laboratories here can read the x-rays or other tests during the daytime (night in US) and send the results back to US. When the doctor comes to work the next day, the results are already in his computer. In this case both time and cost can be saved.

As for me, it’s a timeless world rather than a flat world. People even within a country, some are sleeping and some are working. We have more and more shops operating 24 hours. 7 eleven and petrol kiosks open 24 hours. Now even McDonalds operate 24 hours. (Of course mamak restaurants open 24 hrs). There will be more and more shops, supermarkets and departmental stores that will operate 24 hours to cater for the needs of the people. In the future, you can just buy or do anything you want, anytime of the day. Let’s say u wake-up 2.00 am and just feel like buying Britney Spears or Spice Girls CDs you may do so. If businesses in the future want to survive competition and want to be different from others, they need to do so. Businesses will be innovative and cater for the needs of the people. It’s a timeless world.

Malaysian Mentality

Last night, I meet-up with three old friends at Devi’s Corner in Bangsar. One of them I have never met since varsity days. He is Sutung Umar RS, a writer (short stories and poems) and journalist (formerly with Berita Harian). He is now a freelance writer. The other two guys whom I do meet (though once a year) were Riffien (my brother angkat) attached to Maybank and Hasnuddin (Ambassdor to Jordan and Iraq). We talked about varsity days and wondered what happened to other friends, some of whom we bumped into and some we don’t know their whereabouts.

Sutung did brought-up some interesting issues. He said Malaysians don’t read quality materials, they like to flip through newspapers or books but don’t really take time to ponder matters written in the articles. He was telling how the sales of Berita Harian went down but the sales of Harian Metro went-up. Malaysians like to read sensational things and gossips (yeah, in fact every person u meet will gossip about something). He was also telling us, Malaysians don’t write quality things now because the writers cater for the taste of the younger generations who like sensational and mysterious things. That’s why the sales of Mangga or URTV are sustainable and even make profits but sales of magazines such as Dewan Sastera or Masyarakat are trending downwards. Then, he went on telling us that he is involved in MakYong and Main Teri (Its “main teri” and not main puteri). He said most of the books on our traditional Malay culture were written by foreigners (though they made some factual errors). The reference books for Wayang Kulit, Mak Yong and even Batik printing were all authored by foreigners. He said that during the colonial days, the administrators who were mostly Englishmen wrote lots of books on Malay culture. Now, our own administrators hardly read what more to write.

Then, we went on to talk about the younger generation’s attitude. The ambassador was worried on the findings of a study carried by one of the local university on attitudes towards corruption. The study indicated that more than 30% of the university students interviewed feel it’s not wrong to take bribe and they will take bribe when they are employed in the future. It’s worrying. What when wrong. Is our society too materialistic. The study was conducted in 2002 and these students must be in the workforce either government or private sectors. Some of them will be policy makers in a couple of years. The leaders, on one hand, preaching on integrity, transparency, honesty and all those good values (of course, preaching alone won’t make the difference – walk the talk). On the other hand, the products we are creating to lead the nation in the future is worrying.

We left at 1.00 am with lots of questions unanswered

Note: I always and will always say money is not everything in life. Work hard to achieve but on the right path. Live with whatever you have achieved.

Understanding humans

Humans are the most complicated creature on earth. They claim themselves the most brilliant and innovative creature. Yet, they are the number one destroyer of mother earth. They create wars in the name of peace. They destroy nature in the name of development. They hurt people in the name of love. If you have a dog or cat, you train them from small, you can actually predict what they want and they will be loyal to u. Bet you, humans are not. You think you know them so well but in actual you know nuts about them. They can change 360 degrees in split seconds.

Some of them, you know for more than 20 years but still you cant understand what the hell they are or they want. Some are so nice to you, you think they are the best of humans in the world but it turns out to be, they are the worst hell in the world. Taking care of twenty cows is much much easier then taking care of even ten humans. The cows will behave almost the same and you just need to let them eat the grass. Where as, each humans will act differently and even more diffcult with their so called superb brains, each of them will try to rationalize everything.

Humans are the kind who will always think they are right. Even if they know that they are wrong, they will try to rationalize that they are right. If something bad happens to them, they either blame others or they will say its not their fault and it just meant to happen. They are good in justifying things.

How many of us look at ourselves? Study about our own character. Understanding our ownself first is the best move in order to understand others. If we ourselves dont know about us, how can we understand others.

The other thing is listen first to others, then make judgement. If you dont wanna listen to others but instead trying to make others understand you, then its difficult to understand both you and the others. Steven Covey says "seek first to understand, then to be understood."

Note: Never say others are wrong neither you are right. Human beings are imperfect though they think they are perfect.

Trustworthiness

According to wikipedia trust means a relationship of reliance. I trust a person means you can rely on that person. Among friends you develop trust so that the relationship gets stronger. Its quite difficult to create trust in a person. It takes time. Sometimes you tend to test your friend to find out whether you can trust him/her. Usually, you make promise and see whether that person breaks that promise. Once you trust a person, you will start telling him/her more things about yourself or about anything. Along the way, sometimes friends do things that makes you never trust him/her. In organisations, especially in your working place, you will have couple of friends whom you hang around with. Among them there will be one or two, whom you really trust. Sharing things like food, jokes and even talking about personal problems. Everybody needs a person whom she/he trust, just to let out things, such as problems or even tension at work. People who isolate themselves and seldom mix around, usually are difficult to trust others. On the other hand, those who have lots of friends and easily approachable, will trust too many people. Both of this two extremes are not advisable (my on thots, you may have different views). Person who gets friendly with people but are careful in choosing trustworthy friends will face less problems.

Why am I talking about trustworthiness. Currently, as people become so busy with work and hectic life style, they need somebody who is trustworthy to share things. This will help lessen the burden that is bothering your mind. By way of sharing and telling your problems to the trusted one, you can release your mental burden or disturbances. Of course, there are persons whom you trust so much but they start telling everything to others and its too late when you discover that the trusted person has being broadcasting your secrets or personal matters.

As such before we trust anybody, we must conduct our own test and investigation about our friends. Listening is the first thing to do. By listening to a person, you can know what type of a person he/she is. Dont make judgement yet. Listen what other people think about that person. Dont make judgement yet. Carry out some simple test to determine whether she/he is innocent, sincere, responsible and honest. Dont make quick decision. It takes time to trust a person. Trustworthiness is something important to all individuals.

Note: Christine i trust you. Others what do u think about trust? Do you have somebody who betrayed in your life? How and Why?

One World, One Nation, One Currency

We had enough. Wars here and there. Racial clashes all over. At the United Nations we are talking about cooperation among less developed and developed world. So-called global partnership. Yet the less fortunate are at the mercy of the rich. Even at the national level, each country tries to promote their own national agenda. Some countries which have multi-racial and multi-culture population, they dont trust each other. The majority race will try to take control of the politic and economic pie. Where will this take the world to - more wars and clashes.

We had the great depression in 1930s, economic recessions couple of times in 1980s and financial crisis in the far east including south east asian nations. Now with globalisation and a flat world, countries are trying to be competitive, out smarting each other in both economic and political power.

Why cant we be one world, one nation and one currency with one objective of global prosperity without any individual national agenda or priority. No visa needed to travel, we can choose whichever country we want to live in. Wouldnt this be wonderful? Peace everywhere. All races live in harmony irrespective of colors. People say this is Utopia. But I think it can be realized, if everybody open-up their mind and work towards global peace.