Saturday, August 25, 2007

Of Shame, humility, importance, truth, gossip and happiness

This is a short verbatim taken from Milan Kundera's book "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." I will be using it to describe my feelings as I am now.

"We all need somebody to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public.

The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners.

Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. Their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. One day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark.

And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers."

Unfortunately for me, I fall under the third category, the one with the dangerous situation whereby my feeling of importance has to do with how the eyes of my loved ones see me. When their eyes closes on me, my world turns dark. I was particularly hurt today, over a couple of events. This morning, around 5am, I came to realize that this girl, lets me call her "E" to whom I regarded as a friend had been speaking malicious things about me behind my back. It came as a great shock to me, when "B" messaged me this morning, questioning me in this manner:

B says (05:25):

what have u been telling people mr mok wai mun

mok says (05:26):

wat?

B says (05:27):

about how i supposedly went to ur house one day and wanted u back?

B says (05:27):

or...

B says (05:27):

about how u rejected me tonnes of times blahblah?


Apparently, that was what "E" had been mouthing to others, other people I do not know were. And XY one of the girls E had been talking to went to B and warned B against me to which in her books, I was spreading lies about B. Truth be told, I was very shocked about the whole event. I denied the whole issue and refused to claim responsibility for any of the words she accused me of saying. This brings me back of me falling into the 3rd category described by Milan Kundera. Firstly, I am not as concerned as what strangers or people I do not care about think of me. That's the kind of person I am. But to me, although I have not been speaking to B for sometime, she is still someone dear to me. The very fact that she chose to believe the words of others before clarifying things with me, tore my heart apart. I felt like crying.

Accordingly to the girls in my group, I have not been myself the past few days. Come to think of that, I did not even realize that myself until I received an encouraging message from Mich today which says:

"pal, u seems to be quite unhappy recent;y, fionn, shanice and me are quite concern abt u... but everybody is packed with projs.. and everybody is having issues with their grps as well.. sigh... fionn n i are drowning w/o u sial... MOK!!! SAVE US!!! heard shanice said u guys tried to talk to Da silva abt changing grp but he refused to help.. sigh...anyway.. dun b 2 upset over others who dunno how to appreciate u.. they'll after everything has ended & when they look back, they'll knw ya a great team player & a great leader! cheers! Mok rocks!"

The girls with me are really sensitive to their surroundings, and I thank them for that. Shanice called me up today and prodded me to share the things that was troubling me and I did. Shanice told me that Celia asked a rhetorical question today: "How come Mok doesn't want to talk to us any more these days?"

Because one can be alone even amongst your friends, your family, your loved ones, thus I have never felt so terribly alone in my life
.

I politely decline to join the girls for canteen breaks and with increasing frequency, unconsciously decide to attend afternoon classes, apart from the girls in my group. Kundera describes solitude is a sweet absence of faces. With great conviction, I redefine Kundera's definition of solitude as the sweet absence of familiar faces.

Today while having tea-break, I was sharing with Kath and Fionn some of the problems I had faced this morning, about the rumours spreading around concerning myself. Fionn despite her usual jejuneness, is actually a really good friend, and she told me that 2 other people who had been spreading things about me, were Eugene and Daniel. She claimed that Eugene and Daniel had been bad mouthing a lot of things behind my back. I don't know about the truth of what both Eugene and Daniel spread since Fionn declined to mention the things they said. Probably though, most of the things they think they know about me was from one particular source, a girl who I shall call "F" that I fell out with for various reasons which I do not wish to talk about. I'll give you one really absurd rumour they spread:

That Mok went around smelling (in a perverted sense) the hair of this girl, F.

I am flabbergasted at the thoughtlessness of the joke or rumour. Common, anyone who knows me will know that is absolutely not me, unless I'm suffering from dual personality. I let both Fionn and Kath know that I was really upset over this. In fact, I had been keeping it to myself, hence the unhappiness I was showcasing, unbeknownst even to myself. Fionn was really cool about it. She confronted Daniel and told him to stop spreading malicious gossip about me (Be it truth of lies). Fionn told me when she confronted Daniel, he got angry and scolded Fionn for letting me know about it since it was supposed to be a secret between them. Isn't this really unfair? To gossip/joke nasty things about another person and conveniently decline to take any responsibility for the words you say. It's like going into a restaurant, ordering a would-be feast for yourself and when you are served your meal, you impugn and decline in an upbraid manner from taking any orders. Than you walk away with a contemptuous smirk of a mix of acrimony, condescension, guile, subterfuge and joie de vivre euphrorism on your face. Dis-fukin-gusting.

Here's a quote by David Mitchell pertaining the seeking of truth:
"As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent."

Likewise, the truth that I approach, the spring within the spring, bestirs itself and moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent because I cannot defend myself against an "invisible enemy" unless the protagonist starting these rumours to people unknown to me, comes and settle things out directly with me. You know who you are.

Since, Daniel and Eugene are from the same GM group as me, hence there is very little possible answers as to the purpose of their accusations. So it leaves me with two axioms:

1: They are trying to cause faction within my existing group (since they were bad mouthing to Fionn and Kath)

2: They are innately obtuse and childish (Despite their age) and finds joy at the expense of others

In any case, I realize how harmful words can be when used carelessly and when rumours are exaggerated and spiced up. I don't like the way people speak (that includes myself) that's why I retreat to reading books- The authors place great thought into the choice of words they use and the really good authors, are able to make the words dance as they want it to like a masterful puppeteer.

Anyway, as you probably noticed, I have made my Blog entries accessible only through invites. I really wanted to avoid this situation since, as hard as I have tried to make this Blog only accessible to the eyes of the people I love, I found out today that "E" had been giving access of my Blog to people I don't know of. It's tough. I don't want people I don't know to make judgements of me without at least knowing me- I write really personal stuff here, about my values, beliefs and feelings as a form of exercise to express myself (I'm not good at that since I bottle up a lot of my feelings). But increasingly, I find it ridiculous that on many occasions, I am becoming increasingly conscious of what I write because I do not know who is viewing it . It is unfortunate, but at least I can wholly express myself without feeling shameful that I may on occasion be writing something that may offend or upsets others (I don't intentionally do so this way).

Kundera describes shame as such:

"The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours. But The Ignominy. The Humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the manner, and that humiliation is seen by everyone."

Likewise, it is shameful for me, because I have no choice in the manner in the way the rumours regarding myself spread.

Today, after school, I went to read at Kinokuniya for a few hours- I hang out at Kinokuniya whenever I feel upset/off-tangent. You may think it's silly for me to do that. In my previous post, I was writing my hypothesis about why people are attracted to sad music/stories/people etc.. It is absolutely the same as me. I find solace in reading books that display the same emotional and spiritual level as I carry and amongst the thousands of books there, there's bound to be a few books that I can relate to. One specific book I was desperately trying to find today was Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." Today, in school, I had an "Aha" that this was the very book that I needed as my Prozac for my emotional distress. Alas, Kinokuniya ran out of stock of this novel, leaving me doubly disappointed and doubly disillusioned.

I was particularly entranced by this quote in that Kundera Book; It is a good reflection of how I felt today. It goes:

"If Kerenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, 'Look, I'm sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Can't you come up with something different?' And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition."

Happiness is the longing for repetition. To me, repetition and continuity are the same thing. This remind me of how Elliot Perlman in 3 dollars describes continuity/ repetition:

"How good it felt being required to turn up somewhere at a specified time to do something, albeit more mundane and less taxing than anything I had done at university, and be capable of it. To be capable of it, isn't that what everyone wants? Each day, I would say "good morning" to the same people I said it to the day before. There were "in" jokes about the standard of the coffee, the football tipping competition, or somebody's outrageous tie. Lunch was snatched hurriedly from the place next door, a little cafe where the regulars from the department joked with the proprietor and his staff, small jokes, small business, small change, but these people were immensely important to each other. It might be that none of them was aware of their importance, each to the other, and it took me a little while to realize it myself but with each "good morning" they were reminding each other, just slightly, who they were and that they were there.

Continuity in the form of running jokes (never really funny) or repeated themes (never really deep) is reassuring even to people who might not know how much they derive from it and who might even deny that they derive anything at all from it. If they who have never been without it understood its cohesive force, they might willingly pay a little more for locally made goods and ignore the prophets of neoclassical economics who consign us to isolation in our homes, forgotten by ourselves. Look out, here comes the man with the dangerous ties. Stop expressing your personality through your ties for Christ's sake. you'll get locked away. What a relief to find the mundane so rewarding."

And so, as described above, repetition, continuity and seeking refuge in the mundaneness of life are the key towards happiness. We delight ourselves from the little things that remind us who we are, that we are here and that we are all immensely, incredibly and inextricably important to each other.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Solace

I promised to let you in on some of my thoughts regarding your April 12, 2006 blog post but I was really tired last night so I put down my thoughts into words before I went to bed. . . Anyway since it is in response to the post you have made, I'm dedicating this entry to you and will keep your identity anonymous to make it a little more special. . .


As you have asked in your Blog, “Have you ever pondered why sad people always listens to sad songs?” The question you posed has left me feeling perplexed since sometime back, but I have come up with a few theories on the answer to it which I shall try to answer to the best of my ability.


You said this:

I tried sending happy, funny, comical cartoon songs to friends when they are sad. But it doesn't make them better. They listened, they laughed a bit, and turned back to sad, melancholy songs which make them cry even harder.


In response to this, I cannot disagree with you on this. When a person is sad emotionally, in depth, what they seek is not actually to be happy. Think about this situation: We work really, really hard for the upcoming examinations, but still we fail in our papers or do not get the grades we expect for the work we put in. We thus feel disappointed, and sad at the outcome. Have not we all faced this situation? Than we see our friend who topped the class with really good grades but the effort that he/she put in did not justify the success he received? What do we do now? I think most people will avoid that friend of ours and seek out people who fall within similar predicaments as us.


There is a scientific explanation to this. It is called the universal law of attraction which exists in human relationships. We have a tendency to attract people who are at the same emotional and spiritual level as ourselves. More simply put, like attracts like: Just as happy people attract happy people, similarly, sad people attract sad people toward them.


We’re not actively seeking for happiness at that situation, but more specifically we desire comfort, or solace. It makes sense, otherwise we would not be avoiding that happy friend of ours with really good grades. What we really want is for someone to understand the feelings we are facing, to empathize with us, even if it makes us feeling sadder than we were before and angrier at how unfair the results were.


One article I’ve read describes why people are attracted to sad things or people. It says: “Identifying with such an individual legitimatize ones own sadness and feeling of inferiority. One gains solace from all this and feels better knowing one is not alone in his unfortunate circumstances


In another article, an interview with an Indian family who was forced to move to India during the partition it underwent, the wife said this “I was angry but when you see so many people with the same problems, you know it’s not just happening to you. It was not a personal suffering.


So we find solace from knowing we are not suffering alone. . . and I agree with you that a sad song, a sad word, a melancholy feeling isn't that bad after all as long as it can make us feel better. Even better than better, the next time a friend of yours is feeling sad, don't even bother trying to sending a cheerful song. Rather just offer a shoulder for them to lean on, offer a listening ear and if you able to, try not to hold back the tears you have and shed some tears together with that special friend of yours because that to me, is the comfort that we all seek (even if it is unknowingly) when we face a moment of sadness- To not just to receive love and concern from the people around us, but more importantly empathy and understanding. . . :)

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Mok's Guide to Sustainable Competitve Advantage

The world we live in is not fair. Take a look around you. There are almost an equal number of female to male ratio in Singapore. But why do we see some guys with more girls (market share) while others don’t even get a single one? This question has made me increasingly perplexed and thus I thought I would write a strategy guide to help all those single guys out there (myself not excluded).

I shall extrapolate Philip Kotler’s article on Sustainable Competitive Advantage to come up Philip Mokler’s Strategy to get the girl that you like- A tribute to Cornflake’s Two and Shanice’s suggestion to write my own professional article. *That is why a marketing degree is so useful- You can use it in any situation*


Today, understanding girls in general is not enough. Males are losing their power over females as time goes by because as we know, females are becoming increasingly independent and thus have greater choice and bargaining power over their male counterparts. Under the relationship concept, males gain competitive advantage by designing offers that satisfy their female counterparts needs better than their competitor’s offers. Thus the strategy we adopt to chase the girl must consider not only the needs of them, but the strategies of our competitors.

To plan effective competitive relationship strategies, we need to find out all we can about our competitors. In this way we can constantly compare what we have against those of our competitors. What do we need to know?


  1. Who are our competitors
  2. What are their objectives?
  3. What are their strategies?
  4. What are their strengths and weaknesses?
  5. What are their reaction patterns?

Who are our competitors?

I can’t stress the importance of identifying our main competitors. If you do like a girl (and secretly), always keep an eye on the movements of your competitor, but don’t give away your position that you are watching them by hiding behind something like a bush. As Sun Tze once said:


Know Your Enemy: The Intelligence Strategy. Know your opponent's moves and do not let your motives be known. Understand their way of thinking.


The key to success are to

  1. Gather knowledge of your opponent
  2. Learn to read your opponent
  3. to hide your observations (thus the bush). The reason is obvious. If your rival doesn’t know about your presence, he is unable to react and predict the moves that you make. The invisible enemy is the most threatening.

Michael Porter suggests that five major forces drive industry competition. Just as there is a model for industry competition, Mokler has come up with the five major forces that drive relationship competition.

New Entrants: You need increase the barriers to entry of the life of the girl you like by reducing their access to distribution channels (meeting new guys) by spreading gossip like “Hey that girl is a whore/ slut bag” or “she has aids” or something like that. That will reduce the threat of new entrants into the girl’s life. Of course, make sure no one can identify the source of those rumors or else your plan will backfire.


Substitutes: Threat of substitutes for you can be anything from the guy sitting next to you in the lecture to other activities the girl has interest to. Always watch the guy sitting next to you with great suspicion. They may smile at you, but may be plotting something behind your back.


The girl: The bargaining power the girl has over you can be things like how hot she is. The hotter she is, and if she knows that you are interested in her, she has greater power over you. Always do not let your intentions be known to her and play the bait and hook game.


Existing Guys in the girl’s life: The more guys there is in the existing girl’s life, the more power they have over you.


The implication is that you should try to influence the balance of forces through strategic moves to strengthen your position. Always anticipate shifts in the factors underlying the forces and respond to them, thus exploiting change.


2. Determining Competitor’s Objective.

It will be most prudent to see all competitors’ objective as trying to get the girl. Some rivals pose less threat to you as they may just be “testing water” to see if the girl is suitable and some maybe going full fledge for the girl. By knowing your competitor’s objective you can design a strategy against them accordingly.


3. Identifying Competitor’s Strategies

The best way to understand a competitor’s strategy, you should engage in the gathering of competitive intelligence by say, getting a spy within the girl’s circle to tell of the going on of her life. But be wary of the spy you select. Never get a sotong 007 to do the spying for you. I learnt this the hard way when my 007 (Kathleen) gave me away (See previous post).


4. Accessing Competitor’s Strength and Weakness

If the girl is currently attached, that doesn’t mean you don’t’ stand a chance. Always look for tiny fractures in the girl’s relationship such as quarrels. When you know what’s going on, you can step in and play the good guy and do things that make her question her existing relationship.


Sun Tze says this:

Be in control. Be assertive. Control your opponent's mind. Move them into your territory.

The Art Of Ultimate Control. Make the first move, fight on your territory where you are comfortable, look for your opponent's weakness and draw them into it, deceive your opponent to make them think they are in control.


5. Estimating Competitor’s Reaction

Sometimes if your rival knows the existence of you, and that you are trying to get the girl he likes, you can use that to your advantage.


According to Sun Tze’s Strategy, maneuver them into weakness: The Ripening For the Sickle Strategy. Continue calculated moves in your position. This will enable you to control the situation and bewilder and exhaust your opponent.


In ancient times, the Chinese generals used to provoke their enemies into making a reckless move by insulting their mother and killing off messengers that were sent to them (think of the movie 300). If the girl is attached, try to get a good relationship with her and than provoke her boyfriend to hit you. Make yourself look like the victim and exaggerate your injuries. Girls have a soft spot for that and hate violence. Play your cards wisely.


6. Selecting competitors to attack or avoid

You need to select your competitors you wish to attack wisely. If your competitor is like the Son of Wing Tai Asia, and compared to him, you are like an ant among giants, I suggest you step back and suck your thumb.


Sun Tze’s advise:

Pick Your Battles wisely: The Perfect Economy Strategy. Fight economically, conserving all your assets. Know your strengths and play to them. War consists of weakening the other side—militarily, financially and morally.

Competitive Strategies

Just as Michael porter has suggested three Generic competitive positioning strategies that companies can follow- overall cost leadership, differentiation and focus strategies, so can we also use these strategies in our day to day relationship to get the girl that we like.


Michael’s Porter’s Strategies:

Similarly, a guy can use Mokler's 3 generic strategy like this:






The idea behind these generic models is to know how you can gain a sustainable competitive advantage over your rivals and get the girl. For example, if you have no money, don’t pretend that you do and take her out to expensive restaurants, buy her lots of gifts and things like that. Because the day your credit card runs out and you face a cash flow crisis, your girl will leave you. That simply is not sustainable. So play your cards right, get real and show yourself for who you really are.


If you have no looks, no money and no intelligence, than all I have to say is sorry, I cannot help you. But if you are good at any of that, you will have a competitive advantage you can use. All the best!


*Note* I take no responsibility for any of the strategies undertaken. Heheh

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Two crappy events in the past two days

While having tea break during lecture today:

Mok to Fionn and Kath: Eh hot girl walking down now, hot girl walking down now alert!

Fionn: Huh where?

Kath: Where, Where!?

Mok: There the girl in pink shirt

Kath: (Silence)

Fionn: HUH?! Like that called hot?

Mok: Yeah abo.den. Damn hot ah!! You dunno one.

Fionn and Kath: *Long silence*

. . . .

Fionn: I've seen hotter girls.

Mok: Yeah who?

Fionn: The two of us lor *Points to Kath and herself

Kath: *Giggles*

Mok: ....

Mok: Fionn, that only makes you 1/2 right.

Fionn: *Blur Look* HUH? Are you saying Kath's not hot?

Mok: . . . You should know better Fionn.

Kath: *Stupified look*

Mok: . . .


During lecture yesterday:

Mok to 007 (she's sitting 2 seats from me): Eh Kath! Tell you a secret. Got one guy in lecture thinks you damn cute and wanna know you. How sia?

Kath: Huh? *Blur look*

Mok: *repeats with a louder voice* Got a guy in lecture wanna know you. I intro him?

007: *Embarrassed look* Don't need la, if he wants to know me he can just smile and say hi. I don't need you to be my matchmaker!

Mok: Aiya nevermind one la I'll intro you to him

007: *Annoyed look* Wey MOK! Don't make me announce to the world that you like Avril Lavigne okay!

Mok: SHIT KATH OMG. *Whispers* Her friends are just sitting behind you la.

007: *Looks behind* O SHIT SORRY Mok, I forgot!!!

Avril's Friend (Behind) to another friend: Did you hear that?

Mok: ><

007: *gives the "opps I did it again look"*

Faction

We have all heard of the adage that the camel is a horse designed by the committee. Well recently, I have faced some minor disagreements with one of my existing project group. And that's where a faction comes into play. I have a sudden urge to Blog on this topic, upon seeing, one my team mates' word of the day: Faction. It's definition according to the Cambridge Dictionary is a group within a larger group, especially one with slightly different ideas from the main group. The main concern you see, is whether the existence of a faction, has a detrimental effect on the group's working capabilities. In Dodge & Cox, a global professional investment management firm, their executives regard disagreements as fine. In fact they considered it as a strength. However they felt that operating with a different investment philosophy isn't. This is how I feel the evaluation of the disagreements within my group on whether it is a strength or fracture to our team cohesiveness should be based on- working philosophies.

Okay, so let me start with one disagreement within my group. Now as a description of myself, and I offer no biasness on it since, it is how a friend of mine describes myself- I am a very opinionated person.
But that is entirely different from being self-opinionated, the difference being a self-opinionated person believes his/her ideas are the only correct ones. I often disagree on many things, but not without sound logic or giving an explanation and I always adopt an open mind to the opinions of others. I'll give an example on this. When working on my Glo-bus project, Shanice and Ling commented on the strategy I was recommending and both expressed their concern on the price I was recommending for the cameras. At that point, I understood their concerns since I had similar ones. I had on hand, however, many reasons why I felt that the strategy was the best course of action and I make it an effort to explain to them. If they still disagree on it, than I request for a counter explanation on why it is so and a recommendation of an alternative strategy. Without that, it is just a speculation based on emotions, a no go.

That is the principles I work on which I know many find it hard to accept. So now let me discuss on my working philosophies and whether it is running parallel to my group's. Firstly, I believe that a team, should operate as a team. Toyota has one of the best organization structure globally. Their decision making process is:

1. Decide and announce
2. Seek Individual input, then decide and announce
3. Seek Group input, then decide and announce
4. Group Consensus, and approval
5. Group consensus, with full authority.
If consensus is not achieved go back to stage 4 or 3

I advocate this method of decision making and find it hard to accept at least wholeheartedly when a major decision is made concerning the group without a general consent or at least, prior acknowledgement. One of this instances occurred for our Sales Communication Project, in which we had to choose a product and work on it. It is a major decision because the whole report, revolves around on the selection of it. It so happened that we had chosen on a particular line of phone as a first choice, and security system as an alternative, should the first choice prove unfavourable. It so happened that while we were working on it, Eugene and Daniel decided that it was not such a good option because of the price and so, they emailed everyone on the change
but not without consultation input with our leader, Ling. To add verisimilitude to my account, here was the copy of the email I received in verbatim, :


This is the product we be doin for Sales Strategy
Cisco Voice and Unified Communications 7691 G

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5945/index.html

List Price is USD$445 (plus USD$200 license) for 7961G.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/index.html


Note: This is NOT a VOIP phone, instead it is a Unified Communication
System. Meaning it uses company's broadband to transmit and recieve calls.
This phone is being used by many MNCs.


As starters, I have no objection to the new product. I just disagree with how the decision is made since when I reached school on Monday morning, I realized that 2 of our other members were unaware of the change of plans. That in effect, is skipping step 2 and 3 of the decision making process. I'd like to believe that respect is something you earn, that respect, the more you give, the more you will receive which was apparently missing at this point. What really ticked me off is that both Eugene and Daniel had finished their individual parts already and therefore there was simply no point in discussing further on the viability of the product choice, since I was fine with it from the beginning although it did inconvenience me and Charmaine a little.

Secondly, with regard to how the workload is distributed, I am a guy who believes in team efficiency. So when I come to a junction whereby I am facing two possible choices, I will opt for the better one as I have already described in the post before. Now I have no objections with working with Charmaine. In fact, I feel that she's a great member to have- that I swear with the bottom of my heart. But what I honestly felt was that, when it comes to the work I was assigned, I work better alone or at least with Shanice, since she compliments the areas I am weak at, market research. Thus I made a suggestion to Eugene to split me and Charmaine up and had to convince Eugene that there was no problem(conflict) between me and Charmaine. It's just the style that works best on me. This is where the displeasure sets in, because the team could have been redesigned easily without Charmaine getting the feeling that something was "wrong."

The last displeasure that I face is that, the project in it's current state, is in a great mess since many us are confused as to what to include inside the project and what to cut. This problem really irritates me, since it could have been avoided easily to begin with. The group is really inefficient and often we have to do pointless double work (like the change in product mentioned before). Last weekend I was actually assigned to work on some Keegan Model which was to be completed by Friday. Since I had to finish up this model within a deadline, I decided to complete it early and "redo" my part concerning the analysis of Taiwan's consumer market which I left to Friday to complete. Okay, I admit that's a fair distribution of work, yes I like doing models and don't have complaints on that. I even did it up early and emailed it to the team. Come Monday (yesterday), Eugene apologized to me for not taking a look at what I've done because he had been really busy. Okay, apology accepted for not looking through what I've done up because of a tight schedule. Yeah right. It's more like bad time management on his part. Last Friday night he went to MOS to party, while I was at home working on my part of the project (that reminds me of a scene in Harold and Kuma go to White Castle where Harold was arrowed work by his colleagues while they went to party with the girls) . Ok go party all night, I don't really care whether you look at it by Friday. But at least inform me that you would not be needing it in advance so I can make changes to my schedule.

Shanice mentioned to me today about the book "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" in lecture today. In the book, the acoustic boy often disagreed with his teacher on the things his teacher taught. However in all instances, he was right (he was a math genious). Shanice mentioned that the boy annoys her since he was so stubborn and always insisted he was right. I disagreed with Shanice on that and opined that the stubborn person was actually teacher since he was unable to accept the logic behinds the boy's disagreements (because of personal ego). Shanice than explained that the boy was annoying since he was unable to understand the feelings of others- His teacher was often irritated because of the boy's disagreements, that is true. However, logically, it should have been the boy who should have been irritated since he got his facts were right. But in any case, disagreements based on emotions are very different with those based on logical reasoning and Shanice's disagreement with me did not fall within context on the situation.

Back to the working environment created by Dodge and Cox. Dodge and Cox believes in having a leaderless and power-sharing committee. Sitting in a conference room, the team discusses and asks questions - how are executives incentivized? What would boost margins? - and the, going around the table each member voices an opinion. "It's not a strict vote. Just because five agree and four disagree don't doesn't mean an idea will go through." says Roger Kuo an analyst who covers media companies and sits on the policy committee for international stocks. Four strong objections and five moderately enthusiastic supporters will probably nix an idea. As will the rare situation when disagreements turns into polarization. "The process," says Kuo, "is like taking the temperature of the room."

Likewise, this is exactly what we are also missing, besides gathering general consensus in regard to Toyota's decision making processes. Constructive disagreements are fine but when it boils down to those of my group's, it leaves me largely disheartened. I miss my previous working group last semester. Everything had a place under the sun, and a season for everything. Maybe a faction exists within my present group, yes, but not within a good reasons of different working philosophies. We can only be a horse, only if we choose to be one. Afterall, what's the point in designing a camel, when the horse keeps winning the race?

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Guy talk

What a splendid evening I had today with my friends. Tkoh, Ivan, Chun, Zhen and me had gathered at Tkohs place and met for dinner at Crystal Jade Xiao Long Bao. God, we had a real good chat immediately after Tkoh and Chun touched down in SG after a good o’ 3 months. Some funny things to note about our conversation:


We were talking about the GF(s) Tkoh had, how it started and ended and when talking about his most recent GF:


Tkoh: My last gf was a bitch man.

Us: Why?

Tkoh: She dumped me.

Me: Dumping you doesn’t make her a bitch

Tkoh: Any girl that dumps me is a bitch.

Us: . . . Right. How she dump you?

TKoh: While I was in the canteen eating one day, she called me on the phone and said something like we need some time apart, and her grades was suffering

Us: Right. Bitch

Tkoh: You know 6 months after that, she remove me from her block list on MSN, and she wanted to patch up?

Us: yeah so?

Tkoh: As if I'm going to give her the chance man, not after what she did to me. SHe blocked me!

Ivan: Why Tkoh you should have patch up with her. You know girls initiating the patch will be damn loyal to you one.

Tkoh: Eh no thx man

Ivan: Common! you can go "EH BITCH! WHOIS THE MAN NOW!"

Mok: Ivan! Calm down your fantasizing too much. Hahaha

Ivan: . . . .


Zhen: Damn I saw this damn hot girl on the bus, big boobs and all, but she was a scammer

Mok: What’s a scammer?

Zhen: A person who cheats your feelings and after that leaves you depressed and feeling that life is all bleak and dark

Mok: So how did she scam you? You just met her on the bus today

Zhen: Well, She had big boobs from the side. But when she turned around I realized that it was all empty space between her body and the blouse.

Mok: . . . Right. She scammed you.


During our merriment, coincidentally we met two more of our secondary class mates jacky chan and gene and they added more humor to our talk cock session


Ivan: EH Lionel remember the time Mark Rama and us would go to your house to play your playstation?

Jacky Chan: O ya

Ivan: Well actually Rama’s real intention was to see your dad’s collection (Hidden Porn in the drawer which we discovered)

Jacky Chan: WAH LAU that one was a long time ago ah… Why you still remember!

Us: (Breaks out laughing) Some things you will never forget.

Mok: EH Zhen you were in BB last time right? why you quit?

Zhen: Oh I cannot stand Lincoln man. Buay Ta Han him so i quit.

Mok: O yeah the rugger is it?

Jacky Chan: ARGH Lincoln, everytime I see him I feel like punching his face man (and Lionel goes really berserk, eyes lit with fire, anger in his speech and all. Thats why hes Jacky Chan)

Us: oi Calm down Jacky Chan, relax man!


While using Chuns Laptop we were checking out the Taiwanese girls photos in Bikini and we were like “OMG damn big. SG girls cannot compare” and than Ivan was zooming in and out of the picture. After that I accidentally press “Pgup” and realize that it auto zoomed onto the girl’s boobs. And than Tkoh was like "OMG MOK what you doing? why you zooming at her tits?"


Me: Nothing man. I'm just figuring out how the Pgup Pgdn button works. Eh Chun won't you send me this picture after you get home?


Taiwanese girls are amazing. And not soon after we were talking about the difference between Taiwanese girls and SG girls


Mok: EH Tkoh whats the difference ah, which one better?

Tkoh: Definately Taiwan girls man. But than there was some rift between the SG girls and Taiwan girls while I was overseas. Apparently the SG girls thought the TW girls were damn bitchy.

Me: Erm. . So which one more bitchy?
TKoh: All about the same la. So I dunno what the SG girls were complaining about

Me: So which one more conservative?

Tkoh: Definately the Taiwan Girls.

Us: Nice.

Tkoh: But you know, the thing about girls is that they want me to take sides? And I wanna just sit on the fence?

Me: Yeah tell us about it. As how all wars turns out, the only victims are the innocent ones like us. *Laughs*


We were than talking about when we saw our first porn. And than we were talking about our secondary 3 incident at Jeremy Joe’s house where he show us his collection. But than I remembered it was earlier than that while at Secondary 2 at Lam’s house where Lam tried to corrupt our damn guai classmate Garrett with his “Peeping Pete” CD.


Lam: Eh Garrett come come got something interesting to show you

Garrett glaces into the monitor and Lam rapes Garrett of his eye virginity

Lam than breaks out laughing uncontrollably and Garretts runs out of the room embarrassed


Zhen: Remember the time at Burger King we saw this girl with really big boobs and than we all turned to check her out together

Us: Ya what about it

Zhen: Remember Donna’s friend upon seeing her stuff, shouted “OMG DAMN BIG ah”? God, that was embarrassing. It was not even discrete


On our way home from Holland V, we were at the traffic light junction waiting and the green man was flashing. We were like contemplating whether or not to cross the road, undecided. After 20 seconds passed, it was still flashing green, and TKoh said “fuck man if we crossed just now we’ll already be across. Everytime I’m at the flashing green man, and I am just about to step out, it turns red.”


A few more seconds passes, and Tkoh says “AH man I’m gonna cross it now” and takes one step forward. Just at that precise moment, the lights turned red as if playing some sick joke on Tkoh.

Tkoh: AH CRAP see what I mean?

Ivan: Tkoh I think you have some power over lights or something, remember that time when you touched the lamp post, the lights went out?It happened twice already, excluding today's incident.

Us: It must be because of your static electricity from your leg hair. *Laughs*

Tkoh: …..


MAN I love my buddies. They never fail to crack me up

Friday, August 17, 2007

Chance

There is thing about chance regarding meeting people that bewilders me. Mitchell in Ghostwritten puts it in a very interesting way.


A man in a train sees a woman in a suburb train and takes a liking to her in some old-school Romeo and Juliet love-at first-sight style.


Look at her! Look at that woman. Febrile. Corvine. Black velvet clothes, not an ounce of sluttiness about her. Intelligent and alert, what’s that book she’s reading? And her skin- that perfect West African black, so black it has a bluish tinge. Those gorgeous, proud lips. What’s she reading? Tilt it this way a bit, love… Nabokov! I knew it. She has a brain! But if I break that rule and talk to her, even if I break the middle-way seating rule and sit one seat nearer to her than I need to, she’ll think I’m threatening her and the defenses will slam down. None of these problems would exist if we had just met by chance at a party. Same her, same me. But chance brings us together here, where we cannot meet.


Chance brings us together here, where we cannot meet. Doesn’t this ring a bell? Haven’t we all met a guy/girl whom we really wanted to know but did not have a chance to do so in a way that if you made an effort to do so, it would warrant suspicion towards you? You see a girl you really like in school. You notice that she often gazes at things blankly. Damn those puppy eyes. Boy o boy, isn't she cute? You really want to know her. You are shy. You see her in the library, and you think of approaching her and initiating a conversation. You think to yourself, "what will your friends think of it? What will she think of you?" It’s not worth it. Going out of the way to know someone usually leads to disappointment. The best course of action to you, is inaction and so you fail to act.


The situation changes now. You see her on the street, it starts to rain heavily all of a sudden. She’s getting wet. You have an umbrella, she doesn’t. You offer her some temporary shelter. Everything’s going smooth. She smiles at you, you smile back. What’s the difference you ask? Chance. Thing is, it doesn’t happen at all. So all you can think of all day is jejune thoughts like when she’s walking down the lecture hall you think to yourself “Wouldn't it be nice if she trips (albeit slightly) and falls near me so I have the chance to help her up.” Or thoughts like “it’ll be nice if she boards the bus one day and is out of change for the ride, so you have the chance to offer to pay for her ride out of a kind heart.” WHAT KIND HEART you say?!? I can’t disagree on that. What Kind heart?


Chance is such a strange thing.


Here’s another situation regarding chance that puzzles me. Let me begin by describing myself as a very unlucky person vis-a-vis the people around me. When I mentioned this to my friends, they just shrug me off and say something like “It is because you only remember the bad things that happen to you more often than the good ones, you think that you are an unlucky person.” or "Everyone says they are the unluckiest person on Earth" I beg to differ. It just seems to me, that I was born an unlucky person. That is why I don’t gamble because no matter what the odds are, even if its 50-50, they are against me. (*Note if I bet on something with you, I'm probably going to win)


I remember how I used to play an online game called FFXI. My clan would form a party to hunt for rare item. Every expedition, there would be around 12 players hunting for one item and when we find it, everybody is given the opportunity to lot for the item. That is we roll a dice, and we are given a number from 1-100. The person who gets the highest roll wins. It so happens that I had been playing that game for 3 years and every time I lot for an item, I lose! Imagine this- there is a 50% chance for me to roll a number above 500, but seems to me most of my rolls fall below 100! It’s really so bad that my team mates will always jokingly laugh at my poor luck. My friend Donald, he’s been playing the game for almost as long as me but during the raids, he has a total of over 30 pieces of equipment from a Dynamis raid, and I have an unbelievable zero!


The point of this entry is not to whine about my bad luck. It’s just that because I know I have a natural disposition to lose when I take a gamble, I always try to make the odds of winning favourable to myself (Who wouldn't?)- That is to say, I will calculate the probability of winning and skew it towards myself by taking calculated risk. In the same game I played, there was this enemy called the Veracious Vivian(VV), that when slayed, has a 1% chance of dropping a really rare and sought after ring. How the game system works is that every 36 hours (3 days) this monster will appear in a fixed area and there are always teams of players camping for it. It’s so popular that it is possible for the area to be packed with around 50 people at once. The team that claims VV first will be allowed to lot for the item. The programmers of this game in some form of twisted humor decided to make the game a little more “interesting” for the players. They made it so that if VV is unclaimed for a good 1 hour, it becomes “Hyper VV” and the odds of dropping the ring when killed would be increased from 1% to 100%.


Being the good o’me, I decided to calculate the odds of getting the ring with both scenarios in mind.


Scenario 1: Killing normal VV

Should VV be camped by an average of 50 players and 5 teams, that is to say 10 players per team, and assuming that each team has an equal chance of claiming VV, the chance of my team claiming VV would be 100/5 = 20%


Since there are 10 players in my team, the odds of me winning the lot for the ring would be 100/10= 10%


Since the ring has a 1% chance to drop, the odds of a player getting the ring would be 0.2X0.1X0.01= 0.02% Wow. 0.02% that’s really encouraging for a 36hours wait every cycle.


Scenario 2: Killing Hyper VV

So I say to myself, wouldn’t it be better for all teams to wait for VV to become Hyper VV and than slay it? I was thinking of the optimum scenario, where everyone would form one team of 50 players, kill hyper VV together and have all players who fought Hyper VV lot together. This way, we can kill it faster and raise our odds of getting the item.


The probability: 1/ 50 = 2% !!


So now the percentage has increased a good 100 times in everybody’s favor to 2%. I don’t know about you but 2% seems chance seems pretty bleak to me too. But being me, every time I was at the scene, I would try to get all the teams to form one bigger team and wait for an hour for VV to become Hyper VV. The strange thing is that nobody is willing to do so and the moment VV appeared, it would be claimed faster than you can blink your eye! I mean how obtuse can everyone get? Here we have two choices and we choose the option that based on logic and some common sense, opt for the lesser of the two. Why? Because men being men, will imagine himself as the winner.


This reminds me of the story of Princess Helen, the most beautiful woman the world has ever seen. When her father, King of Sparta declared Helen of marriageable age, all the Kings, princes, rich and powerful man of the world came to propose to her. It was prophesized that because of Helen, a great war would be fought and many Greeks would die. The King was thus facing a dilemma because he was worried that Helen would be the cause of great envy among men and because of her beauty men would wage a war over her should she not be chosen as their wife. Odysseus, thus proposed a solution for the King to avert any such troubles. The king will announce that all the suitors must swear an oath to uphold Helen’s choice of husband, to be content with it. If anyone should seek to disrupt the marriage or dispute it, then all the others will make war on him. The king asked the reason why they would agree to such terms, and Odysseus replies: “Because men being men, each will imagine himself the winner, and enjoying the benefits of this oath.”


Humans are such strange beings indeed. On one hand, when chance doesn't come our way we pray with all God given earnesty for it to appear. And when we have the choice to increase the chance that favours the outcome we desire, in all spheres of God given opportunities, we preclude it with our stupidity. How poetic.


Lastly, to end my post, there is this issue about women that I fail to understand. Women needs to know that men (whether they know it themselves or not) are natural hunters. And like all hunters when hunting for their prey, sets traps. Of which, the of the most popular trap is by saying things like "I always tell a women when I first meet her that I see other women too... If they can't handle that, they can stop before they start."


This is a sophisticated way of alluring women. Mitch says: "It sends out a challenge, "You could be the one to change me, you could be the one to make me believe in love again." Dwight calls it the "Bird with the Broken Wing Syndrome."" I knew this professional fornicator in army, and every day he would come to me and say "EH MOK! I met this really hot chick last weekend and she had the most amazing tits" or something along that line. I don't know what was up with this guy but he seemed to take great joy boasting about all the women he fucked, from a married doctor to some slut he met at Zouk.


One day out of curiosity I decided to ask him, what was some of the things he does to get the girl. And I'm sure you can guess it- "send out a challenge". What gets to me is that as amusing his stories are to me, he can be a total jerk when he says to me things like "girls are like tissue, once used you throw away." (I feel sorry for the women who knows him). Based on personal experiences, love is overrated. As much as you like it to believe, men (including me) are like leopards, and leopards do not change their spots (Easily). Most of the time, women just end up hurting themselves when they adopt the "Bird with the Broken Wing Syndrome." It's just not worth taking the chance. Trust me on this.


Digressing a little, if I were a girl I would live by this rule- Don't be Naive. So what rules should a guy live on you ask?


Two simple rules:


1. Don't love a girl who has less to lose than you do

2. Don't love a girl who has less to give than you do


You will never get hurt this way.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

There are three who think about the fate of the world

"First there is the crane. See how lightly he threads, picking his way between the rocks in the river? Tossing, and tilting back his head. The crane believes that if he takes just one heavy step, the mountains will collapse and the ground will quiver and tress that have stood for a thousand years will tumble.

Second, the locust. All day the locust sits on a pebble, thinking that one day the flood will come and deluge the world, and all living things will be lost in the churn and the froth and black waves. That is why the locust keeps such a watchful eye on the high peaks, and the rainclouds that might be gathering there.

Third, the bat. The bat believes that the sky may fall and shatter, and all living things die. Thus the bat dangles from a high place, fluttering up the sky, and down to the ground and up to the sky again, checking that all is well.

That was the story, way back at the beginning. . .

. . .There was a dimness, which I later learned lasted many years. It took me that long to learn how to remember. I imagine a bird beginning as an "I". Slowly, the bird understands that it is a thing different from the "It" of its shell. The bird perceives its containment, and as its sensory organs begin to function it becomes aware of light and dark, cold and heat. As sensation sharpens, it seeks to break out. Then one day, it starts to struggle against the gluey gel and brittle walls, and cannot stop until it is out and alone in the vertiginous world, made of wonder, and fear, and colours, made of unknown things.

But even back then, I was wondering. Why am I alone?"

This was a short verbatim taken from David Mitchell's Ghostwritten. This was one part that was really able to get to me. It is not that it revealed any really sad part of the story, rather that every single part of the book was doing it in a way that is able to squeeze my heart till the point it aches like hell. It is the style of writing that Mitchell uses that uses in his character(s) to tell the tale of his life- Through short little stories that makes little sense at first sight and using animals as a microcosm of his life's experience. By asking questions that really has no answer at all- From questions like "Why do people do the things they do to others?" to questions like "Why am I alone?" They repeat themselves not in an annoying way but more from a philosophical standpoint making the book impossible to put down but yet at the same time, difficult not to.

Monday, August 06, 2007

... because love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.

I think I have done a bad job with my previous post but anyway its over and done with. Today, I wish to reflect on a Milan Kundera's definition of love. Kundera, in his novel entitled "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting", defines love as:

".... because love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love."

Although I enjoyed most of his novel, this was a definition that I found it hard to accept. A couple of days ago, I was having a conversation with my friend Ericia on why I disagree with Kundera on this matter. First and foremostly, we have to begin on equal footing on the definition of interrogation. Accordingly, the Cambridge Dictionary, defines interrogation as:

"to ask someone a lot of questions for a long time in order to obtain information, sometimes using threats or violence"

It is easy to realize from here that, Kundera's definition of love uses the verb "interrogation" and has a negative point of view to it . It is, at least to my impression, that since love requires the coercive use of force and power to maintain it's position, that I felt largely disheartened. Additionally, let me argue on the concept of love from a universal approach, that is to say, based on the general concept of religion. Assuming that God (I take no bias on what religion is correct) exists and that he created the world, it should be safe to optimistically presume that God, at least to a certain degree, has some love for the people he created. What than would it mean if this God fails to "interrogate" or question us? If Kundera's definition of love is true, indeed, this world would have been living in a big black lie and the very foundations of what we truly believe based on faith and the very laws that governs society would be rendered useless. I say this because, the system and laws we are currently binded in, have been largely influenced by religion. Take the legislation of Britain as an example, which have been molded by the influence of the Catholic.

Ericia on the other hand, believed that constant questioning between, say a couple is necessary for love to exist. As I try to the best of my ability to describe her feelings, you may notice that there is a huge disparity in the field of thought between a male and a female (I will come to that later). Ericia believes that for a couple, it is inevitable for both parties to be constantly questioning one another to things like:

"Does he/she love me?"
"What have he/she been doing today?"
"Have he been cheating behind my back?"
so on and so forth.

I do not disagree on this since, for any relationship to exist, I strongly believe that there must be a minimum level of interest on the side of two parties and thus there is always a constant questioning with one another. On a side note, you may have noticed here that females tend to use their of emotions and personal feelings to critique and voice their opinion. Whereares I on the other hand, have tried to maintain a neutral position and argue base on logic and reasoning.

Anyway, what left me confused is that Kundera, from his works is widely known to be a highly educated and respected novelist. Thus it would be logical to assume that he chose the word "interrogation" for a reason. He could have used the word "questioning" or "prodding?", of which both words has a neutral ring to it. I allowed myself a few days to think this through and have finally came up with an answer to this question. Firstly, I have to stress that I do not believe that Kundera's perception of love has a clear right and wrong answer to it (nor does my own). It all boils down to the environment he/she was exposed to. Kundera according to a little research I made, was born in the Czech Republic, formally known as Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and thus his writings, have been largely influenced by World War II and the German occupation.

This reasons in the differences in our opinions towards love is further exemplified by how Kundera describes his thoughts in another book entitled "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" Kundera says:

"We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions—love, antipathy, charity, or malice—and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals."

I believe that this quote is the missing link to the answer that I was seeking. From his quote, Kundera has given us an important hint to his perception of love- That there is no way to know whether our relationship is built based on our feelings (emotions), or through a constant power play among one another. It is my own personal bias that I believe that Kundera feels that people show best their feelings of love to one another through the use of force or threats (the power play) as a form of constant questioning. (A friend once told me of a boy she once knew who said to her that he will be unable to know who the people he truly loves until the moment before he dies. Maybe this is exactly the ambiguity in a human relationship that Kundera describes.)

Ericia also says to me that she feels that a couple's love is different from the love of a family. The difference being that a couple's love requires constant questioning, and the love of a family requires unconditional love. In any case, I have a different view regarding this field of thought. Call me a cynic but whatever the case I shall be using reason to justify my thoughts. I disagree with Ericia because once a couple gets married, they become a family. The problem is that, love as much as we may like it to be, is not a matter of choice. Isn't that why we call it "falling in love?" Since we do not choose to fall in love, is it possible for us to choose to give unconditional love? I believe unconditional love is merely an ideal that we can only hope to achieve, that exists in fairy tale or through our faith in God. Even if we are able give this unconditional love, in reference to Ericia's family love, in the scenario of a parents' love towards their children, it is never enough. According to Eliot Pearlman in the 7 types of Ambiguity, besides love, a child requires apart from love from his parents alone, understanding or empathy at the emotionally level. Love and empathy are entirely two different things altogether and a relationship build on love alone without empathy is bound to fail and vice versa.

So what than you ask, is my definition of love? I believe in and will likewise end this post with my favourite definition of love as quoted verbatim from 1 Corinthians of the Bible.

"Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It is not rude,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails"