Post September 27th 2009 - Part I

January 17th, 2010 The author

September 27th 2009. That was my last entry

That’s a long time ago, roughly 100 days or more ago. Yes I am still very much alive and I’ve been tied up with work and..well other things.  In my absence, lots of things have happened,  and so, in order to do justice to my readers, and most importantly to myself, I thought I would highlight the events that have happened over the last 3-4 months

We begin in October 2009….

- My church group had organized a trip to KK, Sabah! Yeahhhh I finally had the chance to go to Sabah for the first time in my life! KK is a nice place, albeit the heat that one has to endure. Reminded me of my boyhood days in Penang, where the sun would just beat down on any pedestrian.

- Work resumed following my short vacation. I had 2 more training sessions to conduct. Thank God the training session for one of them was rescheduled to another date. At least the trainer had some breathing room! Both training sessions went well…. oh wait I think there were 3 training sessions that happened in October. 3 sessions is alot but I guess I managed to pull it off! For one of the training sessions I had to travel up to Kedah ; it was a good experience as I got to eat kampung food by the padi fields.

- October was also the time when I got the news that I would be heading the Sound in the Word Minsitry, a Ministry that is focused in providing content for my church youth group, Lifeline.  It was a welcoming change and something, though I didnt expect to get, was nevertheless a pleasent surprise. I could finally have a stronger say on the curriculum and content development of my youth group.

November 2009

- Work started pilling up. There was yet another training session for November 2009 and this would be the last one for YEAR.  So far all of my training sessions had gone smoothly except for one or two that I had done in Kerteh, oh well can’t blame me,  cuz it was the participants that didn’t show up for the session.  Thank god my project team had decided to revert all training sessions in KL hence forth. Yes, it did mean less travelling allowance for me, but it would also mean that I would not be held responsible should the trainees fail to show up… it was up to them after all!

- I also got involved in my first Company event, thanks to a friend in chruch who decided to rope me in. Though I groaned and at times got fed up with the work (I was in charge of communications so all the emails had to come from me), it was nevertheless an experience.  Luckily my supervisor had given me enough exposure in preparing communications materials for the project. Having that experience definitely allowed me to cope much better for this community day project activity.   It was also fun to coordinate and see backstage what are the components required to do a proper community day.  At the end of it, it was a job well done I should say

More in Part II on what happened in December and January

Posted in Church, Life, People, me, work | 1 Comment »

Why do we say nice things about people only after they’re dead?

September 27th, 2009 The author

Newsweek recently ran an article on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy and many prominent figures, such as John Kerry (one of my favourite politicians by the way), and Bob Dole wrote beautiful articles, paying tribute to one of the ‘greatest senators of the United States of America of all time’… the articles were inspiring, many of them filled with memorable moments where Teddy made such positive impacts and contributions in their lives and to society.

But in the midst of all the admiration and accolades that were being lauded to the last of the Keneddy brothers,  it got me thinking…’jeez wouldn’t it have been nice if the old man got to hear all this when he still was alive?’

And that got me to think about Michael Jackson as well. At one time, he was nick-named ‘Wacko Jacko’ and who can forget his infamous baby-on-the-balcony-apartment antics, or his ‘pedophilia escapades’ or the ludicrus claim that he used to sleep in a special oxygen gas chamber?

When MJ died, suddenly millions were crying, millions more were saying what an amazing guy he was, how big was his heart, how much he cared for the underprivlleaged, how he revolutinized the music world, how his music made a difference in everyone’s lives, and how he will be missed.

Gee, if only Michael was alive to hear this…

So why is that do we only say nice things about people only once they’ve died? Is it because we’re just not used to flattering people? Is it because when people are alive, we only look at their faults, and when they’re dead, there’s no point looking at their faults, because these faults cannot be undo, therefore we rather say nice things about them?

Or is it maybe because death is the one thing we fear, and perhaps saying nice things about a person is one way of us coping with that inevitable nature of life?

Something to think about and ponder…

Posted in Life, People, Uncanny Philosophy | 3 Comments »

Men are not all about sex

September 20th, 2009 The author

I just came back from watching the movie ,The Ugly Truth, with a good friend of mine. The movie basically revolves around this guy, who has his own TV show which primarily propagates on the fact that men are just about sex, and a woman should do everything to make themselves pleasing to men if she wants him.

Now whether the story is written in the sense to deliberately portray a typical alpha-male scenario is guessable, but the fact is, we know that some movies are made to reflect the current culture that we live in. Some movies typify the society that we are in.  And my firend, who watched the movie with me, (and who is a girl) also concurred with this fact. Most women actually DO think that men are just about sex.

I guess the problem herein lies in the skewed way of how women think men view love. To women, a man is said to experience love when it comes to sex. So while the common belief that a woman tends to associate love to an emotion, for  a man, love is equated with sex. Having sex is a man’s way of getting love.

Lust Caution!

Our culture today has blurred this line, so much so that we can’t really tell the difference between the two. We don’t really know which is which and how to spot one from the other.  There’s actually two folds to this and they both relate to one another :

Fold 1 : Absence of Love Leading to Lust

Hugh Hefner, Playboy’s founder once commented that the reason he founded Playboy was simply because he did not experience much love growing up.  This absence of love forced Hefner to look for love elsewhere, which led him to founding Playboy, where he could get all the ‘love’ possible. What was more disturbing and sad in some way was, Hefner’s love was a counterfeit, which was disguised in the form of lust.

Too often times we hear lonely young males who become addicted to pornography. While there are many reasons as to why this destructive habit is becomes an addiction to some, for the most part, it is because of lonliness, which means the absence of love.  People often think that women are the ones that long to be loved and cherished, but they often forget that males, guys also need this. Guys need to hear that they are being loved and that they are being cared, that they are being cherished.

Alas, society does not portray these messages when it comes to defining the man. Man is defined as someone who has dominion over his territory, someone who is designed to lead and control the environment around him, and this includes his woman.  Notice how society does not say that Man needs love, rather Man should control his woman, and that woman should satisfy his needs.

And so with all the sensitivity being given to the woman, Man suddenly is left to be the beast, the animal who only has his instincts, therefore if we reduce man to that level, the phrase ‘think with your pants’ becomes quite apt and therefore we view sex as just another physical need, which again becomes disguised in the form of love for the woman.

Fold 2 :  Lust becomes the new form of Love for man

So now, love becomes twisted in the man’s eye and heart, to man, love equates to lust equates to sex.  And because society points us to that direction, suddenly these equations become hard coded into our brains and male human makeup.

The idea of a male being sensitive and longing for love? - That is termed as gay and softy. And because man was not made to be a softy, we are then forced to be the beast who is in control of his destiny¸ and this  means engaging in sexual activity to fulfil our needs. By fulfilling our needs, we become masters or controllers of our destiny. We are in charge. We can engage in promiscuous sex with who ever we want simply because we are men and that’s what we think only about.

Sadly, sex is now merely reduced to something of an entertainment or mere physical gratification

Blindly Playing Along

Having just read all that, you would probably think that perhaps women would think abit different of men? - Hardly the case.  I once had a discussion with my female colleague on this, and she just phlegmatically commented that “all men are interested in is doing IT”.  So it’s not really just merely an Ugly Truth, it’s THE TRUTH (well according to women at least).

The Minority Group

While the perversity of sex is rampant in our culture today, as a guy (who has had his own fair share of dealing with sexual problems), I’m not here to ostracize all the males out there who think this way. Rather I want people, especially the ladies out there to know that there are actually guys who are not about sex at all. I’ve met such guys like this in my own walk of life, and trust me, these are guys who think with their minds and hearts, rather than with their pants.  We want to love a woman the way she is supposed to be loved. We want to also be loved by them and just as we cherish them, to also be cherished by them. We want to lead them, to protect them and to serve them.

Nice guys somehow…will finish last

I guess no matter how much I try to stress that there such amazing and wonderful guys out there to encourage and give some hope to the women out there, I guess a part of me will always think that ‘Nice Guys will finish Last’. It has nothing to do with one’s self-esteem, rather I think it because women at times don’t know what they really want.  They think they do and so they pass up opportunities when a great guy comes along, not even bothering to give the guy a chance to see if things will ever work out, rather simply admitting that “I don’t think this will work out”… for some reason, women (and also man for that matter) are always looking for something else, when sometimes, the right person is standing right in front of you.

Posted in Life, Love, People, Relationships, Uncanny Philosophy | No Comments »