As I walk along..

As a part in our job, we are supposed to provide specialist advice for project managers who prepare documents to procure and manage a service. This function is necessary to ensure that the process adopted and the outcome is consistent with the organisation’s policy and complying with the procedures. Our function is to add value to their work as oppose to policing their work. One of the vital steps to achieve this is to review the draft documents before they are finalised.
Somehow, people took advantage of this situation. Some project managers couldn’t care less and spend little effort in preparing their documents.  Draft documents are sometimes so brief to the extent of next to nothing.  It is virtually impossible to review a very badly formatted document with hardly any content in it. This makes reviewing of the document meaningless and a mockery.   Unfortunately, this is a large bureaucratic organisation and there is really nothing much you can penalise the culprit who performed in such tardy manner.
Tardiness is a human weakness. The weakness is best amplified when shared responsibility exists.   As long as the responsibility for producing a good work (in this case a good document) is shared by a few people, some people tend to be lazy and pass the buck.  Eventually, some other conscientious people in the group will have to work harder to make it good.The concept of Share Responsibility is meant to encourage effective contribution from individual to form an effective team to achieve a quality outcome.  In Share Responsibility, everybody is accountable for any failure. Now in large bureaucratic organisation, it is used a screen to hide oneself for not acting in a responsible manner. It is the duty of top management to investigate, to go behind this screen to know the true value of the organisation. Again, often too unfortunately, top management are busy themselves erecting bigger screens to protect themselves and have little time left to do any thing that adds value.

As part of the work of our division, we provide advice to people drafting documents. This is one way of ensuring that documents produced by the various divisions are consistent to the policies and objectives of the organization. However, one flaw is that we are not doing the enforcement duty to see that advice given out are adopted and implemented.

As you may expect, for half the time, people ignored our advices and went on their ways doing what ever they like. This is human nature and I have long accepted that it is next to impossible to change people’s behaviour, especially those exhibited by the stubborn ones. After all, the golden rule of on advice giving is to be indifferent whether the advice is taken up or not and never persist in trying to set people right.  Ultimately, people are responsible for what they do.

The only problem is that under the principle of shared responsibility, those who landed themselves in trouble by going against good advice would inadvertently claimed that they followed our advices and adopted decision of the group.  After all, this is the real world and back stabbing in office is not uncommon.

My strategy of distancing myself from such claims is my paperwork. Apart form my work focus of providing guidance and advice, I placed great importance on keeping proper record of the advice given and to inform the relevant managers that such advice had been given. It would be up to the relevant section managers to deal with consequence arising from non-adoption of good advice. 
 In today’s complex office environment, it is not just output that is required of a conscientious worker. While office politics may not be our cup of tea, it pays to devote attention in keeping proper records of what we have done.     

Some times ago, some of my school classmates commenced organizing a reunion. It must be exciting to meet up with your old classmates after not seeing each other for so many years. So they compiled a list of e-mails and sent out group e-mails detailing the progress and suggestions for the events. Somehow, they have picked up my office e-mail address from my business card.  Since then I have been receiving all these group e-mails directed to more than a hundred e-mail addresses. As the organizing of the event progressed, more and more of such group e-mail are clocking up my office e-mail accounts. Some of the e-mail also included exe files as an add-on spice to the e-mail conversation. 
 
Somehow, these group e-mails were intercepted by Mail Sweeper installed by my office IT section.  The software regards these group e-mails as spams and either delay in sending them to my inbox or deleted automatically. At the end, I have to advice my classmates to use my Yahoo e-mail address instead of my office e-mail address.
 
I believe many offices have installed some kind of software to check on group e-mails or bulk mails. If this is the case, and very likely too, many of our classmates are missing out on the group e-mails, perhaps without realizing. 
 
From my experience with using the Yahoo Group, I have found that the Yahoo Group function available freely can be more suitable for such communication with a large group of people.  Messages posted on the Yahoo Group can be viewed on the group web site or received as individual e-mail rather as a group or bulk mail. The Yahoo Group also comes with options for one to choose from no e-mail to summary digest e-mail for the week. On top of that, it has facility to store files and photos to be viewed at any time. I do believe that this is a better platform for our communication compared to the group e-mail.

On my own initiatives, I have set up a group for this purpose. I do believe that one day, people will realize the benefit of and step forward and adapt to changes.

The great man Gandhi once said that there were only two types of people in this world. The first type were those who had seen Taj Mahal. The second type were obviously those who had not seen the Taj Mahal. Well, being not having a great mind like Gandhi, I can only narrow down to three groups of people in this world.
 
The first group of people I believe are the people who are at the forefront making things happen. They are the pioneers. They are the inventors who invent new things. They create changes and adopt changes instantly. They take risk in their ventures. When computers came into being, they quickly threw away the old typewriter and embrace the computer technology. They dared to invest in IT even at the early stage. They are the early birds who reaped the rewards.
 
The second group of people are the followers. They are a bit cautious in their ventures. They are analytical people who evaluate risks and make decisions.  They do not invent new things and they do not create change. Nevertheless, they are able to detect changes over a longer period and they are able to adapt to changes.  They are also rewarded for they effort, though a bit late.
 
The third group of people are the die hard conservatives. They sat around they cultures and traditions, not aware of the changes around them. They do not take risks. They refuse to understand new changes, let alone adapt to new changes. While people are communication through e-mails and instant messages, they prefer to write letters. They let opportunity passed by without noticing. If they did realized what they had missed, they blame their misery on others. Even if they are persuaded, they refused to let go their traditional way. They are the ultimate losers.
 
Which group of people you belong to?

The other day, Jah (not his real name) who worked in another division of our organisation came over to meet my colleague to discuss some work he was doing. Unfortunately, my colleague was not in, apparently on a sick leave. So Jah ended up having a chat with me.
 
Well, Jah was of South Indian origin and he belief in Hinduism. Jah said that in his religion, there were many Gods. There was a main God, a God of Health, a God for Happiness, a God for Love, a God for Education and a God for each major issue affecting human beings. They prayed to these Gods for their blessings.  Jah explained that the system was something like the government cabinet, with a minister for each portfolio. I said that was great. Jah had explained his religion in such a simple way that I can understand.

Jah then asked me what about my God. I told him I am a Buddhist and hence had no God. At first, he was confused and said that he used to regard Buddhism as a very complex subject with so many books written of this subject.  How could there be no God in Buddhism. Wasn’t Buddha my God, he asked? I told him that in true Buddhism, Buddha is not considered a God, but a Buddha, an enlightened teacher who showed us a way of life.  Buddha taught during his times and the people followed his teaching. Buddha taught us to adopt the Eight Fold Noble Path to move from the suffering state of mind to the non-suffering state of mind. From generation to generation, the monks in the temples had been passing down those teachings. They were also written down in books called Sutras.  Those who follow the teaching and practice diligently would ultimately attain inner calm and happiness.
 
It turned out that it was the first time he heard about the Buddhism in such a simple manner and he said he really appreciated the way I explained. Before he left my office, I promised to send him a simplified copy of the Diamond Sutra, which is the teaching of Buddha. Later that day, I sent a soft copy of the Diamond Sutra to him via e-mail.
 
Well, conversation on such very complex subjects very often ends in disagreement, as I have observed.  Nevertheless, we were able to tackle this complex issue in light-hearted manner and in simple language without the mystified surround. Jah rang me two weeks later to thank me for the sutra, which he found generally interesting and thought provoking.  

People asked me why I blog. And who is going to read my blog anyway?
In today’s society, people are forever busy and busy. They need to work and attend to thousands of issue in everyday lives. When they can find some spare times, they would spend their times on sports, leisure holidays, movies, parties, reads magazines, watch televisions and many other things. It is really hard to imagine you can get anybody to sit in front of the computer. It they do sit in front of the computers, there are news, e-mails, games, on-line gambling, live chats, pornography and many others that attract their attentions. Why would they waste valuable times reading my blog?

Different people set up their blogs for different purposes. Some use their blogs to report on specific and detailed issues not covered by the mainstream media. Others set up their blogs to champion their courses, what ever that may be. A lot of the blogger use the blog to detail their daily lives and happening around them. And a lot of bloggers hope to change the world with they blogs. So which category of the above I belong to?

Well, when I set up my blog, I gave it a thorough thought. I came to the conclusion that it is unlikely that anybody would like to read my blog if it is not of interesting subjects providing entertainment value or if it is not beneficial to them. Such blog must be able to withstand the test of time, when it is still of value to read years later. So I decided that my blog must portrait the human spirit, it must be thought provoking, must inspire and must consists of articles which can add value to the human kind. I thought, if any one was to stumble onto this web site, he should find the site interesting. So I incorporated some pictures for the background to make the computer screen less objectionable. I used big font to make reading easy and I kept each article short. I promise myself, if I can inspire any one in this whole wide world with any article of my blog, I would have considered the blog successful. I would have contributed in a very small way, to make the world a better place.

This is the amazing story of survival, a story of courage, decision-making and determination. On July 6th 2004, a family of six set out in a dinghy from Badu Island to attend a birthday party in Thursday Island in the Torres Strait, mid way between Papua New Guinea and Cape York of Australia. Halfway through, the outboard motor of their dinghy failed and the dinghy later capsized in the shark and crocodile infested water. The boy age 11 and his two sisters aged 16 and 11 were separated from their parents and their younger sibling.

The boy and the two girls managed to swim to a nearby outcrop island and survive without food and water for two days. On the third day, they decided that they had to leave the outcrop or they would perish. They then swam from the barren outcrop to another island (Matu Island) and survived a further 3 days on some coconuts, native plums and oysters, until they were rescued six days later. In between, they make two major swims, one a far as 5 kilometre.

It is amazing that at that age, they were able to make crucial decision for survival to leave the outcrop to swim to Matu Island. They were able to face up to the challenge of swimming great distance where even a champion swimmer would find it tough. They were able to use their survival skills in search of food and water. According to them, when they swam, they were determined to swim with “one heart and one mind” free from the distraction of the sharks and crocodiles. Their positive spirits and determination to survive have helped them to make it through their toughest time of their lives. It is amazing and heart warming. It is the triumph of the human spirit.

Most of the time, watching TV show is a mere time wasting event. It is a mean to spend the available time while getting some entertaintainment out of it. But there was this reality show, which provides entertainment as well as educational value. This reality TV show was about two teams of people competing on an assignment given by the chief of a big corporation. For each assignment competed, the winner team got invited to some luxury indulgent. The loser team got to face the boardroom and one of the team members was fired. The last remainder person left was rewarded with the position of President in one of the company owned by the corporation.
At the beginning, it was the men’s team verses the women’s team. At first, the men’s team lost on the first few assignments losing a number of men. Then the teams were reshuffled into two mixed teams so that the numbers of team members were roughly the same and the two teams continued to compete on further assignment. It was an interesting TV show and there were some corporate lessons worth learning.
From watching the show, I gather that the following are some of the important lessons arising from the various assignments.
1. Love what we do. Even, if we are doing something non-glamorous, we have to love the job and put our heart and mind into it.
2. Do not just blame others for failure. We need to find out the reasons for failure and improve our performance on those areas. Mere blaming others will not get us too far.
3. Be a good negotiator. We must be able to adapt and change our negotiation style each time to suit the need.
4. Be true to ourselves and stand up for our right. We must not depend on others to fight for our right.
5. Be brave and decisive. A person who is unable to make a decision, or who take excessively long time to make decision is not going to be successful.
6. Show appreciation for other people. We need to appreciate the work of others and maintain good working relationship.
7. Encourage teamwork. A good leader is the one that provides support for the weaker team member and gets the best out from the team.
8. Make constructive idea. Idea should be sound and workable.
9. Be professional. Sex appeal can work at times but for long-term success, we need to be professional in our work and to produce quality work.

Watching TV shows can have an educational effect. It is only a matter of decision as to what show to watch on the TV.

I have never heard of the word “password” before computers came into our lives. In older times, the word “password” was probably used by intelligence services or gang members to identify each other as belonging to the same group.
Today, the word PASSWORD is heard everywhere. We are reminded of our PAASSWORD every now and then in our daily lives. We need password to use the bank ATM card. We need password to enter a building. We need password to make a telephone enquiry. We need password to log on to our computer. We need password to read our e-mails. We need password to book a train or air ticket. We need password for Internet shopping. We need password to set the burglary alarm. We need password to activate the car engine. We encounter passwords everywhere we go and we need to recite our PASSWORD for everything we do. Above all, I need password to post this blog. We can forget our names. But we must not forget all the passwords we need. If your forgot any of your passwords needed for doing anything, your life is doomed. PASSWORD is so powerful, so enhancing that it is now God. How amazing. So we need to worship the new God of Password. Daily we are reciting the words of God Password so we can be blessed to carry on our life smoothly.

The other day, I met this fellow at the train station. He seemed worried. As it was still early for the train to arrive, I caught up a conversation with him. It turned out that he was late and missed catching the train departing half an hour earlier. So what was the worry? There was always another train. Well, he said he was going for a job interview, and chances was that he might arrive late and ruin his potential career. What a disaster for being late. Well he planned his time well the day before. As he was leaving the house for the train in the morning, he notices some leaves blown by the overnight wind onto his veranda. So he got hold of a broom and swept the leaves off. You see, he was a man of cleanliness. The sweeping took only a few minutes enough to cause him to miss the train. What a big price to pay for being side tracked by the leaves on the veranda.

Was sweeping the leaves off the veranda more important than going for a job interview? Are we organising our lives based on priority?

Our office has just undergone an organisational restructuring. That means 54 employees were asked to apply for their own jobs and 30 of them have been successful. So what happens to the 24 unsuccessful employees who failed to apply for the job which there are currently doing? No body knows.
The irony of this restructuring is that this is a utility service company supplying a booming city with the increasing population. The customer base is increasing so is the sales. Only the management sees that there is a need to reduce staff numbers in accordance with the policy and instruction handed down to them.
The only good news is that there is also a policy of no forced redundancy or retrenchment. So the employees having failed to secure job positions continue to represent the organisation and continue to carry out the work. When will this unhealthy situation going to last is anybody’s guess.
There is a general feeling of uncertainty and worry exhibited these employees, majority of them are long service employees and have no other skills outside the organisation. These are the employees who have faithfully served the organisation for the last 20 or 30 years and they have been betrayed. Like the animals in the circus, they were fed just sufficient and trained to perform stunning acts for the patrons. They are good at that but that is just what they know. When the circus closed, and the gate to the cage left open, these animals have no skills to venture out and nowhere to venture to. This is reality. If one is contended with one’s job and think that he or she can perform the job until retirement, he or she must be making a serious mistake.
This is a grim reminder that we should constantly upgrade our skills and maintain our competency to ensure that we are marketable. This is particularly so for the younger workforce who do not have the choice of going on retirement.

This is the chilling story of a women wronged by justice. In 1980, a young couple went for a camping holiday with their young baby in the outback in Northern Territory, Australia. The baby disappeared during the darkness one night. According to the mother, she heard the baby cried and went to check out. To her horror, she caught a glimpse of the baby dragged away by a dingo (a native Australian wild dog) into the darkness. Police later found some torn clothing worn by the baby in some bushes.
The woman was charged for killing the baby and was convicted in 1982 and jailed for life. The young mother maintained her innocent and there were subsequent appeals. In 1986, the court eventually quashed her conviction.
Now 25 years later, a man has come forward with new information. Apparently, he was also camping with three others in around the area where the young couple camped. One day, he went hunting for rabbit for his dog. He then shot a dingo, which he thought was a rabbit. To his horror, he found the baby dead with the dingo. As he was using firearm illegally in the National Park, the group decided not to report the incident immediately for fear of getting into trouble. Instead they discard the baby’s clothing and buried the baby elsewhere. They agreed that one of them were to tell Police later that they hit a dingo with the baby while driving. They never did.
Twenty-five years later, he is now an old man and those who camped with him that faithful time had passed away. His conscience comes back to play on him. He said he felt terrible when the woman was jailed, but he did not have the courage to speak out at that time as the group had agreed to keep silent. He said that he must now tell the truth before it is too late.
As human being, we do have conscience. At times, we suppress our conscience and kept silent about the truth to protect ourselves. But our conscience plays on us constantly. We are uneasy with ourselves with keeping dark secrets. We build a cocoon to protect us and we live inside it. We thought we are safe inside this cocoon away from our conscience, but we actually live in fear and uncertainty. Eventually, we need to live up to our conscience. We need to free ourselves by speaking the truth, soon or later.

Some of our classmates have gathered together to plan for a grand reunion of our schoolboys. After so many years of leaving high school, the old boys are excited. Many of us have not met each other as we worked in different cities. A substantial number of our old boys have also migrated overseas.

While the planning for the reunion is on, there are communications almost daily through telephones, letters and e-mails. I have received so many e-mails that the management of these e-mails need more than a bit of attention. I can safely conclude that the desire to communicate with each other is strong.

To facilitate the communication, I have taken the initiative to set up a communication platform in the form of Yahoo Group. Thanks to the advancement in the information technology, the Yahoo Group can be set up for free. Members only need to register and sign in to read and post messages and photos. I consider this a far better platform than just individual e-mails considering our class are a group of more than 600 peoples.

Some of our boys have responded to my invitation to join the Yahoo Group and signed up. However, for the other, there may be various reasons why they are yet to sign up to join the group. Perhaps, it may be the lack of access to computer Internet, or a lack of confidence in the use of advanced technology. This is likely consider the fact that personal computer was yet to be invented during our high school days. Perhaps it is simply a case of lack of time as they all have other priorities in life. Perhaps I might have misread the enthusiasm.
Needless to say, it is very important to keep ourselves abreast with the advancement in technology, failing which we will be left behind.

The picture below appears in the homepage of our Yahoo Group.

It reads:
“With the passage of time, our happiness, our tears, our ambitions and our purity of childhood are fading into the distance. If you ever have a chance to meet up any of our childhood playmates are you still able to recognize those traces of childhood?
We do not have to remember every bit of happenings during our childhood. However, we are able to stop our rush forward in the fast lane of life occasionally to take a momentarily look backward. It is because, behind us, we have the most sincere laughters, our tears of first love, and our forever friendship.”

The Government's “Baby Bonus” payment kicked in yesterday (1/7/2004). The Government had introduced a lump sum maternity payment of $3,000 for all new mothers, $6000 for mother with twins and $9,000 for mother with triplets. Good news, the more babies, the better. On the surface, it looks like a great help to the mother in easing the financial burden of having a new baby.
There is a general concern that this baby bonus will encourage young girls to get pregnant to qualify for this baby bonus. This is particularly so for young girls coming from socially disadvantaged group with little education and poor career prospect. According to existing welfare system, a young girl who has a child is entitled to welfare payment for the next 15 years. This welfare payment to single mother is almost obligation free and much more generous than the dole payment to an unemployed worker. This generous payment is a big disincentive for the mother to look for paid job elsewhere. At the end of 15 years, there is nothing to stop the mother from having another baby to repeat the whole payment cycle. Thus the welfare system acts as a reward for people making bad choices
Already, almost one in three is born to an unmarried mother. The baby bonus will just reinforce and advance this trend. Babies born from single mothers relying on welfare payment are subject to very high risk of being influenced and inherit a welfare culture. They will not receive a balanced father-mother family style upbringing and have little chances of receiving higher education to advance their career prospects. At the end, when they turn into adulthood, the risk of them repeating their mother’s footsteps is very high. And the cycle continues inside this welfare trap.
Is the welfare system too good for the recipient’s own good? Are we fostering a culture of dependent? Should effort be made to break away from this welfare dependent culture?

What is life? I wonder.
Someone said, “Life is a roller coaster, it goes up and it comes down. There are expectations on the ride up, there are excitement and thrills at the top, there is also the the danger and the sinking feeling on the way down.”
Some other said, “Life is a jungle filled with obstacles testing us all the way. We gain more skills and become wiser after each experience. This is what keeps us moving on with life.”
When I was young, I once said” Life is an ocean, it has the vastness, the beauty, the waves, the tides, the winds, the danger, the horizon, the deep dark secrets beneth the surface and the adventure. Above all, the ocean supports life”

People go about in their life everyday. Some live in luxury with their health ane wealth. Some other have the means and the available support system from the government or society to ensure that life continue with certainty. While some live a challenging live, others live a routine life. And for the less fortunate, life is a never ending struggle, a struggle without protection. To these people, they live their lives in hope. It is the hope for a better future that keep them going. Without hope, life would be routine and mundane. Without hope, life would be without purpose and meaningless.

After going through the ups and the downs, the waves and the storms, I now say: “Life is a journey. It can be a long journey with a far destination. It can be a series of individual short journeys with many stop over or rest places in between.”

It does not matter what you have encountered in your journey, and what you have experienced, you acquire more skills, gained more knowledge and you move on the journey with more wisdom and hopefully much happier.