Picatho's causeries

"I admired PM Badawi's (who has lost his beloved wife yesterday) 40 year's marriage. And how you organize your marriage for 30 over years?" One of my clients asked me.

After a moment of informal conversation, I read from his eyes that he must be having some family problems resided. He finally told me that he had been cooped with "cold war" with his wife for many years.

For the sake of helping him, I shared him some tactics of how to reduce tension at home.

Couples who have great marriages aren't lucky, they were dedicated. It's a partnership of hard-work in common believe fabricated at the mercy of understandings.

First and foremost, I condemned him as an idiot of the total gross. Why? Because I know him well of his "bull" character (no talebearing).

Well, actually what's the cause of a high percentage of home tension? Miscommunication and lack of tolerance.

Soul mates are created over the course of day-to-day living. How to communicate well is a big lesson. Simple rule is first to evaluate each other's character, then use the "acid test" method to create a besting way of talking.

For example, if your partnership is just like a chicken and duck relation, you've to use a straight forwarding method to talk, in addition with body language. If your partnership is like a pair of professor and junior student, a theoretical way of talking will not do.

Don't completely believe what love guru's says and don't just take other's case as a blueprint. You've to approach communication completely different ways. The ways that’s applicable for your partnership relation.

A simple phase of requesting something - "pass me that thing" can be refined into hundred ways of expression. Do try yourself by attaching few affixes onto the space of prefix or suffix. Or using passive voices. The sensations will totally be different!

Chinese proverb said, "if you respect me 3 marks, I'll repay you with 4 marks of respects." It's a basic of courteous regard for people's feelings. If you use "please" then you'll get a return of "Ho" (okay), a human character of natural responding.

The next is tolerant. Anger is very real in all of us. A life without anger is unrealistic. Man used to @!&$% and woman used to gag with tear and blowing nose.

Quite often that I used @!&$ as a prefix into my talking with friends and I gained back a courtesy of another $&!@. And curiously friendship became closer. But the application of same way into your partnership life will only bring you a Vietnam war or Berlin wall.

Anyway, “self-control” is the keyword of good remedy.

Disagreements or conflicts wouldn't 100% be resolved with win-win situations. Otherwise there would be no Iraq war. When come to a dead-lock situation (where x+y=0), the healing way is one party should have to dissolve or absorb or taking a reverse gear (if x=0). Since it's of lady first, man gonna to take the loser's end! (therefore y=0)

Chinese depicting it as "zhik hwang lean“ (eating yellow lotus seed - takes it) of which is good for man's health! Why not, man, thinks it over!

When angry, count 3; when very angry, swear; when very very angry, go elsewhere; after angry, bring back some ware; finish angry, love affair. - put3put4.

The main agenda of MCA nowadays is longlife learning. But most of its fronts are old folks. They want to learn something new, most probably the IT, Isn't it? I guessed.

The trope is "Can you teach an old bird to sing?" By rights you can. I tell you the possibleness within the metaphors.

It reflects the widely held stereotype that older people have difficulties in adapting to new methods and techniques.

Studies consistently demonstrate that older employees are preceived as being relatively inflexible, resistant to change, and less trainable than their younger counterparts, particularly with respect to information technology skills.1

But this metaphor is wrong.

The evidence indicates that older workers (typically defined as people aged 50 and above) want to learn and are just as capable of learning as any other employee group.

Older workers do seem to be somewhat less efficient in acquiring complex or demanding skills. That is, they may take longer to train. But once trained, they perform at comparable levels to younger workers.2

However, the ability to acquire the skills, knowledge, or behavior necessary to perform a job at a given level - that is, trainability - has been the subject of much research.

And the evidence indicates that there are differences between people in their trainability. A number of individual difference factors (such as ability, motivational level, and personality) have been found to significantly influence learning and training outcomes.3

Age, however, has not been found to influence these outcomes. Only they may take longer to learn.

1. L. Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957)
2. A.W.Wicker, “Attitude versus Action: The Relationship of Verbal and Overt Behavioral Responses to Attitude Objects,” Journal of Social Issues, Autumn 1969
3. Ibid., p.65

Life is an admixture and experiment of sour, sweet, bitter & chilly moments as the Chinese sages define it.

But there's always something that can bring a happy moment into our life in a way. Remembering and referring back to those moments will nevertheless help us get through the down times.

On a Saturday night I was in my little library (a very small corner in my room) making my family album in motioned VCD for the purpose of distributing to my grown children as a memento.

The job was interesting but was a bit tedium. A sequence process of scan-crop-resize-despeckle-view-save.

It was a rainy night, I was drinking while doing my work, and suddenly noted the night had turned very cold.

I supposed to heighten the degree of air-cond but on the spur of that moment (as I turned over) I noticed my wife was sleeping so deeply, revealing a peaceful but slight wrinkly face. A face of symbolical sacrifice - of whom had (suffered) married me at little 16. Ah, my indebtedness!

I then made a cat-walk to add on another sweater and went on to continue my work. Picture by picture to scan in, and suddenly I came across the picture (as shown), I held it and relished from it for quite a long moment. The picture figured in one of my happy moments, a happy moment that only a shilyshallying father can fully appreciate. My goodness.

It was 2 at the late-night. The sweet moment had eventually postponed my work.

"Being happy and making others feel happy is the most providential thing." I thought.

"The moment of that kiss contained every happy moment I had ever lived."
(Paulo Coelho quotes, Mystical author, one of Brazil's most successful novelist).

Abstract: This is a digest of hearsays that has been taken heed from a coffeeshop arena (an unintentional dictation from whom an exchange of gossips between A (a Chinese) & B (a Malay) happened).

Warning: This article contains absurd wordings. The blogger is wary of the vulgarity and has tried to plugin as close meaning as possible to make it becomes sensible.

The chitchat starts:

A: "Pu#%ma sekarang apa tu orang pun boleh buat, u tengguh tu bom di Bali, bunuh tu orang tak'berdosa saja." (what's the hell all these people possibly could do any harm, u see the case of Bali bombings where only those innocent people are killed.)

B: "Banyak bahaya sekarang, fasal Itulah dendam yang tak akan henti serupanya yang mana ada tuhan, mana ada hantu." (very dangerous nowadays, because their revenges will never stop as if where there is god, there will be an evil exited.)

A: "Na, lu tengguh paper hari ini, pu#%ma tu orang buang batu-bata ke atas kereta yang jalan. lama lama dia orang buang bom pula." (U see today's paper, there is brick-throwing incident, in such a likelihood they'll throwing bomb in future.)

B: "Hey! ini cuma kerjadian nakal saja, tak sama dengan itu terrorist." (Hey! it's merely a juvenile delinquency and not the same with those terrorists.)

A: "Lu ingat c%b# kerja ni boleh selesai kah?" (do you think that this kind of thing could be solved?)

B: "Tak mungkinlah fasal itu orang sudah hilang akai." (that's impossible because these ppl have losing their brains.)

A: "Wah! sekarang ha tu nyamuk boleh mati orang loh." (wah! nowadays mosquito can kill people.)

B: "Ceh! bukan mati orang, orang boleh mati kalau dijankiti dengan kuman dengue" (by no means of killing people, It's it could infect deadly dengue bacteria to people.)

A: "Dengue belum habis, mai tu sakit ayam lagi" (dengue is not yet finished, now bird flu is coming again.)

B: "Itulah virus-virus berbangkit macam virus komputer" (it's like computer viruses which are rising up.)

A: "Lu tengguh tu perumpuan besi bolehkah menangis lagi dalam kabinet lepas dicucuk belakang oleh tauka DAP?" (what do you think the iron lady could have crying again at the cabinet after the boss of DAP tapped on her?)

B: "Hang penah tengguh wayang kulit kah? Itulah kita cuma dibayangkan dengan cumbu-cumbunya, apa kita boleh tauh." (have U seen the skin show? we're just being shown by its endearments only, how can we get to know from the inside out?)

A: "Lu tengguh sekarang tu lanch@$u syer boleh belikah?" (what do u think that silly share can be purchased now?)

B: "Aku takut dibakar tanggan fasal yang ada syer-syer sekarang mungkin boleh dijatuh sampai bawah, hanya tertinggal beberapa sen saja." (I'm afraid of getting my hands burnt because some of the shares now could even fall down to a mere few cents.)

A: "Eh wa ada satu kawan, lulu dia beli 6 ribu biji tu Mxx, sekarang ha hanya tinggal lebih kurang RM125 saja loh!" (I got one friend, his previously purchased 6 thousands units of Mxx, now only left with a value of about RM125!)

B: "Itu biasalah" (It's very common.)

A: "Er sekarang ah apa barang pun naik harga, orang kuli kerajaan dapat gaji tambah, ada lu dapat?" (now it seems that all prices of goods are going up, government servants are getting pay-rise, how about you?)

B: "Tadaklah, apa kita boleh buat. Hari-hari U mahu makan. Orang miskin sebagai kita mampus saja." (Not at all, how can we do about it. We need to eat everyday. Poor ppl like us are suffering only.)

A: "Rokok pun naik, wa ingat mau tukar itu bangkali rakok loh." (price of cigarette have also increased, I'm considering to change to a cheaper one.)

B: "Ha! Ha!, nasib baik, ini bukan akunya fasal kerana aku ta'hisap" (haha! it's none of my business cos I'm not smoking.)

A: "Lanch@$u, U ta'hisap u adalah untung jimatkah?" (shit! have u save up some money from being a non-smoker?)

B: "Kosong, duit macam air, sini tak pergi, sana pergi pula." (none, money is like water, it has its own way to flow to.)

A: "Wah! cakap cakap sudah pukul 9, kita kena zoom loh, nanti tauka kan sama kita." (wah! time has flown fast on charting, it's now nearly 9 o'clock, we got to move now otherwise our boss will blame us later.)

B: "Zoom, zoom cepat" (move, move quickly.)

The free and brassy radio end. It is a #S%! man's domain!

Yesterday, one of my clients pinned the blame on my network scripts that has given to him the other day. In his phone conversation he complained, "Rob, LP lah! your scripts was a bogus one, it hung my network only." I explained to him that it was my production and was not a bogus one, it was non-functional due to typical error. But he argued that whatever thing that is producing mistake is bogus!

I was not pretty sure on his statement, since my rusty mental lexicon could have just only translated it into "fake" or "fraud". However I was not compromised.

In order to screen out the fact, so I immediately fired my Firefox, threw my inquiry "what's the meaning of bogus" to Answers.com and popped! Briefly were the definitions flashed. I explored into it. Bellyful humph! I cognized that I've been all the while living in a bogus world that's full of bogies!

Be it amboguous (having multiple bogus interpretations); bogotissimo (in a gloriously bogus manner); and bogotophile (one who is pathologically fascinated by the bogus), is extant and is inevitably happened in this globe.

Then it is non-functional; useless; false; incorrect; unbelievable; silly; fraudulent; fake; sham; fraud; pretender; and phony. That's in either way could has been just lived through by us.

Oh my god! That means I'm a bogus human and so you are too! Just because we're same living in a bogus world! On top of that, we do carry many bogus things in the course of human events and activities, perhaps.

OK, OK! let me think and count how many bogus things I have ... (by non-idiomatic words)

I've one bogoBolton degree (sorry Bolton! I meant here); I've another bogoFPNA award (sorry NIA! here only); I've one bogofila shoe; I've one bogoumbrella shirt; I've one bogopc (without bland); I've ... Aiyo! many leh!

In our society, I'm sure that we've came across many bogus things, such as credit card, currency, policeman, datoship, doctor, accountant, saleman, cds, software, helmet reported today and .... countless.

Contrastingly, bogus thing can be a good one also. For example, lies to kid to prevent his juvenile delinquency; bring dishonor upon oneself's financial inability against borrower; telling unsubstantial story to subsist being late at work; orientated bluffing to prevent conflict between couple and .... is also countless.

Oh yes, may be my says have just triggered your bogometer! But by chance you could have some too!

Anyway, who dare to confess that he has no bogus thing or bogosity (bad or good one) in his life? Maybe an alien from the other planet!

Everyone has visions in his life. But many of us go through life not clear about which direction we want to go.

The visions for our life come in various degrees of intensity and timing. Visions often shift and change with systems in our lifetime, and with movement from one stage of life to another.

What we want in our life can be planed and organized into agenda. So that we could have a life of excitement and fun and knowledge. But the philosophy of planing ahead of what we want in our life sometimes went futile. The fruitless plan is something somehow exclaimed as "Faith" by those forks who have had a failing life and those who believe in allegory.

One bankrup said, if you could predict and get to know who would be you youself in future, then there would be no beggars in this world. But quite often a wealthy people would acclaimed that his successful status was because of his prior good planning.

Hero makes the phenomena of society OR the society makes hero? The inexactitude makes it difficult to be answered aright.

If you scoure through this reality world. The unjust fortune set the scene for another worldiness. There are rich people scattering money on big houses and luxury cars. At the other end, there are poor people scavenging for food. In between, there are bourgeoisie working like a hell just for surviving. Is it the decent willing of god?

As children, most of us truly believed we'd grow up to become a rich people and do unique things. The trial and error of growing up never quite fulfills our ambitious. Although some call it a faith, yet ambitious or visions ignite many of us and rekindle our spirit of aliveness.

When I was 17, all adults I knew seemed to teach, "Young man, work harder and one day your head will breakthrough the sky liner." At that time I was dreaming of futuristic events of having a comfortable house, a nice car and a beautiful girl. So I worked like a donkey in believing the silly axiom.

After 13 years, no augmentative income. I found myself was still thirty nothing. Then I begun to realize that life is not a "saving box", of which is end-rewardable. I asked myself: was I living the life I'd wanted to live or was I the victim of the society? Living a life of "thirty nothing" requires a very tough kind of self-questioning.

Decades of donkey's life has passed. Now only I see the fruit, akin a pumpkin of small size but not like the one weights 557kg auctioned at the annual Safeway World Championship Pumpkin which has shown in today's Star paper. And now only I've learnt to realize where shall I go next!

Did I went through the early part of my life with plans? No really. Although I had plans, I had dreams and I had visions but they just couldn't be favored with right outcomes. As if I'd been sailing a boat in the ocean and luckily found a shore at the end.

I've considered myself as "lucky" because most of my friends were used to sent me a kudos: "Wah! Rob, You have a good faith to live like that" but none of them would express: "Wah! Rob, You're smart to plan your life like that".

Chinese proverb cited that, "life is given by 3 marks depend on god; 4 marks reckon on hardworking". Could we control our life? Could we go beyond that 4 marks?

Perhaps, between health and whelth, there is a difficult tradeoff as yet to be made.

In this world, most men were prompted crazy from time to time during their life's cycle (historical period). The realization of balancing in life comes only when they are getting old. And me is not the exceptional.

The elements that caused to interrupt the wheel of man's lifecycle are inevitably the behavioral inclination of somethings that people have been repeating to us over the years.

These included; Games, gamblings, womanizings, reputations, cars, alcohols money, actions & ....

Believe it or not, read on the following conversations between me and one of my friends, who is a grandfather of 4 sons, hereafter refferred to as Fang:

Me: "Congrat, old Fang, now you've got a good life. Got many sons and many grandchildren. No worries lah."

Fang: "Lampah (shit) lah! 4 sons 4 patterns, one is gambling ghost, one is mad with women, one is alcohol ghost, last one is a bookworm. You see, sooisiau (unlucky) or not!"

Me: "Aiya! don't bother about them lah, later on they will automatically change to good lah."

Fang: "I hope so. they changed now and then. Like the eldest one, formerly he was fond of womanizing, after marriaged, now became gambling ghost pula."

Me: "How about the 2nd one?"

Fang: "This one ah, don't talk lah, last time very crazy in doing business, after having some money, playing cars and playing women, lulu siausiau! (hanky-panky). You talk, he won't listen."

Me: "Take it easy lah, naturally he'll retire from womanizing soon. How about the 3rd one?"

Fang: "Aiyo! this one champ (worse) loh! drink from morning until night. Almost every midnight he has to be carried home by people. But he holiau (is good), he could go to open shop early in the morning."

Me: "Mai hiam bey phai (no bad) ah, at least he's caring his business."

Fang: "Yongest one leh, whole day reading. Sampai (even) his mother called him to eat, he also don't think of eating. Everyday he's playing computer. Don't know he is whether truly studying or looking at charbor (porn). I afraid one day he could become mad from reading."

Me: "Is good wah, at least he got learning to deal with. Is better then those who are doing notting but sucking white powder only."

Fang: "You see, all no 3 no 4 (unevenness), but luckily none of them was mixing with bad people and went for robbing."

Me: "Aiya! mai haim bey phai (pretty good) lah! The most important thing is, do they give you money for eating kuih (money for living)?"

Fang: "Hengchai (luckily)! ka ka kiam kiam (some) lah. Eh! how about your children?"

Me: "Not like you got so many watertaps. My 2 daughters have already let other people to feed. My eldest son, almost same with yours lah, he is loving his business and car."

Fang: "hi! men are all like that one. Don't talk about them, last time we were also same sama like that. Ha ha ha!"

Me: "Don't be tortoise laugh at turtle lah! This is called an [innate man's world]."

disclaimer: views expressed are not necessarily of the blogger.