This is a true story and it happened yesterday (20/6), I’ve had a new experience in my line of work. I was working as always when suddenly one worker came running to me saying that there is a drunk tractor driver chasing other workers with a “parang”. I immediately called the security guard and believe it or not, he said he wouldn’t dare to go to a drunk running amok with a “parang”. I am quite angry at the time, because who will go and calm the person if the security doesn’t dare. What if somebody got hurt?

I am not that brave also, but I take a deep breath and “tawakal” to Allah. I asked three of my other workers and we went to the driver’s place. . There I saw him alone, no “parang” what so ever.

“Fuuh! lega!”. Immediately after he saw us, he get upset and start cursing. I asked all those with me to remain quiet and just stand by if he attacked or anything. I slowly approached him and I tried my best to maintain that innocent look of not knowing what happened. I asked him to start from the beginning. After a lot of cursing and incoherent words… he explained to me what’s the problem.

I guess his thought became more organized to properly explain to me and thus he started to calm down. I was agreeing with everything he said and promised him to settle his problem myself.

FYI – he is a contractual tractor driver taking the waste of the mill out. He is not employed by the mill but by nearby estates. And he was paid by amount of load he can do everyday. The more he can load out, the more money he get. To load the waste will require mill’s shovel, which was not available at the tme. That’s why he’s angry.

Of course in order for me to help him, I insist he must surrender the “parang”. Everything’s settled. When I walked back I can see him laughing, maybe because he think I will now do what ever he wants. Obviously I then called his manager and banned him from entering the mill compound ever again. Oh ya, no one’s was hurt fortunately.

Lesson learnt –

• My security need to sit down and come up with proper plan for all emergency. Luckily this is just a drunk case, where I can still reason with him. If it were a crazy person who just want to kill others, the workers will be all dead before police came.
• I need to sit down and come up with my proper plan for all emergency. The problem with emergency is that it usually happen when you lease expected and if you panic, things will only just get worse. Hm do you guys ever plan what to do in emergency? like your bus toppled or burglar inside the house? I think I should..

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There was a man at Bukit Kayu Hitam (The border of Thailand and Malaysia). We will call him Nasir (from “pasir”). He was seen to cross the border to and fro everyday riding a bicycle with two sacks of sands.

One day, a custom officer, who we will call Faisal (From “officer”), noticed Nasir carrying the sack from Thailand into Malaysia. He immediately stopped Nasir and asked him what’s inside the sack. Nasir said, “it’s just sand, sir.” Faisal did not believe him. Who would waste time carrying in sands like that. There must be rice or illegal things inside. Faisal then smashed the sacks of sands onto the road and found that Nasir was telling him the truth. There were just sands. Nasir then slowly gathered what remains from the sands and filled it back into the smashed sacks.

The next day, Faisal, the immigration officer, stopped him again, and did the same thing, expecting he might soon catch Nasir smuggling rice, or drugs into Malaysia. But there were nothing else inside the sacks but sands. Faisal started to feel sorry for the old man. And Nasir continued bringing the sacks into Malaysia everyday for 2 years straight. Of course Faisal did spot check from time to time but to no avail.

After the two years, Nasir had stopped crossing the border. And one day during breakfast Faisal met his old friend, Nasir at the coffee shop looking quite wealthy and very different from two years back. After a long chit chat, Faisal asked Nasir.. “Now tell me the truth, why do you brought in sands from Thailand to here? What do you actually do for a living?”

Nasir said : “I smuggled bicycle”

(Source – Forwarded joke rewritten from memory)

Lesson learnt

• We often see the world expecting everything will be familiar and easily understandable. We prefer not to challenge our mind looking from another perspective. For example, we look at a thin man with red eye, immediately we label him as a drug addict. He might just be Bill Gates trying out contact lense. Who knows? 🙂
• Next time, we see anything. traffic jam, beloved parents, even jokes like the above, maybe we can try looking it from another point of view.
• “Gajah depan mata tak nampak, Kuman seberang laut nampak pulak”

————— Personal Note ————————–
I don’t actually recall my first time riding a bicycle. But I remember exactly how my brother first learn to ride the bicycle. Our father forced him to learn, and in doing so, he injured himself falling. (Not to say injured, but fall down la :p). So one night, he actually took a knife to tear the bicycle tyre. I’m not so sure whether he succeeded or not, but the amazing thing is… the very next day was the day he finally able to ride the bicycle. 🙂 So guys, how did you learn to ride bicycle?

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No, he’s not my uncle. Maybe somebody’s. Anyway he is not that important actually, but his idea is. Click For more info on Pareto’s Principle.

Bear with me for a while, according to him – 80% of all output comes from 20% of input.A few examples will describe the principle better. So what Uncle Pareto said is that –

• In 100 workers, only 20 workers are the good ones. If the other 80 didn’t come to work, 80% of the work for the day will still be finished regardless.

• In 100 tasks given by the boss everyday, only 20 is important and if you can finish these, basically 80% of your work for the day is done. The boss will be happy already. Keep it up and you will start giving task being the boss yourself.

• In business, 80% of your profit comes from 20% of your client. If you fail to recognize these client and get business from them, your company is already losing money.

• In 100 blogs, only 20 will benefit you. (*wink)

To sum up, in what ever things in life (friends, work, business), before you do anything, identify the key 20% and concentrate on these first. basically you have already achieve 80% of what you want. If not –

• The workers may not be appreciated rightfully and leave the company to work in another. Company’s loss.

• You may be so busy doing the small daily routine task, high profile projects are given to somebody else. He will get promoted someday and you are still doing the same small daily routine task.

• Being greedy to get business from all available client, you accidentally neglected the important ones. Feeling ignored they awarded their RM1 Million tender to other contractor instead of to you.

• You spend your day giving feedback on blog about dying ants, color of houses etc, some blog which may actually benefit you were left dry. The author, thinking nobody is interested, then decided to give it up. (*wink)

We just can’t have everything now, don’t you think so?

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