Summary – Another point of view on Father’s Day etc
Father’s day is approaching. Malaysia sure has a lot of celebration. Mother’s day, Teacher’s day, Father’s day, Valentine etc.

Technically the celebration is meant to educate us to be more appreciative.Very true.. and I can’t imagine of better way of doing it. But don’t you think we have to review that approach as now we only appreciate teacher during teacher’s day, our independence on Merdeka day, our spouse on valentine. The other 364 days were spent without any effort to cherish them. Instead of making us appreciate them all the time, we waited for the day to come to appreciate them.

The method of celebration must also be reviewed as you can see throughout the nation, people are celebrating it by mean of spending money. Can’t we appreciate them without or with minimum spending of money. It is somehow rooted in our way that to celebrate I must buy his/her something new. Sellers obviously will take this opportunity, cannot blame them.

A lot of things should be reviewed. Or we will end up being a robot, doing the same thing without ever understanding the reason and its meaning. Like shouting MERDEKA!!! like mad every August but we hate our Malaysia to the guts.

Again, I am not against celebrating these days. I think it is a wonderful idea with very noble intention. For me, appreciate doesn’t have to be a trip to oversea, gift or cards (even though, people nowadays prefer to be appreciated that way). it’s when ever I go the extra mile for them happily and they know deep down they are appreciated any days in my life.

————— Personal Note ————————–
You know I am celebrating and appreciating when the words “CELEBRATE” and “APPRECIATE” are repeated seven and nine times respectively in my post hehe

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Summary – Forced sleep produce nightmare
I have my own theories on this. We can all agree that mind is a very wild thing. To put it at ease will be a very difficult task. Sometimes the nightmare we had just doesn’t make any sense. We are not sleeping in fear but still the nightmare comes.

I believe people had nightmare because they sleep not because they wanted to sleep but they forced themselves to sleep. “Tomorrow I need to work, I must sleep, MUST”. The mind is very wild at the time so no wonder it reacted with the nightmare. Somehow people from previous generation know about this. That’s why they relate having nightmare to not washing your feet. Scientifically, why do we ever need to wash our feet before we sleep?

1) to clean it up so that our bed will be clean? – possible
2) to cool it off so the comfort will help us sleep? – possible

I choose to believe that washing your feet is a cooling down session for your mind. The action itself is telling the mind (in the most persuasive way) that you wanted to sleep. Then with all the “doa” you recite, the mind will immediately prepare to go to sleep mode. And lastly we recite the “kalimah syahadah” which is supposed to be the last word we utter for the day before we sleep. This will subconciously tell the mind “Good night and sweet dream” 🙂

————— Personal Note ————————–
When I was a kid, my nightmare almost always involved two beast (usually elephants) running toward each other with me in the middle of the head on collision. Very short but at the time very scary hehe. Usually it is a sign that I will be down with fever the next day. Do you have any reccuring nightmare.

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I watched the movie “Contact” played by Jodie Foster tonight. And one phrase caught my attention and if you don’t mind, I would like to share it with you guys.

The phrase is Ockham’s Razor. It says that “All things being equal, the simplest solution/explanation tends to be the best one”

Basically it suggest that the simpler the solution/explanation, the better it is. For example, you saw your current girlfriend dating another handsome guy in a mall when she actually know that you will be shopping at the mall that time.

Natural response would be –

• “Is she cheating on me?”
• “But she knows that I will be shopping here today, maybe that’s her relative”
• “Maybe she knows I’ll be here, and she wants me to see her date to make me jealous”
• “Still, she should know that I’m not easily jealous, so she may want to spice things up with me, introducing jealousy”
• “Or did she trying to convey a message to take care of her better or else?”

The question will go on, until you forgot that magggi mee you are supposed to buy. The fact is all you know for sure is just that she went out with another guy. That’s it. All else are just assumptions. This is the simplest explanation you can come up at the moment. And according to Ockham’s Razor, this is the best explanation. It may not be the truth. But it is the best. So you may ask, why is this important? It is important because assumption is a very dangerous thing to have in a relationship. The danger is when you assume something totally out of emotion and you act on it.

The girl may be spending time with her beloved brother who just came back from oversea. Where as you may already start writing a break-up later that very moment out of anger.

So in short – Never ever assume in a relationship. If you must, don’t act on just mere assumption.

Actually the phrase is widely used in engineering, to provide the simplest solution with minimal assumption. I just find applying it in real life to be more interesting 🙂

————— Personal Note ————————–
Tomorrow, I will only be able to post from email, as I’m going back to KL.

It may not be that important, but I learn the “No-Assumption-Rule” from real life experience. For my wife, who may be reading this, No.. it’s not us. I’ve made some mistake like losing a friend because of assumption. You remember Nur Syikri I told you before. Ya well, at one point, I had made assumptions that he is talking behind my back about my secrets (way back in the 90s) hehe. Because of that alone, I started not contacting him. He may or may not be giving out my secrets, but I had act on it. And it cause me a very good friend. hmm do you guys ever did the same mistake? share it here.. so we may learn from each other.

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Summary – The best technique to improve memory – Association
Sometime when I look back at my previous entries, my God!! The topic is very random. But to tell you the truth, they are actually all connected. At least in my mind they are.

I’m thinking of blog, then I remember my friends > then friendster > “long time already not login” > time = 1am > work tomorrow > wish for a holiday > langkawi > beach and so on

Yes, dear friends. That’s exactly how our mind works. Let’s do an experiment. Try reading again the thought connection example. This time at any one time, just connect the two words. You can either picture it in your mind or just imagine the rationale behind the connection. I can guarantee you that you can recite the whole bunch of words front, back and even from the middle. However the trick is to exaggerate any images we conjure.

Another example maybe? Try this list – Celllphone, towel, toothbrush, bag, clock, camera etc

Cellphone to Towel
Now this is the hardest part – using our imagination. Be aggresively exaggerating. (read this very carefully.. and picture everything in your mind) Picture your handphone which is like spongebob squarepants. It very spongy (you can see yourself squeezing your spongy handphone) and absorp all water in a bucket if you drop it in. Now picture you using the handphone to dry yourself out from the shower just like a towel. So now you already connect handphone to towel.

Towel to Toothbrush
Forget about the spongy handphone. now imagine your favorite towel. you are walking to the towel and are going to use it. Suddenly you realize that there are thousands of toothbrush sewed into your towel (all full of colors!!). There’s red, blue and even your favorite color. Towel – toothbrush

Toothbrush to Bags
You are now brushing your teeth very early in the morning. But this toothbrush is very special. With every stroke going out from your mouth, you can actually see bags of different size shot out from the toothbrush (Just like Doraemon items). Imagine if you brush your teeth with 10 stroke. you can already open up bag’s store 🙂

Bag to Clock
Now you are ready to go to work/school. You took your bag (just like the pupils in primary school are using). However there is a big yellow smiley clock on your back instead of the bag. And people are laughing at you!! 🙂 bag – clock

Clock to Camera
Running back to your house, you decided to go to bed instead. There is an alarm clock on your bedside table. You set the alarm to wake you up in 10 minutes. When the alarm go off… instead of the normal ringing noise, you hear the sound of camera (very loudly). And from your clock, millions of photos of you sleeping in embarassing position are being thrown all over the place (you know the camera where you can get instant picture, imagine that). Clock – camera

So can you recite back all the items now? How about backward? I am not taking any credit on this technique. Using this technique, you can actually remember things better. Never assume our mind is old and cannot function that well. We are not introducing anything new to our mind. They have been doing this every second of our entire life.

Rule of thumb

• exaggerate
• use colors
• sex related imagination is easier to remember
• the more ridiculous, the better
• watch cartoons to be more graphic 🙂
• Associate with emotion; embarassing, angry, sad
• practise, practise and practise

————— Personal Note ————————–
Personally when I first started this memory thing. I can actually remember up to 30 things in order. Using the technique, it is not that difficult. The problem however is that I took nearly 1 hour just to memorize them ehehe. I guess with practise it will get better. But who actually remember 30 items to buy at supermarket? I myself prefer using paper and pen. But it’s always nice to know we can actually do such things 🙂 So guys, any other methods to remember things?

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