Summary – Lesson learnt from Pasar Malam

With the new template going on, it does feel a bit like preparing for raya at home.. changing new curtains or repainting the house. Very exciting.. Hopefully everything is ok with the new template. Do inform me if there is anything I can help you with.

Yesterday I actually went to the first bazar Ramadhan this year. Well, you have to understand that going out of an estate is hardwork, so I very seldom went out. The bazar here at my place is not that grand if compared to back home in Kedah, but there is still lots of yummy food around 🙂

I remembered an advice given by my brother, which I am going to share it with you.

Life is very much like a “pasar malam” (in this specific case, a bazar ramadhan), everyone go there. Some know exactly what to look for, Some still has no idea and want to look at the option of food available. Some just go there to flirt with girls. In the end, what you did in a “pasar malam”, or where you went are not important. What important is what do you bring home.

We are all given each 24 hours. Everyone will have to go through the same 24 hours – criminals, loitering youth, the dance teacher, the prime minister, and even Rasulullah. So what are we bringing home from the 24 hours? Do we even know our reason going to this “pasar malam”? or are we just walking around aimlessly.. and in the end we brought back those colorful tents home. which is clearly not what we’re supposed to buy.

So what do you do at 6am? 7am? how long do we really need to sleep? Where can we squeeze out more time for us? Seriously I read a lot of self-managing books, but in my opinion this “Pasar Malam” concept is a good approach simply because we can associate the feeling of wasting time when we go to a “pasar malam” and return home empty handed… Don’t you think so?

How do you remind yourself to be aware of time? any secrets or tips?

————–Personal Note————-
I heard a quote in the tv the other day – “Bukan masa yang terlalu cepat, kita sebenarnya yang terlalu lambat”. Really make sense…

By the way, Mertabak here is very expensive. Cost me RM1.80 each, but I have no choice but to buy because the mrs ask for them… It’s a good thing she crave for things buyable eheh 🙂 Foods are getting more expensive each day isn’t it? and getting smaller too

Summary – A little selfish wont hurt..

Today’s the last day of my medical leave. Unfortunately, there’s some sign that my eye is better. Again.. unfortunately. Nevertheless it’s still a good thing that I was given the leave. Now why do I say it’s good? Here’s why..

I can actually spend time to do other thing. like finishing up the Harry Potter book, resting, and doing some little projects. I wonder why I cannot do this during my day off every week. I guess when it’s your day off, you just want to rest. No more working.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why we are so frustrated with work. We work and we work every single day, and when it comes to our day off, we just spend it resting (with the intention to gather strength for another series of work the next week). Some spend it by doing chores that cannot be done on weekdays. This chores are usually not that fun, like doing laundry, cleaning the house etc. It’s like work… without the paycheck. No wonder we are stressed out, we are working every single second of our life.

Seriously I realize this yesterday, that we really need to take some time for ourselves. Allocate some time to do what we want to do. For example, me with reading the book. or surf the web… not to find material for your blog, but just because you want to.

Can I ask you, at this moment… what do you want to do for yourself? Something that you like to do, without having no other benefit except your satisfaction.

I try to come up with some things that we can do just for our own pleasure. Maybe you can add more to it?

• watch sunrise (at least once a week)
• take leave from work and go see a movie of your choice alone
• play music and do nothing but listen
• buy a watercolor and draw an abstract drawing
• make a robot from bottles and wires

Conclusion – What we do every single day almost always for someone else, or for getting some benefit from it like paycheck, recognition etc. we never spend time for ourselves. It’s true we must not be selfish, but our own time, our own activity is very important for us to realize that we really living a life.

————–Personal Note————-
After finishing Harry Potter, I’m going to find if there is any Silat training here at my place. Anything will do.. I really love practising Silat, not that I am any good :)Just simply love the art

Summary – Our POV is sometimes hazy.. Seek others’

Thank you to all those contributing in the survey held on Saturday. It’s always a good thing knowing where we can further improve ourselves. I still need more feedback to accurately renovate the whole blog.. So for those who have other things to add, I’d really appreciate it.

I believe all of us can agree, that if we are so accustomed to something, doing the same thing day in day out. We will not be able to see anything wrong with it.

Some will be so attached to what they hold to, they are willing to fight for it. Defending it to the end, even though the truth is, the thing is not worthy to be fought for. Wow that’s very abstract of me.

Take me for example, I am so addicted to blogging, that I go to great length with the theme (the boy on the moon). At first it was a mere experiment, trying this and that… after a lot of time spent, I’ve decided that this is just perfect. (I guess the idea of changing the theme will be so tiring, that I convince myself it is perfect).

The truth is, I completely agree with some comments from friends that the theme is somewhat holding me back. It gives the wrong first impression, and there’s not that much room for me to improve. For those who did come up and highlighted this, I salute you.

It is true that every person’s opinion is different. Yours will definitely be different from mine. But now.. that is exactly why I needed to hear your opinion. To hear the other side of the whole story, to see the blog from other point of view. Whether to accept it or not is totally a different matter.

My point is simply this… every now and then, seek advice from others on the matter you believed the most (principles, loved ones etc). Most of the time, it will be very enlightening.

I guess we all have had experience of being blind. So blind that we ignore the truth. (loving someone so much, that we fail to see he/she is a bad person, being so proud that we assume everyone else is wrong etc)

Care to share your similar experience? 🙂

————–Personal Note————-
In my mill, there’s a new assistant started working last March. He used to work in another company. The first thing we did when he reported for duty is to have him go into the mill, and give us 20 things or more which he think is wrong. He came back… presenting to us about 30 items. Things like why some machine sounds weird, why our boiler seems to be very poorly controlled. My manager was smiling. I obviously not. Because those items are happening every day that I’m already so used to it I didn’t notice them anymore.

Luckily the manager also didn’t notice it eheh.

Summary – An important factor to solving problem that we often forget

I think I found out why we are so stressed when handling major problem. 🙂

Ok, I’m sure most of us are good problem solver. We handle problems on a daily basis, from as big as how to live our life to as small as to how to kill time while waiting for a tv show to start. We knew almost every trick on how to manage stress. And had had lots of experience handling it.

But still, why when we were faced with a problem, those major ones like debt, bad in-laws or evil boss, we often stressed out when we cannot solve the problem as fast as we can. I think I know why…

I really believe that one of the contributing factors is due to the television we watch. First of all, I’m not saying that television is bad and must be banned for the sake of humanity :). This is just an opinion.

Almost all television series especially sitcoms will show the problem faced by the husband and wife, or parents and children. Most importantly, it also shows how the problem is solved within the 20 minutes show. Maybe, just maybe.. we are actually influenced by this, and we expect all our problems to be solved in the shortest time, hours top. We are now lacking one of the key ingredient to problem solving, which is patient.When parents faced their rebellious children, they expect the children to be obedient almost instantly. They have no patient what so ever to slowly advice the children. They expect results immediately. We all know, for those rebellion type, the harder we go against them, the harder they will rebel.

When a husband found out that his wife is seeing another man, he immediately scolded her, and those stupid ones may even resolve to divorce. Simply because we lack the patience. In Islam there are ways to resolve marriage associated conflict, advising, sleep separately, third party etc.

These two examples show how patience is sometimes needed in solving problems. There are other situation that may need prompt action, but that would be discuss in another time.

Maybe that’s why we can see the older generation is more patient than ours. Hm..

Conclusion – life is not a show on a television. Some problems need time and patience to be resolved.

————–Personal Note————-
Ramadhan is a very good tools to recover back the patience quality we may have forget. Be patient to break the fast, Be patient when somebody flame you, Be patient when you know there’s nothing more you can do.