Summary – Don’t worry on things we cannot control

I have missed two days of posting. 🙂 Sorry, well as the saying goes, we can always plan.. but in the end He will decide how everything will happen.

Does this mean that all our plan in our life is pointless? and that we might as well do nothing and let everything happen, since in the end He will decide for you?

Eheh even we know immediately right that this is wrong. Allah had never taken away our right to choose. Instead we decide everything for ourselves. It is only how things happen is decided by Him. We choose a road to travel, whether or not that road will suffer major traffic jam is never in our control. We decide to eat, however how our body react to it, digest it is totally beyond our control. But we still need to travel to go to somewhere. We will never get anywhere if we don’t travel. We still need to eat, whether or not we will still feel hungry afterward is totally up to Him,

Now that we clear that up, why oh why should we be bothered by those we can’t control. We are going to office, when suddenly it rains heavily and flood the whole area. we will not be able to go to work, and the boss might scream at us afterward. Think logically… what else we can do? Can we get to the office any other method? No? then call the boss, tell him what happen. Why do we spend the rest of day worrying about getting scold tomorrow… when we know for sure, there’s nothing we can already do. Isn’t it better if we spend the day off with the family happily. At least you are getting something out of this, a happier family.

My point is simple…. always try to control our wandering mind. Things go wrong, you have done everything humanely possible. And there’s NOTHING else can be done. Why spend your energy worrying until it upset everything, your family suffered, your work quality deteriorated, your stress level increased.

Other application that I may think are as follows

• Traffic jam, there’s nothing you can do about it, please don’t cut queue through the emergency lane.. I will hate you for that 🙂 so why curse and get angry. Do something else maybe rehearse for Akademi Fantasia audition by singing the song in the radio, or come up with idea for your blog.

• Your friend have a misunderstanding with you, and you had tried to reconcile by apologizing (eventhough it’s totally not your fault) for for about 3 months already and still he don’t want to talk to you. Why worry and blame yourself. You cannot control people’s feeling. move on.

• etc

Don’t you agree that we spend a lot of time doing basically nothing (worrying)?

————— Personal Note ————————–
Do you remember the time I mentioned to you that I made a terrible mistake in my line of work. I accidentally authorize the cutting of wrong tube in a boiler. The manager was furious. And for the first time, he screamed at me in front of other people. I was so stressed at the time. The only thing come up to my mind is me being sacked from the job. Seriously very stressful. Of course I had called up contractors to repair the damage, yet my mind is torturing me with all the negativity. For about 1 hour I feel like that when I think the last thing I could do is to write an apology letter. I admit my mistake and claim that I will take full responsibility.

He called me in the evening. And to my surprise instead of being sacked, he said that he had shown my letter to his superior (who was by the way there) and the superior was actually very impressed with me taking the responsibility. However he said that this is a very expensive lesson to be learnt and not to be repeated. I nodded appreciatively.. Fuuh lega! 🙂

Summary – The correct method of giving advice

Note : The above idiom is roughly translated to “Like pulling hair from a pot of flour, the hair should not snap and the flour should not be a mess.” Generally it means to do something with extra care not to do any damage.

warning is basically a harsher way of advising. So what is the correct way of giving advice?

I’ll explain through a story. One fine day, two boys were at the mosque when they saw an old man perform the ablution (taking the wudhu’). Now these boys were quite knowledgable about wudhu’ and they knew immediately that the way the old man was taking the wudhu’ was wrong. They knew they had to advise him. So what they did was to go to the old man…

Boys – Sir, if we can have your time, the two of us are actually discussing, I’m saying that this boy is taking the wudhu’ wrongly, while he said that I’m the one who do it wrongly. Can you please be the judge of that?

Old man – sure, why not.

The boys each then performed the ablution, each took wudhu’ the correct way. After both of them were finish. The old man embarassingly admitted that their wudhu’ were actually perfect, and that his was the one which is wrong. He understood that the boys were trying to advise him and thanked them for that.

/end story

Giving advise is a good thing to do, it usually will benefit both of the giving and the receiving ends. Sometime the person giving the advice may actually be the one who need to be corrected. However, the method of giving advice is my main objective here.

I believe everyone has pride or ego. Everyone will feel attacked and humiliated if being told that they were wrong. It’s human nature.

We cannot give advice in hidden meaning like the story at all time, sometime (usually) they might not get it.

We just need to consider the person’s ego at all time. Because if not, he might feel offended and throw away the advice blindly out of ego. In the end, nobody will benefit. Isn’t it more important for the person to at least hear the advice and think about it?

Of course there are always exceptions, some people, you just need to give it direct to their face. 🙂

Examples of where ego will be affected, children advising their parent to stop smoking, wife advising the husband to help in the house and vice versa, workers advising the boss on how to manage better.

By the way, the story above is actually a true story. And the boys are actually Hassan and Hussin, the grandchildren of Rasulullah 🙂

Have you ever given out any advice, brilliantly delivered? Or are there any other methods / examples of giving advice out there that can be shared?

————— Personal Note ————————–
There was one time, my boss drafted a letter, But maybe he was in a hurry, there were a lot of grammar mistake. And this letter is important because it is addressed to the DOSH (department of safety and health). I’m not that good in English but I have no choice. I corrected it and inform him about it after. I said that the letter was placed on my desk, and that I thought he asked me to correct it. He just smiled. And from that time, every letter he drafted goes through me first. (padan muka) heheh

Summary – Warning given in an accident

Have you had an accident that when you think back, you were actually the luckiest person in the world at the time. Any minor changes in the accident may resulted in you being … well, dead.

Yesterday, there was an accident involving one of my tankers. Leaving the details out, I can say that the driver was very lucky. Any wrong action at the time, he will be dead for sure, plunging into a cliff nearby. The pictures above showed the trailer disconnected from the prime mover (the front part of a tanker). Alhamdulillah the driver was not hurt and all palm oil were recovered. Happy ending.

Back to the topic, I personally have had a lot of near (death) experience. Not that I am seeing the light or anything, like there’s one time, I was driving back from Kedah to Johor. I am very sleepy at the time, suddenly I realised there’s a lorry approximately 100 meter in front of me. I hit the brake immediately and manage to stop exactly behind the lorry. (the lorry was moving very slowly). Shocked, I headed to the nearest RnR and sleep for over two hour there. Apparently I’m down with fever, not any fever – the dengue itself. But that’s another story.

In my opinion, there are two ways you can react to this.

• You will be braver, and eventually become those of Mat Rempit or Tokyo Drift material.

• or you can do this. Imagine that the near miss “fatal” accident is actually a warning given by the Almighty, probably it would sound like this – “If you doesn’t change the way you drive or do things… that exactly what will happen in a day or two. Don’t say I didn’t warn you then.”

Have you guys had such near miss accident? How do you talk yourself out of the trauma? Care to share?

Summary – Wednesday smile

Not all forwarded emails are junk. I actually have a folder in my pc for those interesting ones. The problem about sharing forwarded emails is that most of the time people are already familiar with them. 🙂 Here’s one I would like to share with you…

Source – Forwarded Emails
Subject – Kids Say the Darnest Things

What Is The Proper Age to Get Married?

“Eighty-four, Because at that age, you don’t have to work anymore, and you can spend all your time loving each other in your bedroom.” (Judy, 8)

“Once I’m done with kindergarten, I’m going to find me a wife” (Patrick, 6)

What Do Most People Do On A Date?

“On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” (Mike, 9)

When Is It Ok To Kiss Someone?

“You should never kiss a girl unless you have enough bucks to buy her a big ring and her own VCR, ’cause she’ll want to have videos of the wedding.” (Jim,10)

“Never kiss in front of other people. It’s a big embarrassing thing if anybody sees you. But if nobody sees you, I might be willing to try it with a handsome boy, but just for a few hours.” (Kally, 9)

Is It Better to be Single or Married?

“It’s better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need somebody to clean up after them” (Lynette,9)

“It gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I’m just a kid. I don’t need that kind of trouble.” (Kenny, 7)

/end forwarded emails

Do you guys have any experience with your children, when they said the darnest thing? 🙂

————— Personal Note ————————–
Do you remember the PETRONAS advertisement for last Hari Raya, where the couple actually hates the grandfather. They even set up another table for him to dine alone. In the final scene, the children play tea, and set up a table for their parent. “Nanti bila mama abah dah tua, mama abah makan sini”, “Abah jangan lupa pakai pampers tau”Funny, how so much we can learn from the children