I had bought a book titled "Be Your Personal Best", it's Chinese title is " 做最好的自己".   The book authored by the founding president of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, former Microsoft Vice President of Interactive Services.  It is specially written to answer the doubts and questions on China youngsters' common worried about how to be successful in life after graduating from universities or colleges, what it takes to achieve one's visions and dreams, etc.

 

The author specifically mentioned that "success" in life doesn't mean that a person need to be wealthy and famous. A success person is measured by his/her contribution to the society, to other people and to him/herself, whether or not the contribution benefits mankind and whether the person can achieve the utmost happiness and be a better person from his/her choices made. 

 

One of my favourite sections that enlighten me is "we can only change ourself but cannot change other people" 只能修正自己，不能修正别人. The author explained that, in many instances, people that we interact with may misunderstood our response or behavoiur on certain actions of ours. Before we start blaming and thinking that others are bias to us, let us think back what we had done that "provoked" the misunderstood because we are the one who "delivered" the "incorrect" message about ourself. Instead of arguing to "straighten" our standpoint, we should communicate openly and use our actions to prove our standpoint, this will open the opportunity for people to know us better and avoid further misunderstanding in the future. We should always be liberal minded to others but remain self-criticism. When we need to influnce others with our reasons, change our way of presenting the ideas but not force others to change their way to "obey" us.

 

This reminded me on the meetings I had with my client, ie: the bank. There are some common terms that had been used within the project by both parties in all the discussions and meetings. I was assigned to prepare documentations for the project and for some unknown reasons, the bank keeps on rejecting my documentation and saying that I did not reflect the true scenario. Until one day, I made an appointment with the bank project team member to find out what are the "wrongs" that I had made in the documentation. To my suprise, during the "discovery" process, I realised that, both parties are having 2 different understanding and interpretation on the same term used because we are looking at the same thing from different angle.  At first, I tried to convince the bank project team member that my interpretation is correct. However, my effort was failed. Everyone tends to have thier own world evolve around them, so does my client. Having realised this situation, I had no choice but to change my way of conveying my ideas to suit my client. It was a hard process to me, but both parties achieved a win-win situation.

 

Am I at the losing side by changing my way of presenting my idea? Looking at the "result" of the discussion, I completed the documentation and my client gets what they want.  Am I a successful person in this experince? Based of Mr. Kai-Fu Lee definition of successful person, I still do not feel the utmost happy of what I did although my "changed" "saved" the day. The conclusion is, I still need to "upgrade" my mindset to be more liberal before I can claim that I am a successful person.

Last week was the first time I been to Cameron Highlands. It was an enjoyable company trip with a lot of laughters and fun until our neighbours in the resort next to our apartment need to ask for our favour to lower our voice bacause they want to sleep.

 

I remembered my collegue was asking me which tea plantation that I wanted to visit the most. Without thinking twice, my answer to her was ...."I want to visit the Boh plantation where the advertisment on TV always shows all the tea plants are planted beside the steep hills with  breathtaking view" Then my collegue said, "Ok, but the road to that Sungei Palas Tea Center is a bit trudging". Roads to Cameron Highlands is famous for it twists and turns that require professional drivers to reach the destination safetly. In my thought, her statement is just another reflection of the same roads we passed through since first day at Cameron.

 

To my suprise, when we were on our way to Sungei Palas Tea Center, the roads are really challenging to all the drivers especially to city drivers. The road to the plantation is so narrow and bad that it is actually safe if only "one car driving in one way at one time". However, all the vehicles are using the same road to the same destination and there are veichles from the opposite that wanted to leave the plantation after their visit. (P/S: vehicles = buses, lorries, trucks, cars). All the vehicles are "squeezing" on the same road and very often the "leaving" vehicles are very near to the hill side and passengers who sit on the left hand seats can feel the "height and danger" of his/her "position" Experince bus drivers and truck drivers will give guidance to small vehicles if they see any of the small vehicles "goes a bit out of track".

 

This experince gives me some thoughts. Cameron Highlands is a tourist attraction famous for its cool weather and foremost it provides the nation fresh vegetables, fruits and flowers. It has various tea plantation farms and starwberry farms which attracts tourists all over the world. However, the road conditions to Cameron Highlands is vastly different and very trudging, adventurous and dangerous as compare to Genting Highland. Lives at Cameron Highlands is simple as well as its inhabitants living and road conditions. People are earning their living by travelling in such a bad road conditions daily which may danger their life in order to raise their families.  I have no favourtism on either of the Highlands but the way I see is, why the roads travel by the hardworking people is much tougher than the roads travel by people that are enjoying their lives? Why is there no authorities that is willing to improve the roads conditions for the safety of its inhabitnats and tourists? Is money the root of this problem? How economists values lives and revenue earned? What are the "requirements" for money to be spend on improving ones living conditions?

 

Behind all the breathtaking scenery, there hides "challenging roads" to travel to the top. The next time, i see Boh advertisment on TV, i will remember the "roads" that "hikes" by all who earn their hard living at Cameron Highlands. The same roads that I traveled for the purpose of travelling and fun.

Another week passed from my first blog. Life is getting more confusing than last week. I guess the "granted" long holiday doesn't help much in manipulating my life in term of physcology and physically. Haha....human are the most ungrateful creatures in the world.

 

Spent two and a half day in the client's site "looking" and "observing the client's staff behaviour. It is proven that the world is never being fair to anyone and for sure not to me.....sigh...let me explain my point here.

 

When I worked in the bank, my manager said.."Rule no 1: Customer is always right, Rule no 2: If customer is wrong, refer to rule no 1". I "obeyed" the rule during my banking life and I think I had did my part to make the bank customer to feel right when they are in the bank. I "dreamt" about leaving the bank to enjoy the "customer is always right" privilege. Now I left the bank, and I deal with the bank in my course of work. However, my "dream" never come true and the worst is, I still need to "obey" the rule and this time my customer(ie: the bank) is "abusing" my patient to the limit.

 

Almost every mistakes or misjudgement in the project are vendor's fault. Newton's third law "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" is failed in my scenario. The very first time, my collegue "react" back to the bank, the whole bank project team nearly boycott us and my boss needs to step out and put out the fire. Insufficient requirement given to the project, was blamed on vendor lack of initiative and not constructive to come up with a solution. Bank's project team member insufficient knowledge on certain technical terms in the project, vendor was blamed using bombastic words and many more incidents that are really make my "temperature" and blood pressure raise drastically.

 

Despite all the high temperature and blood pressure, I had took all these with much patient and always think positive on the reasons and lesson to be learnt from the "abusing". I wonder, why I have no rights to enjoy "customer is always right" privilege? When can I enjoy this privilege? Why do I have to always put myself in the user shoes and not the other way round? Why I have to tolarate with all these abusing? I do hope that lessons are learnt from all these experince, but it really wearies me.

 

The world is not fair and that is why the earth has different elements exist on it. Maybe I should mourn for 2 days again on the unfairness of the world.

To blog or not to blog...........is the choice that i struggle for quite sometime . First thing comes to my mind is, I never write any diary in my whole life, I "choose" to remember what I want to remember and "bury" whatever that I do not wish to keep in my 'active sector" of my mind. Life is short afterall, too much of sorrow in ones mind will waste his/her brain-width...haha.

 

世界其实很简单，复杂的是人 == reflect the true scenario of mankind all over the world. Despite we always sighed for the complication that we landed into, but we tends to repeat the same thing and landed into another bigger complication.

 

Recent working life made me think a lot about everything that i am involving in. I hope to learn lessons from it and make myself a better person if not the best. Human is the thoughest "object" to be managed. Very often, during the course of my work, things happened that can made me "mourn" for some time but when think of it after 2 days, I laughed at myself for my silly "mourning" over things that are out of my control....What a waste of my brain cells.

 

A long weekend for 4 days leaves was "granted".....woo..hoo....a good time to re-arrange my "messy" life and thought (i hope I will not use up 80% of the time to sleep.....haha)....and maybe the time has come for me to start my own blog and sort out my thoughts as well.