Snopes

Too many things on the internet are fabricated. There is this website that reviews whether a nonsense is true or false. It's snope.

http://www.snopes.com/

Reasons are overrated

Read this book by Bernard Roth over a six-week period. Took longer than expected, which is not a good habit for getting into the achievement habit. I borrowed this book mainly to read for leisure while travelling around the island to my workplace, just that recently, due to some cancellations, I haven't traveled too much, so I took longer to finish the book.

What I have done in the opening paragraph, was coincidentally the one thing that I am writing to discourage after reading the book - giving reasons.

The true reason for taking longer than expected to finish reading the book, wasn't because of the cancellations of lessons. The true reason is it wasn't my priority to finish reading. I hadn't made it important enough to read the book in my free time until it was due to be returned.

On many occasions, people missed the time they spend with those people around them. The reasons they give - they are busy with work, they will make up for time loss when the work are done. It makes them look reasonable that they are not spending time with people important to them, sort of like a consolation to themselves that the work will be done. The truth is, work are never done. You finish an assignment, the next one comes in. So it's always about your priority. You had prioritized work ahead of spending time with your loved ones. The part about making up for time loss never comes to fruition.

"Reasons are bullshit"

Don't give yourself the reason that you are busy with work that you missed your baby's first steps. Babies grow up fast.

Don't give reasons that you are not successful because you indulge in entertainment since you could make entertainment into your career where you earn millions.

It's just a matter of priority. You don't have to give reasons for your actions, because deep down, only you know the truth.

Giving as a good medicine

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/5_ways_giving_is_good_for_you

Read this article about 5 ways that giving is good for you. They are true that it makes you feel good to be giving and makes you happy.

In my local context, people are kind of skeptical to people who act too kind. They will feel that there must be a catch to your kindness. I suppose it has got something to do with the way the environment is headed. In a very competitive environment where people are trying to climb the ladder to success, while at the same time, stopping others who may be of threat to you; so when people are kind to you, you will sort of feel like they might have an ulterior motive.

An ex-colleague buddy called me last week, updated me about the happenings since I had left. She was full of expletives for the person who had taken over from me and really, just by listening, it could have made my blood boil. After handing over properly and left, that new person got into some trouble and what would be more convenient than to blame the person who handed over for not doing it properly. Well, if that was once off, I probably won't have minded. I heard this year, she was at it again. Kind of a stupid person to dare to bring me up again after leaving for half a year where she should have done things her way. It's good that other colleagues had given her a good dressing down and had since stopped trying to push the blame to me.

That was just the tip of the iceberg as my ex-colleague buddy continued to rant about that person for 1 hour. IMAO, this person won't last another year before breaking bond. Even my little spy didn't like that new person.

Oops, got carried away ranting.

It's tough working with people like this and still be kind to them, but I feel there are many others who deserve kindness. Being freelance, it is much more flexible and you can choose your target audience of your kindness. Therefore, I'm a much happier person now at the moment. No more wearing a mask to work. Spending time trying out new recipes. Having friends and relatives trying them out. I don't earn as much as before and that's fine by me.

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A lesson to learn

In the experiment above, the new set of monkeys might not have any idea what was happening when they beat the monkey for climbing the ladder. In actual life, there are also many such examples that exhibit such behaviours.

People always say we should learn from past mistakes. That's why people study history - to learn from the experience of past events and people. So that we don't ever commit the same mistakes. This has never been my strong subject. I learn about wars between countries and this really didn't need a history teacher to tell me that violence doesn't solve anything. There ain't any child who is such a saint that he has never resorted to violence. That's where you educate the child on violence. If you don't teach your child there and then, no number of history teacher will be able to help in future.

Last week, I planned to make the CNY goodie - the small little popiah with chilli shrimps inside, because mum just happened to fried some of those chilli shrimps. One of my mum's friends came visiting, and my mum told her my plans about making that. She's a reasonably good cook and she happened to have made that before or something, told my mum that the chilli shrimps that we make cannot be put inside the popiah because it's too wet. So after you fry, the popiah will become soggy.

Being the bad history student that I was, I still went ahead with my plan, thinking that even if it turns out soggy, I still wanna take a look at what the failed product will look like. However, keeping the advice in mind, I took out some oil absorbent paper to squeeze out as much oil and moisture from the chilli shrimps as possible.

The popiah turns out:

Crispy.