1. Wah, you wanna become professional blogger ar?
2. Why pay so much for it when you can get everything for free?
3. Why make your life difficult to not doing what most people do, instead taking the hard way?

The answer to the first question is no, it’s not my plan to be a professional blogger. I mean, c’mon… with my profile, it would take me centuries before reaching “Kenny Sia’s” status.

The answer to the second and third question is quite personal actually. First of all, I don’t believe in free lunch. If I wanna get something done, I’ll have to work for it. If someone gives you something for free, there are always something that you’d have to pay back, or sacrifice…

Besides, humans tend to appreciate something more when that particular thing BURNS THEIR WALLET…

So why take the hard way? Simple, I just wanna have a taste on everything by myself, manage and learn from it. In other words, I wanna take full responsibility on myself.

I do not mean all, but most of us are living in a world of denial. Whenever we get into troubles, there’s certainly something or someone that we can blame of. We can blame our boss for being autocratic, blame lecturers for being irresponsible, blame our friend for betrayal, and so on… By putting the blame, we will have a sense of self being, satisfy, momentarily… but in the process, we have closed up our mind to everything around us, which often result in making decisions that we tend to regret later.

That was one of the moments of truth in my life. I, as like the other team members, blamed participants from other universities for being irrational. We did work hard, so why disqualify us? But from another perspective, we did wrong as well. If we did not, things would not turned against us. We too have the responsibility for everything.

For everything that happened, it happened for a reason. Of course, I can’t be saying that by taking responsibility, I’ll surely become a better man or be successful in future. But if I do not start taking responsibility on myself, then who will?

Life will never change if we do not take actions, and reflect on ourselves.

Does this sound familiar to you? On a very boring day, you are lying on your bed, brainstorming, thinking hard about your future and what comes next, being drown deep into thoughts…

… and “ting !”, a magnificent idea suddenly struck you. The more you imagine, the more you think it’s gonna work. It will make you become more successful, it will bring you from where you are to where you want to be… An “angel” on your left told you,  “OMG, that’s so cool !”

But at the same time, another “devil” on your right keep whispering, “You’re definitely not ready for it !“. At this moment, there will be four categories of people:

Type 1: Lose Before Battle

Back to zero, give themselves tonnes of excuses why they just can’t do it, ignore the “dream”, blame their own faith and get along with life.

Type 2: 3-Minutes Passion

Start taking little actions, gathering information, crunching books and journals… but the more they read, the more confuse they become. In the end, they gave up.

Type 3:  Chicken Little – The Sky’s Falling

Similar to Type 2, but they persisted. Take their sweet time gathering the “required information”, but always thinking that they are still not fully prepared yet. By the time they get started, they realized other people are already a hundred years in advance.

Type 4: Just Do It

People in this category will always tell themselves, “JUST DO IT!” They are clear with what they want to achieve in life and they know it’s not going to be an easy path. They have the great passion to try their best to reach their target. To them, their objectives of life is not a “should”, but a “must”. They do fall down in the journey but they keep themselves resilient. In the end, some may just achieve what they want… some may not, but still they know they have achieve quite a lot.

Often, we as human are thinking and worrying too much. Some are not satisfy with their life, they want to improve, but they do not want to take the responsibility. Some took little actions, but when it comes to obstacles they’d just give up. All these came from the same reason, they are not taking their goals seriously. They knew that without achieving their goal, they can still get along with life, their complaining life. They are only taking their goals as a “should”, but not a “must”.

Working hard for your goals might not 100% guarantee you achieving them, but not taking any action at all will always 100% guarantee you NOT achieving them.

Think for yourself, which category are you?

Things changed, and never stop changing… yet, something never changed…

Never had I imagine I would return to this state again… just like who I once was…

Many may just think, What can I really learn in just a 2 hours short seminar anyway? But to me, these are platforms that keep us updated with things that happen around us, that can affect our lifestyle, and which we never realize…

…until they hit us…

For example, the establishment of East Asia Community (东亚共同体) by ASEAN Plus Three (东盟 10 + 3), a cooperation between ASEAN countries and 3 East Asia giants; China, Korea and Japan. The community aims to broadened and deepened many areas of cooperation among its membership countries, including politic, economy, tourism, agriculture… etc. This idea was proposed by our ex-prime minister during the 90’s, but only then was taken into serious consideration a few years back. The objective is to unify the economy among the membership countries, providing free tax zone, as well as to cultivate cooperation among the countries during financial and economy crisis.

Malaysia has been a target of many foreign countries as our “culture blend” was considered best managed among the ASEAN countries. We have attracted heaps of foreign investors to invest in many projects, such as the Iskandar Project in Johor and the proposed project to build a bridge connecting Malacca and Sumatera.

Sounds great huh…?

But how many of us living in Malaysia will actually consider what are the long term consequences behind the establishment? I mean, is there any free lunch in reality?

Our country has great potential and resources, but we do not have the talent and ability to expand them. All of these projects, which were suppose to be utilized by the locals to increase the country’s income, have all been “sub-contracted” by foreign countries. Our government has directly “outsourced” all these projects, and yet still proudly claiming “Malaysia Boleh!”

We have many projects with great future, but most of them failed after a few years of development. This is mainly because we failed to establish the right system for everything we do. As mentioned by the late W. E. Deming, most of the problems that occurred in an organization, are due to the inefficiency of the system.

If employee under-perform, it’s the fault of the employer who failed to establish a good system.

If underlings misbehave, it’s the fault of the leader who failed to establish a good system.

If co-workers couldn’t meet expectation, it’s the fault of the boss who failed to establish a good system…

… and in our country, we failed to do the same as well.

Imagine, when Asia’s giant such as China’s market begins to take a big step into Malaysia, how would it affect us? Let take Starbuck Coffee for instance, a cup of coffee would normally cost RM10 or so. But China’s investor and entrepreneur can provide the same coffee bean, with same taste and coffee quality, but at less than 40% of Starbuck’s cost. For us consumers, that sounds marvelous. But how would this affect our country’s economy?

In China, franchising is not a matter of how many hundreds of franchises, but they count by how many THOUSANDS across the country! Numbers are just small matters…

How will our local products survive when people can provide the same, but higher quality products at lower cost in Malaysia?

How will most of our local entrepreneurs react when the foreign investors bring in this competition?

Are we going to put ourselves into the price slashing war, and end up drowning in the Red Ocean?

Some may procrastinate, saying that we would look for QUALITY than QUANTITY, but let’s be frank… how many of us have always preferred Malaysian Made Product than China Made Product?

As you can see, other countries are advancing in fast pace due to this “economy war”. Everyone are implementing innovation, thinking hard of how to further improve their business as well as the country’s future economy. Unfortunately in our country, the most popular topic we can listen everyday would be “political war”. All parties fighting among each other over who should be in “business“… but when there’s a problem, it’ll turn into “It’s none of my business“.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are at war… economically of course, and yet most of us are still unaware of it. In two months time (beginning of year 2010), we are going to battle with these people (foreign investors and entrepreneurs).

So how well are we prepared for it?

Yesterday was one of the most hectic day for all the final years. Everyone was rushing to prepare to give their very best to impress the panels in 8 minutes. That was the most precious yet most suffocating 8 minutes…

I was lucky to be judged by a few good ones. No killing questions, no full-powered-blast comments, just took a few small “bullets”… but some of my friends was not that lucky. Anyway, just let bygones be bygones…

After watching a few friends’ presentation, I realized that there are still so many things that I yet to learn. So many advanced technologies have been available in the market that we’re unaware of.

Ya, most of you might say, “Of course Calvin, you’re a nerd!” or “Dun be so kiasu!“.

Well, I do agree with that partially. But after being in the engineering field for years, I somehow feel that the outside world has much more to offer, provided we take the initiative to go for them, taking step by step to approach them, appreciate them.

Somehow I suddenly realized that I have been wasting so much time in the past. Instead of doing the right thing, I just complaint that I have a boring life.

Life is never boring if we know what we want, and take action to achieve it. Human’s needs are endless, but how many are willing to sacrifice, to work hard to achieve them? Work delayed is work undone, so how many of us are actually aware of it whenever we give excuse such as “Can I do it later?”.

Well, I think all these depend on how much we weight our needs. If we don’t apply a certain “weighting” to our targets, we would never achieve them. Instead of advancing, we would just sit back and procrastinate.

My job is still undone, and I’m now looking forward to my FYP2, where the interesting things will begin…

Seems like most of them, like me, are not quite satisfy with what we are doing right now. We are spending most of our time in the office doing things that are not quite relevant to our scope of studies…

… and we really miss the days in university.

Most of my secondary schoolmates have already graduated at this moment and are earning their own income. I’ve always thought of wanting to graduate faster and join the corporate world as soon as possible. I’ve always thought of:

How would it be to be able to support myself.

How nice would it be to own myself a car.

What’s the feeling of being able to own a property, a house maybe.

… but these few weeks of training has really changed the idea. The corporate world is not as “ideal” as what I thought.

Sometimes really feel helpless. Why are we wasting so much time learning things that we are not going to use in future. Most people have to bear with the fact that they are going to do things that they are not interested in for a few decades just for the sake of living. It is true that companies will evaluate a fresh grad not only based on their academic result, but also skills…

But what skills?

The recent economy crisis has really hit our country hard, particularly electronic sector. Some of my seniors and friends are still jobless. Just hope that by the time I grad, things will be better.

TAURUS MAN

A quiet simple man who can do something unexpected to shock you. Taurus man mostly medium tall, strong with good health, good strong body. When he talks, he likes to turn his head to one side on one direction. His body will be quite straight, facial structure tend to be square shape more than other shape. His eyes sparkle with liveliness.

Even when he is in love, he is still a free wild bird. He is a sand in your palm, the more you want to hold it, it will slip out. If you stand and hold it still, it will stay that way. Don’t set the rules and draw a line for him, he will not stay.

When you are with him, he will think only of you. But an hour later he could change his mind. He is very patient with other people, but very impatient with himself. His world always turning and it will not stop just because he loves you. If he up sets, he will show it right away. If something has gone wrong, he will blame his own carelessness instead of blaming other people.

He sincere to his friends even to some friends he does not like. He likes to do odd things and surprise other people. He could be fully dress in a nice suit and jump in the pool. He could slap your back so hard just to make you turn around to see he has flowers in his hand. He never want to get too close with anyone for he thinks living in reality is living by yourself.

He does not care what people think when he behave weird. He could be walking bare feet and laughing at people who laugh at him and think they are so narrow minded. He does not likes to follow conformity, but always want to search for new ventures, new mystery. He will interest in a life of a millionaire as much as a life of an old man selling newspaper on a sidewalk vendor.

He like to search and analyze people and things. He will analyze his friends or his girl friend, and once the mystery is gone, he will search for new puzzle to solve. He can not easily understand thing, so he will gradually learning about you till he fills up all his questions.

He knows so many people ,but he has a few friends. He looks for quality friends than quantity friends. He will be close with some friends shortly and move on. He always feel lonely even surround by many people. He could create his own little world, and sometimes no one would understand him. He looks only for future and he thinks he lives for the future. He may wonder how many people think like he does, but he does not want to be like the others.

A man with a conflict personality. He is a cool, understanding, able to work well, and very artistic. Taurus man could be an artist. He could shock you as much as he is able to clam you down when you up set. He is a free spirit who likes venture, but when he wants to be alone, do not touch him but to let him be. He won’t disappear from the crowds too long, he will be back.

He will give you straight forward opinion or comments, but will never advice what he thinks you should do. He does not like people to tell him what he should do too. He thinks each individual dreams and thoughts should be very private. He will use his brain not his body strength, so he will let other guys compete. He has a certain satisfactory in life and hate to force himself in competition. He may seems careless, but actually he is a thinker and a stubborn one.

He sees anythings in details and not easily trusted people till he thinks he knows them well. You can just smile and he will think why and what are you smiling about, and if you are pretending. Once he trust you and accept you as a friend, no one can says other wise to change that for he will not listen to gossip. He will be honest and sincere to his friends.

He hates lies, so he will not tell you lies. If he finds it is necessary to lie, he will find other ways not to tell you or avoid telling you anything. If he really has to lie, you will never be able to tell that he is lying. He can really keep secrets, so you will hardly know that he is a lonely soul.

If you want this kind of guy, you have to be an interesting person. He has to be curious about you. Hell for him is ‘No Freedom’, so if he marry you then you should know it is the biggest decision in his life. Always be interesting, then you could have him beside you.

So what do you think? Am I this type of person? =P

This year, we are changing our strategy. Instead of one-man-show, we’re being divided into departments to break down and be more specified on our tasks. For months we’ve been working hard on it, and yet til today, nothing much has been accomplished.

Instead of being more productive, we’re slowing down.

Instead of being more efficient, we seems to be more unorganized.

Instead of having less problems, we’re facing more.

Instead of raising the morale and team spirit among members, everyone seems like half-dead.

Instead of improving, we seems to be static.

It’s not that nobody is working. Everyone stays up late every night to complete the tasks, but somehow we’re lack of something. And sadly, I don’t know what is it.

Have we chosen the wrong path since the beginning?

Have we recruited the wrong person?

Have we been de-motivated due to our financial problems?

Have we been neglecting some important aspects which we didn’t realize?

Everything seems so uncertain and we’re running out of time. It’s true that we’ve changed, but the question is are we changing for the better? Or for the worse?

Our target, our dream is still far away and I’m still trying to search for answers. Hopefully when I’ve found them, it’s not after the big-event.