砂漠のJeffire

Jeffirean Stories

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Before I delve into my luck stats as a blog topic, someone posted a interesting blog on the Punggol forum, . I read a few posts and it has reinforced my belief that money makes the world go round. Although I'm not very money-minded, I believe in getting fair and value for my money. If you read some of the posts around blogs and forums from the locals, some blogosphexperts, some simple people like me, most agree that we should not pour so much money into "luring" foreign raw talent into Singapore and try to cast them into the Singaporean mould so that they will be attached and remain to serve the country. Since I'm one of the products of such a system, my modest views would be somehow flawed, but still, I believe that given our fantastic "hardware" (good environment, great facilities, ease of transport, accessiblity to education and materials), I rather we spend the "lure" money to develop our own talent, especially for the under-privileged, since our hardware should be attractive enough. (I don't know about the software though) I believe that many of the talents remain untapped from that group, whom we don't really see much and that our system does not allow them to carve their niche because most of us are engaged in paper chasing and climbing corporate/government ladders. No doubt it takes huge risks to try to develop talent from people who maybe have some problems leading normal lives like you and me, but there are scores of examples of many great people lead abnormal lives anyway.

Away from the serious topic, I shall let you in on some of the developments in my life.

First noteworthy event was Tuesday's movie Shrek 3. Interestingly, as the organiser, I did not get to watch the movie at all as my "extraness" came into reality. Originally 4 girls and me were slated to watch the movie, but an evening sms added 2 VIPs to the guests list. However, the unlucky, forgetful me had assumed that the change of venue was informed to the 2 VIPs , which only nearly until the movie began, the phone call from one of the VIPs made me realised that they were at the old, predetermined venue. Silly me decided that $21 wasn't worth the loss of the VIPs' trusts and hence off I went to apologise to them personally. This time I was lucky and found the enigmatic VIPs without much hassle despite being in one of the biggest malls in Singapore.

Second noteworthy event was yesterday's interview. I was late again, for perhaps 5mins or so, as I struggled to find the elusive (but posh) Duxton Hill. My luck came this time as there was someone later than me, plus the interviewer came in late too. And the interview was a group session, with even food catered. Hopefully I would be selected based on my merits for I believe this time the peg fits.

Sometimes people disagree with me that luck/fate plays a role in life. Well, my explanation is that we must first acknowledge that there are things in life we have little or zero power, control or influence over. This could be things like the bus arrival time, power shortages etc. The influence part we have is what we can do for ourselves, by ourselves, or through ourselves, so that our goal/destination is reached. For example, we could prepare earlier and use the extra time to hedge against the risk of being late but still, there is a possibility that the bus had broken down halfway and the replacement bus comes really late etc. The latter part constitute the luck/fate part that we may not have control over. Although there is no scientific way to prove so, my brother has commented that we all have equal luck in life. We just gain or lose it someway during our life, ending up with a zero sum game by the end of our life. However, to add to that, I still believe that we must do our utmost, to the best of our ability (or to the best of our judgement) so that even when things do not go right, we can take into heart that we have expended our best effort. Yet again, there are times we easily fall into a trap thinking that a certain level of effort is our best, we do not have the talent or the means to push up that level. I certainly disagree so. There is a realistic limit to all what we can do, but we must have an unrealistic desire to attempt to break that limit so that we can do better and reduce the luck/fate component. We must at least try, if there is still some hope for success, even if it is very little, very difficult. We can depend on our friends, families and the people around us to help, but ultimately we still need to take the initiative to take the job upon ourselves so as to ensure the goal can be reached. Leaving it to others to do so places a huge risk on the success because not everyone has the same vision and goals.

And oh, JK found the movie we watched briefly in Batam! No DVD is available yet though, according to him. Watch it at http://www.crunchyroll.com/showmedia?id=31927 (I haven't done so though)

Finally, before I end another boring post, I would like to thank all of you, brothers, buddies and friends, for being part of my up-and-down life. Hopefully we get to move on together for another long journey on this road we call life.

Best regards
Jeffire

Acknowledged my existence at
12:10 PM