An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Recently, we are conducting Innovation and Enterprise workshops for 2 schools in 2 different days. I noticed some interesting behaviours from these 2 schools.

Students are given the same tasks, same time and same rules; yet students from both schools behave very differently.

In School X, when given a task, majority of them wants to be a leader. In School Y, none wants to be a leader when given the same task.

In School X, those who are not chosen as leader wants to be involved, wants to do something for the group. In School Y, those not chosen as leader hopes to be an observer.

In School X, majority of them are not shy to be in font of the room to do a presentation or a performance. In School Y, children rather quit than to stand in front of the room.

After chatting to the teacher-in-charge of School X, we found out the reason for the participative behaviour. The teacher gave her pupils many chances to express themselves in class. She is guiding them yet not holding their hands. This helps to build confidence in the children. I believe this way of teaching must be from the school culture. I strongly believe that is how we can develop a child; by allowing them to express freely.

On the other hand, in School Y, though I had not spoken to the teacher on their teaching method, but I saw something amazing. I walked past a classroom full of students but no teacher. The class is in absolute silent.

My God, these are children from age 7-12, you put 40 children of such age together, there is no way they can keep quiet. Question is: are these kids being suppressed?

How do you develop a child when you are limiting their creativity and the ability to express themselves? I am in no position to comment if the school right or wrong, because they may have a different objective - maybe to train quiet children.

However, I must comment on this. The old education method doesn’t work anymore. It does not contribute in the growth in a child.

Over the weekend, Vasu and myself was at Kuala Lumpur supporting a team building training for David.

We were back in the hotel room at about 10:50pm, and switching on the TV, it was the 92th minute on Arsenal and Birmingham match. Arsenal was leading 2-1 with one last minute to go.

I went, “Birmingham will score at the last minute.” Right after I said it, Birmingham got a penalty, no thanks to the Arsenal defender, Clichy. McFadden equalize for Birmingham from that penalty.

I was totally shocked. I couldn’t believe it. It was just a harmless comment, but it happened.

Vasu, an Arsenal fan was cursing at me, blaming me. He blamed me for manifesting that equalizer to happen. Ha ha, am I really that powerful, able to affect result in England?

What is the purpose of human being? I guess the existence of human being causes lots of problems to Mother Earth. However, there must be a reason why we are here. The Universe don’t put us here without any reason.

The main difference between other animals and us is we have the ability to think. That makes us problem solver. This become a cycle when we solve other’s problems, other solve our problems. As a result, it elevates human consciousness, improves the standard of living.

What happens when you stop solving other’s problems? What happen when you do nothing to help a fellow human being? And for some selfish reason, you chose to stay at home, sleep, watch TV and do nothing to contribute to the world.

It’s not a problem to stay at home, sleep, watch tv, rot etc. But when someone do that for a long time, it starts to hurt their soul. You are here to do something, but if you are not doing it, your soul will cry for it. You will start to lose self-confidence, or even lose yourself. You’ll become a grumpy chicken.

When you start to solve someone’s problem, your life will start to change. Solving someone’s problem helps you to feel great. It gives you a sense of achievement, thus bring up your self-confidence.

Sometimes we do want to have a break. Watch TV, laze at home, go for a holiday; that’s is called reward for the soul. While our soul wants to help others, our soul also deserve the best. It wants to be rewarded. Like I said, it’s a break, meaning you got to go back to solve other’s problems after the reward.

A waiter in a restaurant is solving someone’s problem. He ensures that the customers are well-served. As long as you are doing something morally, most likely you are helping a fellow human being. Once you stop, you are out of the cycle, sooner or later your soul will cry.

I hope that this post does help someone too.

I don’t usually like English drama, but Heroes is one of the fews that I like. After watching episodes 1 of Heroes Season 1, I was completely hooked.

While waiting for Season 2, I read reviews on it, since US has just aired the last episodes of season 2. The reviews were bad. It seems to me that it’s not worth watching.

While searching for reviews, I came across a test to check which Heroes character are you. Out of curiosity, I tried and this is my result.

Which Heroes Character Are You?

More on Heroes. Created by BuddyTV

You can find the test at Heroes Test. Tried it and let me know about it.

After the Kuala Lipis group, I had to be back to Kuala Lumpur to support David. That is not that urgent though, because Vasu is there.

Zen dropped me at Subang Parade, where I had to take a cab to Hotel Equatorial. After waiting for 45 minutes, finally a cab was willing to take me there. Reached the hotel, then found that my group is not there. I was at a lost for a second, with no phone to call, all communication cut off, I couldn’t call David and Vasu to clarify.

Suddenly the receptionist said, “Sir maybe your group is at Hotel Equatorial, Banggi. This is Hotel Equatorial, KL.”

That’s right…it’s Banggi, I heard David, Vasu and Zen mentioned Banggi. I made a mistake due to my lack of geographical understanding of Malaysia.

So I had to take another cab to the right hotel. I am so glad to see Vasu and David there. It was like a long trip.

A bonus for me here. I used the hotel hair dryer to blow at my phone, drying the water in the phone. YES…it was resurrected. My spirit was lifted up.

It was a really nice trip up. Next week I am heading to Kuala Lumpur again. Maybe I will have some interesting encounters again.

On valentine’s Day, I got to go to Kuala Lipis (a small town in Malaysia) to support a training. This is kind of a last minute arrangement because the actual trainer, Len had a dislocated shoulder. And instead of supporting David, I went over to support him.

It was a nice trip up via First Coach. I arrived in Kuala Lumpur about midnight, then David came to fetch me to his place. At 6am the next day, I took a 2 hours ride in a cab to Kuala Lipis, a really small town.

Upon arrival, Zen told me most of time don’t understand English, a few are illiterate. Their primary language is Malay. Holy cow, what can be a bigger challenge than unable to converse with the participants, especially in training. Fortunately, my role is to support Zen. In fact that’s the only role I can do at that point.

The participants are actually very nice people. They are very simple people and had never attended a team building workshop in their whole life. It was so funny because whenever they spoke to me, I looked at them, smile and nodded. Until the time when we say goodbye, the group finally knew that I don’t understand Malay. Those who can speak English, starts to talk to me in English.

This group did the 4WD up to the waterfall. For one of the activities, we got to hide their food in the bushes, river and on the trees. Trying to do a spiderman there, I went under the bridge to hide the food, but I lost my balance after placing the food, fell into the deep end of the river. The first thing that came into my mind was - my phone.

I climbed out of the river as fast as I could, took out the phone, and it’s not working already. This is the biggest lost from this trip, but I won’t let it affect my mood.

I learned interesting things from this trip. And whether it’s conducted in Malay or English, I can feel the essence of fun. I guess that’s enough for this group.

4 days of rest during Chinese New Year. Start of the week with exciting program.

First went for reece from MacRitchie reservoir to the foot of the Bukit Timah Hill. The reece is to ensure all routes are good and unchange for the Leadership training for CHIJ. This is a workshop by David; Vasu and myself and many other facilitators will be supporting the hike.

It’s a coincidence that 2 weeks ago, Clive, Dennis and me hiked through the same place. That place is full of monkeys and monitor lizards. I never fail to see those two kinds of animals during my two visits there.

How many times have we gone back to nature? We were surrounded by concrete “trees” in our life. In actual fact, we were from the nature, we are part of this eco-system. It’s actually awesome to be back with the nature - a different energy in there.

In nature, it’s balance that plays the role. You can’t have too much of anything, or have nothing; it will break the topple the balance. When something drastic happened in nature, it might be humans done too much of one thing, nature needs to correct it.

Someone mentioned if there is just one kind of insect that go extinct, in 50 years time, all animals will die. If human beings extinct, in 50 years time, nature will flourish.

In life, it’s also about balance. If you have too much of something, your life may go chaotic. There are many Hollywood stars as examples.

From a very young age, I was intrigue by the story of Romance of Three Kingdom. I first got to know this story from the computer game. That was the first time I got to know some of the characters in the story, Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei etc.

This story is about China being divided into 3 huge forces during the A.D 189 - 240. During this time, many outstanding individuals who excel in war and politics appeared. It was one of the exciting and dramatic period of China.

Since then, I was hooked to this story. Started to went around looking for more information about the Three Kingdom. I got the comics initially. There are 2 types of comic that is about the Three Kingdom. But I’m not satisfied, because in the comic, lot of details are removed. Finally, I found the actual novel Romance of Three Kingdom, 三国演义。

I thought I’ll be satisfy after with the finding. Unfortunately, after reading the novel, I found out that this is only a novel, a story. Not everything written in the novel is true. The author simply added some colours so that readers will be interested to read on. So I begin to search for the actual records of Three Kingdom, 三国志。

The actual records are recorded in ancient chinese which I couldn’t understand.

I am always curious about some characters in the Three Kingdom. Like Zhuge Liang, is he really that intelligent?

Also Generals like Zhang Fei or Lu Bu seems to be quite stupid in the game or the novel. But these people are generals leading soldiers to war. How could they be stupid? The lives of the soldiers depend on them, how can they not be intelligent?

Fortunately I found a clip in youtube that analysed the history of Three Kingdom. It was a gem that I found, as there are many lessons to be learned. I would share some of the learnings in the next few posts.

很少看电视，昨晚扭开电视看到了动力火车唱着这首歌。
虽然听过这首歌无数次，但昨晚再听却感动了。
尤其它的歌词是何等的充满了激励，鼓励还有永不退缩的精神。

非常喜欢这句歌词，“不能再让懦弱困住“。

就让我们再一次欣赏这首歌吧。

走出去 就有路
寻见了 就有福
拥有了一切 都进了包袱
思念是带不走的

天空 疑云密布
心中 翻腾起伏
虽将飘摇 前途仍模糊
此地会是我 衣锦还乡处

飘洋过海 我吃得起苦
相信天无绝人之路
现实有咒诅 梦里有祝福
有缘同舟 风雨同渡

顶着烈日当空 眼底有迷雾
不能再让懦弱困住
日子多坎坷 命运有变数
只盼久旱逢甘露

Recently, Lester and Kenneth invited me to a game of squash last week. Today we went for another game. Initially, I thought to join them because of the company, as both of them are nice people to be with. Now I kind of like the game.

A game that requires skill, stamina, speed and brain is the kind of game that will get me hooked. Although fitness and skill is require for this sport, but what really got me interested may be the “thinking” that is involved in the game.

Though now I am still a newbie, couldn’t hit the ball properly, couldn’t direct the ball to where I want it to go, but I can sense that interesting stuff that could be happening in the game.

The exciting thing is the need to think fast, make fast decision and execute the move. It’s like my favourite sport - football. I simply love this kind of game. Come to think of it, I have not been kicking ball in the last 4 months. It’s about time to kick the ball again after this week.

Now I got a new sport to keep fit. It is fun and exciting as well.