A New Year Message

I'm trying to write a new year message assuming the role of the president... knowing it takes a long time for him to write. Having read a bombastic-economy-related new year message from a bank ceo... I know this buddhistic message has to scew towards... *oh what the heck, lets plagiariate* oops breaking 2nd precept!
~*~
What a year that was 2011! First we started the intention to purchase a land to build a new centre.... meetings were held with architectures... fund raising projects were planned...

got the buy in from the committees that we should target to raise RM2 million each year...

kickstarted with the Korean cultural show... there we raised abt RMxxx....

then we formed the committee to organise the DINNER for a 1000 people, to reveal the plan for the new centre. Some how with the magic of karma / conditions, we managed to find a big corner shoplot at Ara Damansara for sale! And the EGM was held a day before the FOTG dinner, to get approval from members, to agree for the greenlight to purchase the new premise.

The FOTG eventually raised almost RM1 million! It was huge success, not only in terms of ROI, but also it was the first time we saw many diff english buddhist groups coming together like an all-star, for a grand gospel-like grand choir performance, of the most apt song 'guardian of the sasana'.... it was an eye-opener for many audiences that night! It was a dinner that brought all the thousand gems together.

BGF didn't have chance to rest after that mega fundraising project! She went on to organise the Food & Fun Fair, a fundraising initiative by the gemkids teachers & parents. In deed the last food fair being held 10 years ago.... this time the Food & Fun Fair chaired by bro. Tee managed to raised abt RM94,000... well we may ask, is it all worth it after all the hardwork by everybody, from the aunties / uncles who prepared the food, to the many youth volunteers who helped tirelessly from midnight onwards, to the organisers & sponsors. The answer? Yes it was well worth it!! It was worth every sweat of it... it was memorable to see our old friends sitting together at the same table chit chating and laughing away. Children having fun. Elderly and even the blind enjoyed themselves very much too!

Looks like the fundraising projects are not going to end so soon, as we are still at the shortfall of RM1million, to fully pay off the RM3.5 million new centre. It would be too texting on the same English-medium Buddhist community.... but we need to stretch our hands and legs to reach out and look beyond our community. We are fortunate to have made friends with the nice lady ms. Yudi Yap, who agreed to help us in our next fundraising drive! What initially thought was just a shanghai jazz concert with Yudi turn out to be a duo pact, with another friendly Taiwanese folk singer 曾淑勤 from Taiwan. BGF is proud to present "A Date with Love" or 《人间友勤》on 17-Feb-2012. Yes the timing is just right when Love is in the Air during this Valentine's season, and love is not just between a boy and a girl, its there's also the family, sisterly or even brotherly love! Of course the highest of level - the unconditional Metta love.

At this juncture, BGF is at the threshold of a renewed mission. BGF will continue to inspire and provide the impetus for the growth of Buddhism. With our new centre, BGF’s earnest wish is to continue our efforts in growing people, unearth new talents and skills, as well as inspire individuals from all walks of life! With your continued support, the flame that we lit together decades ago continues to burn stronger and brighter, illuminating the hearts and minds of all beings.

Let us all embrace the new year 2012 with open arms, plan for the best to happen and expect positive transformation. To kickstart the new year, we're glad to host Bhante Sanghasena (MIMC, Ladakh) in the early of January. Starting from February, the Dhammaduta team & DSTP team will bring you "Foundation of Buddhism" course, which will take place during Sunday@BGF timeslot. GemKids parents are most welcome to participate. In April, we will be receiving Ajahn Brahm from Perth, Australia. Then if all things go as planned, we'll be bring together another Food & Fun Fair with better experience & excitement!

There's still a long up hill climb. We believe we will only go... better.

Live and Learn

It's the first night without sayang as he's on his way to Delhi with some of the BGF exco. I'm somewhat looking forward to the solitude at the comfort of my own home. Am I going to complain about my own ocd husband at my blog? Not now after I've attended Jeff Oliver's "Live and Learn" workshop today....

It was good that I can finally put into perspective on why certain unwholesome thoughts appear in my mind. Before today, I was thinking to rant about why I don't feel its good/healthy for both husband & wife to be working in the same organisation, esp when both are very strong-headed /opinionated. Before today, I was quite convinced that I want to step down from Exco role, and let him take over my position, since he's the one who has the most to say.

I wanted to take the back-seat, one car cannot have 2 drivers. Even if he's driving and I'm at the passenger seat, I'm not supposed to give directions whatsoever, and vice-versa. That's how it is.

Coming back to what I've discovered from Jeff Oliver... when you feel hurt, or when you (intentionally or unintentionally) hurt someone else, seek forgiveness! Not just forgiveness from others, we must try to understand the emotions that came about, was it 'selfishness, anger or confusion' that led us to being hurt / hurting people? It is possible that during that moment, we were unwise and we didn't understand the true nature of things, that's why we get upset or we take things for granted or we harm people. Which in the end, we feel guilty or we harm / hurt ourselves. One must learn to FORGIVE oneself. Say "I forgive myself..."

It was very powerful... its true that I was not wise enough to comprehend fully everything. When there is high-expectation, there is high-disappointment! That's the natural law. Of course this 'expectation = desire' led me to another confusion, that is why would a leader set high standard? Whether setting high standard for oneself, or high standard for the company/organisation/team that we work in?

Wish I can clarify this with another Dhamma teacher who's not tooo laid back in the Theravada Vipassana tradition, perhaps someone more socially engaged with the worldly conditions that we currently dwell in.

Yes I can sense / observe that I'm stucked in samsara...

Through mindfulness / awareness practise, I'm noting the thoughts that arises from moment to moment, sometimes I analyse too much, sometimes I don't get it. Mantra sets in... "I forgive myself"

This post is about my experience and what goes through my mind/heart about being with my other half. So this solitude that I've been looking forward to, is for me to be at peace with myself. No expectation, no question to ask, no sight of OCD-behaviour. Just relax...

How can one be in an unconditional-love relationship with a spouse? How can both husband & wife not have any expectation of each other? How can both party truly accept, embrace, forgive, love and care for each other unconditionally?

For Jeff Oliver, he said he can....

For me? I'm still discovering / learning the art of exemplary happy married life!

Property investment turn into future biz plan

dear diary,

I just wondering why the MRT plan has so many 'stations' at Kota Damansara? I was trying to check out, where exactly is the exact station gonna be, seems there's one at PJU5, which is so near to Dataran Sunway station, then another station further up at TheCurve.

If its gonna cost multimillion dollar for construction, why do they want to 'construct' a few stations so near each other? Why don't they try to save cost?!

Now im looking at investing in a SOHO at Nexis by SunwayProperty, which is right beside Giza, supposedly 100m away from the MRT station. Sounds good yeah?

Next to Nexis, also got development by Cascade & GardenOffice by Encorp... all very huge retail business! On top of that now already got TheStrand & Giza already in operation. Hmmm, then how will the traffic jam gonna be like in the future?!

So say if my wish to invest in property turns into biz wish, then I figured out myself, during my backpacking experience, the hostel must always be near MRT stn, and it can be in office building, so long as its convenient, cheap & got internet / computers for yuppies.

Shhhh.. this is my idea! It came up from my brain, a combination of hostel business & Paper+Toast (http://paperandtoast.com/) concept. I'm blogging it now cos I need to refer back to my 'thoughts' in case I forget. So many wondering thoughts appear in my brain as if it never stops.

Of course money is a perpetual concern. Its either I register for a property unit and rent it out in future for other people's business, or I run my own business on the same property to be invested? Who'd want to co-invest with me? Who would trust me that my biz plan would give good financial return, just base on a wish?

I do wish I can hire all my friends that can work very well, that I can rely on... opportunity for my friends to grow in their asset with me along the way! :D

...happy day dreaming away!

runaway to singapore!

for some strange reason the previous post was truncated and i couldn't rewrite the whole story again... so forget it.

im really looking forward to throwing everything down and lug my basic stuff like money & camera.. of cos passport and go away!

this is it... spore... seeing new people I dont see in my daily life.. re-seeking the meaning of my life and enjoying the wondering around with just me and my bag. i'll go eat what i want.. go see who i wanna see... go talk about what i wanna talk... go smile with a newborn infant... just go away!

go away from everyone.... well just for slightly less than 4 days nia. suddenly im missing the solo elephant ride in the jungle of chiangmai :P

the black general

I was contemplate to write this post in my private blog (where nobody can read) or on this blog where perhaps my friends can read. Its abit private, well to him at least. Cos talking about him is a private affair and he don't condone me openly sharing my thoughts with regards to him. The point to pen down is, first time I saw him 'summon' the North General through the Taoist ritual ceremony. The 5 direction of generals are also recognised by their colour, and he wears the black cloth around his waist over white-chinese-kungfu-pants & temple shirt. Of cours he looks 'macho' in that attire, but when he do the chanting and ritual with

Happy Chinese New Year 2011!

This year will be the second year that I'm celebrating CNY as an angpow giver. The most common 'wish' that family members will wish me is 'nin sang kuai ji' meaning wishing that I'll get an offspring soon! The usual way of brushing off the topic is saying the year is 2012 - dragon. And I need do some math - if it take 10 months to deliver a baby, then I'll have to conceive it starting from this year, from May 2010! :) But what if I wish to give birth to a December capricon baby, means I'll have to conceive in Feb 2011? Which means I might be pregnant already when I travel to Europe in Spring 2011 :P doh...

Well I'm the sort of person who goes by "Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail". Everything destination starts with an intention, a wish, a want and then a plan! Horoscopely speaking, a 'rabbit' would be very much compatible with 'goats' like me and sayang. But I just can't have a baby so soon, perhaps mentally we're both not ready and infact we've got a 12-day Hangzhou-Shanghai-Huangshan-Putuoshan trip to fulfil come Sep this rabbit year! The unfortunate part is abang in Shanghai might not be around then, cos he's potentially moving back to Spore... and this is hush hush shhhhhhh cannot tell anyone!!! (don't know some people are so good at not spilling words out too soon so unlike me)

Good news is abang & ahsoh is expecting a baby rabbit girl this year! :) yay a girl for the Wong family! I purposely wish that the baby will be a girl, cause of the idiotic fact that my father-in-law would rather wish to have a second grandson - why son?! Well for convenient sake (due to my busy lifestyle), I thought having a son would save me the hassle of dolling up the kid, but its perfectly alright with me to have a daughter! Even if I were to have only one child and its a girl.

Because of this chauvinistic thinking by my f-i-l, I think I'll want to have a baby dragon girl next year then, just to purposely 'kek' him :P kekekeke... I still don't know why I like to challenge people.

My only brother, my sai-loh is planning to get married! Sometimes I do feel emotional, when it sinks deeper in me, that my sai-loh is really getting married?! Gossh... I used to just whacking him and teasing him and forgot that he's all grown up! Even perhaps my sai-loh will become a new parent sooner than his tai-kai-che. How come my younger brother grow up so fast? He's earning a good living working as a Siemens Engineer, even I don't get hired by Siemens but my less-than-smart sai-loh do. He even got awarded 'best performer staff', like what?!! My sai-loh who used to suck in maths and need me to give him free tuition as he was suffering through his diploma years? Anyway good luck and all the best to my bro and his pretty fiance of his. I hope his future wife will be able to replace my role in the kitchen to help my mom come CNY, cleaning, washing, serving the guest etc!

No wonder my f-i-l is so proud, he got 2 sons and if he were to wish to have more children, he'd probably wish to have all sons! So then he'll get many more daughter-in-laws to help cook in the kitchen!

My m-i-l is one of a kind. If I had a tough time trying to keep up with my mom's mega effort in the kitchen, try help my m-i-l with her asam laksa party feat! Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't ask her to cook asam laksa for our open house... she'll be cutting, cooking, cleaning, serving, washing, replenishing, watching over the fire, stirring, washing, wiping the table, cleaning, arranging the cutlery, repacking, and repeat the steps all over - from dawn till dusk!

Now you see where my sayang get his perfect melancholy syndrome from? From BOTH his parents! I am a ZERO melancholy person. I don't go for details, infact I can't see details like average people do, you can observe that in my photoshots, I hardly zoom in details unless I change to the 50mm lens (that I'll hardly use for event). I can live my putting all the dirty dish all into the big sink and let it pile up until its too high, THEN one shot wash all up - save water & washing detergent! But for the Wong family? Cannot. EVERY single plate or spoon or chopsticks that comes near the sink will be cleansed with detergent (whether oily or not, even if its a glass which only contained plain water) thoroughly.

Oh while washing repeatedly, the table cloths will be rinsed just as many times to wipe the kitchen top. Can't we just save a bit of water by not being that OCD? No I can't ever give this silly suggestion, or else I'll be doomed, as the lousy daughter-in-law who not only intentionally postpone her getting pregnant, but is messy and dirty!

M-i-l taught me how to use detergent to rinse the table cloth, so that when we wipe the kitchen counter top, it will smell with fragrance. Yes true - but i can't imagine if I put a bread / food stuff on the table (layered with detergent) and then put it back into my mouth. Anyway, just listen obidiently and nod my head. The difference between helping my in-laws vs helping my own mother in the kitchen, is I get 'shut up, listen & follow'. With my mom, I'll talk back & get on my mother's nerves - which may not be a good thing.

On 1st day of CNY when I had a quick visit to my maiden home, I had to hold back my tears upon seeing the glee revealed on my parents face when they saw me after missing me for days! Or was it the other way round, I was missing them for 3 days!

Anyway, on the note about giving angpow, this year I don't have to give double, just one angpow, it was natural to give out angpow to whoever that I'm supposed to give, even to other little stranger unmarried people, well its just RM4 inside, don't think anyone would receive angpow value lower than what I could wrap?! :D For me and sayang, our network of people we know can be very wide, so for us to give high-value angpow (or bak kum) to all the people we know, could be impractical. So for us (or for me in particular), give less give more - quantity equals quality!

I don't have big wish for this rabbit year, except just wish for good health and to receive expected bonus in March. Good news is that for this year, the industry dealing with 'wood' and 'metal' element will be very good - bank is money is metal!

For my friends and family, esp those who'd invested under me before, I really wish that they're global funds investment will bouce back la!

I'm sorry... I forgive you....

I'm so stressed out that I lashed it out at an innocent aunty who has caught me at the wrong time when i was most busy.

When the mind and body is not in sync, raw emotions can be difficult to be controlled. It's the beginning of the new year 2011 and I'm caught in this stressful never-ending infra support job. I feel like I need to take a break, but I just came back from a Buddhist pilgrimage just last month & that should be enough of a soul-cleasing spree...

There's just too much over-spilling calls and job responsibilities to follow up and to do. I don't see myself staying back LATE to "finish" the work because I will not have any energy left by 7pm when almost everyone has left the office. It's impossible for me to imagine how people can work through the night, or don't sleep for the whole week because of "month end" or "closing" or "project". Maybe the energy that these people drained on is periodical and not constant like in my line of daily-non-stop support job.

I don't wish to say bad things abt this uncle sitting infront of me in office, nor i wish to whine about a similar-annoying-aunty in the Buddhist circle who agitated me today. Somehow I must admit that people like them really get on my nerves so much, its hard to explain why! A friend once said "because you attract weird / strange people". Can this be true? How true is this? How can I get away from associating with them? They're not negative, they don't have ill-will. They're just plain painstakingly annoying and repetitive!

For the same thing that he can ask me to do, he can repeat it 100 times until you've done it. Why not ask other people to do? Cos other people don't sit next to him and worst still don't have the skillset to help him. It's just my somewhat-lousy-boss say "if I know you're good, then I'll let you do more things eventhough I know you already have 10 things on your plate!"

"Some people cannot even do 1 thing, so don't even bother give them do another thing".

....

My sayang certainly disagree with this theory. It works in my IT support line of job... similar to my volunteer work at Buddhist societies, just because you can do it - YOU DO LAH! If not who else to do?!

People can easily say "I don't know how to do la, please help me". Full stop.

Yadayada and all sort of nonsense life-balancing stunt. Oh ya you say its NOT nonsense, and its a birth right to reject and say NO to people asking for help... try being me, in my shoe and when helpdesk agent (with continous non-stop incoming calls) escalate an issue to you, and you reply "I don't know how lah, you solve it yourself lah!"

Its very easy to say "I DONT KNOW LAH"

Butttt... it takes alot alot alot of me to say that.... esp when you know the answer , or you know the way/method that could help the help-seeker. The more you know, the more people want you to help and naturally the more you want to help, perhaps solve a problem faster or in a more efficient way.

Help-seeker will not even bother to try to ask the other person in your same team, who either pretend don't know or really sorry-to-say don't know how to help. Its like a pathetic samsara life cycle or the 'Dependent Origination' where the first cause is "ignorance"... just START with "I Dont Know" and you'll NOT have to go through the whole pointless meaningless endless cycle of suffering.

Is it my ego, that makes me afraid of telling people "I Dont Know lah" fullstop?

My family wants to have a family gathering - call me to arrange for the accomodation.
Helpdesk agents want to solve a problem fast and instantly - call me to fix it.
Annoying aunty want me to send early notice to BGF egroup - call me & sms me to do it x2.
Annoying uncle at work want me to help him remotely upgrade his AS400 software on 3000 over PC bankwide - call me because im the admin for the software deployment system
My uncle want to sell his jackrusell puppies - call me take photo for him & sell on internet
Another uncle want to sell his terrior puppies - call me to teach him how to blog
Mentally handicap girl gets bored at home nothing to do - call me ask when am I taking her out
Sunday school teacher couldn't find a photographer for an event - call me to become photographer

If in one day of my life, there is NO request at all... would I still survive?

What if I tell my uncles - "I don't know how to take photo lah!"
What if I tell mentally handicap girl - "I don't want to take you out lah!"
What if I tell sunday school teacher - "I can't help you lah!"
What if I tell BGF - "I don't want to be secretary or administrator anymore!"
What if I tell BISDS - "I don't want to do anything la!"
What if I tell my aunty - "I don't care about family outing, you all go without me la!"

... can I? can I? or will I?

I just had a revelation about "truly letting go". How do you let go? Do you let go the mess that you've inherited because you cannot take it anymore and pass on to whoever to take over from scratch / clean the shit? Or do you continue to persevere and try to do a proper handover / knowledge transfer / assign & delegate / find a willing successor / train your replacement... before you "truly let go"?