Happyness is the way

Victor, a friend of mine back from jc years, has recently introduced me to the literature world of satire. It started out with a picture, and then a website (www.despair.com). Then I was shopping for a book one day when I saw this promotion in Times bookshop, advertising two books on satire. I'm reading one of them now, Guilliver's Travels. It always surprises me how much an influence a book has on me, consciously and subconsciously.

I think I first noticed it when I was meeting my ex-PA colleagues for dinner. Dear Mr Neo, who initiated the meeting, was still at the gym at the time when we were supposed to meet. If there is anything I hate more than insincere people, it's insincere people who wastes your time. Was really pissed, since I had just completed my reservist and was really tired. Wanted to rest at home, but thought since we seldom have a chance to meet up, I should join the guys and chill over dinner. And so began my satire remarks when Neo finally arrived. It's kinda nice when people is able to catch some of these remarks. At the end of the day, everyone had a good laugh (including Neo :) ), and no harm intended whatsoever. It's a different kind of humor, and I think it adds spice to the usual classic but intellectually-boring jokes that are shared around the table.

After reservist, my first week at work sux. I was in a pretty bad mood the whole week. Something was bothering me. And I think it is a combination of several factors. I was rather harsh to one/some of my colleagues. And the justification I had for myself was that this is really nothing compared to the kind of behavior I had experienced from one of my ex-team lead. Then it stuck me that why am I comparing myself against her? If I do that, I am acknowledging that her communication style is acceptable... My boss commented that I was quite impolite at times, and I replied that at least I believed that I was still being professional. Then he said that how can a person be professional when he is not polite. I wonder if the converse is true, that a person can be polite when he is not professional.

Sometimes in life, we always hope to work in an ideal workplace, where you don't have to work with unprofessional people. But then on the other hand, if I can't be professional in my work, how can I expect others to be? That would be double-standard. Alan told me that a guideline on when I should change my job would be when I stopped learning. I think the floodgates have finally blasted open.

When I was in my third year of university education, I adopted a different learning style. Instead of taking notes in lecture, I focused all my attention on the lecturer. I was often seen as the arrogant guy in class who would come to class with no notes and paper, and would just sit in the lecture room asking smart-alerk questions every now and then. I scored pretty well that semester, but it was only because I has good friends who had kindly lent me their notes to photocopy. A special thanks to all of them here, especially Yiwen. =)

The thing is, the reason why I adopted that learning approach was because I believe that the process of learning is more important than scoring well in exams. What's the point of coming to the lecture to copy notes and not understand the lecturer. Afterall, we are paying so much for our education not for the notes, but for the knowledge that our lecturers are able to impart to us. It occurs to me that this style may offend certain people, but if we always go with the crowd, then we will never be able to develop our own unique style. My point is this: when I went for the exams, I was enjoying the experience of education, and not for the sake of paper qualification.
(On hindsight, I would think that a combination of the two approaches work best for me. But everyone should try different methods to find out what works well for them, in whatever they do.)

I am trying to plan a trip over xmas this year with my colleague, and it was quite a last minute thing. Further bad news is that work is quite heavy for both of us, and so the trip becomes an additional workload. I was frilling over this yesterday, when I suddenly connected this experience with my education experience. At the end of the day, the important thing is that we get to enjoy the holiday, and that even this process of planning the trip should be something enjoyable as well. After all, I am feeling excited even when I was surfing the net for places to go. Isn't this something nice to experience? Sometimes in life, we become so results-oriented that we forget that the journey matters more than the destination.

"There's no way happyness;
Happyness is the way."