The Unspoken Truth of Independence

Merdeka, Merdeka, Merdeka

Today. August 31st. We are celebrating Independence Day, which we celebrates every year at this time of the year. But, what is Independence actually? When people was asked the meaning of Independence, the answer has been the same, “Independence means ‘We are free from the  British Colonist’.” For some of us, it means that we are free to think, free to talk and free to do anything. The keyword here is FREE. However, the ability to be free consumes the true meaning of the independence itself.

We are so free, that we didn’t notice that some politicians used political platform for their own personal gain instead of representing his/her community as a whole.

We are so free, that we didn’t notice and realize that everyone has their own needs and expectations.

We are so free, that we are used to see irresponsible, inhuman, selfish people dumb  their unwanted kids in the sewer, in the dumpster and even in the toilet bowl.

We are so free, that we didn’t care about anything happened to other countries (typhoon, flood, drought, earthquake, tsunami).

We are so free, that we always looked upon on other countries but didn’t do anything for our own country.

We are so free, that we couldn’t care less about donating but instead voting on reality shows.

We are so free, that we are so absorbe with all fun things in the world but forgot to plan for the afterlife.

We are so free, that we didn’t wave the national flag during the month of Independence.

We are so free, that we can’t do a thing when there are grew in numbers of people having sex on Independence’s Eve.

We are so free, that we didn’t do a thing when some “people” stepped on our national flag and dumb s**t all over it.

So, if you think that you are not free, then its a good sign. It means that you have the sensitivity and the guts to do something for a greater good. It also means that you are aware on what’s happening and you didn’t take anything for granted. On the other hand, if you think that you are free. Think again. Reflect on yourselves. Think deeply about the meaning of Independence and take some actions. Do something for a change. Voice out your opinions or donate to help others. That’s the least you could do.

To sum up, Independence is not only about having parades, firework’s shows or even about song & dance performances. For me, its something much more bigger. Its about acceptance. Learn how to accept the unspoken truth. It is true that today we are celebrating 53th Independence Day but we also must accept the reality that we are facing right now, especially on social issues. We have to do something about it, otherwise the next generations won’t be able to taste the true meaning of Independence and we won’t be able to see our Jalur Gemilang rise again.

syaftome ~ reflected on himself and will do something for a change, how about you???

Towards High Performance ~ The Challenges

Keep on Smiling!!!

A few days ago, I went to this talk about “Challenges in Developing High Performance“. It was a great talk performed by Datuk Mary Yap Kain Ching and I learned a lot from her, where I reflected situations that I had faced before. Then, I was thinking. I should share this. What’s the point of learning if you don’t share a thing? At least, this is my part to share some useful knowledge that I had acquired.

So, did u noticed that, since the appointment of Dato’ Seri Najib Razak as our Prime Minister, one of his vision is towards high performance of our nation. That’s the reason why, he created 4 pillars towards realizing Vision 2020;

1. 1 Malaysia Concept

2. Government Transformation Program (GTP)

3. New Economic Model

4. 10th Malaysia Plan

In the introduction, Datuk Mary talked about the idea of high performance. She mentioned about quality, standards, measurements, assessments and everything that related to the topic. Then, she proceeded with the main topic, which is the challenge in developing high performance.

In her talk, she mentioned a lot of thing, but I just managed to get a few:

1.         Moral Purpose
In order to achieve a high performance, we need to have a moral purpose, where it will guide us to do your work for a greater good without stray from the correct path.

2.         Shared Accountability
If you don’t share the successes and failures after you did something good or bad, others will feel not appreciated and it will bring low performance.

3.         Resistance/Complacence (Breakers, Takers, Movers)
There are three types of groups to handle when you are a leader;
Breakers will do everything they can to resist changes. Takers will take whatever ideas and just go along with it. Movers will take the ideas and do the implementation, where they will help you in achieving the visions.

4.         Grateful
If you don’t be grateful to what you have done and what you get, God will not help you. This is the part I liked the most about her, because she mentioned a lot about being gratefulness, which is true and what our religion always emphasizes on. No wonder her school got a lot of awards due to her leadership. (a few stories on Datuk Mary and her school can be read from here).

Before she went to another chapter of her presentation, she had mentioned about the most challenges part towards high performance. “Influencing human behaviors is one of the most difficult challenges faced by leaders, Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Prize winner”. This is so true. It is impossible to change a human nature or personality but we could guide them to change. In order to do that, there is one innovative solution, which is to “unleash their power and potential for a greater good”. What it means is that as a leader, we need to help our people to achieve self-satisfaction besides helping them to express their ideas. Other than that, encouragement and appreciation will also help you to gain their trust in order to get their full cooperation towards your goals and objectives.

Pāto 7 ~ To Go Or Not To Go

Which one is the correct answer???

It was a lovely afternoon, when suddenly a guy from Bumiputera Entrepreneur Development Unit (UPUB) came to our office and asked whether some of our Muslims CBGs would like to go for  a video recording session at Islamic Information Centre(IIC). At first, I thought it was just a voice recording session but after I signed the participation forms(its just a plain white paper actually), I was soon to find out that its a video recording session. So, I guess I just have to deal with it since I had no other plans to do.

After breakfast, I goggled the place to find the venue because I’ve never been there even once. I got the information wrong but I’m pretty sure the shoot will be at IIC. I tried to memorize the directions to get there but in the end, I failed. After I had taken my shower, I even ironed my Malay traditional cloth so that I looked well groom for the shooting but everything was not in order. I couldn’t find the buttons for the shirt and I had no idea where my brother put his extra songkok. After a while, I managed to find them.

I went out 15 minutes past eight, where the shoot will start at 9.00 pm. At first, my journey was quite enjoyable. When I was about to reach a traffic light, it went green voluntarily. But in the end, I got lost because I missed a junction. After a few minutes, I managed to find the landmarks to Jalan Ong Tiang Swee , where  I reached there with some time to spare.

But once again, I lost my way towards the main entrance. I guess I’m not really good with directions. So, after all congregations of Terawih prayer had gone out, I tried to find my colleague but he was nowhere to be found. Awkwardness started to take over me because I felt that I was just a stranger and I started to think about getting away. I asked myself whether I should go for the shoot session or should I back myself out. I kept thinking about it when finally a few minutes later I stood up from where I sits and just go straight to where I parked my car.

At that moment, I was thinking how am I suppose to answer if someone ask me why I didn’t go for the recording session. After I figured it out with some of my lame excuses, I started the engine and drove my car way past the guard post without ever looked back. Until at this moment, even though I have made my decision, I am still figuring whether it’s a good or a bad decision. I guess I’ll never find out until I see the video, where it will commences on Raya Celebration.

Future Note: Make up your mind and get ready with the consequences.

Pāto 6 ~ Simplicity is the Key to No Misery

you see...everything is not so much complicated than you think...

Today. Yeah today. Today is the day where my misery ends for a while, coz it’s the day I presents my pamphlet design to BB. I was supposed to present to our second-in-command-officer, our chief of assistant directors, Mr A but unfortunately, he was not in Kuching since he’d went to Miri for a meeting. So, whether I like it or not, I had to pass my design to BB through my supervisor.

As I expected, he didn’t accept a single one of my four designs, instead I had to redesigned a bit to his satisfactions (luckily its just a simple design). After lunch hour, I had presented my final design, which was supposed to be a final product but once again, there is something which is not to his likings. There was an error to the venue of one of the events in the pamphlet. Earlier, I had told my supervisor that the venue is a “closed stadium” but BB insisted that the venue is a “district stadium”. In the end, it is a “closed stadium”.

Fuhhh~~~now my life goes back to a normal life. A life where I don’t have to crack my head about photoshop design(which I have no expertise at all) even though I’m home. A life where I get a nice sleep on a comfy bed and pillows. A life where I don’t have to think about work at all. Moral of the story, don’t brings your work at home coz in the end you will get a burden with the consequences.

p.s: now that was over, but another story about a speaker hasn’t yet to uncover….

Pāto 5 ~ Here we go again

First Draft

Two days ago, I presented my first draft design(pamphlet of our national day) to my supervisors to get their comments and they gave me some good reviews.

‘Just need to add a few more details’, they said. And some said that I need to change the background into a bit lighter and I also need to change the flower because it doesn’t look natural without its real color.

So, I said, “That’s fine, I can do that.” So, I worked tirelessly tweaked the design a bit. I changed the background and I added a few details. And so, here comes the big day;submission to the Big Boss(BB). It’s not that I was the one who presented the design, but a colleague of mine. Lucky me, coz I’m not a big fan in meeting with my BB.

I waited anxiously while doing some unfinished business. As my supervisor came out from his room, I rushed to him to get BB’s review. I was shocked to find out that he totally rejected my design, instead I need to design a much more simpler pamphlet; a black wordings with a white background plus some extra lines of colors(blue,red and yellow).

Second Draft: Can you see the differences?

Ah~~~~Here we go again…As I expected, this thing would happen. In fact, it always happens. As for me, I just need to bear with BB. He is BB after all. Who am I to question his judgments? As what I was thought, in our office, there are two rules that we need to obey all the time.

Rule 1: Boss is ALWAYS right.

Rule 2: If you think that your boss is wrong, refer to Rule 1.

Now, I need to crack my head again on how to fill the three colors into the whole background of the design, where Monday will be moment of truth. So, wish me luck.

Future Note: Be mentally prepare when I get a design task.

Ask BB for clarifications before design anything.

Pāto 4 ~ Fight or Flight

you get the idea...right???

TWO days ago, I received a message about a job vacancy on management and professional group  in Universiti Malaysia Sarawak(UNIMAS) from a friend, who is now working there. And yesterday , my mum gave me a list of vacancies at the same place and she told me to take this opportunity. Then, I started to wonder. Should I take it or shouldn’t I?

Hurm….actually, there were many times, where I got the opportunities to work somewhere else. BUT, I took them lightly, where I used my defense mechanism effectively. I started to give excuses just to ignore the opportunities that I got. People used to say to me, “Grab all the opportunities that you have before it gets away, where in the end you will regret.” But when I think about my current job, I love it very much, where I get to learn something new and travel to other parts of Sarawak beside Kuching(a place I have been living until today). Another reason which made me think twice was the fact that I was in the process of learning “English for Business Communication”, which took 3 months to complete. I wanted to finish the course because I think it  was very interesting and useful to improve my communication skills in English. It was also a good platform for me to be proactive and improve my grammar, which I think hasn’t change a lot. But, at least I learned something new and it is good, doesn’t it?

Okay, now back to the job vacancies. I know that my current job doesn’t promised much for a permanent post but I liked it very much. Then, I started to think that I am much more suitable to this kind of job. A management post would be less stressful than to be an engineer, where they need to design and know a lot of thing about theories and technical equipment, which I think I’m not quite good at. So, I took a lot of time to figure out what am I good at. After a while, I realized that I’m good at nothing. I like doing everything but on a negative side, I think that I have no focus in doing something. I love to try something new, because you will never know when it will be useful in the future. In the end, the weakness inside of me took over. I couldn’t decide whether I should take a career path on management or engineering, because this will decide who I am in 10 years time or maybe 20. So, my decision at this point of time is  crucial, where I don’t think a hunch will be able to solve everything but this is what I’ll do at this moment. Hopefully, with God’s help, everything will become clear.

Note: “If you believe in your choice, fight for it.”, The Adjustment Bureau.

Which one is the truth?

Sarawak (pronounced /səˈrɑːwɑːk/) is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as Bumi Kenyalang (“Land of the Hornbills”), it is situated on the north-west of the island. It is the largest state in Malaysia; the second largest, Sabah, lies to the northeast. Both of them are located to the east of Malaysia, where they shares the island with Kalimantan, a part of Indonesia.

With its 11 divisions, Sarawak comprises about 27 ethnic groups, where we all live together happily and peacefully. But today, I’m not going to talk about our ethnic groups but rather on the subject of our state flag.

A national flag is a flag that symbolizes a country. The flag is flown by the government, but usually can be flown by citizens of that country as well. Well, this is also true for a state flag, where it reflects the government of the state.

Picture A: Sarawak Old Flag

Picture B: Sarawak New Flag

However, for Sarawak, it is quite confusing when you tried to Google the image of Sarawak Flag. From there, you could see that they are various kind of flags, but people already know that Sarawak’s flag has three colors(black, red and yellow) and a star in the middle. But do u know, which one is CORRECT?

People always confused whether the star is supposed to be like in Picture A or Picture B, but the correct Sarawak’s Flag is like in Picture B.

What’s the difference? The difference is so small and yet it is so important to point out here. The star have 9 vertices (which reflects Sarawak’s 9 old divisions) but one of them must point up between the two colors(black and red) just like in Picture B.

So, hopefully this will clear confusion about my state flag, which is Sarawak Flag.

“Agik Idup Agik Ngelaban”, As Long As I Live, I Will Try to Give.

Wawasan Inn ~ Sarikei District

Location:

It is at 69-72, Jalan Masjid Lama, Sarikei, Sarawak. It is quite near to the city, where we could take a 10 minutes walk. So, it is a good place to stay, BUT, there is a catch.

What good criteria I could say about this place...hmmm~~~

Review:

Their service is the worst so far. I can accept their presentation is nothing compared to a hotel. It’s just a place to sleep after all. It’s not a place to have a luxury vacation.

But I can’t accept the TV was not working. After a whole day of working, at least I get a chance to watch tv for news or some entertainments. It was working actually, but then after a few minutes, it went black. The sound kept coming out but the visual is not there. So, I told the receptionist about that problem but what they told me made me frustrated because I hoped that they could change the tv set. On the other hand, they told me to smack the tv to make sure it keeps on working and that is what I did. But then, the main problem is not yet solved. The same problem arose, but there is nothing I can do about it. I’m sure the tv was broken because someone else did the same thing to that crt tv.

In the morning, after a good amount of sleep, I went to the bathroom to have a nice shower. But then the hot water tab was not working. Ah, this is insane. How am I going to have a shower without it. It was so cold and I couldn’t take it but a shower is a must. So, I took a shower with a cold water. Lovely, the tv is malfunction and the tab isn’t working.

To make matter worst, a few hours required for cooling the room down with a low-cost air conditioner. There is no complimentary drinks too and no fridge.

Perfect, everything was not what I expected it to be but luckily, I wasn’t stuck in that room doing nothing.

Recommendation:

It is strongly recommended that you should not stay at this inn unless you have no other choice.

Pāto 3 ~ Almost There

I used to be a button collector but not anymore

My lovely weekend is almost over. Well, what I’ve done today. I slept for a few hours in the morning after a sleepless night focused on doing something for this new addictive blog. Then, soon after woke up in the afternoon. I helped pa to clean the fridges. Not the fridges to be exact, but under the fridges. It’s been a while since the last time we cleaned the fridge because I didn’t have much time during weekends. It took about an hour to finish. I guess doing such a good thing like that doesn’t take much time.

After I watched TV for a couple of hours, here I am, writing this blog even though there is something much more important thing to do. My two-weeks-late minutes haven’t finished yet since I was too busy traveling for the exhibition and the fact that my supervisor was not around to check the minutes. It’s almost done but the thing is that the meeting wasn’t a meeting at all. It’s more like a discussion. We don’t have a proper agenda and we didn’t get any output or results. No nothing, except for the fact that we will have a follow-up meeting in two weeks time. So, that means I have to finish it by tonight. Hopefully. Another thing that I like to point out is that the discussion supposed to be about outstanding public complaints but then we talked about a proper format for a public complaint statistics. That was two separate issues. I guess all I have to do now is to finish the minutes and let my bosses to deal with it.

That is not too difficult I think. The most difficult thing is when I get a design task. The design part is not so hard, but the acceptance part is quite far from reach. When I talked about acceptance, it’s about whether my boss could accept my design or not. I have experienced a lot of difficulties with this part of the job, when I handled a montage project for our department and at the time when I designed a background photo for some of our booth display. It took a lot of time, patience and amendments. The reason why this had happened because they were not sure what they want and they don’t understand how designers do their job. If they kept on changing their minds, it’s quite hard to finish the products before the dateline.

Last week, I was given another task, which is to design a pamphlet for our national day, where it will be organize in Miri by the end of this month. However, we need to distribute the pamphlets 5 days earlier to visitors of another function in order to promote our national day celebration. So, I have 10 days to be exact, minus the time for the pamphlet printing, I might have only 7 days. But I’m sure my boss wants it asap, so I only have a few days to finish it and it might take time to align myself with their expectations. Hopefully, they want to take my design. Otherwise, worst case scenario, they will have to out-source the design task to someone else.

Note: Three more CBG (Capacity Building for Graduates) trainees will come tomorrow.

Hopefully, one of them knew much better than me about designing.

Pāto 2 ~ Long Awaited Weekend

A weekend for me is not much different from weekdays. I still have to think about work and sometimes, I even have to go to work. Our department is quite different from the others. We are specialized in protocol task. So, when there is a function will be hold on at certain places and time, we have to be there and work. So, an organizer does not care whether it’s a weekend or not. What they do care is that some of our staff will be there to arrange seating or tables for our VIPs. Well, that is not my part of the job. My part is about being usherette, that serves VIP to their seating or table. In order to do that, I have to recognize their faces and Alhamdulillah (Praise to God), I have recognized our CM(of course…who doesn’t), DCMs, Cabinet Ministers and some of our ‘Menteri Muda’. Even though it is quite hard to work at field during weekends, our work is not just in the office and the best part is that we can claim for our willingness effort :).

Aaaaahhhh....so envious of him...

Besides worked in a function, my weekend was filled in with a program called “Pameran Program Sejiwa Senada”. It’s a program that connects state government to the public. This program’s goal is to expose government core business, which aligned with our Prime Minister, Dato’ Sri Mohd Najib Tun Razak motto “People First, Performance Now”. This program has been organized in a few districts(Sibu, Bintulu, Betong and Sarikei) and it will continue in October, which will end in Kuching next year. My part in this exhibition is to be an exhibitor besides taking care of technical part of our exhibition booth, which requires a lot of time since we have to be there all the time entertained our visitors.

Now, you could see the reasons why I said weekend is nothing compared to weekdays for our department. Therefore, we are lucky, especially me because of the arrival of this Ramadhan fasting month. I could use a break for a while, where I could use the spare time to learn something new(such as: learn how to write blog… ;P) and have fun a little.

Well, how about YOU? What do you do during weekends?