知多知少难知足

I have been a Karaoke Maniac these few days. Went twice in a row. Madness ... but learned something from some of the lyrics and this time it's one of the oldest uncle and aunty oldie song titled - “Xin Yuan Yang Hu Die Meng” by Huang An.

Honestly, the first time I heard this song ... I must be in secondary school. I didn't understand 99% of the song!!! -.- Might as well said I didn't understand anything. Only know the title has the word butterfly dream in it! -.-

I've no idea why my parents are absolutely crazy about it either but guess now I can understand. Though I still don't understand fully but I grasp one of the sentence which is 知多知少难知足 (zhi duo zhi shao nan zhi zhu). It means, knowing much or knowing less will still difficult to make one's satisfied in knowing anything.

How true .... How trueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ....
I totally relate to this.
You can know so much.
You can choose to be totally ignorant.
But you still can't be satisfied.

Guess balance is the key to everything. I hope all of you may find the balance that you'll ever need.

Video:


Lyrics:

昨日像那東流水 (zuo ri xiang na dong liu shui)

離我遠去不可留 (li wo yuan qu bu ke liu)

今日亂我心　(jin ri luan wo xin)

多煩憂 (duo fan you)

抽刀斷水水更流 (chou dao duan shui shui geng liu)

舉杯消愁愁更愁 (ju bei xei xiao chou chou geng chou)

明朝清風四飄流 (ming zhao qing feng si piao liu)

由來只聞新人笑 (you lai zhi you xin ren xiao)

有誰聽到舊人哭 (you shui ting dao jiu ren ku)

愛情兩個字　(ai qing liang ge zi(

好辛苦 (hao xin ku)

是要問一個明白 (shi yao wen yi ge ming bai)

還是要裝作糊塗 (hai shi yao zhuang zuo hu tu)

知多知少難知足 (zhi duo zhi shao nan zhi zhu)

看似個鴛鴦蝴蝶 (kan si ge yuan yang hu die)

不應該的年代 (bu ying gai di nian dai)

可是誰又能擺脫人世間的悲哀 (ke shi shui you neng bai tuo ren shi jian di bei ai)

花花世界　鴛鴦蝴蝶　(hua hua shi jie, yuan yang hu die)

在人間已是癲 (zai ren jian yi shi dian)

何苦要上青天　(he ku yaoshang qing tian)

不如溫柔同眠 (bu ru wen rou tong mian)

People Are Selfish

You must be thinking ... what the hell ... this woman has been missing in action for so long and now the title of her first post is people are selfish? Has she just returned from the brink of depression or what?

Haha ... don't worry. I'm fine. :-) I just want to say things that I've been wanting to say for so long, which is the title of this post. I don't mean selfish in a bad way but I can't find what other words to describe people. You may agree or disagree with me. I'm not here to debate. I'm just writing my point of view.

Why do I say that? Because the more I see things ... even the most generous of things in this world, beneath all those are just a hidden motive to make oneself happy / sad / whatever emotion that being chooses at that moment.

Like when you think someone does something nice to you, you think that person is so selfless. But is he/she? Look underneath those, as he/she gives, he/she obtains happiness too. He/she wants to do it in order to fulfill his/her gap of happiness inside the heart. Got what I mean?

Yeah, selfish has one of the most negative connotation I can ever think of. I don't like it that the word means so negatively that it may be just the fundamental character of human being. Nothing bad about it. To put it in a different light, let's simply put, every one secretly is putting themselves first among others. It's not bad either. Because making sure you are okay (as long as you are not harming others), is just the first step of loving yourself. Guess the selfishness I'm trying to point out here is self-love. Hhmmm ...

I'm not writing this to attack anyone who's giving and call them selfish ... I just want to point out that it's just how human is. Don't expect them to be something else because it's a survival skill and gene that we, human beings, have inherited since we were born. And stop being naive that when people are sacrificing something, they are so great and great ... they are just being them ... putting themselves for their own benefits that you may not be able to comprehend. It's just fact of life and nothing bad about it. It is just it is.

How Do You Define Your Days.....?

After knowing David the funeral director who was featured in Oprah show has a way in naming his days, e.g. Marvelous Monday, Terrific Tuesday, etc. I wanna be a copycat! So here are mine.

Miraculous Monday
Tiptop Tuesday
Wondrous Wednesday
Thriving Thursday
Fruitful Friday
Startling Saturday
Sumptuous Sunday

Hhmmm ... hopefully I can memorize all :p. If not, I guess I'll keep it simple like this theme song (first heard when Daniel Ong was still active in Perfect 10 radio - he played it every weekend, Friday if I'm not mistaken) and I've loved the song ever since. What did the song say? Check it out ...



Lyrics:



"Happy Days" by Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox

Sunday, Monday, Happy Days.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days.
Thursday, Friday, Happy Days.
Saturday, What a day,
Groovin' all week with you.

These days are all,
Happy and Free. (Those Happy Days)
These days are all,
Share them with me. (oh baby)
Goodbye grey sky, hello blue.
There's nothing can hold me when I hold you.
Feels so right, it can't be wrong.
Rockin' and rollin' all week long.

These days are all,
Share them with me. (Those Happy Days)
These days are all, Happy and Free.
These Happy Days are your's and mine, Happy Days.

How Happy Are You?

So, how happy are you? Can you guess which of these people are the happiest? I got it right (one of them only), let's try it yourself.

The information and image below are taken from www.oprah.com.

Peggy is a 44-year-old married mother of two teenage boys who works as the bookkeeper of the family business. Last year, both her father and her sister died, and her mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

Noreen is a 52-year-old divorced mother of two college kids. She's an avid swimmer and works in the operations department of a major airline.

Lachelle is 27 years old, married and has no children. She works two jobs and has two dogs. Last year, four of her friends and two of her family members died within six months of each other.

David is 53 years old, and he's been a funeral director for 30 years. He is married and has two sons.

Lorrie has been married for 15 years and has six children. She works in retail and also serves as the vice president of her PTA (Parent-Teacher Association).

So, have you made your pick? Which one did you guess? But first of all, what kind of benchmark are they using in finding out who's the happiest? You can take the test too and I'm going to lay all the questions here. (Also courtesy of www.oprah.com)

Satisfaction with Life Scale
How satisfied are you? To find out, read the following five statements. Then, use the 1–7 scale to rate your level of agreement and add your answers together.

1 = Not at all true
4 = Moderately True
7 = Absolutely True

1. In most ways, my life is close to ideal.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


3. I am satisfied with my life.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


4. So far I have gotten the important things I want in life.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7


5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.
   1 2 3 4 5 6 7

So, what did you get? Mine was 26. (Yeah, honest). How about the people we were supposed to guess earlier on? Who do you think get the highest score? My guess was #4 - David (the funeral director), because I thought by seeing dead people everyday, he definitely must have captured the meaning of life well and he must have lived his life to the best. And I was right. But there are 2 other souls that are happy with their lives too and they are #1 - Peggy and #3 - Lachelle. Why? Check the next one out.

Peggy, David and Lachelle scored the highest on the satisfaction scale, while Noreen and Lorrie scored the lowest.

Satisfaction for Peggy is achieved by surrounding herself with happiness. The most important thing? Her husband. "He is there for me. He doesn't only love me, he appreciates me and makes me feel good," Peggy says. Happiness doesn't depend on money, she says. It's about enjoying the simple things. "Every morning I have a ritual. After the boys have left, [my husband and I] get in the hot tub, and it's our time. We talk about what is going on for the rest of the day. It is just our quality time just to stay connected."

David, the funeral director, says he's developed phrases that help him keep a positive outlook. "I will say, 'It's a marvelous Monday. It's a terrific Tuesday,'" he says. Although he deals with death daily, David says his job is anything but depressing. "Most people look upon funeral service as a sad profession. I look upon it as a profession where I'm helping people at a very difficult time in their lives," he says. "Being successful in life is not what really matters. Being significant in life is really the core root of what matters."

Lachelle says she lives by the philosophy, "Negative out, positive in." She says she believes happiness is a conscious effort. "It's about claiming what's yours. If you want a positive life, you need to think positively and act positively," she says. "I do my best not to compare myself with others. I've always felt that what one person has may not be destined for me." - Courtesy of www.oprah.com

If you pay attention to the stories above, happiness is not something external. It's not about what you do, what you have, who you are with, etc. It's about a choice and something internal. You can have thousands of bad day and still be happy with your life or you can have everything in this world and yet depressed over what you've not accomplished. It's a choice. Heck what others say, heck what others do, ultimately, happiness is for you to uncover and let it blossom.

To sum it, I'll let the expert on the subject of happiness to wrap up this segment.

Dr. Holden says the key to being happy is overcoming "destination addiction," which he defines as "living in the not-now." "It's always about tomorrow, so you're chasing 'more,' 'next' and 'there,'" he says. "You promise yourself that when you get there, you'll be happy. And I promise you, you won't, because you'll always set another destination to go for."

Instead, Dr. Holden says if you are unhappy with your life or looking to improve your score on the satisfaction test, there are two things you can do. "We have to learn to let go of our past, we have to give up all hopes for a perfect past. Let the past go, it's gone." After that, he says, "Take a vow of kindness. Be kinder to yourself and to others. "It's never too late to be happy," he says.

Image and text source: www.oprah.com

Aiyah .....

Have been missing from the scene for quite a while ...
Have been busy as my parents are here ... so, guess you know what the normal routine will be .. eat and talk and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz -.-
I'm here ... will still be a bit quiet this week but like the Terminator said it - I'll be back! ;-).

Have a great day, gals and guys! ;-)

"I Quit"

Not me ... don't worry. But for my regular readers, please don't expect something happy and chirpy out of this post. Cause I'm again in my dark aura realm. Beware!

So many of you know I'm the type who'll try to see the positive out of anything but this time I can't help it. I've to do what most Singaporeans love to do. COMPLAIN!!!! And I'm going to discriminate a little ... though I hate it but heck ... I ain't give a damn this time.

First of all, I'm in the property business ... to look for a local (Singaporean) cleaner to work for is very tough ... unless you outsource it to 3rd party company, but that'll be really costly. For the business like mine, it'll be advisable to have an in-house helper. And boy, I can't be more than grateful enough to have my assistant, my trusted cleaner until today. Why? Because she said "If you want me to do that, I'll quit". I was like WAT????

The job is ain't easy but it ain't difficult too. Not all units need cleaning here. Not everyday either. So you may find my cleaner shaking legs for 3 days in a week .... I'm fine with it. Why? cause most of the objectives are met. It's not about how many times you spend in a job, but whether you deliver the results. To me, I hold dearly to the concept as that's been passed down from my boss too.

But today, my cleaner threw tantrum ... why? Because I wanted her to iron all the bedsheets WHEN SHE HAS THE TIME. OWN TIMING. Because one of the customer complained and she said if you want me to do that, I'll resign, with her soprano voice that even creatures in Pluto may hear.

So, there was a pretty ugly fight between her and me which was all resolved just by not asking her to do any ironing of the bedsheets at all and I throw $200 for her to buy as many bedsheets as she wants. Case closed there. And she's quiet.

What I'm not happy about is how people can make small stuff become big stuff ... and talk it so not diplomatically .. and i seriously wanted to use the term "low life animal" ... I'm that angry. I'm angry because out there people are complaining money is so difficult to earn, but when money is given to their face, they are spoilt and want to work less for more. That's fish! Then the constant complaining how others are bad bad bad bad ... OMG for goodness sake ... if your job I offered to any of my countrymen, not only I'll get cheaper rate and may be better job and less complaining. Why??? Because those people have harder life and jobs are harder to come by too. But heck ... I'm not in my own land ... and it's not that my own land is that fantastic too -.-

So ... after so much of rambling and ranting ... I realize ... I really want to discriminate women for being so emotional and petty at times ... it's definitely true that working with men is much better than women (in my own experience) ... but of course there are great women out there ... but generally, men work better when they are not as emotional and see things as they are. Which mean this statement is for myself, I wonder how many times have I been in the emotional roller coaster which may have caused distress to others without me realizing. Boy, that's really tough to put up with.

I'm angry how people easily use the word quit without using brain ... but I wonder which one is better .. not quitting and keep biting your own tongue or just slam it down ... hmmm I'm in dilemma here ... but seriously if I'm able to find replacement fast, I would have sacked her on the spot. Unfortunately, in Singapore, it's very difficult to find people to be full time cleaner (you can ask other cleaning companies on this too). I've interviewed dozens of them ... they are so picky ... I TELL YOU!! .... How? Well, they'll say ... too far from home, no food centre nearby, pay too low, job too hard, transport too inconvenience, work too long hour, etc .... OMG WAKE UP!

With this kinda mentality, I seriously wonder where this country will go next ... I know there are great people and stuff .... but people mostly want only the good and don't want to go through hardship (and I may be the one in this ship too) ... and they expect prosperity to fall down their head? Wait long long.

Anger

WARNING!
This is not the normal happy happy post ... As the title has suggested. It's filled with dark aura. You may discontinue reading it if you think it'll just pollute your state.

Just yesterday I was being asked about my MSN nick ... what does it mean:
"People who anger you, control you."
and I explained that the more you are ranting about someone, without you knowing, what you thought about is that someone ... and in that way, the person you are angry with ... controls your mind, soul and spirit if you are not letting it go.

And guess what....I was that person who's being controlled. How amazing can that be?
Here I am sharing a great quote about anger and here I am being consumed by it and be its victim.

What makes me angry? It doesn't matter. Because the bottom line is, I'm the only person responsible for my own feeling. I'm in control of my own thoughts and I only have myself to be blamed. I just hope others too will be responsible for their own feeling before pointing fingers to things and people outside them.