The water fountain has now been (or actually was) turned on! There are now more happy, motivated faces, I hope. Just before the Chinese New Year.
It didn't start very well, though. Only after half a day since it was turned on, the pump broke. And now still waiting for the replacement pump. I guess the dark force is much stronger than the chi... :)
I heard the Indiana Colts won the Super Bowl, beating the Chicago Bears 29-17. But Super Bowl is really not about the game, isn't it? It's the commercials and half-time entertainment.
Remember Janet Jackson in 2004? (Don't worry, the link is to Wikipedia)
Past commercials like Reebok's the Office Linebacker or Visa's Yo or Levi's Crazy Legs are pretty cool and popular. And if I'm not mistaken, some of those commercials were made and aired during Super Bowl only. Hang on, this one's cool too: FedEx's Caveman.
For this year, my favorite is Bud Light's Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Business has been tough for the past year or so. Despite the initiatives we have accomplished, challenges keep coming like there is no tomorrow. It started with one supplier after another. Raw and packaging materials. Capacity. Equipment. Process. The list is quite long...
What's happened?
Because last year, water fountain on the entrance was stopped and dried, some colleagues claim. It took all the good luck away.
Really?
Feng shui tip 83 from fastfengshui.com says that moving water brings prosperity and good luck to the home. Water fountains and aquariums are great feng shui enhancements because they are at the same time soothing and energizing.
"The sound and motion of gurgling water activates chi and adds humidity to a dry room, helping to balance chi. Moving water gets things going when the chi has been stagnant for a while (think of ice melting in the spring). Use moving water cures anywhere you want to enhance water or wood energy."
Chi, by the way, is kind of life force or spiritual energy.
Back to the issue - will having the water fountain running back again take all the bad luck away?
I'm not sure. I've never been a fan of this kind of "old sayings"; always try to rationalize it. If it works, in this case, there's a high chance that it's because people are psychologically and mentally more positive, more determined.
The latest edition of the Top 10 Conservative Idiots (#276) is State of the Union special. This one is about Bush's education policy.
The Miseducation Of George W. Bush
We all know that George W. Bush pays special attention to the nation's education. That's why you so often see him carrying books during the summer months and pretending to have read them. He understands his position as America's educational role model and standard bearer. Just listen to how well his No Child Left Behind scheme is panning out:
Whoa, hold on bub. We've seen how you "spread opportunity and hope" in Iraq. I'm not sure we need that in America, and certainly not in our public schools.PRESIDENT BUH: Spreading opportunity and hope in America also requires public schools that give children the knowledge and character they need in life.
PRESIDENT BUH: Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, preserving local control, raising standards, and holding those schools accountable for results. And because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap.
There's no question the law has had a significant impact on the nation's 14,000 school districts. But the results from the tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress are more mixed than the president suggested. The administration can point to some modest gains in math and reading among fourth graders, and math among 8th graders. But in 8th grade reading, test scores fell from 2002 to 2005. And the achievement gap between black and white students in that period actually widened a little.
The less encouraging numbers among older students are troubling to many educators.
A question posted in LinkedIn: "Sleep less, live longer? What is enough sleep?"
The responses are quite interesting. Most people would say 6, 7, or 8 hours is "right". Some even say that if they don't have at least 8 hours of sleep everyday, they can't function the next day.
One even go as far as: "I figure I'll get enough sleep when I'm dead. There's too many fascinating things to do in life -- including work... "
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has a leaflet on sleeping well. How much sleep do we need?This depends mainly on how old we are.
Of course, there are other studies and surveys. Each has its own conclusion, which makes it more interesting.There are also differences between people of the same age. Most of us need 7-8 hours a night, but some (a few) people can get by with only 3 hours a night. It's not helpful to regularly sleep more than 7-8 hours each night. The short periods of being awake feel much longer than they really are. So it's easy to feel that we are not sleeping as much as we actually are.
An article in livescience.com says:"There is really no evidence that the average 8-hour sleeper functions better than the average 6- or 7-hour sleeper," Kripke says, on the basis of his ongoing psychiatric practice with patients along with research, including the large study of a million adults (called the Cancer Prevention Study II).
Another one from an interview in CNN:
And he suspects that people who sleep less than average make more money and are more successful.
The Cancer Prevention Study II even showed that people with serious insomnia or who only get 3.5 hours of sleep per night, live longer than people who get more than 7.5 hours.The sweet spot appeared to be somewhere between 6.5 and 7.5 hours a night. Those are the people who lived the longest. Now if you got less than 4.5 to 6.5, you were probably going to live longer than those who slept more than the sweet spot.
Hmm... I would conclude that for most people "around" 7 hours of sleep is the best, i.e. healthy yet productive. Also, sleeping less seems to be better than sleeping more...
A recent study says that skin tone affects earnings in the U.S. The darker the skin is, the higher the chance to get paid less than the counterparts with lighter skin do. The study looks at legal immigrants to the U.S. from around the world.
Several other findings from the study:
I moved in to KL about 15 months ago. It's been exciting - new stuff, new cultures, new ways of doing things. Not all are good and at the same time not all are bad. It's clearly a trade off. Use or misuse of antibiotics may result in the development of antibiotic resistance by the infecting organisms, similar to the development of pesticide resistance in insects. Antibiotic resistance has become a serious problem in both the developed and underdeveloped nations. By 1984 half of the people with active tuberculosis in the United States had a strain that resisted at least one antibiotic. In certain settings, such as hospitals and some child-care locations, the rate of antibiotic resistance is so high that the normal, low cost antibiotics are virtually useless for treatment of frequently seen infections. This leads to more frequent use of newer and more expensive compounds, which in turn leads inexorably to the rise of resistance to those drugs, and a race to discover new and different antibiotics ensues, just to keep us from losing ground in the battle against infection. The fear is that we will eventually fail to keep up in this race, and the time when people did not fear life-threatening bacterial infections will be just a memory of a golden era.
Surely there are loads of them. One that I struggle the most is probably antibiotics - the use and prescription of antibiotics.
It took me some time to adapt to the very strict prescription of antibiotics in the U.S. There, not until the symption is proven caused by bacteria, doctors won't prescribe any antibiotics. Even the patient is having high fever. Why? Antibiotics have no effect against viruses, fungal, and other nonbacterical infections (for example common cold). I guess the only positive effect would be psychological.
But here the practice is totally different - as is in Indonesia as far I can remember. Doctors are so trigger-happy when it comes to antibiotics. They even prescribe antibiotics for "just-in-case". That scares me.
And oh, the antibiotics here taste much worse, especially those for children.
Here's excerpt from wikipedia about use and misuse of antibiotics:
I've had tons of guests - family and friends - visiting since I moved to KL. Most who came to Malaysia for the first time usually shared this same impression: "Whoa!" They thought that life in Malaysia was so influenced and governed by Islamic practices, that, for example, there was no or only a few pubs and clubs around. A group of female students in a secondary school in Johor Baru are said to be competing among themselves to be the one with the highest number of one-night stands, Nanyang Siang Pau reported. Each of the 10 students in the group, aged between 13 and 15 years old, would fork out between RM50 and RM100 to be in the game. The student with the highest number of sex partners within a month would get a "reward", which ranged from between RM500 and RM1,000, said the report. Usually, a student would need between 13 and 15 sex partners to claim the "reward". It was learnt that the school had expelled some students involved in the activity, but the report added that it was still going on.
Well, not exactly. KL, especially, is just another city that shares all the goods and bads of typical big cities. (and frankly I like it for that)
Except, of course, if you live in Kota Baru, Kelantan, where women, working in retails and restaurants, who dress "sexily or indecently" could be fined up to RM 500.
So what about the schoolgirls?
It's a two-week old, or so, news I happened to read. I guess it might contribute to the "whoa!" impression. Perhaps JB, with its proximity to Singapore, has gotten the influence of swinging...
Here's the story from the Star:
So next time JB instead of KL?
Well, I managed to get some colleagues from work to play basketball again. We ain't no good at all, but the games are actually refreshing and help force us to get out from work early.
After the first game last year I wrote a "report", and attempt to do so again this year. (All initials are accurate)
MFG finds winning way against SCM
Petaling Jaya, Malaysia – Desperate to escape from trailing many points on the first quarter, MFG successfully overcame SCM in the opening game this season.
After a long break, last night’s game kicked off the new season. Both teams, with a long history of basketball rivalry, brought in their new signings – TCP, who undoubtedly was the star of the night, and MF, who scored a couple of points late in the game.
SCM started the game brightly with AP and LBK both scored in the opening minutes. MFG was many times unsuccessful to open up SCM’s tight defense, as MFG’s center MS was physically marked by MF.
The arrival of TCP in the second quarter, however, totally changed the game. His vast experience allowed RT and VN dominated the game. MFG clearly took advantage of having one extra player and continued to control until late in the game. SCM made its best push by cutting the deficit early in the fourth quarter, but MFG put the game away in the dying minutes.
Both teams plan to recruit more players. “We clearly need to get more players. It’s obvious, physically we can’t play four quarters without substitutes. We will need more MCs!” admitted MS. As a follow-up, a hot team has been set up for recruiting.
Unspun's "Not unhappy is the Indonesian employee" discusses a global employee survey. One of the findings was"Those with the lowest percentages of employees feeling unhappy or very unhappy are Indonesia (3 per cent), India (9 per cent) and Thailand and Denmark (both 11 per cent). Those with the highest percentages of disgruntled employees are Luxembourg (36 per cent), Italy (30 per cent) and Belgium (27 per cent)."
Something I didn't expect - that Indonesian employees are the least unhappy in the world. As far as I remember, most of my friends who work in Indonesia complain about their workplace. Yes, confirmation bias.
This result also reminds me of a topic discussed in my alumni mailing list some time ago: inferiority complex. It was the first time I heard the term, and I'm still not sure if I understand the meaning correctly. But here's a definition from Wikipedia:Wikipedia: "a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way."
There are more in it though. But taking the definition literally, one might argue that Indonesians are experiencing inferiority complex. That these people feel OK (or not unhappy) while people from other countries may feel unhappy being in the same workplace. Possible...
