Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Life, precious yet wasted

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/28/murder.board.nola/index.html

The murder board in New Orleans. The number of crimes against fellow human being is always alarming. In addition to the news on the murder board, another news on the killings by youth in Britan should make anyone cringe with horror. Human life seems to be valued cheaply or perhaps for free. The condition in some cities and/ or countries seems similar to war zone where life is simply not worth a single penny.

Why is life wasted so easily? Perhaps the hardship has not taught resilience to people but the victims of the hardships (physical or spiritual) are becoming more desperate and selfish to a point that no life matters to them. Perhaps again, that love should be dispensed to them more freely. Hope should be rekindled. Only hope and love can cure the lifelessness of human and brings light to the darkness of heart.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Appreciation

Appreciate all and treat all as able persons. Every one should be able to do many things. It's how the training and motivating work. Having prejudice kills yourself and others.

Working life

I would like to propose an idea.

Enjoying your work is hugely affected by your colleagues. Despite whatever you do, there is no way to win the world. If somehow, there is a mismatch between what you and your colleagues, there is a high tendency for you not to enjoy your work anymore. Perhaps then there is a need to patch up the relationship and you need to seek out how to improve them. Having sour relationship in office creates office politics, a very dangerous situation. Avoid that at all cost!
If somehow, you feel that you have attempted your best and it still doesn't work out, then perhaps it's the time to move on. Don't cry over spilled milk.

Made-in-China

The news are fast and furious in reporting the failures and defects of China made product. It's as if suddenly all China product has a "DANGER" sign pasted all over. I remember clearly ten years ago how my parents have kept reminding ourselves about the possible of made-in-China. It was also widely accepted that cheap products equal to low quality and my parents realized the matter fully when they decided to buy made-in-China. Yet, somehow someone nowadays is trying to blow up the danger of China made product into such a gigantic proportion. It's pretty unfair to China. Their products should have always had the same level of reliability since the first time China market is open for investment. Product quality does not degrade over night!! Big corporations who are jumping the cheap guns are partly to blame. Principle economy has always ruled the expansion and search of suppliers. "Get the most while paying the least". We, consumers, need to be realistic. Hoping to get a good buy with low cost is partly dreaming and partly contributing to the poverty of huge part of the world! Your money is ending up anyway in the employees. Eventhough we might argue about corruptions, higher amount of money we pay should still end up with at least a bit higher pay than when we pay super low.

It's not too late for the consumers to take responsibility of their own lives on their own hands instead of blaming "made-in-China". It's not too late to realize that "you get what you pay for" and it's not too late to realize that the wish to push down cost has caused big companies and manufacturers to contribute to the woe of billions of poor people/ employees in the world

Friday, August 10, 2007

Time and love

There is equal number of hours in a day for every single human. However, the perception of whether the nature has provided enough time for every single one of us hugely varies. Some might be running a 100-m sprint race all their life while chasing they-only-know-what. Every single point of their life, they are wondering what they are doing and why the time is never enough for them to reach their goals. Some might be standing still and still of the same feeling as the previous group of people. Some other people might be running 100-m sprint race punctuated with standing still while realizing that they do have enough time to race. Some people might be running with a constant slow speed and still feel burned and not have enough time to gain everything.

The difference of all those people should lie on one single item: the perception of success.

Undeniably, every single soul on earth wishes to live a successful life. Even kids who seem to love only playing should be yearning for success. The difference perhaps lie in their perception of success, which should be winning over their "enemies" in sports game, words game, etc. Additionally, stay-at-home mom might feel that they are successful when they have raised a "good" child. What is success is difference across the board.

Executives might be running round the business track with money dangling over their front sight while wearing side-blind. They are arguably running like a horse in a horse race. Knowing nothing but chasing what's in front of them, the money is always felt to be of the same distance and so unreachable, yet they keep running. These are the people that prone to feel the lack of time.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are some people who are slow and perhaps without much talent to call their own such that they are working (or not) with low pay (or nothing at all). Some of these people might be feeling the harshness of the world and cursing their life every single time they have a chance to do it. In contrast, some of them might actually feel more lucky than the executives.

I think everything lies on where we set our goals. The sight of success and the feeling is pretty much tunable according to our own wish. Setting a far flung dream and chasing it all time long distract the living of the now and the joy of life is easily forgotten. I feel that we need to really think about our own life and limited capability while understanding its impact to how we perceive success. Success should come in the form of joyful feeling of life, which should be perceivable without owning 1 million dollars or sitting in a directorship position. Of course, I acknowledge the fact that a single soul can change the world, as has been proven time and again. By all means, if you feel that you can do it, do it. The key point is not to lose sight on what we actually values most and re-tune our perception of success to include not only us but perhaps our loved ones. To align how we think about success and how they feel about our success is very important. That's another success point.

For those who think they don't have a loved one, perhaps they can stop to stand still and see the surrounding. There are many people who need love. It just that our living race perhaps have distracted us and make us forget about them. It's not that easy to remember that in giving that we receive. In loving that we feel the love.

Arctic and the owner

I think it has been a long time that an area is so highliy disputed. The last time war erupted due to claims over a treasure-rich area was perhaps in the colonialism era where "new worlds" were plundered. I wonder whether the history is repeating itself with the current claim of Arctic. Many countries are spearheading multiple missions to claim pieces of north pole, said to contain oils and God knows what. Never did once those countries talk about preserving the area., Never did once those countries said anything about the environmental catastrophe that might happen when lots of human venture and even stay in the pristine environment.

Untouchable by human for million years, north pole is known to contain rich ecosystem due to the isolation from the rest of the world. The findings of many new and unique species happen only when the ice melt. I wonder how many of those claimants of north pole truly realize the meaning of north pole without ice.

I am wondering what do we, human, think of our north pole and our earth without ice. I wonder about the perception of the value of future when it seems that many of us only think about living the now with such a greed. For me, it's a scary thought.

Thursday, August 2, 2007

Standards and working ethics

I wonder how long it would take for someone to learn the standards being followed by an organization. Be it ISO, JIT, TQM, TPM, Six Sigmaor whatsoever, it seems that methods to standardize processes are very much in the trend. Although I believe all those are useful, I can yet figure out how to apply them in an organization effectively.

Truthfully speaking, unless the top guys really show their commitment publicly, I don't see how the lower ranked guy would ever think of burdening themselves with the enormous needs of documentation. Each single piece of documentation can easily be used as political warfare munitions. How can it not be if every single meetings are to be minuted and every single email will be rooted out to pinpoint whose fault this and that is. Gah, the misunderstanding around the use of standardization really amuses me a lot.


It's even a big wonder why we call certain processes and things standardized when people can't produced out the example of the standardization or how the standard method/ process should go about. How do educate the middle managers and seniors if the standards are lost in the complexity of an organization?

I can't even stop to wonder how many small organization with employees of <>