Inspiration & Paradox 98: The Cheap Bubble

Shopping has become an emotional experience for a lot of people.

Many of us get into a habit of scouting and sniffing out for sales and buying cheap clothing, shoes, bags, and etc. The thrill of shopping at discounted prices and getting more for the buck has gotten us into this addiction of buying and stocking up cheap deals we don’t need most of the time. On one hand, our shopping behaviour thrives on discovering good bargains, on the other, it seems that we never really consider if we are really benefiting in terms of saving money or spending even more on unnecessary stuff.

Inspiration & Paradox 97: Stop Looking For Trouble

The massive daily news on the gloom and doom of the economy is getting on my nerves. Reports of people cutting back on expenses, making ends meet, joblessness, failing businesses, deep pay cuts, restructuring and downsizing are all making wonder if I was too stupid to quit my job now, why didn’t I decide to just cling on to it for another one or two years and see how things move first….I hate these news, I don’t like the fact that they are making me feel wavered about something which I was very sure about, the future and my family financial security. What if Jason’s business gets hit by this economic crisis? Now stop it…cut out all the What Ifs, stop looking for trouble in the future, live in the present, think positively of new possibilities with my resignation, the work I am going to do, the time I would have after I leave my job in Jan next year...

Keep Your Spirits Up & Have a Blessed 2009!

"Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength."
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

"The worst thing you can possibly do is worrying and thinking about what you could have done."
Lichtenberg, Georg C.

"Worry gives a small thing a big shadow."
Proverb, Swedish

Inspiration & Paradox 96: Latest Beauty Buzz is to Get Eaten Alive by Fish

Yes, you know I’m talking about the peculiar skin treatment - Fish Spa.

When the legs are dipped into the pool, it's totally free of pain, but downright exhilarating, extremely ticklish. I had to slap my own face to keep my legs in the water as hundreds of these little fish rushed over to nibble and bite relentlessly, but the good news is, after a while you just got immune to the sensation, and then it became kind of therapeutic.

Garra Ruffa, also nicknamed doctor fish, is a small flesh-eating tropical fish now popularly used for treating skin diseases such as psoriasis blotches, flaky and crusty skin, and scabby epidermis. Once found in the lowly river basins of Turkey, they’re now a highly sought after fish in the fish spa markets of Korea, Japan, Malaysia, China and Singapore and are very expensive due to strict importation and exportation regulations. When placed in the spa, these Garra Ruffa fish feed themselves on the dead cells of the human body, leaving the healthy skin of the human body to grow. They not only remove dead skin cells, but also massage the skin and improve blood circulation. It's believed that when the skin is better supplied with oxygen, it becomes softer and smoother!

Inspiration & Paradox 95: When You Can't Gel Personality and Behaviour

Yesterday, while I was scurrying across the road with my two daughters in Orchard Road, making sure that we could beat the traffic light, I spotted a colleague in front of us. And as I was about to bid hello to him, he did something which I think I would remember for a long time…

You have to understand this, in the office, he is known to be an irate, brutish, heavy-handed, unrelenting guy whom most people don’t fancy working with in projects. Never, never did I expect him to do this… A granny was waving packets of tissue papers under the traffic light. When he saw her, he stopped dashing forward, turned around, and brisked up towards the old lady and hurriedly handed over a dollar coin, and when the three packets of tissue paper were dished out to him, he dismissed them with a quick signal of his hand. And before I could catch his attention, he had already scampered across the turning-red traffic lights and disappeared into the thronging crowd.

As people are writing to the papers to “remove” from the streets these people who simply are eking out a living in between the lives of others in the name of protecting the positive image of this affluent city, what this guy did, his compassionate gesture has certainly shocked me. Who would imagine such a roughshod personality to display such a tender-hearted act of kindness towards a total stranger?

Have we been judging too hard on people’s behavior and character? Don’t these hard-faces, people who consistently appear rude and unfriendly but can surprise you with a kind act deserve a million times of our respect than those double-faces who are consistently sweet and nice but can surprise you with a nasty stab from behind?

Inspiration & Paradox 94: Economy Down, Sales Up!

On 13 June 2008, Times Online published an article entitled "Rise in champagne sales is sign of recession" that began with this "Champagne sales have increased in Ireland which, according to an economic paradox, signals the country is heading for a recession."

Market researchers explained that with dwindling spending power during a recesion, consumers like to find small ways to cheer themselves up. When finances can’t stretch to big ticket-items like house renovation, cars and long holidays, they will always find money for less expensive treats such as sunglasses, nail varnish, lipstick or chocolate.

So, how true is this syndrome for you?

Inspiration & Paradox 93: When I am big, He is small

Truths learnt from Ed Welch's book:

• When people are big, God is small.
• Need other people less, love other people more.

Inspiration & Paradox 92: Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins

Rather than cripple, failure can strengthen. Depending on how we respond to them, blows can shatter us as if we were a cheap clay pot or temper us as they would steel.

~ Unknown Quote from Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation

Inspiration & Paradox 91: Change is really good...but no thanks!

Dilbert's View of "Change".
Is it yours too?

Change is Great!!!

You go first.

Inspiration & Paradox 90: The tension between strength and flexibility in learning ballet

My older daugher Jerrie faces some challenges when doing the stretching exercises during her ballet class, whereas Jackie, my younger daughter has an amazingly flexible body, which seems to be perfect for learning gymnastics. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk to their ballet teacher and learn a little bit about ballet.

The beauty of ballet is in striking a fine balance between strength and flexibility. The challenge here is that these two forces counter each other. It's easy to find a very strong person who is not so flexible or an extremely flexible person who is not so strong, but the strongest and most flexible person does not exist. A good ballet dancer has to find that harmony between strength and flexibility so that he/she is able to bend the body to achieve certain art forms and techniques and at the same time has enough muscle power to achieve them.

Inspiration & Paradox 89: Sleep and Lose Weight

“A daily spoonful or two of honey taken prior to bedtime can help us sleep better and lose weight at the same time”.

Now, I expect what I just said to stir up an upheaval of emotions for most of you. How can something so sweet be any good when you are closely watching your weight? Doesn’t it sound all too stupid to consume more calories before you sleep when you are trying all day to lose weight and reduce calories in your meals? Doesn’t everyone know that our body metabolism rate at night is low, so we should avoid eating too late if we want a flat tummy? Surely, this must be one of those baseless old wives’ tales about dieting or some quick fix that’s central to all fad diets. More in... How to Sleep and Lose Weight at the Same Time?

Inspiration & Paradox 88: Expert Knows the Limit

The more we know, the less we understand.

"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared." (P.J. Plauger, Computer Language, 1983)

Inspiration & Paradox 87: What isn’t part of yourselves doesn’t disturb us.

How much does this make sense to you?

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of yourselves doesn’t disturb us.” —Hermann Hesse

Inspiration & Paradox 86: Gaining and Losing at the Same Time

"It is one of the paradoxes of success that the things and ways which got you there are seldom those things that keep you there."~ Charles Handy

"For everything you gain, you lose something."~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Most of us plateau when we lose the tension between where we are and where we ought to be."~ John Gardiner

Inspiration & Paradox 85: Deadly Poison Now A Hot Favourite

Botulism toxin, one of the world's deadly killers, today has become a favourite cosmetic treatment called “Botox”, amongst thousands and thousands of mainstream people. A growing number of people are not only going for the cosmetic surgery but are now getting the treatment as festive and birthday gifts for family and friends.

No longer the preserve of Hollywood stars only, this famous poison in the diluted form is injected into the skin to weaken the facial muscles that control wrinkling. The Botox effect gradually wears off so repeat injections are required in about four months.

Where’s the common sense that it’s totally unnatural to inject a toxic chemical into the body? Common sense it’s not so common, I suppose...

"We are all born mad and some of us remain so!" Samuel Beckett

Inspiration & Paradox 84: Be Still When Gripped by Fear

Someone recently pointed out how irrational we can become when fear strikes. Sharing about his night topo out in the jungle back during his army days, he recalled how terror took control after receiving no reply came from his army mates no matter how he cried out for them. In that instance of realising that he was all alone and had lost his direction in the pitch-dark jungle, his very first reaction was run! And he ran as fast as he could without any vision or knowledge of which direction he was heading. "Staying put" was not an option in that state of panic...

How often are we like him? When the situation becomes so difficult that we want to run away from it, when a job becomes so unbearable that we want to call it a day, when someone do us wrong, we want to get back at it right away, when the road is long and winding, we want to shift up to a faster driving gear so that we can quickly see our destiny at the other end of the road... Often we already have a big reaction before we could think and assess the next best course of action to take.

Inspiration & Paradox 83: Greatest investment in this economic downturn

As I hugged my 3-year-old daughter this morning while trying to pull her out of bed, I asked myself how many more times of such hugging do I have....kids grow up too fast, by the time we know it, we have to relate to them at a different level. I was reminded..."when they are still young, find every opportunity to play with them, love them, teach them, and be with them, it may seem rash to give up your job when many jobs out there are becoming unstable, but you will surely realise one day that children are the greatest investment during this economic downturn..."

Inspiration & Paradox 82: Fulfilment of Being Ordinary

We were at my daughter’s childcare annual year-end concert this morning. One of the classes presented a Chinese song and dance item entitled “The Heart and Soul of a Small Fry” (my own translation), and I instantly turned to my husband who was sitting next to me and criticised that the teacher could have made a wiser choice of song. I was expecting the five, six year-olds to be singing with positive exuberance and embracing with all their hearts the future with great hopes for big achievements in life. I just could not understand the appropriateness of singing a song that promotes the happiness and contentment of people who contributing to the society by being just ordinary people holding small, lowly jobs. It was an absolute ridicule, I thought.

But as I sat there totally uninspired, thinking about the silly irony that the concert was presenting, something even more ironical happened. The words of the tuneful song spoke to my heart ... it went “I have never been bothered before that I am not somebody famous, because there is really also a blessing and a sense of fulfillment in being very plain and ordinary.” I did not immediately know why I reacted so emotionally to the song, but I came to realise something that was deep down in my heart – that I was yearning for simply living! And perhaps I needed a song like this to brace myself for a decision that I have trying to make for the past many months – to quit my full-time job and be with and for my young children more. I wrestled with the conviction that my kids are the most important people to me, my personal desire to achieve and fulfill more than what I am able to today, and be all that I can as a career woman. I wanted others to be proud of what I could do as a working mom and be inspired by my drive and capability and also had the fear of being rejected by the workforce if I wanted to find a job again after several years of unemployment.. And with the recent months of staffing issues and piling workload and incidents of being misunderstood at work, great discouragement set in and bogged me down, and at the same time, the impulsiveness in wanting to make things right away at all cost caused me to feel extremely anxious and depressed. A part of me wanted me to escape from all these, to see that it was time for me to let go of everything and leave the job and just be with the children, and another part of me told me to hold on and find vindication.

I still have no idea exactly what course of actions what I should take now, but the song lyrics surely did something to me; it tore apart the veil in my heart. I seem to be able to sense my own heart better and have received a clue to the answer to my confusing questions -- “It’s okay, don’t justify, stop struggling, let go of your pride, be still and spend time to find out and work out God's place for me in this world by pursuing the most important things in this season of my life."

Inspiration & Paradox 81: Sleep Talking

It’s strange; when we sleep, our brains seem to be as active as when we are awake, and our thinking, as logical, even though our body acts as if it’s in a state of paralysis. Just like in the case of my husband - he sleep-talks, and whenever I catch him doing that, I play along by responding to what he says, and almost every time he would “converse” with me as if he can really hear me. What’s so funny is, because only he can understand the context of the topic he has created in his dream, what he says to me is often gibberish and doesn’t make sense at all! The most incredible thing is, sometimes when he is obviously still sleeping, he can even tell me that he is awake and that I should stop poking fun at him!

Inspiration & Paradox 80: Are We Doing What We Say?

Strangely, the more we talk about something and emphasise that it’s important to us, the more we struggle with it and aren’t doing it. Just look at the extent we read, talk and extol about the goodness of health foods, staying slim, the need to exercise and relax; the more this world desires and strives for wholesome living, the more problems we seem to face – rising levels of obesity, weight and health issues, and stress and anxiety in our lives. What has gone wrong?

Inspiration & Paradox 79: Who is cleverer? A great charismatic leader or his follower?

A story was told of two great historical leaders:

"William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli were two of the fiercest political rivals of the 19th century. Their epic battles for control of the British Empire were marked by intense animosity that spilled over from the public arena into their personal lives. Ambitious, powerful, and politically astute, both men were spirited competitors and masterful politicians.

Though each man achieved impressive accomplishments for Britain, the quality that separated them as leaders was their approach to people. The difference is best illustrated by the account of a young woman who dined with the men on consecutive nights. When asked about her impression of the rival statesmen, she said, "When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England." "