Say Bye !!!!!!

I was brought up in a family with a very strong family tie. Dad's very strict and mum's a very loving mum. I have 5 siblings.

My dad comes from a big family, he has 10 siblings in total and his oldest nephew, who is my oldest cousin, is only one year younger than him. I have nephews and nieces who are older than me. Oh, my grandfather was very rich and was somebody in his area in that 'era'.

From TV drama especially the Bollywood movies we know that big family like that is a 'country' by itself. Human beings have the good and evil characters regardless of even if we have the same 'bloodstream' flowing in us. As more human beings are brought together, naturally there will be conflicts. Hence, politic occurs, people are divided into groups / clans, back-stabbing bla bla bla, you name it.

The growing pain my dad had gave rise to the unique way he brought his children up. He manages to create a very strong bond among my siblings. We cherish each other and appreciate everything we have done for each other.

As we moved a lot when I was young due to dad's constant change of job, eldest two sisters and the younger three of us were separated for many years. That made our bond even stronger. We usually say goodbye and see each other off, wave goodbye, for example, in the airport, till we couldn't see the last bit of sibling's shadow. To many people maybe this is an useless act but to us, it's important. To me my family's love is one of the ultimate factor that carries me this far.

Character of cherishing people around me not only to my family members but to good friends has been implanted in me since I was young. I normally would say goodbye when I leave a place, when I have to go offline when chatting with friends etc.

But somehow, there are friends who would just go off without a proper 'departing speech', which can be a very simple words like 'i got to go', for example. It was an extremely big challenge for me to face the world that's so different to the world i grew up in. I'm still wondering how on earth can people do that i.e. just walk off like that. To me, we are fated to know each other so cherish the moment, as we will never know what will happen next. That maybe the last time we would see or talk to each other, unless people just don't care. I don't want to have or try to minimize the regrets I have in my life.

Slowly, I'm getting more used to it now. We can't expect others to be like us. In some way, I'm the odd one to other people as well. In this world, as we live, we learn, we gain experience and we grow to be better person. All the problems that we face, they are only mere challenges. Challenges can be solved and when we face the same challenge again in the future, it'll not be problem to us anymore, since we have the experience to solve it.

To me right now, the once disturbing situation is just a way of life. I have my paradigm shift to make myself understand the world better and also to make my life happier. If others don't bother, why would I, right? But I don't change myself to be like that. I still live the way i think is right, and saying 'I got to go, have a good day, ciao, you take care, see you next time' etc doesn't hurt at all and it does carry a very subtle 'comfort' which people take it for granted.

Life goes on...... whether we like it or not :-))

Gain and Loss

It's been a while since the last blog. Life's been busy busy busy. Had to write a very technical report for a very demanding customer. Was very tired and exhausted in the process as the expectation from both customer and own manager is high. To make things worse, I haven't been writing any technical report for ages and was not as focused as when I was in college. Sometimes I stayed up till late night or early morning just to try to get some inspiration to write. On Sunday, two days ago, I finally I completed it at 2.30am (so technically it should be Monday), sent it to manager for review, did some editing, got few more feedback from colleagues. On Monday evening around 5.10pm, I pressed the 'send' button and the report was on the customer's Inbox within 5 seconds. Initially I was a little nervous because I didnt' know what to expect. Every time mobile rang, I had this paranoia feeling that it could be calls from this customer. It didn't happen, lucky me.

This morning when I opened my Inbox, I saw an email from this customer. With a heavy heart, I opened it. To my surprised, he actually liked the report, written like this: "Many thanks for the report it seems a reasonable conclusion ...... ". I smiled from the bottom of my heart as if a heavy burden has just been lifted off me.

In the process of writing this report, I have learned a thing or two about life and what's going on around me. Well, this is a little 'enlightenment' I experienced I guess.

No matter how touch the situation, as long as we stay focus and put our soul and mind into the matter, nothing is impossible.

It seems like it is the law of nature that one has to endure great pain and suffering before achieving success. We look at the success stories of successful people in the world. All of them have got the similar story, which is they had gone to hell before reaching heaven. I remember a ‘ming yuan’ from a successful lady. Once she asked, ‘when is the darkest moment of a day?’ Some said midnight, some said early in the morning etc. Well, she said, the darkest moment of a day is the moment just before dawn. Sunrise follows the darkest moment. Similarly, as long as we do not give up in whatever we do, hang in there, as long as we endure the most painful moment, success will follow. A lot of people fail in life because they ‘U turn’ when they face lots of obstacles or some would prefer to call challenges. If we make ‘U’ turn, we will be back to square one and start all over again. Time and energy is wasted. Plus, we do not have that much time to start all over again. So, hang in there buddy, don’t give up in pursuing our goals in life.

I love to watch people when they fully concentrate and focus in doing their tasks. I myself always have problem concentrating or stay focus on my work. I like to do this, do that, here and there (everywhere). For me it’s really challenging to only handle one thing at a time. I would get bored very easily. That’s what happened to me when I was writing my technical report. I had a big picture in my mind, but I would do a little bit of this part, little bit of that part, and then try to ‘join’ them together like jigsaw puzzle. Along the way I would chat with friends online, had beers, watched useless series on youtube.com, and just wasted time sitting there dreaming. That’s one of the reasons it took me so long to write the report since I wasn’t focused anyway. Hahaha. But towards the end, when I had to join all the pieces together, I had no choice but just sit down and did it once and for all. At that time, when I really focused on the task, I felt the joy of seeing things clearly and was enjoying all the work I have put in to get that far. I guess it’s all about timing. When the right time has come, all will fall into places, just like falling leaves. I enjoy being so focused but I bet same thing would happen to me again next time, as staying focus in doing my work is really not my kinda thing. Hahaha. I will have another episode of blogging :-P

Passionate about something is beautiful. On Monday 21 July 08, the day I submitted my report to the customer, I played tennis with Fauza in the evening. Was supposed to start playing at 6pm, but sky opened up, started drizzling. We waited till almost 7pm, was still drizzling, but since we were at the court, so decided might as well play some tennis hoping the drizzle would stop. Court was wet, Fauza actually brought with him a broom to ‘clean’ the accumulated waters on the tennis court. When he told me he was bringing broom I thought he was just joking. Seeing him being so passionate about something alarms me of having wasted too much time on useless things in life and have not improved and evolved as I grow. From now on, I will not waste too much time and energy in useless stuff and hopefully to find the desire and enthusiasm to learn something new everyday. We played tennis till 9.30pm that day. Score was 6-7 (8-6), 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) to Liew Khee Chong J. But hell, Fauza, you’ve improved tremendously. I see the passion in you, thank you very much.

So, I guess I have to improve more on my concentration over something as I have to be passionate and enthusiastic. I’m on the right track.

As I’m writing this, I’m a little bit lost. Got to read it again few more times to get it straight. Hahaha.

Sunday (20 July 08) night, I was supposed to start my final stage of writing my report. I told myself to start at 8pm but didn’t have the mood. Then I saw a good friend online. Chatted with her normal daily stuff, old times, her family, my life etc. Guessed that’s enough to get me relaxed and cleared my mind with negative thoughts. I'm glad there's somebody there for me to talk nonsense till I had the inspiration to write that stupid report hahaahaha. I’m sure she didn’t realize it. Sometimes we have expectations about friends – I want you to do this, do that for me bla bla bla but end up with disappointment. Now I realize that we shouldn’t expect anything from anyone, because everybody has to live his/her own life. No one actually really cares or no time to care or don’t bother to care (whatever the reason is, doesn’t really matter). But when we don’t have any expectation, things would happen the way we hope for.

During this period of time, I watched a very touching movie. In the movie, there is a dialog which I think make sense and worth a look at least: “Because you have so much love for one another, even though sometimes it seems to be too much that we end up hurting each other but I believe as time goes by we would all agree that there is no such thing as ‘too much love’. Even if we made mistakes along the way, it’s better than never having tried to love and be loved. Wouldn’t you agree? Life always gives us opportunities to start over after we learn from our mistakes.”

And I think I better stop here. I’ll continue my ‘enlightenment’ session Part II. I’m lost right now. Hahahaha… I end this session after one week writing :-P

how i started this blog

it's an interesting process of finding the right name for my blog...

I've got interest in blogging since errr, few years ago... however, I didn't try hard enough to start it, as I'm a little 'retard' in internet things then... and another reason of this delay is finding a satisfactory name for it... as years gone by, the interest of blogging kinda derailed too...

recently a friend, Leo, has started his own blog... by reading his blogs, i found my own interest again... a lot of times we don't talk to our friends (best friends, good friends, normal friends bla bla bla) what's in our mind due to busy schedule lah, don't meet too often lah and all other excuses... with blogging we keep ourselves updated with what's happening in our lives... I think blogs actually improves relationships with friends and even family members...

Another friend, Choong, also has been blogging for quite sometimes, but I never bothered to login to Multiply.com caused I always forget my ID and passwords to this site... normally she would be too busy to answer my message as she's very focused in her work but few weeks ago i managed to chat online with her... she told me that she bought a domain... hmm, quite interesting... and she asked me to read her blog in multiply.com, it's about her story in her office...

well, i thought maybe this is the best way to keep in touch with friends, at the same time we can write our thoughts down, at the end of the day it's like the dairy of our live... one day when we look back, we can laugh at the good and bad times...

so the task now is to choose the name of the blog... i'm a bit 'sien' (bored) with naming IDs after my own name, for example KCLiew, kcl, liew kc bla bla bla... even the look of it is kinda boring... hahaha... after all, i've been carrying and using these names for 33 years now... need a refresher... First Choong suggested to use my name, of course that didn't work... so she suggested to use terms used in Oil and Gas Industry, errrr, I left University almost 10 years now, and whatever I learned I obviously keep them in the deepest part of my brain, can't retrieve anymore, hahaha... she suggested few, couldnt' remember what she suggested now, but I came up with Cretateous, Jurrasic etc... didn't really like them as well...

after few weeks she again asked me if I've got a name for my blog... obviously not yet... this time she came up with the name alluvial... geology term... i thought maybe I would
attract bunch of geologists / archaeologists... and then all of the sudden she was talking about 'Chixiclub' (i dont know if i spell it correctly). Apparently this is the meteor site in Mexico and her beloved professor from Imperial College, Mike Warner was doing some project on this and named it 'Project Muse'... So from then on she suggested www.muse.blogspot.com, i-muse, muse-i... the first two were taken already, and the latter one was still available... so she asked me to book it straight away... a frequent Internet user, she knows that it's a nice name and would be taken up fairly quickly... well, i kinda like the name, and she pushed me hard to book it, so hahaha, here it is my blog's URL... www.muse-i.blogspot.com :-)

from this blog i can see clearly that i have problem expressing my thoughts into words... especially when i didn't have inspiration, guess i'm not alone in this problem ;-)... well, i always have this problem - couldn't express myself very well hahaha... this blog will record and be the proof of my improvement in overcoming this matter... one day when i look back and read this blog, i'm sure i'll laugh at myself hahahahahahaha :-))

Finally

It's been a busy day... to start the day, i made a 'grand entrance' to morning meeting for the second day in a row - customers were looking for me when I opened the door... when i entered, all eyes were on me... wah, felt like a 'superstar' :-p......... meeting til 10 am, had breakfast with customers, came back office with tonnes of work to follow up bla bla bla, same old same old story...

but today m excited... m taking time off from busy schedule as I want to write something on my very first blog... hehehehe...

I have got so much in my mind which I'll put them on this blog but will do it later when I'm more free and have time to let my mind flies and explores to new boundaries...

so for now, am happy with these few sentences, at least I've put a step forward :-)