A Competent Communicator and the Vice President of Public Relations

A man once angrily insulted a wise teacher.
After he finished berating the teacher,
the teacher calmly asked the man,

"when you have guests in the house, do you serve them delicacies?"
"sometimes i do," the man answered.
"If they don't accept them, are the delicacies still yours?"
"yes," the man replied.

"Then i don't accept any of the insults you've just given me. they are all yours to keep."

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that's one of the greatest things i've read this week.
it's not just a witty (and infuriating) reply to the angry person,
it's realising that i have the power NOT to accept anything negative from another person if i don't want to.

i don't accept it. it's yours to keep!

super cool.

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Poot wants to play golf this sat.
and maybe bowl and snooker.
all the very lem bei sports.
where you can be fat and still excel.

"the only thing you left out is chess." i told her.
"you better not lem bei and start to nuah at home"

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we received an email from a new techonolgy group at work today.
there was a survey and if we filled it out, we'd be included in a lucky draw with attractive prizes.

"wah the questions quite cheem lei" my colleague said.
"anyhow fill la. it's a survey, no right and wrong"
"sekali i tick that i'm aware of this program, but actually the program doesn't exist then how?"

"can you all not to be so xia suay," another colleague walked by. "pple will think that our company pple very free lor."

"not only free, we are not even familiar with the new technology and we're shamelessly filling up the survey"

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I am now the Vice President of Public Relations for the Toastmasters Club!
it is a really good club, and i'm not saying this because i'm VPPR.
According to the booklet, i'm supposed to publicise the club in the media.

i asked the outgoing VPPR what the he does as VPPR.

"actually i'm not sure also. They put you in a list with all the VPPRs in singapore, and you know what's going on everywhere, and then you delete them as spam."

"are you going to be in the next Exco?"
"ya i think they're putting me in as president. i'm not sure!"


After the outgoing Exco presented their reports, i went to rib him again.

"eh all the Exco pple gave a report on their achievements, you gave a list of all the things that need to be done in the next term!"
"ya later i pass the list to you" he laughed.

I think it'll be fun.
The new Exco just had a supper of pratas and teh bings.
A treat from the new president otherwise we won't work for her.

it'll be cool.
raring to go see what kind of publicity i can experiment with as VPPR.

Just as the president proudly declared during the meeting,
"we must go out and expose ourselves!"

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i'm falling in love with juggling again too.
what with the new falco training thing going on.

i went on stage today after a long break from Toastmasters.
i thought i'd get a little nervous since it's been a few months since i took the stage,
but it felt so natural.

maybe it's the fact that i'm now a competent communicator (CC),
that title may not mean much but it somewhat boosts your confidence a little.
Like you've graduated to the next level.
Or perhaps it's the break that made me fresher.
Somehow i just felt like i'm a little more mature on stage than i was before.

nice. :)

No More Spring Chicken

my energy is no longer what it used to be.
need a lot more sleep now to recover from sleep debt.

did a 3 hour gig on sunday.
and now i'm aching all over.

it was super hot
and my adrenaline lasted all of the first hour.
the 2nd and 3rd hour were a lot harder to make through.

it's been a while since i did mingling gigs for family.
i love it.
especially this one,
where the crowd was a mix of locals and foreigners.
a clarke quay kind of crowd.

played simple games with the kids and i literally had to beg J (the friend who hired me) to let me give them prizes.

"you can't give them balloons. there's a balloonist right there! i'm gonna get complaints!"
"please....please...it's so lame not to give anything"
"ok fine," she finally relented, "give them these." (and she passed me a stack of stickers)

half hour later,
"eh the stickers are expensive."
"i give balloons la"
"no"
"please"
"no"
"pleeeeeease"
"i'm gonna hide the balloon pump"
"i need to give SOMETHING"
"ok fine," she said, exasperated, "give popcorn."

So i went to her popcorn stall and got myself bags of popcorn to give away.
"you're desperate to give things away!" she looked at me half amused.

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J's right on that one.
the thing that gets me going on these gigs,
is making pple smile.

and i love balloons because they cost so little but they earn priceless smiles.

the kids love it, the parents love it,
and i'm giving them out with no strings attached.

it's a very humanitarian kind of love,
if you know what i mean.

i want my audience to leave with something.
a smile, a prize, a happy kid who makes his parents beam.

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i had a few parents come up to me to ask for balloons,
with their little princesses in tow.
how could i refuse?

"i'm not the actual balloonist," i whispered to the parents, "but i'll make one for your princess. but we got to keep this a secret."

the funny thing is i actually did really mean it since i didn't want to piss off the balloonists,
but the parents played along with me like i was teasing them.

"ok secret," they whispered back, "we'll hide below the staircase"

and we really did all hide below the staircase while i made the balloon for them.

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how can i forget the little caucasian boy Leon.
He was all but 3 years old i think,
and he had those puppy eyes and came up to me for a balloon.

I had already given the prize to another kid,
and had to direct all the other kids to the "real" balloonists so i dun get a queue in front of me.

Little Leon walked back to his dad with those yearning puppy eyes.

"oh i hate disappointing kids," i smiled to his dad.
So little Leon and I played around with my juggling balls a little bit,
and his parents got him and his younger bro Luke to give me a goodbye kiss.

"You know what, for that kiss, i'll make them both a balloon"
"oh you're such a lucky boy!" Leon's dad picked him up while Leon's eyes sparkled.

As i started twisting my green balloon, Leon went
"Luke doesn't have a balloon. I want Luke to have this balloon"

"you want to give it to your little brother? that's very nice Leon!" his mom was so proud of him.
"you're such a good boy!" his dad coo-ed.

"yes i want to give Luke the green balloon," Leon went in his innocent sweet voice,
"so that i can have the red one."

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I just made something rather interesting at work.
it took me two days to get it up and running,
and i'm quite proud of it.

of getting something out of nothing,
of using indirect ways of patching things up to get round obstacles.

the thing that kills me,
is that it has no real intrinsic significance.

I need it in my work,
but i was the only one who directly benefitted from it.

at least in my previous job,
everything i did helped the aunties in some way.

so much technology on my fingers,
so many things that can be done.
the world is so big,
my world is so small.

Operation Lighten Up

i need to lighten up man.
i've been so soulful i've consumed myself into my own black hole.

so now i think i should move on to the next phase.

My next Toastmasters advanced series will be on humourous speeches.
Timely one.
My last speech was probably the saddest speech ever to be done in a contest.
quite funny on hindsight.

most of my basic speeches have been on some kind of save the world themes.
It felt so grand then but now they seem kind of lame.
it's time i did some funky speeches.

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DH is on a juggling resurgence, after he got himself some Russian balls.
He was usually the one who juggled to take a break from talking,
but the last time i saw him he actually did the MJ thing.
He won't go home till he has done 30 catches of 5 balls.
Willie had to literally drag him home or they'd miss the last train.

He even taught me the 7 ball gap passing pattern,
where we could piroutte at the gap.
and of course we kept messing up so we kept doing pirouttes for naught.

now i'm freshly inspired again.
Willie got me to watch some jap videos.
so now i'm learning some new 3 ball tricks again instead of droning on the 5 club practice.

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i've been pretty stressed at work,
and on Friday i was gloomy again going for the prayer meet.

Somehow i had a strong urge to do some juggling before the meet.
Suntec has some great places to juggle.
it was grand doing some of the ball tricks again.
Some of the things i was working on here and there all just clicked.

that's what i like abt taking breaks.
you come back all fresh and amazed at the invisible work that's been going on during the break.

after the session i was pretty much energized both physically and mentally.

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Unless we have a major upset at the next Exco nomination day ala AWARE,
it looks like i may well become the Vice President of Public Relations of the Toastmasters club.

VP of Public Relations.
i'm smiling just thinking of that title.
Like what in the world??

If you take SK the immediate past president seriously,
and no one should ever take him seriously,
"the VP of PR goes to channel 8, channel U, news 938 and advertise our club la".

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it's time for Operation Humorous!
I do think God meant for the world to be quite funny. ( I often picture him with a wry smile)
And being too serious kind of makes us miss the punchline.

Vesak Day Special

i went to thread eyebrows again.
clinging on to the hope that first time would be most painful and subsequently it would hurt less,
the hope dissipated into a cloud of nothingness once the threader started on my lower brows.

it hurt like sh*t.

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met up with poot at orchard and headed to tea chapter to have tea with shepherd.

we got our way to the buddha tooth relic temple and got lost somewhere there.

"it's along neil road. where is neil road?"
"let's ask someone. Excuse me, where is...."
"I see the shop! cross the road cross the road" Poot excitedly grabbed my arm and pulled me across the road, abruptly breaking my conversation with this elderly couple looking strangely at us.

"Poot you just broke off my eye contact and nice conversation with the old man"
"hmm," Poot's eyes scanned across the road, "now how do we get to the islet over there?"

"erm, we should cross from over there lor. cross back cross back!"

We hurriedly ran back across the road as motorists waiting at the red light watched us run back and forth.

"OMG, this is neil road!", as i turned and saw the green road sign abt a metre from where we were.
"we're on neil road asking pple where is neil road"

"we're dumb and dumber lor," poot said, and added with a smug smile "but dumber was the one who found the place"

"dumber was also the one who pulled me across the road and then asked how we get to the islet over there", i pointed out.

"yea that's why we need each other."

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this is an interesting video i came across.
someone emailed it in and it's timing is uncanny given that i'm in this stage of mulling over certain concepts and i just had a debate with shepherd over this issue.

it is a video on the charter for compassion and it's aim is to bring compassion (of all religions) to the forefront of pple's attention.

http://dotsub.com/view/767c68bb-db0f-4bf3-87bb-dfce18217f68

A little bit more digging brought me to TED talks again.
And this talk by Karen Armstrong, the founder of the charter, summarised so coherently and succinctly what i've been trying to express.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJMm4RAwVLo

Her view was this, that the Golden Rule of all religions, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" should always be on the forefront.

And she quoted a Jewish story, "Everything else, is commentary (to the Golden Rule)."

With the recent Aware saga and its focus on christian views on homosexuality, the fact that Christianity is a religion of compassion and a religion of love not just for God but also for people, regardless of who they are, got lost and buried.

which is a great pity because i think between "love your neighbour" and "Man were not meant to be homosexuals", I would think God would rather Man remember and practice the first teaching. (As He has mentioned that loving God and pple are the two greatest commandments)

"It's time to move beyond toleration, and to move towards appreciation, of the other"
-Karen Armstrong

Tolerance. Appreciation. Acceptance.

Different levels of approaching opposing views.
While acceptance is not possible as most religions are quite fundamentally mutually exclusive (if one is right, the other cannot be),
appreciation allows us go beyond tolerance.

Appreciation is compassion with both the heart and mind,
of understanding where the other party is coming from,
of acknowledging the validity of his argument given the limitations of what we know for sure.

i've found that using this approach actually deepens, instead of dilutes, my faith.
As I see with equal weighting on both arguments and I understand why i still hold on to one.

it is also beneficial to the other party because appreciating his point of view opens up the gates to discussion.
if at the very first instance your stance is "your view is invalid", then you put the other on the defensive and it becomes a pointless discussion as the focus is now on defence and not progress.

My mistake in my pre-christian, buddhist-enthusiast days was that I never ventured out to really understand christianity.
Ironically, it was because of the ferventness of Christians to pull pple in that prevented me from going in.
If i got too close, i got sucked into the tornado. So i stayed away.

We must allow pple to have a safe place where they can understand and judge for themselves the greatness of God without them feeling compelled, persuaded and harassed.

One place to start will be from True Compassion.
To have no other motives but to help and befriend others.

"Love God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul. Love thy neighbours like yourself. These are the 2 greatest commandments."