Just A Reminder Of Something Frequently Known

I felt so emo for no reason today and decided I'd take the advantage of the situation instead of abusing my mind like I usually do. So I sat myself down with a pen in my hand and faced Brook open on my table.

Warning: I didn't use any harsh words but they are harsh in a way.


I call it...

Over and Out

It's not the first time that I felt like killing before,
Ripping the life out of that damn ugly whore,
Seeing her struggle bearing the pain,
If only you did that while you were still sane,

Lives are at stake when humanity fails,
I feel it inside every time I set sail,
Look far out to sea over the faded horizon,
What's left of reality is a world open prison,

When heroes are dying to who do we turn?
We are the people of this world we burnt,
Who can we trust when they only talk profits,
Power is their currency I don't have to prove it,

Every second I try to live this wretched life,
Every heartbeat I wonder what to do with this knife,
Every war that threatens to summon apocalypse,
Every soul savagely murdered all in a glimpse,

It's a shame to be breathing in this filthy wind,
I spit out the dust till my lungs are all clean,
A speck of my blood I see on the ground,
The sign that I'll be no longer around,

All things made equal will perish in time,
There will always be a reason to die,
I hand you an apology for all of my crimes,
Don't you dare save me I'll kill you if you try.

Muahaha! That was fun! I think it's pretty straight forward with a few hints here and there. I hope I can find a tune to turn part of it into a song.

Brook: Great, what about the other emo crap you stuffed in me huh? You gonna turn them into songs too? Nobody wants to hear all you emo rants Edd! You think you know emo? I'll show you emo...

Okay...Brook has lost it.

Later days...

Dear FaceBook People,

Please read this for your own sake and for the rest of the Muslim community:

http://lonkay.blogspot.com/2009/03/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-yahudi.html

How far the truth goes, I'm not that sure.

MySpace Music

Hey Brook,

I just opened up my own music page at MySpace. Just click the link "Edd's Music" in my link tab.

Later days...

What The FLIP??!!

Okay readers of euphoric_nightmare, today I am going to write to you about a true story based on a real-life event that just took place here, in my friggin Plaza Rah apartment, this morning.

In as little number of words as possible, here I go:

I came back early today, around 10.30am, because it was 'self-directed learning' which basically means, 'balik bilik tidur' for most people, whatever. I was just excited because I can spend the whole day going through my planned out study plan while surfing for 'Whose Line is it Anyway'. [I'm trailing off the main point]

Anyway, came back, found a large pair of slippers getting caught behind the main door as I opened it and said to myself, "hmm, must be one of the roomie's friend's", as one of my roomies does have a friend that might fit into them. I settled down on my chair in the living room where my other roomie was sitting next to me, at her desk, studying. After a couple of breathers, I went across the tiny hall to my room, reached for the door and found it locked. I was sharing it with 2 others where 1 of them went home for study leave. So as I sat back down to wait for my roomie to open up the door, I chatted away with my studying roomie or housemate.

Later, my roomie whom I actually share a room with, opened up the door and with a 'tudung' on her head, quickly stopped me from going in the room, "Jap! Ada orang,". Okay, so I sat back down. And then she said, "Jangan tengok tau." Okay? Bells of suspicions ringing, bringing up the dead. I exchanged curious glances with my studying housemate.

If you still can't guess what happened next, you'll understand how surprised I was. She came out with a guy, from our room, the room I sleep in at nights, or have trouble sleeping in (insomnia). Obviously now I will have trouble sleeping in it. With her. Imagine the shock! Both of those numskulls have some decent religious background. What the hell?!!

And the thing was, after she came back from sending him off downstairs, she came to us saying, "Ei, senyap-senyap je lah ye...". I looked away quickly not knowing how to respond to such foolish statement but of course I didn't say yes. Sure, let's pretend Allah didn't see that. Let's pretend I'm not gonna be apart of this circle of sinning. Pish Posh!! I'm gonna take action that's what I'm gonna do! Dare you make such a stoopid, reckless, perverted decision! Sure I rock, I headbang to metalcore, I skip a few classes, but what makes her think I'm OKAY with this sort of attitude. Haktuih! She of all people should know.

I came home early today for a reason and I doubt it ends at witnessing only.

Astaghfurullahalazim...Ya Allah, protect me from what is to come.

No I'm not gonna stab anybody in the back tonight, no worries.

Moral of the story: A good decent background proves nothing, higher chances of surviving maybe, but it's all up to an individual's iman after all.

Later be the days...

Feast Your Eyes

Just follow the link to check out our Starlight cover

Click this other link to see what music video fakey I got myself into now.

Later days

Too High on Adrenaline

And so it ends...The Dental Glam Night.

How was it?
- The best location EVER! Massive and the stage was great! Acoustics, nice.
- The whole event, not bad but could have been better.
- The emcees were, how do you say it? Bad? No fingers pointing, they just lack experience.
- Only a few Chinese went along with the party theme [movie]. Most if not all of them girls were dressed like they were going clubbing and Malay seniors dressed up like they're on their wedding day.
- 4th years rock, as always, gigam!


- After performing, got too much adrenaline in the blood, became too loud, out of control, embarrassing.
- Food. To me, great. The rendang was nice, sweet & spicy; the fish was awesome; the chicken, I can't remember, they all taste the same; desserts, cute, but I didn't get to eat much, full after the main meal.
- Like the dinner in my 2nd year, my foot cramped again. What friggin curse was at play?
- Did not get the chance to take a photo with my one-night-crush guy.

- But got a photo with one of the Vaders. Blurry though, too much force from both sides.
- Another Neo won the best dressed, he was the The Matrix version. I'm the Reloaded version. Of course I couldn't have won, a girl wearing a male's costume. Not in their lifetime.


The performance?

Not bad for my first time, a few slip-ups in the beginning and I think my tempo ran wild near the end. My keyboardist thought she was awful and wasn't satisfied at all. I'll upload the video on youtube once I get the chance.

I regret not recording Jason & Ib's performance, very creative but I was hungry.

And now, back to studies!

Later be thy days...

Starlight

It's coming! It's coming! It's coming!

2 days away from my first ever performance and I am shaking all over. Excited and nervous at the same time. Sure I'll be doing what I normally and casually do instead of studying, not to say I'm very good at guitar playing, but I hope it turns out well. I just want it to turn out fun and enjoyable.

I can hardly study this week. I've been wire-bending [of the dental kind, not guitar playing] since Monday and my hands are swelling up. Requirements are due in 2 weeks time. But I have to put it on hold. At least until after the show on Friday. I don't want to jeopardize my chances in performing. Need my hands to be stable, although my nerves are hardly breathing.

Holy crap! The more I talk or write about it, the worse it gets. I guess self-hypnosis works! I better stop then.

I shall be the star! Okay that's a little too much.

Wish me luck Brook! And whomever reading.

Anyway, I'll be on guitar, Lavi on keyboard, & Zul as the vocalist. We'll be doing an acoustic cover of 'Starlight' by MUSE. A tribute to the masters.


Later days...

CooL XP appS

Since I've been busy messing around with sh@dowfaX for the past few days, I discovered some cool freeware stuff which I shall share below.

Fences
Like the name itself, it let's you group up icons, separating them into whatever categories you wish to between fences. Once you're done, double-click on the background and they disappear. To reappear, just double-click again.


Rocketdock
If you've heard of Stardock's Objectdock before, it's simply the same thing. It's a dock for your shortcuts or an application launcher. The best thing about this is that it's smoother, the icons are more slick, and everything is totally free, including the addons provided. No discrimination to who pays or not!


WinFlip
It allows me to do this...


Glass2k
It simply allows you to make your windows look transparent, like Vista.


CC Cleaner
Helps you to free some disk space by deleting useless files such as those in the Temp folders.

There's few more but I have to get going, tons to do.
p/s: all these nifty gadgets doesn't slow my cpu, if it does to yours just get rid of them. Glass2k is a small file.

Later days...

A Fortnight of Agony

Brook,

First it was Vypress.

After finally getting out to hunt for a new guitar, Vader, I got back to my apartment and found that meg@3on [my laptop] was whacked up. I couldn't enter Windows at all. So much for my advice to Enda [my aunt], "look for positive comments before downloading a torrent file". All this time I've been lucky in optimizing my absolute freedom until that virus finally pinned me down. I had to reformat the whole thing. After 2 years, meg@3on had never gone through one and so, sad I was to put him into a stranger's hand for 4 days. I know I could have done it myself but I don't know how to and I might just postpone the whole thing since I am a student. And aren't we all procrastinators? [Ib: "Yes, we are!"]

my Vader

After getting the newly revived meg@3on, I spent a whole day personalizing him back to the way he was. Re-installing, re-customizing and all but he's just not the same as before.

meg@3on...what was

One issue is that he's got this black bar on the right side of his screen which I can't get rid of [a battle scar?]. The screen resolution for 1024x768 is no longer available [no idea why]. Then some features on his keyboard is no longer working. Nothing is the same after you bring it back from the dead. So much so, I'm now gonna call him Glamdring [if you're a LOTR fan you'll know what that is] or something else. Shadowfax [LOTR again] sounds nice too. Okay then, sh@dowfaX it is!

sh@dowfaX

Well, it does look better when I think about it. It looks more clean, organized and mature. If you look up Shadowfax, you'll see how it fits. I added some cool applications, Stardock stuff [Objectdock Plus and Fences]. I had Objectdock before in meg@3on but the free version. Trying to illegally obtain a free Objectdock Plus was what led to his death. Woops. I found a clean pirated version of it now but it's not as good. Some things just sound or look too good to be true. I even took the background pic myself, Cherating beach.

The very next day, guess what else decided to give me a breakdown. meg@pOd [my iPod] !! Can you believe it?! Just after the 1 year warranty ended. DaMnatioN!!

It's actually quite common for an iPod to go haywire after 2 days or even a few hours. Sounds scary, I know and I am one of the lucky one's where my iPod lasted a whole year without getting corrupted.

Well, 2 nights away from a mini test, I just couldn't get my head together to study that night. I was really devastated! I was frustrated when I found out Vypress was no longer fixable, depressed when meg@3on had an MI, but meg@pOd breaking down was worser than the two combined. I love that piece of crap! Not to mention all my 80G of precious music [nearly 4000 songs] and movies [well over 30G] wiped clean just as fast as saying the F word.

All I could do that night was search the net for answers in fixing meg@pOd. None of them worked. I even tried knocking and dropping it [seriously, it worked for some]. There's one more thing to try out, hopefully it'll work. My last resort would be to send it for repair.

Well, mini test is over and I found a song to play for my performance on 10th April. It turns out that I'm not buying my friend's red Ibanez. I'm quite happy with Vader for now. Things are looking up. Aaaaaaahh, the cool breeze of the night air. I'm going to bed early tonight.

Later days...

HeartBroken & MindBoggled

So sad, it's giving me backaches all over again.

Vypress is no longer fixable. Seems that cracked acoustic guitars are just tossed away. Damn guitar salesperson! Don't you say that to my dear Vypress! I'm not gonna toss her away. I mean she can still function as a guitar pretty well, I just hate the fact that she's torn up inside and behind.










It would be too irrational to store her away after I get a new one so I might probably lend it to my cousin until she can afford her own. I don't think selling her off would be a good idea since she was my first and nobody would buy a banged up guitar anyways.











So what now? Do I buy my friend's RM4XX, red, Ibanex Gax-70 or some other electric-acoustic for a cheaper price. This time, I am thinking through the financial aspect. What if I bought both? Throw in an amp, it would still cost me less than my 80G iPod Classic.

Am I serious about guitar playing? Well, now that I know I have the potential, I would love to get serious. Oh for goodness sakes, I easily bought the iPod without going over it like this, why am I all tangled up from deciding what to do? Where is all that guilt coming from?

IF I am ever going to get a new acoustic guitar, I'm surely not going for the fancy shmancy carbon fibre round-back ones. They do look young & hip, but I'd rather buy one with a hardwood back. They age gracefully and be of more value as it gets older [as long as I play it of course]. No, wait. That sounds poyo. I take that back. Whatever! As long as I can play comfortably well.

Later days...

N is for...

Just another game I picked up from a friend. Nobody tagged me but it looked interesting and thought I'd have a go.

The Rules:
It’s harder than it looks. Copy to your own note, erase my answer, enter yours and TAG 10 people. Use the first letter of your name to each answer of the following questions. They have to be real, nothing made up!

If the person before you had the same initial, you must use different answers. You cannot copy any word twice and you can’t use your name for the boy/girl name question.
Have fun! >>> nay my words, copy pasted

BEGIN!

1. What is your name: Nur Hidayah

2. A four letter word: None

3. A boy’s name? Nash

4. A girl’s name? Nawal

5. An occupation: Night-shift Campus Police

6. A color: Nauseous Green

7. Something you wear: New pair of shoes

8. A food: Nasi Goreng Ayam

9. Something found in the bathroom: Not a pleasant smell

10. A place: Nowhere but here

11. A reason for being late: No reason, I just wanted to

12. Something you shout: Nay!

13. A movie title: Nightwatch

14. Something you drink: Nescafe

15. A musical group: Nightwish

16. A street name: Newton Street [trust me, it exists]

17. A type of car: Nissan

18. A song title: New Born by MUSE

19. A verb: Nap [need one right now]

END!

That was challenging & sometimes frustrating. Took me some time.

I'm not gonna tag anyone, do it if you want to.

...Later days...

The Aching Need

Damn you, Vypress!

See the crack? This was last year, now it's worse.

Why has it worsened? Because I did nay get it fixed & the new strings I bought are freakishly tensed & hard. I can't even play a full song without stopping a moment to mourn over the devastating truth that Vypress is a wreck. Plus, to rest the finger pads. Pins & needles man!

Anyway, I am in desperate need of a fix. Not like as in getting high [although you know I'd love to], but like an actual repair and maybe change those paining strings. Either that or I buy a new acoustic guitar. Hmmm...too irrational?

A friend of mine is offering his red Ibanez GAX-70 for around RM500 - RM400.


I asked for RM400 of course and he said, "as long as I know my 'bini' will be in good hands". Yeah well, he doesn't know what happened to Vypress. I never actually thought of getting myself an electric guitar since I'm not that good yet, but this deal is too good to pass up!

So, I kinda have to decide on 2 ultimate questions here:

1. Fix Vypress or buy a new acoustic guitar?

2. Buy the RM400 red Ibanez GAX-70 or wait for some other fool to give me a free one?

Whatever happens, I still need an acoustic guitar, new or not. It's not about the money, I just don't know if I can love a new guitar as much as I loved [past tense] Vypress. Plus, I don't know if the amount of dedication & skills I have now for striking those strings would increase as much as I hope it would by getting a new guitar.

Okay, you know what, I'll just get Vypress fixed. Hopefully before 10th April, I'm gonna be needing her on that day. Decision to buy the Ibanez or nay will be made around this coming Saturday. Fingers crossed!

Later days...

Come One, Come All

To do, or not to do? That is not the question.

The question is,

Who's in?

Conflicted

Conflict: When there are two opposing pictures in your quality world at the same time.

The more you move in the direction of one, the more you frustrate the other.



What to do?

"If it's at all possible, when you don't know what to do, do nothing in either direction."

What makes a conflict so severe is that there is no immediate solution. If you manage to do the above, it may not solve the conflict but at least, you won't make things worse.

In the end, time will move the conflict in one direction or the other, and the decision will become less painful.

But there are many times you can't wait, if you don't decide, one of the pictures may be lost forever. In that case, DAMN!

Later days...

ChatterBox

Disgusting! Disgusting! Disgusting!

That is all I feel and that is all I shall feel as long as I remember this week of holiday. This shall be my first ever attempt to produce a post barely out of word vomit. Or as pen to paper and fingertip to keyboard...I lost my train of thoughts. Be it as it may, I shall try my best to keep my topic around the activities of my previous week. Disgusting, as I said before, it has made me feel and as I am a day away from it's end I realized I have gained pretty much none to an oblivion. Planned I did and regret I had been. Depressed I might be but sad I am not. What are the likes of me being here typing this when there are people outside doing the things they are simply because the can or they want to. I'd love to do the same but I am hot, as in the temperature and not in looks.

The more I look around the more I get sick of it. The more sick I get the more miserable I feel. The more miserable I feel, the more agitated, the louder I get, the more people shush me, the more ego, the more boredom, the more destructive, the more garbage, the more caffeine, the more I forget. Tisk Tisk Tisk.

As I tisk myself, I hear my guitar strumming by itself. I looked at it but nothing seems to be strumming it. It strums by itself. I sit here wondering whether I was imagining it out of boredom or simply trying to fool myself that a magical being has come to cheer me up. But then a fruit fly comes along and buzzes around my face, especially at the eyes, trying it's best to make a landing, when I was actually wearing my glasses. I was trying hard to convince it that I am no fruit by moving my head around, a similar movement to headbanging, but the housefly stays unconvinced. Something in it's nature is telling them that my ugly face is a fruit. Fruits on the other hand are bright coloured, smooth skinned, and edible. Everything my face isn't.

I came home the other day and got to the 6 months delayed spring cleaning. Though it has nothing to do with spring time, I still choose to call it that way because it would make everybody else feel responsible to put in some effort. Worked, has it? Partially and better than nothing. My room feels wider and the fruit fly is still here to get me. It seemed to have a new destination now, the nostrils. I guess a bunch of nose hair is easier than a glass barrier. Fooled you have been, oh determined fruit fly.

Anyway, I manged to finally fit in some lyrics to a melody of a tune. A new song perhaps! I long for it to be heard but I am still hot, as in the temperature, not in looks. I thought of a few more but this heat has prevented me to do absolutely nothing. Well, I can't quite say absolute, for I am writing an entry in my blog while watching a classic movie. But of course, I am word vomiting and I am not paying any attention to the movie, so all in all, it is next to nothing if not itself.

My hate has killed the fruit fly. Fare thee well, not.

Later days!

N.E.V.E.S

I was tagged by my aunt to do this. Here you go Enda.

I. se7en facts you may not know about me when I was 7 years old:

I can't remember much of what happened to me at this age.


1. started a thieving habit
2. I wore a baju kurung for my birthday party
3. set foot on English soil & stayed for 3 1/2 years
4. lost a lot of memory during the flight to England
5. became enemies with the first Malay girl I met there who later became my best friend
6. had no fashion sense because surviving the cold was of utmost importance
7. first time experienced snow

II. se7en things that scare me:


1. violent deaths: MVAs, murder, freak accidents, mauled by a mouth of sharp teeth
2. losing my family
3. a big body of water
4. break a limb OR lose my sight OR become permanently bedridden
5. falling in love
6. alone in a crowd of strangers, I'd rather be by myself
7. the world

III. se7en songs that I like the most:

Just 7?! This will be the hardest thing for me to do. To be fair, I'll put one of my fave songs from my fave genres.


1. 'Hallowed Be Thy Name' by Iron Maiden
2. 'Fuel' by Metallica
3. 'Turn' by Travis
4. 'Hysteria' by Muse & Radiohead's 'The Bends' album [haha...cheating]
5. 'Down To My Last' by Alter Bridge [but honestly I love all their songs]
6. 'Aces of Spades' by Motorhead
7. 'Glosoli' by Sigur Ros

DONE!

Laters...

23 Enigma

Oh crap, I just had an epiphany. I'm sat here thinking about how old [23yrs] I'm turning into in a few hours & it occurred to me that I'll actually be living my 24th year of life after that hour, which made a whole lot of difference. I feel older. Okay, I'm put off by that fact.

Ever since I turned 20 I began hating birthdays. It means nothing to me unless I achieved something profound for that year [which would be the year that just passed]. If you have been reading my blog since the day I started [April 2008], obviously, I am quite happy turning 23, despite that tiny turn off. So, yay! But that epiphany gives me a new meaning to living a life. I'm gonna work hard to fill my 24th year with appreciable experiences so that I'll have a better birthday to look forward to next year. I don't think I can quite grab the whole idea of it yet, I keep losing my train of thoughts [or was that the coffee?].

No, I'm not going to sketch a plan of it, that's as absurd as stalking Gary Oldman.

in his youth as Jackie Flannery in 'State of Grace'

As much as I want to it's highly impossible, he's too far away & he'll have bodyguards, not to mention the fact that he'll hate me before he even gets to know me, and I don't want my life to hate me [wth was that? oops...that's the coffee again].

Aaahh, I better stop. It's destructive to write in this condition.

Later days...

Something Stupid...by far

A quarrel took place by mistake, an unfortunate event indeed. Somehow I feel it was my fault. It happened between my friend & an acquaintance. I instinctively sided the acquaintance and now I don't know where I stand in my friendship with the other. Dolefully, I don't know how to make things right between them. Between us. I can bearly wrap my head around what actually happened that day.

I think it was I that damaged both parties. If I could have just kept my mouth shut, at least for a few more days, it wouldn't have been blown out of proportions like it already has. If I had a better memory, if I predicted their reactions, if I didn't eat out that day, this wouldn't have happened. And it also wouldn't have happened if I wasn't trying to be a good friend, a hero. The same rules apply, either solve the problem and get more love or screw the deal and become the scapegoat.


Human relations hurt. No shit. It hurts because humans as the subject of a situation is hard to put. We are mostly predictable but personality makes us unpredictable at the same time. The differing levels of our 5 basic needs [survival, power, freedom, love & belonging, fun & learning] gives us our diverse list of total behaviours. If I only assessed their basic needs earlier, I could've familiarized their personalities and by doing so, I could've predicted their reactions. It would be quite natural of me to doubt my acquaintance but then again I guess I never really knew my friend as well.

Now I remember. My excuse for social withdrawal last year was "I am not a good friend, so I should avoid them to save them from myself". Partly true, I guess.

One thing is for sure, wherever you are and whatever you are doing in life, don't think you own your loved ones. Once you do you'd feel obligated to make them change into what you think is right, the way you want them to. You can only tell, but never force. If you love them enough and you care to show them that you do, they will eventually change if they feel your love and that the change is beneficial to the relationship. But if they don't then you should only change what lies within. Either change what you want, or what you're doing, or both. If you do nothing you'll suffer and forcing them would be disastrous.

I said once before that there are right ways of being selfish. We can't afford being selfish materialistically in a society but we can be selfish for ourselves. Love someone for what they are and if you're not content with something, change yourselves. Let you be the one to improve. Let you be the peacemaker.

Human relation is an art and it is the oldest & hardest to master. That is why we are happiest with our soulmates because they are like twins to our own personalities and we don't have to try hard to relate to them. They are easy to be with. This, to me, is a form of selfishness which is everything that I am.

It has been an emotionally reviving episode for me. I still don't know what I'm going do with that quarrel which might have been accidentally, inadvertently caused by me. I'd like to hope for the best but seeing how our 'discussion' ended that day, I better prepare for the worst.

Wishing me luck won't do good. Please pray for us instead. Thanks a mill.

Later days...

Very Much Un-Ace-Like

Going home no longer excites me.
wtf? I know.

I don't know what's really going on. It just seems I'm better off staying alone at Plaza Rah [my apartment/college]. Better off for my emotions & peace of mind. Everytime I come home feeling happier than ever, something or somebody just has to come up and piss me off. I don't literally blow up like I usually do years back but I'm trying to keep all that anger in because it's not gonna do any good. I'm hiding in my room right now.

After my mid semester holi, I'm going to make myself stay at college. Be prepared for my finals. I was happy today after finding out I passed all the subjects for my previous exams. I guess it means nothing now.


Damn...I feel so sad right now. The fact that I can't be happy where I thought I belonged is upsetting me. I'm sure you'd feel the same if it happened to you too.

But then again, all this could be circumstantial. It's a Friday, everyone's tired, the house is in a mess, and I'm having my PMS. Maybe a prayer & a nap would wear it off. InsyAllah.

Laters...

Tag! I'm it!

I have been victimized! I never knew this 'game' existed amongst bloggers. It's called tagging.

The rules are: Use a search engine to search the answers to the questions. Then you must choose a picture in the first page of the results, and post it as your answer. After that tag 6 other people.

I have been officially tagged by Wan, and so here are my answers.

1. I am a...

rockhead

2. I want to go here...

to bungee jump

3. Favourite place...

country site

4. Favourite colour...

black & red

5. Favourite food...

ayam kicap

6. Favourite drink...

coffee

7. My school...

Jalan 3, Bandar Baru Bangi [irrelevant question btw]

8. Favourite story...

history

9. Born in...

Kelantan

10. My hobby...

human personality & psychology

11. Live in...

my room

12. I wish for a...

soulmate

The End

Now, my turn to tag others. Unfortunately, I don't know many people who actually read my blog & it's kind of unfair to re-tag Wan. So besides the people in the list below, whoever read this post can consider yourself tagged.

Tag! You're it!
1. Naqqib
2. Dooha
3. Enda
4. Ib
5. Syinteru
6. Whoever is reading...

This was fun Wan, thanx.

...Later days...

Truth-Blind

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value"

It's not that success isn't a good thing, it is. But it isn't a good word. Success comes in a package of many kinds but unfortunately many souls on this Earth tends to see success as living luxuriously glorified by status symbols. I'm not saying that is wrong either but money can be a route to all evil - don't take it literally and burn all your belongings. It is greed that blinds us and makes everything go utterly wrong.

There are many forms of success. The one I see is me being able to finally grab control of my own thoughts & actions, breaking free from the ancient universal psychology while living my ultimate purpose. Money isn't much to my taste. As long as I can keep my health, loved ones & source of knowledge, I'll do just fine. I'm not trying to say I'm a saint, nay! I came across this behaviour by wanting a goal that's different from everyone else. I was chasing diversity much too obsessively. And from my way of seeing my ultimate success, you can tell how selfish & self obsessed I actually am. To me, the most humble goal is being able to help others change for the better. Hopefully we will all come to this when we're done helping ourselves.

Okay back to the saying above, success is a bad word because it focuses on the destination. What we really want to focus on is the journey leading to the destination. Not only that we'd learn better but we'd also be much happier thinking in the present. And isn't that all that we want, happiness.



The tragedy of a journey is when blindness grab holds and we lose ourselves. There's a lot of manipulative agents & enticing temptations out there. Many may appear innocent at first but later reveals it's fierce iron claw. This blindness may either make us lose sight of the destination once & for all, or make us lose our loved ones, or even self-destruct. Being too preoccupied with the future may also lead to blindness. The only cure to blindness, as I have experienced, is staying close to our religion. Staying close to God. Our Maker, Our Owner.

Forget X-Files' saying, "The truth is out there". The truth is within ourselves. That's why the search is never ending, we've been looking in all the wrong places! And again, what are we searching for? Happiness. A tip that might help this search, stay close to happy people, take in their positive energy and bloom. As much as I like being alone I have to admit, functional relationships are what makes me happy.

"To achieve & maintain the relationships we have to stop choosing to coerce, force, compel, punish, reward, manipulate, boss, motivate, criticize, blame, complain, nag, badger, rank, rate, and withdraw. We must replace these destructive behaviours with choosing to care, listen, support, negotiate, encourage, love, befriend, trust, accept, welcome, and esteem." - Willian Glasser, M.D., Choice Theory.

I think the difference between becoming a person of success and a person of value is the effort involved. One less than the other, value. Live and let live, age gracefully. Don't try too hard to grow up ahead of others. No rush. Take in the air and experience the life around you. A word to myself as well.

Good Luck out there, it's a dangerous world.

Later be the days...

HandShake

For the past few days, I've been in and out of my blog thinking of what to write next. After the previous post, I thought it'd only be fair for me to lay low for a while. Fair for both the writer & the readers [whoever you are], since we all have things to be done. But then again, one thing keeps bugging me and I can't seem to get it off my mind.

A few weeks ago I met a few ladies, strangers you might say, who are acquaintances to some people I know, dearly. Of course we didn't talk much, I was quiet nearly all of the time because they were plural and I was singular. And later as they were departing, we shook hands, a common custom in our community, a gesture which simbolizes polite manner & respect. So if one decides not to show politeness or respect then please forget about doing so because you're only making a fool of yourself.

So, let's talk about handshakes!


Shaking hands is a relic of our ancient past. It is usually performed both on initial greeting & on departure. Of course in some other countries they bow, touch noses, or even hug. We Malaysians shake and if you're a woman you'll hug those that are 'close' to you. Most men just shake to avoid over-contact from disturbing their ego...ehem. In the Malaysian community it is considered impolite not to shake, I know this for a fact because when I was little I was always scolded for avoiding hand shakes. I was shy, I think.

Even so, muslims avoid shaking hands with the opposite sex because touch can be a powerful tool. But in this modern world, as our country becomes more Americanised, people tend to pay more attention to what the whites do than what our God tells us to do. So the men freely hand out shakes to us females [this happens the other way around more often], and though it would also be wrong to leave it hanging because it's wrong to embaress them, why should I care. Serve them right to be embaressed. You know you shouldn'tve held it out, so you should know better. A-holes!

Anyway, like I said earlier, if you're not gonna do it properly then don't do it at all. You'll end up looking like a homo or a bitch. Sorry, I mean you'll end up offending the person you're shaking hands with. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out, it's human nature. Unknown to ourselves, body language play a big part in communication, a bigger part than verbal communication. Facial expressions are the best indication to honesty, other than looking behind to see if anybody's stabbing your back.

How To Shake Hands Appropriately...Unless If You're A Villain, Please Wait For Next Week's Post:

1. Look at the person you're greeting.
Eye contact is optional, I mean some people may feel a little intimidated by the other but at least be face to face. You can look at their teeth or nose or forehead instead. This shows affection & sincerity. It's saying, "I am greeting you". If we don't do this, then I of all people would be very confused, "you're touching my hand but I don't know what it means, is this an assault?". In our community, according to my observations, most elderlies wouldn't do this. It may be ego, I'm not sure but what's the point of teaching us respect when they're not showing us any.

2. Smile.
For goodness sakes, please smile. That's the whole point of greeting somebody, making them feel welcomed or accepted. How can you do that without smiling? Okay, so she stole your boyfriend or she murdered your dad, what the hell are you doing shaking their hands for? You don't have to overdo it, just a simple smirk would sometimes do, for me at least. I'd know you're trying.

3. Grab the whole hand.
Please avoid this if the other party has some disease or open wound on their hands but other than that don't just go for the tip of the fingers, that's utterly pathetic. This is very disrespectful. I'd be thinking to myself, "Am I that disgusting? I think your personality is much worse". Other than that, there's this thing that we Malaysians regularly use to show politeness, the 'Double-hander'. Like in the photo below, my Granny is pulling a double-hander towards my Grandy. In the political world, the double-hander is used to counter the 'upper hand' position which is the dominant position and is simply saying, I'm empowering you.


4. The right amount of pressure.
This is tricky since it's different for everybody. Don't squeeze the life out of their hands and at the same time don't just slide the hand without pressurizing. How much pressure you apply corresponds to how powerful or dominant you are towards the other party. So, not squeezing at all would mean you're weak and the other party may feel they can overpower you easily. In politics, this plays a big role and in employment, make sure you don't squeeze harder than your potential employer during first impressions.

5. The right length of time.
In most countries it's usually 5-7 pumps, in certain others such as Germany 2-3 pumps. A pump is that up & down movement of a hand shake. In Malaysia it's occasionally just 1 pump followed by the submissive or younger party bowing to kiss the upper hand or touching it to their forehead. Sometimes I just bow when I'm confused of the power level but still want to be polite.The hands leave the shake and touches their own chests. I don't really know what this means but I think it has something to do with being modest.


That's most of it. It's meant to be quick unless you really like their gripping hands.

There's a lot more to handshakes than we think. But until next time...

Later days...