Thank YOU!

Quite a few of you know that it was my birthday this past Monday. For someone my age, birthday is not something that I throw a big celebration at anymore… after all, when you know you have almost certainly lived through one-third of your life already, you learn to start to hide your birthday rather than announce it to everybody.

But nevertheless, there are many people I must thank for this year.

First off: to the dear students who have created a beautiful birthday card for me, and presented it to me before we went on our break – your words of kindness brought tears to my eyes. No joke. To read the words of appreciation you people wrote on that card made all the work worthwhile. I was told, and have always experienced, that teaching is a low-paying job that requires you to work long hours with little appreciation from the world (after all, we are the slackers that get almost 3 months’ worth of vacation per year, right?). But to know that you people who are struggling with me KNOW that I am working hard to make your time worthwhile… that is all I need to hold on when times are tough.

And then, there are my brothers and sisters. We went to a church retreat this past weekend, and we were all exhausted from the preparation work leading to the trip, and the actual camp drained us further. Still, on the night we came out, you still insisted to treat me to a nice dinner. Many of were came to the dinner exhausted or even sick, but you came anyway. Some people feel hesitant to call people that go to the same church brothers and sisters, but to me, you people really ARE brothers and sisters to me.

I don’t know what I have done, or who I am, to deserve such love. I just want to say that you people are so wonderful to me, and I am so grateful to have your love.

Thank YOU!

How do you present your message?

I was shopping the other day and something really left me thinking:

When I was at store A, the salesperson asked me what my budget was for purchasing that appliance (it's a major household appliance, so we are talking about quite a lot of money here). I told him of my budget, and it was lower than the item that I was looking at. He pondered for a while, and then went to suggest me to look at products of a different brand, highlighting the fact that the other brand is a little economical, and, in his opinion, offers very similar features and is a good bargain for the budget that I have...

I later went to store B to look at the same item. The salesperson asked me too about the budget. But upon hearing that my budget was lower than the item that I was looking for, he immediately said to me that "perhaps you should not look at something with these features." After some negotiations, his manager gave me a price that he said was the final offer. I thought about it, but felt that it was still too expensive. To my surprise, he said to me, "The door is that way."

In both stores I came in with the same problem - I had a budget and could not afford what I was looking for. But the way I was treated at Store B was so poor that I vowed to never buy from that store again.

The message the two salespersons spoke was actually the same - if you cannot afford this item, you should look at something else. But the way the message was given caused a totally different reaction in the message's recipient (in this case, me).

In life, we often have the message to share, something that we feel very strongly about, that we want others to agree with and accept as well. Be that a message about your world view, your faith, your take on why the Canucks still have a chance to win the Stanley Cup, you name it... But how do you present that message often determines how the message is received.

Alonzo Mourning, an NBA player, once went on a radio show to promote awareness to kidney diseases, something that he was afflicted with in the past, and is obviously very important to him. When the radio host began the interview by first asking about his NBA career, he snapped back and said he was not on the show to talk about his basketball career, but just wanted to talk about his foundation and his cause. Listeners of the show have been trashing him since; no one even remembers the cause he is promoting (and it actually is a very worthwhile cause).

How do you present YOUR message?

Senior Home

It has been a while since I have visited the senior home, but every time I go, I feel very blessed coming out of the building.

To be honest, the program we run is extremely amateurish, and even that is a generous comment. We are not good conversing with the senior citizens; we have lousy singing voices, and the games we play are often put together at the last minute. But every time we are there, we see how the old ladies and gentlemen would be greeting us with such joy. We can see that some of them really remember who we are, even if we only pay a visit every two months. This warms my heart.

Things have been very crazy at school lately. Work has been so hectic, I sometimes just do not consider myself having the time to go and make such a visit. But to come to think of it, if I cannot even spare two hours every two months to put a smile on the faces of some old and frail senior citizens, who may be very lonely and really in need of our company, then there is something terribly wrong with how I slot my time.

While I am never sure what I can bring to the senior citizens during such visits, I know, without the shadow of a doubt, that every time I visit them, they teach me so much about myself.

Looking forward to my next visit in May…

So Long...

While many people of Hong Kong descent are talking these days about the passing of Lydia Shum (Fei-Fei), I have a different eulogy to write…

This eulogy is written for one who did not even have a name, but he has been a family member for several years. It is written for a father, though he had never had the chance to see his sons and daughters grow up. It is written for a gracious king, though he never ruled any land. This eulogy is written for my angel fish, who died early this morning after a long battle with fin rot.

I have always loved angel fishes. They were elegant and gracious when I had them as a child. I had many of them while I was growing up in Hong Kong, and I continued to have them ever since I moved to Vancouver. But of all the angel fishes I had, this is a pretty special one. He was the only one that actually fathered several broods of babies. Together with mother angel fish, they patrolled the fish tank, and would chase away any wandering fish who got too close to the leaves to which their eggs were located (a case of external fertilization, people!). I also watched them move the eggs with their mouths from one leaf to another, in search of a leaf that is located at the best location in the tank.

He had survived many diseases in the tank. A scarred fin was the medal of honour he proudly wore for living through an epidemic that killed over half the lives of the tank… When one of his fellow angel died two weeks ago, I did not really have much concern for him – yes, he was sick, but he fed as excitedly as he had always been. I have long learned that as long as a fish still feeds normally, its overall health is all right.

But last week, his eating became laboured. The tail and fit rot worsened, and he began hiding at a corner, always a terrible sign. Last night, it was a struggle to watch him grasping for air, fighting for his last breath…

Thank you for the memories. Your surviving wife will undoubtedly feel lonely without you. Rest in peace.

You Have a Choice!

We had an interesting discussion today at "The Lunch Room" regarding student reaction when they feel they have been slighted.

One person shares his experience of being looked at in a disrespectful fashion. He said that his reaction is to say something sarcastic to shake the person off his back. And if the negative treatment continues, he will go and beat that person up.

Paul, the coordinator of the group, then asked a very thought-provoking question: what if the guy you beat up bring back five guys with sticks? "I play soccer, so I guess I can run pretty fast..." was the answer. In other words, this person would choose to flee the scene.

We went out of time, but I actually wanted to share about something that had happened to me:

A good friend of mine once started treating me very differently. He became cold, and when I tried to talk to him, I could tell he was dying to leave the conversation. Sometimes, he would even, knowingly or unknowingly, say something to me that was not nice, to say the least...

So naturally, I felt slighted. But interestingly, I chose to have a talk with this friend of mine. As it turned out, his cruel and cold reaction was because of an earlier incident where he felt betrayed by something I have said and done. It hurt him badly and damaged his faith in me as a friend, hence the distancing between him and me. When I realized that it was me who had wronged him in the first place, I apologized and explained to him what happened... and since then, we have been the best of friends.

You see, I had a choice. When I felt I was being slighted, I could have chosen to fight back. I could be even more mean to my friend to "punish" him for how he was treating me. But that would only reinforce the idea of me betraying his friendship. A good friendship that we had spent years building would be in ruins because of a simple misunderstanding, and who knows what else could have happened as our relationship becomes increasingly strained.

Bottom line is: you have a choice. You can choose to escalate a problem, or you can choose to face the problem, with the good will to resolve it.

What is your choice?