This is How I view the Society and the World

Speaking of which how the society moves the world, it is all come back to the existence of the "needs" of human nature. Need for money, for love, for pleasure or anything which will fulfil human's "temporary satisfactions". It is because of the "temporary" instead of "prolong" satisfaction that makes us go far beyond anything we could possibly imagine. 

Neil Armstrong is first to step on the Moon, 20 July 1969

Imagine, as we were born on earth, each of us start fighting for survivor. The rich family got their kids in prestigious hospitals while the poor will struggle within them self to keep their kids safe and alive. If certain medications needed during that period but was unrealised due to negligence owing to insufficient funds that boosters extra care by the nurses and doctors, the infant will just die. 

At the next stage of life, children compete in schools and colleges. They fight for outstanding academic results and respects by forming own groups or organizations to protect against their welfare and fight against others when they are interfered. Within their organizations they fight for positions and recognitions, by doing whatever it takes to push people down including putting fire or back stabbing. 

At the stage of working, I always viewed the world depicted from the movie "Wall Street" 1987. Although the world is categorized in 3 or 4 stages of life, but they always share the common fact that "We start competing against each other for survivor since the day we are born." So, there's a hard incontrovertible fact that always keep in my heart but was not bold enough to speak out is that, "Anything, if without benefits, people will not do". People will just deny the term I claimed and will always elaborate of how good they are in helping people. But how sincere we are, we know the best. It is important to see what is inside than what is outside.

However, it is also important to understand why people are selfish.  Imagine you wanted to change the world, you wanted to be the first person 100% devoted to help and believing in anybody hoping to be an example to others. One day, you are driving late at night alone on the road, and you saw a person waving for help because he had his tire punctured in the middle of the road. You sympathies him so you get out and help. Guess what's next? You should be smart enough to know... Yes, you will get robbed if you are a guy, and get raped or possibly murdered if you are a woman. So, who wants to help in this dirty society?

It is not as complicated as it seems. But its only merely due to how sharp can you be to live in this city jungle fill with tigers and lions waiting to eat and be eaten. It is about the experiences and the understanding of the rules of there's no right or wrong in making any decisions you choose, but it's about whether your decisions makes you and others feel happy inside or not. The rule is indirectly linked to the rule of Stock Market as quoted by George Soros: "it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong". That's why I said "Life is like the Stock Market", in my previous post.

There's one movie that keeps remind me about "What will you do, if your boss wants you to get rid of your friend who treated you not very well before, but if you get rid of him, he will be perished and will live desperately for the rest of his life. Also knowing, your boss will get rid of you one day as well. when you are useless to him." --- Watch "The Devil wear's Prada".

But no matter how cruel the world can be, good people will always win in the final. However, they always need to suffer throughout the process. As a Buddhist, I believe in "Cause and effect". It is not something miracle or magic but it is rather a fact that we can see with our eyes and feel with our heart. No matter what decision we choose, there must be a consequences or price we need to pay. You just can't get away with your deeds.

In the past, when I wanted something, I love to choose short-cut to get things done. Because, people told me so, they say only the dumb-ass use long-cut. The smart-ass use short-cut to get things done. It saves time, and it always makes people think you are super as you can complete a task in a while. Short cuts are like, you get things in an "easy way" without needing the use of your brain or an effort to think. With this attitude in learning, I managed to get beautiful outcome in the short term, but in the long run, I don't know anything. When nobody assist me, I'm dead. So, I go back to square-one, I need to do it all over again in order to be good at it once more. (See, you just can't get away with it)

Well, the biggest example that convinced me that good people always win is my Dad. He works hard in life, and I have never seen any single immoral talking and actions ever in my whole life. He doesn't smoke, and not even had a single dip of alcohol. He managed to take care of me and my brother like an emperor for so long and I just don't know what to say... . Of course, we have relatives who are more successful and richer or whatever, but we already got more than anything we need as compare to alot of millions of people. It has been a breakthrough success to me. 

On the other hand, people who always find ways to cheat or thinking about ways to do whatever negatives in order to get what they want, they always go back to square-one. They will always be living inside the world they think it's so cruel and dirty. So the bottom line is, "we are what we are, according to what we think most of the time." 

The second most successful good people I know which I do not wanted to miss out here is Mr. Warren Buffett.

He has been my inspirational figure for many years. He is the 3rd Riches person in the world whom has a Net worth of $50 Billion Dollars solely on acquiring potential successful businesses and common stocks. He has donated many many Billions of dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since many years ago. He is still living in his same house with his family he bought 50 years ago and drives a cheap American car without hiring a driver. He don't purchase things he don't need.

Obsession with Perfection

That's me, Eric Tham. It has been quite some times I've stopped blogging because it normally took me quite a long time to think about a perfect sentence that describe what I meant. But at the same time, I was aspired by some of my friends who wrote interesting blogs and therefore triggered my eagerness to express what I think once again. Noticed that I left with an unfinished article previously about "Life is like the Stock Market Part 2", I actually had the draft here with me which I think there is a need of further alteration before I can publish. 

Today, this article is solely about me. I'm born in September and I'm a Virgo. I'm not a superstitious person who believe in a particular thing obsessively. However, there is a match between my personality and the astrology aforementioned. Yes, Virgo is a perfectionist. For instance, if I am given a responsibility to take care of something, I'm going to do it perfectly well. I cannot guarantee what will be the outcome, but I'll always do it well first. More interesting is, if I see my friends having problem in handling their tasks, I would always love to get in there and make it nicely. Of course, it must be within my ability, and I must be sincerely welcome.

I don't know if I'm really born to be like this or I was groomed to be like this. It was all started many years ago when I was very little. I was used to be bullied, criticized and humiliated by people because I was a wimp. My feeling was not understood by anyone. I was totally powerless against any dreadful criticism, because my self confidence was completely destroyed, when I was even being criticised for being "dark and ugly". I was tremendously small and skinny like that. 

Well, that's the summary history of my childhood.  

INSPIRING AMERICA'S STORIES DRIVES ME TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD

That time, when I was hapless, I lied on the bed and thought for a long time about what went wrong. Thinking about why was it so unfair, why am I being criticized for being small and not being able to grow up like other kids. Why am I keep getting bad grades or was it because I'm born with a little retard. I was in tears and heart broken. I felt worthless. I thought of multiple ways of committing suicide like jumping off the building or cut my wrist many times but I was afraid of getting hurt. The best way and painless suicide is to put a bullet in my head, but that was completely ridiculous, because there's no way I could find a gun. Anyhow, the feelings was indescribable. Looking back, the whole story was ridiculous. (I know it sound silly, but well, I was just a kid.)

So, I can't die, what am I going to do next? I started reading lots and lots of American books and learning about all the American success stories that claimed everything is possible in this world, hoping to find an answer why. Naturally, reading becomes my habit.  

This is Nikola Tesla, he is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism.

To avoid being further criticism and humiliation, I became obsessed on understanding more and more about the extraordinary intelligent people whom we never find in our own country, by extracting my mindset into the extraordinary alienated dimension of geniuses which average people thinks it is mere stupidity and absurdity. The more I know, the more ambitious I become. Because no one ever concern about my feelings, therefore I always believe no one would ever will and only knowledge will rejuvenate me. Although I never get any bigger until now, I am no longer concern about my size as being small is a problem anymore. Because what's important to me now is "who's gotta bigger brain?" 

I didn't say that I'm smarter than anybody. But it's just that I've seen Value in myself, and a strong purpose of continuing living for infinite lifetime. 

Life is like the "Stock Market" part II

Why do I said "Life is like the Stock Market?". As we enter into the exchange central where millions of shares changing hands in a day, we see numbers of every counter going green and red and so on throughout the trading hour. The price of a single stock turns red when the opening price is lower than the closing price yesterday and vice versa. The aggregate transactions of shares will therefore effect the composite index which roughly explaining about the average or overall performance of our economic condition. Now, do not relate macroeconomics into this stage, because the overall performance of the stock market will only projects the behavior, attitude and reaction of human being on account of the alternation of the macroeconomic conditions. I hope the 3 words in Bold will link you to my title. The next question is "How?"

Who in the world, never experienced happiness, sadness, depressed, curious, moody or any other emotions in life? Even unsound human beings have feelings, even animals cries before they were slaughter if you observe its eyes carefully where there will be tears. But lets look at those sound human beings like you and me who have a normal cognitive function whereby we're able to control our emotions correctly, and understand each others and able to make right choices in life. But inversely, what do we see often in the reality of this society, are people who often have the tendency to choose to think "negatively" in terms of most subjects regardless of things happening to others or him/her self by transferring pressure.

For example, when Ed works too hard and tried his best to do a better job, he was screwed by Jason his superior for doing a lousy job. Ed went home tediously with a sad face and ignored his girl friend Jane when she tried to comfort him. Jane thinks that she must do something to make Andy feels better because she thinks she is his girl friend. When Jane tried to ask further, Ed blew a gasket and walk out from the door. Thinking Jane shouldn't ask so much about it because it was embarrassing to Ed. In this situation, Ed has just transfered the pressure on Jane naturally. Jane was sad and when her mother calls Jane, Jane cried on the phone because she was worried about Ed. Second, pressure transfered to mother because mother now worried about Jane. 

The forces of negativity are simply transferring to each others in everybody's life. We will never see a situation where we are happy and completely ignorant about bad things happened previously, when we are with our best friends. As soon as when we leave our best friends and the great environment, we immediately tune our mood back to sad and depressed mood within seconds where all the bad memory was once wiped came back at the instance. Then again, when we see our happy family members, bad memory erased automatically again and we are completely happy again as if nothing had happened. In this special case, "No transfer of pressure". However, this only happen in the world of impossibility or otherwise Crazy I believe.

How does it relate to stock market? If transferring pressure is possible among human being, then whoever shouted "Sell!" when one is pessimistic/sad, will exert pressure on others to feel pessimistic and eventually causing the market crash when everybody sell. When people shouted "Buy!" when one is optimistic/happy, the market will explode to the peak even within hours. The volatility of the stock market simply means, the instability of human emotion that cannot be predicted over a short period of time due to transferring of pressure on account of imperfect understanding in analyzing stock market informations.

Eric's thinking continues on Part III on Controlling emotions. END

Life is like the "Stock Market" part I

If you look at the past and present of the stock market performance, it goes cyclical which basically means ups and downs. It comprises of 2 devastating behavior namely "greed and fear". Generally, greed took place when the market is bullish, fear took place when the market is bearish. In other words, you may say its "happy and sad" as well. One of an uncontroverted fact about the world's market is that more than 90% of those who involve in the stock market was wiped off with more than half of a country's wealth throughout the years. The question is "why"? Why so many people lose even the smart ass professional fund managers who analyse stock market performances 24 hours a day. Why those who made it to the top billionaire list investors are less than 5% of the world's population and their principles and theories are easily impact the world?

After knowing that some people who made it to the top millionaires and billionaires list, I automatically think about how did they make it? However, as I took a while to think twice, understand how is useless if I don't understand why they did it. The reason that why is more important than how is because, everybody in this world do things with a specific reason to fulfill his/her own needs because of any other reasons that causes the way he/she thinks and then only finding a way to achieve his/hers objectives.

In this current modern society as everything are transforming into a greater competition environment with advance technology invented and innovative way of executing task and producing materials. More new factories and jobs are created all around the world. Eventually, new courses in the Universities are created as well such as biotechnology, microelectronics, and whatsoever which we probably never heard of before during the 80s or 90s. After technologies created new stuffs, people started to expect and being overly optimistic about the jobs prospect for younger generations. Thus, there will be part of a percentage of a younger population going venture into that field to test their luck. Sometimes, it is good that we have new things created in this world with capable and potential people to take control over those newly created industries which usually benefits our society and our standard of living. But, sadly there could also be more research on those new jobs characteristics to be done by the undergraduates when deciding what to do in their future. The more characteristic a company has, the more complex it goes, some questions cannot be forecast any further because nobody are completely involve yet. One thing that concern me the most is when people "don't know what they are doing". Bunch of young and green teenagers jump into different field without understanding what are those and where will it leads them to?

The phrase "don't know what they are doing" is considered a very serious matter in the world of stock market. Because as the old saying "The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do." - Warren Buffet. Meaning, when you lose money to the market, you will never get it back. You need to think and plan the right move and the right decision again. Stock market is life, life is stock market. Same thing, there is no turning back in life once you are wrong. You need to learn from the mistakes and make sure you never repeat again whenever you face the same problem.

Flipping through the Forbes magazines makes most people envy about how these peoples create such a successful multi-billion dollar empire throughout their life time. Instead of thinking how? We need to think about "why", because not everybody loves stocks, not everybody wants to create a multi-billion dollar empire, not everybody likes to be a real estate millionaires. What we see from the Forbes magazines are assets and net worth of the person posses, we never really understand why they do what they do? Stock markets investment, properties investments, bonds, commodities and any other derivatives are mostly just a financial instrument uses for wealth managements by those who understands about our money market system.

Why do we have to live in a way that it is?

Looking back at the history of our world, human being has been fighting and conquering land and property of their enemies throughout the centuries. The purpose is to achieve glory and gain sovereignty thus able to express greatness and pride of its own kind. On the other hand, their nations have also been experiencing survival and death throughout the years of war. Thousands of years later, most part of the country has finally achieved peace. They don't have to experience the fear of death anymore.

The reason I mentioned about the war time is because the living style of young generation then has become different from today. In order to survive during war time in the past, the children knows how and where to find a way to fulfill his needs. They became independent and able to take care of them self and family. As the year goes by, parents in the modern day has somehow became "extreme protective" towards their child in every sense. They have developed an ideology among them self which believes "As parents, it is always right to protect our child from getting harm in every situation". Hence, they forbid their child to go to work during young age, forbid their child to hold responsibility to avoid accusation if failed. In short, to avoid everything as if there is a possibility of failure and hurts.

In my opinion, that phrase above-mentioned has become bullshit to me. The phrase is right, but the doing is wrong. Over the years, parents did every single god damn chores and did all the thinking for their child and they think they are great parents. But guess what, their child's performance became stupendously disappointing, they failed to use their brain more. Before I continue, I want to make sure you get the right message as I'm NOT going to criticize about their outfit, their fashion, personal life, their naughtiness because those are irrelevant. In other words, its nothing wrong to me about all that but it is simply natural. What I'm focusing on is solely about their "Thinking".

Sometimes, it became my primary concern over looking at the behavior of many of today's teenagers who are so discourage to do what they pursue to accomplish in life.

Number one, "Laziness". This mistake is the most destructive ever among others however, it is the most common one. This is what I've seen, Jack is a decent guy aged 17 -18 came to study in a University a long way from home in a small State after completing high school. He does not know what course suits him. After spending a couple of weeks doing a lousy research and thinking, he decided to choose Mechanical Engineering. (He wasn't trained to think deeper and do a professional research because parents did everything last time). After registering the course, he moved into a hostel with a bunch of house-mates of his own kind. They get along well together and play computer games and talking empty 24/7. (He was trained not to care about other stuffs but just to study in a University and get good grades). Understanding that there is a lot of activities at University, but refuse to take part because starting the get addicted by computer games and friends of his own kind. (Giving lousy excuses all time because was trained not to think much and was always told this is what it is). He comes and backs from University everyday without doing anything but solely playing facebook games and online games and talk empty with peers. One day, when asked again, what makes you choose Mechanical Engineering? His answer is "I don't know" and there was total mute and no more because... . Because he doesn't know why is he taking the course, he never put effort and conviction to do well in exam. He merely study in a foolish way by memorizing the notes without event spending one second to think about "why". (This happened when a person is doing something he doesn't understand and without a special purpose). When he is discourage, he become even lazy. He don't do house chores, he don't eat and bath, he don't wash his cloth and dishes unless he has no choice, he don't sleep unless he is extremely tired after playing online games, in short he don't do anything for him self. He wakes up the next morning at 11am or sometimes later consecutively for years. He missed many classes because he was told by his peers "its no use". Finally, he screw up in exam and failed many subjects. He blames all the lecturers for giving a lousy lecture, for not looking good and all that jazz. (Usually, he blames because his peers of his kind blames, he blames to fit into his group). Basically, his life is nothing more than fucked.

Why do we have to live in a way that it is? We have our own mind and its our choice whether we want to use it well or not. We can't choose the way we like to be govern, but we have our own thinking and own ways. 17-18 years old isn't young anymore. Some people, drop out of school but having a burning desire to succeed has been working 24/7 in this nasty world fighting to be successful in life. Some making millions and owning properties and estates. The unfortunate one selling merchandise in shopping malls. But, the fortunate one doesn't know how to do a simple proper research and making decision on what he pursue to do. My point is appreciating the time given NOW by accomplishing your primary objective which is study when you got the chance. You can do anything at the same time but again, whats your primary objectives? Guys and Girls, people are neither born to be stupid and useless nor to be smart and independent. Those who failed simply because they are lazy to use their brain to think and make decisions.

The begining

I would consider myself as a pretty different kind of person in terms of personal perspectives. To define myself in a day or in an article is almost impossible because sometimes I even found it difficult to start explaining what I'm thinking. There have been lots of hardships and adversities I experienced in the past and causing me to learn how to live and understand the world better. Every single time I fail, I learn new things. New things are always important to me because it often moves me into a different and better directions.