Reality Check

An author wrote this:

We all distort reality to varying degrees.
Objective reality is privy to God alone.
The rest of us distort our reality as a function of our past experiences, genetics and perceptual abilities.
We rarely see reality without distorting it with our own biases.

I agree. We see only what we want to see. We do not see what we do not want to see. Someone once said our mind cannot tell the difference between imagination and reality. Einstein said imagination is more powerful than knowledge. It's true.

We are the creators of our own nightmares! Or dreams if we choose to. So let's stop wasting precious energy in fighting ourselves.

This is also a reminder for myself. :)

Interestingly, our ability to distort reality is also a wonderful gift. Our body-mind uses this as a self-defense mechanism to detach from reality under extreme conditions. Have you read or heard of stories about soldiers losing limbs and yet able to fight in the heat of battle? Reality hit them (hard!) after those tense moments, after they stopped. This innate ability is crucial to our survival.

Though we do not fight in bloody wars, we have our other moments. Observe what you feel and think under extreme conditions eg. enormous stress, pressure, when your back is against the wall. Give yourself time and space to think and respond, not to react. Because many times our fight or flight instinct kicks in even when there's no real danger.

Remember, reality is not real sometimes.

Manipulation

Have you ever heard of Manipulative Selling? Ever been a victim? Some professional salesmen use it (eg. door-to-door salesperson selling kitchenware, encyclopedias, house cleaning products etc.). Others for other things. And you slowly began to realized you're caught so deep into his (salesman) talk and you just couldn't say no, or you feel bad for refusing. Eventually, you're "victimized"!

A couple of months back, I received a call from a company saying a friend of mine wanna share a free "cleaning service" (I can't be specific here) with me, for my house etc. From that short conversation, I intuitively caught the 1st sign of selling. Sign: Offer something free to gain consent. But I agreed cos I needed that little bit of cleaning. So we scheduled an appointment for their staff to come to do the cleaning.

On the appointed day, before he stepped in my house the "cleaner" asked if my wife was around. He said he can come back another day unless my wife was around. It was too obvious for me. Sign: Get through the wife (this is a big common one). Since my wife wasn't around, I said I share much of the cleaning chore, so he agreed to come in. I knew the "cleaner" was more than a cleaner....

Then he wanna "present to me" me the product used for cleaning. Offense: Actual purpose inconsistent with the intention conveyed over the phone. I played along and allowed him but in my mind, all my defenses were alerted. But I thought it was still fair for him to show his demo first before giving me the free cleaning.

He quoted many researched facts (typically) to present the benefits of the product. I recognized many other methods he used in his manner of speaking, tone of voice, pause between words, play with eyes etc. He even had his wife as his assistant during demo, who apparently was a victim of a particular health condition until she used that product which was recommended by a reputable doctor. Oh come on! I'm not one of those under-educated customers/housewives easily impressed by these talks.

He proceeded to applied cognitive dissonance into his presentation. Example suggestive lines like "don't you love...", "don't you want what's best for your family...", and later after the cleaning, he crossed the line by using leading questions like: "if I put all these dirt back, will you want to lie down there again?" in a slightly threatening (very subtle but recognizable) manner, and repeated the question, pressing for my inevitable reply "No" and "Yes, I can see how wonderful your product is!". Offense: Manipulating/lay traps for an answer using subtle threats. This was a serious offense and insult for me.

To keep it short, he later used other manipulative techniques, and thought he could close the sale (cos I was showing interest). Of course it was a "Negative" all along for me. He pushed repeatedly for instant response but couldn't take "No" for an answer at first. An average customer would have felt bad at that point, but I was countering everything mercilessly. I can be heartlessly brutal to someone who tries to manipulate my feelings (high and low) all along.

Maybe all forms of selling are manipulative, in a way. It's an active game which no one has to lose. Does 'win-win' sounds familiar? It's not wrong for salesmen to try to convince or even be persistent in persuasion. I do believe in using persuasion and influence techniques. Like magic, I love (and long) to see great skills being displayed. But what's the intent? How do you use them? When does it cross the line? For me, the No.1 thing is probably TRUST. And also INTEGRITY. I can smell the intentions of crooks from miles away...my given nickname by my family during childhood was 'crazy crook'! Go figure. Haha.

So how do you sell anything to someone like me?

1) First, there must be a genuinely good product that

2) you truly believe and think is beneficial (I can sense unbelief too easily).

3) It's ok to introduce the product to me and let it "grow" in my head over time, but

4) forget about the technicalities of selling, I'm not your average customer (it may actually be counter-effective bcos you're only alerting all my defense mechanisms).

5) For expensive products, I would normally buy something only because I've wanted to buy (and have acquired some info). No impulse buying. Your message must resonate with my desire.

6) So, stop presenting to me the facts that you would present to everyone, because I would normally have know them already. It's better to let me ask the questions and they can be quite detailed, so better get your facts right and ready. It annoys me when salesmen avoid my questions by leading on to some other plus points of the product to cover up their incompetency or ignorance. I may nod my head but actually I've "switched off" instead.

7) When I say "I need some time to think", it may mean "I'll do active considerations". Not necessarily mean a "No". The best (and only thing really) you can do is give me the space. Best not to push it.

8) Above all, never abuse my trust when I consent/allow you in to sell to me.

The games that people play...

Hold Me Now, Oh Hold Me Now

On my drive to work this morning, I popped in U2's old Rattle and Hum CD and listened. I loved these songs since secondary school/college years. They're timeless. And when it came to the second song, Van Diemen's Land, I had goosebumps. I played it repeatedly, over and over again. It's a gripping, beautiful, sad yet hopeful song with its haunting melody and guitar tunes. I had goosebumps hearing the melancholic tune as he sang "Hold me now, oh hold me now..." and mainly also how the significance of certain themes become relevant in cycles after many years....

Van Diemen's Land is the former name of Tasmania island when the Brits used the Australian continent as a penal colony. Many Irishmen were amongst those sent to Australia during the brutal period of that history. The song was dedicated to Irish poet John Boyle O'Reilly. Probably someone who dared to speak out against injustice (using poetry!) and was punished, sent to the dreaded Van Diemen's Land. U2's Irish by the way. This song was sung by The Edge. You can search and listen to it in YouTube.

Hold me now, oh hold me now
'til this hour has gone around
And I'm gone on the rising tide
For to face Van Diemen's land

It's a bitter pill I swallow here
To be rent from one so dear
We fought for justice and not for gain
But the magistrate sent me away

Now kings will rule and the poor will toil
And tear their hands as they tear the soil
But a day will come in this dawning age
When an honest man sees an honest wage

Hold me now, oh hold me now
'til this hour has gone around
And I'm gone on the rising tide
For to face Van Diemen's land

I can imagine a time will come when many will be put away for fighting for what's right. But I believe in the inherent hope in that line "But a day will come, in this dawning age...."

Life Quote

"I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun."

-Thomas A. Edison. Inventor, Entrepreneur, Scientist, Lifelong learner

Reunion - ISCA

We finally had the long-planned ISCA reunion dinner on Saturday evening at Daidomon restaurant. First, wanna rent out my frustrations. Can you believe about half of the people who initially said they were coming decided not to turn up last minute? I've served people long enough to know the differences between excuses and genuine reasons. One person "suddenly" remember the father's birthday on that day itself! Another even gave the kind of lame excuses that he would give 10 years ago. Some people never change! And if one really has to say no, don't be a coward and not answer the phone or return call.

On my drive there, I was thinking and asking God what good could come out of the dinner. One thing for sure was, it was good to separate those who really wanted to come from the rest. We had close, great fellowship. Sitting right in front of Ps Chris Long and the wife, we had great and interesting conversations. I was greatly encouraged by both of them and what's going on around their lives. Was fascinated by stories of what God has been doing in Indonesia and Vietnam. So happy to know Ps Long is still closed to Ps Henry, who will always regard him as a son even when he's moving on from Grace church soon. We even pulled off a successful surprise early birthday celebration for him. I was pleased to see him really enjoyed meeting us back, especially those who brought their spouses.

Oh, btw the food there was awesome! Great Japanese and fresh BBQ food. There's a BBQ pit at the center of every table. You can barbecue different types of meat yourself: beef, fish, oyster, squid, prawn, venison, lamb etc. But I spent more time talking than eating.

Here's a group pic taken from Canna's Facebook album.

Awakening

These days, I find more hope (and learn more) from the dead than the living. Been thinking for a long time to write on Augustine of Hippo. This will be my first attempt. If you're contented with everything you are and everything around you, don't waste your time reading this. You won't understand (not playing reverse psychology here).

Adolf Harnack said Augustine was the greatest man the church has possessed between the apostle Paul and Martin Luther. The publishers of Christian History magazine simply said, "After Jesus and Paul, Augustine of Hippo is the most influential figure in the history of Christianity." Nicknamed the 'Doctor of the Church', his writings entered both the Church and the world with such revolutionary force, that it not just created an epoch in the history of the Church, but determined the course of its history in the West up to the present day. Agostino Trape summarized it like this: "Augustine was...a philosopher, theologian, mystic, and poet in one....He is a philosopher, but not a cold thinker; he is a theologian, but also a master of the spiritual life; he is a mystic, but also a controversialist...". Protestant reformers like Luther and Calvin looked back to Augustine as the inspiration for their capturing of the Biblical Gospel. The Reformation witnessed the triumph of Augustine's doctrine of sovereign grace.

So why Augustine for me? I was reading John Piper's "The Swan is Not Silent - Meditations Sovereign Joy in the Life and Thought of St. Augustine". He introduced Augustine as someone who lived in the tumultuous times between the shifting of whole civilizations. The great Roman empire was deposed before the Germans after 900 years of impenetrable security. St. Jerome wrote, "If Rome can perish, what can be safe?" In the midst of Catholic bishops being tortured to death, his friends quoted to Augustine the words of Jesus, "flee to another city". But he replied courageously, "Let no one dream of holding our ship so cheaply, that the sailors, let alone the Captain should desert her in time of peril." That sentence alone encouraged me enormously in this age when many often 'jump ships' all too easily.

One of Augustine's great books is 'The Confessions of St Augustine'. It is very rare but I truly felt inadequate and 'not ready enough' to read this book. Too brilliant and too wonderful. I've just begun to read parts of it.

The Confessions remains one of the most groundbreaking works of Western literature, THE FIRST Western autobiography (it was said he was the inventor of the autobiographical genre). Here he bared his soul, narrated his life in the style of confessional prayers. A series of 13 books of his spiritual and intellectual journey from childhood to adulthood (even some memories as an infant). He was transparent, honest, telling of his faith struggles, his temptations and sins (lust) very candidly indeed. Also his conflicts and battles with opposing thoughts and teachings of his day and the death of his mother. It is a beautiful work, the way he explored his inner world, how he captured his thoughts, prayers, battles and the awareness of the Almighty. His rhetorical style at its most brilliant.

Someone wrote today's autobiographies are all "about me" but not Augustine's. He searched his soul to know himself not as an end by itself, but as a means to an end. For him, self-reflection enhances God-reflection. He discovered and experienced the intoxication of sovereign joy.

Some excepts:

My God, how I burned with longing to have wings to carry me back to you, away from all earthly things, although I had no idea what you would do with me! For yours is the wisdom.

Personally, I was first captured by Augustine's inner crisis during his early 30s which was life-changing.

There was a small garden attached to the house where we lodged...I now found myself driven by the tumult in my breast to take refuge in this garden, where no one could interrupt that fierce struggle in which I was my own contestant...I was beside myself with madness that would bring me sanity. I was dying a death that would bring me life...I was frantic, overcome by violent anger with myself...

The climax of his inner conflict, and perhaps one of the most important days in history...

I flung myself down beneath a fig tree and gave way to tears which now streamed from my eyes...In my misery I kept crying, "How long shall I go on saying 'tomorrow, tomorrow'? Why not now? Why not make an end of my ugly sins at this moment?"...All at one I heard the singsong voice of a child...'Take it and read, take it and read.'...I stemmed my flood of tears and stood up, telling myself that this could only be a divine command to open my book of Scripture...So I hurried back to the place where Alypius was sitting....seized the book of Paul's epistles and opened it, and in silence I read the first passage on which my eyes fell: "Not in reveling in drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ; spend no more thought on nature and nature's appetites". I had no wish to read more and no need to do so. For in an instant, as I came to the end of the sentence, it was as though the light of confidence flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt dispelled.

Augustine's mother, Monica (who at last found joy after interceded for her son to be saved in Christ) died not long after that. He then chose the path of the monastic, gave up the common life for a life of philosophical leisure. Later he chose Hippo to move his monastic community because they already had a bishop and less chance for him being pressed into the role. But he miscalculated. The church came to him and basically forced him to be the priest and later bishop of Hippo, where he stayed for the rest of his life. At age 36 he was thrust out of a life of contemplation into a life of action. This included clergy, legal and civil matters of his time. He never married. When he died there was no will because all his possessions belonged to the common order. His legacy was his writings, his clergy and monastery.

How do we describe our affection for God? What is the love for God in the life of Augustine?

But what do I love when I love my God?… Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.

Not the end of my writings on Augustine, but I shall end this post with a song. I really like Switchfoot's song "Something More". Jon captured Augustine's confessions in his own simple, contemporary words (I can tell that many SF songs (themes) are influenced by Augustine):

Augustine just woke up with a broken heart
All this time he's never been awake before
At 31 his whole world is question mark
All this time he's never been awake before

Watching dreams that he once had
Feed the flame inside his head
In a quiet desperation of emptiness he says

"There's gotta be something more
Than what I'm living for
I'm crying out to You"

Augustine all his fears keep falling out
All this time he's never been awake before
Finding out his old dreams aren't panning out
All this time he's never been awake before

But he's mad to be alive
And he's dying to be met
In a quiet desperation of the emptiness he says

"There's gotta be something more
Than what I'm living for
I'm crying out to You"

"There's gotta be something more

Than what I've been before

I'm crying out to You"

"Hey, I give it all away
Nothing I was holding back remains
Hey, I give it all away
Looking for the grace of God today"

Hey Doctor! Won't you awake and give your remedy for the Church's ailment today? Like the cure to the Reformed community, give a healthy dose of your doctrine and your spirit to the Church today. We need a different kind of crisis! I know you're not silent...

Last of Phuket Pics

I've loads more pics but it's too tedious to upload and arrange them all. So I've to pick and choose. This is the dilemma of shooting too many pics especially if they're nice. This is my last post on Phuket pics (finally!). I'll upload the rest on my Fotki site soon.

.This was Sherene doing last minute study for diving theory test at the airport, departing for Phuket

.Andrew

.I like this shot of Janielle against the moving background. Found out in this trip that she can be such a poser for shots. Hehe!

.Ps John in action. He can not only hike, climb & dive, but make crepe also! ;)

.This was the spiral staircase at Lawan Residence, where we stayed. I was commenting on how this was a disable-unfriendly place. They had no lift, only spiral stairs after stairs. But no problem for young and active people like us. Btw, we stayed on the 3rd and 4th floor

.The condiments for our fav beef noodle soup. We loved the fish sauce. I think Ps John bought a bottle back. I hope Janielle didn't mistakenly think I was capturing her for the shot. Haha!

.This was when we threw a surprise b'day thingy for Ps John. An early celebration

.I think he was actually surprised. Nice to see his reaction

.All of us at our divers' graduation dinner. We had dinner buffet there at a very affordable price

.The PADI certified open water divers with our cool instructor

.Posing with a metal sculpture of Alien

.The guard always gave us the salute when we walked pass the mall entrance. I just had to have a shot of him

.Nately and Sherene

.To our surprise, they had an indoor shooting cafe at Junceylon. Didn't have to go far away to shoot with real guns

.This was me loading ammo into my gun. I was using Para Ordinance, a 9mm handgun. Chose this because it was the heaviest of the lot, and I liked the silver finishing

.The varied ammunitions

.The guns

.The targets 10 yard away. This pic made them look nearer than they actually were

.Close view of my Para Ordinance

.Posing with our targets. You probably can't see I've more shots in the black zone and less on the white zone. I outscored them. Ngek ngek!

.Samurai wannabe?

.So the question is: did we enter Christin Massage?? WE DID! For Jacky's sake (as you can see hehe!). Too bad I was prohibited to capture any shot in there. Basically, there were many 'gorgeous' (my foot!) masseuses sitting at a see-through room waiting to be picked by customers. We didn't engage their services (of course!)

.

You know who was this guy on the left? He's Glen Gilmore, ex-mayor of Hamilton at New Jersey. If you google his name, you can read about his many accomplishments, including during an anthrax crisis! He stayed at the same place and dived with us on our 1st dive day. Totally friendly and down-to-earth guy. He said we can go look for him in New Jersey anytime. Really nice bloke

.

This was Phuket taken from the clouds on the way back

That's it for my Phuket photos. Didn't want to overwhelm this blog with too many pics (although it's quite a lot already!). I'll post most of them at my Fotki site soon.

I think Phuket tourism should pay me a bit for these promo! Cos I kinda noticed my blog is being googled almost everyday for pics of some places I took...
.

Phuket Pics (Open Sea)

Now for the main focus of the trip...Open Sea DIVING. Unfortunately we didn't have an underwater camera, so no pics inside water :( Maybe next time. Ok here goes...
.

We dived with Eden Divers on our 1st and 3rd dive day. This was Sea of Fantasy I. Triple decks. This pic was copied from www.edendivers.com

.

This was Sea of Fantasy II. Smaller boat

.

This was captured at the pier at Chalong Bay, where we boarded on our boats every day

.I like this shot. The dark clouds about to cover the sun

.Thunderstorm approaching at the sea

.A distant island

.

Sherene & me

.Well, the journey to Phi Phi Island took 3 hours. So we played the game 'Mafia' to kill boredom. This was Janielle accusing Jacky for something while Andrew looked on
.Can you see the evil intentions underneath that 'innocent' smile?
.
Janielle victorious after 'killing' off all unsuspecting civilians
.
The father and daughter of mafias. They actually eliminated everyone in the game. Beware of them!
.
Group shot near Phi Phi Island
.
All of us posing for the camera
.
Just Sherene & me
.
The girls posing for my continuous shots
.
The girls doing their version of Charlie Angels' kick for my continuous shots. This was the last of the frames

.

On the left was Holger Muller, our German tour leader briefing us before one of the dives
.
This was me before doing a giant stride into the deep blue sea
.Ps John, our dive instructor in his usual t-shirt and shorts, about to join us
.
Can you spot us amongst other divers. This was at Phi Phi
.
Sherene on Sea of Fantasy II. Enjoying the wind while waiting to dive
.

My gears amongst others. Jeff's fins (grey-black) were on the floor (thanks man for lending me your booties-fins)
.
Spotted a fisherman boat nearby our boat
.

These were few "souvenirs" I collected underwater. From corals, sea urchins. And with all the toxins from eating seafood, I suffered itchiness for almost a week after the trip!

.

Oh well, since we don't have pics from underwater, at least got some shots from an aquarium. Haha! This was one big eel. But not nearly as big as the muray eel we actually saw underwater

.

Blacktip sharks

.

Nemo

.

Giant lobster

.

Another type of eel

.


Gosh! My blog is now filled with photos! I've at least one more post to go...till my next post.
.