Mind and beholder

The life is only one life. The happiness is only in the mind of the beholder, so as the sadness. By beginning to think that happiness exists in all form of life, surely one can find it within.

There are a few black and white pictures that can be interpreted in at least 2 ways. I've seen one; an old woman and a young woman. Looking at the picture and putting different perspectives out of it, had me looking at two dissimilar images.

The conclusion of this idea is that life is just about putting perspective and be able to see it. There are thousands of ways to see things as good or bad and to create and understand reasons of it happening. Sometimes the environment of someone living while bring brought up will instill a certain value. Being defensive, being bossy or even greedy in the later life could have been affected by this simple thing, rule of the family, be it from father or mother or extended family such as grandparents.

However, sometimes the authority could have forgotten that environment is still the main influential aspect of one life. I had an experience working with a few lecturers from Middle East. One of them was from a country that had experiences of constant war with their neighbor. When she was very keen in getting something, she would want it her way even if it is against the rules. She kept most of the reagents or equipments for herself as if it was not to be shared or she can’t have it again if it finish. My point is that she stockpiles everything, just like in case there is a war. Based on my reading and close encounter, their race is strong headed. Sometimes wasn’t easy to make thing go smoothly. My analyzed will say that her cultures and war experiences and family up bringing made who she was, just an assumption on my part.

But then, it is true to most people that I’ve met from Middle East, only eagerness will tell if they were from which country or had they had previous war experiences or lost of relatives in the war. You wouldn’t believe me if I said that if you meet a man with good English and asking you for marriage or on being friend on first of second meeting, they probably from Maghreb. One of many experiences was that they probably used Islam as a mask while asking for your phone number. Do not be puzzle because this country is not under any war.

I had a student from Yemen. Yes, he was strong headed in his way. Wanted to finish his study and yet rarely made his way to the laboratory. I had to peel his strong skin of one by one before getting my way and made him trust me. That was a story of monitoring PhD student while you only had MSc. I just assume that it was hard for him to be guided by a woman.

As a scientific officer previously, I had my tight schedule in between endless meetings, making purchases, doing my own researches and monitoring undergraduates and postgraduates under my department. Thus, in the first few months I had to make at least 4 to 5 meetings every week with him after 5 p.m in the lab which sometimes seems like hours just to teach him reading the literature reviews and understanding the scientific English. This is because if his supervisor asked him to make by himself, it will be a copy of an article in the internet. That’s one of the things that he and a few others that I knew were noticed doing, copy and paste and the supervisor will do the rest correcting the paper. And that meetings were not without fighting and shouting with each other. Believe me; I had to shout my voice out as I think, mentaly, he was not in the position to take direction. And sometimes I had to use the ‘leverage’, as some motivational speaker will put it, just to make he agreed with me and do as I said.

Anyhow, at last his paper was published in a good journal, though he’s PhD was still not granted due to some internal politics in the small scientific community in USM and in Malaysia. Probably soon, I guess as the green light is there, just sometime even the son of soil (Malay, I mean) will try to get his percentage whenever he is in the position as a ‘gold’ keeper, no pun intended. I will try to say at least one or two words of this guy to try to reach the moon by rocket but without gas. Maybe one or two years later, I don’t think he will be long in his journey.

Talking about son of the soil, another ‘gold’ keeper, is having hard time at the moment after I think 5 or 6 years in the position of breaking every law by putting himself above law (law of administration, mind you). Human easily forget that we’re only human, we still have God looking after us.