"Prayer Doesn't Work"?

I've shared one response (with a philosophical angle) earlier. Here's a somewhat more devotionally-oriented one with a familiar metaphor: Prayer is like working out.

You never run merely a few rounds (or lift a couple of weights) on an ad-hoc basis every few weeks or so and expect 'results'. Good health, stamina and physique is the result of consistent and disciplined exercise. Without a sustained regime, exercise will not 'work'.

Ditto with prayer. People who diss it (not unlike those who can't say no to third helpings and but always saying no to exercise) are usually those who hardly do it.

So try talking to God more. About any-everything you care for, about any-everyone you love or have trouble loving. Do it hour in hour out, in super times and shite times.

Then you'll see stuff happening. Then your eyes will bask in light (Matt 6:22).

For Whom the Screen Plays

The Megah Medical Specialist Center where I take my kids and wife for treatment is a nice place. Efficient. Squeaky clean. Top doctors. A comfortable waiting area - with a nice flat-screen TV equipped with ASTRO cable.

But guess what channel is always playing? TV3. Apparently Malay dramas come on between 6pm and 8pm, about the same time parents and patients start filling up the waiting area.

Now here's the thing: Almost none of the waiting parents are watching this drama. We'd much prefer to watch Discovery Channel or Asian Food Channel or something else.

Nobody likes to watch the Malay drama. And yet nothing but the Malay drama is on.

They obviously haven't asked the question of the year: For whom, in the name of every injection ever given, is the flat-screen for? The paying clients or the nurses holding the remote control?

Planet Earth

Most people think of Michael Jackson as a great singer/dancer. Not many recognise him as a poet. Planet Earth is a poem inserted towards the end of the special edition of his Dangerous album:

Planet Earth, my home, my place
A capricious anomaly in the sea of space
Planet Earth are you just
Floating by, a cloud of dust
A minor globe, about to bust
A piece of metal bound to rust
A speck of matter in a mindless void
A lonely spaceship, a large asteroid

Cold as a rock without a hue
Held together with a bit of glue
Something tells me this isn't true
You are my sweetheart soft and blue
Do you care, have you a part
In the deepest emotions of my own heart
Tender with breezes caressing and whole
Alive with music, haunting my soul.

In my veins I've felt the mystery
Of corridors of time, books of hisotry
Life songs of ages throbbing in my blood
Have danced the rhythm of the tide and flood
Your misty clouds, your electric storm
Were turbulent tempests in my own form
I've licked the salt, the bitter, the sweet
Of every encounter, of passion, of heat
Your riotous color, your fragrance, your taste
Have thrilled my senses beyond all haste
In your beuaty, I've known the how
Of timeless bliss, this moment of now

Planet Earth are you just
Floating by, a cloud of dust
A minor globe, about to bust
A piece of metal bound to rust
A speck of matter in a mindless void
A lonely spacship, a large asteroid
Cold as a rock without a hue
Held together with a bit of glue
Something tells me this isn't true
You are my sweetheart gentle and blue
Do you care, have you a part
In the deepest emotions of my own heart
Tender with breezes caressing and whole
Alive with music, haunting my soul.
Planet Earth, gentle and blue
With all my heart, I love you

Leadership 1.0

420+ hits in less than two days? I must've done something right...

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Baby Parking

TESCO's at The Curve probably isn't the only place in the Klang Valley that has parent-with-babies' parking, but it's certainly the first place where an attendant, seeing me park my car quite a distance from the entrance, approached me to tell me of the special lots.

What can I say? I'll have to take Melody out more often (grin).

Studying Tips

Something I cooked up for student orientation week...

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Learning Languages

If I recall correctly, there are two 'schools of thought' when it comes to learning new language.

1. Learn all the units first (vowels, consonants, structure, etc.) - notice how this usually requires the teacher to provide instruction in the language the students can understand?

2. Speak it(!) and pick up the structure as you go along - the best language teachers, IMO, conduct lessons primarily in the language they're teaching and students have to 'grope' their way into the conversation (with some guidance, of course)

The first's deductive, the other's inductive. Nowadays, the latter's the way to go. Thus my being in favour of School No.2 and so I'm glad there's a site like 101Languages which lists out basic phrases.

What we use and 'figure out', we learn.

The Holographic Brain and the Tyranny of the One Thought

Some 'left-over' jottings from my notes:

• If a child is good at music we call her 'talented'; if she's good at Languages or Maths, we call her 'smart' - what does this show about assumptions regarding the nature of intelligence? (Howard Gardner)
  
• The most natural development of the human brain: PLAY
  
• "What if we could forget history?" (Colin James, on the need to put aside past bitterness, conflict, etc.)
  
• The brain thinks/performs holographically i.e. all parts of the brain 'sees' the same thing and all parts of the brain work 'at' the same thing, the left/right-brain divide is mistaken (Mark Treadwell)
  
• "Fundamentalism is the tyranny of the One Thought or the Only Way" (Colin James)
  
• "Marriage is a somatically intelligent decision" (Colin James, referring to the triump of 'gut-feeling' over analytically feeling and how if couples used the latter when thinking about getting married they probably never would)
  
• Humour in the workplace promotes creativity (David Koutsoukis)
  
• "Let's just say he wasn't anorexically challenge" (Colin James)
  
• "We need neoteny" (Glenn Capelli)

Free (again)

"One strategy for making an impression with customers, especially when rivals insist on nickel-and-diming them, is to give away something that other companies charge for - or wouldn't think of offering in the first place.

The investment can be small; the returns can be priceless. A little generosity can go a long way." (Taylor & LaBarre, Mavericks at Work)

I concur.

ICOT pics

They're up.