Stepping outside the fog

What’s the fog?

It’s the current reality we operate under. All our assumptions, our expectations, our beliefs, our goals or lack of goals.

How do we get out of our fog?

It can happen in a few ways.

The most dramatic is the sudden turnaround, or what I call the St Paul conversion.

This requires a catalyst, a traumatic event that turns your current reality upside down.

That’s what happened to me. For years I lived in a fog of music and guitar, blissfully unaware of other areas of life until a small accident knocked me off my feet, literally.

I ended up in the ER and my life was changed forever, not instantly, but after the trauma had subsided, the moment of reflection began and the change came by itself.

It can be a chance encounter that sparks off your imagination and enables you to see reality in an entirely new way.

This was what happened to a former student, a retired vet.

Raised by a single mother in a poor part of town, one day, he happened to be in a better part of town. At that moment, he resolved that one day, he would live in one of these fine houses. He spent the next thirty years working on that dream and ended up buying a home in an even better part of town.

Sometimes the fog can lift because of a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo.

That’s what happened to a friend of mine.

Dissatisfied with the music career, he started looking for other career alternatives, and he chanced upon a book on how to build real estate riches. That was thirty years ago and now he’s a wealthy man, beyond his wildest dreams.

Some fogs have an expiry date and whether we like it or not, it will lift of its own accord in what I call a day of reckoning.

For example, I see many young people living in a fog of carefree existence. It’s sleep till noon and party all night and if you need some cash, work at the local hamburger joint for a few hours a week.

No thought of the future, no thought of building a worthwhile life.

But like every party, this carefree existence has to come to an end one day. At that point, however, it’s usually too late to regroup and unlike your video games, there’s no restart button either.

And it’s a minimum wage existence from then on.

Either that or holding up a cardboard sign by the roadside.

Finally, some fogs persist indefinitely and stay with you until you die.

I suspect this is what happens to most people.

They grow comfortable with their lot in life. And they stay in that cocoon until they die in its warm embrace.

Which is not a bad thing either.

Unless, of course, if you happen to check out with all your dreams and human potential unfulfilled.

The fog

The biggest impediment to advancement, I’ve found, are the self-imposed realities we put ourselves in.

Yes, we’ve all heard it before. We’ve been told about these boxes of life we put ourselves it, but you don’t really understand what it means until you understand it. (Echoing that nugget of worldly wisdom: the game is not over until it’s over.)

Trust me on this. You have no idea what it means until you experience that realization.

I call it living in a fog.

And it takes a lot to snap out of this fog.

For years I lived in a fog, limited by what I could see, accepting it as the only reality, and unable to see anything else.

In a way, it’s part arrogance, part ignorance, and part refusal to see the wider reality.

But mostly it was ignorance. Like the proverbial frog in a well, I thought I knew everything I had to know about life and about the world.

And how can you tell someone there’s another reality out there when he’s known only one reality? How can you tell a frog the world’s a lot bigger than that well if the only reality he’s ever known is that well?

Yes, it’s not easy, it took me years and for all I know, I may still be living in another well, perhaps a little bigger than the one I was in before.

But at least I’m one step ahead of those who even refuse to acknowledge that they’re living in a well, in the prison of their limited self-imposed reality.

The first step to snapping out of the fog is to acknowledge it, that you’re living in a small reality of your own making and choosing.

And the second step is to step out of it.

The first step requires a gigantic leap of faith and vision, the second, a gigantic show of strength.

And what lies outside the fog?

Sunshine and clarity.

Everything suddenly begins to make sense.

Instead of fumbling and muddling through life, you know exactly where you want to go and you’re able to get there directly.

The Art of Non-Conformity

When I was growing up in Sibu, I was fascinated by America and all it represents.

I remember going to the US embassy once to listen to author Maxine Hong Kingston and just the sight of the stars and stripes fluttering in the wind was enough to make my pulse quicken just a little bit.

Why was I so fascinated by America?

Freedom and the seemingly unlimited potential for self-growth it represents.

And individualism.

While in high school, I listened to Bob Dylan, I read Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman and Thomas Paine and I was inspired by the promise of freedom and individuality in their accounts of America.

But now having lived here for over twenty years, I have seen another America, the one where the moneymen rule.

It seems that contrary to popular belief, conformity is the rule in America.

From pop culture to pop psychology, to how cities are designed, to how movies are made, to how books are written, and yes to classical guitar playing too.

It seems that everyone is following everyone else, and everyone else is following the latest trend and rules and formulas, trying to outdo what everyone else is doing.

For example, I gave up on Hollywood years ago – the same formulaic endings, the same plots and the same feelgood music that seems to follow the action everywhere.

Pop music? Why do you think the best rock and pop music always seem to come from outside America? If you recall the British invasion, well, America had its answer with the Monkees, four Beatles look-alikes, picked through auditions and packaged to sell.

(Okay, I know I’m simplifying here. We mustn’t forget CCR, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, true American originals.)

But I think you get my point. when it gets formulaic, most of the time, it’s because money is involved and that’s the thing, money rules in America. As soon as the moneymen get into the act, their formulas are not far behind.

Hollywood is not about making movies, it’s about packaging products so that they sell. I remember being shocked when I found out that they test different endings on test audiences and then they pick the one that makes the most impact on the test audience.

And in the music industry, if you’re an up-and-coming artist hoping to be discovered, forget it. Artists are not discovered these days, they’re manufactured to conform to what the moneymen think will sell.

When I first started to write my AOV, I was told that I had to follow the standard formula, which is to load it up with many ‘inspiring’ ‘heart-wrenching’ anecdotes and make sure it’s at least 200 pages or a legit publisher will never pick it up. (As it turned out, the AOV is 35 pages long and has no anecdotes and yes, I’m perfectly fine with selling it on my website.)

Which brings me to the Art of Non-Conformity.

I saw the book recently in a bookstore and was immediately drawn to it, for obvious reasons.

But the book turned out to be a dud. First – 244 pages. That says it all. The author followed the over-200-page formula perfectly.

Then you turn the pages and it’s filled with the usual required anecdotes. If there’s one thing that turns me off these days, it’s anecdotal stories – true or made up, they only get in the way of the ideas. These days, I refuse to waste my time wading through all that fluff just to uncover one gem of wisdom, if there’s one there.

And the ideas in the book don’t sound all that non-conformistic to me.

‘Convergence,’ ‘abundance,’ ‘legacy’ – these are all standard code words that apparently you have to use if you want to be accepted as a legit author . It’s obvious the author has done his homework well.

The book reminds me of another book that, also on the strength of the title alone, seemed to portend great stuff .

‘The Art of Effortless Living’ — what a title!

But its length, 256 pages long, is a dead giveaway. (Have I mentioned the over 200-page formula?)

And far from being effortless, the book was not easy to read, 256 pages of tortuous self examination and recriminations. It’s mostly about the author’s personal struggles and her personal demons and how she eventually learned to cope with them.

You see, I have this crazy idea, that books should reflect what they’re trying to say.

For example, a book about how to be beautiful should not have an ugly cover.

A book about effortless living should be effortless to read as well.

A book about non-conformity should strike a non-conformistic tone. (Now, here’s an example of what a true non-conformistic book should be.)

I’ve gone a little off topic here. Back to conformity.

But of course, the moneymen America is not the real America.

Below the apparent sameness, the same formula-driven approach, there’s an undercurrent of true originality and individualism in America, but you’ll have to look hard to see them.

You won’t find them on TV, or in books or in McDonalds and Olive Garden.

American music is not the Monkees or Britney Spears.

American ingenuity is not the iphone.

You’ll have to go to garages where people invent computers and juice up their own cars. And in backyards where they build rockets just for the fun of it. Or in streets where kids make up their own dance moves, or in clubs where they evolve their own brand of music and called it jazz.

Truly a country of opposites, and that’s why I find it so fascinating still.

A famous book

I’ve been gone from Malaysia a long time. I left when I was eighteen and except for a brief period from 1981-83, I’ve been gone pretty much all this time.

Such is the life of an itinerant musician. But all these years, I’ve stayed in close contact with my folks and friends at home. You can say that you can take the man out of Malaysia but you can’t take Malaysia out of him.

It was way back in the early 80’s, on one of my trips home, that I heard about a book that had rocked the local community.

It was an unpublished manuscript that had surfaced from nowhere. The story was that someone had left his computer to be serviced and somehow, someone had copied its contents and now was freely distributing a particular manuscript found among the contents.

Come to think of it, this computer theft story seems to be an extremely popular alibi. If I recall correctly, it’s the same one Edison Chen used too.

But back to the story. It was my brother-in-law who told me about the book. And like everyone else, I was immediately drawn to it. I mean, who wouldn’t stop by and watch a car wreck on the highway?

My brother-in-law, who doesn’t read Chinese himself, told me he had read an English version and knowing that I’m completely illiterate in my own language, told me he would secure an English copy for me.

But the manuscript remained elusive. He never did find a copy, and I forgot all about it until a few years ago, when I discovered that a good friend of mine owned a copy. Somehow I managed to persuade him to let me make a copy.

Only trouble was, it was all in Chinese. So I filed it away, intending to try to get someone to translate it for me, or at the very least, type it out so I can use a translating tool to translate it digitally.

Again, I forgot all about the manuscript until the other day, when I was cleaning out my cabinet. The minute I saw it, I knew I had to google the story. It was not easy but knowing the English name of the author helped.

With some very fine sleuthing, I managed to find the key words that led me to a Chinese blog  and there it was, the entire book, out there for the world to see. And the beauty of it is, because it’s digitized, I could enlist Google’s translating capabilities and read this fascinating document finally, although in a very strange kind of English.

Amazing! I was riveted! As a child growing up in Sibu, I knew that the so-called Sibu upper crust lived a different life style from the rest of us, but I had no idea how different it was.

And then I managed to find out the fate of the author of this notorious manuscript. Apparently he had ran away and after spending time in a few western countries, decided to make his home in Beijing where he died in 2004. Somehow, he had managed to get someone to bring his body back from China and bury him in Sibu.

Again, absolutely stunning stuff. It’s the kind of story that nobody can make up. If you tried to make it up, no one would believe you, because it would sound too farfetched. But as they say, truth is stranger than fiction.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the book is its title “Fairy, Tiger, Dog” (translated as God, Tiger, Dog by Google). A more poetic title, I cannot think of.

The book is mostly gossip, the kind that people with too much time on their hands talk about, sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes to malign someone they don’t like. But isn’t there a saying that goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire?

It points to one thing –  the greed and rapaciousness of human beings. How much is enough for one man? This applies to money as well as to women.

But it seems that when it comes to money, the concept of velocitation applies also. You know the concept of velocitation. If you’ve been cruising at 90 km/h for a while, pretty soon it begins to feel slow, and you want to go to 100, and then to 110 and then to 120.

That’s the basic law of money. The more money you have, the more you want. You will never have too much money. And this is what this sordid tale (or tales) expose, the bottomless pit of greed in human beings. (Is there a lesson here for all you Wall Street conmen too?)

It’s no wonder that the author had to run away under cover of night. But it seems strange to me that the people he wrote about were surprised.  I mean, if you want to do dastardly deeds, be prepared for the inevitable consequences.

That’s one thing people forget, consequences.

If you step over people, if you exploit them, if you do bad things to them, you’ll leave a lot of bad feelings behind, and some day, those bad feelings will come back to bite you. And that is precisely what happened here, maybe not in direct ways, but direct or indirect, it’s all consequences.

I don’t know the whole story but from what I gleaned from the few snippets online, the author felt wronged by society and he hit back with the only weapon he had — his pen, or rather his computer keyboard. Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned. Well, how about the fury of a man scorned?

Anyway, to add a personal touch here, I actually had some contact with the author, not directly, and I’ll have to say he was a bit of a sleaze ball himself.

When I came home from New Zealand, my sister had heard that he was looking for an assistant and decided to apply for the position. He apparently found out that she was my sister and for her first reporting assignment, (yes, you guessed right, he’s a local reporter) asked her to write an article about her famous musician brother,

As a good brother, it then became incumbent upon me to help my sister with the report (translation: I pretty much wrote the whole article for her), and surprise, surprise! the next day, my article appeared, verbatim, in the local paper, attributed to him! And to add insult to injury, he didn’t hire my sister!

And as far as the book goes, I personally know that there’re actual falsehoods in it so I can understand the outrage felt by the community he affected. If I know of one inaccuracy, imagine how many more there could be.

Still, the book is an amazing document. I’m sure some people thought that it had been forgotten, consigned to the dust heap of history, but they didn’t count on the 21^st century with its awesome internet. And worse, with the aid of the Google translation tool, anyone can read it now! (This seems to echo a famous airline slogan, “Now everyone can read juicy stuff.”)

So I guess the moral of the story is, if you want to do dastardly deeds, if you want to ride roughshod over other people, be prepared to suffer the consequences. This apparently applies to the subjects in the book as well as its author. I’m sure, on one of those cold Beijing winter nights, that he must have spent at least a few minutes regretting leaving the warmth and comfort of those hot Malaysian nights.

The Flying Sheik

Catching a cab in Kuala Lumpur is always a hit or miss affair. You never know if you’re going to get an honest driver or be taken for a ride (figuratively as well as literally).

On a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, I had to catch a cab from Mid-Valley Megamall, (my favorite stomping ground in KL) to Sungei Wang, (my second favorite stomping ground in KL).

It was the week before Christmas and the mall was packed. There were literally people and cars everywhere, as far as the eyes could see.

After trying to hail a cab for ten minutes, one finally stopped for me.

Now, one thing I’ve learned in KL is to always ask the driver indirectly if he was going to go by meter or if he was going to charge a flat fare (usually an exorbitant fare).

The way to do this is to ask if he would go where you wanted to go, like “Do you go to Sungei Wang?”

If he says yes, that means he would go by meter, if he gives a number figure like RM40, that means he’s asking a flat fare.

As luck would have it, when I asked him, my cab driver said RM30*. I made a motion as if to decline the ride, and he quickly changed it to RM25.

I was desperate and RM25 sounded much more reasonable, so I got into the cab.

Almost as soon as I got into the cab, he said, “I’ll take the tunnel.”

I was curious so I asked him, “The smart tunnel?”

“No,” he said. “The tunnel.”

As he said this, he made a right turn and there, right in front of us, was an opening in the wall of concrete. We went through it, and almost miraculously, we emerged from the other side into a side road which took us straight into the freeway.

I was amazed at how easily he was able to bypass the huge traffic jam outside the mall, and I asked him, “Do other drivers know about that tunnel?”

“No, that’s a secret way,” he said.

Then he looked at me slyly and said, “I know every road and shortcut in this city. Other people need a GPS but I don’t need a GPS because my GPS is in my brain.”

We sped down the freeway and exited to an unfamiliar street. He was about to make a left turn into another street when he suddenly changed his mind and continued straight on.

I looked back and saw why. There was a police officer hiding further down that street. Even as I looked, I saw a car behind us turn into the street and was immediately stopped by the officer.

The cab driver saw this too and he laughed. “These people are stupid. They want to get a love letter from the policeman.”

Then he added, “I never get a love letter from them because I know where they hide and I know where they put their CCTV cameras.”

He went on. “We call them dogs. Because all they want is money. And the more money they get, the more they want.”

“You see, I’ve been driving this taxi, not five days, not five weeks, not five months but fifteen years. I know every road in KL. I’m the fastest driver in KL. You can drive a Ferrari and you still can’t beat me.”

I was really impressed by now. The guy was truly a virtuoso of the highway. He handled his old beat up Proton Saga as deftly as Heifetz handling his Stradivarius and he did it with almost as much panache and artistry too.

I had to go to the airport the next day and needed a ride there, so I asked him if he went to the airport.

He looked at me and said, “Yes, only cost you RM70 one way. But my regular customers give me RM120. They know I can take them there in half an hour when other people take one hour.”

He’s right there too. KLIA is 75 kilometers from KL and it normally takes about an hour to get there by car.

Part of me was curious about how he was going to cover 75 km in half an hour, but part of me says no, you have a plane to catch, don’t risk it, so I decided not to ask him to take me there, but I wanted his phone number so I asked him, “Can you give me your phone number?”

He gave it to me, then I realized I didn’t know his name so I asked him his name.

He looked at me and said, “They call me the Flying Sheik.”

Now, I know you probably think I’m making all this up.

What are the odds of the world’s foremost authority on virtuosity meeting someone in Kuala Lumpur (of all places), who goes by the unlikely name of “The Flying Sheik,” and who seems to have  mastered every one of the principles enumerated in the said authority’s blockbuster book “The AOV?”

From the principle of economy (taking shortcuts) to the principle of lightness (a traffic citation becomes a love letter) to a healthy disdain (and respect) for rules and authority, this man seems to be the very embodiment of all the qualities I wrote about in the book

But happened it did, everything, exactly as I described above.

In fact, I have the man’s phone number in my phone under the name “F Sheik.”

We reached Sungei Wang in less than 15 minutes, which was nothing short of a miracle, considering the traffic congestion everywhere.

And I’m resolved next time to ask him to take me to the airport. I’m curious as to what unearthly shortcuts he’s gong to take to cover 75 kilometers in half an hour.

 

* RM stands for Ringgit Malaysia, the currency of Malaysia. As of the time of writing, $1.00 USD is roughly equivalent to Rm3.00.

Aesthetics and function

Driving around Sibu is a nightmare.

Not only are the streets cramped and small, but a number of years back, some politicians got together and decided to make the narrow streets even narrower.

The reason? To beautify the city.

So they hired some town planner and put in all these beautiful sidewalks with green trees lining them. The idea was to turn Sibu into a garden city and streamline traffic flow.

Trouble is, someone forgot the loading trucks.

You see, Sibu shops were built back in the days when goods were delivered by trishaws. They didn’t build alleyways back then wide enough for trucks to pass through.

So when trucks came on the scene, they naturally unloaded their goods in the streets in front.

When their old loading zones were turned into sidewalks because of the new beautification efforts, these enterprising truck drivers  just stopped anywhere they could to unload their wares, resulting in perpetually clogged and sometimes impassable streets.

Where’s the law enforcement in all this? I think they understood the truck drivers’ dilemma so they just turn a blind eye.

Aesthetics and function.

It’s probable those smart city planners never visited Sibu or did not understand that a city must not only be beautiful but it must be functional too.

I’ve seen pictures of beautifully designed interiors with no storage spaces in sight. It’s all very well to live in those nice beautiful spaces but where do I put my junk? By that, I mean my books, of course, and the other necessary paraphernalia of life such as clothes and food.

The common solution in many of those super slick modern homes is to hide these ‘ugly’ items of life. With me, however, out of sight usually means out of mind, so I usually prefer my stuff in plain sight, otherwise I forget about them. Plus, of course, I don’t need the hassle of having to open a closet door every time I needed an item like a book or clothes.

Aesthetics to me must always be based on function.

The beauty of a hand made cleaver lies in its functionality. Without that functionality, it’s just a piece of scrap metal. The beauty of a website is in its functionality, the more functional it is, the more beautiful, that’s why you wouldn’t see a single unnecessary element on my other site.

I bring that focus on functionality into my life too. I make sure everything in my life serves a function.

The reason for this focus on functionality is maintenance. I find that the more stuff I have, the more time I waste maintaining them. Even a little display ornament needs the occasional dusting and cleaning. So I stay away from anything that serves no useful function other than to ‘beautify’ the place.

Coming back to the cramped streets of Sibu, the city planners should have required that all the shops modernize and renovate their back ends to allow access to loading trucks. This way, the streets would be free of loading and unloading trucks, allowing easy access for cars and pedestrians.

But no, these geniuses did what politicians do best, which is to create a mess where there was none, and leave the citizenry (and truck drivers) to deal with it as best as they can.

In a battle between functionality and aesthetics, functionality always triumphs, but somehow the inevitable make-shift solutions are never very aesthetic.

Desperately seeking number 14

I must confess I have an obsessive streak in me. Take my fascination last summer with #14.

What’s #14, you might ask?

It’s a local Sarawak brand of hand forged iron tools, specifically knives – parangs (machetes) and cleavers.

It all started when I went looking for a parang to open up coconuts. (I’m a firm believer in the health properties of coconuts.)

I went to downtown Sibu, Market Street, to be precise, and the first hardware store I walked into, the storeowner handed me a fearsome looking object and said, “You want one of these, it’s a number 14.”

I had no idea what was #14 so he enlightened me. Apparently, it’s some ironworks place in Kuching and they specialize in forging knives from springs – the stuff that’s in the shock absorbers of trucks.

I bought the parang and was soon opening up one coconut after another. It really was an exceptional tool.

And then it occurred to me. Do they make cleavers as well? I have fond memories of my mother’s old cleaver (handmade by one of my cousins) and had wanted to get one of those for years.

So I went back to the store and the man said no, they don’t have #14 cleavers because, as he said, they don’t make them. They only make parangs.

Undaunted, I tried other hardware stores. I found a lot of handmade cleavers, but none made by #14.

As it so happened, I went to Kuching the next week and guess what I was doing for most of my trip, going from one hardware store to another, looking for #14.

No luck. I did find out where the factory was located, somewhere in Bintawa, but my obsession only went so far. No side trips to Bintawa for me.

And as it so happened again, I took another trip out of town the next week, to the town, or should I say, village, where I grew up, Kanowit.

I was walking down the main bazaar, close to where I used to loiter in my pre-Sibu days, when I noticed a hardware store, barely five doors down from where I lived as a boy.

Out of curiosity, I went into the store and asked the lady behind the counter if she had a #14 cleaver. To my amazement, she said yes, and produced not one but six of them.

Success finally. Mission accomplished.

Needless to say, it was a happy camper who left the store clutching four of those cleavers.

The object of my desire

The famous logo

So back in Texas, with my prized possessions, I went to the local supermarket to get a coconut, one of those from a Central American country.

Trying to get the coconut open was another story entirely. I had never known that a coconut shell can be so hard. It literally became a battle of spring cleaver versus hard coconut shell. In the end, spring cleaver won, but the flesh turned out to be almost as hard as the shell. Since I didn’t want to have a battle of teeth versus hard coconut flesh (knowing what the outcome was going to be), the whole fruit ended up in the trash.

So what happened to the #14 cleaver?

Sitting patiently in my kitchen drawer, happily rusting away. Occasionally, I still take it out to admire its workmanship, and the love and passion that went into its fashioning.

It takes two to tango

This is a continuation of my previous post, and expands on one of the points I raised in that post.

In a perfect world, learning occurs when a teacher imparts knowledge and a student receives that knowledge.

That’s all there is to it.

For years, this was the unwritten contract between teacher and student.

And teachers were especially wary of students who were not ready for instructions.

Martial arts lore is replete with stories of masters who would not accept students until they knew the student was ready.

I read about a martial arts teacher in Beijing who made a student exercise every day with him for three years (at a distance) before he would accept him as a student.

The great piano pedagogue Leschetitzky almost made Paderewski jump off a second story building to test his sincerity and eagerness to learn before he would accept him as a student.

But we live in a very imperfect world.

Being a teacher these days means many other things.

Now, we’re expected to become cheerleader, counselor, entertainer, babysitter, magician, parent, mentor, on top of our duties as ‘teacher.’

And the minute we assume the teacher mantle, we also become miracle workers – we’re expected to make students learn, no matter what.

And if students show no interest in learning, it’s our fault.

If they don’t do their homework, it’s our fault.

If they have low test scores, it’s our fault.

In other words, we teachers are one hundred percent guilty of any failings in the student’s education.

The student is blameless, the parents are blameless. The student bears no responsibility towards his own learning. The parents bear no responsibility towards their children’s education.

I’m not sure how and when this shift in perception of the teacher’s duties took place.

But suddenly we’re not just charged with imparting knowledge, we’re also charged with changing mindsets, we’re charged with making student receptive to our teaching.

And this is the crux of the problem.

That’s really not our job description.

That’s the parent’s job. That’s the parent’s responsibility.

It’s the job of parents to show an active interest in their child’s education, to make sure that homework is done, to provide a good learning environment at home, to encourage them, motivate them, fire up their ambitions.

In other words, it’s the job of parents to mentor their own children and make them receptive to learning.

If parents do this and step up to their responsibilities as parents, I guarantee test scores will go up across the board.

This is not rocket science, it’s just common sense.

Here’s a little anecdotal example from my own experience.

I went to school in a third world country. Classroom size was, on the average, 40 students per class.

And I remember some of the teachers were not the most enthusiastic and inspiring of teachers.

There was the science teacher whose idea of teaching was to copy endless notes on the chalkboard and we had to copy them down by hand. During tests, we had to memorize all these notes and regurgitate them.

There was the history teacher whose idea of teaching was to read from the textbook. He was so lazy, he didn’t even bother to read the book himself. Instead he would get one student after another to read it for him.

Not the most inspiring of situations. No fancy teaching techniques, no smart boards.

Just teacher, student, textbook, and chalkboard.

But did we learn?

As one famous politician is fond of saying, you betcha!

Because we were all fired up to learn. Yes, we still clowned around in class, but when the time came for testing and exams, we all knew we had to get serious.

The secret was expectations. Expectations from parents mostly.

If you didn’t do well, the shame you experience was enough to force you to study harder the next time. I remember having to show my ‘report card’ to my parents every term end. If the test scores were bad, it was more a matter of personal shame than any reprimand you could get from them.

Modern educators might shudder at the description I just gave.

But the proof is in the pudding.

Where are all these extremely ‘disadvantaged’ students now? Flung all across the globe, from New Zealand to Australia to Malaysia to Canada to the USA.

Engineers, doctors, lawyers, businessmen, accountants, bankers, teachers, real estate developers, and yes, even a guitar professor in South Texas.

As I wrote earlier, teaching is a two way street.

For the transfer of knowledge to take place, the teacher must be willing and able to impart knowledge and the student to receive it.

And if the student is ready and receptive, learning will take place, even under the most adverse conditions.

A commentary on the Tavis Smiley/Michelle Rhee interview on PBS

Being a teacher is a thankless task.

Students have little respect for you, administration thinks you’re shirking your duties and are constantly evaluating you, and politicians use you as a punching bag.

Take the recent appearance of Michelle Rhee on Tavis Smiley.

Her basic message was simple:

If students are not doing well, blame the teachers (and their unions).

It’s the same old refrain that bureaucrats have been making for years. As a teacher, I’m frankly sick and tired of hearing it.

In all these debates about education, one point seems to be consistently missed.

Learning is a two way street between teacher and student.

It can only occur when the teacher is ready to impart knowledge and  the student receptive to that knowledge.

The great Bruce Lee used to tell a story about a learned man who went to a Zen teacher to learn about Zen. As the teacher began to explain things, the man interrupted him frequently with remarks like, “Oh, yes, we have that too…”

Finally the Zen teacher stopped talking and began to serve tea to the learned man. He poured tea until the cup was full, and then kept pouring until it overflowed.

“Enough!” the learned man interrupted, “The cup is full. No more can go into it!”

“Indeed, I see,” answered the Zen teacher, “If you do not first empty the cup, how can you taste my cup of tea?”

That sums up the teachers’ quandary.

To be able to impart knowledge to students, the student must be empty and open.

If the student has already closed his/her mind, no amount of coaxing, cajoling, and teaching gimmicks will make the student learn.

But these days, it’s fashionable to blame teachers for all the failings in our school systems.

When schools fail and test scores are low, blame the teachers. Fire them, make them jump through more hoops, subject them to endless evaluations, require them to keep copious records of students’ progress.

Most educators in the trenches know that this is just so much smoke and mirrors. Mere posturing and theater. Administrators trying to look busy and engaged in their jobs.

Because despite these fancy measures, standards have continued to decline.

I say it’s time for a new approach.

And that approach is to work on the receiving side – to open up students and make them more receptive to learning.  To take the lids off their cups so teachers can pour more tea of knowledge into them again.

Let me qualify that by saying that no, I’m not suggesting that all teachers are blameless. Good teachers are few and far in between, just as good doctors are few and far in between, just as good pastors are few and far in between. (Is there any profession or vocation that does not have their share of deadwood?)

But learning can take place even when the quality of the knowledge that is being poured into the cups is sub par (I can attest to that, having had my share of disengaged and disinterested teachers in my life), just as healing can take place even under mediocre doctors, perhaps just not as fast.

Andrei Aleinikov is a leading learning and creativity expert. In his book, Mega Creativity, he devoted a whole chapter on finding out the essence of things. Luckily for us, he’s helped us define the essence of learning.

Here’re the questions he asked to arrive at his definition. (I’m paraphrasing a little here.)

Will learning take place if we take away politicians and bureaucrats? The answer is yes, we don’t need bureaucrats and politicians for learning to tale place.

Will learning take place if we take away school buildings? The answer is yes, we don’t need buildings for learning to take place.

Will learning take place if we take away textbooks? The answer is yes, we don’t need textbooks for learning to take place.

Will learning take place if we take away computers and smart boards? The answer is yes, learning will take place without computers and other modern gadgetry.

Will learning take place if we take away teachers? The answer is no, learning will not take place if we take away teachers.

Will learning take place if we take away students? The answer is no, learning will not take place if we take away students.

So the essence of learning can be reduced to two things – students and teachers. Everything else is dispensable.

It’s time we get back to the basics of learning.

We don’t need more politicians to tell us what to do. We don’t need more bureaucrats to tell us how to teach. And yes, we don’t even need more computers and smart boards to help students learn better.

All we need are receptive students and for that, the responsibility lies squarely on the parents.

Parents have to get involved. They have to take an active interest in their children’s education. They have to encourage and motivate their children to learn, and provide a good environment at home for that learning to take place.

Until that happens, students will continue to be disinterested in learning and test scores will continue to be low.

To quote another old saying, “You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.” You can bring a child to school but you can’t make him/her learn.

Back to the Tavis Smiley/Michelle Rhee interview.

Until October of 2010, Ms. Rhee was the Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. Soon after she left the school district, she formed a new student advocacy group, Students First.

One of the stated goals of the organization is to recruit one million members and raise $1 billion dollars in five years. (Yes, that’s $1 billion.)

This is an inordinately large amount which Tavis Smiley was quick to point out.

He asked her, does this amount suggest that she believes that lack of money is the problem for our schools?

To which Rhee provided a rather startling answer, the money is not going to schools or students. Instead, it will be used to pay lobbyists.

According to her, teachers’ unions and the AFT are spending $500 million a year on lobbyists, so if Students First wants to counteract their efforts, it has to spend at least $200 million a year on lobbyists too.

Brilliant solution! Only in America.

To put students first, pay $1 billion to lobbyists.

I’m sure test scores across the country will skyrocket with that bold and visionary move.

People Can Count

When I first discovered Choon Seng coffee shop in Sibu a few years ago, I was astonished.

It was full almost every time I went there. In fact, most of the time, you had to wait around for people to leave to find a table.

And Sunday mornings? Forget it, you wouldn’t be able to find a table at all.

It got me thinking.

Coffee shops are a dime a dozen in Sibu, and if you were to look around, most of them only have a few customers at any one time.

What’s the secret to Choon Seng’s success?

To me it’s obvious –  it’s their coffee.

But there’s no secret to coffee making. All you have to do is mix some coffee powder with hot water (and for me, condensed milk) and you have a good cup of coffee.

What’s so special abut Choon Seng’s coffee?

It comes down to four words.

Generous helpings of ingredients.

They don’t stinge on their coffee, nor do they stinge on their milk. You can see them making it right in front of you. Generous scoops of coffee powder and generous spoonfuls of milk.

And so I guess the next question is.

So why don’t others do the same? Why can’t they see that there’s no secret to a good thriving coffee business? All you have to do is be generous with your ingredients and people will keep on coming back.

I have a good friend in Kuala Lumpur. We’ll call him Lee. Lee is a superb businessman but more than that, he’s one of the most genuine people I know. He owns a thriving music business and every time I meet him in Kuala Lumpur, he seems to have bought a new car. (No, this is not to suggest he’s a spend drift, it’s to underscore his business success.)

So one day, I asked him his secret.

And his answer was simple: “People can count.”

This means, don’t try to cheat your customers or your workers. They’re not stupid; they know when they’re being taken. (Is there a lesson here somewhere for our friends at Air Asia?)

If they’re customers, they won’t come back, and if they’re workers, they’ll be looking around for another job.

Coming back to coffee making again, I was at a Thai restaurant here once, in Corpus Christi, Texas, and as usual, I had to order my iced coffee.

When it came, it was the worst coffee I’d ever tasted. Just a faint hint of coffee and milk, that was it. It was mostly just water and ice.

So I asked the waitress, “Who made this coffee?”

When she said she did it herself, I was flabbergasted, I asked her again, “Do you drink coffee?”

She said no.

So I said something to this effect (something that I know my good friend Lee probably would never say), I said. “How can you make coffee if you don’t drink it yourself?” (Implying, how are you supposed to know what coffee should taste like if you don’t drink it yourself?)

Almost immediately, I was sorry I said that, from the expression on her face.

And needless to say, I never went back to the place.

Back to Choon Seng’s coffee. You can feel the effort, the passion behind the coffee. You can feel the love, the care. You know that the people making it obviously drink coffee and they know what it should taste like.

And that’s why people keep on going back.

So I guess if I were to identify one key element in building a good coffee shop business, it’s to paraphrase Lee: “People can taste.”