An old friend came calling

An old friend came calling yesterday and today. He had just arrived from KL. A friend of many years and we had some good times together when I visit KL. He is my drinking pal and he had some bad experience in his career.

I pick him up after my day's work and I took him to a mall near Sunway hotel and we start to search for a drinking hole. To my surprise , they do not have a pub or a decent drinking joint in the mall and we have to get out of the mall to look for one. Finally, we walk along the road lining the mall and ended back to his hotel and we managed to drink at one of the restaurant next to the hotel.  Ow! I wonder. What had happen to all the pubs or drinking joints in the Sebarang area.

We sat down and we start to catch up with each other's career. He told me that he has two more years to retirement and he can continue if he wants. He told me that in our working life, we can do ten things right but if we make one mistake, we will be reprimanded or sack. This is what happen to him when he was a top manager at a local bank. He make a bad call on a deal which his boss had approved but they charged him for making the bad call. He was terminated and he took up a court case with the bank. It has been six years now and he told me that if he die, the case will be finished. He advised me to be careful and do not be as careless as him and protect myself. Nobody is going to look after you except yourself.

This is a message that I want to convey to all of you. Don't exceed your authority and if you need to do it, please get the necessary support or approval and be transparent to your management. Put on record if you need to.  It never plan to fail but fail to plan and get yourself in trouble. A clean sheet of paper and one black dot is enough to make the paper dirty and render it worthless and get discarded.

I do not mean that you should do nothing. In china, there is a saying " if you don/t  do anything, nothing can be wrong". This is a survival technique but we should not live or worth with this lame philosophy.  We should do what is right or need to do but do it in a smart or orderly way. I would like to tell you  a story of two mouse.

One day, two mouse was chased by an old cat and each of them ran in a separate hole. The cat could not get to them as the hole was so small, so the cat waited in front of the two hole. The two mouse could not get out because once they get out, the cat would eat them. So, both stay in the hole but there was no food in the holes. Finally, one of the mouse decided to try his luck and make up his guts to run out and make a dash for it. The mouse kept staying in the hole hoping the cat will get up and move away. In conclusion, the mouse that took the courage to get out, survive and the cat choose to stay is the hole , die of hunger. The reason is that the old cat had died while waiting for the mouse to come out. The moral of the story is that have gut to make the different and the challenges in life instead of living in a tortoise shell.

Whatever happen in our life, we take it at its stripe and move forward. Come what may, we just make things happen and amidst all the CYA(over your ass) people around us. Let the sleeping dogs ly while we get on with our life and do what needs to be done.  Walk with our head held high.

Namaste.