Love(s) of our Life?

I love my father and my mother. I love my brother and my sister. I love my son and my daughter. I love my dog and my cat. I love football and I love billiards.

Why won’t I love Girl A and Girl B?

Love is an instinct, emotional and uncontrollable. Instinctively, we love more than one thing, more than one person.

But social norms are such that while all other loving is ok, we cannot have more than one love in the romantic sense.

Hence, some have more than one love in their hearts, they know and accept it, but they can’t admit it. A small group of people, the enlightened ones, are in this category.

Some have more than one love in their hearts, they know it, but they won’t accept it, let alone admit it. They feel guilty and struggle within their hearts, internally. These are the ones who swear there is no such thing as liking or loving more than one person. Most people are in this category.

Of course, there are others who have more than one love, they know and accept it, and they don’t resist it. They are the ones with extra-spousal relationships, keep mistresses, etc.

The fact is, the first two categories of loving are real, instinctive, and cannot be helped, like it or not. The third category is controllable, hence not acceptable.

But accepting the first and second categories too readily can also be dangerous, as they can easily slip into the third, once self-discipline goes and resistance crumbles.

For those feeling terrible about feeling in love with more than one person, you are in the second category. But as long as you understand the point, bring yourself into the first category and stay disciplined, there is no need to feel bad.

The Truth about Workspouse

The idea of a workspouse is an interesting one. It refers to a very close colleague, one whom you share your life with, one who has an intuitive understanding of the pressures, interactions, personalities and underlying narratives of the workplace. It involves intimacy in a non-sexual, non-romantic way.

Really? The argument is almost an extension of whether men and women can just be friends.

The idea alone reassures some that the relationships they are having at work are normal, accepted, that there’s nothing wrong with it.

Some even say it increases productivity at work, making the workplace a more exciting place to go to.

But there is no scientific evidence for workspouses. Whether it is indeed a different construct, meaningfully different from a romantic relationship, we don’t know. In theory and in words, there can be such a thing. In real life and emotional terms, it may not exist.

21st century parity between men and women at work probably makes such relationships more plausible than in the past, when men usually were the bosses and women the subordinates, the subservient ones. Parity gives rise to peers – in the full sense of the word: equals, i.e. nothing higher or lower, nothing more or less.

But then, I think workspouse is just a way of side-tracking the fact that people like, or get attracted to, more than one person.

There is a threshold of liking and attraction: above that threshold, you are attracted. Below that threshold, you are not attracted. There is always more than one person above the threshold in any individual’s life. The spouse is, for sure. The workspouse too, as well as several or many other friends of the opposite sex.

The point is, human beings always like more than one person.

And dare I say, some may even love more than one person, although the threshold for love is far higher than the threshold for like.

But this is not socially acceptable to say. That’s why no one openly says or admits it.

Workspouse is merely a more acceptable way to explain the fact that one can like, or indeed love, more than just his or her spouse.

So yes, workspouses do exist. But it is hardly true that there is no romance involved.

Who works hard?

Everybody hopes that somebody tells THE BOSS that they are working hard, but nobody would tell THE BOSS that anybody is working hard. So it ends up THE BOSS does not know that anybody is working hard, or THE BOSS thinks that everybody is not working hard.

To stay or to quit?

Decisions, decisions, decisions. I hate making them.

The time has come for me to ask myself seriously, to stay or to quit.

Why stay:

• Good salary that comfortably funds my car, overseas trips and other material expenses.
• Stability.
• Good prospects with increasingly lesser competition, it seems.
• Repay superior's time and faith.
• Free year of course-cum-holiday overseas. Another free year of course-cum holiday several years down the road.
• Work-life balance, close to absent now, may not be better elsewhere.

Why quit:

• If need to start elsewhere, start young rather than wait till middle age.
• If need to suffer pay cut, suffer young rather than wait till middle age. May well be able to make back the difference anyway.
• Pursue interest in field of psychology. Still relatively current now, whereas if wait till middle age will no longer be.
• Prospects not guaranteed, especially with new structures.
• Not enough distinction between the average-good and the better-good.
• Get back at superior for unwarranted bad treatment.
• Leave with a good reputation, to avoid falling from grace in a few years' to come when limited abilty shows through.

Wish I could be how I was once upon a time, deliberately guided by emotions and not rationality, doing what I like to do rather than what I should do, being selfish and less thoughtful of others and not being bothered by it, making decisions based on the now rather than consider twenty thousand years down the road.

Sigh, in sum, being a boy and not an adult.

What's wrong with Blogger?

Something's wrong. Put up a new post but it doesn't show on the main page. Strange. Such times make me wonder whether it's just me being a dinosaur or there's really something wrong with the system.

My travels...

There are many things I could not enjoy when I was young and so I grew up loving them. KFC and MacDonald's are the more trivial ones. I guess what I have to be satisfied with are the number of countries I've visited. It may not compare to some others in my age, especially the more established and well off ones, but I'm content and satisfied. Just to take stock:

1994: Russia (St Petersburg, Moscow), Latvia, Prague.
1996: Brunei.
1997: England.
1998: England, Wales, France, Egypt.
1999: England, Wales, Scotland, USA (New York, Philadelphia, Boston).
2000: England, Scotland, Italy, Switzerland.
2001: England, Australia (Adelaide).
2002: Thailand, Hong Kong.
2003: Maldives.
2004: New Zealand.
2005: Denmark, England.
2006: Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand, Australia (Canberra, Perth, Brisbane), Vietnam, India, Greece.
2007: Thailand, Israel.

... and Malaysia since I was young, and periodic trips now and then to Genting, etc.

The places I want to go to next:
Brazil - the samba girls.
Holland - the drugs.
China - the Great Wall.
Greenland/the Antartica - to prove my manhood.
Hawaii - just curious.
Kenya - the animals, to clock time in Africa.
Iraq/Afghanistan - the war/conflict.