My time is up (3): 苍狗
Alright it’s time for the third post, on 世态炎凉 (realities of life?).
Don’t really know how to translate that, I think you should just google it. This post will be a lot more Chinese because… like I always say, English is a emotionally-deficient language.
Gunakanlah bahasa ibunda, sebab bahasa jiwa bangsa. I tak nak jadi Mat Salleh.
Looking at how things are developing in Malaysia, I guess there are certain things that you could observe as part of human nature.
Let’s take the former ruling coalition, the Barisan Nasional as an example. In this coalition, UMNO is like a dai-lo and there are several smaller parties serving this dai-lo, as if they could not survive on their own. No matter how much humiliation they had to endure, because of the huge benefits they manage to reap off by acceding to UMNO’s incessant demands, they continue lick their dai-lo’s boots.
Suddenly post-GE14, Barisan Nasional lost the elections and dai-lo UMNO no longer was able to keep its grip on the huge amounts of resources it used to have as a ruling party. Suddenly you see the Chinese proverb 树倒猢狲散 (tree fall, monkeys run away) come to life. Very quickly you see Barisan Nasional component parties leaving the coalition, and some UMNO members actually resigned from the party to join the Pakatan Harapan, the new ruling coalition. To make things worse, one of the remaining component parties (who ironically has no elected seats at all this GE14) even suggested to boot UMNO out of the Barisan Nasional. 他妈的自己没有议席，一直依附巫统，今天敢讲这种话，原来这就叫做“落井下石” (throwing rocks down the well, when you’re stuck down there)。
I guess the newscaster below is right: 因利益而结合的，肯定也会因利益而离去。
Okay so what’s the point here?
很简单，西瓜偎大边咯。When you choose watermelon you always choose the bigger side right:
Similarly in life, we tend to stick to people who are more influential/resourceful.
那问题就来了，一旦你失势之后怎么办？会不会突然间没有人鸟你了？
事实还真的是如此，在朝有势的时候还真是犹如众星拱月般。
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It is natural for people to feel “close” together, because honestly it is convenient to do so. When you eat/play/study/shit/club together every single day, unless you choose to be a hermit and “phantom” yourself (which always make me wonder why do you even apply to stay in a Hall in the first place) it is virtually impossible to not have little cliques of friends around you. Some even become couples, and then choose to break up after a while, 验证了 “don’t shit where you eat” 的真理。
After six years of communal living in NUS, my definition of FRIENDS is quite simple—someone who I would invite for my wedding. I could mingle with the whole damned world, and probably everyone would turn up at my wake one day (with huge full page colour obituaries—my simple life goals), but it is important to be able to identify who matters more to you and vice versa. If your relationship is solely based on 走咧吃饭咧 / 借我notes咧 / 我这一题不会做tolong我咧 / 可以载我去UTown吗 / 明晚几点meeting啊 then I think it is pretty clear that once you leave this communal environment your relationship won’t go anywhere further.
And I think it is even more evident when you’re serving in some leadership position, because you take on new roles as part of your relationships with your peers. Right now I could classify these relationships into a few categories, like Senior/Junior, Leader/Follower, Neighbours, Colleagues, Teammates, Makan buddies, FWBs, etc. Each of these types of relationships requires different ways of managing and it is definitely difficult when they exist at the same time between you and another person. Well I guess being exposed to such environments is a good thing; at least you know how to deal with it in the workplace next time.
在民主的体制中总是会有竞争，以少数服从多数作为原则，但是并非所有人都会对结果感到满意，事实上你也无法透过民主体制达到百分之百的认同。在这种情况下，占少数的一方采取消极的做法是否明智呢？或许这种看法见仁见智，但是国初的老师以前有说过：“你要改变体制，就应该打进体制，从内改变它，而不是采取消极手段”。在民主意识的熏陶下，我们也实在没办法学人家丢手榴弹搞革命，那何不发挥民主的特点，勇敢发表自己的看法，大家集思广益为同学谋福祉呢？
也罢，反正道不同不相为谋。 #点到为止
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Okay I digressed. Back to the story of sticking your butt around people who appear influential. So it is vital to see who your true friends are, because if they are unwilling to go through thick and thin with you then I don’t think they deserve your best at all.
意气风发又如何，最后还不是芸芸众生之一员？
Tang Dynasty 杜甫 got this poem called 《可叹》, quite long, but damn descriptive. It’s about this damn hardworking and smart but super poor fella called 王季友 who sold slippers for a living while mugging. He was so poor that even the mice and birds didn’t want to enter his house and the wife ran away from home (#bitch), so he spent his free time (because no more wife already=no more commitments haha) studying even harder. Then he became a scholar, and became HIGH SES, so the wife returned home (#bitch).
天上浮云如白衣，斯须改变如苍狗。
Clouds may be shaped like a nice white shirt now,
it might just look like a grey dog later.
Spend your time with the right people. You only have this four years left before you step into the real world.
