Blogs ‘R’ Alex

“Ring!” goes my phone on a Friday evening, and it was TJ asking me to represent the club and attend a leadership talk by some CEO that MMU Student Affairs Division had invited. By that time, I was going on the 4th day since I contracted the flu (wonder who infected me?!!) and I was not at all keen to go. Reasons I changed my mind: I was bored and I had already slept for half the day ;P.

So, off I went as the unofficial “ambassador” for the Aikido club to some talk that I had completely no idea of in the first place. Once I reached there, I went “Yikes!” for everyone was wearing super-formal and all I was wearing was a T-shirt and pants. Luckily, I brought my jacket along and managed to improvise. Muahahaha :D.

So, the ball kicked off at half-past eight, and Mr. Man-of-Mystery arrived… a certain Dato Shazalli Ramly, recently appointed CEO of Celcom, previously CEO of ntv7, worked with British-American Tobacco, etc. And he had long hair. And he took the centerstage. And he was good at it.

First he talked about his humble beginnings (don’t every successful person had humble beginnings?) and his rise to a leader to four thousand employees, while along the way, forming a few bands, played soccer (kaki bangku, the way he tells it) and pingpong, president of a few clubs, plus straight As all the way and 4-flat through college.
The trick was, he did not tell it like a biography, instead more like a setting, or example, for several trait-attributes for leadership skills. The way he put it “A true leader does not know that he is a leader until he looked backwards and sees people following him.” Or something like that.

Leadership skills and traits be damned, the one thing that REALLY got my full attention was the four attitudes for success. PACE: passion, authenticity, credibility, and ethics. That was when I know I had missed an ingredient since my pre-SPM days. I lacked passion in studies. Heck, anyone can ace UPSR and PMR with zero passion in studies, I know I did. SPM showed me up with 6As and 4Bs. Even now I’m getting substandard grades in university; all because I lack passion in studies.

Attending that leadership talk was a real defining moment for me, because before I had not known what’s wrong with myself. Now is the time to see if I can really change, with the only fuel that burns at 110%. Just in case one of you reading this happens to be the man himself, thank you Dato Shazalli, for you have given me more than I expected from a mere talk. And to be sure, I’ll continue to be a Celcom user for a long, long time.

p.s. Switch to Celcom ;P

Song of the day: Edwin Starr - War, what is it good for?

Had a dream, a very… emotional dream. I can’t remember the last time I really cried. Reading Stephen King’s “The Green Mile” brought me really close, but, no I haven’t cried in a long while. Not when my granduncle passed. Not when both my grandfathers passed. Damn, I don’t think I’ll be crying at anyone’s funeral.

Just proven myself wrong last night. I cried at my own funeral.

Well, not really my own funeral. This dream was really detailed compared with all other (yes, all of them) previous dreams I had. Let’s see now, I (and someone else, can’t remember who) decided to play a prank on two unsuspecting persons; something involving a fire, then those two persons died when the fire goes out of control, also killing several firemen who came to stop the blaze. Subsequently, I was convicted (can’t remember dreaming about the trial) and the rest of the long, long dream was, well, the usual stuff you watch on television about repented-but-on-the-death-row people: repented, cried a lot about my actions, wonder if I’ll go to hell, wonder if I’ll see my loved ones in the afterlife (for some very weird reason, I was thinking about my sister), my last supper, etc.

The dream ends after I finish my last supper. I would guess that dreams are affected by emotions, and that a very strong emotion would end the dream prematurely. So that’s as close as I’ll ever get (hopefully, seriously) to my own funeral. Dreams as a warning? Omens? For now, the only thing I think about the dream, is that even the most empathic person in the world can’t imagine the feelings of another person, but first-person perspective (as in a dream) is one way a person can ever come close to feeling what sufferers feel, in waking life.

Song of the Day: Richard Clayderman - Wonderland by Night