I want to end my life!

After dododoyo, now I have another child, he is just 11 and he said this: I want to end my life at all cost.

It has been a very challenging week with only few hours of sleep per day.
Las t night, my colleague and I have to attend to a kid who was crying in the room. From 3.30am till about 5am. So in total, I hardly sleep for 4 hours. Right now, the best thing for me to do is to blog, at the same time, waiting for the camp to end and I can hold briefing with the coaches, and then.. Hopefully, get some zzzz.

What does it really meant to “end my life”?
Can you imagine if you are a parent and your child tells you that he/she wants to end her/his life? Perhaps for some, it is an easy way out. In recent years, we have been hearing students telling their parents, teachers, school counselor, psychologist or even psychiatrist that they are very stress. STRESS has become a word that is very powerful. For many parents, when they hear their children saying that they are stress, they will just fall into the very panic mode, afraid that their child behaves irrationally and do silly things.

What have the children today become ?

I believe that we are created for a purpose and reason. If we choose to end our lives, we are just disrespecting our creator. There are people in hospital, at the edge of dying fighting for every single day, single hour, minute and even second. I always say this: is only that god think highly of us then post us the challenge. Therefore, cherish and live life to the fullest and be the best we can be.

I must say that this holiday is very enlightening for me, I finally get to “practice” and experience some of the theories I learnt in class, such as distorted the irrational beliefs of the kids, and ABC Theory for autistic child.

Dododoyo – Entering into a new world

It has been a very challenging week for me, is not the end yet… more to come… 1 and a half weeks to go and I’ll be on holiday. A long awaiting holiday! It has been a year since I went for holiday.

As I’m writing this blog, I’m keeping a look out for Dododoyo. To make sure that he doesn’t run around or do harm to self and others. You may wonder who is Dododoyo. Dododoyo is one of the participants in the camp right now. If you had read this book titled “the child call it”. Dododoyo is very similar to the child in the book.

I’m now having a life example of “the child call it”. This is the first time that I encounter with low functioning Autistic Child. He is non-verbal and the only audible word coming out from him is dododoyo. So my colleague and I started to call him Dododoyo.

Lucky I have a classmate, Matthew who teaches autistic children. He gave me a lot of insight information and directions to go about understanding autistic children. Ever behavior is a message. My ultimate goal was to decode his behavior such that I can understand him better. Banging his head into wall, running around, slap his ear, mumbling words that none of us could understand, throwing tantrums, etc.

I must say it is not easy to handle autistic child. Can’t imagine a camp whereby the trainers have to wash pants stained with urine, sleep with participant, and teach him how to brush his teeth. PATIENCE is the “medication” for all of us and him. This is the first time, my colleagues and I running a 24/7 camp with Dododoyo. So tired, so draining, every single moment, we are always on our toes looking out for him.

My salutation to all the personnel in special needs education !!!

For me
1 autistic child = very tired
1 school of autistic children = incredible madness

Blessing ?!?!?!

I just came back from training in Surabaya. For many of my outstation trips, I think this is one of the most memorable. The moment that I touch down Surabaya, I wanted to call my mom to let her know that I’m safe and sound. That was the moment that things started to go wrong for me. My lovely HTC phone decided to fail on me.

Well, in my mind I was still telling myself, it’s all right. Count myself lucky that I still can receive and call. Ok, so let’s move on. I shifted all my focus on my training the next day. The next morning when my colleague and I arrived the training place, first thing first, the projector person cannot get the get the image toggle to the screen. Just 10 mins before the training, my colleague realized that the person did not connect the cable to the right port. Ok. 2nd hinder passed !

Just as I was about to toggle my laptop and show a short video, I realized that my laptop began to be crappy. The start menu kept popping up itself and it disrupts the function of the laptop. I knew for sure… something is not right. Ok. Laptop got virus, but it is still alright because I save most of my things in my hard disk.

Just ½ way the training, my darling colleague phone went off. Initially, I thought it was my phone, I forgot that we share same ring tone. So as I was reaching for our phone, I DROP MY HARD DISK. O yes. For that moment, I was just praying that everything is going to be fine fine fine.

I quickly pick up my hard disk, hopping that my laptop will read the disk… BUT I didn’t…
That is it… first was my phone, follow by laptop and now my hard disk.

For the moment, I don’t know how to describe my feeling… it is just so beyond words and explanations.

So the first thing I did when I got back Singapore was to get all these fix !!!
That every moment I got down my flight was to call the company IT guy, Aaron.
He spend the entire night to reformat my laptop (so that I can post my blog now). But my hard disk (which contain my work from 2003 – now) à GONE. it would need about 3K – 4K if I really want to get it fixed. Well well, I’m sure going to give it a miss…

The best part when I related my mishap to my very close friend, he told me this: Perhaps it is the time for a NEW start.
Maybe… but I know for sure… more work to come by……

And coincidentally today’s quote for me was:
YOU DON”T HAVE TO BE GREAT TO START, BUT YOU HAVE TO START TO BE GREAT.
Well said !!! I'm going to be great and ALL IS WELL

Born Free

I am now located in Jakarta and today is my “holiday” after working non-stop and 7 Hr of sleep for 3 days! I’m still in good shape and I was reading Van!lla – June 2008, issue 11 - my colleague, Katherine’s favorite magazine.
There is this article that spurred me to write here, Born Free. The article was featuring this parent that was heaving “headache” during school holiday because she has got no idea where to “park” her 2 children. I guess that the thing about parents, when the kids are having holidays, their lifestyle just get upside down.

At my work place, I see tons of parents doing the same thing, finding different programmes to pack their child schedule from morning till night. For a moment, I was so happy that my parents are not like them. Perhaps the children life are more meaningful but come to think about it, are the children happy? Were are those days whereby boys catch spiders and girls play “five-stones”?

I remembered that one of the “silly” things that my brother and I used to do is to “fly kite” from our grandma house, located 10 stories high. We took NTUC plastic bag and sewing strings to tie the handle of the bag and threw the bag out of the window, letting the wind to carry it. It was so simple and yet just so fun. Till today, I still can remember it clearly in my mind how happy was I back then. I wonder will any children do this in this new age. To me, the only game that they have is this thing call electronic games, PSP, Play-station, wii etc.

So what is “childhood” means now?
Childhood = studying hard, top in class + enrichment classes + talent classes + tuitions + a little of PSP?

We are who we THINK we are

I just had an enlightening conversation with my boss (Adam Khoo – Singapore’s Top Motivational Trainer), and all I want to do is to pen this for all the reader. We started talking about Anthony Robbins (Unlimited Powers) and I was asking my boss what’s Anthony Robbins’ background, is he a psychologist, psychiatrist or have some medical science background. Guess what! I supposed none of us will expect Anthony Robbins was once a janitor and a school drop out. I was told by Adam that his turning point was that Anthony Robbins chance upon Richard Bandle, attended his Neuro-Linguistic Programme (NLP) course, but again he drop out of the course. Having the material, he started his own motivational talk and there is where he began to be very famous. Anthony Robbins also went on talk shows which he challenged all the therapist to bring their most challenging client to him and he will solve their issue just in half an hour. Well, he did it! Of course there are still non successful cases, but they are not featured.

This brings me to my next point about disorders. Are disorders biological or non-biological? With my recent successful experiment, I help a cerebral palsy teenage to “walk” again. For the passed 17 years he could only stand for 30 seconds, but in the camp, he walk for minutes. Then Adam asked if I came across reading Deepak Chopra’s book. Of course, being so clueless, I asked for more insights. (Well, I can’t deny that Adam got so much to share in this field).

Deepak Chopra’s theory suggest that human being have the ability to chance it own biochemist just be shifting the thoughts. With this change in the thoughts, the body begins to chance the chemical compound in the cell and with this in great manifest, the whole body chances. Heard of this saying – We are who we think we are! Isn’t it very true? So what’s in your mind now, and what are you telling yourself?

When Love Knocks at Your Door

Good Day
I happened to flip the book my lecturer gave me, “When Love Knocks at Your Door”.
To me, it is a simple book and yet has great meaning.
When love, so what’s love.

Rule No. 01: The important thing about love is not what you want, but why you want it.
Rule No. 02: Before you give yourself to love, think about which part of self you want to keep.
Rule No. 03: Love makes all things easy only if you know how.
Rule No. 04: Love is a gift from the heart. Treasure it.
Rule No. 05: Understand what you want and what other people want. Give room for growth.
Rule No. 06: Love is a special kind of feeling not a though. No point to reason with it.
Rule No. 07: Love has many dates not planned on a calendar. It is hard to tell when it will end.
Rule No. 08: Love is not a piece of work. It cannot give you success. Failure is never part of love.
Rule No. 09: Be ready to take a roller-coaster ride with love. It can be exciting and thrilling. But at the end of the day, it is just a ride.
Rule No. 10: Love cannot take away your pride or ego. Look to see if you have them in beginning.

These 10 rules probably had given you another perspective in life. More to go, in total, she wrote 20 rules, if you are interested, you can email me.

So what is love to you? I supposed it is hard to explain.
To me, love is a force, it is the force that keeps me going everything, and it is the driving force behind everything that I do.

I always say that this world is not all about of the poor, the starving, it is all about lack of love and in this well of love that each of us has, some are afraid to give because they scared that it may run dry, some don’t know how to give. What about you?