Happy Wesak Day

On this auspicious day, I would like to say 'Happy Wesak Day' to all Buddhists all over the world. It is a day the Buddhists will reflect on the teachings of Gautama Buddha.

Simply put, Buddhism is a way of life. The Buddhists will try to emulate what the Buddha does - be compassionate to all beings, animals included and practise loving kindness to everyone around them.

On this day too, many Buddhists will opt to release birds, tortoises and animals about to be slaughtered to practise 'saving lives' as a way to prolong lives for themselves as well as showing compassion to others. According to the working of karma, if one saves lives, his age will be prolonged.

I would like to repeat the basic teachings of Buddhism in this post. According to Gautama Buddha, human beings suffer because of three things - avarice (greed), hatred and delusion. Hence we should all try to eliminate all these three so that we will say 'goodbye' to suffering.

To part with avarice, we have to practise dana or donating things to the needy. We can donate a ringgit a day to a beggar if we can't afford to give more. Some people will cling to their money for dear life and they suffer because they are always worried that the money will be robbed by some bad guy. Are you going to take with you the money you own when you pass away? If it is no, then you should donate it to those who need it to survive or alleviate their suffering.

In order not to hate others, we have to treat others with love no matter how badly they treat us. I know this is not easy. However, if you think in terms of the karma theory then you will find it easy to do it. If someone always says bad words about him, do not hate him. On the contrary, forgive him because in your last life (the Buddhists believe in past lives) you must have done the same thing to him. Why harbour hatred towards others when you can radiate love to them?

As for delusion, we have to understand the true nature of things in this world. All things are impermanent. They do not stay the same forever. The car you bought yesterday will have wear and tear after a week. The water you put in a glass will become less after a few days even if you do not drink it. If we can understand the impermanence of things then we will not cling to things and loved ones so much. In this way we will have less suffering should the things we own get lost or destroyed and our loved ones leave us suddenly. In other words, we should practise detachment of things and loved ones.

I hope my simple explanation of the gist of Buddhism will help others to understand Buddhism better. For very detailed teachings, one has to consult a monk.

Once again, Happy Wesak Day.

Happy Teacher's Day

Today is Teacher's Day. I would like to wish all teachers in Malaysia a very happy Teacher's Day.

As a teacher, Teacher's Day is the day I look forward to. When I was teaching in Jerantut, Pahang, teachers would be entertained to a variety show put up by the pupils. Sometimes teachers would join in the fun by playing the guitar and singing. Sometimes I was surprised to see pupils who were quiet in class showing their talent in singing and dancing.

As for my teaching days in St Theresa Secondary School in Sungai Petani, I cannot forget the sumptuous curried chicken brought to the school for the teachers from Koh Choon Hong, the son of Sek Kiang Restaurat (I hope I remember the name of the restaurant correctly) which I savoured with greed for more. The pupils in the school performed marvellous Chinese traditional dances too.

In the last school I taught in, that is Methodist Boys' School, I did enjoy watching the sketches put up by the scouts and the singing of some talented pupils. I also joined in the games with the pupils.

I did receive presents from my pupils. They were mostly pens but I like cards with sincere words poured out by the pupils. The appreciation shown really put me in the air for quite some time.

Once again, Happy Teacher's Day to all engineers of the soul.

The difference between 'pedalaman' and 'pendalaman'

In today's post, I am going to talk about the difference between 'pedalaman' and 'pendalaman'.

According to Kamus Dewan 4th Edition, 'pedalaman' is said to be 'daerah yang jauh dari pantai (yang terletak di ceruk pelosok atau di hulu negeri' which simply means 'inland area' or 'remote area' You can make a sentence such as the one below using this word.
Kemudahan asas di kawasan pedalaman serba kurang.
[There is litter basic amenities in the remote area.]

As for 'pendalaman' it is 'perihal mendalamkan, tindakan (proses) mendalamkan' or 'the act of deeping' in English. An illustration of its usage is seen in the following sentence:

Pendalaman dasar sungai itu dilakukan untuk mencegah berlakunya banjir di sana.
[The deepening of the river bed is to prevent the occurrence of floods there.]

So much for the difference between 'pedalaman' and 'pendalaman'.

Look before you leap

I fell three days ago for tripping over a stone on the tarred road in the parking lot of my condominium thanks to being not mindful.

You see, I was turning my head to the left while continuing my walk and when I realised that my left foot had kicked something protruding from the ground, it was too late. I tried hard to balance myself but failed and I landed with my right elbow touching the rough and jagged surface causing it to bleed because of abrasion. I quickly ran to reach my unit and had it washed with Dettol solution and pressed with gauze to stop the bleeding after which acroflavine is applied to the wound. Bandaging was done after that. As I was a first-aider before, doing all these is not new to me.

It taught me a good lesson. You must 'look before you leap' that is watch your steps when you walk so that you won't trip over anything and be in my plight now with the wound still hurting.

How to open amipro files in Word

Besides using Wordport to convert sam (amipro) files, I have learnt of a way to open it directly from Word. You need to do the following to enable Word to read your amipro files.

1 Download the Amipro to Word converter from http://www.gmayor/downloads.htm
2 Look for the Amirp converter for Word whose length is 114 kb.
3 Click on it to save the file Ami332.zip.
4 Unzip this file to a new folder called Ami332.
5 a) For Windows 32-bit user,
copy Ami332.cnv to C:\\ProgramFiles\CommonFiles\MicrosoftShared\TextCnv\Ami332.cnv
b) For Windows 64-bit user,
go to the 64-bit folder and copy Ami332.cnv to C:\ProgramFiles(x86)\CommonFiles\MicrosoftShared\TextCnv\Ami332.cnv
6 Merge the registry patch given

Now if you open any amipro or sam files in Word, it will be opened without fail. Then you can save the file in doc or docx. It is another way of converting your sam files to doc or docx files.

I hope this tip will be of use to those who still have sam files but do not have the amipro software anymore because all those sam files can be converted using the above method.

Happy computing.

One into two and now two into one

Looking at the title, you may wonder what I am trying to say. Well, it has to do with Socso or Social Security Organization or Perkeso (Pertubuhan Keselamatan Sosial) in Malay.

My sister-in-law passed away in 2003 and her parents benefited from this scheme by being able to receive monthly dependent benefit (something like pension) of RM243.08 each month. The full share is 4/10 of the monthly salary of the daughter which was about RM1200 at that time.

Then this year, my father passed away. The cheques in his name still kept coming. So I brought them back to the Perkeso branch in Penang and was told that I could help my mother-in-law to get her late husband's share credited into her account. Hence my mother-in-law can now receive RM486.16.

The above is a case of one into two (the dependent benefit is equally divided between parents) and now two into one (the husband's share and the wife's is combined and she gets the full share).

Parents who have children working in the private sector should know this benefit in case something bad happens to their working children.

Count up to 100 when you start to flare up

In Buddhism, one of the three things to be avoided is hatred. When someone harbours hatred towards a certain person, he will go all out to condemn him, scandalise him, scold him or even murder him. Hatred often gives rise to anger which is not only bad as it bears negative karma but only bad for health. The Chinese physician will tell you that anger will harm the liver.

Those who are always angry are paving their way to the hell realm. In such a realm, beings are always quarrelling, and stabbing each other with sharp objects. They are so used to hurting others that when they are reborn as human beings, the traits are always there. Such people will not give in and they are the 'kneah-su' (afraid of losing) lot.

If we do not want to go to the hell realm, abstain from getting angry. Count up to 100 when we start to flare up and after a lapse of doing nothing but counting mentally, maybe we can forget about wanting to get angry. Why not practising forgiving others? If someone annoys you, just treat him as one of those whom you annoyed in your last life who are here to give you back what you had given him then.

Let us forgive and forget when someone hurts you physically or verbally. As long as we can subdue our anger, we are getting ready to go to a better realm when we leave this world.

Today is Qing Ming Jie again

Today, most of the Chinese will be graveyard bound as they will be paying homage or respect to the deceased relatives by cleaning up the grave and offer items such as paper money, cakes and meat for prayer. It is Qing Ming Jie again.

The purpose of having this festival is to show filial piety to the elders especially the ones who have passed away. When the Chinese are at the site of their relatives' graves, they will start to do weeding and cleaning up the grave after which praying to the deceased is done.

Nowadays, it will be a good get-together for relatives who will return from all places just to show respect to the late relatives. Going up the hill slope is actually good exercise for us.

Today is the actual day of the festival but the Chinese can go the graveyard ten days before or after to pay homage to the dead ones.

How to change font size immediately

Have you ever surf to a site where the fonts are too small for comfort? Well, there is a way to solve this problem. How about increasing the size of the font so that you can read the text easily. Here is the trick.

Hold down the CTRL key and scroll the mouse wheel away from you, that is forward. The font size will increase according to how far you roll your mouse wheel to the front. Scrolling the wheel towards you will decrease the font size.

I hope this trick is useful to readers of this blog when you are surfing the Internet.

How I prepared for windows crash this time

I just bought a Dell desktop, the recent Crazy Deals powered by AMD Athlon II X4 Processor. As the computer I arrived I set about configuring Windows 7 64-bit as the OS was pre-installed.

If you still remember, I have done reinstalling of Windows at time 10 times with my old sets thanks to Windows crash. This time, I planned ahead before the arrival of my new pc. All software and drivers needed were burnt on a DVD. Hence when the set reached my hands, I installed what I wanted.

I partitioned my 1 terabyte hard disk into two, that 200G and 800G. The former is my C drive and the second my data drive. Then came the task I deemed important - backing up my system.

Windows backup did a good job and I had the backup file in my 2.5" external hard disk. The repair disc was burnt too. In case of a crash, I can always boot this disc and recovered my system with the help of my backup file in the external hard disk.

As a precaution, I also used Macrium Reflect (a freeware which I introduced to readers through this blog some time earlier) to back up my system too. This software also helped me to prepared a self-booting rescue disk.

This is the best time to back up my system as everything is working perfectly just like a new car running for the first time on the road.