Uncontrolled Mind

Sitting in one corner of the classroom was a young teenage girl named Flor. This high school girl was a quiet and timid introvert. She was anti-social and disliked mingling with others in the school. She had very few friends as many would be pissed off by her temperamental behaviours. Sometimes she would just throw up her temper and scream or yell at anyone or with no body in the public; and when she had calm down she can be quite sociable at times.

Flor experienced some mood swings and found it difficult to cope her emotions. Her school counsellor understand her situation and suggested to her parents to seek medical attention. Her condition got worse but she didn’t want to care. Her schoolmates would sometimes poked fun with her, saying words like ‘weirdo’, ‘crazy’, ‘retard’, or even ‘psychopath’. She easily became annoyed and agitated by people who constantly disturbed and harassed her. Her mind started to imagine someone was about to attack her, she got aggressive and used a chair or anything she got hold off and throw it at anyone.  She was labelled as a mad person in his school.

She was diagnosed with ‘bi-polar anti-social personality disorder’ syndrome or kind of a bi-polar psychopath though these two syndromes don’t actually exist at the same time. This syndrome could be inherited genetically. She was put under observation and monitoring by her school. Flor need to take ‘tranquilizing’ medicine regularly to calm her down. Her school advisor wanted to transfer her out but no school was willing to take her in the city.  With some special provisions given to her, she was allowed to stay on to continue with her study at the same high school with some segregation from others.

Initially everything seemed so okay to her but due to some circumstances she became a little out of control. Sometimes she forgot to take her medicine she would just go crazy again. She behaved hysterically, she could scream, shouts, laugh, cry, and angry and even get aggressive, some of her classmates would just get hold of her and tied her down. It was very challenging for the high school to keep her. She was brought to the mental hospital and was hospitalized for couple of weeks before returning to study at her high school.

For next couple of weeks since her discharged from the hospital, her condition had improved a little. However, it didn’t last long again due to one incident. One day while she was returning home after classes, she was met with some hooligans in the street. These gangsters were the wayward guys with tattoo on their body. She tried to stay away from them but met with constant harassments by them. She shouted for help but nobody was there.  She couldn’t control herself and hold on to her temperament anymore, in a spur of moment, she opened up her bag and saw a ‘secret’ revolver gun. She took it out and pull the trigger – ‘bang’, one of the guys was shot on his head and was killed almost immediately. It was a bloody sight and everyone was shock and stunt.

Soon the police came and she was arrested. The police investigated on her case and found that she suffered from some mental illness. She was brought to the juvenile court for trial and was sentenced to jail for few years. She was locked in the prison and was given mental treatment to stabilize herself.  It was during her imprisonment that she had the time to reflect on herself. Sometimes she would cry and grief over those unhappy moments that she experienced in her life. A lady prison volunteer counsellor came to know about her case, visited her and wanted to help her. She was a holy person and she prayed for Flor recovery. Flor was a little calmer and she found faith with God. Under the God’s blessing her condition got better by the grace of God.

Until today, with Flor’s belief in God she found some tranquillity in her life and still continue to take her medicine daily. When her jail term was over, she stayed on as a volunteer in the prison to guide those prisoners having the same situation as her. She learnt how to live and cope with her ‘uncontrolled’ mind and found happiness helping others in need.

An Addiction to Gambling

By the first look at someone face you really couldn’t tell that one day a person would become a gambler.  May a fortune teller can predicts that. Here is a person named Zack who lead a normal life making a living as a busy businessman in the city. He is the owner of  a chain of retail provision shops. Like everyone one of us doing his business, contributing to the country’s economy and provides for his family every day. For the first part of his life he was quite a happy person, busy working and well-respected by his employees and a role model for everyone in the retail industry to emulate.

As times goes by his business expanded to many parts of the country. His retain business thrive and even survived through many economic upheaval in the region and many of his peers would like to learn from his success story. Zack was always very humble and knew that one will always need to adapt to the changing environment particularly there were so many competitors in the region. He had entrusted his business to his managers and even took the advice of jumping on the bandwagon of the internet through e-commerce. With the use of technology his business was able to move up the level chain and be able to stay ahead of his competitors.

The retail business is a very dynamic industry, from marketing to logistics, customers’ relationship and prompt delivery everything need to be in a tip top conditions. However, nobody is perfect and Zack has one weakness – that is, he likes to gamble and gambling was like his past time hobby. Sometimes in the weekend he would go to the casino to gamble and his gambling hobby became a habit. He didn’t know the reason why he like to gamble maybe he liked the thrill of winning or it was just to de-stress himself. With the city’s opening up of integrated resorts he would always visit the casino sometimes after work.

When he was inside the casino, he would spend long hours playing jackpot, roulette, card games like black jack or poker, rolling dice big or small and many table games. As one of the integrated resort sales tactics, Zack applied for the premium membership and had accumulated many points for him to come back and gamble over and over again. He was awarded with free hotel stay, free car parking lot and sometimes free buffet in the hotel whenever he gamble a lot and wins many points. All these reward system motivated him to gamble even more.

His gambling habits went from bad to worse. An old adage that one wouldn’t get rice just by gambling didn’t hold true in him. He was adamant about changing his gambling habits. The thrill that he had in winning overshadowed everything that he treasured in his life. Soon his relationship with his family members turned soured and his business takes a toll. With the arrival of the giant retailer, he began to make unsound judgement and listened to wrong advice. Some of his trusted managers even warned him or opposed about the dangerous strategy of having a price war with the giant head on. Some many of his managers left his company, some were sacked by him. The giant retailer leverage on its economy of scale coupled with making use of the disruptive technology on smart phone mobile apps, Zack retail business was too slow to catch this wave. Many customers started to order from the giant retailer using this new technology to order their stuffs with the touch of their fingers things that you order would deliver to your doorstep. And the giant retailer even had plan to deliver thing using drones in the future. Many of these changes that took place he was unable to see as he was too engrossed and blinded by gambling. He became a habitual gambler and addicted to it. He would let his managers run his business entirely like an auto-pilot.

Soon his business was unable to compete with the giant competitor. His company runs into heavy debt and unable to pay his vendors on time. With mounting debts, and debtors coming after him and his company for repayment he went into hiding in the casino to gamble away his time and money. When he ran out of money he would borrow it from the loan shark. Many debtors and loan shark runners came after him he got no choice but to retrenched all of his staffs and folded his business. From then on he became a bankrupt. Some of the angry loan sharks came to his house to draw graffiti signs like O$P$ on the walls, out of panicky Zack escape to hiding in the park.

Zack was at his wits end. He was very sad, down casted and disheartened. He had never tasted such a bitter failure in his life. He took stock of himself, when he thought back he felt that this was all his fault and could not blame anyone in his life. He repented what he did and prayed that he would do some changes in his life, he yearned to be given another chance to atone his mistakes.  

One day while walking towards a bus stop, he noticed an advertisement of a voluntary charity organization with a written message ‘Don’t Be Afraid of Ah Long (meaning loan shark) We’ll Help You”. Upon reading this, he felt so touch and straight away copied down the contact number. He called up to a Mr Tan and he was happy to meet him on an appointed date for some counselling. On that day Zack met with Mr Tan who listened to his financial problems compassionately. Being an experienced person who had handled many of these cases before, Mr Tan tried all his best to settle his debts with his debtors and the loan shark on condition that Zack must quit his gambling habit. The loan shark’s scare tactics had no way to threaten Mr Tan as he has dealt with them before. Zack agreed to repay them with an instalment plan similar to the rest of his debtors. When all was settled, Zack thanked Mr Tan for all his help and wanted to stay on his organization to volunteer and help others with the same situation like him. Zack quitted his gambling and found his job as a delivery driver with Mr Tan’s help.

To this day Zack’s debt was almost settled, he recalled at time when he was struck with failures  it was too tormenting and devastating for him to shoulder these heavy debts , he was too ashamed to go home , the worst thing that came haunting in his mind was to commit suicides. Luckily that suicidal thought did not materialize otherwise he wouldn’t be here guiding and counselling others now. He was grateful that he made the right choice of giving himself another chance and was very thankful to his benefactor Mr Tan.

Get 'Sucked' Into the Game

Have you ever wonder how you are so engrossed into something that you are being ‘sucked’ into that virtual reality?  It’s not about the Jumanji movie show or dreams but it is like you are being ‘taken’ into some out of this world reality, a phenomenon of being transported into other realm or reality. Here is a guy called Joel who experienced this kind of a phenomenon.

Since young Joel would like to play with computer games. He would spend long hours playing those games like counter strike shooting game, street fighters, snake or brick games, some mobile apps games like angry birds, candy crush, play station games like soccer and so on. His parents were all working and wouldn’t have the time to accompany him. He was pretty bored staying alone at home as he did not have any siblings to play with him and he was also anti-social, seldom mixed with his friends. He was and average achiever at school, his study was sub-par and dislike going to school. Sometimes he would just play truant and absent himself from school. His parents were very worried about his academic results and did not like him to spend more times playing with computer games as this could affect his future career. Joel was fed up with his mother for constantly nagging at him to study. It was a big headache to motivate Joel to study and this had caused frustrations on Joel.

Joel knew that he won’t make it in his study and his morale was down all the time. Initially, playing computer games was a way to vent his frustrations but as time passed by, he became addicted and so engrossed into the game that he would return home late to be scolded by his parents. A curfew was imposed onto Joel by his parents but he ignored it. Visiting the arcades in the mall and nearby cyber café was his favourite daily past times leisure activity. He hate outdoor games and sports as he didn’t like to sweat it all out with all the physical activity.

In school, he didn’t pay much attention in class lessons and would just daydream, when queried by his teacher about homework he would just done some of them. Punishments on Joel didn’t work either, he just got worse. The school councillor came to investigate into Joel’s lack of learning in school. That didn’t work out at all too as Joel rejected any help to coach him in his study. The school principle wanted to transfer him out to some special school for students with behavioural problems. However, his parents especially his mother broke into tears and begged the school principle to let Joel another chance to improve on his study. Joel was a bit moved by his mother’s appeal to the school principle, he agreed to improve on his study quite reluctantly.

For the next few week, Joel did study well and did well in his semester assessment. However, old habit die hard, after a couple of month it became back to square one again. This time round he would go to the arcades when his homework was completed with some coaching by his peers. At least he didn’t want to break his mother’s heart of not study at all. It took some times for Joel to learn how to balance his times in coping well in his study and spending his spare time playing computer games.  

Once in a while you would go to cyber café to play some on-line computer games. The computer shooting game was what he liked best, using machine guns to shoot at the enemies was so thrilling to him and it requires quick reflexes,  fast reactions of pushing those buttons to fire and kill all the enemies. One day while he was playing the shooting game, he was so engrossed into this game called The Commandos Battle. All of a sudden his mind sub-consciously got into that shooting game’s reality virtually. It was like you were suddenly being ‘transported’ into some form of a virtual reality or some other realm. Kar ..boomed you are into this shooting game, Joel touched his body and he was wearing some army combat uniform and carrying a machine gun with some firing rounds and hand bombs with him. He heard someone shouting:” enemies in front, attack! Fire, Fire, fire, take cover”, everyone started to take cover, Boom.. Joel couldn’t believe that he has entered into this shooting game, a warfare led by some evil empire Dark Forces to capture the territory of the Friendly Empire Forces. It was like a world war, a battle between enemies identified as the red-band camouflaged uniform armies and the friendly armies forces are in green-band. They were shooting at anther other everywhere, it was like a real war, he had never went into any war before only heard or read about it in history books! There wasn’t any time to lose or think, what Joel did was to take cover, shoot and run for his live or he be killed. He could see battalions of enemies’ troops coming, fighter planes above dropping bombs, the scene was bloody and it was like hell! On the other end of battlefield, he could see some of the friendly armies’ forces were killed in front of his him, there were many casualties and a terrible scene for a young guy to see.

Soon the friendly armies’ forces were able to gather some reinforcements and support artillery bombardment to shield off the enemies relentless attacks. He managed to shoot and killed some of the enemies, he got some bruises on his legs and body while running away to hide in the bunker during enemies attacks. He couldn’t believe that he felt like he became an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Rambo in this war shooting game. However, being in a battlefield wasn’t kind of a fun, Joel knew that one had to deal with life and death every now and then. He got to run, stay away and take cover from bombs and be alert to shoot at the enemies. He got to fight as a team with his army comrades. When on an attack or retaliation mission, strategizing the plan and executing it in unison were all critical to destroy enemies’ deceptive tactics and attacks. It was a do or die, fight or flight situation living no room for any miss steps or mistakes. Being bravado or gung-ho could even lose your live. Soon the enemy’s fire power got weaker and the friendly forces were able to recoup. Joel heard some noises coming from a mountain’s cave. He could see some glow, he walked towards it and saw path of light shining onto his face so glaringly. He travelled deep into this cave and saw a tunnel and went inside it. Out he went and all of a sudden he came back to the real world that he once live again.

He narrated what he been through and seen on the battlefield. He vowed not to create any war with anyone and discovered the importance of living with peace and harmony with people in this world. The lesson that he learnt was worthwhile the experiences gained much outweigh what he played in the shooting game.

The Vanishing Art of Dolls Making

At one time the small kids used to like dolls and dolls making was flourishing trade. Jessie recalled during the peak season she used to receive many orders from her clients. She would custom made these dolls and showcase it for sale. Some dolls were designed by her using her own creativity and imagination. It was a sunrise industry but now it has faded away due to the infiltrations of many electronics gadgets, internet games and mobile apps that are readily available to the youngsters nowadays.

Prior to the computer and internet era, kids used to play with their own self-made gadgets, toys and dolls. Many were physical stuffs that you could play with and it was quite fun for the kids. As one plays with it, one’s emotions can get attached to those toys and dolls after playing it for some time. It was these emotions and desires of making dolls more enjoyable that motivates Jessie wanted to take up this challenge of doll making.

In those days there were not many doll makers, it was a unique art catering to a niche market of young kids. Jessie picked up those skills by herself out of passion. She would spend long hours making those dolls and when it was done she found it quite satisfying to see kids playing with her dolls.  This would be enough to keep her going as a key motivator for her job.

Jessie remembered those days that she had difficulty making dolls, some of those designs require embroidery with special patterns on its fashionable dress. For instance, at the customer’s request the doll could be designed into a cheongsam or kebaya or nonya fashion dresses, some demands laced and colourful dresses or eyelid with lashes and many other special features for its dolls. From design, materials acquisitions, cutting, sewing to finished dolls all were done by her. It was very taxing and time consuming for her when the orders increased.

Her business expanded and she even rented a small shop in town and had some helpers. Many of her regular customers still come to visit her shop. Jessie had designed many characters and gave it names such as Dolly, Molly, Justin, Barbara etc. The kids liked her designer dolls and adored it as it was attractive and look trendy with those fashionable clothes and make ups. For Jessie it was an arduous task to continue to be innovative and designing those dolls that the market wants. She had to know the market and be creative to keep her business going.

This trade was also very seasonal, during the peak festive seasons she found that many parents would buy dolls for their kids to play. When there was an economic downturn, few people will buy. Sometimes it was an unpredictable business Nevertheless Jessie still pressed on with her business and craved out a decent living.

At a time when her business boomed, there come the arrival of computers. Her business gradually started to decline as many kids chose to play with their electronic gadgets or play station. It became a double blow to her business with the invention of the Internet, mobile phones with apps features and SMART phones technology. All these new technology soon became too disruptive to her business and there was no way she could competes with them. Eventually, her shop closed down as it couldn’t survive on the rising rental costs and falling sales.

Life takes a toll for Jessie but she was adamant that she wasn’t going to give up her doll making trade. She didn’t succumbed to her situation but decided to give a second chance to her doll making. She became more flexible and founded her own home for doll making. By the word of mouth, her business was still able to strive a little in this niche market. Some of her regular customers returned while some kids were already grown up knew about her talent and bought some dolls for their kids.

Her nephew Nick came along to help her to alleviate her business further by sharing those dolls made by Jessie on the Internet through social media, videos and e-commerce platforms. Many internet users were very impressed by her delicate hands and intricate designer’s dolls. Nick would gather some audiences to show case the art of doll making in an organized workshops or classes. Jessie, an elderly now, was sometimes confused how his nephew brought in so many people to watch her doll making. The audience was amazed by her sharp eye for detail and her dexterous hands in embroidery. She would share her experiences with her audiences and like-minded people in the art of doll making.

Looking back on her trade, Jessie never regret it and she was glad that she did not give up on this vanishing art. She would carry on with her passion of doll making art for as long as she lives.

The Ninja Sumo

When Inaka was young he like to watch the Ninja fighting and Sumo wrestling show.  He particularly liked and enjoyed watching these two sports in action as it involved the quick, swift and stealthy movements of fighting while the other dealt with wrestling. Being a fat and medium size person wouldn’t defer him to be in fighting sport one day. However, his parents were opposed to his sports dream as they wanted him to excel in his academic study while wanting him to lose weight and stay healthy. It seemed like his parents and he couldn’t reconcile the idea of letting him to be in the fighting sports.

As a fat person he knew that he was disadvantaged and how would he convince the Ninja and Sumo Schools to let him learn the fighting sports. The desire for him to learn about fighting was so great that he would sometimes challenge anyone to a fight with his peers whom had insulted him. He was once caught by the school disciplined master when some bad ass guys tried to bully him. He was reprimanded and warned by discipline master to watch over his behaviours Inaka was warned by the discipline master never to pick a fight with anyone in the street though Inaka tried to explained that he was the victim. Inaka didn’t argue with the disciplined master and accepted his warning and punishment.

When the school lesson was over, he would quickly sneaked out of the class to go to the nearby garden near a village. Here, he would see some people practising some form of a martial arts, its moves looked like a mixture of karate, Tae Kwon Do, Judo wrestling styles. These people were the retirees, some were ex-military soldiers while some were avid fighting sports lovers. These people was puzzled why a fat young kid was so engrossed in watching them doing those fighting stunts and moves. Inaka was exuberated and wanted to learn the fighting skills with them.

Initially, they were reluctant to take Inaka as their student because they need his parent consent and he was also fat. Nevertheless, they had allowed Inaka to watch them practising those fighting skills. He was amazed by those kicks especially jumping kick, side and turning kick, bare hand sparing, Sumo wrestling, fist punching, pole fighting, dodging, defensive and deceptive attacks, grapping and throwing an opponent, leap jumping to tree and attacking opponent with surprises. There was another move when a practitioner would loosen himself from a rope that was tied around his body and many techniques to escape when you were a captive. These fighting skills were rarely seen by the outside world and he want to acquire these skills eagerly.

After school, he would visit the place almost every day and those people were happy to see him and would sometimes allow him to learn and practise those fighting skills after some persuasion. Inaka finally was permitted to learn on condition that he never tell anyone about it and observed the fighting discipline, rules and decorum. In the beginning, it was very hard for him as he lacks the fundamental skills and techniques for fighting. After some countless attempts and perseverance, he was able to practise those fighting stunts. Time flies and he became a young guy now. He was called upon to spar with some retires. Inaka was able to counter his opponent with some pretty good fighting moves and this has caught some retires by surprise. They were amazed how much this young fat chap had advanced his fighting skills after a span of about six years. Inaka soon graduated from this informal school of that place and left quite reluctantly.

One day while he was walking in the city he chanced upon an advertisement about some fighting tournament with some rewards for the winners. He wasn’t interested on the reward but want to take this opportunity to proof his fighting skills that he learn to a real fight. He signed up and took the challenge. On that day of the competition, he saw many competitors of diverse backgrounds and fighting skills. He went through the initial, quarter-final and semi-final rounds of the competition. He was tired and exhausted when he reached to the final. Fighters were allowed to rest for a certain period after that the final sparring round continued. The final he was met with a stronger opponent with powerful kicks and punches. The opponent was very aggressive, blow upon blow coming after Inaka, he tried to dodge those punches and kicks but were being knocked down on the floor. It was a very bitter fight. Inaka was on the verge of giving up as his mouth was bleeding and his eyes suffered bruises by the opponent’s heavy punches. Just when he was about to lay down flat, he saw one of his instructor retiree coming to cheer for him. He got up and carry on to fight. He recovered and he found the opponent’s weakness. He made use of his Sumo-like weight and adopt the Judo-like stunt coupled with a punched at the opponent’s head to knock the opponent out of balance. This moves made the opponent KO and Inaka emerged as the winner of the fighting competition.  Later, his parents found out about it and had forgiven what he has done. Inaka went on in his life to be a Fighting Master and opened up his form of Fighting Techniques and was well received by many of his students.

A Crocodile Attack

James is a sporty person who likes hiking, cycling, travelling, mountain climbing, sky diving, running and many other sports. During his free time, he would go out with his friends with similar interests on these sporting activities. In fact, he was pretty active in sports and has written many journals and magazine highlighting on his sporting interests. Occasionally, he would go for a holiday trip and never missing catching those wonderful moments on his camera.  He had been to many places such as Maldives, Indonesia, China, South Korea, Americas and so on. Beside his hectic life style as an office executive he find some time for his vacation.

Those places that he visited some are exotic location and some with nice scenic nature with a good and temperate climates. He enjoyed visiting these places and would often think of coming back for another visit or new sites once his vacation was approved by his boss. He had no ideas why he like to go for a sporting holiday trip, probably he thought that could de-stress himself from the daily busy workloads. Taking selfies or wefies and uploaded it in the social media were all his usual tasks, to him, it was fun, sociably communicative and he could find many like-minded persons sharing the same interest together

However, some of his friends were worried that his personal safety may even be jeopardized partly because when he went silos to those faraway remote places for an adventurous trip. Being alone he felt that he had no qualm coming into consensus with anyone on a vacation trip. He would go anywhere he like in this world without the hassle of consulting each other decisions. The communications break down or conflict of interests were minimized when he go alone on his way.

Planning for an adventurous vacation trip from budgeting to journey route was no problem to him with the advent of technology. He had never go to Africa before and he intended to go there for a jungle safari trip. He did some research and was confident that he would go there alone. His friends all advised him to bring along a buddy or a guide for his personal safety and furthermore it was his first time going to another vast continent, he did took their advices reluctantly.

So all was set, he prepared the trip, booked an air ticket and fly all the way to Africa (somewhere near the Congo region). When he arrived, he checked into a hotel and began asking the hotel staffs about the nearest jungle safari from the hotel traveller’s brochure. He had a good meal and went to sleep in the hotel. He did not sleep well probably due to jet lag. The next morning, he managed to gather some information about the jungle safari trip and booked one experienced driver to bring there. After some bargaining with the driver, he headed to the jungle safari with his back pack and some packaged meal. The driver brought him to a beautiful place in the jungle, there were birds, butterfly, deer, giraffe , all living in their own natural habitat, he never seen this before, it was simply amazing. Quickly and quietly, he brought out his camera and took some video and pictures without scaring the animals. He felt fairly satisfied with those shots.

Without further delay, he asked the driver to proceed farther into the jungle safari before dusk fell. They came across a river bank and became attracted to the tranquillity of the river stream, at the end of this river there was a waterfall. He alighted from the jeep and asked the driver to standby at his location. Out of curiosity, he went near the river side to watch the blue stream of water flowing. It was a good view not to be missed and he wanted to take a selfie near the river bank just for his social media postings to update his friends. Just as he was about to snap a picture, a crocodile sprang out from the river. His hearing reflexes was quick, in a nick of time James ran as fast as he could to stay away from that crocodile. He shouted for help and the driver quickly drove the jeep to rescue James out of danger. It was so close, with just a few inches away James would be a dinner meal for that crocodile (which was estimated to be about 7-9 feet long). What a close shave.

He went back to the hotel safely and report the incident to the authority. James completed the remaining part of vacation by shopping in the city market. Once return home, he was grateful that he is still alive and all his family members and friends were happy to see him back again. After this ordeal, James had some reflections of this trip. He was lucky to survive a crocodile attack and he was glad to have listened to his friends’ advice. He vowed not to go alone on any adventurous vacation trip again.