Glazed

It's been 3 months... and even today... someone came up to me, "Are you Hank?" "Your speech... your presentation... was so good.  So entertaining and captivating.  You had me on the edge of my seat.  I wish I can talk like you." 

Keep glazin'..... I'm eating it all up.  With a side of humble pie, of course. 

No suave

 SW and I walked into Happy Lemon... and he acted very 蛇𠺌.  And seconds... milli-seconds!!! after ordering... he snuck out of the shop leaving me standing alone.  Turns out... SHE was also there.  Aiiiii.... 仔啊!!! Like a duck swimming... you needa be calm and cool after water even if you're frantically kicking underwater.   Now you totally... 露咗隻低牌. No suave. 

William Chan

 When the aunts from Macau and Vancouver visited... every where we took them... they'd want to look for "William Chan" aka "Water Closet" aka the bathroom.  When Nita and Brandon visited this week... everywhere we went... we looked to unload a few ounces and pay our water bills.  We are now... them. 

Far too agonizing

At a company offsite dinner inside a little, private party room.  I sat right in the middle of a long table that fits about 40.  During drinks and hordeurves, it got soooo loud on both sides...   Everyone was laughing harder than they usually would.  And in doing so... speaking or yelling so they can be heard.  Which in turn... forced the other people to raise their volume even more.

I simply had to get up and walk out because it was far too agonizing.  

Stay positive

In reviewing our employee insight survey comments... why does my boss and then HR like to gather and summarize the "bad comments" and leave out the compliments?  When I asked HR... they said, "We wanted to summarize the good stuff."  To which I wanted to reply.. that is the literal, absolute definition of NOT the good stuff.  One week later... during staff... HR came back with the compliments.  

Then last night... when we had our Youth Parents Small Group about empathy... to which I still have a fundamental disagreement with the definition... all we can talk about is being empathetic about the negative feelings.  We never share about being empathetic... or try to understand... or walk in the shoes... of someone that's feeling joyful and ecstatic. 

People.  People.  People.  Let's try to stay positive. 

Empathy vs Sympathy

 At our Parents' Small Group - we had a whole discussion on "What is empathy?"

"To understand...."

"To wear one's shoes...."

"To identify...."

"To not judge..."

I piped up (cuz that's what I do...) and said, "Sympathy... is understanding what someone is going through because you've experienced a similar event.  Whereas Empathy... is identifying and validating what someone is going through... but you can't truly understand it."  And my example was Menstrual Pains. That lauched a whole discussion on kidney stones... and gender... and generation.

Modern society and contemporary psychologists have hopped on this hot take bandwagon and branded sympathy with a scarlett letter of being a hand-wave, robotic response.  Whereas empathy... is trying to understand, to walk that mile, to be at the level of.  At the end of the day... does it really matter? Not really. I'm just easily annoyed and like to be that gum under a desk.