Jeff Ma's talk at the Singapore Expo

Buddhists abhor gambling, as for one to win, many have to lose. All other religions I know of forbid gambling. Personally, I don't gamble, as they cause unnecessary anxiety and awakes the greed in me.

It is therefore surprising that in a seminar that I attended recently stretching two days with about six prominent speakers, I ended up learning most from the gambler among them, Mr Jeff Ma. Jeff is a well-known card counter and it is said that many casinos ban him from playing blackjack in their premises.

He said that people are generally averse to losses, they are not averse too winnings, which leads them to 'bias omission' or 'inactivity', ie. the decision not to make a decision. This must never be an option. That he learned when his mother had a stroke and the doctor that normally wouldn't do a brain surgery to old people. At that point, he knew that an 'inactive' decision (not to do anything) would normally mean that his mother will not live pass another sixty days. Against normal practice, they decided to get her to the operating table and the result is that his mum is still living and well today.

His method is data-driven and not based on gut-feeling.

He related to us how he lost $50,000 in one round of black-jack, even though his decision was data-driven. Then he went on to lose another $50,000, in yet another round of black-jack, in yet another data-driven decision. Dejected, he went to his room, slumbered on the floor, stared at the ceiling and contemplated quitting. Then curiously, after long thoughts, he decided not to quit and go back to the tables and subsequently won $100,000, and then later, another $70,000. 

He said that he won his rounds based on data-driven decisions and lost also based on data-driven decisions. In other words, the right decision made based on data, need not always end up with the desired outcomes. That said, we have to continue to make the right decisions although sometimes they don't come up with the desired outcomes. In other words, we must be able to separate right decisions from outcomes, and not be discouraged by the latter if they don't turn out desirable. So we must learn to embrace 'failures' and not be disheartened by them.

I think one of the reasons that I learn more from Jeff than the others is that he was purely sharing his experience and was not trying to sell me anything. In an act as if sarcastic of the other speakers, he did playfully asked the audience to take out their smart phone to go to Amazon to buy his book, "Bringing the House Down".

In group work, he said that there must be trust, transparency and communications. Of which he told us that they use code words to get around other people knowing what they are communicating to each other. For instance, the word 'paycheck' means something. So one of their team members would said out loud to the dealer, "Hey! You are taking away my paycheck!"

Yet another code word is "sweet" for "sixteen". And one of his team member is so happy whenever he utter the word "sweet", that in one time at the end of the game, he was paid some winnings, even though he had lost.

Finally, he related how he was sharing his experience in Silicon Valley among venture capitalists and other financiers, when suddenly, a billionaire VC who didn't seem to be listening and was busy with his Blackberry most of the time, said, "I don't believe you...". 

"What do you not believe?" Jeff asked.

"I don't believe you wanted to quit," he quipped.

Recounting the time he was lying down on his hotel room floor, despondent and starring at the ceiling, he said that, that billionaire was right, he never wanted to quit. And so he didn't quit. Had he quit, he wouldn't have gone back and won some money, had the book written, a movie made and his talking to us at the seminar.

Here are some clips:

Kid's Play - The Child in You

.A friend of me sent me this video from Evian. I am not related in anyway to their marketing, but this ad reminds and inspires us to live the child in us. Enjoy!

Rich Church Poor Church

In Poor Church, I watched a Christmas skit on their makeshift stage. A church goer next to me commented that it will be nice to have a real backstage where the actors can prepare themselves and emerge into each scene more seamlessly. I replied that it wouldn't really matter as this is a church and not a professional concert hall. Besides, the message conveyed through the skit was entertaining and clear - that we should celebrate Christmas with God in our hearts and not be overwhelmed by the frills of Christmas shopping and parties. Before the service, there was a simple buffet dinner. After that, we had a nice dessert buffet for everyone to get know each other better.

In Rich Church, we watched a Christmas musical on a collosal stage with props of an outlandish and stately American home complete with a winter fireplace; a huge back-up choir and live orchestra in the backstage, their silhouette focused by  cleverly positioned and synchronised lights and colours, visible through a translucent screen. The auditorium seats 3,000 odd of us with a professionally lit stage, pristine sound system and two large video screens magnifying the performance delivered by two camera cranes. It was an entertaining performance. The singing and entertainment were cleverly orchestrated with preachings in between and eventually culminating in a hard sell to convert non-believers. It was cleverly done by asking everyone to close their eyes and raise their hands if they so wish to be converted, to overcome their shyness. There was also peer pressure to ask believers to look at non-believers and say, "I will accompany you if you would step out to accept Jesus".

I am never a fan of hard sell of any product, religion included. Sadly, religion is a product and all religions are man-made without exceptions.

As the hard sell made its assault, I couldn't help but imagine how Jesus would have felt if he sees all these bright lights and sizzle displayed before him in the name of converting non-believers into believers. Couldn't it be done the same way as he did under the canopy of a tree in an open ground without any frills? Can we truly enlighten people about their spirituality inside by exploiting the crass materialism outside? Can we solve the problems of this material world that tempts us to stray away from God, with the same mind that had created them?

Big churches need big funds and these come from church goers. But should these funds be channeled to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible, or to commercial outlets and glitzy auditoriums?

May be among the thousands recruited in Rich Church, some will see the Light and experience salvation. However I suspect that many will be led into many blind alleys and meanders. Poor Church is materially poor, but I find its congregation warmer and its size of a more human scale. It also does not hard sell, or sell at all. It treats its congregations and guests as seekers of the Christian faith.

Of course, being spiritual does not mean that one has to be poor. We need material to survive in this human journey. However, if we are overwhelmed by material and lose ourselves in the insanity of the material world, then we will be led further and further away from our heart and God. That is my discomfort with Rich Church. This is my opinion. I am not imposing this on anyone. Rich Church goers will continue to do what Rich Church goers do. Ultimately, whatever we do, whether we are conscious of them or not, they are on our journey towards self realisation and salvation.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone!

Reading Books

I stopped reading books since I started having a smartphone. Then last month, while searching for my guide book to Guangzhou, I stumbled upon some fascinating books from my boxes. I had them for a long while, but haven't read them as they have been packed into boxes since I moved out of my old place.

Unexpectedly, merely seeing these books energised me. An instant lightness embraced my body as I recalled the bliss.

Smartphones, cyberspace, asynchronised telecommunications and constant multi-tasking fragment our attention. I believe that without technology and commerce, we all have an inherent natural flow that keep us in bliss. When this natural flow is too frequently interrupted it will break our intuition and tire us.

I am now back into reading books. The smartphone is still my pal and a useful one at that, but it is now carefully kept in check. I think it is the same that the soul should be firmly in charge of the mind. When the mind is overwhelmed by intense emotions, the soul becomes momentarily paralysed. :) While emotions flutter like leaves, the soul ought to remain sturdy like the trunk of the tree, unperturbed and in-charged.

Kid's Play - A Little Girl's Breaking News...

This post is borrowed from my friend Karen Tan's Facebook posting. It is reproduced here with her permission (with very minor corrections to typo errors and formality):


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This is my daughter's most original way of breaking the news that she didn't do too well in her Chinese language test. She breaks into a song at bedtime. Completely improvised. 

"O Mama, your eyes are as round as the ... zeroes that I get on my Chinese paper... 

O Mama, your eyeballs are as crossed as the "x"es that my teacher marked on my test paper ....

O Mama, your lips are as red as the red ink that fills the pages of my test paper ....

O Mama, your cheeks are as fat as the scary Chinese test paper that I didn't like sitting for ....

O Mama, your ears are as wrong as the words that I wrote wrongly when I should have written something else .... 

O Mama, your legs as as long as the cane that my teachers threatens us with ....

O Mama, your hair is as black as my teacher's face when she returned me my test paper ...

and in her soprano finale ... 

O MAMAaaaaaa.......!! I love you SOOOOOoo!!!!"
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Wouldn't anyone forgive this little angel easily?!! :)

Distractions

I have not updated this for three months. I have been busy acting and maintaining my other blog - about acting (click here), but that was not the real reason for neglecting Vacuum State. Rather, it was my recent obsession with my smartphone that has distracted me.

On the flip side, my smartphone has helped me extensively to communicate with agents, organise my gigs, negotiate terms, fix appointments, send invoices, check payments, record my lines and practise them, take photos of costumes and even helping me to find the shoot location on site. Ironically, my efficiency is at all time high. Without the phone,  I would need a manager and a secretary. But high efficiency comes at the cost of fatigue and fragmented attention. The result is a scattered brain and a monkey mind, as the phone turns from a useful tool to a distraction and then finally to an obsession of checking emails, advertisements, Facebook and other updates every few minutes.

In the public places, it is common to see people fixated with their phone. Many even extend their online expeditions beyond the necessary mundane chores, into movies, imaginary second lives, games and mindless chatter. I suspect that their their mental states would be more agitated than mine. An agitated mind becomes cluttered, forgetful leading to the ultimate drop in effectiveness and then the soul becomes a slave of the technology.

So a useful technology like a smartphone can easily turn to enslave us. Are you a master or a slave of technology? That is the question.

I notice that my intuition also drop as I rely more on technology. So, it is time to go on retreat to get my mind and tranquility back. You will thus see more posts here in time.

Remembering Foo Toon Jong

Foo Toon Jong, RIP 19 May 2012.

It took a few days for me to decide to write this post. Perhaps it is because it takes that long for me to accept the vulnerability of this human journey itself. 

Toon Jong was nicknamed "Tom Jones", because of how the two names rhymed and also because we had spent countless hours strumming the guitar and singing at the Club room. We both were volunteers in the Singapore Polytechnic Welfare Services Club (WSC) and Tom was a volunteer at Bukit Ho Swee Tuition Centre, Villa Francis Home for the Aged and Singapore Association for Retarded Children (now more politically correctly named as "MINDS"), from 1974-1978.

Toon Jong was at a staff bonding function in his new job, when during the activities, he had to excuse himself as he didn't feel well. He then went to rest on a couch and passed away peacefully there. Doctors concluded that he had a cardiac arrest.

During his wake, I learned from his wife that Tom never had any serious illness. He was a non-drinker, non-smoker, not over-weight and was always careful with what he ate. I last met his wife during their engagement held in a community centre in 1982 - thirty years ago. Time flies. Tom works for a civil engineering construction contractor. Such jobs are usually highly stressful, which could be the reason for his clogged artery and cardiac arrest. Some months ago, another younger WSC grad, Chang Yew Kee, died of heart attack in his sleep at the age of 49 - he was also working for a contractor.

This is not to prejudice the construction contractor business, but rather to say that we need to watch our stress levels, as stress is the single biggest killer.

After the wake, some of us suggested that we should meet at least once a year, before we never have the chance again. Sadly, it takes situations like these to renew interests to connect with each other. I used to phone them regularly, but gave up after sometime. I may have gotten a few phone calls from them (on their initiative) in the last 32 years, but too few to make a dent.

Perhaps now, things will change, alas getting back to be 'brothers' and 'sisters' in one big family - as we used to refer to ourselves as - back in the good old days.  :)