The dumbphone revolution

When Nokia (yes, your old pal from the past) was licensed to HMD Global, they started to release a series of dumbphone (or featured phone) to the market. Many were wondering why would a company made such a move when the market is clearly dominated by smartphones, but since then the sales of dumbphone has been increasing year on year. A surprise perhaps for most of us, as the dumbphone trend started to pick up steam and become a thing again. 

A search over the internet will bring you to all sorts of videos and blog posts, from average Joe to so-called influencers, raving over how much their life has improved ever since dumping the smartphone and switched to a dumbphone. I agree that the problem they cited are real, social media addiction, the endless scrolling over all sorts of meaningless content, the stress and competition from others who lived a much better lifestyle than yours, the list goes on. However, the root of the problem does not lie in the smartphone, rather it lies within you and me.

Smartphone is just a tool, a tool for us to communicate, to connect, to work and to play. It’s so powerful that it can literally does everything and anything. However, as the old saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. We need to be in charge to control the tool we used, otherwise we would end up being controlled by our tools, leading us to places where we shouldn’t belong. With smartphone in hand, it is our choice whether to use it for the good, or to let go and let it consume our mind and soul. I don’t think it’s right to put the blame on smartphone when we lack the will and discipline to control ourselves.

Having said that, I’m not saying swapping from smartphone to dumbphone is wrong. If it does help you to stay away from the source of stress and anxiety, by all means go ahead and do it. The key thing is for you to realize what is the real problem, otherwise switching to a dumbphone alone will not make any difference, as you will end up ditching it soon, or finding other ways to get consumed again by the dark side of the world wide web.

The Unrest World

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Just as the world is still fighting against a pandemic, other had a different agenda on hand and pushed ahead with war. I do not think that war is the best and only way to resolve any conflict, it’s amazing that at 2022, we are still resorting ourselves to the barbarian roots in our DNA when it comes to conflict resolution. Strange, but perhaps you can’t defy our genetic code no matter how much we evolve and progress.

With the war started, sanctions begin. Everyone is cutting their ties and even the slightest association, and it certainly is getting ugly. Athletes of that country banned from any competitions, sponsorship contracts terminated, and on top of that, all sorts of economic sanctions imposed are causing more harm to the innocent people than to the war starter. Some argue that it is necessary to have the suffering people to pressure their government, but personally I couldn’t comprehend such approach. Is there a better way then? I don’t know, I’m as helpless as those who were caught in this crossfire.

At lower level, some acclaim they would stop drinking vodka, while some started to shame anyone of the nationality or having some association to that country. We read news that people get cyber-bullied, restaurant getting bad reviews out of the blue and the list goes on. I understand that you are angry, so do I, but such action you took, which likely triggered by the barbarian gene rooted in our DNA, to me is no different from what was done by the guy who started the war. Just because you are standing on the other side of the war starter doesn’t mean you are entitled to start your own war and have it justified.

People threw a punch on you, and how do you respond makes all the difference. Perhaps this is something that we should ponder a little more, so that we could perhaps find ways to suppress that barbarian gene that tuck down deep within our body.

“I miss flying!”

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Everyone around me seems to miss the days when they can just board the plane and fly. During this challenging period, the airlines were scrambling to push out various plans and packages such as “fly to nowhere” initiatives, allowing people to board the plane just to take a meal, or even allowing people to order and have their in-flight meals delivered to their doorsteps. These just proved that people really enjoy the flying experience and missed it dearly, and there was opportunity to market such service to the masses. How about me? Well, I don’t.

For some reasons, I had never really enjoyed flying. Perhaps it’s because I am too poor to fly business class or first class all the time (for the record, I did flew business class once, although it was a short flight distance), but even so, I really don’t fancy the time wasted on the plane (and the time wasted before boarding) just to travel to somewhere else. That’s probably the reason why I always chose to have overnight flight just so that I could stay asleep and forget about the whole journey on plane. I had never felt any enjoyment from taking a flight. Yes, some flights do provide very good services and taking good care of their passengers onboard, but perhaps it’s the introverted self of me simply dislike the chaos ensued by having hundreds of strangers locked down within a confined space.

As such, none of those plans and packages appealed to me, and whenever people around me screamed “I want to fly!”, I simply couldn’t return them with any positive emotion respond. I like travelling to places, but no, I don’t like the flying process in between. Considering all modes of transport, I am probably more of a train person I guess? Anyway, until the day when teleportation becomes reality, I could only continue to fly to places despite not being my cup of tea.

What it takes to ride through the waves

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Singapore has entered into Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) in view of the surge in locally transmitted community cases. More restrictions were put in place in an attempt to break the spread of virus among fellow residents, but these measures were met with backslash and discontentment from the public. People were quick to put their blame on the government for allowing travellers from South Asia to enter our border, hence increasing the risk of “importing” viruses into our homeland.

Further north, Malaysia has seen huge spike in cases as well, and with recent record of over 8,000 daily cases, decision has been made by the Malaysian government to reimpose a nationwide lockdown in hope to curb the virus spread. Similarly, Malaysians were all at rage blaming the government and authorities for not taking action soon enough, therefore causing the situation to be worsen.

As a Malaysian who works in Singapore, it was a pain following the news and witnessing the numbers climbing on both sides. Both countries had been through a lockdown and subsequently managing the outbreak pretty well, so why is there a second wave now? Was it due to poor government protocols and policies like what the people had been pointing their finger to, or was it something more?

Like the saying goes, when you point your finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back at you. When we put the blame on the authorities, had we ever thought about our own action instead? Going places, gathering with friends, not wearing our masks properly, not maintaining the required social distance, not practicing proper hygiene, the list goes on. If we can’t have the self-discipline to protect and to take care of ourselves, what rights do we have to demand for our country to protect us?

Everyone is eager to live back their normal lives, but I can’t help but wonder if we could ever go back to our “normal lives” without first learned how to live in this “new normal”. It was predicted that such pandemic would occur again in the future, if we can’t learn to live through this one, the same problem will hit us again in the future and the vicious cycle will go round all over again.

The way I see it is this: those who refuse to acknowledge and adapt to the “new normal” are just like Kodak refused to admit on the rise of digital photography, Blockbuster refused to take a hard look at the born of Netflix, BlackBerry refused to acknowledge iPhone was the future of smartphones, and they all ended up with the same fate.

I’m not asking you to give up your normal life once and for all, what I’m asking is for you to pick up a new skill, learn to live your life in such trying condition, and this will better prepare ourselves for any challenges ahead, be it a prolonged battle with COVID-19, or some new outbreak in a few years down the road. Be nimble and switches between different ways of living, I believe this is the only way for us to move forward.

Are there bad companies?

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I wonder… 

I bumped into one of my old colleague who have left my previous company for quite a few years. I could still recall the days when she was working there, she looked miserable, lost and simply did’t fit in. I wasn’t that closed to her, but I knew she has good personality from the communications we had. But from the eyes of others, she was just “a girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing”. Most have given her a below average review, and honestly at that point of time I don’t regard her as a “great contributor” either. 

She left after a short stint, and now she has been doing pretty well in her career while maintaining her same good personality I used to know. Although not a close acquaintance, but I still feel glad that she managed to find her calling and made it through the low tides. I didn’t get to talk much with her about what happened in the past, but it started to get me wonder how things could changed so much for her.

Often we hear people saying they left a “bad company” and joined a “good one” and life becomes better thereafter. But I can’t help but starts to think… is there really a bad company to begin with? Company does not exist without its people, so I would argue it is “bad people” who made companies gone bad. I must say I believed my previous company in a nutshell wasn’t bad at all, but it was working with the people around that put me off. 

Fast forward today, working in my current company… how do I felt about it? Well, the close people who I worked with are generally nice and helpful, but people in the higher management… not so. Despite the challenge brought by pandemic, stubborn mindset are still stuck and refuse to change and adapt. A loud sounding alarm for the company’s future, but seems like no one bother about it. Should I do something about it or should I just leave? That’s the question I need to answer in the near future.

Till then.