Reading the news from Buddhist Channel, I was intrigue on the news that the Buddha boy who have been meditating in the jungle of Nepal for years was the re-incarnation of Siddhartha Gautama.  I was curious as all this while I learnt from Buddhist text that Buddha, is an enlighten being who have successfully come out of the wheel of suffering (birth and re-birth) through self purification of one’s mind.  Therefore, cannot be reborn again.  If this as a fundamental teaching in Buddhist text, how come there are still so many that believe the Buddha Boy is Siddhartha?  Enlighten me please.

Every once in a while, you walk up a coffee shop and the person standing behind the counter look at you like she wants to eat you up, with no smile, no friendly voice, instead, shouting on top of her lungs “How can I help you today!”, almost picking a fight.  That’s the coffee bitch.   The coffee bitch is not one specific person, but a species of bitches who serves coffee.  I just wonder if they spit into the coffee or food to make their day.  In Malaysia, Coffee Bean, which I patron almost every weekend has the most of these bitches.  They are scattered all over Malaysia.  If not for their breakfast and royalty program, I would have ban this franchise long before.  Even when I help to clear the table when I was done, I was greeted with a ‘Oi!, Just Pass to Someone Can Already!’, like what the fuck, a thank you would be nice. 

On the other extreme, I have never encounter such coffee bitches at Starbucks.  I patron Starbucks in every city I visit and always, never fail, greeted with a smile, friendly voice and always made to feel like home.  I’ve read “How Starbucks Saved my Life” by Michael Gates Gill and finally understood why there’s a smile at the back of every Starbucks counter.  It’s their culture.  Now, why can’t coffee bean be more like them.  Then again, if coffee bean would embrace such cultures, then coffee bean wouldn’t be coffee bean today.  At the end of the day, these coffee bitches are human after all, and thanks to Coffee Bean, they have a job.  If there were no coffee bean in the world, and only Starbucks, these coffee bitches would have been discriminated, or worst being forced into doing someone that they are not.  So, the next time, I encounter these Coffee Bitches, I would just smile, and glad that these bitches are working in the coffee shop and not in my company which I have to deal with more often than visiting the coffee shop.  Maybe they will smile back and dont spit into my food.

The thing about suffering is that it changes all the time. And as a person, we often gets deluded about the sufferings. We often things that we change things, we change jobs, we change partners, we change home, our sufferings will go away. This is not true. What we change is just changing the type of sufferings. For example, in the current house, there are problem with neighbors being crazy, and we thought changing home, it would go away, well, partly true, they go away, but when we go to the new home, there are other new types of sufferings, and how would we deal with that then? It will never end. So, the key to eliminating the suffering is to deal with it directly. To accept that the world are full of funny things, and we can never escape from sufferings. To begin accepting the suffering is to first be thankful of the things you have now. Back to the house example just now, be thankful of the nice home you have. Be thankful that the home have sheltered you from heavy rain, and keep you warm and safe from thunder storms. When you start to cultivate these feelings, two things happen. First, the focus of the problems goes away, shifted to a positive focus. Second, because of the positive focus, you feel much happier. This is how we can eliminate our sufferings. Start with small things, and be thankful of them, and in time, we will be thankful of the life we have and the opportunity to do good and contribute positively to the society.

One week in, and my wife still has not finished the deathly hollows yet. The buzz over the price war have subsided and I believe the bookstores have moved on. Popular is giving a 25% discount for popular card members and a free ‘t’shirt (while stock last), general public gets a 20% discount. There were some bloggers who screams the drop of quality read or the death of retail bookstores with this invasion of hypermarts into the book domain. You can read the responses on this site. I believe that those who stood by the sides of the bookstores are truly an elitist and probably have not bought anything pirated nor downloaded anything illegal before. With all these hoo haa, many fail to identify the real ‘bad guys’ here. Yea, sure, the hypermarts were the easy targets, but failed to realize that they did everything within the law and it was mere a business strategy. Many forgot about the pirates. Read about them here and here. Why are there no one crying ‘death to the pirates’? Especially those called for the death of the hypermarts. The ones that really going kill the book industry will be the pirates, in the sea and online. The ones that degrades reading quality are the pirates. And yet, no one seams to care…

When you are young, you think you can change the world,
When you get old, you realize that the world changed you instead.

Kew L. Ang Summer 2007