My Philosophy of Friendship

Friendship is an investment and I take my investments seriously.

Investment in friendship does not necessarily lead to spending money. However, on some occasions investing a little money to know the person better is a necessary evil.

In financial investment, things are straightforward. The good outcome is when you gain a profit and the bad outcome is when you lose money. It's a little different in friendship. The outcomes are assessed differently. I assess friendship by looking at the direction of the investment - is it one way or two?

One-way investments happen when someone becomes the absolute taker with no intentions of reciprocating in whatever circumstance. Unfortunately this type of people are a disappointment in friendship investment. These are people who will kick your face when you are down and knock you out when you are of no more benefit to them. Fortunately, this type of person is easily identified. Which is why I mentioned earlier that spending money to exorcise this type of person is a necessary evil. It is also a stop-loss in future investments. There is no room for such friendship in my portfolio of investment, so I get rid of them in a flash.

Two-way investments happen when there is a dynamic exchange of investments between both parties - mutual trust, respect, empathy and positive vibe with each other. Two-way investments are rare and far between. That is why, a good friendship is hard to come by.

Backed by this philosophy, I draw parallels to what I'm doing elsewhere in life. For example, I have started the cull in Facebook; trimming down from 683 "friends" to 400ish. Of this, only a select few are granted visibility. I am sure I too am assessed the same way by other people.

2011 London Tube Fares

The following is the approved Tube Fare for 2011 which I obtained from an "insider" who gave permission to share this out:

Off-Peak Price Cap
Zone 1-2: £6.60 (previous £5.60)
Zone 1-4: £7.30 (£6.30)

Peak Price Cap
Zone 1-2: £8.00 (£7.20)
Zone 1-3: Withdrawn (£8.60)
Zone 1-4: £10.00 (£10.00)

Bus Fares
Oyster Single: £1.30 (£1.20)
Oyster Cap: £4.00 (£3.90)
Cash: £2.20 (£2.00)

Celebrities

Two and a half years after living in London and just across the road to the oldest commercial TV network in the UK, I went in to one of the studios on a priority ticket to see the live production of The Graham Norton Show. Ironically the chat show was a BBC production, a rival network to the ITV. But not much of a surprise with this sort of thing in the UK. Cross-fertilisation with rivals is commonplace here.

Graham Norton Show

Rihanna, Daniel Radcliffe, Colin Farell and Rhod Gilbert were present. Can't believe I met all of them in one night. I was particularly impressed with Daniel Radcliffe who rushed to the event from the movie premiere of his latest Harry Potter movie in the evening. He was shorter in real life than I thought! He shared that the craziest fans he had were from Japan. A Japanese fan gave him a rubber ear!

Rihanna announced her upcoming album "Loud" and sang the album's lead single "Only Girl" on stage to the rousing applause from us.

Certainly a memorable experience for me and hopefully the three of my friends.

Paris Marathon: Registration

I signed up for the Paris Marathon 2011 after failing in a bid for the London Marathon. The race cost me €90 inclusive of €10 insurance to get a full refund in case I pull out. This is the most expensive marathon I've paid to-date.

One of the requirements to run the Paris Marathon is to produce a medical certificate showing I'm fit to run 26.2 miles. It's the first time I ever needed to do that.

Today I had to rush back from work before five o'clock to go for a medical check up. Clinics here don't do 24 hours like kebab stalls. Doctors here only work on weekdays and till 6pm. So if anyone falls sick, it better be life-threatening in order to see a doctor in the hospital. Otherwise, see one on a weekday!

The checkup was simple but slightly humiliating. Not saying about nudity. Yes the normal heart rate checkup was done but what took me by surprise was the doctor asking me to do thirty squats with both arms stretched in front, in one minute. I felt like a school punishment because that was what my primary school teachers prescribed when we behaved like monkeys. So as I was doing the squats, I felt like back in SRK Bukit Bintang all over again.

It probably wouldn't be so strange if she did it with me like in a gym session. No, I take it back; it would be more strange! She was looking at me and I was looking at her while I counted the squats; just the two of us in a consultation room. Odd! Odd! Odd!

Squat like this

The initial reading was 120/63. A reading was taken immediately after the squats - 175/84. At this point, the doctor looked, shook her head and said, "Too high..tsk tsk tsk!" She laughed. Obviously she was trying to make me feel nervous. She took two more readings a few minutes apart. The readings were 150/74 and then 125/64.

"Ah! Good recovery. That's what I'm looking for. I'm happy to sign the form now", the doctor said, then penned her signature and put a stamp on the form.

After stepping out of the clinic, I looked at the name of the doctor. It read "Dr Lefeuvre". Sweet! A French! Now there's no way the French organisers are going to reject this!

Chilean miners - the miracle debate

Last week's international news were dominated by the successful rescue operation of 33 miners in Chile.

For some reasons, the operation has made me proud to be an Engineer and a Christian at the same time. Chileans are staunch Christians - Catholics to be exact. This catastrophe has tested anyone with a strong faith to the limit. The rescue operation lasted two months and would have debilitated the strongest of faith.

I have experience working with holes in the ground - from small trial holes to big tunnels. There are all sorts of complications associated to boring through vertically and horizontally e.g varied ground conditions, building settlements and cracks, unforeseen "craps" in the ground and equipment playing up. I was therefore biting nails when I read the Chileans were buried more than 700m below ground and the only way is to bore through 700m to get them out. I was doubtful anyone could survive the ordeal.

Working with tunnels and holes

To appreciate how deep 700m is, consider putting two Eiffel Towers on top of each other! And to understand the complication of boring at such depth, consider hammering down a 9" nail into the slender side of a plywood without breaking out from either side.

As an Engineer, I understand screw ups do happen at anytime even at the first 10m e.g deviation, hitting cavity or soft spots and groundwater pressure. I recently oversaw the boring of three tunnels the same size as the Chileans', with a total length of 200m. They took us three months to complete because of an unforeseen site condition. So, 700m would have its own set of problems. To compound the problem, 33 lives are under the machinery. Therefore, any collapse induced by the boring machines would have a devastating effect on the operation.

Long story short, two months later, the machine managed to get through 700m and exactly at the spot where the miners were trapped. Absolutely brilliant engineering!

The Chileans have a great ending to this story. They have prayed and their prayers answered. They set up camps around the site known as Camp Hope, and rightly so there was hope.

Yesterday morning there was a discussion in BBC about the Chilean miners. The discussion was more like a debate if this should be attributed to miracle or mere coincidence? How was it likely that 33 miners were trapped in a hole that didn't collapse with the surrounding ground?

A pastor said this could not be explained but convinced that this was certainly a miracle.

A human rights activist dismissed this possibility and said that it couldn't possibly be a miracle or divine intervention. He challenged that if there was a God, then where was He during the 2004 tsunami?

For me I respect both opinions but I would personally choose to think there was an element of divine intervention. Choosing to believe this doesn't in anyway downplay the established path of the rigour of science that helped rescue the miners. This is as good as drawing parallels to an HGV not reversing into me at site when I'm protected with concrete barriers, hard hat and with all the right PPEs.

Yes, there are two sides of the argument. Some will continue to use tsunami victims and trapped miners in China as anecdotal evidence that miracles cannot be supported and that they are purely psychological. The other side of the argument, as I feel is that these events are isolated but also relative in some ways. They made me realise that, "Bloody hell! The worst could have happened! Thank God it didn't!"