attitude...part 2

Last night I read a blog titled : The One & Only Problem in Malaysia written by Syed Akhbar Ali.

I found that his writings in that blog is spot on to what I'm experiencing and what I felt for the last couple of months. I found it very true.

The problem is basically, wrong attitude.

I have my fair share of stories about this attitude thingy.

1. It happened recently, a local contractor said it will take them 4 weeks to install a kitchen cabinet and it'll cost me about RM1700. A chinese contractor told me that for the same price, they can install it tomorrow and will complete the exercise in 2 days.

2. A local graduate with a degree in business administration came to us for an interview. During the interview, I gave her 5 minutes to talk about herself and her future aims. I actually stressed that she should answer in English. What happened next, well...she stuttered and unable to answer such a simple question. It's very difficult to help someone who doesn't even know on how to communicate properly...

3. I had the opportunity to travel overseas during the recent years. One thing that I noticed during my travels was that, people in Indonesia are very passionate about their work. No matter whether they are employed as a guard, a waitress, a salesman, a golf manager or anything. THey took their job seriously and always with a smile. It's very different from here. There's no customer relationship. It's all about 'I- have-to-work-so-I-earn-some-income' Perhaps, it's more about 'I-have-to-do instead of I-want-to-do it.

Take for example, when I was in Cambodia 2 years ago, the restaurant that we were in ran out of Coke. The waiter told me politely ' Sorry sir, we ran out of coke. WOuld you like something else? Pepsi?' A similar situation happened to me 2 weeks ago at a restaurant in Bangsar. I ordered a coke and the waiter said ......'Coke habis bang!!' That was it. No suggestion being offered. To make matters worse, barely 10 minutes after that, the table next to us were served with not one can of coke but 3. Idiotss.......The waiter didn't even bother to go and check whether there are any left....

4. I called up MARA to enquire about an application for a study loan for my sister. Rang them up a few times with no answer. IN fact, when I did get an answer, the person in charged was either at a meeting or not at his table. My call was passed around from the reception to the 3rd floor, then to the 5th floor ....it was endless. In the end, I just made the assumption that perhaps, nobody knows the answer.....

5. During my student days in Ireland, I had the opportunity to meet some very bright medical students. Some of them were sponsored by the government to complete their studies in Medical. Unfortunately, some of them went there for the wrong reasons. Instead of studying, they join the tabligh movement. They didn't attend their classes. In the end, they failed and came back.

6. A local golf pro recently state in a golf magazine that he doesn't require a coach. He felt that he shouldn't listen to anyone who he thinks are no better then him. Of course he has won tournaments before but that was years ago. And now, he is still struggling with his game and still continue to train alone. Let's be honest here, just like everything in life, to be successful, to be good in something, we need to have a mentor. HOw do you expect to be good in what you do without guidance? If he change his attitude, he'll be a good golfer. He has the talent but waste it all with his attitude....

7. We sometimes feel angry when we talk about the lack of jobs for our citizens. There are jobs. Thousands of them. But we gave em all to the foreigners. Who are we to blame?

8. Let's not get started with our driver's attitude on the road. Almost everyone turns into a maniac whenever we put our hands on the steering wheel. Sometimes, I felt scared to even drive nowadays.......That's one of the reasons I don't ride anymore.....

9. In the working environment, we are bound to come to the office at the stipulated time and are expected to perform our job till 5 or 6pm. Unfortunately, from I what I saw, if some of us can't come to the office before 830am and left the office at exactly 530pm, how are we going to be competitive? It is even worse when a portion of our working time is being used to surf the internet.....

10. We do like to question, why is A is better then me? Why is he driving a larger car? Why is he living a bigger house? Why...why ....why? Well...it's because he works harder. It's because his or her parents gave their support. It could be many reasons and one of it I'm pretty sure is due to his or her positive attitude in life....We always see the end result but we do not see the progress that he or she has made in reaching his or her goal....

Those are just a few experiences I had when we are talking about some of our attitude. I kinda agree with Syed Akhbar when he mentioned the issue is not related to race, religion or education. It's all about the attitude...

If we can change our attitude just a little bit, who knows, we might a better person then we think we are....