Stuff You Learn From The Walking Dead

Lessons from watching three seasons of The Walking Dead over two weekends:

1. Tie up loose ends - When you've got the chance to sort things out, do it. If you miss the chance it may not only not come around again, it may literally bite you, kill you and have you resurrect as a zombie. Carl didn't kill the zombie who was stuck in the mud outside the farm and what did that walker do? Attack Dale. Morgan didn't whack his zombified wife wgo later ate her son Duane. One may be afraid to deal with the problem at the right time, but you gotta just pick up that rifle or steak knife, pluck up some courage and stare the problem in the eye before fixing it. Andrea should have whacked Philip's one good eye when she had the chance. Fewer people would have died and she wouldn't need to go through all that drama.  

2. Accept what cannot be changed - whatever it is, if you can't fix it, don't waste your time, effort, tears and energy to change it. Unlike a clogged sink, there are some inevitabilities one must simple accept and move on with. Like Herschel who kept his zombie wife, stepson and friends in the barn thinking there's be a cure coming. Nosirreebob. Just let them go or shoot them in the noggin. 

3. A zombie apocalypse changes people - It's an emotional roller coaster that's takes a mental toll regardless how strong you may be. Poor Rick started seeing his dead wife, his kid Carl became a stoic psycho in the making, Carol grew well hardened. Herschel's kid wanted to end it with a dinner knife and asked her sister Maggie to join her. Unfortunately, therapists aren't really readily available during the end of the world. So look out for the signs and talk to one another. 

People can also change for the better in times of crisis. I am speaking about Daryl. From redneck sonofabitch, he became a trusted champ at camp. He tried his darndest to find Sophia, and he whack so many walkers with his trusty bow and arrows. He just needed the right leadership to straighten him out. And when he had to choose between his asshole misguided brother and his new family, he eventually returned to his friends. 

4. There's almost always a way out - You gotta keep looking and figuring out the possibilities. You never know what ingenious solution that grey matter of yours comes up with when put to the test. It may mean ripping off a zombie's arm and using the sharp edge of bone to pierce same said zombie's brain. Daryl started hallucinating about his brother taunting him when he fell off Nervous   Nelly into the ravine, got pierced in his sides by his own arrows, and attacked by two ugly walkers, but that didn't stop him from trying to save himself. 

There are probably more insights but this is all the writing there's time for on this train ride to work. 

Winning At Mahjong

I tend to lose at Mahjong. I was introduced to this game by some good university friends who decided that it was about time I shun my inhibitions of time-wasting and mental anguish. They decided to teach me to play without the 'teaching fees'. This means we went through the rounds without any monetary wins or losses, just affirmations of the right moves or bad decisions. Ego boost or ego crash. But the illicit pleasures of gambling crept in soon enough, at low values of course. In fact, the current bunch of like-minded tile-tackling addicts I play with have not expressed any dire need to increase the 20-40 cents 5-double tolerance. Not yet. 

Competition aside, it's the peripheral activities that make playing the game so enjoyable. The conversation, the food, the drink, and even TV form part of the distractions to concentration. Welcome distractions, otherwise one gets too caught up in the supreme gambling fetish versus participation in the social buzz. The conversations go on about anything and everything. That is what I believe is the hook. Winning is great and losing sucks but being with friends, telling stories and random eating and drinking are the proverbial icing on the cake. 

So even though I tend to lose at mahjong, I don't feel like I have. Maybe this what old people want. Am I there already? Yikes.  

A Mad Men Snippet For Happier Living

While ironing I caught a random episode of Mad Men in season 5. The team was getting an award at some dinner. Megan, Don Draper's wife, had her father Emile there, at the same table.

“I always thought that you were very single-minded about your dreams and that that would help you through life,” Emile tells Megan. “But now I see that you skipped the struggle and went right to the end.” “It’s not the end, it’s the beginning,” Megan says. “This apartment, this wealth that someone handed to you,” Emile replies. “This is what Karl Marx was talking about. And it’s not because someone else deserves it. It’s because it is bad for your soul.” “Don’t pick at me with your politics because you hate that I love Don,” she says. “No, I hate that you give up. Don’t let your love for this man stop you from doing what you want to do.”

(Most of that paragraph came from another website, www.pajiba.com. Lucky me, not having to recall all those lines.)

Wow. Now that's TV trying to teach us something. Rare but possible, haha. Megan marries Don, and her dad thinks she's lost her spirit.

It's an important lesson for all of us, not to lose ourselves. We all have dreams of some kind or at least ambitions we want to fulfil. A hobby perhaps, something that keeps us happy, a personal contentment.

I remember telling my primary 4 class that I wanted to be an astronaut. Well that's not gonna happen but I would still like to look at the stars and get lost among the pin pricks of sparkly lights. A telescope would help.

Maybe not losing our dreams too much is key. Life takes us on the usual route for some of us - school, work, marriage, house, more work, kids. (I say some because who am I to judge your circumstances). Along the way we figure out certain things. That we like to draw, a nose for wines perhaps, a flair for cooking, a vision for origami, an eye for photography, a dexterity for number puzzles, hands and legs for tree climbing, musical fingers. Whatever it may be, an activity, physical or mental, that activates our happy centres. We should try to keep some bits of these in our lives, if we don't already pursue what some might say would be our true calling.

The Mad Men example I suspect exemplifies the sacrifices we tend to make as we jump into various life stages. Even love may prevent us from being at our fullest and oddly enough, happiest. It's scary but makes sense. My mum left her home and school to come to Singapore and had me and sister. I know she regrets not having spent me time studying than taking care of her family back home in Ipoh and then here. A childhood missed. She's pretty good with art and did some of my praised pieces in primary school. Well, we tend to figure out our regrets when we aren't in control of circumstances.

So do something. Today. Watch your kids and figure out their talents. Teach them not to forget. We need a happier planet.

Railroad Lessons For A Five Year Old

This week is my nephew's first as a five year old. Five is when kids start asserting themselves more. In fact, putting him in his place has always been a challenge and now his linguistic prowess reinforces that dogged determination, adding much to the frustration to the blindsided adult trying to teach him a thing or two.

I bring up this story of stubbornness because today he blew up over really nothing. This week I progressively unleashed the wooden marvels known as the Ikea train set upon this toddler. On Monday I gave him a basic two-train and tracks kit. It also came with a bridge. He was delighted. On Tuesday, I gave him additional tracks, surprise number 2. Today, got surprise number 3 - curvy tracks and another bridge. With all these additional equipment to build his railroad empire, he set about the usual way of joining the implements and then wondering why they didn't loop back around. He started to move furniture to accommodate his engineering whims and fancies. I told him he needs to think about how that can happen. This conversation happened as I partook upon an oatmeal, biscuits and dried berries breakfast and his Highness in the floor in front of the TV. I finished quickly and joined him. I proceeded to explain how the curved tracks joined up and what he could do with them. I broke up his existing linear display and proceeded to form a figure-8 with the new bridge in the centre of this new magnum opus. Quite nice if I say so myself. But then I am 38. My intention ultimately is for him to craft out a plan in his head and build that, so I started to break up my masterpiece which my nephew had already started layering on the rolling stock. He burst into protest then tears. He hit me with the dismantled pieces.

"You can build it again! Ow!" I urge while ducking. "No I cannot! I cannot build it again!" He wails in agony only a 5 year old can appreciate. It was as if his pet had died or Ben 10 got cancelled. Calamity of the highest order for a toy has been destroyed.

"All the pieces are still here! You have to use your imagination! Ow!" I plead. With actual tears down his cute cheeks, he screams "Nooooo! I cannot! I cannot!" He immediately reminded me of that failed musician character in Sesame Street (or was it the Electric Company?) that couldn't complete his rhymes. In the end of the scenes he'd go "I'll never get it, never get it, never!" while crashing into the piano keys with despair and melodrama.

Now my mum, the nephew's grandmother and self-appointed Defender Of Evil Against Kiki comes around to scold me. "Why did you destroy the track!? You got to work now!" "Come, Kiki, we build it again on the dining table" she goes to placate the little monster. "He needs to learn to build it again. He can do it" I went to which I received the antagonistic "Go away lah you".

Sigh. I slipped away to brush my teeth. The construction scene outside moves from the dining table back to the floor as my mum realises her notion of railroad design isn't as small as my nephew's ambitions for grandeur.

I come back out and lo and behold, a wonderful figure-8 track laid out on the laminate. Larger, more quirky and fabulous than my earlier attempt. All my mum did was guide the track under the bridge component. Lovely. Happy kid.

So I asked my nephew for an apology. For all the noise, screaming, emotional blackmail, threats to my being, actual bruising on my person and general mayhem that ensued just minutes earlier. Good grief. He threw daggers at me with his eyes. Life lesson part done.

Before I left home, I angled him with "Surprise number 4". He seemed genuinely interested once again. I asked him to say sorry. He did in song. I'll take what I can get, admist the realisation I was very late for work.