There’s a relatively new saying I remember from my childhood watching Hong Kong TV, it’s in Chinese and one of the characters says, “做唔一定好，唔做一定唔好 ” (zou6 m4 jat1 ding6 hou2 ，m4 zou6 jat1 ding6 m4 hou2) Roughly translated, this goes, “If I do this, the outcome might not be favorable, if I don’t do this, things definitely won’t be favorable.” The usage was in reference to the overthrow of the Chinese monarchy in the early 20th century but can be applied to our own lives as well.

If we are in a situation that is middling, that is we ain’t happy nor completely miserable, we may end up tolerating with “ok,” the outcome is fairly predictable. We end up with average and at the end of life, more oft then not, a great many of these individuals end up thinking “what if”, fill in the blank, would things be better?

Back to the present, when trying something new, you take a chance to fall anywhere on the bell curve:

If you were on the middle prior, you can be higher or lower now.

The mistake comes when people think they are “stuck”, especially when they’ve been in the middle for a long time. You can always change, quite often an effective method is a physical shift through geographic relocation to break the routine. Such action throws things into chaos and your left to put things back into place. Your source of income, relationships, place of residence etc. This is more work , that’s why the verbs used to describe dreams, happiness and goals are “Chase your dreams, pursue happiness and reach your goals. They require blood sweat and tears.

If you want to get to the far right of the bell curve, it won’t be handed to you on a silver plater, you’ve got to earn it.

Part of the reason why I’m no longer an accountant in Reno, NV and no longer an English Teacher in Bangkok, Thailand for that matter.

Smash, Learn ,Rebuild, Repeat.

Kingston S. Lim

March 9, 2020

Cebu, Phillipines

Life Update: Leaving the Philippines soon, honestly not my favorite country, I was treated better in other places. The people, food and culture also seems more westernized then other SE Asian nations which lends a feeling that I’m in a different region of the world. At the same time, I find myself thinking about Thailand a lot. Likely because I lived there for so long, it’ll take time to adjust.