OLDER BUT NOT WISER

Last week I ordered a wooden filing cabinet with 4 drawers. I wanted a sturdier cabinet for my files that had been cramming into a couple of fully packed 2 drawer low-end steel cabinets. I was glad that the shop offered free delivery. It would save me the hassle to hauling up the cabinet upstairs, to my home office. One weekday night the delivery came and guess what – the darn cabinet was in a big box, still be be assembled. The delivery man was instructed to deliver the box at my doorstep period, no more no less 😦 I was disgusted but had no choice but to assemble the cabinet piece by piece at the room where it was supposed to go. The instructions weren’t bad and all the materials needed – screws, bolts, glue, allen wrench – were inside the box. No hammerring and nailing required, just a standard screwdriver to bolt everything up . I did the assembly one Saturday afternoon and I was finally wrapping up, inserting the last drawer into the bottom part cabinet, it wouldn’t fit ! I found out that I inadvertendly reversed a piece of wood at the very bottom. I needed to take out all the drawers, detach one of the sides of the cabinet so I can get access to the piece that was wrongly positioned. I did fix it and I was lucky the glue hasn’t totally dried up on the wooden joints. Man, I cursed myself for messing up such a simple step. I swear if I had a chisel I could have just cut the errant piece and couldn’t care less how the cabinet looked 😯 It was a real drag and when it was over asked myself – “self, how could you possibly bungle such simple thing you stupid SOB ” ? 😡

I hate it when I mess up with simple things but no matter how embarrassing, I would take it anytime over a major screw up. Nothing in life is risk free and I’m not about to turn myself into a recluse, holed up in a little cave so I can eliminate any danger to my existence. Like is about taking risks ,of being brave enough to trust your abilities, smart to recognize and mitigate risks when you perceive them. Last week I saw a 20 year old Asian dude accompanied by both his parents to the walk in clinic for consultation with his doc for flu symptoms. Common’ now – that’s frigging babysitting an adult 😡 When will he learn ? No pain no gain they say and in my opinion, what we are today is the product of how we viewed and handled risk and learned from the mistakes we committed.

YOU’LL GET OLDER BUT NOT NECESSARILY WISER

Here’s an excerpt from the book Rules of Life. We all seem to think that we become wiser as we grow older. Experienced perhaps but that does not exempt us from goofing up once in a while.Rule No. 2 – You’ll Get Older But Not Necessarily Wiser dispels the notion that getting older means getting wiser. I totally agree with the author when he says that ” wisdom isn’t about not making mistakes but about learning to escape afterwards with our dignity and sanity intact”. It is a nice way of describing survival – getting badly beaten but somehow finishing the 12 rounds 😉 That also means not putting a bullet in our head because we screwed up 😯 As one saying goes – mistakes are totally useless if we learn nothing from them. True, safety first would reduce the probability of making mistakes but it will also reduce our chances of achieving greatness. Ironically, life is all about the business of taking risk to get rewarded. Somewhere along the way, we are bound to make mistakes to gain experience. Now to complete the irony, they also say experience is a hard teacher because it gives the test first, the lesson afterward 😉

WHY THE MAYWEATHER-PACQUIAO FIGHT FAILED

Boxing fans are aghast that the Pacquiao-Mayweather fight ended up in a stalemate. Hard to figure out how both fighters could muff a potential $40M payday because of PRIDE. Yep, PRIDE rules above everything they say. It started first with Floyd Mayweather behaving like he is the sole reason for the fight, when in truth, he is challenging Pacquiao’s pound for pound crown. His demand for an Olympic style drug testing, over and above the rules of the Boxing Commission was odd. It wasn’t necessary but then the Pacquiao camp agreed to a blood test after the press conference, 30 days before the fight and the day after the fight. When everything seemed hunky dory for a final go , Mayweather demanded blood test be done 14 days before the fight instead of 30. What’s with the 14 days anyways? Should Pacquiao win and gets tested positive after the fight and the win gets nullified, wouldn’t Mayweather get his zero loss he so cares for intact right ? Now, what’s wrong with that ? On the flip side, Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum has bad blood with Mayweather  because FloydM bolted from his camp when Arum was arranging for a return bout with de la Hoya a three years ago. Mayweather refused to fight de la Hoya again and was content with his controversial split decision win. The fight could have been an all time grosser but FloydM didn’t want to take the risk. He wanted to preserve his undefeated record which stands until today.  When bad blood exists between promoter and protagonist, expect a breakdown in negotiations, until one side agrees for the other to get the lion’s share. With bloated egos, both Arum and Mayweather will hold their ground till hell freezes over unless the other side buckles down in agreement. Now Pacquiao will fight Clottey on Mar 13 and Mayweather will fight Mosely on May 1. We will wait and see what happens next.

“In the end,” Roach says, “if we had given in on the blood testing, it would have been like giving Mayweather the first round. Why would we do that?“

It became a game (on or about Dec. 24). It became a game with kids drawing lines in the sand. It wasn’t anything special with Mayweather demanding 14 days. It was all about Mayweather bullying in my book.” –PROMOTER BOB ARUM