Social Invincibility

October 15 is an important day to a lot of people. For some, it means freedom. For some others, it means bravery.

Last Saturday was such a day. All around the world, people has gathered in public spaces in their cities, getting along with people whom they barely knew - people from various background who might never not knew each other if not for the monumental October the 15th.

October 15th was not about protest nor anger nor frustration - even though most of the one who showed up has a lot of said emotions swelling inside of them. October 15 has no hidden agenda nor political affiliation nor conspiracy theory since everyone who came are ordinary citizen like you and me. The day however is about something much bigger. It was about hopes, and dreams, and love. Forgive me if I make it sounds corny but October 15 is about all that. It is not about the past, but about the future.
 
October 15 romantic idea is that we, the people, should claim back what is rightfully ours. The symbolism is demonstrated by the act of occupation of public spaces, where as I have mentioned before, people gathering various places in their cities such as the streets or the squares which aptly called #occupycities. #occupywallst in financial district has been going on for 3 weeks and still going strong while the #occupy juggernaut at Tahrir Square# which has attracted millions has been continuing since February this year.

Closer to home, about 50 people turned out for #occupydataran where a lot of people gathered under the huge Malaysian flag at Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square).

Last Saturday night, the one who comes is neither Malay nor Chinese nor Indian. Neither Bumi’s or Non-Bumi. They did not even came as Malaysian; they just came as who they really are -  People, Human, Manusia; however you may called it. People whom may look different, think different and act different yet the same people nonetheless.

If one were to asked any Malaysian what they think defines the Malaysian identity; they would only be one answer. Nope, it’s not lagu Negaraku (Malaysian Anthem) and it’s not Bahasa Melayu (Malaysian Language), although both of that would be nice. The one thing that defines a Malaysian; and one that I believe anyone would agree; is food. When I arrived, near 6.30 in the evening - two hours later than #occupydataran started, I was greeted by food - a lot of food.

The crowds were just starting a mini event called People’s Potluck where attendees brings foods to be shared with everyone. There’s nasi lemak (steamed rice cook with coconut cream with spicy anchovy sauce),  fried wonton (a type of dumpling), roti canai (a type of flatbread), bihun goreng (fried rice-product), egg sandwich, baguette ( a long french bread), plenty type of cakes, snacks and drinks. The richness in variety made me smile (and made my stomach full). The feast continue on for 1 hour before the crowds decides to start the main event for the day which is called the People Assembly.

The People Assembly or called General Assembly in other places like the United States, is a mock parliament session where the people practices what is called a participatory democracy in which everyone can have a voice and a vote when discussing about various topic which may be discussed in the assembly. Everything from the moderator, the topics and the proposal is decided by the people. One uniqueness of of people assembly or the a certain extent, participatory democracy compared to currently practiced representatives democracy is that everyone has a vote and every vote matters. This is demonstrated by the assembly requiring an unanimous vote to passes any proposal. This may take a lot of time and effort may end up provide satisfaction to every participant.While the system probably ain’t a perfect on yet, it is almost a breath of fresh air especially for those who are infuriated by the status quo.

While the feast last for an hour, the People Assembly last for much less than that. Not a minute after starting the assembly, uniformed police officer appears in droves and requesting the crowds to stop eating (some still did) while giving the assembly 5 minutes to disperse. This is expected since  Malaysia’s authorities# were never known for their love towards peaceful public gathering and given how well #occupydataran is publicizes, their interruption is inevitable.

In most other gatherings like this, such as the previous thousand people strong protest called Bersih, the crowds will most likely to make their stands whether to fight or take flight -  the People’s Assembly’s crowds however managed to keep their cool. A few people were sent to negotiate with the authorities while the assembly keeps on discussing about how they want to deal with the police. A proposal that won the unanimous vote was to kindly invited the authorities to come into the assembly and tell them directly why they couldn’t continue gathering but the invitation was turned off.

The assembly later decides to take a break and encouraged the crowds to mingle around and engage in various activities such as musical performance, stunt performance, group activities such as games and watching the football match which is shown in the huge outdoor amphitheater  just next to the Independent Square.

The logic behind why a group of non-threatening ordinary people weren’t allowed to have a peaceful public discussions in public places escapes me. Have we become a nation that discourage our people to discuss things openly? Have we became a police state where everything anyone wanted to do must have the consent of the big brother? If that is so, then what next? Do we pull a China# and make people disappear whenever they complain? Oh, shit - we are doing it now.

P/S: #occupydataran doesn’t ends after the first confrontation with the authority as mentioned in most local and foreign news media#. The crowds stays and the people assembly reconvene a few times until morning even after threatened a few times by the authorities.

P/P/S/: I was having a huge headache during the half-part of #occupydataran so I was unable to give detail report about it. I was taking naps (yes, twice) while other people in the assembly.

Your biggest enemy is often no other than yourself. I’ve dressed well, prepared well, and I know half the people at the party. But why the hell did I bombed it?

If I must blame something, I’d say lack of practice and the fact that I haven’t been in the right mindset for a while.

Last night, I was invited by some friends to a party at the suburb to celebrate the Muslim’s Eid and Carrefour new iOS application. I walk out of the rail station dressed up to the max, street style. Brand new haircut, damn fine t-shirt and jeans and a tweed jacket. There’s no way I can fail tonight, or that’s what I thought. Anyway, let’s get into the detail a little bit.

#WHOlah was made by Tandemic - a Malaysia social media movement group - forCarrefour and is an iOS game which challenges you to match your Facebook friend’s profile photo with their name. This game is designed so that if you get a high score in-game, you can claim for real prize at Carrefour shopping mall.

I’ve known the people at Tandemic for a while now, I’ve joined a couple of the events they organized and one thing I knew is that these guys (and one girl) can throw a hell of a party. And they did last night too, it was crazy.

How crazy? How about supermodel played #WHOlah (the iPhone game) while playing a hula-hoop?

And #WHOlah drinking game, well… not quite.

Suffice to say that the party rock. Unfortunately, while there are plenty of cameras flashing around last night, there was no picture of me. And I can only attribute that to my own fault. My invisibility went through the roof last night.

As I said earlier, I knew almost half of the people at the party. There are plenty of people I’ve met over the year in event quite like this one. But I never get to get into talkative state last night. I am too worried about saying stuff that don’t make sense and have embarrassed myself.

But not talking to people in the party make me look awkward. And I know that, but I really can’t help myself last night.

What I do learn though is that I need to step up my game a little bit. I should have not stop practicing because I might need the mental confidence when something like last night happens.

But I’m not going to think about last night too much. Let bygones be bygones. Next week, I’m invited to help host a Women Entrepreneur Award. Let’s hope that my confidence is back then.

Peace out.

I never believe in clairvoyance. I never believe in horoscope. I never believe in tarot card. I am too logical as a person.

When I woke up the morning of the second day of the summit however, I had a bad feeling about the day. I had a terrible headache and I don’t have the energy. Just as we often pick up subtle vibes when we meet a new people, we also pick up vibes about ourselves subconsciously – probably.

But one thing is clear, as soon as you started your day without the right mentality, your whole day will suck.

I don’t want to explain why I became invisible on the second day of the summit. It was a pretty disappointing day for me.

In the last post I talked about preparation and how it helps me a lot on day one.

I was prepared for day two. Too bad I wasn’t prepared for disappointment. And I fell hard.

Life is unpredictable. We humans are very good at understanding the past but are terrible when it comes to predicting the future. A historian, for example, is a real and quite respectable profession, but the same cannot be said for a futurist.

We might not be able to predict the future with any confidence or know exactly how events will turn out for us. However, we can rely on our past experiences to help prepare ourselves for future events. We can take what we learn in the past and use it to help form our future experiences, as I learned from one event.

I came to the venue of World Bloggers Summit a little early; I arrived an hour before the registration session was supposed to start. I didn’t get enough sleep the night before since I was busy preparing and rehearsing what and how I was going to speak to people during the event. I was tired, yes, but I looked sharp and my mind was sharp. I felt confident.

I wore a casual outfit - blue mock turtleneck with light blue jeans - thinking that I was going to meet youth bloggers like myself. However, I soon found that most people in the summit were young working adults wearing neckties and coats. In the past, a situation like this would make me nervous and undermine my social skills, but not today - I’m mentally prepared for this.

Writing is my passion and blogging is one of the activities I use to express my passion. I learned many new things about blogging during the summit and the speakers and panelists also reminded me a lot about the things I already know. I never met any of the speakers or panelists personally, but because they told me something that I can understand and relate to, they managed to get my attention.

The same principle applies when you start a conversation with a complete stranger. You want to create a sense of familiarity with your target, building a rapport with them. Most people in this situation will start barraging their conversation partner with question after question so they can find a commonality between them, but this is not the right way to do it.

Conversation should be a dynamic interaction with a lot of give and take. Asking question after question is like taking without giving, and after this continues for a while, the dynamic is lost.

If you expect people to share information about themselves with you, you should first let them get familiar with you. You give before you take. Whenever I want to ask people something about themselves, I often tell them something they might want to know about me first.

I had the following conversation with a girl sitting next to me:

Me: Hi, how are you? (Offering a handshake, prompting her to respond)

Girl: I’m fine, how are you?

Me: I’m fine too, thank you. (Pause) I’m here because I just started a new blog and I’m pretty excited. (making eye-to-eye contact, encouraging a response)

Girl: Well, I used to blog too but stopped for now; kind of busy with work so I don’t have time to write anything.

Me: I stopped blogging for a while too (commonality), but I just started again recently. What do you blog about, I mean, before you stopped?

Girl: I have this website where I wrote about traveling - backpacking and stuff.

Me: Wow! That’s cool. I always wanted to go backpacking. I dream that one day I’m going to take a flight to Turkey and go to Paris only using land transportation. Then I’m going to take another flight to New York and backpack my way all the way to Los Angeles.

Girl: Couple of years back, I went backpacking in South America and I have to…

I realized that the more I shared with this girl, the more she opened up with me. Before long, I became very comfortable speaking to her, and even managed to squeeze a few laughs out of her with my jokes. I repeated the process with a few other people in the summit. I wanted to make sure that my first success wasn’t a fluke - and it wasn’t. I notice that people enjoyed talking with me, and I had a great time at the summit.

One thing I should mention here is that without preparation, it would be very difficult for me to share my thoughts with other people. It was only after engaging in several smooth and natural conversations, one after another, that I realized all the preparation I put in the night before the event paid off.

I came prepared, and I left satisfied.

I was sitting at a table outside of a fast food restaurant near my house - alone - while drinking what’s left inside of my plastic cup. A soccer match is played on a flat screen TV not far from my table; a match between two local football club. I love football and it was a great game but I can’t seem to focus on the match. What really grabs my attention was a two set (a two set is a group of two girl, a mixed two set is a group consist of a girl and a guy -  origin Mystery) sitting in between the TV and my table.

One of them looks slightly older than then the other; her hair was dark brown, curly and she was sitting facing to my direction. The younger girl sit next to her, puffing smoke while they were talking. She has light brownish hair which she kept firm with a worn out hair band. She wore a thin framed glasses, a black ladies overcoat which nicely complement her inner purple shirt.

I’m slightly attracted to the younger girl but I can do nothing except to watch them from afar hopelessly as she puff another smoke while talking to her friend, completely oblivious to my existence.

I wanted to go to her and ask her name, maybe ask her number or email address so that I can ask her out in the future. It wasn’t that hard to do, I just need to be brave that’s all. But something stops me from doing so. I have analyzed the situation and came up with a conclusion that nothing can go wrong. But I just stood there doing nothing, until they stand up and left me after a while.

What I’m experiencing is what called the approach anxiety; it’s the fear we felt inside, the state of awareness we had which often tries to mess up our mind. The logical thing to is to just go ahead and say hi; worst thing that could happen is that she may give me the finger (if she had a bad day) or maybe she would scream (if I act like a total creep). But the probability that good things might happen is always greater (meeting new people, getting a girlfriend, finding career / business opportunities). But in the aware state, our mind will always tries to fuck us up and all of sudden, the worst case scenario seems so real.

There is a technique in the pick-up communities to counter this problem which is called the ‘Three second rule’. The rule is simple, as you set your eyes to a target or a group you wanted to approach, allow yourself no longer than three second before you open the set.

This technique will reduce the time you are trapped inside the aware state, and our mind won’t have enough time to imagine all the bad things that could happen. This technique will greatly help you to reduce your approach anxiety.

On the other hand, this method will also create a good first impression to your set; you came off as spontaneous and confident which is something that most people lack.

“But what should I talk about when I approach?”

Well, there is an art of opening a set - a technique if mastered, will allow you to start a conversation with whomever you want be it a stranger or a celebrity. But that is for another post; we are here to discuss about how to get past the approach anxiety.

But then again - to put your mind to ease when you tried opening a set - you should always know that what you said to open the set is not important. A master conversationalist which called himself Juggler summed quite nicely.

He said,

“The first thing you say matters very little; as far as opening lines goes, a grunt or a far is sufficient.”

And I believe in that wholeheartedly.

So, I promised to myself that the next time I feel the need to approach someone - as soon as I felt the aware state - I’m going to apply the three second rule, and I’m going to say, “Hi, how are you?”