Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

Translations/interpretations:

Friendliness is conducive to business success.; Amiability attracts riches.; An even temper brings wealth.; Good-naturedness is a source of wealth; Harmony brings wealth.; Peace breeds wealth.

A even temper brings wealth. This is my favourite. It doesn’t matter if some ignorant, impulsive, impatient and bad tempered brats don’t believe in it. The key to business success is not really “smartness” but good and bold strategy, hardwork, discipline, patience and an even temper. These beliefs are part and parcel of Chinese culture, especially during Chinese New Year.

During this festive season, there is plenty of buying and selling, cleaning and renewing. Demand for goodies like seafood, meat, vegetables go up. Prices follow suit. Schedules may get disrupted as people postpone major undertakings to after the new year. Along with all that, comes a bit of stress. But the party is about to start. We cast our worries aside, put on our finest attire and behaviour and greet the new year with a big smile.

When I was a kid, I was often admonished not to speak of anything negative during Chinese New Year. It doesn’t mean that we bury our heads in the sand. It simply means that we don’t spoil the festive mood which we remembered so well as kids. And I really enjoyed my Chinese New Year back then. All the sweets and good food. Catching up with relatives and friends. And of course, those red packets.

When I was a swinging single, I’ve called home from Thailand, Myanmar, India, Nepal and various other exotic destinations during Chinese New Year. Many people couldn’t understand why I would want to do something like that. Have I forgotten all the fun I had as a child? I guess like many other singles whose marriage was long overdue, I packed up and flew off to escape the irritating “so when are you getting married?” from my elders.

With my own family and kids now, Chinese New Year ought to be a lot more meaningful than before. Many people can’t understand why I still want to escape. Because one hand can never clap. I’m the only real Chinese at home who understands that Chinese New Year is not just about hanging red decorations. It’s not just about eating pineapple tarts, prawn rolls, love letters and kueh bangkit. It’s also about visiting, mingling, forgiving, forgetting and looking beyond the minor disputes and irritations around us.

Ironically, it is during this period that people who are either unfamiliar with the culture or who were not properly brought up would take the opportunity of reunion to rake up the past, reopen old wounds and pick fights. What is the point of hanging joyous couplets, keeping the brooms locked up or even praying to the god of fortune? To me, those are just superstitions. What really helps us prosper is to make peace with as many people who matter as possible, so we can focus on business and not fighting and grumbling.

There is no way I can impart values of even temper, tolerance, making do with less, patience and harmony when negative demonstrations fill the house. Year after year, there has been no exception. If anything, I have more reason to escape Chinese New Year now than ever before.

Happy New Year, everybody. Signing off until I come home from my trip.

As an adventurer, it’s not easy to admit that I have my phobias. I don’t know about everybody, but for me, my phobias can all be traced back to some traumatic experience in the past.

People who know I can swim but wonder why I’ve never done any scuba diving may have guessed that diving is one of my fears. This came after I saw the bloated body of my OC when I was 18 and serving in the army. My OC then, CPT Chua, was a diving instructor. On a trip to Tioman with his trainees, he went missing and was later found stuck to rock underwater.

That image was to be retained by my traumatised mind for years to come. The mere suggestion of going for a scuba diving course would send shivers up my spine. I just couldn’t do it no matter how hard the diving enthusiasts tried to convince me that the sport is very safe and accidents are very rare.

When my good friend Jason was still alive, we used to go trekking and climbing together. After Jason’s demise, I’ve lost a good travelling companion. And good travelling companions can be very difficult to find. Regardless of whether you’re going to Bali or Britain, Nepal or Norway, it is important to accommodate. Whether it’s your companion’s shortcomings or a disruption of schedules, change of plans due to circumstances, a good travel companion or even the lone traveller must deal with them with patience and an even temper. I’m sure almost everyone reading this has had bad experiences with friend or acquaintances who are ingredients for a disastrous vacation. Some people have gone on holidays as friends and come back as enemies. Would you feel good about going with them again, knowing very well that you’re going to end up with another eruption of fiery temper?

Only a fool would repeat the same mistake. Such unpleasant and sometimes traumatic experiences can sometimes result in phobias too. Just like my next phobia. There was also a time when I loved to go to Chiangmai. It was my second home. Years ago, I met many foreigners who also treated the city as their second home. Almost none of them is left today. Some have just left in disillusionment. Some have died.

Take J for instance. I met in Kathmandu on my first visit there many years ago. J is a Malaysian guy who fell in love with Thailand in the late 80s and decided to settle down there. He set up a legal, decent clothing business close to the Malaysian border and for years, J went through many ups and downs, struggling with the culture, the mentality and the authorities. He put up with them until someone held a gun to his head and threatened to blow it off. He settled down in Nepal and never went back to Thailand again. Why? Phobia.

At the time when I met J, I was also making plans to settle down in the Land of Smiles. I dismissed J’s story as a rare exception, but all that changed after a most traumatic incident far worse than seeing my dead OC’s bloated and deformed body. Having come face to face with life threatening situations before, the only time I panic, become cowardly and helpless is when my kids are threatened.

And there are spoilt brats out there who would threaten, throw tantrums and even resort to violence to have things their way. The trigger for such acts of violence can be that imaginary dusty old file that should have been closed ages ago. In a foreign land where guns settle disputes, where elected governments can be toppled by mobs and the rule of law is seldom respected by the powerful spoilt brats who are feared and obeyed by everyone around them, I can be quite helpless. It’s one thing to enjoy a nice holiday, ignoring the minor glitches and just concentrate on having fun. It’s another thing to pick on every minor irritation, blow them up, invent a few more stories and use them as an excuse to lose one’s temper and exact “revenge” on the bewildered “offending” parties. 蛮不讲理 takes on a whole new meaning.

I was so relieved to have escaped alive from that episode. Yes, it’s going to be a phobia that would remain with me for life. I will never step into that house of horrors again, especially when I can see that trouble is already brewing - again.

The world is flooded with self improvement books. Each one of them acts like a coach to guide the reader on his path of success both professionally and socially. There is one common denominator as far as self improvement or self help books are concerned. Another “selfish” word - self esteem. Since the “self help movement” started a couple of decades ago, the experts authoring these books came to the rather unscientific conclusion that people are obnoxious losers because they lack self esteem. It may have something to do with an unhappy childhood, but the gurus felt and so many still subscribe to that “you’ve got to love yourself before you can love others” myth.

How do we know it’s a myth? Because after an entire generation of self help books with thousands of titles published and billions of dollars spent on all the “non-fiction” bestsellers, America is still the same old country full of unhappy and unloved people. And Singapore is not spared this rip-off. Some years ago, two of my buddies in the army used to snap up every single self help book in the local bookstores. They were single, unhappy and not rich enough. After spending thousands on these books, they were still single, lonely, unhappy and a few thousand dollars poorer. Have the gurus thought of preaching a diametrically opposing doctrine?

Who are the people who are often unhappy and usually unloved; with few friends and even fewer successes in life? Who are the losers? Personally, the losers that I see around me are typically self-centred spoilt brats with poor emotional control. Is there a problem with their self esteem? Do they love themselves too little? Hell, no. In fact, they often have too much self-respect and too little respect for others. They turn hostile when others merely express impatience in repeating something to them. On the other hand, they don’t seem to realise that all the while, others are being very tolerant to their impatience and rudeness which they can’t see. Of course the spoilt brat may choose to live in denial and accuse the whole world of being against them. The objective indicator for who is right and who is wrong lies in the number of friends they and the people they criticise have. The genuine spoilt brats have few friends and even more telling is their propensity to blame the very nature of the environment for their unhappiness.

Like the yin and yang theory in Chinese medicine, boosting the self esteem of these individuals will merely upset the balance of yin and yang further. And without self help books, the parents of these spoilt brats are already doing a very good job perpetuating their self-centredness. These helpless folks agree with everything the spoilt brat says because they fear that disagreeing will trigger a round of tantrums. This way, the spoilt brat will never learn his/her mistakes. Certain cultures actually consider this as appropriate action in the face of unreasonable people/behaviour. I beg to differ. The more we give in to unreasonable behaviour, the more we encourage it.

No country can progress without peace and stability. No personal achievements can be made without hardwork, patience and a calm, peaceful mind. Glitches and mistakes are sometimes caused by our own carelessness. Sometimes they is caused by others’ carelessness or a breakdown in communication. They are intolerant to any glitches in life, getting angry and throwing tantrums whenever things don’t turn out right. By blowing up and blaming everyone instead of staying calm to resolve the matter amicably with people who are not impossible to work with, they effectively set bridges on fire, cutting off opportunities for future interaction and cooperation. Do we still need to add the oil of self esteem on those burning bridges?

The majority of people are able to deal with spoilt brats simply by avoiding them. Not when it happens in your family. Some parents continue to pamper those spoilt brats all the way to adulthood, soothing their already fiery ego on a daily basis. Ironically, that is meant to stop these grown ups from throwing tantrums or issuing malicious threats. What else can the aged parents do?