Urgency in Compliment

Sometimes we Malaysian, or to a certain extent, Asian, are a bit lacking in giving compliments. The jokes about Asian parents that when their child comes home with 98% exam marks, they will ask where did the 2% went too. Then there’s also compliment given, but a bit too late.

I realised this when I myself feel that I have given a bit of effort and completed quite a good job, that I felt like asking, “Did I do a good job?”. The circle came back to me when my child came to me and asked whether he has been good and did a good job that day. It struck me that I was too slow in recognising the effort and giving the recognition it required. I try to prevent this from happening, and I think there’s an urgency in giving compliment, right when we realised it.

Of course there’s the problem of praise abundant, so much so that it becomes less valued, but that is another topic. For now, I’ll just practice to give compliments.

So, thank you for reading. (Id est, this is a compliment, for taking the time to read my blog).

Similar Posts

  • |

    Retirement and Romanticism

    My wife and I visited a group of friends recently and we inadvertently talked about future and retirement. One point of interest was that in Malaysia, people are normally forced out of work and into retirement, while in the UK, quite a lot of people, especially knowledge workers, continue to work past their 60s. This…

  • |

    Cybersecurity and Aikido

    Disclaimer: I am neither a cybersecurity expert nor an Aikido practitioner so apologies in advance for any faux pas or false facts. I was watching this video recently where it interviews an Aikido masters and he talked about Iai (Iaido), where one is always prepared to draw their sword due to sudden attack, which relates…

  • Black Friday

    Why do they call it Black Friday? I asked chatGPT and its unconvincing answer was that people used to do so much shopping that the police or enforcement said that it was a black day, i.e. it is a bad day to work. The term was then supposedly hijacked by capitalism and applied commercially. Yeah,…

  • Choosing to Keep It Simple

    In most situations, keeping things simple is the best way to get things done. But when you look at great things, they are rarely simple. The modern marvel in your hands for example, the smartphone, is something that is far from simple. It is complex and complicated. But how does it get to that stage?…

  • Prescription vs Proscription

    It was the first time that I heard about the word proscription, and I thought it was related to people being pulled into the army, i.e. conscription. Apparently it is not. The formal definition is the action of forbidding something, or banning. The ‘pro’ in the word proscription made me think that it was something…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *