WHAT CHARLIE BROWN FOUND OUT ON HALLOWEEN

On Halloween night, I anticipate scores of children dressed up as ghosts or witches going door to door with bags in their hands hoping for candy. I wonder about bad teeth and obesity. Although I do not celebrate Halloween I am puzzled why adults do not give the children fruit or muesli bars instead. Well, the answer is that the children would probably throw the fruit or muesli bars back into your face or worst still throw toilet rolls up to the roof of your house so that the paper would roll down the sides of the roof making it a daunting job for you to climb up to the roof to remove them, especially if they got stuck to the tiles after the endless Irish drizzle.
Halloween is an annual holiday observed on October 31 in Ireland and though secular in nature, it has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain , whose original spelling was Samuin (pronounced sow-an or sow-in). The name is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end". This festival celebrates the end of the festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half ”.
In the past, people believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to cross over. Ancestral spirits were honoured while harmful spirits were warded off by wearing costumes and masks. In the effort to avoid harm, children disguised themselves as ghosts or witches and go trick-or-treating. Other activities included carving jack-o’-lanterns, joining ghost tours, and setting bonfires.
My earliest introduction to Halloween was when I saw It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown a 1966 American prime time animated television special based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.

Two characters stood out:
Linus (the one with the security blanket) and Charlie Brown (the round headed child). Linus had great faith that ‘The Great Pumpkin’ (a benevolent figure) would emerge at the pumpkin patch and so he waited until he fell asleep at the pumpkin patch while other children were out trick-or-treating.

The Great Pumpkin never showed up and Linus’ sister Lucy took him home and put him to bed. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIWh_YIRQuM)
Charlie Brown on the other hand went trick-or-treating and while everyone else got assorted candy, apples, gum, cookies, money, and popcorn balls, he got a rock from every house he visited. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tIhwITwhSg)

For both these characters, it was a night of disappointments.
But in reality disappointment is no respecter of age. At some point of our lives, we would have suffered disappointment , great or small. It hurts when things do not go the way you have planned and hoped. I remember I tried seven times, year after year, to apply for a full doctoral scholarship. To say I was not sorely disappointed would be an understatement.
We would play the event over and over again in our minds, trying to make sense of it and trying to come to terms with it. We might recover quickly or we might wallow in the mire of frustration or blame.
However on a positive note, the very presence of disappointment suggests that this is something you care about so much that you would feel bad over it. But the more we deal with disappointment and learn from it, the closer we will get towards our goals and dreams. It has been said that disappointments leave us with the unpleasant task of crushing life’s lemons to extract anything to transform into lemonade.

I find that very true. We build up our strength, our character and our tenacity. We learn not to put all our eggs in one basket and formulate contingency plans. We alone know our true worth when we overcome setbacks to achieve greater things in life.
So back to Charlie Brown and Linus.
They were disappointed on Halloween but they were not defeated. Linus vowed he would wait again for the Great Pumpkin the next year. Viewers of the show were moved by Charlie Brown's repeated line of "I got a rock" and in the retrospective TV special "Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown", Charles Schulz said that when the programme was first aired, viewers all over the world sent bags and boxes of candy "just for Charlie Brown."

Source: The New Straits Times 23/10/2011 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-199139531.html

HUMBLE BOSSES WILL ALWAYS BE CHERISHED

October 16 being National Boss’s Day reminds me of ‘Working Girl’ starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford filmed in the 1980s. I like the film so I watched it not once but twice.

‘Working Girl’ is about a young girl starting out in the big bad working world and bosses.
Melanie wore sneakers as she took the train to her office. She then exchanged those sneakers for smart looking shoes once she reached her office.

Like Melanie, I was just starting out in my career path in the 80s and had to depend on the public transport for years. Since the university was situated on a hill, the bus stopped at a point on the highway opposite a pedestrian entrance.

I too wore sneakers for easy walking, dashed across the busy highway and climbed up 123 steps carved against the hill slope, pregnant and carrying an umbrella to shield me from the sun and rain. I knew the number of steps because it was more fun to count the steps then to climb moanfully. I also carried a non-designer bag which contained lecture notes and a pair of court shoes which replaced the sneakers before I stepped into the classroom and started to teach.

Russel H. Ewing (1885-1976) a British journalist said that while there are bosses who create fear, who think they know all and who blame others but never themselves there are also good bosses who recognise the individual’s worth, who make work interesting and who show concern. Insecure and mean bosses tear down their staff in private and in public and even misuse their positions to attain their own desires. I choose to remember only those bosses who showed me mutual respect and knew the meaning of a good boss-staff relationship.

I have worked under many bosses but only three stood out from my 27 years of service.

Boss No. 1 recognised the hard work of her staff. To me she was both a boss and a friend. Even when she was no longer the boss, she never failed to send me a Chinese New Year or a Christmas card. In between cards, she would send me occasional text messages – full of bite and charm- just to keep in touch.

Boss No. 2 was amiable and I knew I could walk into his office before 8 a.m. just to catch up with him on all things that mattered. His personality was such that one would feel as comfortable as talking to a good friend that could be respected and trusted. Whenever I return to Malaysia we still meet up for a cup of teh tarik.

Boss No.3 handled difficult issues with tact and decorum. He guided his staff when they erred and listened to their side of the argument as well. I enjoyed his leadership because being visionary, creative and artistic, he was not afraid to engage in aggressive branding of the department he was in-charge of. If anything, I saw in him an advisory figure who was sure of himself and who emphathised with his staff. He knew his staff’s assets and gave them opportunities to excel.

What made these bosses different?
The key word I believe is humility. Positions come and go. It is only when we are humble that we learn how to treat others right and to esteem others better than ourselves.

So I watched ‘Working Girl’ again three decades later, thanks to satellite television, and I still like it. Like Melanie, I have had my fair share of experiences of good bosses and bad bosses, of promises kept and promises unkept, of loyalty and of betrayal, of being recognised and of being used.

But like the theme song of the movie, ‘Let the River Run’, through it all, I have learnt to run on the water and go through the fog, to stand on a star and blaze a trail of desire through the darkening dawn.

Only to emerge strong.

SOURCE : THE NEW STRAITS TIMES OCT 9 , 2011 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-198503165.html