Genuineness is a highly underrated virtue, yet it is the one that can arguably touch the most lives and reach the most hearts. We live our lives under various masks and guises, sometimes even in front of ourselves. Yet, when we can strip away these layers of protective covering, placed their because we are inadvertently [...]
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Some friendships are worth keeping. This may mean some sacrifices along the way, but true friends are hard to find. We make many new friends everyday, and many more acquaintances, but life is more than mere passing acquaintanceship. To live life to the fullest, we need a small number of trusted, intimate friends whom we [...]
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Hurt always stems from expectations not met. Only those from whom we expect a certain behavioural response can actually hurt or disappoint us. If we do not expect another to behave according to our expectations, we do not set ourselves up to be hurt. This is not to be confused with love. We can love [...]
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Communication and commitment are the two essential components of a long-term successful relationship. After the first flush of initial positive chemistry that accompanies any new relationship, be it romantic or platonic, between lovers or between friends, it is these two elements, communication and commitment, that bind the relationship allowing it to weather the stern test [...]
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Behind every individual lies the great story of his or her life. We meet many people every day. On this vast canvas of human life, each individual seems like a mere two-dimensional dot. That is if we take people at face value. In actual fact, each one of those dots is a three-dimensional line, with [...]
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The biggest single hindrance I have observed that prevents Malaysian young people from fulfilling their potential as human beings is lack of self-acceptance or self-confidence. This probably stems from the Asian culture where from young parental praise and encouragement is considered taboo, with parents instead publicly continuously criticising their children in the belief it is [...]
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The goal of education in many parts of the world is “to know, to understand and to apply”. In Malaysia, this has depreciated to the goals of “to know and to remember”. The real goal of education, which is I believe practised in the elite schools of the world is however not merely to “know, [...]
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Unrealistic expectations cause many relationships to fail. For example, many people expect their spouse to fulfill their every emotional need, to be their all-in-one human support provider, but this is putting an unnecessary strain on the relationship because in truth no one human being is perfect or can perfectly fulfill all the needs of another [...]
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It’s always hard at first, for those not familiar with the concepts and technology involved, to explain why it is not possible to take your favourite music CD, pop it into the computer, and extract out the music notes. It’s one thing to tell folks that MIDI files, from which scores may be printed out, [...]
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One of the crucial steps in mining metal ores is purification by fire. The metal is heated well beyond its boiling point and impurities float to the surface of the molten metal where the miners are able to scrape them away, leaving the pure element that can then be used for a variety of useful [...]
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