WORDLESS WEDNESDAY #24

“A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.” ― Steve Martin

It seems that today, work-related stuffs aside (defamation suits are damn interesting, if you must know), I am all about funny toilet walls, InTrend March funny piece on Khairul whatshisface and yeah, Ryan Gosling. I’m random like that. Why Ryan Gosling, you ask? Pfffttt! Haven’t you watched The Notebook, Fracture, Ides of March and ehem, Crazy Stupid Love? I mean, yeah, why not? Why are you even asking, seriously?

Here’s a funny video by his look-alike (try shedding a few kilos, he does look like Gosling!) on How To Look Like Ryan Gosling. Adorable stuff. I know I’ve shared it on Facebook but I feel the need to share it again here. It’s that adorable.


He can even talk like him! Funny dude!

Yes OK, if Ryan Gosling says so *stuffs face with Biskut Tiger Susu*

“I looked on childrearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.” - Rose Kennedy, mother of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy (1890-1995)

You know how most working moms would say that they clock out from 1 job at 6 p.m. only to clock in another at 7? Yeah, that’s the reason for my lack of entry, not that anyone’s counting on it. Ngeee. Demanding day job, wifely/motherly duties, fun side business; terkadang take a toll on you juga. But most of the time, put aside lack of sleep/rest, I am A-OKAY! *thumbs up*

Oh and have you heard the quotes, that "Working mothers are guinea pigs in a scientific experiment to show that sleep is not necessary to human life"? Spot on! I have 1 kid! Imagine having 4 screaming kids, on top of demanding clients and house chores! (I just found out a new colleague of mine, a senior lawyer has 4 girls at home. 4! Respect!)

Hahaha. So true. Most moms I know, kalau rasa nak demam mesti berdebar, because we cannot afford to be sick! But I guess the Almighty has created us strong enough for all this; childrearing and what not, don’t you think so?

Being a working mom ain’t easy, juggling things and trying to make time for everything. And not to mention the guilt, oh the guilt! At work, you think about your kid and at home, you can’t help but think of unfinished task at work. Restless tau otak. But, but, but, being a SAHM/WFHM is not a walk in the park either! No no no! We each fight our own battle and this is mine. OK battle lah sangat. It’s no battle but not a picnic either because that’s just what life precisely is, kadang di atas kadang di bawah, kabhi kushi and kabhi gham.

Working moms, stay at home moms, work from home moms, single moms, stay at home wives, homemakers, happily single women; if you are nice, if you make other people happy, if you are thankful for your life, you all rock big time! Let’s just fight through the battle of life and enjoy each and every nice little picnics life offers us every now and then, and pray for the day when we all get to have awesome picnics every single day in Jannah, insyaAllah ;)

This entry is of course inspired by today’s theme of #FebPhotoADay challenge: Where I Work ;)

"Bullies are jerks, they wreck the profession for everyone, and you can beat them every time."

This is a seriously good, inspiring speech by Stephen C. Ellis, the managing partner at the law firm of Tucker, Ellis & West given at the Case Western reserve School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, featured on DavidMaister.com. On Being a Happy and Successful Lawyer.

But really, anyone can relate to this piece, which is why I’m sharing it here. It’s a rather long read, but I promise you, it is worth it!


Being a Happy and Successful Lawyer

Thank you Dean Simson. Even after that gracious introduction, I can guess what most of you are thinking. Who is this guy? The most informative parts of my background are not in my public bio, so let me tell you a little more to help set the stage for what I’ll be talking about. First, I am a lifetime Cleveland resident. I am married to my high school sweetheart of 40 years ago, and in 1972, I graduated from this great law school.

Other than talking my wife into marrying me and our terrific sons and grandchildren, attending this school is hands down the most important event of my life. My three years here changed everything for me. The sort of squared away corporate type you see standing here this afternoon bears no resemblance to the bell bottomed, lamb chop side-burned college kid of 40 years ago. I look at photos of me and my friend back then and it looks like we were transported here from a strange place very far away.

Before showing up here in the fall of 1969, I was the fun guy your parents wanted you to stay away from. In fact I essentially majored in fun at Denison University, and with graduation looming I was looking for something to do besides start working. A bright enough student bored by academics, I took the LSAT’s on a flyer, slightly hung over (to my earlier point), and did great, good enough to get me on the waiting list at Case. Back then, when Case was just starting to become a highly respected school, the waiting list was pretty short and didn’t take long to clear, so I got in.

By the third week I was totally hooked. I loved law school and the idea that I would know the rules of how society worked — like someone gave me the back of the Scrabble box. I did very well at our school and for the first time, started to think of myself as someone who could actually accomplish things.

In the summer of ’71 I took a job as a summer clerk at what was Arter & Hadden, a 70 lawyer Cleveland firm. Starting as a trial lawyer. I went on to be a transactional M&A/finance type and was able to build a successful, really fun practice. At the too early age of 43 I became managing partner, and ran the place for ten years as it grew to a nearly 500 lawyer firm. In 2000 a friend and colleague took over as managing partner and three years later in 2003, that nearly 160-year-old firm, and my only job for 30 years, collapsed.

Now if it’s true that we only learn from our mistakes, with all the degrees that surround me, I am without a doubt the best educated person in the room. But this story has an unbelievably happy ending, because the Cleveland office of Arter & Hadden didn’t scatter and collapse into finger pointing lawsuits like virtually every other failed firm. Our lawyers turned down all sorts of great offers to jump ship. We put our money up, signed personally for the bank loan to get started, and chose to stay together as a team. All but perhaps 5 or 6 of our partners, associates and staff, maybe 200 people, threw their lots in together, and we formed Tucker Ellis & West, which is a truly great place to practice.

So, it’s been 36 years since I was sitting where you are, waiting for someone like me to finish, and I still love being a lawyer. Every day brings new issues to wrestle, I spend my time with bright, completely engaged people, and all of my clients are people I’m proud to call my friends. I find myself very close to my lifelong goal of not spending one second doing things I don’t want to do or being with people I don’t want to be with.

I tell you all of this not to brag - well at least that’s not the only reason - but because our new firm rose out of some hard simple truths about what’s good and not so good about being a lawyer today.

The fact is our profession has become increasingly unhappy over the past couple of decades. I am convinced the vast majority of that unhappiness derives from a singleseemingly innocuous event in the late 1980’s: The American Lawyer magazine began publishing the AM LAW 100, and listed the profits per partner of the 100 largest firms. Virtually all of the firms in this country immediately bought in to that statistic as the only credible measure of success. The game was on - we lawyers would now take our measure almost entirely from money, at least in terms of what was publicly discussed. Without question, integrity, service and professionalism were important, but how we measured ourselves was money.

This was a terrible mistake and now, more and more of us see its dark implications: the bragging rights on how many billable hours we charge (and the matching lost weekends and evenings); rates that are topping $1000 an hour; and clients who believe their files are being worked to death by armies of inexperienced associates. All of this so the largest firms can bump their statistical rankings and everybody else can compare themselves to the published stars.

But the worst of all this is: that we’ve chosen simply money, as our measure of success. It’s too simple to say, “Money is the root of all evil” because it’s not. And I know that the absence of money is a pretty good predicator of unhappiness. But money, just money all by itself, does not provide a sense of worth or accomplishment, or even peace of mind. The fact is, it’s in our DNA to always want a little more, and getting more only feeds the need to get a little more.

Here’s the formula on personal budgets that if you don’t already know, you soon will. I know all of your parents know this. And you should write this formula down because it’s as immutable as a law of physics. Your monthly expenses always equal your monthly income plus $300. No matter what, we’re all looking for “just a little more”.

Now we’re going to do a ten second experiment. Take a moment and reflect on the occasions when you felt truly happy - and please don’t name ‘listening to this talk”. [8 seconds of silence] I submit that not one of you is thinking about money or material things. Our best times are always with people we care about, doing things that bring us closer together. But knowing that, we let ourselves climb on this treadmill, running harder and harder, like that donkey trying to catch the carrot on a stick.

I believe this is beginning to change, at least in the arena where lawyers have to keep increasing the hours they devote to work. Hours are being recognized as an irrational measure of value. Nobody calls a lawyer asking them to please spend twenty hours on a project. Clients want to pay us for what we do, not how long it takes us to do it.

In fact, a growing minority of lawyers and clients are starting to move away from hours as the basis for fees. The feature of Tucker Ellis & West about which I am most proud is that we have no billable hour requirement. We value our people for what they accomplish. And that decision has been hugely liberating for us.

I submit there’s much more to being a satisfied lawyer than making a lot of money. Back when I was running Arter & Hadden I would speak to our incoming class of associates and suggest that if their career goal as lawyers was to get rich, they should seriously consider a career change. My point was that most law practices by their nature are designed to produce a comfortable living, not make us rich. We don’t take big financial risks, we don’t make critical business decisions, we are fundamentally well educated consultants.

If you’ve decided to become a lawyer solely to make money if to you it’s simply a job I fear you’ll hate it. As a career and a calling it’s great, and unbelievably interesting, but as simply a job, it’s way too hard and stressful. It’s the people, the pace and the endless puzzles of the law that make being a lawyer fulfilling. If you want tons of money for working twenty hours a day and nausea-inducing stress, Wall Street investment banking may be just the thing . In that business the grand old men are burnt out at 45.

Over the past few years I’ve come to some conclusions on finding guideposts that will give us lawyers the best chance of being successful, in the sense of truly enjoying our lives and careers as lawyers. They are simple, some might say “trite”. But 36 years of listening to happy and desperately unhappy lawyers and watching colleagues succeed as lawyers and people, and some fail, I know that these may be cliché’s, but I also know they are true.

I’m going to talk about a handful of these “truisms”, only a couple of which I’ve made up, on being a successful lawyer in the sense of being fulfilled. Just so you know how close I am to wrapping up, there are nine of these, and they’re pretty short.

First, be someone others count on. Most folks talk a good game; very few come through. Clients come to you because they have a situation they cannot solve on their own. Most are not looking for an analysis of the law. Most want you to solve a problem. So solve it, don’t add to their problem by being hard to find, by missing deadlines, or by simply describing their problem back to them. It’s like going to the dentist when you have a toothache. You want it fixed and you want it fixed now. That’s what a client wants every time they talk to you. Walk in with a problem, walk out with a solution.

What they want is someone they can count on to make their lives simpler, to accomplish what they want accomplished. If you can simply do that, you’ll be sought out as an extraordinarily effective lawyer. And there is a real difference in your sense of self between being simply a resource; somebody who knows the law, and the person that people count on to solve their problems.

Second - be an interesting person, for your own good and so that clients think of you as more than a lawyer. A decent definition of hell is a dinner party companion who is a first year lawyer on the day after his or her first trial. Law stuff is interesting mostly to lawyers. In fact, it’s real interesting to lawyers, so that’s what we talk about all the time, just like you talk about law school all the time.

Force yourself to do be able to talk about more than law - read books, go to movies, be part of politics, go to lectures. You’ll meet people, you’ll be able to talk about things that other people find interesting, and you won’t burn out on your job.

The horror stories you hear about associates working 2500 hours a year? You will be surprised when you see how much of that is self imposed. These young lawyers get caught up in the chase and find that what they’re doing more interesting than anything else- so they become that boring self absorbed dining companion. The world’s full of great people with jobs and hobbies that are just as demanding and just as fascinating as yours, (assuming you make yourself get a hobby). Learn about them. You’ll be happier and much more fun to be with.

Here is another obvious but ignored truth. Look out for yourself. Nobody cares about you like you do except maybe your parents, and you won’t be working for them. My late and very wise father used to tell me to not worry about what people were thinking about me, because they weren’t. They were thinking about themselves.

Your employer may have a mentoring program, but nobody is mentored into a success. Mentors are important, but they are only a resource. Accept that you are in charge of your success. So if you think you need experience in an area, make it your business to go get it. Ask somebody; don’t wait for it to come along. Don’t wait for somebody to notice that you’re missing an important skill. Ask for a promotion - people aren’t watching what you do as carefully as you think or hope.

Also, determination matters. It matters more than intellect. The streets are littered with directionless geniuses with unexecuted good ideas. Woody Allen had it pretty dead on when be said that 90% of success is simply showing up. You won’t suddenly have a great career. Nobody ever does. The secret is simple- great careers are the result of day after day deciding to do good work and being someone who others count on.

Be enthusiastic. Because we deal in rules, it’s real easy to fall into cataloging all the reasons something won’t work or why somebody shouldn’t do something. In fact, we lawyers take pride in being the first one to find fault with an idea. Makes us look smart. In my days as managing partner I would roll out a strategic initiative, and I could see my partner’s eyes starting to spin. Who would get the prize for being the first one to spot the flaw?

Clients want to do things - they don’t call you so they can not do things. They want to stay in the borders of the law, but they want to be told how to do what they want to do. And they want to know that you’re happy to be part of what they’re doing. There is no better way to end a client meeting than saying “This is going to be great” and to mean it. It’s fun to be charged up - to add energy to every conversation.

Trust yourself. You are a very bright person or you wouldn’t be here today. I think among the most important conclusions I came to as a young lawyer was that if I didn’t understand something, it was because the thing in fact didn’t make sense, not because I was stupid. Most of the times I’ve found myself in hot water it’s because I let a conversation continue past the point where I understood what was being said. And virtually every time I would say “stop, I’m not following this,” someone would come up to me after the meeting and say “Boy I’m glad you said that. I had no idea what we were talking about.”

Get involved. Organize the reunion or the bicycle race. Chair the church committee. Help people who have not enjoyed your good fortune. You have spent three years learning how to organize your thoughts, analyze a situation, and articulate action plans. Use those skills everywhere in your life. Stuff will get done, people will appreciate your initiative, and you will derive great satisfaction from making things better.

Here are my final two unappreciated but clearly true truths: The toughest lawyer is not the one who is the most obnoxious. Clients will say they want a tough son of a gun to make somebody life’s miserable, a real bulldog, etc. Don’t be that person. It’s been my 100% uniform experience that the bulldog only adds time, expense, stress and confusion to an otherwise inevitable result. Even clients can’t stand them after a couple of months. You want to be tough? Have the best preparation on the facts, the law and the strategy. Judges care only about those things, not a whit for bluster. Bullies are jerks, they wreck the profession for everyone, and you can beat them every time.

And finally and hands down most importantly, and please pass this on to your friends and your children, because it’s really important — Be nice and have fun. Just doing that makes life better for everybody, mostly you.

And now really finally, and this is not a truth, but what I think you should do - thank the people who have helped you get to where you are today, and fully enjoy this moment - you have earned it.

I am honored to have this opportunity today and I wish all of you good fortune, and fun, in this great profession. To each of you, “This is going to be great.”

“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” ― Maya Angelou

Some asked how did I develop Hadi’s interest for books. I don’t know what exactly I did but I sure hope his interest for books will last and is not just a phase. I used to read a lot (back when I have time to spare, sobs!) and hubs still reads a lot, so maybe it’s hereditary? Ngeh. I make sure Hadi has books everywhere he goes. Every time we enter a bookstore, he will get one new, albeit cheap book. If we go into grocery stores that sell candies and books, walau macam mana dia nak candy, I’ll make him take books instead. I buy him colourful, interesting books with stuffs he likes like animals and fruits, I don’t force anything into him. So yeah, itu saja I guess.


Anyways, Hadi turns 21 MONTHS today. Wow 21, that’s a lot of months!

At 21 months, he still mengempeng to tidur and still wakes up at night for milk. I still pump at work although my stocks sangat menyedihkan. I don’t see any sign of him weaning off naturally and I can only pray that he will, eventually. I don’t want to have to go through episodes of crying and wailing forcing him to wean off, please God, no. Frankly, I am so tired.


At 21 months, he still is an energizer bunny, he even moves a lot in his sleep! Hubs watched a documentary on Bruce Lee; his parents dubbed him as ‘The One Who Never Sits Still’, which is why they got fed up of him always getting into trouble and sent him to learn Kung Fu and the rest as they say, is history. Never Sits Still; that is so Hadi! Hence we are now considering enrolling Hadi into martial art class. Who knows, maybe he’d become the next Bruce Lee. Hehehe.


At 21 months, his vocabulary is improving although nothing lah to shout about. Oh, he can make 2-words sentence, nothing fancy, like “Nenek mop mop” each morning when he sees the building cleaner mopping the lobby, or “Uk uk haip!” when he sees noisy dogs (saying Haip, imitating his Nenda) Oh yes, ‘uk uk’ is dog, and ‘uk uk’ is poop as well. Pfftt. ‘Tatak’ is kakak and can also means cicak, depending on the situation. So when he points to the ceiling and screams Tatak!, bukan dia nampak hantu kakak ya, he sees cicak. Boleh bertenang.


At 21 months, he still is a somewhat picky eater. Inspired by the blog Heavilyspiced.blogspot.com I stalked on Friday, on weekends I tried out the blogger’s recipes and they were a hit with my boy! Hadi was never a fan of oat but surprisingly, he did like this one. So I’m sharing the recipe, credit to the blogger, which I tweaked to suit my boy’s taste.

Here’s Hadi having the OAT WITH YOGURT, and here’s the recipe: 3 table spoon of oat, masak sampai kembang. Add 1 table spoon of plain fat free yogurt. Sprinkle some brown sugar. Slice some banana (which Hadi calls ‘Nana’) or any fruits that your kids like.

YOGURT PANCAKE: ¾ cup of tepung naik sendiri. ¾ of plain fat free yogurt. Sprinkle some brown sugar. 1 egg. A pinch of salt. I served this pancake with slices of banana and generous dash of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. Tak sempat tanya, Hadi terus angkat jari telunjuk dia, signaling sedaplah tu. Yeah, at 21 months, he still thinks his pointer is his thumb T___T


At 21 months, my boy has a split personality disorder. Pfftt. One minute he is all sweet and angelic, hugging and kissing me, singing sweetly to Barney and reading books melting my heart away, and the next, he can be monstrous and sangat garang, it’s frustrating and annoying! Then I’ll be all geram and kecewa and be all like, ‘where did I go wrong?’ bla bla bla but then he sleeps and looks all angelic and I’ll be feeling guilty and he wakes up and smiles at me and the world makes sense again, then he reads and sings and mengamuk and the cycle repeats itself.

Example of Personality A. No picture proof of monstrous Personality B, Mama is usually too busy taming tantrum to be bothered with anything else when Personality B strikes T___T


At 21 months, he still and will forever be my world. Oh and yes, the annoying dreadful ‘Bila lagi nombor dua?’ question has been flooding in, thank you very much T___T

"The three ingredients of a successful union between two . . . humor, commitment & undying love" - Bill Cosby

NOTA KAKI: As I said on Facebook and Twitter, Lawak Ke Der is awesome and highly recommended! Nabil calls Harith Iskander the main dish of the show; and yeah, what a scrumptious main dish he was! Awesome! 4 more shows left, don't miss your chance of the 3 hours full of pecah perut fun!

"You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who’ve never had any.” - Bill Cosby

"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home." - Bill Cosby

“What's so good about being 20? I call them the materialist years. The years we get distracted by all the bullshit. Then we cop on when we hit our 30s and spend those years trying to make up for the 20s. But your 40s? Those years are for enjoying it.” - Cecelia Ahern in Love, Rosie

When the doctor asked me how old I am and I answered, “30 this year”, I swear I freaked out a bit. In two months I’ll be 30! THREE. FREAKING. ZERO. It’s not that aku rasa being 30 tua sangat ke apa, it’s just that I remember back when I was a student, I always look up to kakak-kakak in their 30s, with career and money and kids; aku rasa mereka sangat grown up and accomplished. Quoting the girl from the movie 13 Going On 30, “Thirty, flirty and thriving.”

And now I’m gonna be one of the kakaks in my 30s. Sangat grown up lah, so grown up that I feel like rewarding myself with something cool on my birthday this year. Something that says, ‘Congratulations Self, For Turning 30’. Kah kah.


Did you know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Britney Spears and Jonathan Taylor Thomas all turned 30 last year? Man, they were once so young! And now they’re 30?! I feel so old. Oh Beyonce too will turn 30 this year. And she said she’s going to retire once she hits the big 3-0, yeah, she’s that accomplished, tahap boleh retire dah at 30, when manusia biasa like me terkedek-kedek dalam career path. And now she is a mother. How more (duniawi) perfect can one be?! Oh well.

According to This Is London, things you must do before turning 30 includes:

Buy a property. Have a baby. Live abroad. Build your brand. Leave parental home, because life begins when you fly the nest. Look after the pennies – save up! Drop out of the rat race. Co-habit with a partner, be it boyfriends or friends. Own a designer handbag; paid for with your own hard-earned cash, equals job satisfaction by the bucketload. Grow a pair, learn to stand up for yourself, how to say "no" and more importantly, how to entertain the notion of being right. Baz Luhrmann was right, always wear sunscreen. Dump the debt – settle your student loan. Build up your black book – because information is power, and networking ability will always stand you in good stead. Be a fashion victim. Heal a broken heart. Get married. Take it to the extreme, push your body to its limit. Write a book; Flaubert, Kafka, Fitzgerald, Updike and Walcott all pushed out classics before 30, so writing a decent tome is actually possible too. Know who your friends are. Learn to cook. Learn a language. Make a million, or at least earn your age. Find yourself. Have a summer of love. Get a second life; Don't let work become life. Extracurricular activities could also help you unearth your real passion. Sleep when you're dead, because everyone knows the best fun starts after midnight. Start a business; Take the plunge while you still have nothing to lose.

What a cute list. Glad to know I could check off a few from the list, phewww. Hehehe. I would really like to start my own 30 Before 30 Project of 30 things I must do before turning 30. But March 30th is in just 2 months and I’m afraid aku akan hangat-hangat tahi ayam. We’ll see, maybe I’ll come up with something. Or maybe I’ll just be lazy, cheat and think of what to get myself as my ‘Congratulations Self, For Turning 30’ gift. Hahaha.

Oh, just so you know, hubs’ already had his ‘Congratulations Self, For Turning 30’ all planned out; he wants a Ducati Monster! Pfffttt, man!

But really, still being given the chance to live this perfectly wonderful life is a gift itself :)