Timmy Lai

"Friends are God's way of taking care of us" - Unknown Author. God designed us to have close relationships with others and with Him. Cherish true friendships. You can be yourself with a true friend. There should be mutual respect and honesty in your relationship, where you can count on your true friend being there for you - a text, an email, or a phone call away. We all have our homies. A lot gets talked about friendships. Everyone wants a true friend to someone, and many of us believe that we have a friend who can be called a true homies. What kind of relations do friends share? When can we call a friend a true friend, and when can our friends take us as their true friend. After a romantic relationship, friendships are the most important relationships we can have. Though all of us have family and distant family, most of us rely on friends for advice, comfort and inspiration. How do we define a relation that can be called as one of true friendship? The very first si...

Prejudice is like peanut butter - easy to spread, but sometimes hard to swallow. "I can't stand (particular races)! They're so selfish, lazy and biased towards their own people!" "I don't give a darn, knowing what she did to my friend. I heard loads of things about her!" "What! Going out with her?" We heard such remarks on all sides. So seldom are they based on reason that they may be considered the earmark of the thoughtless, the uninformed, the cruel. They express prejudices. Let's not confuse prejudices with preferences. It is natural to prefer somethings to others - one's wife, home, country, or religion, for example. Preferences becomes prejudice when we refuse to see the good in anything we happen to dislike. Prejudice isn't reasoned opinion. It condemns without trial. It rejects evidence before facts can presented or considered. It affects our treatment of persons and things, distorts our judgment and works toward o...

Waking up after only a couple of hours of sleep and immediately plunging into intense activity can lend the activity the alternately surreal and hyper-real quality of a dream; I was thinking this at 7:00 Monday morning as I wrestled the resistant of my own body to the bathroom, half awake and drag myself to my car, eyes close; Blek! It's confirmed, I am victim to transient insomnia. The second my mind has something to hold onto, my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) kicks in and I go through bouts of massive insomnia. It's not all bad, I get a lot of work done. I also find time to hone my guitar skills at times like this especially you are aware practicing every day is ideal. However, come the next day, I decided not to let this insomnia get the best of me. I launched a project call 'Project Sleeping Early'. Seriously is hard to sacrifice football but I guess it will be worth it in the end (At least I tried, right?)

Depression is the great disease of our age, our generation with no war to fight, fighting for their will to live. There comes a time that everybody feels like down in the hole. You lose the will to go out, socialize, even to talk with friends. You can't smile you used to do even smile like before. There is a season in everyone’s life of walking through the valley. Even though it is in our nature as human beings to want to fix things, sometimes all that is needed is our presence. I recently came across a video by the SkitGuys entitled 'The Mourning Booth'. Here's some insights on the video... Psalm 23 says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” The valley- it is a depression or an extended canyon that seems to go in one direction. It seems like it could go on forever. You see, we all seem to go through these valleys in our life. We may be entering the valley, we may be in the middle of the valley, or we’re about to leave th...

Being Head of Department in a music school is about responsibility. Every single student in the school is under your care whether you're the one who teaches them or not. Their results stops with you. You need to be able to look at their family and tell them your kid did everything they could to excel well in their exams. Their technical expect. Their song preparation. You get caught up, taking care of their result is crucial and the responsibility makes you more cautious. You take care of the whole aspect and you sacrifice your own. On the side note... Being a teacher is the best job that anyone can offer. For me, teaching is a way to build an eternal bond with another person. I love the communication that builds from scratch between you and your students. Remember how your friend taught you to whistle? Now realize that this satisfaction is even greater when you share an insight into living. I don't sell myself short. I want to have the ability to make a positive impact....

If you think you would like a band that expresses that sentiment in a more versatile way, have I got a band for you. One Friday evening Bernard, Amelia, Jacky, Ivan and I went and see a house band from 'Shalome' located right in the commercial centre of Taman Tun Dr.Ismail. Everyone in the audience (except for us - 'our first time') had a thing for them; the general ambiance was that we had stumbled on the secret subterranean meeting-place of an ascetic yet hip cult of some nature (adding to this vibe:the beer were on offer that day). A brief 1st set by a deep melancholy, bluesy guitar riff that unfolded the band’s true roots, fits perfectly with their happily redolent Americana sound; the rolling harmonies and melodies, a gritty, rugged, youthful sound with still, smoothed edges of age and wisdom to add weight and balance. After around 20 minutes they took the stage again. This time they played more heavy tunes as the night got 'Younger'. Their songs, as far...

Communication. It’s the first thing we really learn in life. Funny thing is once we grow up, learn our words and really start talking; the harder it becomes to know what to say or how to ask for what we really need. We may teach our children to say, “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” but it’s just not true. Words can hurt. Words can cut. In fact, at the root of our word sarcasm is the notion of cutting flesh. Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of sarcastic speech knows the accuracy of that idea. The world would have us believe that since it’s unhealthy to keep our emotions bottled up, we should allow ourselves to “vent.” Unfortunately, this means we often use our words to vent anger, irritation, disappointment, impatience, stress, insecurity, guilt or whatever negative emotion we may be feeling at the time. Usually, those who are standing closest to us at the time are the ones who are wounded in the blast. At the end of the day th...

A good football game can have us all on the edge of our seats especially the top four playing each other. All of my life I’ve been a proud supporter of Liverpool FC. So I guess I should be feeling gutted right now, because I've just witness our bitter rival winning the league again. Obviously there is some disappointment but while we always remained hopeful, I think deep down we all knew weeks back that this would be the likely outcome. (The people in the Baywatch Bar are focused on a football game being shown on ESPN) I realize football games are all about the glory, pain and the play-by-play. And then there are the more solitary games. The games we each play all by ourselves. The social games, the mind games, we use them to pass the time to make life more interesting. To distract us from what’s really going on. There are those of us that love to play games. Any game. They love challenges. They love the risk. And there those of us who love to play… a little too much, playin...

After some careful consideration and many sleepless nights, here’s what I’ve decided. There’s no such thing as a grown up. Since graduating high school in ‘98, I have reduced my comfort zone to my house; and venture a new world, thus leading to a cycle of more fear to the land of metro Kuala Lumpur. We move on, we move out, we move away from our families and form our own. But the basic insecurities, the basic fears and all those old wounds just grow up with us. And just when we think that life and circumstance have forced us to truly once and for all become an adult …( I called my mum a while ago) … your mother says something like that. " Tai Boy, No matter how old you are now, you'll always be my 12 years old " ' Hmmm' Or worse. " I remember you're crazy over Dragon Ball cartoons last time" "What mum?" Or something like that. Don't get me wrong, I really love my mum. I really do! We get bigger, we get taller, we get older...

During the first few months of this new stage of my life, I found it impossible to get out of bed, my bones ached, and I had a strong desire to sleep for the next 100 years. There is no denying a broken heart can cause a lot of pain. We deny that we're tired; we deny we're scared; we deny how badly we want to succeed in our lives and most importantly we deny that we're in denial. We only see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe. And it works. We lie to ourselves so much that after a while the lies start to seem like the truth. We deny so much that we can't recognize the truth ... right infront of our faces. Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass. And when the dam bursts all you can do is swim. The world of pretend is a cage. Not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired. We are scared. Denying it doesn't change the truth. Sooner or later we have to put aside our denial, and face the world head ...

You know how when you were a kid and you believed in your dreams? That fantasy of what your life would be? A Gibson Les Paul guitar as my first guitar, Technically as good as Steve Vai or Paul Gilbert - who would carry you away to become a 'Super Rockstar' through a famous rock band. You'd lie in bed at night and close your eyes, and you had complete and utter faith. Sharing the same stage as Steve Vai, your first electric guitar, becoming a recording artist, they were so close, you could taste them. But eventually, you grow up. One day you open your eyes and the dream disappears. Most people turn to the things and people they can trust. But the thing is, it's hard to let go of that dreams entirely. Cause almost everyone still has that smallest bit of home, of faith, that one day they'll open their eyes and it will all come true. At the end of the day, faith is a funny thing. It turns up when you don't expect it. It's like one day you realize that the d...

A brief report of my trip in Vietnam . . It's Independence day in Ho Chi Minh. The city itself is an ongoing party, and everyone is celebrating. Clichés converge at this navel of the world. You almost want to laugh, but you can't help feeling these Vietnamese know more about having fun than we do. I had a lot of their infamous 'Beef Noodle' from here, and the red meat sweetness breaks open in my mouth. It even smells red. One more thing to mention before i forgets, of the many myths that mushroomed from the carnage of this land, the coffee here is just pure class. My caffeine addiction is hitting up my veins again. I wish I could stay longer, but my work back in Malaysia kinda reminds me of my time here has come to an end . . .