Dear All
Does the above proverb ring true?
There is a difference between habits and bad habits though. Habits such
as driving to work, making your cup of Joe (coffee) – I would call it being on
autopilot; things that we do without having to wreck our
brains.
On the other hand, bad habits are hard to break; one tends to ‘fall off the
wagon’ so to speak. For instance, losing weight and gaining it back by
bingeing/stuffing one’s face, stop smoking but greedily drawing in lungfuls of
nicotine when the need is soooo unbearable etc etc.
Bad habits literally have a vicelike grip on one’s mind and behavior – reeli
reeli hard to break.
Share with us your bad habits and if you have managed to overcome yours,
awesome! All the more we need to hear/learn from you.
Anxiously waiting, darlings.
No! Bad habits can be corrected but it depends greatly on how convinced, determined and must be prepared to undergo “uneasiness or sufferings” to give it up.
I took to smoking cigarettes when I joined the armed forces, as it was a fashion for military personnel to smoke. I continued on for more than 10 years after I left the armed forces and joined the private sector. One day, my boss, who was like me, a heavy smoker, came into my room for a business discussion. Both of us, run out of cigarette after a while and my boss wanted to continue to smoke. I suggested to him why don’t we gave up smoking and he told me that if I can do it for one day without smoking, he will follow. With effect from that day, I gave up smoking everyday and my boss followed. He, too, gave up the bad habit.
Beginning it was not easy to gave up smoking, especially having smoked for about 20 years.
After giving up smoking, I enjoyed food better and put on weight. I then went jogging every morning and till to date, exercise has help me to stay a healthier life.
Honestly, till to date, I do enjoy smoking when I drink with a group of my friends who are smokers, but I’m very sure I will not be addicted to cigarette smoking again!. again.
Hi Jeremy
Quitting cold turkey after smoking heavily for about 20 years. Hats off to you! Some determination. A wower!
I can imagine the withdrawal symptoms but you pressed on. Although you still enjoy a smoke or two (why not?), your story is inspiring.
Thanks for sharing.
Hello Jeremy,
You took up smoking when in the armed forces like many I know. As to me the sequence is difference. But I still better then you, ha ha. I don’t smoke even once till today.
I started to smoke when I was in my secondary school age. First my uncle came to know and reported to my mum and grandmother. Grandma said good for my big nose (ha ha)
Principal came to know that I smoke outside school and ask me not to wear the batches when I smoke.
So with no objection and having friends all smoking I feel so great.
Among friends we even agreed to set a penalty to stop smoking. Whoever get caught pay $10.00. However cannot kick the habit and we agreed don’t penalise each other and enjoy ourselve. No money for cigarrett then go for bidi (very cheap)
During army days my officer always have a non lighted cigarrett held between his lips. Ask why and he said trying to quit.
In my case, I think is love. During the two years in the army I started on serious date with my girlfriend. She don’t like the smell. So got smell no kisses. I really love her. I also love the sweetness of the kisses and started to feel the cigarrett tasteless.
That is how till today I still did’nt smoke. Still falling in love with her.
Next meeting will shake your hand.
Hi Johnny
Your story of breaking a bad habit is soooo romantic…..
Love does make a person do things which otherwise may not happen.
Here’s to Love!
Hi Johnny,
I am glad you do not smoke anymore. I know of friends who gave up and eventually went back to smoke again.
Given present conditions, smoking not only cost a lot more, bad for health, there are many restrictions where you can smoke. It’s wise to give it up. Moreover, many non-smokers may be annoyed by the smoke and smell.
Thanks your love for it!
Geraldine: Thank you for your kind words.
Despite having a chain-smoking father, none in my family ever smoked. Countless times in my younger days I was offered a cigarette which I politely declined. I clearly was aware of nicotine addiction back then.
In some states in the USA when a family has a new baby daughter they will issue their family friends or colleagues with a dough nut each. On the other hand, if the new baby addition to the family is a boy, an expensive American or Cuban cigar is issued each of their family friends and colleagues. This is part and parcel of their culture reflecting a celebratory mood.
So at one time an American process engineer in my dept had a new baby boy in his family, he happily began to issue a cigar each to everybody including me. He lit the cigar for me and I courteously thanked him for it. I pretended to enjoy his gift of a cigar in his presence which was the only right thing to do given the circumstance. Once he had left my office to other offices to hand out his remaining cigars, I snuffed out my lit cigar with my cold drink and dumped it into a trash bin and covered it with waste paper. The taste was horrible, and my breath stank for several hours after that.
We can say no to costly bad habits injurious to health. My late father died of throat cancer at age 61. In 2 years I’ll be seventy. Many of my siblings are presently in their
seventies. Statistics point to cancer being the main culprit shortening a smoker’s life.
In one wet market a 50 year-old vegetable hawker, non-smoking widow died of lung cancer because her chain-smoking twenty something son was helping out in her stall. She single-handedly raised her young son to adulthood after her husband died in an accident a long time ago.
Terry Tang
Hi Terry
Thanks for sharing!
I think if we ‘REALLY’ got a (or some) habit (s) – no matter good or bad, it is not easy to get rid of them. If I used to sleep and wake up early or doing an exercise every day for a very long time, say 10 years, I will in love with it and won’t give up if there is no change.
The problem is good habits (like exercises every day) usually dull and laborious that needs much more time, efforts and discipline to foster them before they become our habits. The good habits can also be more easily affected by the environment. For example, if my working hour changed, or I acquainted with a group of new friends they used to out at night, my sleeping time will be affected.
In contrary, bad habits (like smoking, gambling) are exciting, need no effort to nurture and easily be addicted. After addicted, we’re willing to pay whatever price to keep it.
So, does bad habit die hard ring true? I will say – “YES”
I am a patient of diabetes, but can never stop for sweet, Is this a bad habit?
I like to be alone most of the time, will it be another bad habit??
Gambling is a game of chance, which goes either way: boom or bust. Seldom do we encounter the “no-win, no-loss” senario.
Some insist that social gambling is good while compulsive gambling is bad. This is a matter of personal opinion. Social gambling, according to some, enables friends to come together and chit chat at the same time around
most probably a mahjong table. It is way better than staying at home watching TV all alone all the time, some would chime in.
I am a sorely bad loser. If I lost a lot of money around a gambling table I would feel sore to the core for several days. That is why I play cards without involving money with church friends inside a cruise ship or holiday resort.
Inside a cruise ship or at Genting casino I used to walk around gambling tables and one armed bandits without punting one cent.
When a forthcoming TOTO draw has snowballed to several millions, I’ll buy a $3.50 quick pick ticket to try my luck.
Otherwise I don’t gamble at all.
Last time I stayed in a 5-room Model-A HDB apartment where SHC Priscilla is now staying in another unit of the same block in Bt Batok. My neighbour a housewife was such a compulsive gambler that her husband left her. Loan sharks came pounding on her door barking out obscenities in Hokkien. They took my flower pots and hurled at my neighbour’s door. She called the police and the frightened loan shark runners scooted. Detectives interviewed me about my lady neighbour, and I told them that she owed a lot of people money including myself and loan sharks. Because of her I lost many expensive orchid pots which loan shark runners used as missiles against that lady’s door. What this lady needed to solve her problems was to pay up what she had owed. When she lost money, she would come home screaming Hokkien obscenities at her teen daughters threatening to force them into prostitution.
I dreaded that loan shark runners would hurt my teen children over a case of mistaken identity which caused me to move to another location in Bt Batok to a HDB executive flat.
The lady in questioned, I understand, became a bar girl, sold her flat and moved out one year after me to a secret location. Now I regretted moving out too soon because my former house is a walking distance to the MRT station and West Mall. Over there I lived just opposite SHC photographer Danny Lye and his wife June Tan, my ex-colleague. Sometimes in life we just can’t have the best of everything. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose out.
Terry
Hi Terry
I was about to ask members to share about gambling habit, if any.
Talk about telepathy!
Since in the meantime nobody has come forward to write something, please bear with me to tell you something unpalatable we as a family had experienced at our former abode.
My wife and me had run-ins with loan sharks and their informers/runners as if we were the real debtors ourselves, although we didn’t need to borrow from them as I was then working with an American oil corporation. Since a lot of loan shark graffitis like “O$PAY$” and other expletives in both rotten English and Chinese were prominently painted all over the external walls of my house and my neighbour’s, we had to do something drastic as we were putting up our house for sale.
My wife and me surveyed with utmost caution our surroundings to spot the lurking presence of loan shark runners. When the coast was clear, we used kerosene to erase all the accusatory paintworks about our nasty lady neighbour. We had to do this as we had no other options since my broker and potential buyers would be calling on us to view our house and its environment. Our “hide and seek” game with the loan sharks eventually paid rich dividends culminating in the sale of our house at quite a high market value prevailing at the time. Our “mopping up” activities were not discovered by our opposite number, the loan sharks otherwise we could be in serious deep shit.
And before the husband of the said obsessive gambler had left her I managed to recover her debt from him. He was a community leader and I was and still am a member of the RC in the locality of my former home. My loan to his wife was interest free with no strings attached and no IOU documentation, and since I was at the time the RC secretary, he felt compelled to re-imbursed me for the sake of protecting his reputation as a community leader although he did seem initially reluctant and unhappy over the episode.
End of actual incident.
Yes, Terry, chronic gamblers literally gamble away family fortunes or whatever they have made.
A well-known actor over here who finally had to kill himself years ago as he owed a lot of money to loan sharks.
Another well-known actress whose mother gambled away hundreds of millions over the years. This filial daughter turned to her previous lover to help out her mum many times and finally she had enough and announced that would be the last time she helped her mum.
In the Cantonese folklore, there are 4 cardinal sins:
1)Whoring (looking for whores (prostitutes). Incidentally, whore is pronounced as “hore” just as “whole” is pronounced as “hole”.
2)Gambling
3)Drinking hard liquors
4)Smoking including doing hard drugs.
The Cantonese axiom goes like this:
“Pew(whoring) Doh(gambling) Yum(drinking) Chuey(smoking) Sei(four) Yeong(kinds) Chai(complete)” Sorry I cannot write Chinese although I can read a fair amount. But, I can speak Mandarin fluently.
So far we have dealt with only 2 cardinal sins:
smoking and gambling. We’ll let the rest write something on the other topics not yet discussed.
Terry
Errmm….let me talk about drinking (looking very guilty, kekekekee). Don’t know if wine is considered a hard liquor though.
Bad habit? Not to me obviously but have been told umpteenth time NOT TO DRINK by a close family member.
To this family member, drinking is sooooo bad for health and will start a longggg lecture about it or after watching me having a few glasses will go, ‘Thought you’d cut down?’
This immediately makes me run to get another drink; not to spite her or anything, just that it’s driving me nuts!!
Or if I did not drink that nite, she’d go, ‘How come you are not drinking tonite?’ Pleeasse, go away!
I understand her concern but C’MON, it’s not like I am an alcoholic or go binge-drinking. Geesh….
Come to think of it, she is one of the reasons why I drink. Kakakakaaa.
Nah, I drink wine because I enjoy it. Bliss.