But no worries. There are few ways you can work with Arzumy. Just follow these instructions

1. You can find Arzumy at ar.zu.my
2. Just say hello @arzumy in twitter, he’ll reply hey @yournamehere
3. If you are young enough to have a Facebook account
   
4. Or of course, the plain old boring email – hello@ar.zu.my
5. Even spam him with naughty SMSes +6012 610 7830
6. Say Hey man! when you see him IRL
7. Lastly, just google for ‘arzumy’ :p

If you are not looking for Arzumy, the Ruby on Rails freelancer, then I can’t help you. But if you are looking for Alice, you can find her here

Good luck! Cheers!
Arzumy

Maybe it is because he has seen a lot. Maybe that’s how he is since the very beginning. Maybe he is just faking it.

The truth is, I don’t know.

Although he’s well known around the world doing things he’s well known for, he never got a problem answering

“Honestly, I don’t really know.”

That is a very humble thing to do. And nobody was taken aback by that answer. Everybody accepted the fact that you don’t have to know everything to make a lot of money.

But come to think of it, would this work with leaders too? I wonder what would happen if somebody ask our Prime Minister about something. Maybe simple question like

“When will you step down?” Or,
“How increasing public awareness about environment will help the economy in the long run?” Or
“When will we push for IPv6″
(Sorry, I can’t think of any politically correct question)

and the Prime Minister said

“I don’t know”

What would the people think about this? Will it make the leader looks weak? Will they cherish him as an honest person?

Honestly, I don’t know.

But I guess you can’t just say I don’t know. You got to acknowledge your weaknesses by saying I don’t know, then back it up with something that you do know.

Like “I don’t know, but I’ll make sure no one will suffer from it”

Or something along that line. That would be enough for me. I know you can’t be perfect, but at least you are doing something about it.

Moral of the story, just be honest and humble.

And family matters. But that’s for another post.

And it’s all about luck. And that’s another story too.

And being humble is quiet easy to duplicate. Just try it out!

Cheers!

It’s all about perspective my friend.

But before that, here’s a disclaimer. I don’t know why you want to lie. I don’t advocate lying. But maybe there’s a day where you will have to lie. It could be for business, could be to save life, and could be thousand of valid reasons. I hope when that day comes, you are fully prepared.

Like I said, it’s all about perspective.

It’s not a lie if you truly believe in it.

That’s the most important thing. You got to really believe in you lie. Or even better, you got to realize that you are not telling a lie – you are telling the truth.

Or rather, the altered truth.

For example, you’re having a blast partying last night and ended hooking up with a girl. Yeah, I’m sure it’s great, except that you got a girlfriend and now she demands the truth.

Just stay calm; first you got to remember what really happen last night. Then repeat the event in your head and add/delete details as you like.

Repeat it multiple times; it may helps a lot if you do this before you make contact with your girlfriend, really.

So now, you are telling her what you remember from the event last night. You might have forgotten or exaggerated few things but hey, that’s how you remember it. Can’t blame you.

You will have to really believe in it, that even if you are drunk you’ll tell the same story. It’s not a lie. It’s simply an altered truth. Our mind forgets things. Even most of the times, our mind fills in the blank for us. Now you don’t have to worry so sick about memorizing the lie just in case you slip up one day, because as far as you are concerned, you are simply telling the truth the way you remember it.

Josh Lim from Advertlets told a great story about marketing. And somehow I see it fits this entry.

Heineken sponsored a concert. As a sponsor you can see Heineken’s logos and banners and all sorts of promo material around the stadium. And boy it was a great concert.

But when people walked to their car after the concert, they saw a lot of Carlsberg’s balloon tied up to the cars. Nobody really think much about it, they’re just having fun and tired and just want to go home and sleep.

Amazingly, few months after that, people remember that concert as Carlsberg sponsored event and totally forgot about Heineken.

Now, if I was one the music lover on that concert, couple months after the concert when people ask me if I’ve been in any concert lately and I said

Yeah sure, that awesome Carlsberg concert!

Am I telling a lie?

See? Isn’t that annoying?

Back then when I was in English Communication Skill class (or something like that), the lecturer really pissed off when our brain farted. I do understand now why. But, the lecturer never really gives any solution to this problem.

“Today, um I aaa want to talk about… you know”
“Stop farting!”
“I wish I could. Would you like to tell me how I can stop my brain farts?”
“Just continue with your speech and stop farting”

See… Not really encouraging. So here I am now, with all due respect to the lecturer, wish to provide a way to teach your brain how to be more polite. Polite brain won’t fart in front of the public.

There are two ways to do this:

First. Get a recorder, MP3 recorder or if you are old schooler, tape recorder (lol). Then go to http://www.zokutou.co.uk/randomword/. This page will generate a random word. Now try to talk out loud about the word and make sure you record it. Then listen back to your recording, and jot down all the brain farts you encounter. Once you got the list, read them out loud. This way you’ll be more conscious of them next time.

Second way is a bit easier, but might not work that well for beginners. But, before that we must understand why our brain farts – simply because, when we are struggling for words, the brain will automatically fill in the blank to give us some time to think.

Good intention, but bad execution.

Here’s how to fix it – next time you find yourself struggling for words, simply shut your mouth up.

So instead of:

“I think um… we all should you know do it um right now”

It’ll be

“I think <pause> we all should <pause> do it <pause> right now”

Not only you’ll remove the brain fart, you will also create mysterious aura and build anticipation. Brilliant! Girls will think you are actually cool (only applies if you are a man).

End result – people will actually listen to you.

Cheers!

“It’s only stupid when you are not genuinely interested”

So, he claimed, contrary to popular belief – there’s no such thing as stupid question; stupid question do exists. I believe him. Never met this guy, but what he said really makes sense. For example, What is 1+1? That’s a valid question, and no matter how stupid it may sound, it isn’t if you really want to know the answer.

What is 1+1? normally becomes a stupid question because the people, who asked you the question already knew the answer. So they don’t really care about the answer. You can always call them off – Are you sure you are not stupid mate?

Imagine a year old girl comes to you and ask – What is 1+1? She looks at you, eagerly waiting for an answer, with her cute big eyes.

Is it still a stupid question?

Cheers!

It works perfectly well, except that it always left me exhausted. It’s not easy gracefully move around people without direct hit.

Luckily I found a wonderful technique somewhere around the Internet – How To Walk Effortlessly Through Crowd. It’s easy technique but works almost all the time.

Are you ready for this?

Look them in the eyes.

Heh. Easy. Simple.

Just walk straight but make eye contact with the person in front of you. Trust me, they’ll always give way.
For stronger effect, you might want to project your killer instinct. Repeat lines like:

“I’ll kill you if you don’t give way” or “I’m a crazy (insert offensive line here)” or “Kill kill die die”

Just remember to repeat them in your head. And look sharp in their eyes. If they are busy looking around and didn’t notice you, simple walk straight and when you almost collide simple say:

“Boo!”

Work perfectly every time. Have fun barging through crowd. Cheers!