Kalangkabut
What would you think if you put me in charge of an undertaking and allotted me tens of millions to spend to ensure that I ‘succeed’ at the task, but I end up failing miserably? What would be your reaction if this did not only happen once, but twice in a matter of five months? After I failed miserably the first time, we pretended our failure was just because we were not expected to succeed anyway! Ahh! Fantastic…this actually turned out to be quite a convenient way of looking at the situation, no?
Then circumstances were such that we had to compete with this opponent all over again. Sigh…Adoi!!! What man! But what to do? But we thought – never mind la; we have lots of money…we out-spent our competitor and made sure we succeeded this time. After all, we are “stronger,” we have more “clout,” we have “home field advantage,” we have all the necessary backing of the “behind the scene” people who will be supervising this competition. No sweat one! This goat is cooked! Right?
This time around, we again out-spent them and even tried some other…let’s just say ‘unique’ tactics, la. Yes, you can say they’re unique, la. I personally spent countless hours trying to ensure we succeeded; I had no desire to be humiliated again. Because I will soon be the tuan besar and calling all the shots, I wanted to make sure I looked impressive with a convincing win this time.
But what if after the first embarrassing thrashing by the opponent, and after all these ‘unique’ strategies and our other advantages noted above, the outcome again was a debacle for us?
What if afterwards, I said something like, “this is a setback for us” la!
Why you or anybody want to make such a big deal about it! Okay la, we lost, but it’s not so bad as you think. Even if we spent tens of millions to try to succeed, it’s only a setback! No big deal.
Would you be convinced that this defeat is just a setback – and be alright about my performance? Would you be alright about both of my embarrassing debacles? Hmmm…. I wonder – I really wonder.
Now, here are some additional twists to this episode: http://imagineequality.blogspot.com/2009/01/kalangkabut.html
