Learning to Toot My Own Horn

I was fresh out of university.

Then I got a job at the family firm. I had a million ideas, when I was back in university, about how I would spend my first salary. 

When I was a teenager I thought that I would buy music albums from my favourite bands, books from my favourite authors, and musical instruments so that I could play music in the comfort of my home. I made plans to get a laptop. A mobile phone. All those things that teenagers want.

But a friend made a remark about my man boobs. I was young. And foolish. And easily devastated. So, I signed up for a gym.

Beep beep. Probably the modern day version of the horn.

Upon signing up I was assigned a free personal training session. The guy was a Chinese, tall and good looking. He looked like a model.

As he was going through the routines, he kept mentioning that he had just graduated, and he was looking to get into this and that. That he had a vision of something greater. I thought that he was trying to get me to sign up for the PT session, which was out of my budget. So I kept quiet.

The years went by, and I kind of remembered him. Then one day I saw him on TV. He had become a local celebrity.

"Amazing what tooting your own horn can do for you", I thought as I saw him talking with his co-host.

Jazz music is my idea of good music. Sometimes jazz pieces feature a good horn player.

Recently I was invited to a party.

It was the open house of one of the foreign embassies. They were having a dinner at the Shangri-la. Standing room only.

I sent my RSVP in, stating that I would attend with a guest.

And so I went with my 58 year old friend, who has a great way of getting around. He would just look at someone with a naughty smile and one of his eyebrows would arch upward. His silver suit made him look like a stage magician. Then he would say something like, "The crowd here is just too packed. Wonderful food. But terrible crowd." And then he would talk about himself. He would say outrageous things, interesting things. People were fascinated. Ten minutes later he was still talking. Sometimes twenty minutes later, he was still talking. 

I saw how he made so many friends that I lost count. I just followed him around and said hi. I exchanged cards with some of them. They said hi to me. But all their eyes were on him.

Some of them opened up their phones and stored his number.

Then I thought to myself, "Amazing how tooting your own horn can get you around."

If you don't toot your own horn, don't complain that there's no music.

Recently a friend of mine held a street protest.

The next day, some newspapers had covered his street protest. It was a big thing.

But we had some friends in a WhatsApp group chat who didn't say anything about it. It was as though they didn't know. Or maybe they didn't care. Or maybe it was both.

My friend asked me for a favour. Could I share his news in the WhatsApp group? 

"Congratulations ____!" I wrote in the group. "Good job." Everyone else congratulated him too.

"Ah. So that's how you toot your own horn," I thought to myself.

Why should you toot your own horn?

Because if you don't do it, nobody else will do it for you. 

They're too busy scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking apps. Maybe they're not interested.  Or, maybe they didn't even know of what you have done. How can they toot their horn for you if they didn't know?

Because it's free. 

If you need to spend twenty minutes talking to the CEO of a big company at a party, it's 20 minutes of precious time that you couldn't get even elsewhere. A friend of mine told me recently that it costs RM10,000 to print a full page of black and white advertisement  in the local newspapers. It costs even more if it's colour. And the CEO who sees it might just turn the page, because he's in too much of a hurry to bother.

Because people expect you to.

A few weeks ago a religious leader made an outrageous statement. It was prejudicial to minorities, so I went to the nearby police station and I made a police report. I shared it with some friends. My 58 year old friend heard about it and he said, "Aiyah! You should have told me. I could have helped you to organize a press conference. It would have come out in the newspapers." 

I hadn't planned on doing that, but a few other people expressed the same idea. It's as though they expect you to blow your own horn.

Sometimes you just have to toot your own horn.

Thanks for reading.

Here are some other pieces from me.

1. Imagining and Pretending yourself into Action.
2. Four lessons from my grandfather's life.
3. My response to the 1MDB scandal.
4. So what if you go bankrupt?
5. Fourteen reported cases which mention the Rukun Negara.
6. Donate your body to science to save on funeral costs.
7. Comparing Cloud Storage: Google Drive vs Microsoft OneDrive
8. Living up to expectations.