20110826: Out of Space

Are we getting Out of Space?”

Went back to the old house we used to live. Almost everything has changed, the neighbor got married and had a new born baby and the other neighbor has moved also, replaced by young unfamiliar faces.

A mixed feeling, a tinge of sadness and rejoice creeps up at the back of my mind and all of a sudden that feeling of “away from home” surfaced again, my parents, siblings, nephews & friends. Even the scent of newly cut grass after the rain smells different here.

Home is where we grew up in, surrounded by family, friends and things that we are familiar with. A place where we could go back again and again in the hope of finding “nothing has changed” & in our mind, will remain the same for our remembrance until eternity.

Although the landscape has changed a bit, the trademark row of trees are still standing green. Not sure for how long though. I heard some have been relocated to make way for transportation needs.

In pursuit of happiness and needful things, our life should be getting better & better. But these days, for the sake of development, in the name of modernization and capitalism, seems that what once was valued are replaced by mere investment tools, slapped on with a price tag, mark with a dollar sign & traded for making profit.

“Get on the band wagon or be left behind” is the mentality I felt going on these days. This message pours over to the younger generations of Haves and Have-Nots, whether they understand it, want to accept it or not. Thus creating a void which seems may only be filled by newer material things & the latest shiny gadgets. Hence a new generation of “Your Rich Dad & My Poor Dad” youth is born. Comparing amongst themselves who has got the shinier new toy.

As a Chinese saying goes, “旧的不去，新的不来” “If the old don’t go, the new cannot come.” But what if we can appreciate and preserve the old way, and figure out another discreet direction to arrive in a new way.

Getting from here to there, there’s always a way so that no one has to suffer. Some may say & some might already have thought or say “but it is elusive and getting there may not be a happy journey” & it might not even yield as much money as would have preferred; which is now advertised as the purpose of our life.

Some be asking “where is this so called WAY?”, and expecting a simple answer in a short 12 words sentence. Luckily, life doesn’t count as short as twelve. General advice would be to buy lottery & if you strike it, you’ve got the A N S. The thing is, there is no one perfect available answer about how to get there, that’s what people should realized when they finished those reading all those “How I made f##king Billions?” book.

Like the lady’s who sure all the glitter is gold, or that room at the top of the stairs, there is sure a way to climb up the stairway to heaven. Each one of us has to chart our own journey in order to arrive there in life, & it is measured by definition of self. As long as we’re breathing and our eyes can see ahead, mark that path and make way for the new “WE”.

20110728: The Day It Was

It wasn't a Thursday that I had ever imagined,
As things fall into places with minor complications.
A little bit of sadness lingers in the air,
Or maybe it was just ME?

All things must someday come to be,
As an end to a new beginning.
Embark on a new journey of uncertainty,
in this existence known as LIFE.

Maybe things happened according to THE PLAN,
on The Day It Was supposed to be.

inspired by a MOM incident.

20110712: Rejuvenation

As I look out my window pane, the afternoon Sun shone without mercy down the crack earth, drying everything in it's path. The weather seems odd these few days. With late afternoon downpour just enough to wet the earth and then disappear as soon as it came.
One of the trees has grown quite tall with it's branches reaching up for the sky, it seems to be shedding it's leaves.

Few months ago, a fire broke out and nearly burnt it down. The branches at the bottom of the tree has dried up, but it still remain bushy at the upper part. I hope it will continue to survive & flourish as the shade is very much needed to cool the surrounding environment.

Sometimes just by shedding leaves and then growing new shoots & branches. This shows that even plants in evergreen tropical country need to rejuvenate. Ever notice that the trees look the same but feels differently? Every year, around that same time, there's a different feeling or a scent in the air that we just could not describe. Maybe we do have our seasons here after all.

Rejuvenation is part of a yearly process necessary for growth, not only in spring time do we need to clean up our room, sometime we need that extra energy & push from our surrounding to proceed, to reach out & touch the Sun.

20110705: Flying Time & Space

At half past 2011, it's the annual month of July again, the Sun has turned making nice shadow during early morning and hot late afternoons. The world is flying in a different time & space. Lady Gaga, big square phones with Identity, unforeseen natural disasters, 2 part final episodes & social networking.
It's the best of times, it's the worst of times, (IMHO) anytime is a good time to live in, as long as we're breathing.
Will the land open up like what we saw in movies about disaster?
will we experience an apocalyptic days without sky?
Some care, some doesn't, most are busy living their lives everyday to take note or lay their concern for this end to all meaning of existence.
Some even tried to force fear by announcing judgement day while the end didn't bother to come, hence causing skeptic non-believer like me to live another day.
If I were a farmer & thank the Sun for shining each day, would that make me a Sun worshiper? but since I'm not a farmer I would still be eating the vegetable simply shone by the sun, making me accountable for the thirst & hunger fulfilled by the enlightened of leaves. In the end, that is still indirect sun consumerism no matter how they tried to conceal or sugar coat it.
When talking about space, there might be a coincidence in how things come to be. Like the volcanic ash from Chile blown by the wind & harassing the air space over Australia. Never could I imagine, ashes as big as our feet, shooting up in the air, and then coming down on another continent across the sea. Didn't bother to really look it up in the internet, but I did found some stunning pictures of the volcanic eruption. Makes you wonder from the safety behind the screen, are those natural earthly entities? or green tights space suits humanoids master-stationing & manipulating the clouds?
What if tomorrow never comes? If it comes, I'll let you know tomorrow. Peace out dude. :D :D :D

20110413: The Choices We Make in Our Life

First choice of the day, whether we make a decision to wake up or keep snuck up in bed until the alarm snooze-off. Arosen from dreamland on a cold morning, the sun is already up but the rain keeps it cool... the April rainy season is here for another year.

Coffee or tea, do we order teh tarik or nescafe for that jolt of energy? that flows over during brushing of our teeth. As the morning progress decison decisons decisions. Little decisions we make each day stake-up to the choices we made or will make in life.

What we wear, the colour of our cloths, pants & shoes. Many would argue the importance of fengshui and how people preceive what's on our back, the car we drive & translate them into our behaviour, hint of our preference and what our future beholds.

What we've read in magazines, may in fact unconsciously bump our head into our action further down the road. Humanity is possibily the least of the things we worried about in the present tense, but after things fall into places and it doesn't suit our choice we suddenly realized, we hate it.

Mirroring what we do through our thoughts and controlling actions, as the seconds passus by we may not know what have happened. Until one day we suddenly awaken, "Is the mirror showing our true self or just a projection?" The face we see we must have forgotten, or the cataracts in our eyes, blurred our vision.

As life progress & profess itself all through the years, the world around it also changed & evolved, whether it's turning to better or worst... The things we do today tomorrow and there after, they all boil down to the choices we make, made & will make in our lives. Do we want others to make it for us? Can other people define us better than ourselves?

Who are to be responsible for our lives if not ourselves?
Who are to be blamed for our lives if not ourselves?

20110327: Of Food, Taste & Paying Respect to the Dead

5AM prep the food and stuffs for praying.
7:15 car pool with relative.
7:45 left for the cemetery.

This time we went earlier to avoid the crowding, traffic jam, smoke, etc... The weather was sunny though not as hot as today.

Cheng Meng is the time to pay respect to our ancestors and also a chance to meet up with relatives. Pray, cold food, hot weather, smell of joss stick, melting candles, colour papers, burning of hell notes, paper 7-series (as in BMW), LV accesories cloths and other stuffs. I have to applaude the creativity & skill of the people who hand made all the car, house for this occasion. Wonder if they have a blue print for making stuff like this? Or the skill is pass down from generation to generation?

About the food (whole chicken, the fish, some huat kueh cake, ang koo kueh, etc), since the time I was little, it's always have this strange taste after praying. The old saying goes that our ancestors had "blessed" the food.

1) The hot weather & UV rays from the sun might have add to the "mutation" of the taste.
2) The joss stick could have intercepted & blunted our sense of smell for the rest of the day.
3) The food might have been "aged" during the journey in the vehicle (instead of the usual 8 hours).
4) The reheating-up the food for eating later may have caused the taste to change, especially if cook with soya sauce and other stuffs.
5) Some say the taste was taken away. :-)

I'm not sure whether it's a torture or enjoyment to hear family gossips, & seeing some of my aunties, you do tend to realize that people do not change much, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree & it's not a Culture Re-Shock event. Some same generation relatives you haven't seen for a long time, even if you meet on the street also couldn't recognise them. Some mentioned of dream they had report?broadcast? from our ancestors.

In this fast-paced modern age, Cheng Meng festival provides a rare opportunity for that sweet and bitter walk down memory lane for all of us. Hopefully the fond memory will last longer than the viral ones. After all, remembering that catchy song tune: "We Are Family !" & the Blessed Food of course.

20110201: Usagi!!! Usagi!!! (Wabbit! Wabbit!)

"Usagi !!! Usagi !!!", this is year of rabbit and another chapter of my existence on this planet earth. :P

I'm in Kuching. It's 2.16 am in the morning, and I'm still up. New year's not the same without sleepless nights like this. chuckle..
Ya... & checking facebook status & replying & poking people too. Haha...I've been quite adamant in protecting my fingers seeing dad's messed up fingers. Luckily I didn't saw off my left index finger while doing last minute woodwork just now (Onitofo...)
Preparing also clothing for New Year, felt relieved this year, somewhat. Comforting knowing that I'm shielded from unpleasantries tomorrow evening. Not that I'm not keen to handle it. "Bla.. me!" blatantly.

My room is still a mess as I manuever through it like the front lawn. Well, still a long way to go from completion, but I'm pretty confident that the mess will be gone come CNY morning. :D sort of a Santa TPK (Tua Pek Kong or another) mentality maybe.

Last minute clean-up procrastination seems to be a normal phenomena as long as I can remember. Usually things last until reunion dinner. CNY (Chinese New Year) is not the same without hectic disorientation like this.
It's a relief to be able to cherish memories of minor urusei-ness (noisy) like this. :p

Home is the best learning place for understanding our roots, and also the history and previous generation and how they made us who we are today. In past years, I usually used this time to do resolutions and stuffs, but this year, I'm going to CHANCE it & ACCEPT things as they come along. Like the saying, when life throw your cure ball, when life give you lemon, etc. Live life as 2012 as possible.

When i was younger, I get sick on the first day of CNY, then I slept through the whole morning :-p, sometime throughout the day until to the 2nd day, come to think of it, it's sort of solitary confinement. Now... I think I know why I do not feel the anguish or anxiety felt by others during a faraway from home CNY.

Poking people at 3.08am in facebook seems to be on the menu of fun these days. kekeke...

Still haven't finish my cup of coffee, hah another 11 minutes 8 seconds to go.

Oh well, Minor habits to reconsider:
1) Use pencil to write (many pencil lying around found during house cleaning)
2) Wear glove when handling things
3) Let the temperament flair
4) recycle rubbish into gold
5) Waking up early, preparing and getting ready
6) pickup, do, until finish, put down.
7) Sort of pick up where you left off

5:28 time to ZZZ

20110108: Beginning of a New Year

2011 is here, bye-bye 2010. Last year has been a cool, serene, quiet year. I enjoyed it a lot (maybe more so than I ever did), a journey of recovery, recycle, remixes, rebla-bla-bla...
Most of the people I know had a good year. So is me... =)

一开始.

As the chinese saying goes, "It starts with one" (like the Linkin Park song), 2011 is the beginning of a new decade.

Past keywords:

Regrets - definition of regret is the thing you wished to do but didn't do. Either I did not dig deep enough, it's buried too deep, or I just can't find any. It might as well just slip through the cracks. Oh ya, maybe the fact that I did not update my blog every month. As situation evolve, we human beings will always find a way to make better use and take charge of it. So, this becomes circumstances.

Circumstances - The deal is one thing I am quite pissed at myself is concluding, minding, seeing, smelling, rotating, reading, feeling, judging, saying, speeding, & other bla, being too emotional (over 50%? then what is a good %? 20 pa emotion 80 pa logical?)
Remembering that someone once said "Takes 10 years to know a person and took only 5 minutes to make a decision." So emotional (20/80?) is critically next.

Emotional - IQ, EQ, MQ & all the other Qs. I did a search & found so many Q-testing WTF. Anyways, 20 pa emotion 80 pa logical sounds good. Emotional is connected to the food we eat, bananas & chocolate are 1+1 of the food I love, so next on the card should be health.

Health - Health problems are bound to happen when you lease expect it. Be vigilant all the time no matter how healthy you are. One person may not agree with me that "Health is Wealth", but that's ok, I agree to disagree.

Agreement - Is it really worth the energy you use to open & move your mouth, the grey cells for that matter, the voice you use for karaoke, body muscle movement of any to convince people to get into agreement with you? I guess that really depends on what the win-win result desired. Is it really worth ones effort? While the other just spend a "No". Take a note on one worth.

Nett Worth - Concentrate on value added work, task and chores which will give a positive result or a negative result but a plus learning experience. Leave the grunt job when you're in a viral or estrange bad mood. See the value in time, but not so far as to make it one liability.

Liability - Those things that you pay but can only give you less (like insurance). One aunty invested 500k, but only got back 400k. One uncle entrust his money to his banker, but did not get any interest, because the bank never inform him properly that the interest is not guarantee one, now he is suing the bank.

LLL - Life-Long-Learning

RRR - Reduce Reuse Recycle

1 + 1 = 3

Looking forward to this new 2011 at full throttle.