Compassion

Dalai Lama said,

Genuine compassion should be unbiased. The closeness we feel towards our friends is usually more attachment than compassion. If we only feel close to our friends, and not to our enemies, or to the countless people who are unknown to us personally and toward whom we are indifferent, then our compassion is only partial or biased.

This is hard. I had to look up the meaning of compassion. Merriam-Webster's entry on "compassion" reads "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it." Only one source at this time, and I already feel the toughness of this quest. To be compassionate to strangers and enemies alike.

We will, occasionally, meet with people whose personalities we find unfit with ours (to put this mildly). How many times do we stop and seek to understand these individuals? Some don't, they naturally drift away. Some would go further and try to 'correct' (read: change) the part of the other's personality that is considered unfit to their own. Some just accept them for whoever they are and do nothing about it. What is compassion, I ask of you?

It's easy to blame other people, much easier to think that what we did was the best at the time, and the right thing to do. Yet everything we do is not without flaw. We are afterall, human. But to be compassionate to others does not mean we have to accept things the way they are, especially when they are not right. Again, it's easier to shut up when we find people close to us doing something that wasn't right, just as it's easier to be mad when a stranger or an enemy violate your rights.

The world will undoubtedly be a better place if people seek to understand and be compassionate to each other. Such a cliché I know...But true nonetheless. I have yet to achieve this stage, to have an unbiased compassion. Will I? I don't know.

29 April 2006

We were eating snacks, walking along the streets of Chengdu, admidst the hustle bustle of the city dwellers, working, shuffling, rushing home, meeting friends, en route to do something important. I would expect to see bicycles more...of course they're still ubiquitous, yet capitalism has caught up. It was a year ago. What has it become today?

Back then...

I remember, when I was little my mom used to scare us with harmless little tales to get us to do her biddings. They were funny little anecdotes that stuck with me for a long long time...As I enter 2000s, they faded.

On not swallowing any seeds, "Do not eat mandarin orange seeds, or you'll find that the plant will grow out from the top of your head someday!"

The reason we're fat and healthy when we're kids: "Eat your last grain of rice! Don't waste food! Or you'll get a husband with pockmarks all around his face!"

The thing I never quite found out the 'why' of: "Never ever clip your nails at night! No good!"

It's a shame I can't dig out some more, thoughts just crossed your mind at unexpected moments I guess.

Anyway, that was what I used to have for breakfast some time ago, 3 stack of Weet-Bix with sliced bananas, peaches, raisins plus some skim milk and a McDonald's chocolate chip muffin on the side. Voila! Good old breakfast that's yummy, (I hope) healthy, and satisfying! How I missed those days.

Subway #1

The interior of MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) in Singapore. Love the symmetry and the high-techness of the shot. I feel like I was on one of the Terminator/I, Robot/Matrix movies. One thing I'd like to ask Daniel Cheong is how he managed to catch the empty train during that earliest hour of operation! From my experience, even when you catch the earliest train in the early morning, you'd almost always see people. Unless you're heading towards Punggol I guess.

Check out his Flickr page here.

UPDATE: Finally found the answer to the mysterious empty train! Ready? Here you go.

Partahi Lumbantoruan

Obit from NY Times:

Partahi Lumbantoruan was a 34-year-old aspiring teacher who left Indonesia for Virginia Tech three years ago to pursue a doctoral degree in civil engineering.

He was two semesters away from achieving that dream -- a dream that included returning to Indonesia to begin teaching -- when he was killed in Norris Hall on Monday.

A native of Medan, the capital city of North Sumatra, Mr. Lumbantoruan earned his master's degree in civil engineering from Parahyangan University in Java and arrived in the United States in 2004. His father told The Associated Press that his family had sold property and cars to help Mr. Lumbantoruan pay the $8,000 a semester he needed for tuition.

"We wanted him to succeed," said his father, Tohom Lumbantoruan, "but he met a tragic fate."

According to Teguh Wardoyo, a spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy in Washington, Mr. Lumbantoruan's body will be returned to Indonesia.

One of 32.

As soon as I saw this page, my heart aches. Every one of them is such an amazing human being. My prayer goes to all of their family and friends.

Conversations with Other Women

My friend S is a great story teller. S works in a professional training company and has to call clients all the time. The following are S's stories and I never had such a good laugh in such a long time.

S: "Hello, I'm calling regarding [insert some conference name here]. May I speak to Mr. X?"
X: "Oh! I can't make it during that day!"
S: "What day?"

If you gotta say no....say it well.

S' colleague K graduated from a reputable University. One day, another colleague M (a middle-aged man who was used to speaking Singlish and want to make sure his grammar was correct in an sms to a client) asked both K and S: "'Has she been approved by the Manager?' or 'Have she been approved by the Manager?'"?

S immediately answered, "Of course it's 'has'!".

K butted in, "Definitely 'Have' lah! Where got 'has'! You don't use 'you' with 'have' right? Right??"

S sees no point in arguing with K. I agree, how could you argue with such a person? S lets K have it.

K then threw tantrums, "If you don't trust me, then whatever lah, you either ask me, or your ask S. If you ask me, then S better not answer. If you ask S, then I won't answer for you."

M scrambled to make amends between the two. He sensed K's anger and proceeded to (pretend) to agree with K.

Plenty of other stories, but I'll leave the story telling to the great story tellers. I aspire to be them one day.

Wasted

I just spent the past 2 hours tweaking the template of this blog. I've already spent enough time yesterday on it. If you're editing the blog template manually instead of using Blogger's new editor, remember to back your template up. Or you'll end up like me, lost most of the chunk and ended up with an empty blog with non-sensical looking HTML codes.

Panic set in. Cussing silently, I went "Bye bye blog, see ya later" (trust me, it's much more civilised than that). In the dead of the night, red eyes, dark circles and all, I went to work on it, figuring I have to start all over again. I ... will...not...give...up...until...I...finish...it.

And that I did. Turns out, Blogger has this great Help resource, a quick "missing template" search led me to this entry. The trick is to search on Google a cached version of your blog, get the source code and paste those onto your template. Voila!

Happy now. Though still mad over WHY THE CHUNK OF CODES DISAPPEARED ALL OF THE SUDDEN?

Okay, enough of angry-speak. Calm down..calm down.

Looking forward to weekend again. Plenty of shut-eye awaits.

I had a dream

To be so many things, to do so many things. All took form of a simple thought, often in the late evening, or in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning. Thoughts flashed my mind all the time, inspired by the things I see and I hear.

- To be humanitarian worker
- To go vegetarian
- To be bald
- To be wanderer of the world
- To open a cafe
- To make more friends
- To write more
- To read more
- To take lots and lots of courses
- To focus
- To be more disciplined in my life
- To be kinder
- To be vigilant
- To guard my mind against negative thoughts
- To "be"

Believe me, the list goes on til the end of the world. Then again, I came back and reflect, how many of those "to"s have I achieved? What I'm doing is trying to improve point number 7.

Millions of other thoughts. My palm shows. So little time. So much to do.

Hope. What does it mean?