Limiting my choices

I recently turned vegetarian. I also recently bought my first Apple product. I don't have any mp3 player to date whereas my friends have bought their 5th generation iPods. I'm only using my second cell phone after 6 years, and that's because my brother insisted to pass it down to me and took my first cell phone, which was working perfectly alright. I didn't plan this actually. I wanted to try out how being a full-time vegetarian is like, I instantly made that decision one afternoon and that's it. Plus hopefully I'm executing the most effective way to stop global warming and stop killing animals. I feel good about it. Buying Apple is easy, I don't have to compare prices from the various PC vendors and choose from the oh-so-many models out there. I prefer not to spend that much time on the research and decision-making process.

Then I thought, hey, by being a vegetarian or buying a Mac I am limiting my choices! Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing. When I go out, I don't have to fuss about what to eat because there's only so many vegetarian options in one place. I don't upgrade my phone if it's still working. Now I'm starting to think if I can apply this to aspects of my life I would be a happier person than I am now. By limiting our own choices, we are sort of forced to take the very few alternatives that are available to us. Therefore, we stop worrying and start living. Going on with our lives. Once a decision is made and there is no turning back, it's like a burden is lifted off your shoulder. When you know you don't have other choices, you would resign and accept whatever path that lies in front of you. Of course people will say we always have choices, but what if we proactively limit our choices?

We can apply this in almost anything: careers, spending, food, schools, anything you can think of. Start building a habit of limiting our choices and we might just be on our way to be happier individuals.

Racism

Someone wise said: "If we could all laugh off racism jokes in the world, wars wouldn't be started and fights between people wouldn't happen."

Are we taking ourselves too seriously?

Oh human. We are sensitive creatures. Smart as we are, we are so easily manipulated. Mind controls are weak. Words can start a war. Words can also stop wars.

Exercise mind control and non-violence. Let us all be happy and peaceful.

Happy Sunday.

Understated numbers

4.5 billion years.

10 to the power of -24 seconds.

60 billion light years.

26 dimensions.

I have to say, these numbers are truly beyond me. Even that is a great understatement. And by that, it's a terribly enormous understatement. And so on...

Human brain is not capable to imagine these things. It took us about 6000 thousand years of civilization to reach here. Yet there are tremendous other things waiting for us to be discovered or understood. I guess learning is never enough. Imagination never has a limit. Who knew this glob of flesh and liquid had the power to think? Great people like Einstein, Newton, and Hawking had the power to think beyond what normal humans can do, and that sets them so far ahead. We need these people, the pioneers who would propel us to (yet to be achieved) golden age. A friend once said, we only use a tiny little fraction of our brains and if we train our minds we could achieve so much more. Our potentials are so great nobody knows what we're capable of yet. In this fast age of communications, few of us really sit down and think each day. All we do is breeze through the day in work and random things. It's no wonder I had such short attention span. There's just so much things to do. Was there ever so little time to think?

Imagine if all 6 billion people sat down and think. Just like the Great Serengeti Migration, over a million animals move at one direction each year and they seem to know where they go when in herds. Leave one alone and it will be lost not knowing its way. Individual can absolutely be great just like the names mentioned earlier. Potentials of collective thoughts must be overwhelmingly greater.

I still can't imagine how long 4.5 billion years were. B I L L I O N years. Nine zeros. Goodness. Enjoy Sunday!

The Beat

One beat, it reverberates through your being.
One beat, you jump up with newfound joy.
One beat, it pounds like your heart.
One beat, you are back in your mother's womb.

Feel it.

Love

What is love, really? Specifically, what interests me is how does a child "understand" the concept of love?

It is often said that all parents in the world love their children. I have no doubt of the truth of that statement. It is then presumable that the parents either say it verbally or say it with actions that we considered 'loving'. Love is a concept. It is - for the lack of better description, as quoted from my favorite source of knowledge Wikipedia - a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. I am perplexed by how a child, a young child, if you may, grasp this whole concept of love.

Assume you say, "I love you", to your child every day. They start to develop language skills since 12 months old, but when do they start to understand concepts? I'm sure child expert can easily answer that question. I am not a parent, but let me try. I suppose, in child-rearing, when we say we will do something, it's very important that we do it. In fulfilling our promises, we gain the child's trust. They are observing and mimicking our every action. When we say we love them, they may associate the word 'love' with our every day actions, cuddling them, cooing them, playing with them, caring them (now 'care' is another vague concept), fulfilling our promises. In addition and perhaps most importantly, the intangible emotional connection with the child. I suppose love transmits that way, the accumulation of all our actions and our emotional relationship translate to love.

I may be completely wrong, this is indeed a curious subject to explore...

Happy Sunday.

Things I learn from traveling

- It's never too much.
- You discover things about yourself you didn't know.
- You discover things about other people you don't want to know.
- You also discover things about other people you would not know until you travel with them.
- You learn / are forced to learn the art of bargaining.
- You experience discomfort you don't expect at home, but you do that anyways.
- You learn to wake up early.
- You learn to be a bit more generous.
- You exercise.
- You finally learn how to pass your idle time meaningfully (or not?)
- You learn to appreciate your life.
- No matter how much you read up and travel in a country, you'll never know the real country. It's a myth.

I always knew, to know the real someone, travel or live with them. It's very very true.

Choices: Barrier to happiness?

We scream and sulk when we're not given a choice to anything. "I don't have a choice", you've probably heard this line a million times over. Just like being forced to do something. A lot of people probably realize this deep down: choices make people unhappy instead.

Suppose you have a free gift of a key chain. Now the key chain has many varieties of shapes, you have a choice of bicycle, palm tree, monkey, crocodile, and key. The catch is there are five crocodile-shaped ones, three bicycles, two palm trees, 1 monkey, and 1 key-shaped ones. Let's say you're most attracted to crocodile-shaped key chain because the design is the best of the lot. At this point, the mind obviously wanted the most 'unique' ones (read: the least quantity), namely key and monkey - it reflects the demands of the market (what else explains the quantity of 1?). It's inescapable that we have a herd mentality, we follow the crowd. Four in five experiences of given a choice, I think people would hesitate, ponder, repeat the same process, and eventually would choose either the key or the monkey.

Choosing an outfit, choosing a footwear, choosing a travel destination, choosing a phone model...you name it, we've all been through it! I believe we also went through a process of narrowing down, eliminating the obvious unwanted alternatives first, then compare benefits of the remaining ones side by side. It's a tedious task and is rewarding at the end (hopefully). Yet I can't help but think, given just one path to follow, one gift, one travel destination, one university to go to, however unfavorable the 'offering' may be, we may be happier, knowing that there's no other choice. Acceptance comes easily at that point, and we move on. With acceptance, we cease to be bothered, we cease to spend time in comparing, we cease to have worries or troubles, we cease to ponder, and we begin to be 'happy'. I'm probably using the word 'happy' too liberally here, but you know what I mean.

So, choice, or no choice?

Simple pleasures in life

- Seeing my house after clearing all the old newspapers, junk mails, brochures, old magazines and unnecessary clutter away
- A takeaway bubble tea after work or on a lazy weekend afternoon
- The smell of fresh dry laundry
- The sunlight shining in through your window
- Shower at the end of a tough workday
- The smell of fresh ocean air
- Internet connection
- A walk around my neighborhood
- The sight of blue sky
- The sound of a familiar voice calling you on the phone
- A good music that you sing along and move your body to
- A meal with just yourself and a newspaper nearby
- A cup of tea on a chilling day
- A meal with your friends
- The sweetness of a teh-o-peng
- The taste of chocolate melting in your mouth after a day of craving
- Popping in your new CD for the first time
- The smell of pages of a new book
- A laughter of a child
- The smile of your loved ones
- A good sleep

Aiming for that wisdom

Today I turned a year older, albeit wiser is a subject of debate. I still feel like the old me, and I feel old already at this age, although many people would whack me for saying that. I should be feeling older, not old. Haha.

It's a gorgeous weather today. Started raining towards the afternoon but as the sky clears up, I feel the gentle breeze of the wind, birds singing right outside my window, sound of human chatter and activities in the distance, vivid blue sky and soft white clouds.

I am grateful. So thank you.

Oh! Let me pass along a wonderful idea from The Dilbert Blog. Send your loved ones an email saying how much you appreciate and love them right now. Do it. It's a good thing and it felt great! Do as he says, after all, he's the brain behind Master Dogbert.

Have fun!

Paper-less, not paperless

I throw away a lot of stuff periodically. Remove clutter. Simplify my life. Make room for something else.

Tonight is one of those times. Although the "stuff" is mainly just paper. It's such a waste sometimes, for people and companies alike to print so much paper. I'm constantly contradicting myself, because I'm the culprit who prints almost every other day. It takes a huge effort and a big awareness on our part to limit ourselves from printing so much paper that we probably won't read or need later.

I'm not saying we should eliminate paper altogether. Imagine the paperless world, everyone will be constantly carrying around some sort of electronic media reader and you'll be lucky to find people who have that rare 20/20 vision. I suppose 99% of the population would agree that nothing beats reading from a book, the paper-in-your-hands feel is unsurpassable. Information that can be contained in a physical medium is more reliable and easily accessible I suppose.

Yeah, recycling maybe the solution. Let me know if you know any good methods to dispose of electronics, plastic bottles, newspapers, magazines, books responsibly in Singapore. Been wanting to find out but I guess I stopped short on being proactive about it.

It would be nice if:
- Banks would just stop sending confirmation letters or monthly statements. With every statement comes an envelope and for bills, more marketing brochure and a return envelope!
- All bills could come in as email attachments (though I notice many companies have offered this option to their customers). Yeah, 1,000,000 companies to follow suit.
- Marketing pamphlets could be limited. I throw those away every time I find them in my mailbox.

Here are some good practices that have been around for a while:
- People who carry their own mug to work or environment-friendly water bottles to travel instead of buying readily available plastic water bottles every time. Sigg water bottle is a good example.
- Companies who carry water dispensers instead of water bottles.
- Plastic cups that were replaced with recyclable paper cups.
- I went to Ikea the other day and found out they are now charging customers for plastic carrier bags. It was a first for me but I suppose it makes sense! Supermarkets should start implementing this. You won't believe how many people would carry their own shopping bags to save 10 cents.

I'll post again if I find out more...

Another weekend

Everyone has a story to tell.

There's always a story behind an invention, behind a picture, behind a person's sad smile, behind the laughter of a child, behind a song, behind the feelings we have right now.

Of course! What was I talking about? David Pogue's post on Simplifying Diabetes Shots is one example on how everyday inventions are created from our simple needs. A need to simplify our life. Isn't everything we see, touch, use every day created to make our life easier? However, things that were made for that purpose in turn make our life more complicated more often than not. One thing spawns another, and we can't stop creating "things". It's a vicious cycle. Can't we get them right the first time? A friend once remarked, if we were to live our life without all these modern inventions (think plowing a rice field in the day, sipping hot tea after a long day in the field, then gazing at the sky at midnight), would we be a happier individual today? Perhaps so.

But I digress.

What's so interesting and exciting now is it's up to us to pursue and discover these stories. Come to think of it, isn't that part of our life, if not our mission? To find out life stories, how a person become who he/she is today? How from then on, we move on in life, knowing these people in our midst. Perhaps the more subtly overlooked but even more difficult question is: How do we become the person we are today? What's our story?

I love these stories. A contractor who invented a door latch that only needs a little push to open because he often had his hands full when going to a locked laundry room. A mother who invented a ready-to-mix syringe for her diabetic child because once she had to run to her car to get the right mix of doses, risking her child's life due to the delay. A woman who became famous around the world after her powerful portrait graced the cover of a magazine yet whose name was unknown and lived in obscurity. A child who died in a concentration camp, leaving behind a diary that stunned the world. A grandmother, trying to make ends meet out of cleaning toilets to feed her family. Fascinating, really.

To be honest, I can't even accurately describe my life story. Why I became the person I am today. Life is just one event after another, how do you attach some semblance of meaning to it? Toddlers, teenage years, twenties passed by in a blink of an eye. Time is running fast. We are mere mortals! It's a constant battle.

What will you tell your grandchild? What's your story?

We grow too fast

I'm repeating cliches. Time really flies. In the blink of an eye, here I am, reminiscing the past. The past was so far away, yet it's also so near. It was right before my eyes, and then it was gone. All that was left was the idea of the past, the flicker of memories like blown dust. One day it may hit you again. Or not. Sometimes intact, sometimes in a fraction.

I am bad at recollecting memories. And I'm really afraid some day what's left in the nooks and crannies of my brain will be gone. I know it's going to happen. It's already happening. Maybe since I was born. Cycle of life, guess it's inevitable eh. Brain breakdown. Wahaha!

Anyway, sat down today, one thing leads to another and I started flipping through some old pictures. Snapshots of life, memories, random stuff. You don't even know which goes first, who the people in the pictures were, where you were, what occasion it was, it's all a mess of cris-crossing dots and lines on the same paper continuum.

And what a heck of FUN it was! You'd go "What was I thinking?!", "Was that me?", or "I wish I could do that again!" (most likely). All in good times. I truly need visuals to remind myself every now and then. We really grow too fast.

Enjoy!

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?

Saturday

Perfection lies in imperfection

Oh well...

So, the other night, I was throwing away some stuff at ground floor. Before I can hit the button of the elevator, a gust of wind blows into my face. Intrigued at how pleasant it was, I decided to venture beyond my normal block vicinity, which sadly involves only the route I take from the train station to my house.

A playground, some plants along the sides, a small park, a few elderlies having a loud conversation on the park bench, and a few cute guys jogging...The soft light illuminating the park, combined with sound and sights of people doing their own thing and the soft blow of the wind, sort of give you that resort, ooh-ahh feel. Further down, I arrived at a mini-hill, the half-moon path runs along the edge of that hill with apartment blocks surrounding it. Then I saw it.

BBQ pits!!! How on earth could I miss that before? I envision this to be a great hang-out place. A few tables, good lighting, and of course, the BBQ pit itself. Just perfect for light conversations or juicy gossips, AND good food.

Problem is, how to get a booking?

Anyway, it's Saturday again!

Enjoy.