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2013年3月15日 星期五
2013年2月11日 星期一
My Shang-ri-la.
I suppose right now I'm exploring all possible choices. There are two ways to go- enlightenment for the "self", which focuses more on uncovering knowledge to satisfy your own desires. They would be the people you see who are lost in their own world, spending their time researching on topics of their interest, digging deep down, specializing in their respective fields. The other road to go would be one with the aim of serving the world, whereby all knowledge and experience gained are tools to be utilized in the efforts of a cause. These type of people are the activists, those that you see sitting on someone's shoulders, holding a banner, shouting passionately to promote awareness, incite action. They work tirelessly for others.
I don't know which way to go. I don't know which suits me best, but I'll try both for now. Yes, it may be to my disadvantage that I am on the road of discovery a tad bit ( no, a whole lot) slower than others, but better taken than never, right? The first option may seem selfish and self centered to most, but I find that passion is something that you can't force someone to have. If you have it, then you have it, if not, that piece of responsibility won't carry you that far. If it doesn't gratify your innate desires, then why force yourself? Nothing good will culminate from it. Your efforts at researching may produce juicier outputs compared to that lukewarm effort put in.
So I'll look for it.
In the meantime, I'm back from my three day Shang- ri- La break. These are the days I duck from the world in seclusion, focusing all my attention on the immediate people around me and my favourite things to do. Of course, Facebook has got it's hold on me- I still surfed the news feed. Sometimes I despise the invention of social media or the internet. I remember reading about all those ancient poets of ancient China, who chose to live in seclusion in tiny villages, immersing themselves in nature together with the innocent villagers, away from the dust of the earth. I think I would appreciate that, really. But once you've been exposed to the upper world, it's hard to regress back to that original state. I don't think I can live without my cell, my television, my internet, my gadgets for a long period of time.
I am a thoroughly modernized piece of complex organism.
I don't know which way to go. I don't know which suits me best, but I'll try both for now. Yes, it may be to my disadvantage that I am on the road of discovery a tad bit ( no, a whole lot) slower than others, but better taken than never, right? The first option may seem selfish and self centered to most, but I find that passion is something that you can't force someone to have. If you have it, then you have it, if not, that piece of responsibility won't carry you that far. If it doesn't gratify your innate desires, then why force yourself? Nothing good will culminate from it. Your efforts at researching may produce juicier outputs compared to that lukewarm effort put in.
So I'll look for it.
In the meantime, I'm back from my three day Shang- ri- La break. These are the days I duck from the world in seclusion, focusing all my attention on the immediate people around me and my favourite things to do. Of course, Facebook has got it's hold on me- I still surfed the news feed. Sometimes I despise the invention of social media or the internet. I remember reading about all those ancient poets of ancient China, who chose to live in seclusion in tiny villages, immersing themselves in nature together with the innocent villagers, away from the dust of the earth. I think I would appreciate that, really. But once you've been exposed to the upper world, it's hard to regress back to that original state. I don't think I can live without my cell, my television, my internet, my gadgets for a long period of time.
I am a thoroughly modernized piece of complex organism.
2013年2月8日 星期五
The market
Despite being a true city kid, I'm still fascinated by wet markets around town. If I were to describe them with a single word, it'd be " chaotic".
Everything is everywhere there, literally. The paths are narrow, and people shove past each other without so much a glance or apology. They step on your slippers, they push past you with a sticky, wet plastic bag, you get dirt all over your leg from all those splatters of puddles on the uneven floor. Drips of chicken blood are found on your clothes or arms from the chopping board, where the corpse of a chicken is viciously split into unrecognizable parts. The language uttered by the shopkeeper may also be another source of anxiety, since I would have no idea if they were speaking in a Cantonese dialect, or a Hokkien one. Worse off, I'm illiterate in Chinese dialects. Answering in Chinese would seem weird, but not even comprehending their questions is the problem. " Sap Man"? Thanks to my superb inferring skills ( well, not really), I understood that as RM 10.
The market is characterized by a lack of structure, rules, and a sense of ambivalence.
There is no fixed price, hence it becomes the place for people like my grandmother to exhibit their superb bargaining skills. There is no clean queue either, if you want attention you've got to speak up. As mentioned before, the market is a place where you get shoved and pushed a whole lot so to "survive", you've got to be firm on your feet. Oftentimes there are also food hawkers in the market, which contributes to the whole chaotic scene by adding their flavors of shouting and smoke. It is a mess and you've got to make your order swift and direct. But once again, be prepared for them to answer you in some dialect. I. Have. Problem. Understanding. Them. Not to mention I feel like a dork by speaking to them in Chinese.
Some day, I suppose these wet markets will be a thing of the past. It would be a pity, really, since I find these markets the symbol of our unique culture, embodying all the typical characteristics of our traditions. I'm not going to go into that, since it's chinese new year and there are better things to do then to blog. Anyway, I hope that we will appreciate the wet market and what it means, what it has meant to our culture as a whole since the past.
P.S. Markets make me want to learn dialects. Markets make me indulge in ambiguity. Awyeah, no need to dress, no need to be clean, no need to be nice, no unofficial rules to abide to unlike as in an emporium.
P.P.S. Quite a good place to learn about biology as well, since... you can see strong aunties chopping off chicken heads and pulling unidentifiable yellow goo from the chicken equivalent of anus.
Everything is everywhere there, literally. The paths are narrow, and people shove past each other without so much a glance or apology. They step on your slippers, they push past you with a sticky, wet plastic bag, you get dirt all over your leg from all those splatters of puddles on the uneven floor. Drips of chicken blood are found on your clothes or arms from the chopping board, where the corpse of a chicken is viciously split into unrecognizable parts. The language uttered by the shopkeeper may also be another source of anxiety, since I would have no idea if they were speaking in a Cantonese dialect, or a Hokkien one. Worse off, I'm illiterate in Chinese dialects. Answering in Chinese would seem weird, but not even comprehending their questions is the problem. " Sap Man"? Thanks to my superb inferring skills ( well, not really), I understood that as RM 10.
The market is characterized by a lack of structure, rules, and a sense of ambivalence.
There is no fixed price, hence it becomes the place for people like my grandmother to exhibit their superb bargaining skills. There is no clean queue either, if you want attention you've got to speak up. As mentioned before, the market is a place where you get shoved and pushed a whole lot so to "survive", you've got to be firm on your feet. Oftentimes there are also food hawkers in the market, which contributes to the whole chaotic scene by adding their flavors of shouting and smoke. It is a mess and you've got to make your order swift and direct. But once again, be prepared for them to answer you in some dialect. I. Have. Problem. Understanding. Them. Not to mention I feel like a dork by speaking to them in Chinese.
Some day, I suppose these wet markets will be a thing of the past. It would be a pity, really, since I find these markets the symbol of our unique culture, embodying all the typical characteristics of our traditions. I'm not going to go into that, since it's chinese new year and there are better things to do then to blog. Anyway, I hope that we will appreciate the wet market and what it means, what it has meant to our culture as a whole since the past.
P.S. Markets make me want to learn dialects. Markets make me indulge in ambiguity. Awyeah, no need to dress, no need to be clean, no need to be nice, no unofficial rules to abide to unlike as in an emporium.
P.P.S. Quite a good place to learn about biology as well, since... you can see strong aunties chopping off chicken heads and pulling unidentifiable yellow goo from the chicken equivalent of anus.
2013年2月3日 星期日
The little things
" If you just pay attention to all the tiny details surrounding your life, you'd understand the yourself much better. "
Lately I've been hit with sudden seeds of thought at the most random of circumstances. Of course, these thoughts are rather personal, they're more of tiny discoveries about myself that I thought I knew. Remember the psychological concept of " insight"? That's what's been happening lately. It's as if everything I heard from others, recent talks or reverie has met with their supporting proof with all these sudden insights. Some of them are quite insignificant, really, but still interesting to entertain.
The one that made me laugh was a point I discovered after listening to a preacher in CF. He mentioned about " not knowing what's around the bend", " if you don't let go of what you think are jewels, you will never be able to obtain the real ones", " there are many possibilities ahead, but you have to learn to let go of the current obsessions". Well, I was shopping for belts at FOS, looking at the RM7 cheapskate belts with their qualities compromised. They didn't look favorable to me, but it was still acceptable. Where else can I get such a cheap deal? When can I get it? My old belt is being torn apart, hence I needed a belt as soon as possible. The decision was to finally purchase the FOS belt. But right after that when I was scouring the Jusco ladies section waiting for my mom, I noted a whole row of cheap, pretty belts with much better qualities. I stopped dead on my tracks and laughed. I can't believe that the message from the sermon was materializing right in my life in the most ridiculous of circumstances! If only I had bothered to allow possibilities in the future and let go of the cheapskate poor quality belt at FOS, I would've found a better deal. I'm still laughing about this now. Still. And I really want those belts. Aww.
Another even hilarious scenario was when I was queuing up for the fitting room. There was two rooms, one occupied with a person waiting already and the other, supposedly occupied with the door shut. I noticed that the color of the little lock was blue, which meant it was vacant but I've learnt to never trust Malaysian machinery. The door was locked anyway, and the person queuing at the next cubicle didn't say anything. So I just waited. Waited. The line got longer behind me. Then a salesgirl came up and stared at me.
" Uh, there's no one inside la. "
I pushed the door. Woops. I gave an awkward laugh, the sales girl gave an amusing laugh, and the people gave a pitiful smile. I laughed again, inside the cubicle. Gosh! This just goes to show how passive a person I am. Had I taken the initiative to knock at the door or give it a slight push, I would have saved myself plenty of embarrassment! But no, I chose to stand there like a dork. Once again, if projected in life, it means that we have to be assertive, because unless we take action we'll never know what opportunities we have.
The last one that I remember was well, alright, rather personal. All I can say is that incident made me realize what sort of person I was. Someone who is desperate to fit into the picture, no matter what blows I have to take. I would just go on, enduring all those for friendship and a desperation to match the crowd. Not a good principle to hold. It's something that I've been trying to shrug off for years, and something that I thought I've succeeded in eliminating but this observation just made it clear that well, this desperation is still deeply ingrained in my subconscious mind. When can I be free of peer pressure? Some times I think that is the biggest shadow in my life.
I'maselfcentered*
Time
Sometimes I find it frustrating that we know the locus of control is in our hands but somehow at the end of the day, feel as if everything that happened was not of my own doing at all, but rather, a gradual development of circumstances beyond my control. All this constant sprinting after the fingers of the clock is rather consuming, because I allow time to control my life, every aspect of it. I've always thought about the possibility of distorting time to my own pace, creating a pseudo reality only seen in movies whereby all actions are in slow motion and it takes an hour for an eyebrow to twitch. If I could do that, then there'd be plenty of time to immerse in reverie, plunge into my passions and take a rest.
It's impossible.
But then again, not so. Who was the person that defined what " time" was? No one ever proved that the concept of time is real anyway. I think that time is something personal, really. Something that is at our mercy, and we can control the pace of time, how fast it runs and what it signifies. It's all our decisions. The hour and second pointers are just oars of the boat- we are the batteries that provide the essential energy to move it.
Our decisions define time. Of course, it's easier to place the blame on time, to view it as an external, uncontrollable factor that dictates our lives. No worries though, about that view of time, since humans generally are at the mercy of the universally defined time- it can delude us from many truths, such as the reality that the joystick to life is in our hands. The conventional time prompts us to forget that, but instead see time as the person in charge. I myself often fall into the trap, but feel horribly guilty whenever I use " no time" as an excuse. Just like what our moms always remind us, " no time" is just an excuse. A very easy an tempting excuse to use.
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Since the huge burden of deciding our lives and structuring time is left to us, sometimes I suppose we just duck from that responsibility and allow things to go on as it is, giving an opportunity for the golden excuse of "no time" to dominate. Nothing wrong there of course, since superman has to rest too. We are not perfect beings, we can't go on forever.
But I'll try to master the skills of distorting time to my preferences. If it's even possible.
It's impossible.
But then again, not so. Who was the person that defined what " time" was? No one ever proved that the concept of time is real anyway. I think that time is something personal, really. Something that is at our mercy, and we can control the pace of time, how fast it runs and what it signifies. It's all our decisions. The hour and second pointers are just oars of the boat- we are the batteries that provide the essential energy to move it.
Our decisions define time. Of course, it's easier to place the blame on time, to view it as an external, uncontrollable factor that dictates our lives. No worries though, about that view of time, since humans generally are at the mercy of the universally defined time- it can delude us from many truths, such as the reality that the joystick to life is in our hands. The conventional time prompts us to forget that, but instead see time as the person in charge. I myself often fall into the trap, but feel horribly guilty whenever I use " no time" as an excuse. Just like what our moms always remind us, " no time" is just an excuse. A very easy an tempting excuse to use.
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Since the huge burden of deciding our lives and structuring time is left to us, sometimes I suppose we just duck from that responsibility and allow things to go on as it is, giving an opportunity for the golden excuse of "no time" to dominate. Nothing wrong there of course, since superman has to rest too. We are not perfect beings, we can't go on forever.
But I'll try to master the skills of distorting time to my preferences. If it's even possible.
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