The art of interpretation

"How are you?"
"Where are you from?"
"What do you do?"

During my socially un-enlightened years, I used to think these questions are so boring. After having hundreds of repetitive conversations like these, I thought: "Why can't people be more creative and ask something more interesting?".

Until one day, many experiences later, it dawned on me: words don't always convey what the speaker wants to express.

For example, I'm sure everyone has read/experience about the interesting fact that, what women say and what they mean are two different things. Here are some humorous examples taken from a website:

- It's your decision = The correct decision should be obvious by now
- Do whatever you want = You are going to pay for this later
- Sure...go ahead = I don't want you to
- I'm not upset = Of course I'm upset, you moron!
- Is my butt fat? = Tell me I'm beautiful

The same principal applies to many human interactions. When someone asks "What do you do?" when you meet for the first time, what they are really saying is: "Tell me something interesting about who you are in ways I can relate to, so that we may connect in some ways."

When you respond to what people are really asking, instead of being boring and repetitive, the conversation takes a different tone and becomes interesting. It's pretty simple right? But I was clueless for years.


When I travelled in India, the question "Where are you from?" quickly became an annoying phrase, because it was the first thing every tout and hawker said when they have their radar locked on you. When they said it, what they really meant was: "Give me a response so that I can continue talking and sell you something."

But when you are sitting in a friendly hostel with fellow travellers, "Where are you from?" becomes just another way of saying: "Tell me something interesting about who you are in ways that I can relate to."
Same words, big difference.


A while ago, a friend was upset because the girl he was seeing liked to play mind games with him. "I know all these games and tricks, and I'm so sick of girls who like to play them." He exclaimed.

That got me thinking, why do girls play games with guys? Isn't it just another form of indirect communication? Isn't it a way of expressing their uncertainty and/or doubt? So when us guys get upset and/or confused by them, doesn't it basically mean that we failed the tests titled "Are you man enough to be with me?" or "Are you sensitive enough to understand my feelings?"


I find it interesting that for some people, the skills to interpret what certain communication really mean seem to come so naturally to them, that they don't even need to think about what they do.

But for those who are more debilitated such as myself, we have to learn them the hard way. It's not easy, because someone who thinks "Why can't people ask more interesting questions?" has very different mindset and beliefs about themselves and others, compared to someone who thinks "I understand where you are coming from, and I can relate to that".
Mindset and beliefs are harder to change than behaviours.

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A conversation

"I can understand now how passion is important for running a business."
Me: "Yeh, passion is kind of like the counterbalancing force to fear isn't it?"
"Yes"
Me: "So without passion, you are left with...fear alone!"

Me: "Are you an optimist or a pessimist?"
"I'm slightly more of a pessimist, because knowing things aren't right makes me want to take actions and do things to change them."

"I think it's healthy to feel a bit scared; to allow your survival instinct to kick in. Many people I know who lived their life too safely ended up complaining about how life is boring; how they don't feel passionate and alive, and how they felt lost and meaninglessness."

"Feeling danger might be something that's essential to our biological system; it might be necessary for us to feel a bit scared in order to grow and achieve a sense of fulfillment."

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A crushed egg

Early yesterday morning, an egg placed next to a milk bottle in our fridge, was lightly crushed by the pressure of its neighbour. The egg remained intact, despite the fact that the shell was fractured & some egg yolk was released.

In about the same hour, I was dreaming in my sleep. In the dream, I was a child, a member of a Royal family, packing up my things for our imminent departure from the palace. The country had become unstable due to either war or revolution, I couldn't tell, but in hindsight, the setting of my dream was mostly akin to the stories I heard about the Russian Royal families.

Logic is never necessary in a dream, so for no reason at all, the me in my dream boiled an egg, pealed its shell, and found that I had no appetite for it. Food had become scarce, so throwing it away would be a terrible misconduct, and some family members were urging me to hurry up and get moving. I was left in a dilemma, but was soon relieved because the dream changed and I became someone else.

And hour or two later, while sitting in front of the computer, my mind suddenly made a connection between the two incidents. Why was I dreaming about an egg? It's certainly not a common theme of my dreams.

After years of casually reading about the human mind, I believe that we, human beings, even with our technological advances, still cannot describe the full extent of our mind's capabilities. So its fully possible that my mind somehow picked up what happened in the fridge, and brought it into my (the dreamer's) consciousness.

This is one of those things that makes you go like "woo...", as if someone had tipped over a bottle and spilled a sense of wonder all over your solar plexus.


It was not the first time something like this happened.
Back in 2007, I had a dream in an early morning, in which I was a mountain climber walking on a precarious path. The feeling of danger and the imminent threat of falling down the mountain was vivid and alive even after I woke up. Later that day, I heard on the news that two climber felt down on Mt. Cook and died.


I've claimed half-jokingly that I'm a half-psychic from time to time, and I really believe that my intuition almost always knows more than my consciousness mind does.
I've long given up my interest in explaining why or how the intuition works, I just want to use it to my advantage.

Yesterday afternoon, I began listening to the audio book version of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. "Blink is about the first two seconds of looking--the decisive glance that knows in an instant." -- Amazon.com.


There was an interesting experiment described in the book. It's a simple gambling game: imagine there are 4 decks of cards in front of you, two red and two blue. You were told the rules and just have to turn over cards from any of the decks, one by one. What they didn't tell you is that the red decks contained high risk cards, which will punish you severely when you turn them over. So the only way you can win the game is to only turn over cards from the blue decks.

A group of scientists from the University of Iowa did this experiment a few years ago, and they found that most people developed a hunch of what's going on, after turning over about 50 cards.

Now here comes the interesting part, the researchers hooked the participants up to a polygraph, to measure the activity of the sweat glands in their hands, and they found that the participants started to develop stress responses to the red decks by the 10th card! That's 40 cards before they started to get a hunch of what's going on consciously.

The excerpt of the book can be found here: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/blink_excerpt1.html


Our body (ie. our subconscious/unconscious mind) knows what's going on before our conscious mind does!

What surprised me was that, I came to this same conclusion after learning how to interact with people in more direct & natural ways! People can lie, or even you can lie to yourself, but in either case, responses from your body can't.

To be more intuitive, means to listen to your body, or more precisely, to be aware of the feelings or hunches in your body.

It's long been my belief that whether you're happy, sad, angry or nervous...etc, other people can sense it instinctively.
From the body's point of view, you can say that their body can always sense how you truly feel, whether their conscious mind can register what they are sensing or not, that depends on how much awareness they have to their own inner responses.

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Bits and pieces

A dozen of my blog posts stayed in draft mode and never got published. Most of them are from 2008, which was unsurprisingly the year with the lowest number of entries.

March 2008, I exclaimed "what a ride!" in regard to everything that had happened.
"I am sitting in a small lifeboat, floating in the middle of a vast ocean called reality. Being thrown and pushed around by the raging waves and currents, what can I do other than to hold on tightly?"

April, an entry titled "miracle" never got finished.

May, another unfinished entry titled "Too much to write, too little time".
"Sometimes I feel like time is running forward madly like a wild stallion. I have one of my legs stuck in the stirrup, so it dragged me through a rough terrain while I, to no avail, tried to grab on to something in an attempt to slow it down."

June, a post titled "beauty".
"Contacts with beauty always send emotional shockwaves through my body, shake me to the core of my being."

July, "Riding motorbike in Nepal"

August, "The long hiatus", in regard to my blogging efforts.

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Things About Edwin

1. Steve Irwin and Richard Branson are my favourite celebrities.

2. Most of my favourite songs were sung by female singers.

3. My favourite comedian is Jon Stewart, now you know my political inclinations.

4. Things I learnt from travelling: it can take you to places that evoke surreal and wonderful feelings beyond description.

5. I weighted a mere 44kg by the end of my journey in India. If someone sneezes next to me I would be blown into the air like a feather. However my luggage was so heavy that the gravitational force it exerted would then pull me back down and go into orbit.

6. I have a love affair with the ocean, but I'd cheat on her and have affairs with rivers and lakes whenever I can. I plan to convince them to have a menage a trois when they meet one day.

7. I still believe in magic and miracles, and I'm still fulled of ideology and dreams. These things are so essential to me that taking them away would be like cutting the oxygen supply to an astronaut.

8. I still dream about my childhood pet, the cutest Sheltie in the world.

9. I have a very high tolerance for spicy food, I was trained by certified mystic chilly gurus in secret locations in Asia.

10. I once stayed overnight in a hospital during my trip in Spain, where everyone's English was as good/bad as my Spanish. P.S. No hablo mucho Espanol.

11. I once attended a 2-week German-run marble sculpture course in Italy, where I was the only non-German speaker. You should see the instructor's face when he found out that he had to teach in English.
I could almost hear him thinking: "why you weirdo...why would you come to a course run by Germans in Italy?"
But we ended up having a great time, the instructor would do his best to get me to drink all kinds of alcohol: Limoncello, Grappa, Sambuca, Campari..."Eddie, come here, drink this!"

12. I find that experiencing a beautiful scenery is a whole body affair, my eyes can get watery and I can often feel the chill travel through my spine.

13. I was crazy about Swiss knives when I was a kid, and I suppose I never fully grew up in that respect.

14. When I was 6, I was once reported missing to the police.
In reality, it wasn't me who was missing, it was my dad. He was waaaayyyy too late to pick me up after school(it seemed like hours), so I walked home instead.
I don't remember how long it took (the distance was about 5km), but apparently long enough for my parents to file a missing child report to the police.

15. Beautiful art works affect me emotionally in ways that are hard to describe, but I don't care much for modern art.

16. I think a playful & slightly mischievous spirit in a girl is extremely attractive.

17. A bungy jump used to be something terrifying and off-limits for me, but now I've done it and I'd like to try skydiving next. Getting over a fear and/or a preconceived limiting belief always give me a great sense of achievement.

18. I obsessed about doing things differently from everyone else when I was a kid. Once I had to write a fairy tale in a writing class, I wrote that once upon a time there was a little sheep, who's father passed away 3 years before he was born. The teacher commented "this could not happen" and I couldn't understand why.

19. A spider once built a web between my thumb and index finger during my sleep. Fortunately it was one of those skinny long-legged spiders which didn't look so menacing.

20. I was super competitive as a kid. For a brief period of my life, I indulged in mercilessly crushing my opponents in chess. Until some time later, I helplessly watched atrocious war crimes being committed to my mini soldiers, that's when I started thinking about karma...

21. I often visualize stories while I fall asleep.

22. I like the feeling of being intrigued, and I want to travel to almost every country in the world.

23. when I rode a motorbike for the first time in the messy Kathmandu traffic, my feelings were so intense and I was so occupied with surviving the journey that I had no time to stop, think and be afraid. However I did have time to curse at my friend on the leading bike whenever he started to zig-zag through tiny gaps between cars, trucks & buses. What else can you do other than to follow-on?

24. My favourite quote at the moment: "something is not interesting unless it's inappropriate".

25. I used to think that achievement is everything, until life taught me that finding joy in everything is...everything. Surprise surprise.

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Lost in translation

People are different, so different that you can be talking about the same thing, but your ideas/views/perspectives/realities are so far apart so that not only the other couldn't understand what you're talking about, they could have interpreted your words in ways beyond your expectation. And it's funny because this could be what the other person think of you at the same time.

I suppose once upon a time, when people lived in relatively segregated groups, where culture defined commonly agreed upon ideas and principals for them, it was easier to define what's right and what's wrong.

In today's world, where ideas & philosophies have virtually no boundaries, where different traditions & cultures clash constantly with each other, there's no longer absolute right or wrong.

Without a common basis of understanding, there may as well be no communication.


This was written as a comment to a recurring theme in my life, but seems like it can also cast itself as an afterthought to the movie of the same title. No wonder I liked the movie.

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Stories

Story 1
Life is hard. You have to study hard, work hard, compete with everyone to earn your place in the world.
How successful you are determines your value to the society, to the world, so you better struggle and strive to be somebody.

Story 2
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. You just have to relax, follow your heart, flow with the current and it will take you to where you want to be. Who you are is valuable and worthy beyond question, so, believe in yourself, relax and have fun on this journey called life.


I've followed story 1 for almost two decades in my life, the problem with it is that not only does it not work for me, but it almost broke my spirit, drove me to despair and the edge of self destruction.

So screw it, I'm going with story 2.
Letting go of the mental & emotional baggage of story 1 takes time and effort, but it's the best decision I've every made.

There are many people who live by the principals of story 2, for example: Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Irwin...etc, and I found them to be a great source of inspiration.

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Joy

Divine inspiration comes in many forms, their expressions, however diverse, are universally joyful.

It's wonderful to witness so many joyful spirits around, an especially noticeable phenomenon in my social circles, is that many people are becoming happy first time parents.

Congratulations to those who finds joy in their lives, in any manner or forms.

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leaving, floating onwards

The cat curled up like a furry cushion, sleeping soundly on my laps.
Usually he prefers to sleep on K's laps, but for the past two days he's been coming to me instead.

"Somehow cats always know that you are leaving. Before we left NZ, the cat we had came and stayed around us all the time." K said.

There are still 3 days left before I leave, but I'm already feeling nostalgic.
I really like my stay in Dharamkot, where we can see the mountains and valleys every day; walk pass forests, monkeys, mongooses, cows, donkeys, and of course dogs and cats; watch crows, huge vultures and other unknown birds flying in the sky.

Of course the place is not a paradise, it's fulled of inconveniences and daily bugs, like the frequent power cuts, internet problems, network cable problems, the cold weather & the absence of indoor heating, and the locals who always try to get as much money out of us as possible (they are the minority but unfortunately they are the ones that you have to deal with the most).

On the day before I leave, I still have to deal with the guys who sold and promised to buy back our computers, as he suddenly had a change of heart and wouldn't own up to the flowery promises he had made.
I also have to settle the payments with our landlord, who had already given us a few surprises regarding to the bills.

Every time something bad like the above happened, I wish I was in the comfort of my home in NZ, but...I will still miss the good things here once I'm gone.

"There's a French saying, every time you leave a place, a part of you dies." Five years ago, in a mountain village of Northern Italy, my Dutch flatmate told me this, before I left after finishing a two-week marble sculpture course.

Yes it is sad to leave a place where you've created a lot of memories, but that's just a natural part of travelling. You feel sad, but it's a beautiful feeling.

"I guess I'll miss you too." I say to the cat as I stroke his chin. He continues to sleep like a baby.

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Believe it or not

I find that when I disagree with people's beliefs, quite often they get upset.
On the other hand, it upsets me when they assume that since I disagree with them, I must believe in the opposite beliefs.

Needless to say, with all the upsetting going around, the heated exchanges of disagreements often occur naturally and unavoidably.

It's an interesting and delicate situation when you are standing in the middle, and don't want to take side in the constant fightings between dualistic beliefs and ideas.

"Does god exist?"
"Does Jesus as a historical figure actually existed?"
"Is there a purpose to life, or are we all just nature's accidents?"
"Did we really evolve from monkeys? (evolution vs. creationism)"
"Did we (humankind) really landed on the moon?"
"Was Benezir Bhutto really killed by Al-Qaeda?"
("It's Musharraf, he's the one behind this!" Someone uttered this in a matter-of-fact-tone, immediately after the news of the assassination came out.)

Having spend a lot of time on questioning and thinking about everything I could, I concluded that: "If you know the truth, then you know it. Only when this knowing is absent do beliefs become necessary."

Of course we cannot know everything, so it is inevitable that we have to believe in a lot of things that we don't really know.
The point I want to make is that, since beliefs are merely pointers to the truth, there's no point to get too caught up with them mentally or emotionally, right? My beliefs often change with time anyway, like everything else, they are ever-changing and constantly evolving.

My attitude towards questions like "Do you believe....etc?" (eg. "Do you believe that we actually landed on the moon?") have always been something like: "Since I don't have access to the first-hand evidences, and I'm often not expert enough to interpret them, I prefer to stay neutral. I'll just observe, see what both side have to say, and leave it at that."

However this answer doesn't always pleases people.
"You are being political."
"You are just avoiding the responsibility to choose."
"You just won't open your eyes and see the truth, by saying that you will stay neutral, you are denying the evidences in front of you right here!"
"You can't stand in the middle of the street, the car is coming, choose which side you want to be on now, or the car will run you over!"

I frowned whenever I see people jump blindly into believing something, without carefully examining the validity of the story being told to them. Most of the time, people just want the evidences to support or reinforce their existing beliefs, they see what they want to see, and ignore whatever they don't like.

Those who are making an effort to search for the truth, who prefer to observe without rush to conclusions, have to stand the heat coming from people on both sides of the dualistic belief, or leave and go their own way.

How did a lone wolf become alone?

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Drifting

Sometimes I feel I was born too late into this world.
The age of exploration is long gone, there are no more mysterious places in the world, no more uncharted territories unexplored by man.

The era of revolutions & great ideologies is now just a bygone memory. People used to fight with great passion, to bring freedom & equality to our society.
But nowadays, the society we lived in (in the developed world) is dominated by consumerism & endless pursuit of materialistic wealth, while most people in the world still live with inequality & injustice.

The western world thought the only way to help the rest of the world, is to bring modernization to them.
The so-called progress, bring roads & consumerable goods like coca-cola & mobile phones to every corner of the planet, but at the same time, it creates pollution & plastic wastes in quantities far beyond our capacity for them.

Living in New Zealand was like living in a paradise to me, because it's a beautiful country, and it's far away from all the troubles & conflicts in the world.

But I felt lost.

What's my purpose in life?

Is it just like what everyone said, you should get a career, get wealthy, find someone, settle down, get married (or not), have kids (or not), take up some hobbies, have a normal life and be a good citizen, and there, that's your fulfillment in life!?

Unfortunately following the status quo is never my thing.

I guess that's why after graduating from university, I went on a pilgrimage, and now four years later, I left home again and ended up in India.

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Life = never ending adventures

Four years ago, I dropped everything in NZ and travelled to Europe for almost 6 months.
After I got back, I thought "ok I've got the biggest adventure in my life over and done with, now it's time to come back to the real life, have a career & create a lifestyle that I want."

Little did I know, the adventure is far from over. Four years on, the current of life take me to places that I would not have imagined before.

All it takes, is for me to let go of my worries, doubts, and dive into the flow. It feels good to be alive, even though it scares me from time to time.

Ever since I came to India, I feel like a handicap because I don't know how to ride a motorbike. Everyone agrees that riding a motorbike is the best way to travel in India, it gives you the freedom to go wherever you want & stop whenever you like. And almost every Indian guys I've met knows how to drive it.

Sure I've been riding bicycles since I was a kid, and I have ridden a scooter in Tuscany (fully automatic), but a motorbike is slightly more complicated than that.

Today I have finally broke my personal record. I rented a motorbike this morning (Yammaha RX100 for Rs. 350), and threw myself into the deep end. Before this, the only times I've driven a motorbike were the four 10-minute tutorial & practices given by Marcus back in Hyderabad, so when I first started, I could not get the bike moving properly and the engine always dies. But after awhile, with some instruction from the guy who rented it to me, I started driving on the main road.

Unfortunately my first experience only lasted for about 15 minutes. I came to a bridge and it was sealed off (looks like it was damaged), so all the vehicles have to drive through a very bumpy & rocky detour. I drove behind a car, and when it suddenly stopped, I hit the breaks and just like that my engine died. I was in the middle of the road and I couldn't start it again! Well...long story short, 2 guys helped me to push the bike back onto the normal road, a local stopped by because his bike had a punctured tyre, he helped me to restart the engine, and he drove my bike with me on the back to a bike repair shop to get help for his bike, and I drove the bike back to the guy who rented it to me, who took the bike & repaired whatever the problem was.

2 hours later, after lunch, I was on the road again, but heading for the opposite direction towards Naggar, a village about 21kms away from Manali. This time everything went smoothly.

Man~ driving in India, it is fun & scary at the same time!
Let's see...how many things have I drove pass (or overtook me)? Trucks, jeeps, buses, cars, other bikes, auto-rickshaws, tractors, people, sheep, dogs, cows, donkeys, horses, an elephant....yes, a real live elephant, with a guy riding on top of course.

My ultimate goal, is to be able to ride to the highest & 2nd highest motorable roads in the world (which happened to be both in this region of the Himalayas), in Nubra valley & from Manali to Leh. But at the moment I really couldn't make the decision, to do that I'll need really solid experiences in handling the bikes, the roads are not easy at all~

Anyway as the saying goes, let's wait and see.

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Random thoughts

A question is like a mirror, the answer you give reflects who you are and your perception of the truth.

Lately my mind had tuned back into the soul searching/truth finding mode. I've learnt that changing the modes of my mind is not something I can control entirelly, it's far easier to let go and just allow it to shift gears naturally.

Life as it is has become more peaceful and enjoyable than it had ever been, even during the past two stressful weeks, it was a lot easier for me to find peace during the breaks.

When I was troubled, I ask myself, what advice would I give if someone come up to me with the same problem? The answers were always fulled of peace and wisdom, that they calmed me down.

Taming the ego, healing old wounds, and allowing inner wisdoms to shine through. So these are what I signed up for for this life eh?

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Giving a nudge

A friend called me today, he's someone I knew since I was a teenager, we've met up a few times last year, and I've shared my travel stories with him, and a bit of my spiritual experiences. But by the end of our interations, I found that we've ran out of conversation topics.

I learnt that he's not been doing anything outside of work, so I suggest him to go and explore everything about life as much as possible, and find out who he really is.
I thought that's the final message that I should pass on to him, and he really needs to figure things out for himself.

He called me once in a while to make small talks, how are you, what have you been doing...etc. I politely replied his questions but the conversations never really went anywhere, it was always the same repeated stuff.

Today, after repeating the routine once again, I asked him:

"So you're working five days a week, what do you do during your weekends?"

"Oh...nothing, just staying at home, doing some gardening, the same old boring stuff."

"Man, you sound like you're already 40-50 years old." (He's only around 30 by the way)

"Ha ha, ye, I know, it's boring."

"Man you should get some hobbies."

"Yes maybe I should, but I really don't know what to do."

"Well...what are you interested in?"

"I don't know..nothing...."

"I don't believe you."

"It's true, really, I can't think of anything...."

"No way, I don't believe it, tell me, what is it that you really want to do? If tomorrow the world is going to end, what would you do today?"

"Well...I don't know, spend all my money?"

"Ok, so what would you spend your money on?"

"I don't know..."

"Come one, there must be something you want to get, or something you want to do."

"No...really...I can't think of anything, I don't have any dreams...etc"

"I don't believe you, I believe that it's not because you don't have any dreams, but that they have been suppressed over the years as you grow up, so all you need to do is to ask yourself questions and find out what you want."

"Maybe you're right, but I can't think of any."

"Well...what did you want to do as a kid? You must have things that you wanted to do back then but couldn't, and now it's your chance to realise them."

"It's too long ago, I can't remember."

"Ask yourself, go explore, find out what you want."

"Yeah, maybe, but what I want maybe unrealistic."

"Don't worry about whether it's realistic or not, just say it."

"Well...I want to earn lots of money, but it's a bit unrealistic."

"Ok...what does earning lots of money meant to you? What does money represent?"

"It's a good feeling to have lots of money, it feels good."

"Ok, but when I asked you what do you want to spend your money on earlier, you told me that you don't know, so what do you want to have lots of money for? Ask yourself what does money represent, what does it meant to you personally? Just go and explore."

"Ok..."



I felt this is the end of our conversation, he should turn inward and find some answers from himself. But he then started to ask me what I'm planning to do today, something he's already asked earlier.

"Hey don't change the subject, you haven't answer my questions yet."

Seeing that we're going to repeat the same talk again, I tuned up my bossy persona a notch at this point:

"Ok, I remember when I told you about my travel experiences, you mentioned that you'll be interested to do something like that as well. So tell me, if you can travel to any places in the world, where would you like to go?"

"I want to go to Italy." Finally I'm getting a straight answer.

"Ok, why don't you go?"

"Ha ha, hey.. it's not like you can just go anytime."

"Why not? You've been working for a while now, you haven't been spending much, so you've got quite a bit of savings, so just go whenver you've got a holiday."

He agreed, but then said he doesn't like to travel alone.

"So go findout if there's someone you can go with, go explore the possibilities."

"Yes, that's the thing, finding someone..."

I gave him a speech about how when you travel, if you're open to others, you'll meet all kinds of people, you can make friends anywhere, so why do you need to worry about being alone...etc

"Yes you're right, the feeling is different that way though...etc"

Finally I made a proposition that he can't refuse:

"Look, I'm not saying that you have to go tomorrow, just start exploring the idea, start investigating and researching. Go to the library or a bookshop and pick up some travel guides, there're lot's of places in Italy that you can visit, so do some readings and find out what interests you the most, start researching and planning the trip.
So that in the future when someone ask you what have you been doing, you'll have something interesting to share with them instead of just the normal boring day to day stuff. And maybe through the conversation, you'll find other people who are also interested in travelling to Italy, and then you may find yourself a travel partner...etc."

He agreed.

"So go and make your life more interesting." I said.


I'm glad about how things went, I've finally broke the old interaction pattern between us, so that in the future we may have someting exciting to talk about.
I totally believe that everyone is responsible for how interesting their life is, there's nothing others can do except give you a nudge in the right direction once in a while.

By the way, it's fun to play my bossy persona, I enjoyed it.

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Power

The only time when other people can have power over you, is when there's something you want from them, whether it's materialistic or psychological.

This is the latest thought that entered my mind, as I continued to observe how my internal state responds to external events.

Why else would so many guys get nervous and insecure around beautiful women? Why else would those successful people participate in "the apprentice" and become wussies in front of Donald Trump?

Is there an exception to the rule? I couldn't think of any at least for now.

The media often describe the president of the US as the most powerful man in the world. Is he really?

When Alexander the Great came before Diogenes (who was sunbathing), thrilled to meet the philosopher, asked if there was any favour he might do for him. To which Diogenes replied "Yes, could you move out of the way, you're blocking my sun."

Who was more powerful?

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perception of time

I used to think that if there's a remote control for my life, I'd put it in fast forward mode, so that I can quickly go through everything life has to offer and be done with it. This idea, although still instereting, seem less relevant to me nowadays.

Somehow my perception of time have changed.
To me, the past few years seem like one single continuous day, and everything that happened feels like it was yesterday.

I feel like time has come to a stand still, so that in one eternal moment, I observed the occurance of countless events, saw myself change from one state into another, and witnessed sunrise and sunset over and over.

Maybe time really doesn't exist.


A brief internet search on related topics brought me some interesting finds:

A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy Of Godel And Einstein
"in 1949 Godel made a remarkable discovery: there exist possible worlds described by the theory of relativity in which time, as we ordinarily understand it, does not exist. He added a philosophical argument that demonstrates, by Godel's lights, that as a consequence, time does not exist in our world either. If Godel is right, Einstein has not just explained time; he has explained it away."

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/denying_time.shtml
"Perhaps humans invented the concept of time out of mortal fear; reasoning that if time were tangible then its degenerative march could be controlled, just as mankind has tried to subdue other aspects of the natural world. Immortality would be within our grasp! But while time may be a convenient metronome that delivers neatly portioned slivers of existence to conscious beings, the idea of a ‘universal time’ is looking increasingly fanciful, at least to some physicists."

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New years day

Yesterday was a strange new years day. I woke up to a bright sunshine, but then the sky turned dark, rain & hail followed. In the afternoon my backyard was again lit by rays of sunshine, but not far away heavy clouds occupied the sky, and for hours it thundered.
I lost count of the numbers, but I'm certain that more than a dozen of them occured within 2~3 hours.

For most part of the day I was clouded by a heaviness centered around my solar plexus, a feeling that had became all too familiar to me. It persisted until finally, during a half meditative state, that I focus my awareness on fully experiencing and observing this emotion, and right then it shifted.

Like an ice cube on a frying pan, the heaviness melted and vaporised within seconds, leaving not a single trace behind.

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Krishnamurti & Krishnamurti

Two well known spiritual figures emerged from India and the theosophical society in the 20th century, both were known as Krishnamurti as their westernized surname, but the two were quite differnt.

Jiddu Krishnamurth was a renowned spiritual teacher, writer & speaker, and had a great influence on the modern New Age movement. I've read about 3~4 of his books in the past few years, and an interesting thing about them is that I am unable to read them in the traditional fashion, ie. continuously from front to back.
Infact if you really follow what he says, you'll end up putting the book down, become observant of your thoughts, emotional states, and the external world. What he says is no longer the focus, as he points the direction of the discussion/exploration back to yourself. So you walk away from the books, and walk back into life and existence.

The other Krishnamurti (U.G. Krishnamurti, abbreviated as UG) was described as a spiritual rebel/terrorist, an anti-guru. He repeatedly said that he has no teachings to give, told people don't bother to listen to or understand his words, but many people find this to be too irresistable that they continued to seek him out for his spiritual wisdoms.

UG: People throw questions at me like they would stones at dogs. Like the dog, my response is also to bark. I am merely barking, which you translate into meaningful language.

Listener: I am sorry, I can't believe you.

Equally amusing was the disclaimer of his books*:

My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.

You have to admit that's at least rather original.

Personally, I have not read any of his words other than the quotes above, hey...if the man tells you that he's got nothing of value to give, why wouldn't you listen to him and walk away?
That's exactly what I do, but I have an appreciation for his style of humor & honesty.

So interestingly, as I continued my journey ahead I walked away from both their books, and travel into the unknown alone.

*Note: according to wikipedia, UG writes no books, but instead others record his talks and publish them in book form.

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On rebirth

It's been 27 years and several months since I came to this world, so that makes me 27 years old in the ordinary sense. However, having to start a new life in a different country/culture at the age of 13, when my family migrated from Taiwan to NZ, meaning that I am only a 14 years old member of this society.
Moreover, at the age of 20, I went through a process of spiritual rebirth, so in that sense I'm only 7 years old as a spiritual being in awakening.

The spiritual rebirth was a confusing process for me, of course being born in the first place could have been an equally if not more confusing experience, but hardly anyone remembered much of it, and we really didn't have much to do back then other than slept & being fed.
Whereas in my case, I had to continue functioning as an adult on the outside, dealing with university studies and social interactions, while inwardly experiencing all kinds of calamity (but dressed with a sprinkle of rare occasional blissful moments of enlightment).

Since then, nothing in the world had been the same for me. Like an infant, I had to pretty much relearn everything about who I am, all of my beliefs were questioned and examined from several different perspectives. And that's not the end of the story, as the whole thing end up becoming a continuing process.

It's because of this process, that in 2003 I took the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain (a.k.a. camino de Santiago, the camino).

One of the optional finishing point of the camino is Finisterre, the westernmost point of Spain, known as the edge of the world during medieval times. Today many modern pilgrims still practice a traditional ritual, they burnt some of their personal belongings (eg. cloth) at Finisterre, symbolizing rebirth, the end of the old and the beginning of a new life.
A rather fitting ending to (approximately) 800km of on-foot pilgrimage I have to say, even though I didn't go through with the burning ritual at Finesterre (because I was unaware of it until my fellow pilgrims told me aabout it after we arrived there), and I finished my pilgrimage at the city of Santiago and took a day trip to Finesterre by bus instead, the visit was still quite an interesting experience.

The spiritual rebirth/awakening had been an interesting ongoing process, even though I intend to write a story based on my experiences someday, at the moment many things are yet to happen, and the ending is all but unknown, so for now all I'll just reflect what comes to mind by writing here.

Photos below:
1)Finisterre, the end of the then known world.
2)Me at Finesterre, it was raining and with the help of my fellow pilgrims I ended up wearing an improvised raincoat made out of a rubbish bag.
3) A fellow German pilgrim burning her cloth at Finesterre.

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More than words

I noticed that sometime between the year 2000 and 2002, the voices in my head have changed from predominantly speaking in Mandarin to English.
I can easily switch my mind back to using Mandarin of course, but it just became a habit for me to conduct logical thinkings in English.

It's been a long journey for me, from 13 years ago when I could barely understand English conversations at a normal pace, to where I am today. I still wish that someday English grammar can become a second nature to me though, so that I don't have to constantly refining my words and combating confusion with tenses...etc.

In the past I've had discussions with people about what language do we (multilingual person) use for thinking, observing myself I find that my thought usually started out as a hunch, impulse, or feeling, and gets translated into its verbal equivalent of sounds and words.
There is a function in my brain where I can decide which language to translate it to.
Of course once you get so used to this process, the time lapses between thoughts and words are so minimal that they became negligable. So in the end, for most people, their words are their thoughts.
Learning to use another language as a primary communication tool slowed this process down, thus allowing me to observe how these things worked in my mind, and noticing what a pure thought is like.

I've experimented with focusing my attention purely on the thought impulses without translating them into words, and the experiences were pretty much like meditation. Pure thoughts, feelings and awareness, without any verbal interpretations of the experiences.

In a similar way, when I am asked about some deeply spiritual questions, (eg. The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything ^^ ), if I tune my attention inwards, I became silent.

It's not that I couldn't think of any answers, but that they seem irrelevant compared to the silence.

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