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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working overtime

The difference between last week and this week cannot be more drastic than it had been for me. Last week I had all the free time in the world, and I was considering apply for a position in a UK company, the job is pretty much what I'm looking for (technical artist/scripter), and at the moment there doesn't seem to be any opportunity of this nature in NZ.

However, a phone call last friday changed my plan. A friend brought the info that a company wants a short 3D animation to be done in 2 weeks, and he asked if I'm interested in taking on the project with 4 other people. I agreed without giving it much thoughts. But when I finally found out the complexity of the project....I was seriously stressed.

It seemed nuts to attempt to create a 2 minutes+ animation in 2 weeks, especially when none of the character design/setup, storyboard & animatic are finalized. With no other options, everyone in the group jumped straight in and started working, and I've been working for 10~12+ hours everyday since then.

The stress only goes away when I'm making progress, or when I detach myself from the project emotionally. Either way, I'm looking forward to get the animation finished and done with.

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Learning to paint

I've always been reasonably adequate at drawing what I see, but for some reasons, when it comes to painting (figures & portraits specifically), I fumbled like a clown trying to juggle baby crocodiles while standing on top of five stacked beach balls.

There seems to be some links missing in my brain, that are supposed to connect one skill to another.

What's the difference between drawing & painting?

I feel comfortable with drawing because there's only one variable that I have to control: the values (ie. darkness). By varying the density of the applied medium, I can define light & shadow, shape & form quite easily.
Similarly, I can paint reasonably well as long as it's limited to only one color, but attempts to create a "real painting" (ie. a picture with full color ranges) mostly end up becoming a color mess.

As I gradually improved my skills over the years, I've learnt to work with 2 tones. I'll establish the values with a dark color, then use a light color to add highlights to different areas. It's an improvement, but still far from a full color painting.

So now what?

Not long ago I discovered traditional painting techniques like glazing & scumbling, meaning the artist will apply transparent color layers on top of monotoned underpaintings, thus build up richly colored surfaces.
(see an example here)

Sounds easy enough right? Seems like a perfect solution to my problem.

Well...the concept is easy enough to understand, but the application is definately a lot more complicated. For the start the varieties of mediums & paints out there are enough to confuse any beginners, then the technique itself will require a lot of experiments & learnings to get a hang of.

So this is where I am now, at the monotone stage:



Paintings like these are my inspirations:




I honestly have no idea how far can I take my skills, but I'm not too concerned about it, for now I'll just take it one step at a time and see what happens next.

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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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translating wikipedia

I've spend 3 days last week translating wikipedia's entry of Hannibal Barca from English to Chinese. It took a lot longer than I expected: 3 full days of work for 5000 words.

A lot of time was actually spend on finding out existing translations for all the different names, for historical person, tribes, countries, cities, provinces, rivers, mountains...etc, which turned out to be a rather time consuming job. Some of the names have no translations to be found, and some of them have different variations in which case I had to find out which one is consistent with other wikipedia entries.

In the end it's a rather satisfying experience to see everything being neatly put together, however I'm definately going to take a break & probably won't start translating another entry any time soon.

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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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John Currin

I've recently discovered the artworks of John Currin on the internet, and I have to say that looking at his paintings gives me an enjoyment that I rarely find with contemporary art. It's so refreshing to see an artist who can actually paint, to present classical aesthetic traditions with a modern flavour.

I'll leave the judgements and controvercies about his paintings to art critics, and let's just take a look at some of them that I've found on the internet:

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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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A blog is born

Testing flickr with blogger, I'm continue to be amazed by these clever web2.0 inventions~ Not just the technologies, the cleverness of the design is even more impressive in my opinion.

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