Happenings in Aug 2015

Squeezing time to blog is difficult, but I just do what I can.

Movies:

Have seen ‘Inside Out’ and ‘MI5 – Rogue State’ recently, Pixar produced a great one this time. The movie was entertaining though it didn’t hit me until I read reviews afterwards. My sons couldn’t get into the movie much, but my wife found that surprisingly deep in content. I think the creativity is superb giving the subject matter and the way of presentation. Certainly, a keeper! MI5 is good too, I like the third one since and I think this one is quite entertaining from start to finish. The female lead is pretty good, something like an equivalent of Tom Cruise in it, not very pretty but very decent for the part. The villain looks a bit funny, I don’t know why his look really reminds me of Tim Cook?! J

Travel:

Spent 6 days in Osaka and have a day trip to Nara last week. A happy trip overall with the whole family. To be honest, I was very tried everyday, but it wasn’t any worst than before. Foods can be better, but certainly much better than the SG trip earlier this year. Didn’t do much shopping, except surprisingly few clothes from GU for myself. I wish the kids are older and would be able to appreciate culture part more, though the Lego Center, Kid science place are fine for them. The Universal Studio was actually more for me and my wife! The Harry Potter land was really amazing, the ride as well….There weren’t too many tourists from the PRC, so the tourists’ places aren’t too packed. Love the day in Nara, the temples are good, but surprisingly the best meal during the trip wasn’t the crab dinner, but the largely veggie lunch in the temple yard, very refreshing!

Gadget:

Haven’t brought it yet, but I’m about to buy a NAS first time and would install that at home DIY. After experiencing the HORRIBLE LOSS of data that I’ve in a freaking Seagate hard disk this year, lost few hundred GBs of MP3 that I collected last few years, damned! I would need to prevent any further loss in my other hard disks, just able to partially rescue most of my photos in another, thank GOD! So, the setup of the NAS is imminent, just need to find time to buy it and install it, most likely QNAP TS251C would be the one, though Synology DS214Play is also good. Let’s see…

With the huge loss of my MP3 collections, I just don’t have the mood to construct my iTunes library anymore. Also, listing to podcasts have occupied my audio entertainment times, I’ve not listened to any music for months! However, given the Apple Music hype, I did the alternative: registered Spotify instead, cuz the prior doesn’t have a free version, I’m not gonna pay for anything in case I forgot to discontinue the free service after 3 months. Well, the free Spotify version is fine and good enough, particularly when I just don’t have the time to be very picky for customization or constructing my playlists. Just looking back the when we still listen to vinyl and cassettes, I thought MP3 would be quite ultimate, just couldn’t expect streaming would potentially takeover until I tried it on myself to see the beauty of it. I think every music delivery format has its fans, more options the better.

The World:

The refugee crisis in Europe is sad. But, for being a fan of conspiracy, it is just the result of the force behind all those chaos. Those who suffer are mostly Muslim and Africans, they are the ‘targets’ of the conspiracy behind. What can we say……

China just has another military parade to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the deficit of fascism?! The purpose of the show is largely for domestic reason. I just feel that ‘self-reflection’ is more important than all the ‘empty’ words and propaganda, if anyone really for peace-keeping. As a side note, my older has started asking me questions about world events as I was watching time on TV. He recently was quite interested in the anniversary of end of WWII, the Japanese invasion of China, etc. He asked me who the face on Tiananmen Square is? Well, I answered him with comment, I think that raised more questions in his head than before, which would be a good thing down the road. ….

My Long Absence

It has been the longest absence of blogging ever for this site. I guess many people thought that I've abandoned this site for good. Well, that's not true. There are just simply too many things happened in the last two months+ that can explain my absence. I think we could take over 10 posts to cover everything in details which just not gonna happen given the current situation that I'm in now. So, I'm just gonna do that by bullets, just for my personal interests to record part of my history. 

1. Job change 

I left my previous company for a new one. Hours are much longer and works are much more challenging. It is not an easier environment to survive. Cuz, my current job has no BAU, I either succeed or fail! No third way. So, I've been working very hard to please my new boss as well as everybody and myself as well. I even dreamed many times about my job which is not a good sign! But, what can I say? I made the choice to move on and I'm not that kind of person who will regret over such decision. So, I suck it up and take it like a man! It ain't easier, but looking at the good side, I've not been that self-motivated for a long time. I do like my current job and think that I still have the chance to make something about it. So, I gotta focus and work smart at the same time! What can I say? 

2. Business Trip 

I left for a business trip to the U.S. for 2 weeks last month during the World Cup period. It was an interesting trip. Met my sis one day in NYC. Visited the 9/11 Memorial Center, etc. Also, some scenary do stimulate certain nostalgic feelings.... Stucked in the middle of nowhere, glad to have free WIFI to Facetime with my family daily, and some old friends as well.... Travelled on B-class for the first time, it was indeed nice! Watch tons of movies!!! (includes LEGO, The Rise of the Planet of the Ape, The Wolf of Wall Street, Captain Philips, Total Recall and Robocop remakes, Frozen, World War Z, The Amazing Spider-man, Thor 2 - the Dark World, Iron Man 3, etc.) 

 3. Housemaid Replacement 

That happened before my B trip. It was done out of a 'necessary' reason. Is the result good? That's certainly debatable. Just another unique thought comingle in an already very busy and hectic household. Challenges always, such as new relationships to be formed, broken things like washing machine, electic fan in toilet, etc. Another character to deal with..... 

4. Health concern 

Touchwood, nothing really bad has been detected, but I do think that I'm getting old and stress at the same time. My hair loss is getting serious. My recent flu virus attack that gave me 4 days+ of sore throat has been a torture! I need to really pay more attention to my health and body..... 

  5. Others 

- Went to see Transformer 4 with my wife which was nice! Haven't done that for a while. 

- My iPad was disabled more than a month ago and I still don't have time and arrangement line up to fix it... 

- Bought a new HP PC before I left for my B Trip. It was a rush decision that I'm a bit regret that was made. Win 8.1 sucks! can't read isilos, problem with reading Chinese, still has problem in downloading files, iTunes problem, etc......SUCKS!!!!!! Well, that's all for now. Hope that I will have chance to blog more in near future!.....

Spritz

Not feeling well these days, physically I think I need to start some workout to improve my blood circulation, perhaps, via that certain hormone will be released to make myself feel better. Psychologically, I felt a bit drained, work load honestly is not killing me, but the pressure and uncertainty, and attention/effort demands from all fronts just make me feel exhausted! So, the combination of stress on my body and mind just drive me to a point that I have to something about it…quick!

Well, getting back to the topic that I wanna talk about: Spritz. What is Spritz? Well, you can google or wiki it, so I’m not gonna copy the introduction here. However, I’m actually very very excited about this product!

As an owner of tons of ebooks, I certainly believe that my collection is valuable, many of them are great books that I really wanna read them, but I just can’t find time to do so. Spritz can’t help me in time-management, but once I can squeeze time to read, which I promise myself that I will do. Spritz perhaps will be the ‘Holy Grail’ in catching up my readings. I love reading, but I can’t read as fast as I hope, for a book with meaning, like some self-help books, I would probably read 50 pages in 2 hours. Certainly, for some leisure book or novel, I may read faster, but I don’t want to rush for the sake of finishing a book without really enjoying it. So, if Spritz can help me to achieve both, it would be the best thing happen to me since my purchase of the iPad. I will do a bit more research, testing it out and see how that will go. 

Just for reference here: http://www.spritzinc.com/

‘What if…’ and Regret

Every now and then, I would be asked by my wife about some ‘What if’ scenarios, like:

What if we don’t have kids, our lives will be …

What if we bought an apartment after we got married, we would be…

What if I stay where I lived before, how my life now would be….

All these are valid questions, but I would never have good or correct answers for them. Cuz, our lives are always moving forward, there is no going back. Yes, there is a theory of parallel universes. i.e. there are infinite number of universes that every choice we made would lead to different outcomes and actually all those outcomes are moving forward somewhere else in other universes. Coming down to earth a little bit, that reminds me the old movie ‘Sliding Door’, about what happen to a girl who caught a particular subway and couldn’t catch that subway on a given day, the different encounters that led to respectively which produced drastic consequences. 

To be honest, unless I had nothing to do, I rarely thought about any ‘What if’ scenario myself, cuz they always lead to nowhere. We all are responsible for our lives which are by no mean perfect. Many people compare our life as a movie, and we are not only staring in it but also directing it. However, we in fact rarely have a script and even if we do, the movie would never turn out according to it. We don’t live like the movie ‘Truman Show’.  Also, life has no ‘take 2’. We always go along what we run into. Even for people with boring livelihood like myself. There are still some important encounters and events that we didn’t really seriously plan ahead, and did change our lives. I don’t have a good memory, but just a few examples, like how I get my first job after graduation, how I met my wife, just to name two. 

So, thinking about those ‘what if’ would be just a waste of time. Cuz, we can’t change anything regardless they are good or bad. That also relates to the issue of ‘regret’. Honestly, I can’t recall any big regret in my life. Not that I’ve a perfect life. However, as a responsible and sensible person, I fully shoulder all the consequences of most of the major decisions that I made. They are not the best, but they were mostly appropriated at the time they were made. We can’t change a lot of things that happen around us, but we can choose how we react to them. I am no saint, but I believe that I’m a decent human being that never intentionally tries to hurt anyone. That was probably reflected in the past decisions that I made and remember, that’s also why I don’t have any major regret. I think that’s very important, cuz that gives me comfort every night before I go to bed and give me reason to get up every morning. I can’t imagine living with a big regret throughout my life. I can imagine that would be very hard. Of course, God forbids if that happen to me, I would have to find way(s) to deal with it. However, I would rather prefer not to do anything that would lead to regret myself in the first place. Definitely, I still make mistakes, but they are not serious enough to become a life-long regret, thank God!

In the near future, I can see that there will be an important decision to be made. I’m doing some researches to see what would be the most reasonable choice that would perhaps lead to an optimal situation for myself and my family. Hopefully, things would turn out ok.  My fingers are crossed!

Ten life lessons

The items below are what I’ve learned recently or reminded of what I did learn before but forgot. I hope it will be something that I would revisit from time to time and my sons would take a look when they are older.

Don’t live in a hole – I’ve been getting too comfortable or short-sighted about my life flow. I.e. getting up, going to work, lunch, work till out of office, get home for dinner, see family, run some errands, check online, then go to bed. Weeks in, weeks out, this kind of life would be too comforting, predictable, routine, or manageable. But, these kinds of daily routine for too much for too long is not good for the brain. Simulation is important! I’m not saying to jump out of the plane or something, but our mind need stimulation, not just one-way stimulation of serving the web for new things, or talking to people that we talk to all the time which would not be a challenge for us to provide acceptable response. But, going to places and talking to people, don’t need to get too far or some total strangers, just some old friends, or someone just we don’t talk to frequently will provide surprises or stimulation to get us thinking. That’s important!

Self-reflection is important – need to challenge yourself, playing your own devil’s advocate. Criticize your actions, doubt your own decision, try to break out or to take one more step outside your comfort zone.  Making small mistakes are ok, otherwise, we won’t grow and improve. A short term and small regret is actually manageable, as long as you can get bigger return and improve in future.

Take time for yourself – don’t just give yourself to others. Serving others, taking care of the others are important, but don’t do that to an extent that you don’t have time for yourself. Cuz, only giving yourself to others for an extensive period of time is not necessary a good thing. It is an honor to be a giver, but we do need time to take care our own soul. It needs to relax, to heal, to rejuvenate and to do better. A bandage is not enough to heal a wound, it takes time. Don’t over push yourself to an extent that you would start to doubt whether you should continue to give and to help others anymore. Give yourself a break or breaks every now and then. Every car need and deserve a tune-up every x miles. 

Take time to organize – we live a busy life with many errands to run, make use of modern technology as tools to help us to memorize, organize, be reminded, and execute. Otherwise, we will live with a mess. Prioritize our tasks, organize our assets in searchable way, protect our information, keep schedule of reminders of dates (e.g. credit card expiration, birthdays, account maturity, etc). Clean our closet, sometimes putting on new clothes may make us happy. Of course, we should never waste our resources, to be too materialistic, to ‘overdo’ anything.  

Set some long, medium and short term goals – as I said, don’t ‘overdo’ it, but don’t be lazy either! Life without goals is easy, because you won’t be disappointed, but it could be a wait of time. Cuz, a goal would help you to get better, organize, and motivate to do things, to improve ourselves. Otherwise, we would be directionless and like a leave in the river. We would fail without knowing it, and will never succeed, because we simply give up measuring and judging ourselves!  It’s never too late to improve and to drive ourselves.

Don’t wastes resources – we come to the earth with nothing and will leave with nothing either. As such, material things are only important when we see them as important. We can’t live well and happy without them, but they are not our purpose of life. They are just tools to help us to help ourselves and others. So, don’t give up our soul for them or lose sleep over them. Just treat them as tools and live with them. Earn them honestly and use them wisely!

Be spiritual – I recently surprised myself for saying this, for being a rational, logical person who value the brain more than the heart most of my life! But, our mind, spirit, soul or whatever we call it is strong as well as weak. Being scientific and spiritual at the same time is actually fine, there shouldn’t be any conflict. They can and should coexist in order for us to be a smart human! 99% of the time, we can keep both in our head in balance, just use them when it applies. Don’t discriminate one or the other. Their co-existence in ‘harmony’ makes us successful human. The truth and love can co-exist!

Take care of yourself – have some frequent workout, even it is a light one, it would better than doing nothing. Our capability is the sum of our spirit and body. We need to take care of both.  A bookworm is weak, fragile, and unsustainable. A jock is a human ‘tool’ that would be manipulated by others. It is not about 50-50, but about a balance that would keep both side healthy and happy. Select our foods, have health check, listen to our body, do some stretching, Tai Chi, Yoga, or whatever that would make us healthy. Nothing would wish to be sick, and no sick person is a happy person. A healthy body would give us confidence to use our intelligence, to do good to the people around us, and to make a positive difference.

Be humble as well as confident – they are not in conflict with each other. A humble person is a blunted weapon. A confident person is a brave and smart soldier. A blunted weapon is blunted, but it is still a weapon. Don’t be deceived by the look, it just looks less harmful and threatening, but it can still kill if being used by a brave and smart soldier in battle. Life is a war, and our daily life is full of battles, at work, at school, at home, etc. Don’t kill the innocent, protect the weak, and we can only do that if we are not innocent nor weak! So, be prepared and alert.

There is always hope – as long as we believe there is. Hope and goal are different and not self-contradict with each other. Hope is less tangible, a driver that get us ‘there’. There are always bad things happening in the world and near us. As long as we choose to live, we should have hope. Otherwise, our life would be meaningless which should not be the case. The ‘half-glass full’ theory is helpful and put us in perspective, but we shouldn’t live with it all the time. If we are in dark, look up the firefly! If we are in heaven, help others to join us!  

Silence majority on social media

I login social media sites everyday. Actually, few times a day. It has become a habit since I start using it few years back. I think the social media site is a great invention. It pulls people who you can rarely meet in person together virtually, to let each other communicate through direct message or simply viewing each other’s post. Since it is very convenient with words, pics and video, its blossom is by no mean accidental. However, as a long time user with many many friends on the site, I can’t help but notice that many of my friends or acquaintances do not really post much. Well, I don’t know their reasons, but as I also behave that way, I surely know why I don’t post much or frequent as some active posters!

Checking other’s posting would seem to be a way to be informed as well as relax.  Reading others let myself stay anonymous, but posting something would mean that others would read it. Do I’ve something to say to many others often? I guess not.  I do send messages to some people, but that’s when I’ve something specific that I want to say to someone special for a purpose. On the other hand, just telling everybody the same message is a bit pointless unless I feel that there is a compelling reason to do so. Most of the time for my hectic and boring life, there rarely happens. 

Some people like to share their thoughts and experience with many people. That’s understandable, but I’m just not that kind of person. I don’t really see the point of telling other people all the time what restaurant I’m in, what dishes I’m eating and where I’m is worth anything. What exactly is the point? For some very special events either it is good or bad, like wedding, someone passed away, meeting the Pope, or witness a crime, or something like that, I do see that’s worth posting. Otherwise, many posts are quite frankly pointless. I won’t criticize what others are doing, they have the freedom and right to do so. I just don’t share that and follow myself.  Perhaps I may change in future, but at least that’s what I believe now. 

Furthermore, with the technology that I understand these days, whatever you said on the net is permanent recorded. That’s why we should be very careful of what we said. Express our own emotion is acceptable. I can say ‘Fxxk’ as many times as I want if I got really really frustrated. But, I wouldn’t say ‘Fxxk XXXXX! Go to hell!’ either in my blog or on social media. Cuz, a record is a record, you will never know when it may some days coming back to haunt you, to make you to explain something that most likely you’ve already forgot. For middle aged folk like me, I don’t think I’m going anywhere. The impact may be less, but for young people who suppose to have a bright future, could be the president of who know what, these kind of careless posting  in the past may surely be dug up by the media and be used as tool to against you. So, the bottom line is, don’t mine your own bombs!  Cuz, you may lose your job, your relationship, or God knows what because of stupid things that you posted in the past.

Just be careful.