New Start (Preface)

I’m flipping another page of my lifebook. Soon, I’m gonna have another new start. Every time when similar thing happened, each time is different, but the feeling has been similar, i.e. a mix bag of sadness, excitement, relieve, concern, etc., just the proportions varied. 

Even though it is not the first time that it happens, I really do think that this time is gonna be different as I think I’m more committed this time and will have both tangible and intangible preparation for this new start. When I’m looking back and ahead as well, I’m overdue to be serious. I think preparation would build confidence, gather kick in the upward engine of the self-fulfilling prophecy cycle. Every new start in life must be cherish, the older we are, the rare for such occurrence. There are not many chances in life that we can take two and start again. So, when we are offering such opportunity, gotta grab it tightly and never let go. Such thing is so easy to say, nothing new, but it would take experience to really understand the true meaning and value of it, and really do it. I wish myself the best!

‘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!  

Be a good parent

Theories sometimes are hard to be practically use in the real world. I have my beliefs in what count as a good parent. In fact, I know what kind of parent I want to be, but in reality, I would say I've not been able to do what I want to be so far. It is not that I've not tried, but I fail quite often. To step back and analyze it, when I do and say certain things with a good intention, the recipient end may not view it the same as I do. So, the expected results never come and my emotion kicked in. It is not their fault, cuz how can I remember what I thought when I was five or six years old? Even two six years old kids don't behave the same way, he is my son, but he doesn't think like me. So, communication is really an art that takes a lot of time to practice.

I just need to be more patient and keep my temper down, since being too emotional goes against the person what I want to be. My wife every now and then would say what if we are not parents, how our life would be different. I always reply to her that there is no 'what if' in my dictionary. I'm mature enough to understand that being a parent is my choice with no regret. There are certainly both plus and minus for every decision. I still think that being a parent gives me more to cherish than the opposite. I'm happy to be a father, though it is not easy.

My dream is to be my sons' personal guide, their lives' companion that they are willing to share their thoughts to me and seek my opinions actively. That's much more advanced than simply being a friend or an old-fashioned father figure that you fear/respect. That's not something that can be done easily, a lot of cultivations are needed. I need to observable, approachable, knowledgeable, caring, and patient. I still have so much to learn..... 

Think and change

Being a family man, a city dweller, and a person with a full time job, 24 hours are all we have, it is always difficult to allocate my conscious hours properly to optimize its usage on a consistent basis.

It is not easy to self-motivate to step back and think what should be done, how to do things more efficient and effective, and really do it! The catch-22 situation is that we often try to make things work smoothly to a point that we can do them on a 'cruise control', things become routine. However, environment around us is actually changing all the time which should demand our reaction to change accordingly in order to adapt. Changes take effort and very few of us would make them voluntarily as we usually enjoy the routine way of doing things. As such, the result is, few of us will not make change at all and ultimately fail. Some of us will be forced to make adjustment when our routine way will not work anymore as the environment has just changed so much. Few of us will make adjustment a bit earlier than those but still would do that most likely as a reaction to the changes in the surrounding, kinda adapting the environment so as to make the change less painful. Only very few of us would have the vision to make self-adjustment on voluntarily basis at the same pace with the environmental changes or even a step ahead of them. The cream of the crop would be those who can do that on a consistent basis. 

Even though I understand that it is always better to aim high, as a discount of that would still be sizable achievement. However, we adult often get caught or grounded by the harsh reality. Have a dream is one thing, realizing a dream is marvelous, but we know that the probability of that is low, the cost is high, so it would be better to be more practical to have so called 'reachable' goals than 'dreams'. It is sad, but I still can't get myself pass that. 

Today, I just feel like I need to make small changes, nothing grand, just small changes that would make myself better, maybe it is because I feel kinda down or bored and would like to do something to make myself happy. If I can make certain things better, I should be happy, that's simple! Well, I know that there are other things that bring joy to me, like my kids and my wife. Nevertheless, I also enjoy to do something for myself, by myself, that would cheer myself up. I don't know if it makes any sense to others, cuz happiness to me can be categorized. Like tasty foods could be hot, cold, salty or sweet. Happiness for me is similar, I can't put exact words to describe them as foods, but the situation is similar.

So, what I think I need is to find time to think, to brainstorm! Sound crazy to some people, but with a fully-packed daily schedule, spare time is hard to come by. Come to think of it, how sad it is! I'm talking about finding time to think freely!? Yes, I can think anytime anywhere, but quality output would need quality input in a quality environment. I'm not asking for having a full massage, with cocktail and buffet, in an incense-burning parlor with chill-out music. I just need a quiet hour, perhaps walking in my own pace in a park with trees and being uninterrupted. Again, it is sad that I don't think I can do that until sometimes next week! So, to me, a realization of self-motivated changes and actually executing them to generate good results on a consistent basis is absolutely a dream to me.

The way I live these days

It is now Jan 2013. I've kinda lost touch of the time for while. Busy life at work and at home put my sense of time into different perspective. I just feel time flies, day by day, week by week, many things just happen. I rely on the calendar on my iPhone to record important events, some of which won't happen until months later, such as dental appointment or immune shot appointment for my boys. Anyway, I just need to know they are about to happen.

My life is now mostly being arranged according to my family's need. Gotta go to work to make a humble living to pay bills. Buying bread everyday for my son's breakfast the next morning. Looking after the boys at night before they go to bed. Check my son's homework or school notices every evening. Reminding my son to practice piano everyday, and helping out my wife on stuffs and few houseworks every now and then. Over weekends, my major duty is to pick my son to places: playgroup, Taekwondo classes, park, etc. Am I complaining? I'm matured enough to accept my role in my family, how important I am to them. So, it is not about complaining at all.

I do still try my best to squeeze some leftover time for my own sake and enjoyment. I still surf the web here and there on my iPad and PC, I listen to my podcasts on '1.5x or 2x' speed of normal in traffic. I read mostly news on the web these days. Cuz, no matter how busy I'm, I still can't stand for being ignorant of what's going on in the world near and far. With the power of technology these days, with the access that I've, being losing touch with reality is not tolerable. In fact, many news stories are more interesting than fictions. Regardless their natures, tragic, comic, inspirational, or else, they are far more interesting than my mundane life anyway.

Actually, my life or family life these days are not as flat and boring as I mentioned. There are issues that do have long term impact to my future days. Seniors in my and my wife families respectively have health issues. My sons have respectively learning issues that do bother me a bit. In addition, my work relationship, my wife's career, and the relationship between my wife and I , all did have rough spots here and there. Thank God that I think that I've proper EQ and attitude to face those difficult issues and some of which really get my wife frustrated when they are brought up. I'm fortunately for the most parts, myself even if not being the solution, but at least not becoming a problem that make things worst! Well, what can I say? Life is always a half glass of water. We can choose to enjoy it by looking at the bright side, or to damn it by complaining the shitty part. It is all in our heads, we make the call, we choose. What I've learned is that things will proceed with or without our involvement, but our emotion is all our making.

For the most parts of my life in the last decade, I learned to appreciate how fortunate I've been and satisfy with what I've. For being older and seeing what's going on in the world, I also learned few other things:

• Nothing is guaranteed. Thus, take nothing for grant.
• Life is strong and fragile at the same time.
• Try to appreciate, learn and enjoy the journey, and don't too caught up with the results.
• There are wayS to do things, don't be stubborn.
• How important of a thing depends on how you look at it and who is looking at it.
• Life can be happy and meaningful without a lot of material things.
• Really spend time to think what is needed and what is desired.

Well, I guess it is enough for today from a grumpy old man!

New Year Wishes for reference

I came across this today in housenews.com, and like it quite a lot, just wanna share it here with anyone interested.

What I learn today

Saw the following from here today.

....
世界是不完美，世事總是甩甩漏漏，我們習慣了在甩漏中尋找滿足。完美人活在一個不完美的世界，感覺應該是辛苦，因為太多事情看不過眼。在控制到的範圍，完 美人做到最好，但世事包括很多控制範圍以外的事，在完美人眼中，自己控制以外的世界充滿平庸。小野二郎的供應商便是例子，他們未必能達到小野二郎的要求， 因此小野二郎須做很多本應是供應商份內的工序。完美人忙到癲，因為處處看不過眼，唯有做埋別人的工作。
我們讚美完美人的成就，但這種讚美其實帶點盲目，甚至虛偽，因為我們為保存心裡的完美形象，不想知道完美的背後。完美當然是好，不好的是追求完美的過程。....

 .....
完美人專注，專注沒有不好，但過分專注可能扭曲真相。專注的人咬實一件事不放，全神投入，做到最好。然而，更合適的方法，可能是嘗試不同方法，貪新忘舊不 是罪，而是不停提醒自己有可能出錯。專注的人不大接受事情有其他可能性，不願質疑自己有可能犯錯，因為他們已投資這麼豐富的感情。完美人的價值觀，外間未 必能理解。
我要不完美，因為我相信 Good Enough， Good Enough夠了。 Good Enough不代表馬虎，在要求愈來愈高的工作環境，馬虎沒法達到可接受水平。 Good Enough同樣需要計劃，需要下苦功。 Good Enough不是接受次貨，而是定下一個顧及參與者能力的計劃，然後在符合成本效益的前提下盡力做好。
Good Enough不是完美的反義詞，因為我們對 Good Enough的要求，也會隨着時間和環境而改變。例如香港人對政治人物操守的期望，過去十多二十年，有很大變化，今日的 Good Enough，差不多等於過去的完美。以 Good Enough為目標的好處，是接受世事好難，做到 Good Enough已經是了不起，再做好一點，一是不可能，一是不划算。做任何事也要考慮成本，當成本高至不合理水平，當事人要懂得叫停，可惜叫停在完美人詞彙 中不存在。 Good Enough容許我們接受自己不完美的一面，而這一面並不醜陋。.....

Very meaningful!

六字大明咒

I found the following interesting information in a forum that I visit often. Just wanna share with anyone that is interested and may find it useful if needed.

唵嘛呢叭咪吽（梵文：ॐ मणि पद्मे हूँ，oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ是觀世音菩薩願力與加持的結晶，故又稱為觀世音心咒「六字真言」

達賴喇嘛十四世的解說
「六字大明咒持誦必有效驗，但汝頌時應思其意，其妙樂殊無量。…Om（ༀ）字乃汝帶業之身言意，亦為諸佛（སཔས་རྒྱས）無垢之身言意；…四音指其徑：Mani（མ་ཎི）乃為寶飾，示其法：…無私悟，無私憫，無私善。Pad-me（པད་མེ་）乃為蓮花，智也。…清淨圓滿乃智、法所為，hum（ཧཱུྃ）乃圓滿也。…是以六字真言為智法圓滿之徑，修持汝帶業之身言意，乃至諸佛無垢之身言意…」


http://youtu.be/jU1WG_dpWS0

Life Lesson

The following are by no mean all that I wanna say about this topic. I'm sure I will have reprise of that in future. But for now, here we go. Sons, I hope you can pick up something here that would benefit you somehow.

Don’t expect return when we are able to help someone.

Don’t forget the kindness that we receive from the one who helped us.

Just because we are able to do certain thing doesn’t mean we are defaulted and be responsible to do that thing.

We should keep an opened mind to learn whenever we can.

Knowledge is only one of few things that can’t be taken away from us.

The world doesn’t owe us anything. The world will still function with or without us. So, don’t exaggerate our importance to the rest.

Just because we can do something, doesn’t mean that we should do it.

Purely good or evil people are very rare in our society. Most of the people are no different from us. It is our tendency to be with people behaving nicely. So, be nice to people if we want to make friends.

We can’t please everybody, particularly if we know a lot of people. We should be true to ourselves, try not to do things that we will regret later. So, if we can do things that please ourselves as well as those close to us, most of the time would be good enough.

Lying is a difficult act. You need to have very good memory and logical sense. Sweet white lie once in a while is fine. But, being an honest person is more honorable and admirable than being a skillful liar. Rather than continuing telling new lies to cover your previous lies, it is better to try harder to get things right in the first place.

Once a person is found out to be a liar, it is extremely difficult for him/her to be trusted by others. One of the foundation of personal reputation is creditability, we don’t make friend with a person that we don’t trust.

The most admired persons throughout history are those that did great things to others, either through passing knowledge or inventions.

Don’t be fool by a person’s appearance. A person with beautiful attractive appearance could be result of plastic surgeries, makeup, or lucky combination of genes from his/her parents. There is no doubt that appearance would be helpful in social activities or opening to various opportunities. However, there is always other ways that would work as well. The most important thing is that most of those beautiful people in the world are control by someone who are not physically attractive at all. So, don’t lose hope for being less attractive.

Personality takes time to be constructed. It is easy to set goal to tell ourselves to be an XXX person, but it would take a time and effort to achieve that.

9 thoughts to my sons

I read the following article and like the content a lot. Just wanna share with anyone can read Chinese. If you can't, please feel free to Google translate it. Though it may not be 100% correct, I think you will get the points more or less.

梁繼璋的信

Posted on 2012/01/09

「你可以要求自己守信，但不能要求別人守信，你可以要求自己對人好，但不能期待人家對你好。你怎樣對人，並不代表人家就會怎樣對你，看不透這一點，只會徒添不必要的煩惱。」

名DJ梁繼璋寫了一封給兒子的信，包含了九件他要兒子好好記住的事，我十分喜歡。細看之下，我發現那九件事當中，可以找出一個共通點，基於這個共通點，我稍為改寫了一些地方，換了一些次序，給我的兒子和女兒。

1. 除了我和你媽媽，沒有人有義務要對你好，若有人對你不好，不要感到意外，你要靠自己克服。

2. 除了我和你媽媽，沒有人有義務要對你好，那些對你好的人，除了珍惜，也請多防備，因為每個人做每件事，總有一個原因，對你好，未必一定是真心，不必太快將對方看作真朋友，你要靠自己搞清楚。

3. 你可以要求自己守信，但不能要求別人守信，你可以要求自己對人好，但不能期待人家對你好。你怎樣對人，並不代表人家就會怎樣對你，看不透這一點，只會徒添不必要的煩惱。說到底，還是要靠你自己。

4. 生命短暫，愈早珍惜，享受的日子也愈長。享受的意思，不是說任意妄為，而是找尋自己真正熱愛的事情，做自己真心喜歡的事情。那是什麼，要靠你自己找尋答案。

5. 我不會要求你供養我下半輩子，同樣地我也不會供養你的下半輩子，當你長大到可以獨立的時候，我的責任已經完結。以後，你要坐巴士還是Benz，吃魚翅還是粉絲，都要你自己負責。

6. 人要發達，還是要努力工作才可以，世上並無免費午餐，而保持努力工作的秘訣，是做一份你真心最喜歡的工作。同樣地，要靠你自己找答案。

7. 沒有人是不可代替，沒有東西是必須擁有。只要，在爭取的過程中，盡全力去做便可以無悔。看透這一點，將來你身邊的人不再要你，或許失去了世間上最愛的一切時，也應該明白，這並不是甚麼大不了的事，因為你已對得住自己。

8. 雖然，很多有成就的人士都沒有受過很多教育，但並不等如不用功讀書，就一定可以成功。你學到的知識，就是你擁有的武器。人，可以白手興家，但不可以手無寸鐵，那是真正屬於你自己的籌碼。

9. 親人只有一次的緣份，無論這輩子我和你會相處多久，也請好好珍惜共聚的時光，下輩子，無論愛與不愛，都不會再見。

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRnAxnbCUoY]