Life's A Leap

I read from somewhere that human beings live two lives: the first is the current one, second is when you realize how short the current one is.

My father passed away three days before Christmas last year, twelve days after he was diagnosed. This painful and dark path in my life left a food for thought for me. Death does exist, and it can strike whenever it wants to, whether we are ready or not. I was not ready for it.

The change adversified my outlook in life, that relationships matter, that laughter and smile are our daily visas to a smoother ride. I realised that our struggles to achieving the highest peak of our lives lead to the same end, that death, once it embraced us, transforms our lives' achievements into a piece of paper. At the end of everything, we all get summed up to a piece of crucial document.

This thinking led me to the deactivation of my Facebook account. In the toughest and most difficult journey, the truest of friends rose to the top like a cream. I have hundreds of Facebook friends, I have tens and twentys of true ones. I do not need the others to decorate my life, a superficial acquaintanceship with millions of seconds spent on never ending browsing thru feeds is time thrown into the dust bin. I stopped the old life to give space for the new. I ceased the old life and refreshed it. I closed the browser and cleaned the cache.

Although it is a new philosophy to me, I am learning to drive my life governed by an emotional state. I would feel more to relate more. I would share more to receive more. I would smile more to feel happiness more. Life is not a composition of the grandeurs, but a puzzle of simplicity and passion that makes up a bigger picture. We need to find the part that clicks to make it work. A simple hello is the missing puzzle to the busyness of daily living. I am decided to finish this one and put all the pieces together.

According to the Taoist philosophy, the world is a reflection of us. It responds to how we perceive it. We mold it according to our thinking. I believe that the world is a happy place where love thrives. Suffering and pain are the spices that make life worthwhile, and relationships are the sprinkles that add flavour to it. We live two lives - the first is the current one, and second is when we realise how short the current one is. I know which phase of my life I am now, and although a novice, I have an idea or two how to walk through it. Baby steps are a leap of faith. That leap of faith is the beginning of a fuller life.

I'm back

And I'm back. :)

I am not sure how many times I have wandered on treacherous virtual islands, treading away from the depths of my heart to seek the greener land. But regardless how far I have gone, my heart bleeds for unproductive days. Words untranscribed haunted me. My heart beats letters and thoughts that need to be blogged. I was made to write. Now I vow to stop stopping myself.

2014 has come, and it already made a tremendous change in me. After years of browsing the lives of strangers, millions of minutes wasted through newsfeeds of hundreds upon hundreds of faceless list, in the middle of January 2014, I pulled the plug. I have had enough of Facebook.

I tried it last year. Two days later, I came back running. I am proud to say that after nearly two weeks, the Facebook temptation never crossed my focused mind. I do not see any sign of relapse on the horizon whatsoever.

It is an irony. Facebook's motto is to bring people together, but if bringing people together means checking on their profiles and liking their pictures thus updating ourselves with their lives, discounting interaction because information is provided freely and accessibility is timeless, then yes, it has reached its goal. If friendship is equated to commenting on posts,  sharing photos, advertising your life to be adored or abhored (secretly) by others, Facebook is a powerful tool. But we are people, and no matter how much evolution we surpass in the waves of time, our relationships, the deepest of them at least, are all based on personal interactions. I will never forget a conversation with a friend while waiting for my bus some months ago. Another friend whom I was talking through a messenger years ago called me long distance that day just to share five minutes of laughter. There were no words uttered, just a long, vibrant, teary laughter was all that could be heard on the other end. Apparently, a typed Hahaha or HAHAHA were not enough to express this hearty, big guffaw. We shared a duet.

It is the pouring of our hearts that include the tone of our voice, facial expression, body language, the crackle of laughter that gives tummy ache, the touching statements that produce tears, these are essentials that bond us together. Facebook masks these vital information. Unfortunately, they can never go online.

According to Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body, men and women are called to communion with one another. That communion is a bodily thing, and our presence to one another should be bodily as well. We are made to spend real things with real people and real events, and these activities give us lasting joy. I spent an afternoon yesterday at a park with my friend's five year old daughter. She played with her friends and classmates, while I took the swing for the first time in many years. I sat and aimed at the highest, the leather seat and metal chains brought me to the sky and the clouds above. The wind on my face, the rubber ground on my feet, the smell of steel that swayed me back and forth, the sound of children laughing and teasing in the background, the afternoon sun kissing a tangy orange light on my face. It was the most fun-filled afternoon I have had in a long time. I felt in the present. I felt alive.

We are called to live our lives. We were born to be alive. Spending so much on modern day gossiping destroys our humanity. All things will come to an end, and however we brush it off, life is short. Let us start living before the wick of our lives spew its last flame. Let us start being in the present, involving our five senses, especially our hearts. Let us see the world through it. It is only through it that we see all. That, indeed, the world is a beautiful creation of God. That God, indeed, is in everything He created. That, we, ourselves, are a wonderful creation of His. We are beautiful, real people of God. Let us not disappoint Him.

Relationships

It is almost two weeks since I came back from a volunteer work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was a fulfilling journey; God manifested Himself through other people for the whole duration of the experience. He showed us the good and bad side of the place; He sent angels to lead us. He pulled us through. But apart from the divine, I realized something. In relationships, depending on avenues, time spent may not be time well-spent, or may be time well-spent.

Before I went on my trip, a group was created using the Whatsapp platform to communicate with the people who also volunteered for the event. In March of this year, this group chat was born. It has been labeled as a 24-hour chatroom because of the unceasing beeping of our phones from people conversing all over the globe. It has reached its maximum capacity of 50 participants; twenty or less are actively engaged.

It is a common conception, especially of the traditionalist and conservative, that a relationship that sprung from and developed on the internet is a superficial type. The foundation is weak and has the tendency to crumble. We have been communicating for almost everyday, yet when we finally met face-to-face in Rio last July, our connection was dissolved by some unknown formula. It remained on the surface level; there was not an attempt to level it up. Or at least that was what I felt. I am one to blame, to be honest. I was not motivated to extend the friendship, neither was I inspired to invest personal time. Constant virtual communication failed to go past that thin boundary between an acquaintance and a friend for keeps. We met and talked and listened. That was all.

My work as a volunteer was to man the train station at Campo Grande SuperVia in Rio. I worked with a group of fellow volunteers. We greeted pilgrims with our biggest smile and most sparkling positivism. We shared some moments of hysteria, our way of expressing hospitality and warmth towards our fellow volunteers and pilgrims who came by the station. Sometimes the train was packed. Sometimes it was not. During our free time, while waiting for participants to board or alight the train, I turned to the people composing our group and talked to them. Some of them did not speak English. Some just smiled and stared helplessly at me and at others who might be able to translate. I used hand gestures to send my messages across. Google Translate was a sympathetic tool. Good thing laughter was a universal language.

We drowned ourselves in music. We sang and played air instruments, pretended we were in a concert hall, thus thanking everyone who had 'come to see the show'. We froze the moments. We took mental pictures. We laughed till we cried. We cried till we said goodbye.

It takes years to get to know a person fully, and it takes a minute to know if that person is worth-knowing. It takes a million words to develop a relationship. And actions. And laughter. And some conversation we are more comfortable sharing in person, because we are interested to witness first-hand the other party’s reaction. Some memories are lasting and have left an imprint in my heart. Some are fleeting they barely touched my face. Some are tattooed in my memory; some have been swept away like the waves clearing the sentimental words traced by a finger on the shore of the Copacabana beach. Some are chillingly winter and warmly summer. Some are curly innocent and some are a faithful goodbye.

Relationships can be eternal; they permanently reside in the depths of our hearts, whether they are continued or broken. They may be founded on good conversation and sincerest personal contacts. Some interactions are short and are not accentuated by words, but despite their brief attribute, they linger persistently. They sliced sharply onto the most concealed part of my heart, leaving me altered for the rest of my life. I have learned to clear myself of clutter, emphasizing on the most valuable, but not totally forgetting, the not-so. I am learning to grasp the tangible, to reminisce the facts, to trust God with the future. The traditionalists and the conservatives advocate the simplest of truth. Personal touch weighs more than a dozen of internet connection. I am learning to refocus my time. To be totally present where I need to be. Relationship is where I am. It is where my heart is. It helps me find my way home.

Happy New Year!

It is a tradition of a Chinese family to partake in a reunion dinner on the eve of the Chinese New Year, where they share a meal of steamboat, a dish of seafood, meat, and vegetables poured into a boiling soup of chicken or tom yam. A single pot on a micro-stove is placed at the center of the dining table, then randomly, ingredients are put in for everyone to feast on. I was told today that eating from one container, in this case a pot, symbolizes unity and oneness of the family. It is a good way to start the New Year if you ask me. Despite having no Chinese blood and family living overseas, I have been celebrating the eve with a very hospitable, adoptive family, who never hesitated to share their time and sumptuous dinner with me for two consecutive years now.

Apart from the traditional steam boat, there are other dishes of extravagant nature that are popular during this festive season. My friend's family, to make this year of the snake extra special, prepared Pen Cai, or Poon Choi in Cantonese, which translates to Big Bowl Feast. True to its name, this highly interesting and expensive meal consists of eight-layers of ingredients like scallops and abalone, each level cooked separately and exquisitely laid on top of the other. Due to its exorbitant stature, my peasant of a palate is virgin to the abalone's delicate tang. To finally put it into my mouth and chew its rubber-like but brittle texture, for my tongue to register its salty meat taste, my gustatory system sure is one satisfied sense tonight.

Guess how much is inside! :p

And there was the traditional Hong Paos, or Red Packets, normally handed by married people to the unmarried, typically children. Even numbered amounts are popular as they signify auspiciousness, with an exception of the number four as it means death in Chinese. Odd numbers reflect otherwise. The figure inside indicates the closeness of the giver to the receiver; the higher it is, the tighter their bond is.

Despite me being the proverbial water against the thicker blood, the Hong Pao I received was more than my merit. I did not really expect it. I came for the company and the food (yum yum!), not for any figure inside a red envelope. We started the dinner with the Singaporean tradition of Lo Hei, an appetizer where standing participants, gripping chopsticks, verbalized wishes for luck and happiness and tossed the ingredients into mid-air. It is believed that the higher the chopsticks while mixing the contents, the higher the possibility of hopes and dreams to materialize. This act lasts for around five minutes. It is consumed afterwards.

Our rich, strong, and unique traditions, however diverse they may be, have a common denominator: they are preserved as an identity of a nation. They are built on a foundation of a stronger bond among loved ones, meant to deliver happiness. Amidst the hustle and bustle of our modern society, our traditions remind us of who we are within, leading us to who we might become. I am proud to be part of this Chinese tradition. It has been going on for thousands of years, an institution in today's perspective. May this new year bring us hope and happiness, health and prosperity. Yam seng! Xin Nian Kuai Le!

Bucket List

After watching the trailer of the movie Bucket List a few years ago, ideas of my own to-do list before hitting the grave flashed before me, resembling that scene in the Matrix where series of numbers were descending in haste they had the probability of exploding my brain. Fortunately, my head didn't. My heart did, from excitement.

I reached my abode at half past midnight today trying to fulfill one of those dreams. It was not as big as conquering my fear of heights and jumping off a cliff tied only in a rope (for one, there ain't no cliff in Singapore! Thank God.) It was not about proposing to some random guy to fulfill my mom's wildest dream of me getting married before the year ends. Prioritizing is a skill that requires high emotional quotient and logical thinking. My bucket list started smooth and comfy. So comfy I stayed on a seat for two and a half hours trying to digest the rigorous plot of Cloud Atlas glinting changing eras sequentially in front of me. The first in the bucket list: watching a movie ALONE.

must.buy.the.book

As independent as I am, considering the fact that I manage to live outside my comfort zone by myself, oceans apart from the people whom my heart has taken residence, I have not done seeing a film by myself. It did cross my mind; I have done interviews of those who actually enjoy the act. Yesterday, I made up my mind. It was the most courageous decision I have made this early part of the year.

It was not so bad. I loved the idea! The morning I conceived of it, a smile plastered on my face that lasted me the whole day, knowing that I'd be subjecting myself to doing a 'first' for the heck of it. I called my brother and told him of the news. He called me a loser. I defended that this glorious deed has to be achieved by every human being at least once in their lives if they want their mortal existence to be an accomplished one, which he agreed. Besides, it was actually very cool.

The movie was great! I gasped, covered my eyes and ears numerous times to avoid fully sensing the ghastly parts, and put on my detective hat trying to find the missing link in the movie's wondrous plot. I decided to buy the book, and have made a trip to the nearby bookshop this evening to make a reservation.

To be in charge of something personal, to not adjust to other's demands and be very conscious of a fair deal, to watch the movies, or not to, at my own timing and moods, self-centeredness has its own reward. Independence is being able to choose whether a company or self-indulgence is applicable, and making decisions, big or small, beneficial to one self without treading on others. A 'me' time is essential. It is about realizing the inner person within each of us, knowing it gradually to step out of it eventually, ready to embrace and accept others wholeheartedly. Striking off an entry on the bucket list, which was the main goal of this experiment, is incognito secondary.

What is next on the bucket list? Seeing Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, up close! :)

Brekky

Wanna know what made me happy today?? :))

Tada!

Tada, indeed! Strawberries! This red red, juicy, sweet and sour strawberries that I personally freshly handpicked from the cold mountains of the nearby supermarket have definitely made my day. They inspired me to be young again, to be quirky, to be full of energy and be 'vitamins' to others. The strawberries and I are a match-made in heaven. After all,

"The heart-shaped silhouette of the strawberry is the first clue that this fruit is good for you. These potent little packages protect your heart, increase HDL (good) cholesterol, lower your blood pressure, and guard against cancer. Packed with vitamins, fiber, and particularly high levels of antioxidants known as polyphenols, strawberries are a sodium-free, fat-free, cholesterol-free, low-calorie food. They are among the top 20 fruits in antioxidant capacity and are a good source of manganese and potassium. Just one serving -- about eight strawberries -- provides more vitamin C than an orange.

This member of the rose family isn’t really a fruit or a berry but the enlarged receptacle of the flower. Choose medium-sized berries that are firm, plump, and deep red; once picked, they don’t ripen further. First cultivated in ancient Rome, strawberries are now the most popular berry fruit in the world. In provincial France, they were regarded as an aphrodisiac. These red gems may be good for your heart in more ways than one", according to   Andrea Gabrick of WebMD. *See http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/nutritional-benefits-of-the-strawberry.

In this uncertain world where unexpected things are inevitable circumstances, it is worthwhile to stop worrying and feeling anxious and just enjoy one or two, or eight, according to the website, of this magnificent fruit. It is an aphrodisiac to living lightly, a recipe for a healthy encounter with others. The best things in life may not all the time be free. Mine cost about SGD5.40, and it gave me the boost I need to take things easy and positively today.

Wanna know what kind of fruit will pep me up tomorrow? :)

One Piece

Without regard for age, generation, or gender, with only love for a good plot, wild imagination, and japanese merchandise that conquered the world subtly and without warning being the top considerations, anime has not lost its grip on the hearts of those who let it in.

During my Christmas vacation in the Philippines last year, I was transported back to my childhood days when one sunny Sunday morning, while I was toggling in between channels in search of a good show, I stumbled on an episode of the anime One Piece, dubbed in the local language. I almost had forgotten that part of me, that anime-loving, cosplay-drooling part of me. It was dug deep within, buried beneath my new self I have presented to the new world I now evolve in. Funny how those thirty minutes could be so powerful that it brought me back to my senses.

A friend at work mentioned yesterday that a One Piece film is now showing, and that she and her group of friends had booked the tickets. Unaware of such phenomenon, I blamed her for making me miss it. Today, due to an unforeseen and unstoppable event, both a friend and she could not make it for the movie. I know unfortunate events should be dealt with a heavy heart, but this turn of events sent me sky-rocketing to the heavens. Two free tickets! An opportunity to unleash the kid in me again, without consequences, responsibilities, nor obligations! And the best part was, I would not be alone in this! I could drag a big fan of a friend with me! What a blessing!

Batman and Goofy watching One Piece!

The texture of the movie was of its typical anime on TV; not digital, not even 3D. There was a bad guy, the good guys, which is Monkey D. Luffy and his Straw Hat crew, some half-bad-half-good guys, sprinkled with humor, and a pinch of obscenity, topped with a very good plot. The antagonist transformed into a protagonist he deserved, the group of Marines who was supposed to be the adversaries has a dignity of their own to protect, making them protagonists in their own right. At the end of the film, everyone bloomed into becoming heroes, each in their own time, goal, and honor. All had their fair share of the pie.

I admire the japanese for inventing the anime, for, unlike the common cartoons, their version defies rules and imagination. It has become a tool for harbored grudges, wild sentiments, a platform for anything and everything a proverbial ventriloquist can ever dream. It is the world for the unexplored, for the explorer, for the timid, and for the adventurous. It breathes life to the personification of the good of goods and the evil of evils. It is the reality of fantasies. It is a tear-jerker. It is the fountain of youth. It is the embodiment of the time machine.