dreams, responsibilities….

we always have to juggle between what we want to do, and what we have been asked to do..

what we want to do could be termed as a dream, and what we have been asked to do could be deemed a responsibility..

i have always dreamed about what i wanted to do, and pursued my dreams, but at this stage of life, i am not so sure i could continue on this path, to carry on dreaming.. well, i am sure many people would jump at me readily, give me a slap, and tell me it’s about fucking time u realised the reality in life..

but i have steve jobs on my side? in his book on the innovation secrets of steve jobs, he encourages people to keep dreaming! and i have a billionaire encounter, i meant an encounter with a self-made billionaire from scratch, and he told young people to keep on dreaming, and to start young and follow all your heart, dreams.. the last i know, he has 800million liquid assets.. bloody hell.. that’s 8 zeros!

here’s another steve job’s quote; passion won’t guarantee that you would not fail, but passion would make sure that no failure would ever stop you!

ok, that’s the dream part, what are the responsibilities that i have to juggle with?

there’s a chinese saying, 百善孝为先， meaning, the biggest kindness is to be fillial.. and that’s why, kindness has no boundaries and needs no money, even the poorest can be the most kind..

ok, back to 百善孝为先, my dad wants me to settle down so badly, that it is becoming like a tape recorder repeating it’s mantra of me finding a wife and settling down, and with it comes responsibilities.. i suppose with that, one has to sacrifice a lot of dreams..

maybe i should get a dreamer, as a partner.. ha!

what a crude joke..

i am searching for a breakthrough on this conundrum..

reminder on love and attachment

Often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize how much they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile the relationship becomes.

So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: “How can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it?” How often attachment is mistaken for love!

Even when the relationship is a good one, love can be spoiled by attachment with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.

dinner to ashes in >72hrs

the jaws of yama strikes you out of nowhere and before you know it… without any warning.

my uncle was having dinner and chit-chatting with his usual group of friends on sunday evening, complained of some dizziness, and collapsed at a clinic.. his body will be cremated on wednesday morning. what long term planning? what far sightedness? what long term vision are we talking about here?

i’m perplexed..  just like that… in less than 72hrs… gone.

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30/30

“我曾指若有六十岁命，三十过后就是人生开始倒数之时。。 “  杨千嬅

i have absolutely no clue when i will live till, perhaps 60 is a good gauge, as our chinese elemental horoscope goes a full circle every 60years.. to be more detailed,1980 is the year of the Metal Monkey, 1992 will be the year of the Water Monkey, 2004 will be the Wood Monkey, 2016 will be Fire Monkey, 2028 will be Earth Monkey, and then 2040 will be Metal Monkey again..

so, turning 30yrs old in a matter of months, is quite a significant milestone for me.. i sort of have a rough plan on how i would want to spend my 30yrs old birthday, and so the next few months will be to prepare my trip, and perhaps also take the time to reminiscence on the people who has made a significant contribution to my life..

family, gurus, friends, ex-bosses immediately springs to mind, people that have moulded me.. but how many of them will be able to be together with me and continue the next 30yrs like what we had in the past 30yrs? immediate family, siblings have already started their own family and moved out, while friends are starting to spend more time with their kids, or making babies…

counting down one’s life after 30yrs old suddenly seems not a far fetched plan that i can defer any longer.. we couldn’t choose how we want to live since we were born till we are 30, but we can certainly choose how we want to live our next 30yrs, and choose wisely, carefully, we must.. if we keep our daily routine, dosing ourselves without realising we are still in the rat race, and continue to live as though we are in our 20s, i am sure, by the time we realised it, we will already be 32, 33..

we can’t continue to live in pretendence, living as though we have all the time in the world and that we won’t age..

to move purposely forward, we must examine the paths we have taken so far.. revisit and reflect on them, but also mindful in not allowing ourselves to be trapped by our past while reflecting on them..

i think meditation helps, be it spiritual meditation, yoga, qi-gong…

quoted,…

“What’s more, all these experiences of pleasure and pain,
Are not brought about by anyone besides yourself.
They are produced by your very own actions, good and bad.
Once you know this, it’s crucial that you act accordingly,
Without confusing what should be adopted and abandoned.”

newCo update

met with all the partners, 4 of us, for lunch at Bumbu, a Indonesian-Thai restaurant at Far East Square..

- managed to review the newCo setup questionnaire and when we are gonna meet the lawyer and administrator.. we decided sometime around Jan2010..
- identified distribution arms for our products,..
- phase1 90% ready for launching, phase2 40% ready, phase 3 not ready..

quite a few investment models to tweak… i hope i don’t sound arrogant, but before tweaking the models, these models to me, if applied correctly, are hard to lose money.. but after the tweaking, i firmly believe they will be extremely extremely hard to lose money.. speaking from a former I-Bank proprietary trader perspective, what we are doing coupled together with TD indicators, i would say we have a pretty good product to enrich a lot of people’s life.. money making money never seemed easier.. i love this part of the adventure.. great adventure… it’s gonna be a wonderful experience..

had dinner with my bro, dad, my sis-in-law’s family at East Ocean, Shaw Centre… while walking to the restaurant on level 2, i walked pass that Agnes B shop… they refurbished quite a bit since Easter 2002.. they still sell nice sweaters…

decided to walk back home from Orchard Rd after dinner to look at the Christmas deco.. pretty good

Spirit of Mooncake Festival

below is a recount of my mooncake festival when i were young..  Mooncake festival is just around the corner, only 4 days away in fact.. the mood ain’t as anxiously anticipated as i were 20yrs ago.. we’d grown out of it,.. but really?!?

Mooncake festival used to be one of the rare opportunities when we get to go out at night, and to top it with buying colourful colourful lanterns~! wow!! or some years, our parents will hide the lantern in a cupboard they bought earlier where we can’t reach, and when it’s the night of the mooncake festival, it would be as though our parents knew magic. out of nowhere, they will take a few lanterns out of the cupboard and reveal a very surprised and happy face and gave the lantern to you.. they will lit it for you, and asked you to go and have fun with your cousins and siblings..

the lanterns were usually made from transparent coloured plastic wraps.. it comes shaped into a fish, horse, or a butterfly, etc.. and their eyes, scales, were drawn in white onto the coloured plastic wraps as if they were drawn using liquid paper.. the shape of the lantern was usually structured either with bamboo sticks or thick metal wires.. but there was always a bamboo stick that’s attached to the lantern for you to hold onto.. sort of like those bamboo chopsticks at japanese restaurants.. not so bleached and smooth though..

the whole pasar malam (night market) street will be filled with sellers of paper and plastic lanterns.. they weren’t many battery-lit ones yet then..

1) u get to go out at night
2) colourful colourful lanterns everywhere along the street

u get to show your animal lantern to all your siblings and cousins, what more joy can a child ask for?

x x x x x

fast forward 20yrs, that joy can only be vividly remembered, and yet preciously treasured as those days are all but distant sweet sweet memories..

the act of love and warmth from our parents cannot be underestimated here.. without love, nothing can grow. without love, a plant won’t grow, without love, a baby won’t grow.. you won’t, i won’t..

without giving time, love won’t exist, and nothing will grow.. have u given enough time and love back to the one u love?

do take the time to give your dad/mum, loved ones a call and wish them Happy Mooncake Festival.. the sweet memories of 20yrs ago can only be revisited and made sweeter if you can return the love and time to the one that gave u these memories in the first place..

..  receive happily and give freely ,.. …..  ~ ~ ~

fulfilling dream last night

i had a dream last night. i was having breakfast, dim sum to be exact, with my mum and another cousin. it was an open air restaurant and it’s situated in a square surrounded by flats. the flats were old and grey, while it’s a clear blue sky overhead.

people say when it’s the 7th month of the chinese calender, souls will be set free and they will be allowed on Earth. if that’s really the case, i am glad my mum came to look for me and we had dim sum together for breakfast. it was only for a short time frame, and i didn’t get to talk to my mum much. moreover there was sort of a watch-keeper around, and so everyone sat down and ate quietly.

i never got the chance to buy my mum a meal through my first paycheck, and that’s always my regret.. not that i could have done anything more, because my mum passed away 3 days after i got my job.. this dim sum meal with my mum surely is very emotional for me.. it’s the first meal we had together since i started to work.. all the way back to Jan’03…

Chinese New Year!

To all Chinese friends of mine out there that I can’t reach and/but somehow managed to stumble upon to my little humble webbie, Gong Xi Fa Cai and many prosperous returns this year~!

Approaching the end of the Rooster year and welcoming the year of the Dog, basically, to cut it short, you better be nice to your pet dogs.. hahaha! and you can now resume your secret fetish for KFC once again! well, that’s if you’ve had a sabbatical year on chicken related products in the year of the chicken! ;D

by the way, KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken and not King’s Fried Chicken on WhiteLadies Road, Bristol, UK!

Oh! i see a small misery for people who i share your woes whenever CNY arrives. it’s THE misery for those unmarried ones who will be facing ‘that’ question from relatives asking us ‘when are you getting married?’ and/or ‘hey, not feeling embarassed still receiving ang pows’? SO let’s all unmarried buddies of mine stick together and voice out loud over the speaker and proudly proclaim to them, ‘i know you wish you were like us!’

PEACE! ;D

so long.. farewell

gonna attend a funeral cremation on friday, of a very friendly aunty… although we are not relatives, our family is close enough to be like relatives..

another victim of collapsed lung due to cancerous cells.. reminded me of how .. … …., heart-wrentching,..

i attended a wedding last wkend too, it was carried forward for their mum, so my aunty left this world knowing that all her children had finally married.. not many dying mums can have that kinda relief.. i can only be happy for her that way..