Gratefulness

How does one express gratefulness in a meaningful way?   I often struggle to express it even at the joyful moments of my life, because words are cheap.  I do feel grateful, very grateful for so many things. But as I count my blessings, I know that my friend somewhere is grieving as he just lost his son to illness.  Life is fleeting; one moment of pleasure and one equal measure of pain may come one after another.  One moment of joy may be followed by one moment of sorrow, and vice versa. 

Life is a continuous journey, with its ups and downs. Gratefulness should always be above them all, beyond the daily dramas of our lives.  It should be ever present regardless of where we are in our lives journey.  Gratefulness should be there in pleasure and pain, in joy or sadness.  It should be a state of being, a glowing light that shines even in the darkest and most depleting moments.  

Gratefulness is most meaningful when it is expressed through action, not words. It should be reflected in everything that we do, the choices that we make, the gestures that we give.  When our action is guided by a sense of gratefulness, it will fill our hearts with joy. With gratefulness in our action, hate has no place to exist.

Easter Misalignment

The street was so quiet today, at 8 am on Easter Sunday.  I guess people would either be in church or still be in bed.  I am guessing that this pleasant quietness would soon disappear as people would go out to celebrate Easter. 

Somehow I am not feeling very celebratory today. Yes Jesus has risen from the dead - just like he has every year, around this time. Time to go to church and fall asleep during the priest's homily.  Time to hunt for some Easter eggs afterwards.  Somewhere in the bible Jesus told us to do that. 

Bah humbug!

Before anyone calls me the Easter Scrooge, let me stand to differ,  Unlike Scrooge, I am not feeling grumpy.  I am feeling misaligned.

I saw just yesterday, in the eve of Easter, the news about the mass death of hundreds of thousands of fish in the coast of Florida. The coast was filled with silvery carcasses, so many that no trace of sand can be seen in the photo.  There are several theories behind this.  The water is getting warmer and the fish can't stand it.  The salt water content is getting diluted by the dumping of dam water to the river. There are some other theories in the article that I do not remember.   

When I saw the news I thought to myself: How am I, as a human being, supposed to feel about it?  Isn't that event some sort of environmental warning that something is going seriously wrong? Wouldn't I be freaking out if hundreds of thousands of human beings drop dead in one day for whatever reason?  Wouldn't we all be in an emergency mode? 

Oh wait, the news channels no longer mention it today, so the problem is gone forever.  Jesus has risen from the dead. 

There are so many other massive problems going on that has come and gone in the news like they never happened.  The Fukushima nuclear disaster - the threat of contamination of the water still continues but the world seemed to have forgotten.  The plastic waste accumulating and getting bigger in the ocean.  The irresponsible logging and destruction of forests, the pollution of water and air by the irresponsible corporations. The irresponsible mining activities everywhere.  They're still happening at full speed.   Is this what humanity is all about? 

But wait!  Today is Easter, the time to celebrate. 

No to Democracy, Yes to People Power

What is this thing called DEMOCRACY?  If there is any word that defines how messed-up, confused and lost humanity is, it is this word.  

It is defined in the dictionary as "a system of government in which all the people of a state or polity ... are involved in making decisions about its affairs, typically by voting to elect representatives to a parliament or similar assembly"

Ever since the 20th century and continuing until now, The United States has been overthrowing governments, waging wars, invading other countries and intervening in other nations' affairs in the name of spreading democracy.  Here is a country that was created when the white immigrants from Europe VIOLENTLY took over a land from the native american people 3 centuries ago. It is a country that is, at the present age, still very far from acknowledging or fixing this mistake and its other mistakes in the past.   Today in 2016, it is a country that is still obsessed to vote for the defender of status-quo like Hillary Clinton, or a tabloid quality bully like Donald Trump.  

How could the USA fix the past problems if they can't even acknowledge it?  Clearly, the current leadership of the country is as delusional as ever.  President Obama did not seem to learn from the errors of the past in intervening with other people's governments and toppling its leader; instead he wanted to do it once again in Syria. Meanwhile he continued to make ignorant statements like "we are the greatest country in the world".  The only past leaders who speak like that are those who has chauvinistic illusions.  I can imagine Donald Trump doing that if elected president.  I thought a non-white who has had the chance to live overseas in the past would be wiser than that.  

So there it is, a country that goes around the world preaching democracy like it invented it and owns it. I am sorry for this brutal analogy, but a country that invades others in the name of democracy is no different than a murderer who kills because he/she feels spiritually more enlightened than the victim.  It's beyond crime.  It's mental illness. 

But I should clarify my view: Just because the USA hijacked the word democracy and made a mockery out of it does not mean that the idea of people power itself is bad.  People power, which is the original essence of democracy, makes a lot of sense.  People power is a better alternative than mad dictators or monarchs. But the process to channel the power of the people into governance differs in every society.  Each one of them is not perfect, just like us humans.  Therefore nobody should try to impose one's way on others'.  Just like the best of human nature, the process of channeling people power into governance will continue to get better as long as the society keeps trying.  

A Papua Story

I am sitting in a tiny Suzuki minibus front passenger seat, with its window open to allow air to come in.  It is humid in the old cranky car with no air-con; and without the air from outside, I would have been sweat-baked in no time.  So the dusty breeze blowing on my face was the better option.

Despite this simple, time-worn public transport, the ride is quite enjoyable.  It is my second time to be in Sorong, Papua, but this is the first time for me to stay for more than just a day.  So I have the chance to get to know the city a bit better.

Sorong is a small town full of life.  I can imagine massive coastal cities like Mumbai or Singapore were once like Sorong before they became a city everyone wants to go to and eventually the metropolitans that they are.  A strip of road thread the coast, linking the tiny airport in the east and the small sea port in the west, all within a 10 minutes ride.  Along the way I see little businesses from hawkers selling fresh sea food to mom and pop retail shops to small distributors of building materials.   I see a large, nicely designed blue-white mosque prominently standing not far from the port.  I see a couple of signs of “buddhist vihara” as I pass by a bit further to the west.  I see a few newly built hotels, all of them hanging red colored lantern with some chinese characters at their front porch (it’s coming close to Chinese new year).  I finally stop in front of a row of coconut vendors, all of them women of the local tribe.  The coconuts, large and freshly picked, were laid out invitingly.  I and my three colleagues that came with me from Jakarta spent a good half an hour enjoying the delicious fruit. 

I am enjoying this little town, where many things coexist promisingly in one strip of road.  It’s a land that has been transformed into a small town no longer than 25 years ago.  From the perspective of the indigenous people, many has changed, many migrants from all over Indonesia have made the town their home.  Yet if we look at the women selling the coconuts by the sea, we will be reminded that it’s the land of the Mooi tribe of Papua. 

“Mooi people are open minded people”  my business partner mentions as we sit together in the tiny poblic transport.  He himself is not a local.  He came from the city of Surabaya as a business migrant, one of the seemingly many who came more than 15 years ago, when the town began to grow.  “Unlike some of the other tribes that live in this town, the Mooi people are welcoming and are willing to learn something new”, he continued.

I had the chance to meet a few Mooi people a few days earlier as I spent three full days at the cargo port, taking care of my business. I did not have the chance to talk to them very much, as they were busy working, unloading my cargo from a few containers at the port.  Frankly, I can’t tell the Mooi people from the other tribes that have settled in Sorong too; but I know some of them are.

I am in Sorong because I am expanding my business here.  To do so I have to find a local partner, and we managed to find one before we came.  In the last 3 days my colleagues and I had to train and supervise him and his crew at the port.   Everything went well thanks to him and my colleaugues who did a good preparatory work.  Our partner was well prepared, well supported by the local workers, fully dedicated and quick to learn.  We finished the work well within the timeframe we planned for and left the port feeling excited for the possibility to do more business in Sorong again in the future. My skin is noticably darker than it was when I arrived.  That’s what you got if you stand under the sun at the port for 3 full days.    

Back in Jakarta, it is very easy to have negative perceptions or be intimidated by the land of the Papua, the farthest province from the capital.  People tend to talk about the bad things that happened here, and the media only makes it worse as they report only the sensational bad things. 

So it is very heartwarming to hear my business partner say that the town of Sorong has become what it is thanks to the openness of the Mooi people.  The many migrants that are working and living in Sorong came from all backgrounds, from the island of Sumatra, Java to the island of Sulawesi. From the presence of the large mosque, I can imagine a fairly strong population of muslim people who may have come from Java and Sulawesi. From a couple of budhist vihara that I saw,  I learned that there are also a fairly established buddhist community in town.  There is also the christian influence that came from the Dutch occupation earlier in the 20^th century. Sorong is a small cosmopolitan, a town that is not only rich with natural resources, but also with an exciting mix of cultures and background.     

However this town is not spared from the many troubles that are happening as the modern life entered.  There most common talk in town is the wars that are often happening between the tribes.  There are different tribes who have settled around the town of Sorong, co-existing with the local Mooi tribe.  Time and again, tension flared among them, and hostility lead to another level of hostility.  The fights are often violent and destructive.  A local supermarket was recently vandalized badly during one of the wars.  I asked the public transport driver how often does this happen, and he told me “often”.  

Related to this is problem is the serious pandemic of intoxication and poor state of being of the native people.  Some of the immigrants I talked to perceive this as a problem of the native Papua people, who are often branded as lazy and addicted to alcohol and drugs.  But I refuse to believe this; I refuse to believe that a certain race is more “prone to alcoholism” or more lazy than others.  The Papua people got into this problem because of something has happened to them in the past; something unjust, something that violently took them out from the lives they know and comfortable with.  The fact that the problem worsens is only a testament that the cause of the problem is getting stronger, not weaker.  

I don’t have to search very deep to find similar problems everywhere else.  Just look at the displaced aborigines community in Australia, who also struggle with alcoholism, violence, drug abuse, lack of education and poor living condition.  Or look at the native american communities who struggle with the same things in the american continent. 

We have to face it: modernization and migration that violently displace the indigenous people, make them worse off from their earlier lives and ignorantly dismiss their problems are not good progress.  It is no different than looting at the grandest scale.  It is colonization at the highest and most shameful degree.  It is happening right now, and worsening every day.  Just because the indigenous people do not go to the media to scream and shout about it does not mean the problem does not exist. 

To be continued…

2015

Three hours left till the sun sets
In this last day of the year
It's so hot, as hot as it gets
Not a cloud in the sky so clear

"Time to write some reflection", I thought
review the year that's been hard to explain
But inspiration escaped me like a drought
I wrote, delete and wrote again in vain

So I try to go with words that rhyme
Hope it will help the fuzzy mind
Clarity should come just in time
So here I go with my rewind

It's been a year of courage
Started a business and listened to my heart
Free like a bird out from a cage
Worked hard like a horse with a cart

It's been a year of solitude
Wrote my first book in my house on the hill
Kept at it with a positive attitude
Believe in myself, I said, if not who will

It's been a year of wonder
My body needed some TLC
'Slow down' that's the doctor's order
I healed through prayers, herbs and the help of my lemon tree

It is hard to find a word with all the meaning
2015 is just a start of everything
Faith and Courage have kept me going
and Gratefulness I offer each night and morning

Melbourne, 31 December 2015

Talk is cheap

Jiro-san is a sushi maker who owns a nice sushi joint in Singapore's East Coast road.  He is not related to the famous Jiro from Japan, who happened to also own a world-renowned sushi restaurant.  Jiro-san of Singapore just happened to share the same name.

In fact, Jiro-san of Singapore never had any experience in sushi making before he decided to open the joint 15 years ago.  He was working in a Japanese company as a "salaryman", a term that the Japanese like to use to describe the nine-to-fivers.  One day, he was told that his services were no longer needed and he was let go.  Stuck in Singapore in the late 1990s, he decided to do something radical: he stayed and took on a brand new field of sushi making.

His joint is now one of the "best kept secrets" of Singapore - where only the lucky few would know and have the chance to visit.  He never advertise and relies solely in word-of-mouth.  I happened to be sitting in front of him in his restaurant a day after he had an operation.  I asked him, why is he not delegating, despite the pain he had to endure standing for hours behind the sushi bar while his wound is not yet fully healed.  He said in his broken English that he tried, and he could not find any one to fit the bill. Therefore he had to return as soon as possible.  So Jiro-san has been working in this mode, 7 nights a week, for the last 15 years.

Jiro-san clearly takes his job seriously, you can see in the way he slices the fish to the way he places the sushi on the plates.  But he is also a struggling businessman.  Singapore rental market has gone up tremendously. When he started 15 years ago, he did not have the foresight that the rent cost will blow up out of proportion compared to his income.  He also did not have the money, the opportunity or the interest to buy the property he was renting - so he kept on renting the place since he started.

A couple of foreign expatriates were sitting in front of him last night.  I happened to be the only other customer left, and I over heard their comments:

The wife: ".....so, after all these years, you have never bought a property"....
The husband: "...if this things go up-and-up-and-up, you will suffer.....  If you were to buy this property a long time ago, the value of the property would have beaten any income from your sushi shop...."

It hit me when I heard those comments, how arrogant and unhelpful these two ignorant expatriates had been. Jiro has to endure the rent problem every night he closes his shop.  Yet he still have to ensure that he slices the best sushi for the customers, just like he did 15 years ago.  And here they were, a couple of ignoramus who has never done anything as good as he does, lecturing him about buying properties.

At that moment I felt like I needed to stand up and tell them, that if Jiro were to spend his time speculating on properties, we won't be sitting here enjoying his sushi. Also, if they can't say anything useful, please shut up.  But I decided to stand up, paid the bill and left.  I managed to escape the rest of the verbal garbage - but poor Jiro had to endure it until the end while serving the sushi.

Talk is cheap. People should do more, and talk less. 

The Transient Life

A bright red-blue-green Rosella flew in front of me as I stood in my back yard porch in Australia, looking at the mountains, holding to a glass of red wine.  To my surprise he landed on a branch not more than an arm’s length from where I stood.  He may have mistakenly thought that the wine glass was a cup of delicious corn kernels.  He stood there for a while, staring at me as I admire the amazing mix of colors of his feathers, wishing that I had real corn kernels to give.

As I stood there, I thought, this is how life should be……the bird in the tree, a glass of wine and the mountain at the background.   The bird flew away and I went back to my house.

I stood at the junction of 16th and K street of Washington DC.  I looked along the 16th street and saw the White House at the end of the street.  I walked across the street to the office that I had to go to, one block away.  The city was clean as always, the smell of coffee from the café next door was tempting.  The monuments and the flowers in the parks make the city feel cozy.  An African American lady who worked as the security guard of the office building greeted me with a smile.  She said – “how are you today?”.  I returned the gesture.  I met with 3 of my colleagues, an immigrant from China, an old Caucasian man, and an African American lady.  They told me that if I am hungry there is a very nice Indian food joint just around the corner.

As I stood among them, I thought, this is how life should be…..the beautiful city, a rich mix of culture. The meeting finished after a couple of hours and I made my way to the airport.

I alighted from bus number 10 in East Coast Road in Singapore.  I walked to a hawker center selling one of my family’s favorite foods, the vegetarian wanton noodle.  The stall lady-owner greeted me and asked how my family and I are doing.  I answered that we are doing well but we have just moved to Australia.  She asked me when will we return, and I said I do not know.  I ordered one dish and asked for a cup of my favorite tea to come with it.  She made me a slightly up-sized dish as a nice gesture.  I heard familiar noise of other hawkers working in the background as I enjoyed my comfort food.

As I sat there, I thought to myself, this is how life should be…..beautiful food, familiar people, familiar places.  The food was finished in no time and I rushed back home to pack up and return to Australia.

Everything in life is transient.  Love what you do, love who you are with, love everything around you.