何时变得那么急躁？

好想慢下脚步。
但深恐一慢下来，就会跟不上。
于是我学着跳，跑。
不管任何捷径。只为了跟上大伙儿。
就算掉了东西也继续跑着。
跌倒了也继续走。
虽然一直跑着，但不知怎么老是只勉强得赶上。
已经很努力地跑。
已经很卖力地跳。
大家怎么走的那么快？
为什么大家都那么急？
不累吗？

为了交货？
为了成功？
为了金钱？
。。。为了生存？

我为什么急着跟着大家一起跑？

Adapting

I had a nice conversation with the taxi driver awhile ago. The taxi driver was reminscing the older days when he said people were happier as they were more carefree and made do with what they had. People lived more simply and had less troubles. Even when there were inconveniences, they just lived around it.

... The people last time walked in mud puddles, wore dirty clothes but were carefreely happy. Even though things were dirty, we eat food dropped onto the floor, it helped built stronger inmune systems. When we step on a nail, we just squeeze all the bad blood out and we get well after a good night's sleep. Last time we could walk in the dark and sometimes the wild dogs would chase us. But when the dogs weren't around, you'd miss their barks. It's quite funny...

I wonder if I can laugh if I stepped onto a mud puddle, have wild dogs chase me on my way home and the streets weren't lit. These conditions sound horrible in today's terms because we are too used to living well? People sure were more positive back then when they hadn't experienced what could be better. Once we do, it seems hard to go back, or go the country way of life. Seeing how people from the older generation lived through such "adverse" conditions happily, why aren't we as adaptive to the new set of "first-world" problems our new comfortable living conditions have given us?

That's why I keep a journal

“I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It’s a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe. I can smell the air, and I can touch the ground, and I can see the green of the trees. That’s why I want to write a book.”

Haruki Murakami

Advice from a bona fide bummer

Twenty Six

What have I done this twenty fifth year of life? I made two trips already in the span of six months, rode on the back of a stranger's motorbike in a foreign country (the craziest thing I've ever done in m life so far), sang sukiyaki with japanese grannies and an indian taxi driver, bathed in an onsen with all the other grannies and aunties, picked up drawing and find myself liking it more than my time in ADM, took action for my feelings, failed but it's okay, took up a class myself, hmm what else...

Now I'm thinking WHY DIDN'T I DO ALL THESE EARLIER?
It took so long for me to realise that all I had to do was to do it and stop scaring myself by over-thinking. It's usually not as bad as I think it would be.

I have freaking FOUR years of my twenties left. What's out there that I ought to be doing before I hit thirty?

Other than that I've also made many mistakes at work, saw my bad sides and vulnerabilities. I hope all these make me a better person. One of my friends remarked that I can't seem to sit still and just do nothing; think nothing. I... have no comment about that but here's a related good quote from Eat, Pray, Love :

"Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss."

So hey now that you're almost twenty six. Do all the things you've been wanting to but haven't got the guts to. Do all the things you think logically would make you grow and learn something new even if you might not feel like doing it. Be adaptable to change, be willing to fail, and accept and grow with the flaws that make you Huiling. Happy Birthday!

Drama rambling

Today I decided to try an episode of Mad Men (I haven't tried any English dramas since Glee and Lost?) as I well recommended a favourite Asian drama of mine  (Taiwanese to be exact) to my friend who rarely watches any Asian dramas. Upon watching something Don Draper said struck me a chord:

The reason you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons. You're born alone and you die alone and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget. I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one.

Then it got to me that love concepts really do sell big in Asian dramas, particularly Korean and Taiwanese ones. The plot focuses entirely on the relationship between the leads and whether they get together. Look at winter sonata and all that tragic melodrama...

Anyway I recently just finished a japanese drama called "Roosevelt Game" that focuses just on company politics alone. It encompasses the values on how a company can run and succeed idealistically, in a very Japanese spirited manner. It was inspiring and very moving. The executives stood for their work ethics and values despite facing bankruptcy. Running a company was being compared to playing baseball- having trust in your team mates, bonding with all of the staff to work towards something, how to take failures etc. Maybe I described it a little corny here but it was all very "gambare" kind of feeling. A quality I like in my japanese drama taste. When the episode ended, a flash of words saying this drama is fiction brought me back to "Earth" that such good spirited companies probably don't exist, even in Japan.

Dramas are just concepts that feed on your desires and fantasies, that you hope existed.
(I hope I'm not sounding like a pessimist here. Dramas are my brain food, regardless.)

What reality sounds like

Yesterday I sat in a quiet taxi. The driver didn't turn on any radio or music throughout the ride. It wasn't noisy though I could hear the buzz of engines and cars whizzing. There it dawned on me that this is what the world really sounds like. Collisions of particles. Human beings filled the world with so much feelings and expressions, it is almost everywhere. From music, to films to art to games that projects our needs, wants, feelings and desires. An illusion. There I sat in the taxi when all of these projections are switched off, what I heard was merely the sound of particles colliding.

Reflection time

It's strange when a certain period of time you remembered you like to jot down the amazing/mundane things that happen in your life to remember but as you age,  you just let it be and don't feel the need to jot them down anymore. It's not like you forget them but you just don't reflect on them as much? For writing an account of your day means reflecting on your day. I was just browsing my elder cousin's children's instagram (who are currently teens (14-17 years old)), they post photos with long thoughtful accounts of the day, or being thankful to the friends that they have, which is reminiscent of my youth blogging days. When I was happy, I wanted to write all about it so that I won't forget that moment. Now when I'm happy, I just be. Perhaps teens are usually more reflective than adults? I had more time to reflect back then than now for sure. Reflection time = Me time and Me time is when you spend time to think, talk to yourself and iron out messy thoughts. It used to be a way to solve my problems too.

If adults didn't have to spend so much of their time working to earn a living, would we be reflecting more? If somehow our survival is guaranteed and human bodies don't need food and water to survive. What would we be doing with our lives when we all don't need to work anymore? Would we be happier? Would we be lost sheeps wandering without aim?

Ahh.. I like how my train of thought went hypothetical just by thinking out loud.
These are the nice possibilities when you language-fy thoughts out of your brain to written form.

Consumption and Creation now

http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-builders-high/

This article here made me want to write something. It reminded me of the days when I liked blogging. It's quite hard to sit in front of a blank draft without anything in mind to build a piece of writing. That blank slate that I often used to compose some writings was a sacred me time to organise my thoughts. Like when I had strong feelings about something, or something I liked which I wanted to talk about to jot them down or some muse I had. Nowadays there's so many distractions to distract me from the challenge of composing a well-thought out paragraph, it takes much discipline to sit down and finish typing a proper paragraph. That discipline is so easily put away in place of something else that seems to be screaming for you to look at like that cute thing that cat just did.

 There's also so many platforms to express your thoughts conveniently, easily and to a wide audience, drafting a long paragraph like this becomes something difficult- like tweeting or uploading a photo of something or most of the time forget it because I happen to also want to look at my friend's ootd photo today for example. It's so easy to be lazy and be gratified these days that even though knowing the euphoria in building something is much higher than those instant ways in consuming and creation, we can't avoid choosing the latter. Times have changed though I don't quite like this too.