Struggle with online social networking
The past year I have been mostly active with various online social networking sites. Trying to find the new ground to update and share thoughts. The only result is to have truncated my continuity with this place while not completely migrating to another place.
The way life is - is making people writing less and less, shorter and shorter. Who has the time to read War and Peace now. Time is still the same, it is the rhythm of time that has gotten much faster and the intervals are much shorter.
I’ve lost the use of my laptop - abandoned to be factual. I live by my iphone, surfing, listening, viewing photos, talking, calenaring… I live a condensed life on this iphone. For the first time in my life, I fear of losing one object for an extended period of time. Hopefully no thief will read this entry.
Filed under Life 超然物外 | Comment (1)Reflection on Feng Shui
Is Feng Shui superstition or a science? I was taught that Feng Shui was people’s superstition when I was growing up. But for some reason, I was drawn by its mysteriousness. Upon the added experience in life, I’ve learned to think of Feng Shui as the wild western frontier to the established science.
In my opinion, if something cannot be proven by scientific methods, it cannot be rendered as superstition. In a scientific way, this thing is only unexplainable at the moment. Perhaps, at a later time, our science will have the capability to prove its validity. What really irked me is a lot of the so called science based people would simply dismiss the possibility that such item can ever be an object of science. I think such behavior is indeed an unscientific way of dismissing a lot of the future potentials. It is also a disrespect to our ancestors. Thousand-year-old practices such as Feng Shui has to have some validity to have many nations’ top scholars in the past to study and utilize in their every day practice. Call it a superstition is simply renouncing the way how our ancestors used to live!
Feng Shui is a science of the invisible “luck” element which is so visibly present in everyone’s daily life. Our ancestors discovered that there are ways to increase our chances of better fortune by aligning ourselves with the universe. One analogy I read about which I thought was quite astute describes the science of Feng Shui roughly as follows:
In driving, the red traffic light tells you when to stop at an intersection. In an average person’s life, there is no traffic regulations, one simply keeps on living one’s usual routine even if one is up against odds. Feng Shui helps one to navigate more efficiently and successfully through the streets of life.
Why there are a lot of people don’t believe in it? Because, a true Feng Shui master is hard to come by. What we see in bookstores, or most often we encounter a so called Feng Shui master, is not the genuine Feng Shui. Feng Shui science is too “holistic” or too complicated for everyone to understand. The true knowledge of Feng Shui cannot be learned by books alone. For those who blindly follow these kinds of Feng Shui, it is a practice of superstition.
Filed under Fun 吃喝玩樂 | Comments (2)Blog with iphone support!
Finally coming back to tend my abandoned patch of blog field. After the upgrade, I noticed the added support with iPhone. Now I will not have any excuses for not writing!
Filed under Life 超然物外 | Comment (0)The Paperman
Recently got a circulated junk email regarding an art contest. I was intrigued by the clever paper art - all work was done on a single sheet of paper. Upon checking it further, I found out it was all created by one artist - Peter Callesen from Denmark.
His humor, cleverness, attention to detail and his philosophy in general really appealed to me.
Filed under Fun 吃喝玩樂 | Comments (3)Consequences of Being Green
We’ve decided to be more environmentally responsible this year. So starting early on, we’ve been buying green produces, reusable bags, I stopped shopping for leather handbags (still allowing leather shoes). The most significant change has been trying to live with only one car.
The result of this decision is that it is costing us more money right now to be green. In a sense that I feel to be environmentally conscious may not be an affordable option for everyone. After a couple months of trying, here are the reasons why:
1. Carbon emission. For a hard working family with each person working at least 10-12 hours a day, it is nearly impossible to combine their car usage into sharing one car. (I have many such clients with marginal income and 3 household cars as a result.) The ride sharing, public transportation dependent scenario will work for a regular one job person, not for people have 2-3 jobs a day. They have very little time to waste on travelling.
2. The reusable bag. It is a good idea to eliminate the plastic bags, but I have found a reusable outlet for my plastic bags by using them as my trash bags in various rooms of my house. Now that the trash bags are gone, I have to buy for trash bags - an additional expense. For the underprivileged, hardworking people, they wouldn’t want to spend extra $$ from their already tight monthly budget.
3. Green produce. To support the green business, we’ve been buying the produce and other daily needs from the whole foods. In short, these items are significantly more costly than the average products. Looking at the faces shopping at the Whole Foods, I think these are mostly middle class (at the least) people. My 3-car per house hold clients will shop only at Shaws and stop and shop. What they usually buy are frozen foods and canned foods with a little fresh veggies because they lacked time to prepare and shop food.
This way, being green is not really an option for the American working class. It may take some time before the costs of things get down (will it? now that all over the world we see the $$ value plunge?).
Filed under Life 超然物外 | Comment (0)
