Sometimes I want to ask why

Although I know there's no answer to many or most things in life... but

Why didn't I spend more time with my dad when he was healthy?

Why didn't my boss like me?

Why was she angry with me when we've spent so much time together already?

Why doesn't he love me?

Why did he say he loved me then ignored me?

Why won't they reply to my emails?

Why did she say she wanted to be back in touch then totally disappeared the other day until now?

Why is everybody married and I am not?

Why is my mom so happy all the time?

Why did my dad have to be sick and die of such a horrible disease?

Why did that happen to me when I was young?

Why are people so unfriendly and not say hi back?

Why did she think I'm no good at all?

Why is it that nothing seems to work no matter how much I try?

Why is there always a gap between our dream and the reality?

Why am I feeling alright when everything turns out badly?

Why am I feeling not alright when everything is fine?

Why can't I tell you how I really feel?

Why do I miss you still?

Things that make me happy

A good friend of mine told me she once made a list of the things that makes her happy. So here is mine:

1. Watching a good meaningful movie

2. Dining and drinking with good friends

3. Sleeping in my own bed knowing I don't have to wake up early the next morning

4. Writing journals in a coffee shop somewhere in Japan

5. Swimming in a nice big pool in Bali in the dark night all by myself

6. Talking to someone I love on the phone

7. Reading a good book that makes me laugh or think

8. Cooking for someone I love and for good friends

9. Making coffee on a quiet Sunday morning

10. Listening to Ken Hiari or any good music

11. Travelling - the moment of landing in a destination and walking around a foreign city

12. Knowing that someone I care about thinks about me

l3. Moving to a new flat

14. Interviewing an interesting person and seeing my article being published

15. Teaching and interacting with my students

16. Walking in a garden full of flowers and trees

17. A nice massage by nice hands

18. Writing letters on beautiful papers

19. Visiting the Van Gogh museum or the Tate Museum

20. Being in Bali or Japan

21. Giving a good presentation to a good audience

22. Learning to speak Japanese

23. Learning new things

24. Ceramic - the touch of cold clean clay

25. Practising calligraphy

26. Sake with yakitori

27. A glass of oaky dry wine, white or red

28. Watching a good creative dance performance

29. Watching a clever and funny standup comedy

30. Walking in a big clean supermarket full of fresh produce

31. Breakfast with eggs and bread

32. Visiting good friends outside HK

33. The smell of grass on a rainy day

34. Watching the sunrise

35. Watching my big sister cook in the kitchen and enjoying her food

Moving (1)

I have just moved in a new place yesterday. Thinking back, I have moved more than 10 times in my life:

The first move was big and it wasn't initiated by me. It was when my family moved to Edmonton, Canada from Hong Kong.

The second move was significant in my life when I moved back to Hong Kong by choice and on my own.

Then I began to move from one flat to another.

I moved from a room in a hospital staff quarter offered by a friend to a room rented by my sister's friend.

Then I moved from my sister's friend's room to our family's old house in To Kwa Wan.

Then I moved from To Kwa Wan to Lam Tin.

And from Lam Tin to Discovery Bay where I lived a few special years of my life.

I moved a few times within Discovery Bay too: From Costa Court to Vista Court to La Serene to Bay View.

Then I moved out the island to mid-levels.

And from mid-levels to the New Territories.

Once I went to see a fortune-teller who looked at my "book of life". Without asking any particular questions, he just 'read' me and told me that I belong to Water and the kind that moves (like a river or sea as opposed to dead water like a pond). He said it's my nature to move from one place to another - be it my home, my jobs or the intuition to travel.

It's the first time I heard someone tell me why I do something in a certain way. And for some reasons, I find it soothing to hear that.

I wonder if I carry the blood of the 30-40 million nomads in the world, or not.

But I feel no root in a place, and my home is the wind.

Hoi Ha

I met a beautiful teenger named Hoi Ha (literally meaning "sea shrimp") while visiting a rural village in Guiyang, China. Hoi Ha is 16 years old. She lives in the village and goes to school in the city, Guiyang. I talked to her one afternoon about schooling. This is what she told me.

She likes going to school because it gives her knowledge. Her favorite subject is Maths and she likes learning the equations. English is her worst subject. She says because the condition in China is not good and it isn't easy for them to learn a foreign language. She also says she can't put it in practise and she doesn't see the point of learning it.

Hoi Ha made me think of myself. When I was in school in HK, to the opposite of her, Maths was my worst subject and English my best. I didn't understand any of the equations nor the meaning of learning them but I liked the sound of English words and knowing about all the grammatical rules. I also had a lot of chance to use the language in my school.

What she says does make sense. If there's not much use of a language, how can you learn it well? And what's the point of learning it anyway? She lives in this remote village where it's rare to have visitors like us, let alone a foreigner. So why does she need to learn English? Perhaps it would only be for one's interest and curiosity.

Talking to Hoi Ha made me wonder the meaning of education. For a teenager like her who was born in a farm and will probably marry in just a few years and live in a village all her life, she still finds school interesting because as she says, she can learn new things and meet new friends. She appreciates knowledge. I think learning itself is elating: It gives us pleasure. It makes us confident. It makes us feel good when we learn something - when we have the freedom to learn.

I'm happy for Hoi Ha that she has the chance to go to school and that she enjoys it. (In the village, children often have no extra money to go to school unless they have sponsors.)

Meeting her was the highlight of my trip.

Life is hard

My Poon is 78 years old. He belongs to the Sui people, one of 56 recognised minority groups in China. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shui). He has lived in the village all his life and has never gone outside. I visited his home in a rural village in Guizhou, China and listened to what he has to say about life.

The following is my translation of his story.

****************************************

Life is hard.

When I was seven years old, my father died. After seven years, my mother also died.

I worried about what my life would become.

I got married at 17. My wife and I have 5 sons and one daughter.

They've all left the village to work in the city (Guiyang). They visit us once or twice a year and when we are sick.

I never thought about leaving the village. Where can I go outside? What can I do? Now China's culture is the culture of Hans Chinese.

I hope to stay here with other old people and talk with them.

I hope our roads are flatter that it'd be easier for us to walk around.

{Mabel: What was the happiest moment in your life?}

I haven't felt very happy in my life.

I mean I was happy to see my children growing up. But that's just a normal feeling, not happiness.

When I was small, I worried about my parents.

When my parents died, I worried about life.

When I got married and had children, I worried about my children.

Now I am old, I worry about my wife who is sick in bed. And I worry about my own health.

Life was hard when I was a child. It's even harder when I am old.

Life is full of worries.

China

I am going to China to visit some students in a rural village. Apparently it is in one of the poorest provinces there.

My sister doesn't want me to go. She had a dream the other day - of me having a traffic accident on the road, like one of those news we watch on TV.

China often attracts more negative than positive media reports, from contaminated milk, to fake eggs, to corrupted officials.

It's a country where some, mostly westerners, are intrigued and interested to travel to but where Chinese, well some at least, would rather stay away from.

When the June 4th crackdown happened, I was here in Hong Kong and I saw all the live reports here. What the news and images did for many of us then, I think was a sense of betrayal which led to mistrust towards China, which is now supposed to be 'our' country.

I suppose there is always a dark side in all of us, and in all the nations. Somehow, the dark side of China has always left a question mark in me.

Is it that poverty makes us corrupted
or power does?
Is it a lack of education that blinds us from being honest and truthful
or our eagerness to rise from the world platform?

Whatever it is that twists the nature of human beings, my feelings for you have yet to be defined.

Right now, I feel mixed
and sad.

Gratitude

I am grateful that:

1. I have a shelter in which I feel comfortable living while watching the rain outside

2. I have food available to me and I can order food to be delivered to my door

3. I can study what I like to learn whenever I have time to do it

4. I have the freedom and money to travel

5. I can change my jobs and I have done that a few times

6. I have the choice to do the things that make me happy

7. I can read and have access to books

8. I like to write and I can write in more than one language

9. I can sing and play a beautiful tune

10. I can dance and I enjoy it

11. I have a close family and good friends

12. I've had a few men in my life who have truly cared about me

13. I have good mentors whom I learn from and respect

14. I have good memories of my childhood and of my father

15. I am feeling grateful

Fate

The opposite of fate - the title of Amy Tan's book

What is destined?

What is random?

How do things happen? Why is that nothing happens?

Why am I here? Where would I be if not here?

What am I doing every day in such an office?

Why is that when we are reaching a dream, it doesn't seem right.

What is right? What is wrong?

If a part of picture is not right, does it mean the whole picture is wrong?

What if I am wrong about everything?

Who should tell me if it's right or wrong?

When can I be sure when things are right?

And that my life is not heading the wrong way?

And that I will be alright?

Labyrinth

.Labyrinth originates in Greek mythology. It is a single path leading to the centre. Unlike a maze, one will not be lost in a labyrinth.

I first walked a labyrinth when I went to a CPSI conference in Buffalo many many years ago. It was a a trip in a different phase of my life when people around me were different, and I was different.

I liked it the moment I walked on it; I was taken on a calm journey of: my life at the time and some of my inner thoughts. Suddenly, nothing else mattered but carrying on the walk in front of you, step by step, thought by thought, until you reached the centre.

Some people in front of me actually walked away, stepped on the lines and left in the middle. I felt like something was abandoned when they did that: a thought, an awareness, an experience.

Recently I've discovered a labyrinth in this little garden near where I live. Not exactly but a resemblence because of it's circular pattern, except that there is no centre I can walk towards. When my mind is filled with a lot of random thoughts, I walk on it and I think to myself -

Life is a pattern
that we walk on without noticing
It requires our concentration
on something we may not know
Instead of walking towards it, we may get out of it
when we are annoyed
bored
sad
or lost
But there is a centre in the end

We walk the pattern
of our labyrinth
every day
Until one day
we see the pattern
at the centre

Speaking to the mountain

I live in an apartment facing a mountain. It's very green in the morning and very dark at night.

It reminds me of the big mountains in Canada that my family used to drive a long way to camp nextby. In the morning, we'd make scrabble eggs while watching the mountains wake and at night coffee over the campfire while watching it sleep.

Time seemed to freeze for me then.

Every now and then, I will speak to my mountain. I don't know why but it's a soothing thing to do.

I like speaking to it when I wake up to a hazy morning, with no expection where life is taking me.

I like speaking to it when I am feeling blah and have no answers to things or don't know what to ask.

I have lived in many apartments before, some of them with a spectacular view of the sea or the harbour, but I like my mountain best, perhaps because...

It is huge

It never moves

It is quiet

It always listens

Perhaps one day it will speak to me...

Do you hear what I say

I met this heart-shaped rock when I travelled in Taipei

I went to see a performance at Fringe the other night. It was by a gay singer Rick Lau who's shared the journey of how he came out of the closet, through songs.

There's a song called Quiet Love which made me think and cry...

There's so many languages in the world and many more of the heart...
Are yours and mine the same?

I long for one day that our languages will become one.


*********************************************

Quiet Love by Charles Aznavour

You see, my lover makes no sound
His language is his hands
I watch his fingers dance and try to understand
I try to understand his elegant ballet
In my heart I can hear the words he longs to say
And so I've learned to speak a language he can hear
To tell him how I feel whenever he is near

He lives around the block; it's just a little walk
We'll meet tonight at eight
At eight tonight, we'll talk

Oh my love, oh my love
Quiet love, quiet love
I am calm whenever you are near
And somehow I can hear what your heart wants to say

I have a small surprise to spring on you tonight
I'm learning how to sign
It's something that you do with confidence and ease
I'm clumsier than you; this might come out Chinese

But come and fill my heart; its never danced this way
I'm nervous and it's hard; I have so much to say
I've always been afraid; my dream seemed so unreal
But now I bless this world; for how you make me feel

Oh my love, oh my love
You are shy, so am I
But if you would tell me that it's true
You feel the way I do, then tomorrow we can start
As we are, together we'll grow old
For wise men always say...

That in silence
there's gold