Such a struggle doing a balancing act

It's a struggle trying to do all the things we have to do.Try multitasking between marketing,cooking,cleaning,laundry,preparing your work,trying to finish reading a book,dabbling in painting and trying to exercise with a demanding child who wants your full attention to talk and listen to him.

         How do people find time in their lives to write a novel?According to Firoo
zen Dumas


"I write in spurts.When I'm writing,I get up at 4.00am without use of an alarm clock.Once a story is in my head,I'm possessed and the only thing I can do is write like mad.This means the house gets very messy and dinner is sometimes frozen.I do not read or go to the movies when I am writing because I can't concentrate on anything else.it's really a challenge trying to be a writer and a decent mom."

So on the next holiday in Thailand,I'm gonna go around observing people going about their daily lives and make notes on quirky characters.I'm also going to seek out a stint at a retreat that I don't feel obliged to talk or listen to anyone so that I'm quiet to be alone with my thoughts and continue my sci fi story writing that has been abandoned.I'm also hoping to look for the same fortune teller that the Italian travel writer wrote in his novel 'A fortune teller told me" which send him not travelling by planes at all for a year as the prediction that he may meet his end flying in the air.
Mom did an astrology prediction when I was young that say I would meet with a devastating life changing crisis in mid life but I would survive and get my life back on track.So let's see what the Siamese astrologer will say about my fate in life.Hmm to believe in it or not .That's like living with a sword dangling over the head.

We are migrants like our primitive ancestors

Somehow our ancestors moved from one continent to another looking for food and shelter.Then later some became early explorers and settlers in alien land,migrating to look for freedom and land.
Yesterday when I did the document on Universal human Rights,the kids were bored as there was a lot of reading of abstract ideas and academic language.So I cooked up a teamwork game today. We pushed the tables to one side ,leaving an empty space ,then the ngirls became immigration officers while the boys were refugees who are leaving the boats and trying to run to land on the opposite side of the class.The immigration officers held paper batons made of rolled up papers and try to hit the refugees to drive them back up the boat.If caught they are thrown into a detention centre witha guard.The rest of the refugees will try to rescue the inmates and then together run to the alien land.There was so much tension and screams and running around.
          Then we cooled down and discussed the reasons why people become refugees.I let them listen to the music video by Sting on song Inshallah.They were engrossed.later we divided them into a debate with two teams one the immigration and the other the refugees spokesperson.It was wonderful,they researched the topic and debated passionately and it was worthy to see young Malaysian debating in a gentlemanly manner ,fighting with facts and not emotions.
      democracy requires us to train the youths to think critically and argue logically
there is hope for these young malaysians.Kudos I feel optimistic again.

My favourite readings

Just read David Byrne ,ex Talking head and his extensive collection of books and how he let his concert goers have a chance to borrow some of the books from his library when he shipped them from New York to England.Heck a few of the books in his library are so freaking intriguing to read like the history of Jazz,bachata or bossa nova.I would love to have a chance to read some of them.
           Some of the reading materials I remember having read when young and impressionable was Heidi, a swiss children's storybook,the little Prince,antoine de exupery,the Arabian Nights, and as I grew older,Greek mythology,Journey to the West,Romance of the Three Kingdom,Tuesday with Morries,Italian writer  The solitude of Prime Numbers,M Gandhi's My experiment with Truth,the Mosquito Coast.The Asian future -Dialogue for change.
            When we open a book,we are given a chance to travel to a foreign place,to travel back in time or forward to the future.They are a treasure trove of talking heads.We are richer for having the chance to read

Music as meditative tool

Music has the ability to soothe and tame the wild thoughts that reverberates in our brain. To empty the trash in the bin that's up your neck,music is a useful tool.
      This morn,Jun showed me a youtuber ,a Thai DJ that did a mix of Emimem's music with a Cambodian monk chanting at super fast speed.I thought it's freaking awesome to mix rap with Pali chants -the young might be drawn to the rhythmic beat of modern rap and chants.So I suggested he asked his newly ordained friend who is a gifted musician to create Metta Blues or Jazzy sutta.Cool and good for stress reliever.
Music is music-there's no good music or evil music

Heavy Metta

I've got the blues

Aint a cent in my pocket

And that car I've sold

That chick magnet sure draws the hot chicks

It got fire man and we just seem to click

I need some heavy metta

Coz my blues aint ever getting betta

Da cops think I'm a low life robber

When i pull my hoodie over my head

Think I'm gonna scream This is a stick up,put up your arms

And empty that cash register into the sack

When they see me and pullover

They jab the stick onto my back

Shudup or I'll fire

Shudup you F...g nigga

What dat in your sack

Which pack you belong to

No sir i work alone

Coz I'm the music man

That's my guitar in the sack

And I aint belong to any pack

Coz I  only sing the heavy metta

To get over the blues and make you feel betta

My gig will blow your brains outta

More powerful man than any speed

I don't wanna go messing around drugs,no need

Coz my music will blow your brains outta

All you need to chill with is heavy metta.

Bro heavy metta  much betta ,much betta 

Listen to the blues on my guitta , my guitta

An ending finally

The ending is here and now a new beginning awaits.Freedom ,how does it taste?
                It's the wind that  rustles the trees -moving but unseen
                It's the flock of birds leaving the sheltering trees as it flies upwards to an open sky
               It's a candle flickering in the darkness
              

I think the greatest blessing Chief Priest has given me is the gift of good health.Health is wealth but we take it for granted until we've lost it so thanks for blessing me with it.

"Some persons are like letters carved on a rock,they easily give way to anger and retain their angry thoughts for a long time.Some are like letters written in sand;they give way to anger also but the angry thoughts quickly pass away.Some men are like letters written in water;they do not retain their passing thoughts.But the perfect ones are like letters written in the wind,they let abuse and uncomfortable gossip pass by unnoticed.Their minds are always pure and undisturbed.
                                                                                Ven. Dhammananda

Change starts from small to BIG.

I've come to believe that changes won't come overnight.It begins when I mindfully make small changes that I will see the result not in a day or week but years down the road.So when I plant a seed,I might not live to enjoy the fruit of my labour but my next generation will reap the reward.So those who replant deforested area will see future generations enjoying a greener environment and cleaner air.Those who choose organic farming will leave a richer,fertile soil for the next generation of farmers.Those who consume farmed fish allow the wild marine life to spawn and multiply and increase fast depleting seafood.
          The small steps I take seems insignificant but my conscious choice in making the small steps invariably contribute to big changes when masses of us do it too.
I stopped consuming red meat two decades ago,changed to a more active lifestyle, practising yoga,swimming and running and developed spiritually to train myself to face the adversities of illness and old age.
       I'm now at a stage I'm happy to be me,comfortable in my own skin and confident of who i am and what i stand for.It's been hard giving up my sweet tooth but it's no pain,no gain.The aches and so on are still there but I've started nourishing my body with fresh fruit,vegetable and herbal soups like cordycep flowers and ginseng soup.Where once I was a passive consumer of soap operas,now I've restarted my creative interests in flora arrangement,oil painting,poetry writing and fiction writing.I once thought Tai Chi was slow and boring but  after nearly 9 months of consistent practice,I realised I've developed stronger qi as when the tuina masseur commented on Sunday,my low back aches have gone and when she pressed my acupressure points hard,I used to howl in pain but now my spinal muscles are strengthened,i hardly feel the pressure.
     I'm beginning to enjoy zumba at the park and trying new recipes.The kids keep me young at heart .Gosh yesterday when I quizzed them  on music,I realised the generation gap.Hardly any of the teens know the Beatles ( are they an Irish or US band?),Frank Sinatra or Led Zeppelin or Guns and Roses but they know One OK Rock, Emimem,Green Day,Cold Play and Avenge 7 fold
.OMG, when I heard their attempts at cracking jokes it sounded lame so I guess there a huge perception gap on what is funny.But S made a really funny joke and he's crowned the class clown.
          What do you call what you wear on your bottom?
            "Underwear"
          What do you call what you wear when you go out in the cold?
          " Outerwear"
           What do you call what you wear on your bottom when there are many holes in  it?
          "Not safe to wear"
         What is the wear that can hold a number of things?
          "tupperware"

Haiku on love and loss

Dedicated to the ones who have not fallen

in anguish

A Haiku on " To weather every storm"

The waves come and go

Crashing onto worthless rocks

Shaking the foundations of your life

The darkness will soon be lifted

Leaving behind memories

That you have lived,loved and laughed 

Post modernism

I think of myself as a baby boomer generation,the era born out of challenging the status quo of materialism,consumerism,the deference to traditional institutions,the anti militarism of beatniks and flower power. so as we transition to hipsters,i find being drawn to post modernism-it ranges from the surrealism of Salvador Dali,cubic art of Picasso,organic architecture of Gaudi ,the philosophy of existentialism of French philosophers of Paul Satre,semiotics and deconstructionism of Jacques Derridda and Michael Foucalt's discourse analysis and language empowerment.
          How does the philosophy of postmodernism extend to music,photography,sculptures,fashion,,politics and etc?

Features of post modernism
- anti traditional religious dogmas
-individualistic
-looking at the commonalities between people instead of differences
-anti -authoritarian
-acceptance of diversity
-Truth is relative
-facts are subjective representations


When we look at how the mass media interprets "reality" ,it constructs a world view for its readers and readers need to be taught to read between the lines to see how truth can be manipulated through semiotics of visuals and words.
   The phenomenon of the social media "likes" constructs a view of reality in which attention seekers and egomaniacs are cause for celebration so that these social influencers ger so heady by the number of social acceptance that they risk their lives doing daredevil stunts to get a wider audience as captive market.The other thing is how that social fame translates into profitability of advertisements and commercial endorsements that the power of fame is monetised.Before i "like " anything,I think twice about the effect of that like button that shows my approval and endorsement of that person's actions and I would be wary of liking some behaviour that I find socially outrageous ,scandalous or perverted just NOT to give that person a sense of his or her power to manipulate my preferences and thinking.
       Einstein said the day we lose the skill of interacting using language would be the day technology has reduced us to idiots would be seen in how facial expressions and body language which are how primates communicates feelings and opinions had been degraded to universal symbols of emojis,giffs.emoticons and abbreviated LOLs so much so that human communication would lose that subtlety of the inference and nuance of words,tones and facial and gestures to express meaning and we literally degenerate to a generation of autistic behaviours,being unable to interpret body language without the aid of machines like software apps.The autistic apes that we will be changed into might see us using sign language soon.
     I enjoy holding a good conversation with well informed students like the girl from China with whom I discoursed at length about the impact of technology on daily lives and how it could make our lives more convenient but somehow lose our personalprivacy when big data secretly collect information about our preferences,tastes and opinions and sell that for commercialization.Students with critical thinking skills are  nice to interact with when it comes to understanding the new generation.It would be an eye opener for them when issues of gender discrimination is shown through movies like Provoked or plights of migrants in Tsai Ming Liang's Sleepless in KL.Education should be more than a means to earn a living but instill attitudes that there is a wider social issue they may not be aware of.Some of the kids I've taught have gone on to become more compassionate doctors and lawyers and that would be my greatest job satisfaction.

Like a duck to water

The young I'm surrounded by keep me young at heart.The young people take to technology like a duck to water.I'm still learning from my young kids on how to use stickers on smart phone and they're so quick at using electronic gadgets.
               But I'm still a classical traditionalist at heart.I still love musicals,jazz ,rhythms and blues.I love the fusion of old and new in steampunk so Malone's Papa's Time Machine is a steampunk production I'm wishing would be staged in Malaysia.I love the open air in situ staging of Zhang Yimou's Liu San Cha. or Third Sister Liu with the rafts on River Li,the craggy limestone hills and native music.
                I remembered sitting on the steps leading to the Notre Dame church in Paris and remembering the hunchback of Notre Dame and sinking my teeth into French pastry - a quiche lorraine was all I could afford for lunch.Then  at Trevi in Rome, I threw three symbolic coins in remembrance of the song Three Coins in a Fountain.I love the classical songs and literature associated with France and Italy.My next target would be Greece,Central Europe and Portugal with which our links with Kristang arose.
               The past is to be retained as a nostalgia element in cities instead of destroying everything antiquated in a rush to modernise and appear progressive.