The Asian mind (Part #1)

My lady works hard. Really hard. 11 hours a day, and up to six-and-a-half days a week. Like the typical Chinese of ancient times, and even of modern times, she knows no Sabbath, except on those lucky days when she can get a weekend replacement.

I have often (and unfairly so, since I have always belonged to the cushy class of five-day-workweek wage-earners) chastised her about the way she works, and how I find it unacceptable for a balanced life. Today's conversation was no exception. Except that I pointed out that in the West, such an unbalanced working life is generally considered unacceptable. Her terse response: "We are not in the West."

As much as I treasure and jealously safeguard my Asian heritage, this one statement brought home something that I have always disliked about the Oriental mind (and no malice intended to my lady, whom I love dearly): Pessimism and fatalism. Where tag lines like "that's the way things are", "it's already done, we cannot change it", "there's nothing we can do about it" paralyse and cow the psyche into accepting the unacceptable, into believing that such is the dismal and natural order of things, that there is not a sparkle of hope beyond what is set before us in the path of Life.

That is why I like the Western mind. Why? The Westerners know the value of dreaming and hoping. Of holding on to that vision of better things to come. Asians think that dreaming is a waste of time. Westerners believe that a dream can be a start of something wonderful. My answer? Let all those wonderful modern creations from the West - borne out of nothing more than a dream - speak for themselves.

I am not suggesting that we pull the wool over our eyes and live in denial of certain stark realities in life. But making fatalism an emphasis in our mindset cripples our faculties, makes us jaded, and takes away the hope of a better tomorrow.

As an Asian myself, I humbly submit that this is one of the failings of the Asian mind. It makes for a mournful and miserable existence.

A shittier week I've never seen...

Here's the roll-call...

1. Monday: Tenant called, the living room couch has finally given way due to old age, the springs sticking out like an impaler's spear.
   
2. Tuesday: The girlfriend chewed me up for making last-minute changes in dinner plans.
3. Wednesday: Two weeks' leave of absence from climbing to recuperate from my near-death experience, and the result is a thoroughly dismal performance at the wall.
   
4. Thursday: My Broadband modem died on me (probably a lightning surge).
   
5. Friday: My bed collapsed (poor build quality, coupled with my penchant for rolling about in my sleep).
6. Saturday: I backed my car out of my driveway and straight into a 4WD parked on the side (it was late at night, and the bloody thing was black), and my bumper now needs a new coat of paint.
   
7. Sunday: My dog chewed up my driver's license (dropped it on the lawn the night before, and Trixie hasn't quite outgrown her teething stage and her inexplicable taste for plastic yet).

Anyone care to up the ante?

A near brush with Death

It is one thing to read or hear about the inherent dangers of extreme sports such as rock-climbing. It is quite another thing to personally experience it yourself, and yet be lucky enough to escape – not only with your life, but also with your limbs relatively intact.

I had such an experience over the recent weekend, during what should have been just another regular outdoor excursion to Batu Caves’ “Damai Wall”. While attempting to clip-in at the third bolt of a 6a route, my lack of jurisprudence in selecting a secure foothold caused my left foot to suddenly slip without warning. My belayer suffered severe rope-burn, and I free-fell 5-6 metres to the ground.

Upon hitting the ground with a thud, the first thing I instinctively did was to stand up. I guess it was my mind telling me to do confirm that yes, I was still alive.

By God’s grace, I was spared the very real possibilities of broken limbs, concussion or paralysis. The ground underfoot was grass on soft wet ground. I also miraculously landed on my most well-endowed and least damageable part of my body – my big fat ass. Of course, some degree of collateral damage was to be expected – I suffered lacerations on my left knee and right ankle, and I believe I may have baldy bruised my right ankle.

One of the veteran climbers on-site whom I recounted the event to, told me that I was, to date, the third casualty of that particular route. The first casualty slipped off the fourth bolt and crashed to the ground, but also escaped unscathed. The second casualty was the result of an overly-short rope length (he used a 50m rope on a route that was over 25m in height^*), causing him to plummet 10 metres to the ground, and landing him in hospital.

Some degree of reflection on increased safety awareness, be it during rock-climbing or daily activities in general, is called for here. But it is also a time for some degree of reflection on Life, to be thankful to God that I was spared the loss of it, and to appreciate all that it has to offer.

* The theoretical minimum required rope length is twice the height of the route. An additional 5m as a minimum is required for tie-in purposes.

Urban life? I crave the simple life

This week marks my second business trip to Norway (the first was with my previous company of employment). Norway ranks among the richest and most developed countries in the world, and was voted the Best Country To Live In for five (5) straight years.

One thing I have come to realise while being here for just a few days, is that a society's high degree of maturity does not necessarily equate to a high degree of urbanisation and development. Norway is at the forefront of a multitude of echnologies, ranging from biomedical to industrial technology.

Here I am in Mo I Rana, one of Northern Norway's industrial hubs. And yet, the residents - numbering just under 30,000 - lead a simple and straightforward life, free from the trappings of high-strung urban development so characteristic of Asian cities and industrialised regions.

Families still live in cosy cottages along the hillsides - not in high-rise, densely-populated condominiums. Weekends are spent taking the children to picnics, hikes in the forest, or even ski-ing - not to crowded and air-conditioned shopping malls, theme parks and arcades. Children complete their education, settle down with their high-school sweethearts and start their little families early - not get caught up with the paper-chasing, and the complicated, stressful and multi-geographical career paths that inevitably lead to multiple-failed relationships and settling down late, if even at all.

Asian urban life makes for a complicated life. I certainly do crave for the kind of simple yet developed lifestyle that the Norwegians here enjoy, while retaining the good parts of Asian culture. Regretfully, such a perfect balance does not yet exist in Asia, at least to the best of my knowledge. Where I come from, a comfortable life still requires the trappings of the paper-chase and high-strung corporate life. And all at the expense of a simple and happy life.

The natural cycle of life

A few days after I published my recent blog entry “On Ageing – Age is just a number”, I received comments from friends (both verbal and written), heaping praises on me that I had finally seen the light, that there is no need to rush through life as if there is no tomorrow, and that I should finally stop putting pressure on myself to get on with ‘the important things in life’.

Now, while I still hold onto the opinion that age is just a number, I believe some of my readers have misconstrued my words to mean “take your time with life, there is no rush”. On the contrary, if you read and understand carefully what I wrote, what I meant was “live life to the maximum, as if there is no tomorrow”.

I believe there is such a thing as a natural cycle of life. There are periods in life where you do certain things. And if, for any reason, you did not get down to doing those things during that period as allocated by Nature, then you bite the bullet and let it go. Attempting to “live out your youth” when you are already in the adult phase, is an invitation for disaster. You know why? Because it all starts to stack up and snowball on you. You drag your youthful lifestyle all the way into your physical adult life. And then when you have entered your thirties, you suddenly realise, “Oops, I have not actually gotten down to living my young adult life yet, because I was so caught up being blissfully youthful back in my twenties”. And them you struggle to live out your twenties life when you are already in your thirties. The result is, you end up playing a lifetime of catch-up, never actually living your natural age.

What I am basically saying is this: There is a time to be a kid. There is a time to be a teenager. There is a time to be a yuppie. There is a time to date. There is a time to get married. There is a time to have kids. There is a time to watch the kids grow up. There is a time to grow old. To live those phases or life too early or too late can be really jangling to the soul. You feel as if you are totally out of sync with your physical and psychological self.

You start to look around. You see your friends happily married with kids, and you wonder what the f**k you were doing in your mid-to-late twenties, blissfully squandering the years on youthful endeavours that, no doubt life-enriching, should really have been out the window when you were in your teens or in college. And then you take a good hard look at the last ten years, and realise that you have allowed your life to go on auto-cruise, and the boat has gone way off-course.

By all means, live your life to the full, experience all that life has to offer. But while you are doing all that, it is worthwhile to keep regular tabs on what phase of life you are in at the moment, and what are those basic things you should be doing. And if you have already missed out on any of those phases, perhaps it would do well for you to just let it go, move on and get with the programme.

On ageing

Age is just a number.

Close friends sometimes marvel at how, at my age, I still continue to flog my body with less-than human workout regimes as if I were still in my twenties – carrying a backpack with aluminium pallets up a steep hill, running on the treadmill with a steep incline, and doing pull-ups and dips with a dumbbell dangling from my ankles – and ending each workout session with drool from my lips, gasping for breath, and looking as if I were about to pass out.

I take mild offence whenever friends, relatives or the occasional passer-by tells me, “Ah, but you are not as young as you used to be, so you should not expect your body to perform the way it used to when you were in your twenties.” Now, I am not saying that I am blissfully denying and ignoring the unavoidable fact that I am physically ageing. But at the same time, allowing that fact to be the damper that retards my determination to push the envelope of my physical limits will allow and cause my body to atrophy and deteriorate according to my biological age. On the other hand, if I condition my body to consistently withstand the physical strains, it will remain at an above-average performance level belying its true biological age. Let the vast number of veteran marathon runners in their sixties, who leave the mediocre folks who are a full generation or two younger than them panting in the dust, bear testimony to this.

Ageing is not limited to the physical. A lot of it has to do with the mind, too. And by that, I mean attitude. By their mid-thirties, most people tend to stop exploring new horizons. By their sixties, many would have completely ceased even learning new things. They become risk-averse and unreceptive to new ideas, preferring to remain within their comfort zone and life-long habits. And because it results in laziness of the mind, those little grey cells stop working and start degenerating.

I marvel at the 18^th century mathematician Carl Frederick Gauss who, in his old age, kept his mind active by acquiring new languages just for the fun of it. It was his way of keeping his already razor-sharp mind – machined to perfection by years of research and analysis into calculus and algebra – active till the very last day of his illustrious life. Friends wonder why, at thirty-something, I bother to indulge in such meaningless and non value-added activities as reading mathematics books and studying archaic Chinese dialects. True, insofar as pragmatic life is concerned, they may be ‘non value-added’ activities. But to me, they definitely add value to my mind. I am keeping my mind active by allowing it to indulge in, and feed upon things that stimulate and interest me.

The girl in my life has often chided me for my occasionally acting very boyish, or even childish, especially in my expressions of love and affection. I still enjoy the simple joys of teenage-like love – pummeling with my girl’s fingers, the occasional pout, bear hugs and butterfly kisses. To me, these simple actions are a manifestation of how, at thirty-something, I still see love through rose-coloured glasses – cute and innocent, without the need for all the trappings of a jaded “been there, done that, so let’s just get on with it” adult life. A lot of the joy in love is spawned from having a pure and positive attitude towards it. People wonder why love seems to fade away and die out as married couples get older. The answer is simple: They have lost sight of what it once meant to be young and in love. For love is one thing that the harsh realities of adult life should not, and must not, be allowed to dampen and kill off.

Whether we like it or not, we are ageing by the moment. So, the way I see it, why make the journey all the more depressing by constantly reminding ourselves of it, and allowing it to dampen our mental and physical activities, when there is no reason why we cannot slow it down by constantly pushing the mental and physical envelope? It is not about being old – it is about thinking, acting and living young that keeps us truly young.

Age is just a number.

Smooth Jazz

Okay, it's confirmed – I am now a true believer in the Smooth Jazz genre. After two decades of muddling through various music genres - ranging from classical to Cantonese pop, before finally settling down to jazz – I think I have finally zeroed in on one that really stirs my loins.

I have been a jazz fan for more than decade now. It was Traditional Jazz, particularly the jazz trio ballads (piano, double bass, percussions) made famous by the Bill Evans Trio and his contemporaries, that started off my love for jazz. The soft gentle melody and mysterious chords from the piano intertwining with the pulsating staccato's from the double bass' strings, the swing beat from the drums and brushes lurking in the shadows of the music – all blending together to form a musical mosaic of romanticism.

I had always believed that traditional jazz’s trio ballads defined the pinnacle of what I sought in my quest for the music genre that I loved. However, a trip to SkyFM (http://www.sky.fm/smoothjazz/) convinced me otherwise. Therein, I found something in there that, I have to admit, the traditional jazz genre of the 1960's seemed to lack.

In just one 2-hour sitting, I had already singled out three tracks that I loved:

• Gregg Karukas – Looking Up
• Euge Groove – Just Feels Right
• Joe McBride & The Texas Rhythm Club – Oi Gata
  

If I had to choose a word to define that extra element, I would have to say it is sensuality. That perfect cocktail of harmonic mystery, romanticism and sensuality. The scenes conjured by these two sub-genres are contrasting. Traditional Jazz trio ballads transport me to a dimly-lit bar, soft cushions, a glass of port in my hand, and the woman I love sitting beside me in gentle embrace. Smooth Jazz transports me to a beach setting, the gentle breeze cascading upon the palm leaves, the waves lapping the shore, the sunset upon the horizon.

Smooth Jazz melodies tend to be more well-defined than their Traditional Jazz counterparts, their rhythms a combination of rock and Latin. Perhaps somewhere in that combination lies the middle ground I seek between the creativity of Traditional Jazz, the sentimentality of contemporary rock ballads, and the sensuality of the Latin beat.

Don't get me wrong. It is not that I no longer enjoy the Traditional Jazz trio setting where the seeds of my love for jazz were first planted. Also, not all Smooth Jazz music contains that perfect combination of harmonic creativity, mystery and sensuality that I seek. But as and when I stumble upon the occasional smooth jazz track that brings that added touch of sensuality, it evokes the kind of passions that pulsate through my veins. Without sounding titillating in any way, if ever there was a music genre that could truly be called music for making love, my vote would go to Smooth Jazz.

I suspect this is but a transient phase in my lifelong journey of music. In all probability, I will eventually settle down to a steady state where my love for jazz will straddle between both Traditional and Smooth – and which one I prefer will be temporal, and governed by my mood and surroundings.

Duets (Part#2)

Okay, I realise this post is quite unoriginal, given that I am plagiarising song lyrics off the Internet. However, since this particular song has gotten me captivated in Loveland for a full week now, I thought I would share it with my readers. The lyrics bear an uncanny parallel to my love-life at this moment. :)

Plus, I have thrown in a link to a 30-second clipping of the song for good measure (in order to listen to the full track, you have to sign up with Imeem.com... don't worry, it's free).

Till I Loved You
(Don Johnson & Barbra Streisand)

Nothing lived, nothing grew
Till I loved you
Every sky ever gray, never blue

You were my friend, good friend
And sometimes I would wonder
Could the one to save me
Possibly be you?

I was lost, I was blind
Till I loved you
Wouldn't see, couldn't find someone new

You were my friend, dear friend
I held you close to my heart
But I never thought that I'd feel the way I do
Until that certain moment when I loved you

And now I can't ever imagine
My living without you
It seems I spend all of my time
Thinking only about you

Once I dreamed in a dream I would find you
Never thought that the dream would come true
Until that curtain lifted, parted, drifted from you
Until that certain moment when I loved you

Until that certain moment
Certain moment when I loved you
When I loved you

Nothing lived, nothing grew
Till I loved you
Every sky ever gray, never blue
Empty days, empty nights
Sometimes I wonder
Could the one to save me possibly be you?

Ooooohh… I was lost, I was blind till I found you
Couldn't see, couldn't find someone new
You came along, stole my heart completely
And I thought, could the one to save me possibly be you?

http://orman.imeem.com/music/IctVIgaB/barbra_streisand_don_johnson_till_i_loved_you/

Duets

Friends who know me and my taste in music consider me a die-hard mainstream jazz/swing lover, with an occasional craving for classical music. However, I do actually listen to and enjoy contemporary pop. From time to time, there is the odd modern love song that I would hear on the radio, and it would capture my attention for that entire day.

Within this fairly broad genre of modern love songs, it is the male-female duets that take centre stage. I think it is the intertwining of the male and female voices in perfect harmony, crescendo-ing to the climax of the upper registers, as they passionately and unreservedly express their love for each other, that really stirs up the romantic mood in me.

Admittedly, not all love duets retain my attention and interest. The tune, the instrumental arrangement, the lyrics, the voices of the singers – they all have to blend perfectly into a kaleidoscope of musical colours, throwing me into a hitherto-unknown otherworld of romance.

Here (in rough chronological order of the first times I heard them) are my all-time favourites:

1. Cliff Richard & Olivia Newton-John “Suddenly”
2. Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore”
3. Andrea Bocelli & Celine Dion “The Prayer”
4. Gary Valenciano & Regine Velasquez “The Perfect Year (from the Broadway “Sunset Boulevard”)”
5. Russell Watson & Cleopatra Higgins “Someone Like You”
6. Danny Chan & Sally Yeh “等 (Waiting)”

Well, okay… I admit not all of them are what one would categorise as happy love songs (e.g. “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore”) – or even love songs (e.g. “The Prayer”), per se! A couple of them are slowly starting to fall out of my favour (I recently dropped Michael Jackson & Siedah Garrett’s “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” from the above list, as I eventually found the lack of harmonic creativity rather stultifying to my romantic senses), as they are overwritten by new discoveries (which may not necessarily be new songs, but songs I newly-discovered).

Recently, I heard another lovely duet on Light Radio. It’s not a new song, but this was the first time I had heard it. The music and lyrics was captivating enough for me to seek out a recording of it (thanks a million for finding it for me, Kevin!). And listening to it always brings to mind that special woman present in my life today.

The song was “Till I Loved You” by Don Johnson and Barbra Streisand. It’s from Barbra Streisand’s title album.