What Kind of Emperor Are You to Yourself?

More than two thousand years ago, a king united a world surrounded by the sea, the high mountains and the deserts after hundreds of years of chaos. Since his realm was larger than any other kings had ruled, he felt the title of king was not great enough for him. So he gave himself the title of emperor. Thus he became the first emperor in this part of the world.

In order to make his empire strong and ever-lasting, this first emperor did many great things. Writing system, money, weights, wheel-gauge and measures were unified throughout his empire. Imperial highways were built from the capital to numerous important cities. These things lasted for extremely long time. Actually, the people in this part of the world still use the writing system unified by the first emperor. He was surely great in these aspects.

On the other hand, he introduced the strictest control over every aspect of lives of his subjects. He levied heavy taxes and imposed forced labour on peasants for many state projects including his gigantic place and tomb. In order to ensure all these civil duties to be observed, a very strict and lengthy penal code was introduced.

He put an extremely strict control on thoughts, too. Books other than the ones approved by the state were banned and burnt. Hundreds of philosophers who criticised the emperor were buried alive.

Do you want to live in such a world?

This reign of terror remained intact while this great yet horrible emperor was alive. But people’s discontent continued to brew… This mighty empire fell just three years after the first emperor’s death. The entire dynasty lasted only for fifteen years, much shorter than any other dynasties that reigned the whole empire later.

So the first emperor of the new dynasty reversed many of totalitarian policies that the previous dynasty had implemented. The penal code was cut to the minimal and tax was not levied in the early years of the new dynasty so that people could recover from the oppression of the ancien regime and from many years of war. Free thinking flourished. And this much more benevolent dynasty lasted for more than 400 years!

Well, this is what everyone in this part of the world knows… But we can apply this history to how we treat ourselves.

You are actually ruling yourself like an emperor. Are you constantly forcing yourself do something you do not want and suppressing what you want in order to make yourself strong and great? Or do you listen to the needs and wisdoms that come from deep inside of you and treat yourself well?

If you are experiencing uneasiness or sudden surges of emotion time to time, then you are a tyrant to yourself, just like the first emperor. But you can feel happy if you change yourself into a ruler of virtue, the one like the first emperor of the second dynasty.

And you can start changing yourself by heeding to the small voice from your soul. It’s very easy so I believe you can do this (only if you are willing)!

A Commotion

In a very small part of Hong Kong's grass root level, I caused a bit of commotion yesterday.

As you see in my profile, I work as a part-time garbage collector in a housing estate in Hong Kong. So does my wife. (But she is a full-time sanitary worker.) Well, she actually arranged this job for me after seeing my severe lack of exercise after I'd started working at home.

My wife brought me yesterday a document from our company (written in Chinese) and told me to sign it. It was a notice of salary cut from HK$700 to HK$600 a month (a 14% cut). So I groaned "A salary cut!" And she suddenly got quite agitated. She had little idea what this paper meant before hearing my groan...

She, a Thai, cannot read Chinese just like the majority of foreigners in Hong Kong. So she did not know what this document was about. But she signed anyway after hearing her boss' explanation. However, he did not tell her a word that it was an agreement form of a salary cut.

After I explained her about this, she started calling her colleagues (who are mostly immigrants from Fujian province, China) and none of them knew exactly what the document was about! They are only half-literate or simply do not bother to read anything. (You can easily imagine that a university graduate is a very, very few exception there. And I am one.) And the manager could have known this. It was his duty to explain to everyone who was supposed to sign this form.

But it seems that everyone signed document as directed by the manager. So it is very likely that this salary cut will be implemented as the majority of employees have agreed to it. I feel sad and angry that the company used the workers’ ignorance and fear of losing jobs… They are already among the most exploited in this city. And Hong Kong's economy is now booming...

I still have no plan exactly how to react to this situation. Anyway, I should calm down first and think about what I can do… Well, I think I can do a lot as I am a very rare person who has a bachelor’s degree (in legal study!) there.

Indeed, the ability to read protects you. So I have started wondering how I can take a part in helping illiterate people learn how to read…

Just Make It Up Yourself!

Lo Ka-ying 羅家英 as a monk in Stephen Chow's 周星馳 Journey To The West 大話西遊, one of my most favourite nonsense comedy movies. Click the pic to listen to his classic Only You.

Oh, Sariputra, form does not differ from the void,
And the void does not differ from form.
Form is void and void is form;
The same is true for feelings,
Perceptions, volitions and consciousness...*
- Heart Sutra

Tired of the search for the meaning of life?
Then simply put it aside.
I guess you might never find it
After many, many years of spritual journey.

What is the meaning of life, anyway?
Is it something that you can find outside
Just like some coins someone dropped
On the sidewalk or on the beach?

The meaning of life is nothing but
A nice label you can stick on yourself
So that you'd look better, isn't it?

Then you can easily make it up
And stick it on your forehead.
When you don't like it anymore,
Just make another one up.

You can't pick up the meaning of life
On the sidewalk or even on the beach.

No, you can't wait for someone
To give it to you, either.
Actually there are helluvalot teachers
Who'd like to lead you for their own gains.

So just make up one that you feel reliable
And keep it in your heart as a light unto your feet
At least while it can lead you...

When you give your meaning to your life,
You can really get along with yourself.

*舍利子, 色不異空, 空不異色, 色即是空, 空即是色; 受想行識, 亦復如是。-心經( 唐朝玄奘法師漢譯版)

On a Tiny Blue Grain of Sand

Even this gigantic twirl of light is just a speckle in the entire Universe...

Our address is
A tiny blue grain of sand near
A yellow hot pebble at the middle of
An arm of a huge twirl of light
That is actually a mere speckle
In this gigantic Universe.

We are just like microbes
Hanging onto this blue grain.
We are so insignificantly small
But our mind is just deep enough
To perceive our insignificance
And the bewildering size
Of this Universe.

Isn't it already extremely significant?

Nothing is too big to be
Placed in our mind.
Although it takes some efforts,
We can house even
The entire Universe within us.

We know only as little about
Our inner universe as the outer one.
Since it does not cost much money,
I want to set out for an exploration
Of this deep and vast Universe
Within me.

McDull Internationale

Although I have had quite a strong leaning toward the Left, I haven't listened Internationale(國際歌), one of the most important anthem of the Communist movement until recently.

The first one I happened to listen to was the one by a Chinese rock band Tang Chao (唐朝樂隊, right). I love the heavy beat of electric bass guitar in this version. It really goes well the traditional chorus of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (中國人民解放軍) style. (Listening to this, I wonder how Beethoven's Ninth Symphony sounds with the traditional chorus and a rock band sounds... Could be very good.)

Too bad that this version is banned in the mainland China (中國內地). It may be an act of blasphemy for the Chinese Communists to alter such a sacred song... (Well, the Party was actually afraid that this kind of song would be used in popular protest against the corruption among some of its cadres.)

Rock 'n' roll is indeed the marching song for lonely urban workers. Its heavy beats have always encouraged me go on advancing for my own glory.

Now is the very time I really need such an encouragement. Almost defeated by heavy workload and the summer heat, I am helped by this Chinese rock version of Internationale to keep my integrity...so that I can go on working...so that I can hold onto a hope...

And I also found that one of the theme songs (The Anthem of Chun Tin Fa Fa Kindergarten 春天花花幼稚園校歌) of My Life As McDull (麥兜故事), a very popular Hong Kong cartoon movie is based on Internationale.

I first felt it very difficult to find anything common about this humorous cartoon about a slow piglet and the Communist anthem. I guess you'd feel the same way when you see what McDull (麥兜) looks like (above)...

But I then remembered that a mainland Chinese magazine editor had once said My Life As McDull surprised him because it was so much leftist (as Hong Kong is supposed be a very capitalistic city). I do not remember what exactly made him think so. But I can imagine it as the McDull cartoon showed so much empathy to the people of the lowest strata in this city (with whom I work with now as a garbage collector). And I found the missing link between Internationale and this beloved slow piggy...

I know that this kind of empathy keeps Hong Kong, a paradise for the rich, from being a hell for the poor. And this is one of the reasons why I love this city - a curious mix of lessaiz-faire capitalism and social democracy. Hong Kong was already like this during the British rule. No woneder why her handover to the Socialist China was so smooth...

Love Is Indeed Beyond Cogito

I would like to share a picture of illuminated ice sculptures from Harbin 哈爾濱, China with all the people suffering from heat like me...

It is awful hot here in the southern tip of China. Hong Kong Observatory 香港天文台 has issued Very Hot Weather Warnings already for a few days in a row. So have more than 60 municipalities in the neighbouring Guangdong province 廣東省 and Macau 澳門...

And I have been suffering from this weather. Although I had a lot job to do last night, I gave up around midnight as my brain almost melted down. The hot weather is almost like my nemesis and that makes me think that I may be a reincarnation of a Siberian Husky (I generally do not like dogs but I find these huge sled dogs stunningly beautiful) even though my grandfather told me that I had been a cat in my past life, and I had been a beheaded monk in a past-life therapy...

I remember my visit to the winter Harbin in the former Manchuria a few years ago. It was 20 degrees below zero Celsius and the sunshine was only bright and without any heat I could sense. But I walked and walked around with joy. My skin was so tight and my thought was so clear. I felt as if I had come back home.

Another cool place pic. I took this on a night train from Beijing 北京 just half an hour before arrival to Harbin at 6:30 in the morning. The 12-hour travel was very comfortable.

I love the cold weather. I loved to live in Minneapolis a decade and half ago and later went back there for a visit in the middle of winter! But I chose this subtropical city as my home (and became a citizen here, too!) instead of Minneapolis or Harbin. So I experience some meltdowns every summer.

One more pic from the winter northeast China. Somewhere in Jilin province 吉林省 on a cheap express train between Harbin and Shengyang, Liaoning province 遼寧省瀋陽. A middle-aged conductor was so friendly that I'll remember him for the rest my life...

It is very illogical for me to live in such a hot place. But I love Hong Kong. I don't exactly know what makes me love this city but I just felt it would become my home when I visited here more than a decade ago. And I have lived here for ten years already. I again feel that love is indeed beyond cogito...

But this hot weather makes me feel like cheating on Hong Kong and looking for a cool mistress... (But it's awful hot in Minneapolis and Harbin in summer, though...)

How Significant Are We?

As a business reporter, I handle the large numbers such as million or billion usually together with dollars or RMB yuan. These numbers are still indirectly related our lives as the business cycle can have a great influence on our lives. But if they come with years, they can so easily blow away my thought…

These great numbers have been associated to years these days as there were many news stories about Prof. Stephen Hawking’s recent visit to my part of the world, namely Hong Kong and Beijing. Although I haven’t read A Brief History of Time or any other works by this beloved physicist, I at least have pondered a lot about the beginning of time. That led me to write my most recent poem Glad to See You Again...After Billions of Years.

It is awfully difficult to see the relationship between our mundane lives and an almost unimaginable time span of billions of years. The earth is supposed to be around 4.6 billion years old (if you don’t subscribe to the Fundamentalist Christian theory that our planet was created in the year 4004 BCE). And our species started cultivation of earth and became completely distinct from other creatures only around ten thousand years ago. (Some anthropologists say that the expulsion of Adman and Eve from Eden symbolises the human beings' transition from hunters/gathers into farmers.) If we suppose the earth were 24 hours old, the human history would only be a bit more than three minutes.

But the age of our planet is only a fourth to a third of the entire universe's. If we shrank the 14 billion years of time after the Big Bang into a day, our history would be as short as six milliseconds! Then each person's life span would be only 0.06 milliseconds at longest… It is much shorter than a virus’ lifespan in comparison to ours. (A SARS virus can live up to 15 days in blood, according to Chinese scientists.)

I don’t exactly know what kind of significance such a calculation has to our lives. Shall we think that even our biggest problem is utterly insignificant in the long, long history of the universe? It may help. But can thinking that our lives are even less significant than viruses’ empower us? Probably not.

Then how about thinking this way? We can perceive the enormity of the universe despite our utter smallness. And at least on this planet, we are the only creatures of God that dare to try understanding the entire history of the time… It expands our potential, doesn’t it? It makes me feel better, at least…

A Philosopher (Wanna-be?)

A cat often looks like a philosopher... I felt especially so today as I found Amy, my cat, pondering on a Latin dictionary.

Glad to See You Again...After Billions of Years

"Energy Soup or Genesis" (by Peter Yokoyama)
Can you guess what it is?

About a dozen of billions of years ago
The whole universe was smaller than
Any dots we can imagine.

Nothing existed in the form as we know
But everything was cooking in this energy soup
In preparation for the long long evolution
That’d be triggered by the destined explosion.

You were not in this tiny soup.
Neither was I in this energy soup.
But it contained the seed of you
And the seed of me.

So about a dozen of billions of years ago
We were one in this dot.
So about a dozen of billions of years ago
We were already destined to meet again
Billions of years later in the course of
Great evolution...

And I am extremely glad that I can see you again
Now after billions of years...

Fatigue

I sometimes envy my cat's ability to sleep anytime, anywhere and absolutely without any remorse...

Fatigue is a sign that
My body and soul want my attention.
That's I know it very well.

So I myself a nice cup of tea
As a response of my boy and soul
When I get too tired to go on writing.

But the fatigue continues to ring the bell...

It's because the tea is not given
As a bribe to my body and soul
To go on working a bit harder,
Not as an opportunity of a good rest.

Well, just like the summer rain pours
Over the heated earth to cool it down,
Not warm it further up,
Fatigue is request from my body and soul
To slow down, not to straighten up.
But I always misunderstand this message...

I am tired now.
Make a good cup of tea and
Set everything aside for a while
Or even overnight
So that I can work better later...

I know, I know... I usually receive a lot complaints from my boss and clients after working with whips on my tired body and soul... Even the superheroine Sailor Mercury or my sweet Goddess Phoebe/Artemis (both are my anima or the representation of my unconscious mind) gets exhausted sometimes... I should treat them better...

Power of Silence

Silence often fills the space
Much more powerfully
Than mundane speeches.

Silence often makes us
Ponder much more
Than annoying noises.

Silence often brings us
Much more messages
Than hundreds of words.

But we are not as good in
Reading others' minds as
We want to think.

And because of its power
Silence tends to take us
To a big misunderstandings...

So when you have a message
Just speak up in simple words,
Espcially if you believe in
The power of silence...

Walking Instead of Taking the Bullet Train

I am now reading Michael Ende's Momo in German. Reading this elegant language again for the first time in many years, I have to check the dictionary dozens of times to finish a page. I think it is safer to say that I don't know any German.

So in two days, I only managed to read ten pages. I think if I read in English, Chinese or Japanese, I'd already have finished this children's book. I feel as if I were walking from Tokyo to Osaka (or from Berlin to Munich) instead of taking the bullet train (or Inter-City Zug).

The amount of word I can process is so small but it is enjoyable to see the beauty of the language, the similarity to and difference from English and so on. Moreover, it is fun to see my vocabulary and knowledge of German grammar grow as I go on reading. It is really like going on a long hiking, slowly enjoying the scenery...

In the past six month, I read at least a few thousand pages. It was fun to finish reading a book after another as I used to be a very slow reader in my school years (that ended 14 years ago). And I tend to see the ability to read smoothly as an indicator of my mental state so I was so glad that I went on reading, reading and reading. Then I read in excess and even had a very bad digestion problem.

So I am going to enjoy this hiking with Momo for a while and learn how to pace myself and enjoy things deeply...

Well, the only thing that Momo is rich in is time. And that makes her an excellent healer. It indeed is very suggestive for me, a psychotherapist-wanna-be...

Cogito And Beyond

Cogito ergo sum -- I think therefore I am.

It may be one way of understanding ourselves.
But it cannot explain so many things about me...

Why do I like cats more than dogs?

Why do I like Thai rice better than Japanese rice
even though I was born and grew up in Japan?

Why does long curly hair turn me off
while short boyish hair turns me on?

Why do moths frighten me
while I can easily pick up cockroaches?

Why do I find leotarded women so sexy
while I don't find lingerie attractive?

Why am I an individualistic cosmopolitan
while my father's clan is almost neo-Fascist?
(Well, perhaps I became a cosmopolitan
because I did not like neo-Fascism...)
....

Especially, liking and tastes are beyond cogito...

Maybe these things can be explained by extremely deep and long cogito but actually they had been my attributes even before I started thinking about these.

So I am cogito and beyond. And this beyond is so huge and so deep that I suppose if it should be written that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. (Amen!)

I know I don't have to write down of every aspects of my beyond cogito. I know my wife would be even more nagging if I did this because our flat is as small as 500 sq. ft. (Space is indeed so precious here in Hong Kong.) And I don't have enough time for this enormous venture, either.

Well, actually I feel if I wrote down every attributes of me, it'd only greatly limit what I am. The beyond cogito can take care of itself while working for me.

But I feel due attention to the beyond cogito is the key to the peace of mind. Because it is an inseparable part of me but usually ignored...

The Sabbath

The Sabbath (1910) by Marc Chagall

I spent the Jewish Sabbath working.
So do I the Christian Sabbath today.
I feel like demanding God to send
Some no-nonsense Pharisees to
My boss and my clients...

Some five thousand years ago,
The Lord insisted everyone
Take one day off out of seven
Despite the utter simplicity
Of the labour of those days...

How merciful the Lord was
Compared to ever urgent
Bosses and clients of our days!

But wait.
It's we ourselves who walked out
Of Jehovah's tyranny.
Because we did not want to
Observe the Sabbath out of the fear of God.

But we simply walked into
Another tyranny of corporate society
That took away good rest from us
Despite utter complexity
Of the labour of our days!

Thinking that we were freed from one thing,
We are actually mere slaves to other thing!

I want to observe the Sabbath of our time
That frees us at least one day
From complexity of our age
Not out of the fear of God
But out of the love of humanity...

But but but...
I still have thousands of words to write today.
What I can afford now is
Only five-minute Sabbath from work
In which I can walk away from my desk
And I can pet my lovely cat...

It's better than nothing, anyway.

A Monster Party

Dr. Sigmund said that
Neurosis is caused by bad memories
Repressed in my unconscious mind.

So I broke open the rusted door
Of my unconscious mind
And ended up with all the monsters
From my past romping around me
All the time...

Feeling as if I'd opened the Pandora's Box
And being annoyed by romping monsters,
I was worse off than before the door was open.

So I tried to chase them away.
So I tried to exorcise them.
But the harder I fought against them
The more reluctant they became to leave,
And the stronger they became...

Darn tired of endless battle
I asked them
"What makes you stay with me?"
Then they started to talk...

I learnt that they were here with purposes.
I learnt they tried to help me
Keep my integrity.
But I also learnt
That their help was so weird and troublesome
Because it was utterly outdated.

So I thanked them and announced to them
They were discharged from the tough duties.
And I threw a party to thank them again...

And they left me happily...

I've Set Myself Free...For a While...

I returned Shirer's The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich today to the library. As I had read to the end of Book 3 on Wednesday, I felt it was the right place to stop for a while. I feel very well now.

For I am from a former Axis country that seems to have failed to learn a grave lesson from the WWII (i.e. Japan), I have always felt it is my responsibility to continue learning about the modern history. But this book was a bit too heavy for me now...

The language itself was not a problem. It was not too hard to go on reading because a history book has a very natural flow of story... But this book contained almost only the dark side of humanity. I spent almost all my free time reading this book in the past three week and it dragged my soul so much and I literally felt sick. (I had a digestion problem... It's very suggestive, huh? I could not digest too much evil at one time.)

So I had to set myself free from this book for a while. And I am now feeling how much negative impact the concentration on dark story can bring to my body. Next time, I will have to think how to keep myself from plunging too much into the book.

The Smell of Death

A flame raging and high
Rushed into my nose
And burnt the hair inside.
It left me with no pain
But with unpleasant odour
Of burnt protein.

It's the odour that I smelt
Passing by a crematorium
Many years ago.
It may be the smell of death that
Smoking would bring me...

To my sweet Goddess of Moon
Swore I a long time ago
That I wouldn't bring a cigarette
To my mouth again.

But alas, my weak will has
Continuously broken my oath.
O! My Goddess of Moon so sweet!
Please give me power of will
By turning your face to me!

But alas, how much well I know
You'd not turn your face so graceful
To mine with stinking mouth!
I know the flame into my nose
Indeed was your warning!

Have mercy on me,
My Goddess of Moon so sweet!
Give me power of will to quit smoking!
Give me hope,
That I can see you again someday!

My nose got burnt when I tried to light a cigarette today... The flame of cigarette lighter was unexpectedly high. It left me feeling very very stupid...

An Underachieving Math Fiend

I saw a nightmare last night. It was so scary that I felt when I awoke as if I had fought a match with Mike Tyson while I was asleep. What was so frightening about the dream?

I was in a math class at my senior high school in Japan! And the teacher told me to solve a trigonometry question at the blackboard!

I went up to the black board and just stood still for a long time. I did not have a clue how to solve it. Then time was up. The teacher told me to go back to my seat.

Well, he did not scold me. No classmate laughed at me because the majority of them did not have a slightest idea what the hell they were studying. I felt their sympathy but I was filled with horror; it'd take me six years to finish three-year senior high school!

At age 37, I still see a lot nightmares about high school math classes. I know it very well that it is one of the biggest reasons of my low self-esteem.

At 15, I was sent to the best senior high school in my school district because my junior high average score was relatively high, boosted by excellent scores in Japanese literature, English, science and social studies. These subjects set off my miserable math score and made me a very bright student. Teachers were very willing to push me into the best senior high but they ignored that the school excessively emphasised the math classes!

My high school had eight math sessions a week. And I spent eight out of 33 hours every week just sitting with my mouth agape absolutely without an idea what the teacher was saying... I felt very miserable. But so did most of my classmates!

My mother was furious with my first mid-term math score there. I only scored 25 out of 100. But it was slightly higher than the class average of 24. Math teachers lamented aloud and gave us piles and piles of homework that we could barely handle... And we fiendishly studied math. Only math so that the teachers of other subjects lamented that they could not give any homework.

But the situation got worse. We continued sitting like a bunch of fools (some started sleeping) and continued scoring miserably. Sometimes the class average dived to a single digit out of 100! So the school shortened the summer vacation to mere five days and made students attend only math classes during summer. But the situation did not improve a bit. Our average score continued to crawl around 10 to 30 out of 100 like a worm.

Then were we really a bunch of math fools? Perhaps. But the math teachers finished the 10th grade math textbook in two weeks. And the 11th grade math textbooks before the end of our first year. They tried to build a magnificent skycraper of math without a foundation! They simply failed to teach us. They were like a surgeon who dares to say that the surgery was successful but the patient died...

Our math teachers had a grand ambition that all their students could apply for the science divisions of University of Tokyo, the most prestigious school in the country. That's the reason they made us low-achieving math fiends. Well, some of us did and a few were accepted. But mere five or six out of the school's 500 students went to UofT every year!

The fools were not the students but the teachers... There's nothing bad about being ambitious but using others as the tool to fulfill one's ambition is even evil.

And I now envy them as they did not have to take the slightest responsibility for the disastrous results of their poor jobs but could blame their students. What a job! If we behaved like this in the private business sector, we'd never keep our jobs beyond the probation periods! (Well, it seems that such people can keep their jobs regardless of their performance in some European countries, though...)

Now I've let some of steam out. I hope now I can fart less. But actually I am thinking about studying the entire high school math over again, slowly, taking a lot time this time so that I can console the part of me that suffered in the math classes.

(I want to console me very much because my poor math scores barred me from confessing my love to Ray, my boyish dream girl who was very good in math... Well, the students with high math scores could behave like aristocrats while the ones like me had to humble ourselves like serfs in our school!)

Just Like a Can of Red Bull...

Is this an ad or a parody? The dead guy looks like a Swede. Did anyone die in Sweden after drinking the energy drink? Do the two Finnish words "antaa siiivet" mean "gives you wings"?

Close your eyes and smile.
It infuses a small heaven to your soul,
Permeating freshness through your body
Just like a summer shower over cracked soil.

It softens your heart
So that you can be more in touch
With your true Self.

It gives a wing to your soul
So that you can be aware
That you're already in the Heaven.

Close your eyes and smile.
It gives you a pair of wings.
It may work extremely well
When you want a can of Red Bull...

Struggiling...

I am still struggling with The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. I have read around 600 pages (to the breakout of the World War II) in three weeks and I still have almost same number of pages to go. Probably I would not finish reading it by the end of this month as my reading speed has decreased greatly...

Since this book is indeed full of valuable lessons, I do want to read it through. But it is tough to read on as the lessons are of counter-professors'. It is filled with the dark side of the mankind and I am sure it would not leave me feeling happy when I finish it.

I usually read it just before going to bed. Well, it is the most convenient time to read. However, I have started to wonder if loading the negative memories of our species before sleep would affect my mental and physical health... Since I started reading this, I have not seen a pleasant dream. I guess my unconscious mind has had a hard time digesting the dark history fed every night...

So I am now thinking about returning this book to the library and free myself from the Nazi history for a while. I want to read something that makes me feel happy... And after I feel better, I will face the dark lessons again...

Human Capacity Utilisation?

When the capacity utilisation (the ratio of machines at work at factories in an economy) reads 85% or more, the industrial production is supposed to be overheating. That means the industrial production is healthy only when at least 15 machines out of 100 are idle.

If a factory is producing at full capacity, it cannot increase production any more and additional order may be taken by its competitors. Under the full utilisation, a breakdown of one machine may cause a big loss for the company. It is needless to say that running all the machines all the time will wear machines down more quickly and increase the chance of breakdowns... So some machines have to be left idle and take a rest.

When I heard this concept for the first time many years ago, I felt we were actually treating machines better than humans. A machine can be more easily repaired or even replaced with a new one when it is broken down. But one human being cannot be replaced by someone else upon his/her death. Why don’t we care much about human utilisation but mostly behave like slave drivers to others and ourselves?

After working full-throttle for many years, I have recently started to feel that I can work at 60% utilisation of my capacity. The relatively low utilisation ratio would not only allow me to handle urgent orders that come in time to time but also enable me to work for much more years. Then I may be able to work until death, hopefully at 80 something. Then I will be free from the worries about how to finance my life after retirement…

My Secret Revealed to the Whole World!!

Well, I tell the whole world my rather embarassing long-time secret tonight.

Because of this problem, I love working at home.

Am I addicted to the Net porn? Maybe... But I can spend a week without logging onto the Net. I proved it when I spent a week without a computer in a small village in northeastern Thailand. So, inaccessibility to naked girls on the Net is not the reason why I don't like to work at an office.

The true reason is...

that I fart a lot.

I don't know why but I fart once every few minutes. If I were accepted by a Lakota Indian tribe as an honorary tribesman, the chief would give me an Indian name "Fart Alot" or "Skunk." It should be an after-effect of a fistulae-in-ano surgery three years ago because I had not had this problem until my mid-30s…

But now I wonder if it has any psychological cause. In the Chinese language, they call ranting 出氣 (chūqì, let off the air). Well, it is the same as “letting off the steam.” From the standpoint of Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), my excessive farting may have something to do with anger...

Am I angry at something? I am not at the conscious level. But how about the unconscious plane? Maybe.

I am often very tired and feeling as if I were carrying a heavy burden… I know I have something that I can let go… Then farting could be the reminder from my unconscious mind that I am angry with something. Well, I should ask my Sailor Mercury (my anima, the representation of my unconscious mind) tonight in the dream…

The Greatest Invention of the Mankind

When I woke up this morning, I felt I had to agree about one thing with Mr. Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of Republic of Singapore.

I forgot stopping air conditioner when I went to bed and I felt just great when I woke up this morning. I felt Mr. Lee is indeed right: The air conditioner is the greatest invention of the mankind!

It is awfully hot and humid in Hong Kong these days. The temperature often stays around 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) even at the late night but I usually turn off air-con just before going to bed. I don't know why I do this. Perhaps I unconsciously do not want to receive an eye-popping power bill for sleep that looks like the ultimately unproductive activity. And I usually have a horrible morning. I feel as if I had run at least 10 kilometres when I get up every morning these days...

But sleep is a very important recreation activity both for a body and a soul. A body can have a deep rest, freed from the conscious mind. And unconscious mind can act more freely in the form of dream, also freed from the tyranny of conscious mind.

So I have actually treated my body and my sweet unconscious mind (who appears in my dream in form of Sailor Mercury) quite badly for a few hundred Hong Kong dollars (approximately a few dozen US dollars) a month! Maybe my horrible fatigue in the morning is their rebellion for my nightly torture to them...

I know I can easily afford this amount of money so I am going to sleep with the air-con on so that I can make my body and unconscious mind happy. Sleep is indeed so important. Actually, I often get an idea for what I write here while I am asleep...

Dangerous Fourteen

An expression "dangerous fourteen (危险的14岁)" has caught my attention these few days. Although I do not remember where I saw it, I must have seen it on a mainland Chinese website as I remember these words in the simplified Chinese...

Maybe it is a headline of a news article about a violent crime by a fourteen-year-old. I do not know. Even though this word caught my attention, I did not click the link. Perhaps my unconscious mind wanted me (my conscious mind) to ponder about this without being influenced by the news report...

Well, I think a fourteen-year-old boy is quite dangerous in some ways. I know it because I also was like a walking arsenal when I was fourteen a bit more than two decades ago.

A boy or a girl of 14 is biologically adult already. I remember that St. Augustine became a father at 14. And it is often said Virgin Mary was 14 when she conceived Jesus. Although boys tend to have a few more years of upward growth, girls usually stop growing vertically around this age. Anyway, a human being is usually fully reproductive by 14.

A woman who had delivered a baby at 14 told me that bearing a baby had been easy like pooping... Compare this with the terrible pain of a thirty-something at her first childbirth. We can see how narutal it is for a 14-year-old to deliver a baby. (I have to make it clear that I do not advocate teen reproduction. I believer that a 14-year-old is far from socially or psychologically mature.)

And look at kittens and puppies. After they grow up to the size of their parents, they become independent and start mating. They are fully adult. Maybe human was like them until quite recently, well, until a few hundred years ago in the West. We can still see it in some Islamic countries. (And from the age of consent in the Japanese criminal codes, that was 13 before the revision in 1990s.)

I do not know when and why humans chose the late reproduction. And I feel it was a right decision. But I believe the wide gap between biological and social/political adulthoods (four to seven years) is the reason of general irritability of teenagers. I guess giving them some social rights and responsibility could be the way to make fourteen-year-olds less dangerous...

Dear Devil

I know you live also in my soul.
I know you are me of many years ago
And you work as the manager
Of a deep storage filled with painful memories…

But I know you used to be an angel,
Pure like snow and without any evil mind.
I know that you are just a child hurt,
Looking for a chance of revenge…

I know revenge never heals wound
But it just makes you stay in hell longer.
So I now want to hear your stories
And want to console you
So that you can be an angel again,
My little angry child…

Surviving all the pains, I am still alive.
So are you, my little devil.
So you can put everything down now
And take a refuge in the words of Truth…

A Public Church School in a People's Republic?

I feel a bit strange that Hong Kong government has assigned my son to an Anglican/Episcopal primary school while I am drifting away from Christianity. Is it a call from God that I should reconcile with Christianity? I don't know...

And I feel a bit strange that the local government has allocated him to a church-run school. I grew up in a country whose constitution clearly states the separation of religion and government (it is the Japanese version of the separation of Church and State) so the government allocation and a church-affiliated school do not fit nicely to each other, at least in me.

In addition, we are now living in one the few people's republics that still exist in this world! But in this southern tip of the People's Republic of China, much of public education is provided by various churches.

Well, this is a part of Deng Xiaoping's "fifty years no change" promise to Hong Kongers upon the return of Hong Kong to China in July 1997. As it has already been nine years since this city was handed over from the United Kingdom to China (and the handover was very smooth), I often forget that Hong Kong used to be a British colony...

The line between government-run and non-government-run schools is very vague here in this former British colony. Although all Hong Kong kids can receive free education, there are not so many pure government-run schools here. The majority of schools are affiliated to religious organisations (mostly Catholic and Protestant churches but there are some Buddhist, Taoist and Islamic schools) and provide free-of-charge primary school education. These church schools can teach their religions when the secular school kids are taught common sense.

I guess it is because the former British colonial government was reluctant to spend much money to educate the local Chinese people and church schools could be used to keep the local population away from the influence of the Communist Party of China, especially during the Cultural Revolution that ended 30 years ago...

As less than 10% of Hong Kong's population is Christian and most kids are allocated to church schools by the local government, I guess I should not be worried about rigorous indoctrination.

And I believe that some contact to traditional moderate religion would be helpful when my son faces spiritual problems many years later. It will work as a good immunisation against so-called cults. (Well, it's funny that I say this. To many Christians, ACIM and Jungian psychology - the spiritual guidance I now subscribe to - are nothing but new cults!)

An Adopted Son's Wish

As an adopted son of China,
I truly hope her people
Prosper in peace...

China has changed drastically
In the past 17 years...

I don't think the young people's
Blood was not wasted at all.
But it'd take for some more years
Before it'll be officially recognised...

So we cannot forget them...

The Worst Kind of Blasphemy

Really? Is He that small-minded? In Japanese, such a god is said to have "a small anus"!

March on!
Rising the banner of "1+1=2 is true"!
We must go on fighting for this truth!

How do you feel when you hear this?
Sound stupit, doesn't it?

Truth will prevail itself.
So I think the fight to protect the Truth
Is the worst kind of blasphemy.

God is almighty.
Why does He need the protection from
Us from feeble humans?
If He is really almighty,
The worst kind of blasphemy
Should be to fight to protect Him, isn't it?

Don't Wait for a Saviour

Don't wait for a great Saviour.
When a saviour comes from outside,
He'd likely demand you surrender
Your freedom for the price of His truth
That's actually only an extortion.

Do you want your Saviour to
Behave this much like a mafa boss?

So close your eyes
And quietly talk to your soul.
So close your eyes
And listen to your soul's quiet reply.
Because true peace comes to you
Only from the reconciliation with yourself...

Yes, you have your own Saviour
Deep inside of your heart.
Yes, our true Self is our true Saviour.

So make peace with yourself.

I am now reading William L. Shirer's classic The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich. This book tells us how the irresponsible longing for an external saviour could lead to horrible consequences...

Mindless Busyness

I have been a bit busy these days. Shortly after I started worrying that my translation agency would not give me any more jobs, its agents started calling me... It always work like this and makes me feel some kind of mysterious connections among humans.

I usually love their first call. It sounds like salvation. I do their second and third in a week, too. These calls give me some confidence in my skills. But when they have jobs for me, they usually have a lot. So I will start feeling saturated before long.

Whenever I am too busy, I remember what a pastor told me twenty years ago in a catechism lesson. He showed me a Chinese character 忙 (máng) or "busy" and then broke the Character into two elements 忄(豎心旁 shùxīnpáng), the radical for "heart" (an altered form of "心" xīn) and 亡 (wáng) or "to die."

He said that being busy meant the death of heart so we sometimes had to put down everything and go back to God or our heart would perish. (I do not remember exactly when he said it but I guess it was a class about observance of Sabbath.) In a softer expression, being busy should be being mindless. This has just reminded me of a Korean expression "청신(精神)이 없다" (Cheongsin-i opta) or "I have no spirit" that means "I am busy."

Well, although I do not identify myself much as a Christian any longer, his words still work as a very good reminder. It allows me to close my eyes and take a moment of break so that I can keep in touch with my soul again. (Or my sweet anima, who manifests in the likeness of Sailor Mercury, used to kick my ass to give me horrible haemorrhoids... It was her second reminder.)

Interestingly enough, 忘 (wàng) the Chinese word for to "forget" is also made up of 亡 (wáng) and 心 (xīn) or heart. So forgetting also is the death of heart or being mindless... Anyway, we tend to forget things very easily when we are too busy. So we should be time to time to do nothing so that we can be in touch with our hearts...