Photo-blogging 300610

I guess i can at least post some photos (like what Kohyee did) when my words run dry like Sahara desert.

My colleague sent a photo she snapped when i was working like a busy bee during the conference.

Happy working everyone!

When i was 26....

Monday blues, have to dragged myself to go to work this morning.

Had great dinners and hangouts since last Friday. i'll let the picture do the talking.

Peter and i went to Trattoria, authentic Italian Restaurant.

We had breads and donuts as starters




The dipping sauce and the chili infused olive oil tasted superbly

Here comes the mouthwatering tomato cheesy soup and ham mushroom-ish pizza!


Yummy....


Last but not least, the super yummy authentic special of the day- Itallian style chicken stew with super creamy and sticky mashed potatoes

The end.
(Seriously, i run out of words...)

I missed those days when inspiration to write is like a big pot of overflowing boiling soup whereby words just pour out madly and freely.

The cove (2009)

Am away for CDC Regional Combined camp 2010 for 4 days 3 night last week, which means works are piling up on my desk... and hopefully it justify why i didn't post any blogs for the past 2 weeks (ok maybe i am just plain lazy).

Anyway, cried a river last Sunday while watching a movie called "The cove". Please do watch the movie if you never heard about it before. It will change your perspective towards animal care as well as humanism all together. The cove is a documentary movie which talks about a man called Ric O Barry and his journey of transformation from training dolphin in captivity (for a famous TV series "flippers" in 1960's) to assertively combating the captivity industry.

Here comes the short description about the movie adapted from http://www.takepart.com/thecove

"In a sleepy lagoon off the coast of Japan lies a shocking secret that a few desperate men will stop at nothing to keep hidden from the world. The Cove exposes the slaughter of more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises off the coast of Japan every year. Begins in Taiji, Japan, where former dolphin trainer Ric OBarry has come to set things right after a long search for redemption. In a remote, glistening cove, surrounded by barbed wire and Keep Out signs, lies a dark reality. It is here, under cover of night, that the fishermen of Taiji, driven by a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry and an underhanded market for mercury-tainted dolphin meat, engage in an unseen hunt.

Undeterred, OBarry joins forces with filmmaker Louis Psihoyos and the Ocean Preservation Society to get to the truth of whats really going on in the cove and why it matters to everyone in the world. With the local Chief of Police hot on their trail and strong-arm fishermen keeping tabs on them, they recruited an Oceans Eleven-style team of underwater sound and camera experts, special effects artists, marine explorers, adrenaline junkies and world-class free divers who will carry out an undercover operation to photograph the off-limits cove, while playing a cloak-and-dagger game with those who would have them jailed. The result is a provocative mix of investigative journalism, eco-adventure and arresting imagery that adds up to an urgent plea for hope."

Commercial whaling has been outlawed worldwide since the mid-1980s, but that prohibition has not been extended to smaller cetaceans, or marine mammals, like dolphins, in large part because of Japan’s opposition. As a result around 21,000 dolphins are killed there each year, according to Japanese government estimates, in places like Taiji, a small seaside town south of Osaka where most of "The Cove" was filmed (http://www.nytimes.com)

Further to release of the movie, critical praise and audience awards worldwide have focused international attention on Taiji and the annual dolphin drives off the coast of Japan. Under intense pressure, Taiji called for a temporary ban on killing bottlenose dolphins. The film, which was originally rejected, was shown at the Tokyo Film Festival due to public outcry. Residents in Taiji are being tested for mercury poisoning, and for the first time Japanese media are covering the issue.


The fisherman are clearly rattled, but haven’t stopped killing dolphins (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/6255789/Sea-of-blood-as-Japan-slaughters-thousands-of-dolphins.html)

Mom

I had started to read "My Sister Keeper" by Jodi Picoult after hearing so much of good recommendation from many bloggers and colleagues. So far, i'm 1/3 through the book, and the message which strike me hard at the moment is that how selfish yet sacrificial a mother's love can be. As contradicting it may sound, it's true.

Anyway, I will reserve my comments until i finish reading the whole book.

I had an 'adult' conversation with my mom last Sunday, not the 18sx 'Adult' type (NO WAY i'm gonna talk to my mom with regards to THOSE topic), but more of the topics related to the adulthood a.k.a. paying bills, owning assets, house renovation etc.

Believe it or not, i seldom talk to my mom with regards to worries and difficulties i faced in my life. Its not that we are not close or i dont trust her enough to share my personal feelings. Its just that i dont want her to be anxious thinking that her daughter is 'suffering' and 'tormenting' at the foreign land 外地 (according to her definition, any place away from home is considered as foreign). It was unnecessary for her to bear my burden as there is nothing much to do when there is a great South China Sea between us.

She always felt that out of her three children, i am the one farthest away from her, hence she felt deeply insecure when she sense the slightest indication of me in depressive mood. In order for her to not fret too much, for years, blogging has been my only outlet to release my true feelings as my mom is a complete Internet noob. Trust me, my mom is good at fishing information from my close friends.

In my mom's eyes, i have ceased to grow since the day i left my family to embark on further studies, that's when i was 17. And to be fair, its really hard to accept your child is a grown up when she was hardly at home. And it doesn't help much either when she only 'heard' from once a week call that i'm had my final examination, i've graduated, i have fallen in love and out of love, i'm flying to UK, i've graduated again, i've found a job, i've bought a car, Peter had proposed to me and i'm getting married soon.

"Eat well, dont take too much of oily food"
"Dont work too hard, sleep early"
"Be careful while crossing the road"..... That's what my mom always told me, in every call, without failed, for 10 years.

And the funny thing is, the more she look at me as a 17 years old hormone ranging teenage, the more i wanted to prove to her that i'm an adult now, by age, by emotional maturity and by financial capability. In short, she don't have to worry because i have everything under control.

"yeah, yeah, am fine, my boss is a headache but i'm dealing with him fine"
"House reno was a mess but peter and I are working on it fine"
EVERYTHING is fine ......... That's what i've always told my mom.

Thats why the tele conversation which we had that night was completely incomprehensible. I dunno what had gotten into my brain but for the first time i was frank with her that i'm fed up with all the adult worries. I've admitted that things are not fine and its not easy to become an adult. And funny thing is, instead of getting all tense up like what i would expected, my mom suddenly talked to me like i'm an adult.

"That's a road where every adult need to go through, your dad and myself were there once, although its frustrating, but its fine, thats all part of the process." She said.

Her words soothes my nerves and frustration almost immediately. I would never expected that my mom is cool enough to talk to me in that way. Finally we are talking at the same level and it really felt like a conversation with a friend.

This bring a whole new meaning to the definition of my adulthood-being an adult means that you can talk to your mom like a friend.

A house is not a home

Ever since Peter and I initiated the mega plan of house renovation, I have this constant feeling of being ugly, which further evolved to a certain level of self resentment.

When i said ugly, it was never refer to external appearance because its a matter of relativity and subjectivity. There is a no way a person can be ugly when beauty is in the eye of beholder. No matter how unsightly a person is, he/she is still the perfect person in someone's eyes. So when i said ugly, i am referring to this ugly little monster in me, who is emotional, temperamental, effusive.

When we first get our place, the feeling is like the man in the parable who found the hidden treasure in a field, in his joy went to sold all he had and bought the field. Such a joy came from the longing for a home after I've been away from home for a long long time and moved 7 times in 10 years. Having a home is like the light in the end of this tunnel of never ending nomad life. I have always pictured "home" as the idea of planting myself (with my love one) somewhere, with hard work and aspiration and seeing how life could be build upon solid cemented ground. Although its just 1068 square feet, however, the empowerment from the feeling of 'ownership' is still pretty much overwhelming.

I would very much wanted to sugarcoat the entire process by continue to make statements like owning a house is about building our life dah dah dah.... However in reality, when i am finally in the process of seeing the wall hacking and bricks by bricks it went up again, it strikes me that this may not be as beautiful as painting the castle in the air.

The amount of the details which we need to went through, the endless decision with regards to the choice of contractor, design, purchase which we need to made is wearing us off. It took me off guard that how impatience and how indecisive i am when it comes to housing matters. Maybe its because i am inexperience, maybe it involves a hell lot of moolah, or maybe its a simple fact that i am incompetent when it comes to dealing with adult matters (well, the entire adulthood is nothing but paying bills, loans, getting house, paying more loans isnt?). Who would imagine that Peter and I can argue on petty things like should we have 2 or 3 downlights at the corridor, and reconciled by sending make-peace sms afterthat.

At some point it hit me hard that owning a home was much less about building a life but more about purchasing a living structure on a piece of illiquid asset. or in simple terms, it was just a "house", and we should never see the asset bigger than life as though our entire couplehood or happily ever after is depend wholly on that.

"Home" was never about the house, but more about us. I was listening to the song "House is not a home" from Glee the other day, and the lyrics nearly teared me up. It says:

A chair is still a chair
Even when there's no one sitting there
But a chair is not a house
And a house is not a home
When there's no one there to hold you tight,
And no one there you can kiss good night.

A room is still a room
Even when there's nothing there but gloom;
But a room is not a house,
And a house is not a home
When the two of us are far apart
And one of us has a broken heart.

Yeah, its still long way to go before the house is ready for human inhabitation, but am glad the the process taught me a great lesson.