seesight kansai

It's only a two and a half hour flight from Taipei to Japan, and there are literally tours going there every day offered by various travel agencies, so my wife and I picked one we used before and off we went, for a 5-day trip to the Kansai region of Japan.

Kansai (關西) refers to the area situated in the west central part of Japan's main island Honshu. It is about 1/5 the size of Southern California with the same amount of people (23 million), and encompasses major metros such as Kobe (the 4th busiest port of Japan), Osaka (the second largest city of Japan), Kyoto (the thousand-year-old old capital of Japan), and many other historical sites and cities; a hub of political and cultural centers of the old and economic power house of modern day Japan, so to speak.

Autumn leaves scenery, Japanese gardening style, was one main attraction we came here for and saw, most everywhere we went:

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And temples and castles that came with different flavors: golden plated, stony majestic, red audacious, on the pond, up the hill ... awesome and unreal:

Mixed with events of the peculiar: tuna cutting show, hot spring foot massage, and fearless deer feeding:

Though I had been to Japan many times before--almost all of them business trips and restricted to Tokyo area, granted--this was the first time I saw so many a Kimono (traditional Japanese costume) wearing young woman (and man) out in the public:

                         

And kids and parents all dressed up to worship and take ritualistic photos at a "scholar patron saint" temple:

Not to forget the modern side of the metros, and the plain, calm beauty seen on the road:

Maybe I was under the influence, but I think Japanese food did look and taste more refined in Japan, at restaurant or off the street:

This was a little group of 22 people we traveled with. They came from all walks of life in Taiwan, young and old, couples and families, and were all nice, decent, and punctual. The hotels we stayed, except for the last one, were new, quality, and surprisingly spacious by Japanese standard. The meals were good and delicious, the itinerary tight but not too tiring. And I was most impressed by the tour guide, an energetic, passionate young woman who knew her stuff well and really took care of everyone. 

Over all, one nice little trip!

fictively speaking

In his international best seller "Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind", the Hebrew University professor/author Yuval Noah Harari suggests the reason our Homo Sapien ancestors beat out other human species in the evolution game was because they possessed--as we still do today-- the ability to "think fictively", recognizing not only objective reality but also imagined ones that enabled them to cooperate in groups and drive their other-kindly "brothers" to extinction.

A good modern day example of a fictive entity is a corporation. It is conceptually composed of only a set of rules and guidelines on how and why it is created, but in fleshing out its presence it can produce a myriad of products or services, employ hundreds or thousands of people, and create handsome sums of wealth for a multitude of its share holders.

Money is another good example of fictive entity whose power derives purely from people's perceived value of it. If not "in God we trust" that greenback, my grocery shop owner won't give me the food I need and I won't give my used car to a total stranger, all for exchange of a few pieces of silk screened paper, and the Feds won't be able to print oodles of them to "quantitative ease" the economy to save it from tanking. 

A political system is also a contrived, vanity affair of mankind. As an emperor likes to think he rules "all lands under the skies" (普天之下莫非王土), one of his lowly peasants may actually say "The sky is so high and the emperor so far away. I rise to work at dawn and set to rest at dusk, what's the emperor's power got to do with me?" (天高皇帝遠。日出而作日落而息，帝力於我何有哉).

Until the emperor establishes an effective national registration system and comes nabbing him for taxes and compulsory services. 

Citizens of modern democracy turn the system on its head. They are less likely to be hypnotized by the notion of a great, benevolent government that can do no wrong--such a grand, fictive idea--than constantly questioning "where did my tax dollars go", and "what has my government done for me lately". They'd rather pay user fees than general fund taxes, given the choices. 

How strongly people put their faith on their fictive belief directly affects the value of the fictive entity and the effects it creates. If enough people look down on the prospect of a corporation and dump its stocks it drives down the market value of that company. If soldiers are not convinced by the stories they are told to believe in their fighting, their morale drops and the battles and the war are lost. A democratic government can collapse in one day if a vote of confidence fails to pass through its house of representatives.

Religion can easily be categorized as one of the grandest fictive thinking of mankind. A shared story of a certain people weaved by an imaginative few and consumed by the weak, the needy, the ignorant, etc., from a secularist's point of view. But rather than calling religions fictive, let's say they are human efforts trying to pin down a universal mystery that is way beyond the capacity of their collective fictive thinking.

Buddhism is one religion that actually tells people to fahgettaboudit: All things, physical, mental, or emotional, living or dead, are illusory. Stop your misdirected cognitive endeavor, and you are one step closer. But that's not easy to do. Even John Lennon's Utopia-aspiring song "Imagine" that extols a world without heaven implores you to imagine such a no-more-fictive-thinking world, how ironic is that?!

Great people and entrepreneurs start their ventures with dreams, the flimsiest of flimsy fictive thinking. Yet by sticking to their visions and through hard work and smart execution, they make fictions into facts, dreams into reality, many times more real than a realist dares to imagine.

Is my past--like where I was born, went to school, people I know, etc.--fictive thinking, since they are just figments of things in my head that I can't touch or feel any more? No, because I have things other than those in my head to corroborate with: documents, photos, mementos, other people... But does that mean if I cannot find corroboration then my past was false or did not exist?

The Australian aborigines believe each person carries all his/her ancestors' history and experiences at birth, continues to build on that history and experiences during their life time, and returns them to the "dreamline" that originated from the beginning to the end of time. Not much corroborating evidence for that, of course, except that they seem to have an uncanny ability to detect illness of distant family members, and intuitive herbal medicine knowledge that seems to come from nowhere.

Am I dreaming a living or living a dream? Or are they really the same thing, living and dreaming?

Fictively, and really, I am done with this writing.

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

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” 
― Albert Einstein

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
― William Shakespeare

"Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it."
― Hebrews 11:1

unchained

I "cut the cord", or should I say, disconnected my DirecTV satellite TV service a few months ago, after pondering on it for a long time.

We know cable/satellite TV services have been taking us for a ride for years, throwing at us bundles of channels we don't watch, nickel-and-diming for "extras" such as multiple TV outlets, "advanced" receiver and DVR rentals, "whole-home" service, etc. that ought to be standard in the first place, all adding up to an extortionary monthly sum we can't afford not to pay. 

Or can we?

The main snag I needed to overcome before I could ditch DirecTV was to find a good replacement for the "premium" Mandarin package they provided that contained programs from Taiwan my wife enjoyed watching that I couldn't find in public broadcast or through independent subscription.

One day I saw an obscure ad on a Chinese newspapers weekend edition for a set top box that claimed to provide full lineup of TV programs from Taiwan and mainland China, etc. We took a trip to the store and checked it out and bought it. It indeed does what it says, mish-mashing oodles of broadcast TVs, media streaming websites, cable TV channels from all over China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc. into one magic hub. Those channels my wife favors were on it. That took care of the issue. 

Then I needed to find out whether I can get good TV reception where I live--right at the mid point between LA and San Diego on a hill by the ocean. To do so I went online to Craigslist and looked up local Penny Saver ads for TV/antenna installation services and ended up with a guy who said he had done installation in my neighboring city and would come to my house to do a field test before I decided to go ahead with the installation or not.

He brought a tiny little rabbit ear antenna he said he got from HomeDepot for $5 for the testing. We put it on the floor of our second floor master bedroom, hooked it up with the TV and started the scanning... It got over 20 channels in a matter of minutes, capturing all the local channels from LA (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Channels 5, 9, 13) and a couple from San Diego, as well as some remote stations from San Bernardino and Riverside counties, PBS's, international channels, etc. That's all I needed. Another issue solved.

Now it's what antenna to buy. I had done research on which has better reception, reliability, ease of installation, etc., but the antenna man told me he'd got some good experience using a particular brand that he'd give me the name and I could get it directly myself while he prepared accessories for the installation. So I took his advice and ordered the antenna online and set up an appointment for him to come install it after I received the unit.

This is one of the more expensive but reputable antennas that cost me around $100 (refurbished, if bought new it would be $150). We first tested it on the master bedroom floor as we did before and it got over 70 channels in no time. Then we put it on the attic--where it permanently locates now--and got over 90 channels in one scan.

It's been over 3 months since, and we've been watching all the local and remote TV channels, in HD quality and not (many TV stations nowadays broadcast analog "sub-stations" along with their HD channel, using frequencies made available through new technologies that cable/satellite TV don't normally carry), via the air or through the Internet, from any room in the house, free of charge. 

Regarding Mandarin channels, it turns out there are so many on-the-air choices available my wife doesn't even need to go back to those old favorite channels she thought she couldn't live without. Though not an avid TV watcher myself, I do find it enjoyable watching many good movies--some are pretty recent, like Jurassic World--that this little made-in-China box streams from their tremendous library collections at the comfort of my own home.

I also get to watch History, Discovery, HBO, CNN, etc., channels that I believe come from some cable TV provider in Taiwan that get their Asian distributions from the US. The world is round after all, what originates here circulates all its way back where it comes from.

We used to pay about $65/month for DirecTV service, and that's after I cut it down to the very basic (local channels only), plus the Mandarin package. For Operation Cutting The Cord, I spent $200 for the media box (I probably could have found a better deal if I looked around; Or, you really don't need such box if you know how to set up your computer to go to websites that stream movies and TV programs from all over the world), $100 for the antenna, and $250 for the installation, totaling $550. I should be able to recuperate all of this in another 5 months or so. Not coincidentally, we noticed our electricity bills dropped about $10-$20 per month since we cut the cord, probably because we no longer need to feed 24x7 those DVR and receiver set top boxes that come with DirecTV (or any cable/satellite TV) that I heard are electricity hogs even when they are in stand-by mode.
 
Hurrah to the unchaining, and Yes We Can!

* I probably could have gotten even better TV signal reception if I put the antenna on the roof top instead of mounting it in the attic. I didn't do that because: 1) Aesthetically it's still nicer to hide it inside than sticking it out on the roof, even though by law your homeowner's association cannot stop you from putting antenna on the roof if you really want to do it, according to what I heard; 2) Maintenance wise it's less wear and tear and easier to reach if it's kept in the attic.  

* Missing the DVR that allows you to record and playback your favorite TV programs? Here's how I did it: I got a USB tuner ($45), connected it between my PC and the cable from the attic that carries all the live TV signals from the antenna, then fired up the Windows Media Center program that came with the PC, and now I have a full featured digital video recorder with timered/random recording, playback, fast forward/backward, real time pause, instant replay, closed caption... all the niceties and conveniences at my desk top.

* There are an increasing number of online services that offer TV series, movies, and even sports programs through Internet streaming that you can subscribe to to supplement your free broadcast TV watching. Netflix is probably the most popular one: for $9/month you get numerous movies and some original programming series; For $99/year, Amazon Prime offers many movies and TV series, plus streaming music and 2-day shipping for anything ordered on Amazon.com; For $20/month, Sling TV gives you basic-cable channels such as AMC, TNT, A&E, CNN, and sports channels ESPN and ESPN2. More can be found at this report: http://time.com/money/3963077/streaming-packages-cord-cutting-cable/

righteous chi

A recent sharing I had with my weekly meditation group: 

Zhuangzi was a wild, Diogenes-like, "don't block my sun" kind of philosopher born 370 BC. His writings, along with the Tao-Te-Ching by Laozi, form the foundation of Taoism philosophy of ancient China.

One story in his writings goes like this:

One day Zhuangzi was taking a stroll with his friend Huizi. As they stepped onto a bridge and stopped, watching the fish swimming down below, Zhuangzi commented, "See how happy those fish are!"

Huizi, a quick witted philosopher of different sort who liked to challenge Zhuangzi's, said, "How do you know they are happy since you are not a fish?"

To that, Zhuangzi replied: "How do you know I don't know they are happy since you are not me?"

Then he added: "I know they are happy from where I stand!"

I think he means to praise the universal joy he senses and shares with the being down below.

The Confucianism has been the dominating philosophy in Chinese culture since about 2000 years ago, when the emperors of China decided they liked the way it teaches people to respect the family, the social orders, the authority, and the emperors themselves ("Obey your emperor even when he is in the wrong") and promoted it through education and political/bureaucratic system.  

Ostensibly, Confucianism has never become a religion in form or spirit, but gradually and inwardly, traceable starting some 950 years ago, some great "gentleman-scholars", or I may borrow the word "gnostics" here, in a good way, who not only were well versed with Confucian philosophy, but also extended his humanistic thinking to include the harmonious co-existence of all things in the universe: "All people my fellows, all things my kind" (民胞物與); "Heaven and Man are one" (天人合一), they'd say.

So, for example, one article we were taught in high school was by a famous "ethnic hero" who was a learned man who picked up arms and led the national army to fight the invading Mongols and failed and got imprisoned for years but refused to surrender and finally got executed by the admiring Mongols. The article started like this:

"A righteous spirit (chi) exists in heaven and earth, appearing in various forms. Below it forms rivers and mountains, above it forms sun and stars. Grand in a man, exuberant in the universe..." (天地有正氣，雜然賦流形。下則為河岳，上則為日星。於人曰浩然，沛乎塞蒼冥...)

He died for/with such "chi", I believe, way beyond the superficial Han people vs the barbarian Mongols thing the traditional teaching may want us to believe.

A few hundred years later, another gentleman-scholar/gnostic made that spiritual and mystical aspect of neo-Confucianism even clearer. Long story short, this great guy's aha moment came when he realized "all the meaning of the universe resides in your heart;" (心即是理) and "if you really 'know' something, you are actually doing it already." (即知即行)

And "the innate state of the heart has no good nor bad; good and bad only comes when the intent comes..." (無善無惡心之體，有善有惡意之動...)

That I think is pretty consistent with Christian contemplative thinking if we substitute "the innate state of the heart is good" for "the innate state of the heart has no good nor bad" since the Bible says all things were good when God created the world... But, what the heck, call it "good", or "indescribable", I am good (pun intended) with either term!

the road to character (3)

St. Augustine was a prodigy son growing up with an overbearing but extraordinarily spiritual mother during late Roman Empire times. 

He went on to become a self loving, lust driven, fame chasing young man who enjoyed "smarting out" with philosophical elites, until one day he realized he was chasing the same earthly pleasures as a beggar on the street, except he could not get them as easily as they could.

He looked into the vastness of human soul and found not only treachery and uncontrollability, but its deep rooted connection with God Almighty and the Grace that could only be accepted through humility.

Augustine did not live a tranquil, easy life after this "conversion". When he wrote his famous spiritual memoir Confession, he was not reminiscing a conquered experience but continuously reassessing that experience as he faced hard times in life. 

He reminded believers that the center of their lives is not in themselves, and the pleasures of this world are most delicious only when savored in the larger context of God's transcendent love.

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

These are stories of three of the several people David Brooks, a New York Times columnist and writer, presents in his book "The Road to Character" that I read recently.

Brooks said he got the idea of writing the book after hearing the rebroadcast of an old-time radio program celebrating the end of World War II, where celebrities of the day commented the victory with subdued, humble tone, in great contrast to the flashy, self-ingratiating personalities that he encounters daily in our modern culture.

So he went on to study the lives and inner worlds of some historical great men and women, to know "how some people have cultivated strong character. It's about one mindset that people through the centuries have adopted to put iron in their core and to cultivate a wise heart. I wrote it to save my soul."

Here are my take:

Looking up the dictionary, the word "character" can mean value-neutral "features and traits," or virtue-ful "moral or ethical quality" of a person. My guess is we refer more to the former (e.g. "He's quite a character") than the latter (e.g. "He is a man of great character") nowadays. Our battered (and pampered) self would rather enjoy the idiosyncrasies of fun personalities than be saddled with solemn moralistic reminders on any given day.

In the occasion we do invoke the value aspect of the word, it is the virtue of tenacity, toughness, creativity--traits we need to achieve our personal goals--more than that of selflessness, generosity, self-sacrifice that we like to pick up on. We are taught to look highly at ourselves, then focus on improving our given talents to be the "best you can be" in our field of specialty in this utilitarian minded society anyway.

No surprise then many admire Steve Jobs for his brilliant product ideas and insistence on perfection but ignore his demeaning dealing with people and fact fabricating "reality distortion field" capability.

Rather than character, the favored word and top virtue of the day seems to be authenticity. To be really appealing to the mass today, one has to be genuine and relatable, open and honest about their personal life, and consistent with the message they send out. Jennifer Lawrence and Taylor Swift are two good examples.

This is not a bad thing, really: Great character cannot exist in vacuum, but is relational, validated through interactions with others. Transparency and authenticity, with the aid of godspeed Internet and wild fire social media today, help us find out who's got the juice and who's not, sooner rather than later.

That's why I admire people who say "My lifetime goal is to have those who know me best respect me most." Familiarity breeds contempt, if it breeds respect instead, something remarkable is shining through that person, warts and all notwithstanding, consistently and persistently.

I know this might sound simplistic, but here's my end thought: If character is an assembly of virtues, and there is no greater virtue than love... or, put another way: if all virtues are derivatives of love, under the supervision of love, sustained by love, then the road to character ought to be... "keep love alive"!

God help us do that!


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

“Souls are like athletes that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers.” -- Thomas Merton

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." -- 1 Corinthians 13:4-7
 

the road to character (2)

George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Anne Evans, was born in early 19th century England. Her father was a successful carpenter-turned-businessman, her mother an ill-healthed woman who lost twin boys 18 months after Mary Anne's birth. She then sent her surviving children away to boarding schools to spare herself the physical effort of raising them when Mary Anne was only 5. 

She was called back to tend to her mother's health at age 16 and subsequently took over the role of supervising the household after her death.

As a young child, Mary Anne was precocious, strong-willed, if somehow awkward, and enjoyed the company of adults more than children of her age, with hunger for affection and fear of abandonment.

In her late teens and early 20's, she was first driven by moral ardor and spiritual perfectionism to become a priggish religious nut: She gave up reading fiction, believing that a morally serious person should focus on the real world and not imaginary ones; she forswore wine and as manager of her household forced those around her into abstinence as well; she adopted a severe and puritanical mode of dress and allowed music only when it accompanied worship.

But her roving mind and capacious intellect couldn't be contained in such straitjacket mode for long. Pretty soon, besides reading Bible commentaries, she was learning Italian and German, reading Wordsworth and Goethe, as well as Romantic poets including Shelley and Byron, whose lives certainly did not conform to the strictures of her faith.

She also read voraciously books on modern sciences, including those that tried to demythify and reconstruct the life of Jesus through biblical accounts, as well as those that tried to defend it. She found the latter unsatisfactory and unpersuasive and her doubts on her Christian beliefs continued to grow.

"While I admire and cherish much of what I believe to have been the moral teaching of Jesus himself, I consider the system of doctrines built upon the facts of his life… to be most dishonorable to God and most pernicious in its influence on individual and social happiness,” she said in a letter to her father.

Things finally came to a head when she declared a "Holy War" with her father and refused to go to church with him. She wrote to her father that she would like to go on living with him, but if he wanted her to leave, “I can cheerfully do it if you desire it and shall go with deep gratitude for all the tenderness and rich kindness you have never been tired of showing me. So far from complaining I shall joyfully submit if as a proper punishment for the pain I have most unintentionally given you, you determine to appropriate any provision you may have intended to make for my future support to your other children whom you may consider more deserving.”

She reconciled with her father a few months later, however, after realizing her selfish grand-standing had been hurting her beloved father and causing damages to the people surrounding and society in general. She agreed to accompany her father to church, so long as he and everybody else understood that she was not a Christian nor a believer in the doctrines of the faith.

She went on to meet and socialize with a variety of artists, philosophers and literati of the intelligentsia circle of London. Intellectually she was mature. The intensive reading she had done throughout her adolescence produced an impressive depth of knowledge and a capacity for observation and judgment.

Emotionally, though, she was still something of a basket case. By the time she was 22 it became a joke in her circle that Mary Anne fell in love with everyone she met. These relationships followed a general pattern: Desperate for affection, she would throw herself at some man, usually a married or otherwise unavailable one. Dazzled by her conversation, he would return her attention. Mistaking his intellectual engagement for romantic love, she would become emotionally embroiled, hoping their love would fill some void in herself. Finally he would reject her or flee, or his wife would force her out of the picture. Mary Anne would be left awash in tears, or crippled by migraines.

Her emotional maturity continued to grow through these heart aches, though, and at age 32, she met her true love and soul mate George Lewes, a self-made writer who was officially married to an estranged wife from whom he could not legally divorce.

Mary Anne and Lewes fell in love over ideas. In the years before they met they had been drawn to the same writers, often at the same time. They composed essays on overlapping subjects. They both took the search for truth with the same earnest intensity, and both subscribed to the idea that human love and sympathy could serve as the basis for their own morality as a substitute for a Christianity they could not actually believe in.

They finally decided to take the plunge and eloped to the European continent, where they spent the rest of their lives as husband and wife, and Lewes helped Mary Anne (now taking the pen name George Eliot) unleash her writing talent to become one of the greatest English novelists and writers of Victorian era, if not of all times.

They lived happily through their 24 year marriage together. “I am very happy— happy in the highest blessing life can give us, the perfect love and sympathy of a nature that stimulates my own healthy activity. I feel, too, that all the terrible pain I have gone through in past years, partly from the defects of my own nature, partly from outward things, has probably been a preparation for some special work that I may do before I die. That is a blessed hope, to be rejoiced in with trembling."

"Adventure is not outside man; it is within,” she would write.

the road to character (1)

Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower grew up as a farm boy in small town Kansas, with a strict father and a religiously devout but loving mother, alongside 6 brothers. 

He was an ill-tempered kid when one Halloween evening he was forbidden to go trick-or-treating with his elder brothers he got into such a rage he went pounding his fists against the trunk of an apple tree in the front yard, scraping the skin off and leaving his hands bloody and torn.

He went to West Point primarily for the free tuition and was academically mediocre and behaviorally defiant and rebellious. He graduated in 1915, lobbying furiously to be sent to the World War I and finally received the order to ship out to France on November 18, 1918, one week after the war ended.

He spent the next 20 years training troops, coaching football, and doing logistics in the US. By his 40's, he was easily the least accomplished of the boys in the Eisenhower family. Nobody expected great things of him.

But he settled in and learned the secrets of thriving within the military organization. He learned to master procedure, process, teamwork, and spot and elevate the right ideas from people: "When I go to a new station I look to see who is the strongest and ablest man on the post. I forget my own ideas and do everything in my power to promote what he says is right."

He was appointed personal assistant to General Douglas MacArthur, a man he disliked for his aristocratic air and above-institution attitude but served him loyally for 8 years, as he did for all other superiors he'd been assigned to.

As the supreme commander of World War II allies, he suppressed his own frustrations in order to keep the international alliance together. As President, he hid his private thoughts, and wore a costume of affability, optimism, and farm-boy charm in public to lead the country. 

He once told his grandson that his smile “came not from some sunny feel-good philosophy but from getting knocked down by a boxing coach at West Point. ‘If you can’t smile when you get up from a knockdown,’ the coach said, ‘you’re never going to lick an opponent.’"

To tame his underlying anger, he took the names of the people he hated, wrote them down on slips of papers, and tore them up and threw them in the wastebasket.
 
He was a master of army expletives, but almost never cursed in front of women and would walk away from a dirty joke; a 4-pack-a-day heavy smoker at the end of WW II but quit it cold turkey one day. 

"Freedom," he would say in his 1957 State of the Union speech, "has been defined as the opportunity for self-discipline."

He wrote that "It's all my fault if Normandy invasion failed" note but also a curt and emotionless letter to his war time chauffeur/secretary and rumored lover at her dismissal at the end of the war.

After his death, his vice president, Richard Nixon, recollected, "Ike was a far more complex and devious man than most people realized, and in the best sense of these words. Not shackled to a one-track mind, he always applied two, three, or four lines of reasoning to a single problem... His mind was quick and facile." 

"He was honorable but occasionally opaque, outwardly amiable but inwardly seething," added his recent biographer Evan Thomas. 

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"Take a bucket, fill it with water, 
Put your hand in — clear up to the wrist. 
Now pull it out; the hole that remains 
Is a measure of how much you’ll be missed…. 
The moral of this quaint example: 
To do just the best that you can, 
Be proud of yourself, but remember, 
There is no Indispensable Man!"
-- Anonymous poem carried in Ike's pocket

rhine river cruise

We've been thinking about taking a river cruise through Europe for some time, so when a good friend couple suggested we join them for a "Romantic Rhine" river cruise that they had signed up for some months ago we practically jumped on it without much weighing and dawdling like we normally would.

From the Alps

The cruise started at a little town northwest of Zurich, so we took flight from LA to Zurich a couple days early to take time touring the city and the country before the cruise got started. 

Zurich is a nice little big town nestled between a lake, two rivers and some wooded hills north of the Alps, wearing the crowns of one of the busiest financial centers and wealthiest cities in the world underneath its calm and classy setting. 

We strolled down from our cozy little hotel nearby Zurich University campus to visit the old town district with canals and bridges, shops and cathedrals, and had our first taste of bratwurst and fries at a popular local eatery we found through the Yelp mobile app.

   

We also took a one-day excursion to another tourist town in central Switzerland, got cabled up to a mountain for a May snow surprise, then an equally surprising scenic lake ride back.

   

Through the Bourg, Bergs, and Heims

Other than our first stop Strasbourg, which is located on the French side of the German-France border, the rest of our ports of call all lay in German territory. 

Besides the usual cathedrals and town centers with lively crowds in each of these little and big towns we walked by, we also got to sit down and sip beers at the sunny romantic Heidelberg; watched how the world's first printing press was set and done at Gutenberg Museum in Mainz; awed by the grandiose monument celebrating German unification some 150 years ago at a majestic hill side park overlooking Rudesheim; and enjoyed a true Black Forest cherry cake and coffee at--where else--the true Black Forest in southwestern Germany.

   

On the Rhine

A river cruise ship is a miniature ocean cruise liner. Instead of hosting two or three thousand people, it holds only 110 guests in our case, for example. 

What it cannot provide--such as casino or lavish stage shows--it tries to make up with fine services and finer entertainment programs. All our meals were of high quality ingredients and exquisite design and all dinners were served with complimentary wines. There was usual light jazz piano music at the lounge at night for dancing and one particular evening a string trio performance by 3 young upwardly mobile East European musicians was so extraordinarily good and touching it counted as one of the high-lights of our trip.

To the Lowlands

Amsterdam is the end point of our cruise. We took a canal tour around the city, then a bike ride in the afternoon that wound through the beautiful, serene country side of Holland, which is literally just one corner turn away from this bike-crazed metropolis.

We spent one extra day finishing up our street tour and visiting a museum that hosts master pieces of Dutch Golden Age maestros such as Vermeer and Rembrandt, and had a nice dinner at a nice little park next to our hotel with great tasting Belgium beer.

   


Back to the New Land

From the old we flew back to the New Amsterdam (the original name of Manhattan) the next day. Off the plane, I found the skies sunny blue instead of gloomy gray, streets wide and straight where pedestrian right of way reigns, the Statue of Liberty holding her torch on the gleamy harbor... Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" buzzing in my head...

We spent the next two days touring New York City, just like we did with those German towns and Zurich and Amsterdam, strolling through parks, going to restaurants, visiting museums... Big Apple seems to have them all, old and new, glamour and substance... Frank Sinatra's song lyrics "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere" buzzing in my head...

   

The Memorables

Besides our good friend couple (Sean & Sophie), Gohan and Jiafen were the other couple we traveled with. We met, ate, toured, and laughed a lot every day. One thing worth noting was Gohan is a recovering lung cancer patient who's still undergoing chemo therapy, yet we didn't see him hampered physically or emotionally in any way, but jolly and energetic all the time.  

We shared our faith and "family feud" mostly light-hearted, occasionally serious, but always progressively enlightening and helpful to each other.

Then when in New York, we met Sean & Sophie's daughter Tiffany who was engaging happily with her exciting new job and life here with a loving boy friend beside; and Angie, a dear friend of ours who looked just as chipper and charming as we last saw her some 4 and a half years ago. 

These were precious moments we came to enjoy, as much as or even more than the mountains and monuments, lakes and rivers, castles and cathedrals that we saw all through the trip!

    

* For more photos and details of the trip, please go to 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10206900410573930.1073741830.1387569224&type=1&l=d0e74b4d5f

hypocrisy

Growing up in Taiwan, I heard some "Chinese Culture Supremacist" jeering that in American culture, calling someone a "liar" is a serious offence because "Americans lie all the time, so they are ultra-sensitive to being called that name."

That's a silly allegation, of course. After living among them for well over 30 years, I find Americans to be more honest and straight-talking than most other peoples in the world I know, if anything.

What I am surprised though--at least initially--is the term "hypocrite" so often used here.

Politicians are often called hypocrites, for pretending to care for issues or people when all they do is their political future or how many votes they are getting in the next election. 

Businesses are often called hypocrites because their institutional goals of obtaining maximum profits are often in conflict with the benevolent image they try to maintain in the public. 

And of course when celebrity-like church leaders are found involved in sex or monetary scandals they are pinned as the most despicable ones who practice exactly what they preach others not to do.

Maybe Americans are just too honest a people to stand any phony characters or manipulative behavior flitting right in front of their societal eyes. (But then we have the Kardashians... well, that's another story).

That same honesty may also be called naivete or simple-mindedness that causes them to try to provide simple solutions to complicated issues that often times get them involved with troubles in other parts of the world where they are in turn called hypocrites who mess up other people's affairs when they can not take care of their own well in the first place. 

It's much easier to subscribe to a lofty idea in its abstract form than when it's broken down into nitty-gritty parts whose implementation may interfere with my personal interests. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) mentality is one example. Another, more amusing one is like this: When asked by surveyors what they think about illegal immigration, most Americans say it should be banned, no doubt. But then the surveyor asks: "If we do evict all and allow no more illegal immigrants, your yard maintenance cost will increase, your restaurant bills will go up... What's your thought on that?"... Moments of silence... then many would say: "By how much will my bills rise up?"

When I was a boy, I was puzzled by all those funny tales of men so fearful of their wives... What the heck are they so fearful about? Then I grew up and knew, it's probably because men are usually the great pretenders, grand speech makers, abstract idea promoters, while their wives are the nitty-gritty doers, who know all the shallow hollow behind their billow, so they have to kowtow.

I think we are all hypocrites to some extent. One reason for that is we all aspire to be someone or something better than who we are at certain stages of our life. So to the old man who gives the youngsters the wrong mentoring advice of "Do as I say, not as I do" I'll give him credit for wanting his youngsters to model after something he knows he himself hasn't set a good example for. Similarly, to those who call all the people sitting in the church "just a bunch of hypocrites" I'll say yes some may well be, but many are there because they know they have been falling short of the mark but are continually trying nonetheless.

You probably know the word "hypocrite" came from Greek/Latin origin meaning "a person who acts". And as they say, the world is a stage, we all act a part in it. We play the roles we either are born with or seek to be, or both, wearing different hats at different times or at the same time, all the time. Each role has its intrinsic values and expected norms. Play it well, and you get self-satisfaction and the society functions hunky-dory. Nothing wrong with that.

Except we all have something else that goes beyond this acting, that common being some call "true self" or divine presence, that we like to unveil from behind our masks and hope to meet with others who find it too, from time to time, as often as possible.

Take it easy, fellas!