kyrgyzstan -- kids, students, and businessmen

Kyrgyzstan is a young country. Statistics says 34.4% of its population are under the age of 15 and 6.2% are over 65; my eyes told me whenever I went outdoor or going downtown I saw young workers or school children bustling/roaming on the streets, or toddlers on strollers by their young adult parents.

And kids are not about being shy or bashful, but bright and sprightly here. Say hi to a roomful of kindergarten kids and they all turn and vigorously greet you back. At one of the schools we visited, a 1st-grader-ish boy came up to us introducing himself as a boxer (the school did offer boxing lessons), and asked if we knew of Mike Tyson?... Bruce Lee?... Muhammad Ali?... Jean-Claude Van Damme...



The young, smart, fluent English speaking female principal of the vocational college we visited was actually a graduate from the first Christian school the foundation set up some 18 years ago, who came back to work at the college a couple years ago when it started and grew her way up to the principal position. Talking about sowing and harvesting, fruits of education.



One expressed intent of my trip here was to meet and talk with the university's IT department staff and students, to get a feel and explore the possibility of bringing online development project opportunities to the motivated and talented.

My encounter with the IT students started off at a casual off-campus lunch with four of them (who all later became my group discussion members at the TWTS leadership training course): Abai, the typical, smart, computer wizard kid, Azamat, the pensive one, Iskak, the young and restless, and Aisulu, a bubbly girl who looked every inch like my niece-in-law in Taiwan. All seemed curiously excited about the possibilities I mentioned.

I then met with the IT department staff at school: Polina, the charming department head, Andrei, head of IT services for both the university and the vocational college, and Kochkorov, head of career development. All welcomed the ideas I proposed, as educational and potentially monetarily rewarding opportunities for the students. As a matter of fact, Andrei, who also taught web programming at the schools and had done some online projects himself, had thought about assembling a "programming club"--as many commercial IT companies in Bishkek have been doing for their junior programmers to practice development skills--to take on online projects for some of his students too.



So he informed and gathered a group of around 15 students he pre-selected to meet with me at school, where I introduced myself and my ideas and invited them to share their online development experiences--if any--with me and others. Out of a few who spoke, one 14-year-old said he had done some online project since age 12! Wow, I knew that's what I would find here (like anywhere else in the world)!



International Micro-Enterprise Development (IMED) is a micro-financing program that gives start-up loans to worthy small businesses that the foundation has started doing about a year ago. I got to see and meet those businesses and people who had received loans last year as the Special Project Manager from the foundation took me along for the program's follow-up visits.
Out of those we met--the tin metal maker, the wedding photographer, the carpenter, the plumber, the car repairman, and the beef jerky maker--three struck me with their unusual backgrounds and life stories:

S. was a Uzbek living in southwestern Kyrgyzstan, the most conservative and Islamic part of the country. When he and his brother's conversion to Christianity was known by their neighbors, an angry mob took them to a public ground and demanded that they recant and revert to their Islamic faith. When they refused the Imam turned his back and signaled the mob to stone them to death, but the police cars arrived in time to take them to safety. They and their families had since left their hometown and moved north here to start a new life where S. runs his carpentry business while pastoring and hosting weekly Bible studies for his relatives and other fellow Uzbek Christians here.

V. had an abusive Korean father (whose father was one of those displaced by Stalin from Russian Far East to Kazakhstan in the late 1930's) and an Armenian mother. At age 17 he was in such depression he almost killed his father or himself if not for his new found Christian faith. He graduated from the foundation's university and is now managing John (the Canadian)'s farm, studying for Master's degree on international project management, and starting a beef jerky manufacturing business with his friend/partner A.

A. is a German Kyrgyz of Mennonite descent who nowadays goes to Calvary Church in Bishkek. He had gone to study and got a business degree in Lithuania but decided to come back to fight for orphans' welfare in his home country. He works for World Without Orphans on legal matters while running the sales and marketing side of the beef jerky business he started with V. He is happily married with a lovely wife and 5 daughters, 4 of them orphans they adopted.

kyrgyzstan -- missions and missionaries

In 1992, 64-year-old Captain Yang (楊嘉善), a former merchant marine captain, decided to retire and serve God in full time ministry. He turned over his shipping business to his employees and dedicated the rest of his life to mission work.

From 1995 - 2000, he and his wife ministered among the Dungan Muslim people in Kazakhstan. In spring 2000 they were moved to open Christian schools and orphanages in Kyrgyzstan. Miraculously, Kyrgyzstan's departments of Religion, Justice and Education granted Elder Yang the nation's first Christian school license. He soon set up a Christian charitable foundation and opened its first Christian School of Blessing in September 2000 with 120 students from 1st-4th grades.

As of today, the foundation operates/supports five schools (mostly 1st-11th grades) and two orphanages that serve over 1200 children, and a university and a vocational college that offer business, law, linguistic, pedagogy, international relations, and information technology studies to over 400 students, as well as a gym and a playground with youth and pre-school programs in northern Kyrgyzstan.

 

Christian funded or not, proselytization and open adulation of Christianity is not allowed in Kyrgyzstan. An off-campus student fellowship/counseling program is thus set up and conducted by Jean, a lady pastor from Taiwan who has been residing and hosting weekly meetups, organizing summer/winter camps, providing life coaching, etc., to young adults here for well over a year.

Another off-campus, annual event organized by the foundation is a Christian value based leadership development program (called "The Way To Success") that invites seasoned business people as speakers and mentors to teach and facilitate the training for those who choose to participate.

Spencer and Diane are such speakers. They are a couple originally from Kansas and veterans of corporate world before leaving it for mission fields. They--along with their three young children--had been living among the Uyghurs in Chinese Xinjiang region for 5 years until the Chinese government decided not to renew their visa and moved here a year and a half ago.

Paul is another layman-turned-missionary that I met through the TWTS program (where I cameoed as a mentor). He was originally from Wisconsin and a gifted addiction/crisis counselor by profession, before he met Captain Yang's ministry in the States and decided to become a full time missionary himself. Before coming to Kyrgyzstan six months ago, he and his Chinese wife Angela had spent a couple years in southwestern China (雲南) evangelizing tea growers there.

From a rigid Catholic background (he is the 7th child of two church going Catholic parents), he had "converted" to a pro-active, but very kind and thoughtful evangelical in this land of non-Christian-believers. He told me two contrasting episodes that recently happened to him: In one someone knocked on his apartment door and advised he keep a low profile in his evangelical activism here; In another he was invited to a rural village by a Kyrgyz woman whose recently deceased husband was a non-practicing Scottish Christian to speak in his funeral and he took the opportunity to pronounce his faith and the gospel message at the end of his speech to hundreds of Muslims in the audience, knowing full well what dangers such pronunciation might bring him.

I met Sandra at one of those student fellowship functions Jean organized. She told me she was originally from Ohio but later moved to Arizona and then sold her property there to travel the world on missions. She has been living in a house she bought 5 years ago in the former Mennonite village and working on rescuing and educating women who are victims of bride kidnapping that she said is still quite common practice here.

John is a Canadian who came to Kyrgyzstan 4 years ago and with his churches' backing set up a farm for adult orphans who "graduated" from orphanages without employable skills and/or places to live. He had since extended his farm to include guest houses for back-packers/eco-vacationers and sell handicrafts made by orphanage children to help achieve self-sustenance for the operation.

Last but not least, Butch, a retired chief executive of a big construction company in Illinois, has been the major benefactor and brain trust for the foundation for the past 15 years or so. He happened to be here on one of his frequent visits from the States and staying in the same complex as I so we hit off chatty conversations almost daily at breakfast in the homey kitchen. He struck me as an even-keeled Mid-Westerner and straight-talking Texan (indeed he just bought a ranch in central Texas and moved down there a couple months ago) combined, a rock solid guy befitting his position as chairman of the foundation that is particularly needed since Captain Yang, a very dear old friend of his since the founding of the foundation, had passed away more than two and a half years ago.

kyrgyzstan

For the past couple years we've been sponsoring an international university in Kyrgyzstan through a Christian foundation. I decided to pay an explorative visit to the country and the university while in Taipei.

A straight line flight from Taipei to Kyrgyzstan (3000 miles) would include an overnight stop-over in China that required Chinese visa which I didn't have, so I opted for an alternative route that took me off Taipei in early morning, stopped by Seoul for a couple hours, then a 7-hour beeline to Almaty, Kazakhstan, then a short hour flight to Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, before a driver and two students from the university picked me up at the airport and took me for a one-and-a-half hour drive to the town of my destination, Tokmok, while the night was still young.

To most people--me included--Kyrgyzstan is probably just one of those hard-to-spell "-stan" countries in the middle of nowhere Euro-Asia landmass. Indeed it is first of those "-stan" countries sprawling west of China (Kazakhstan to its north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest), occupying a key section of the ancient international highway called Silk Road, carrying a mixed-bag of cultural and historical heritage spanning millennia, as ancient civilizations ebbed and flew, East and West met and left, at the heart of the Eurasian continent.

Take two ancient ruins I visited for examples: Suyab (碎葉) was once the principal capital of Western Turkic Khaganate (西突厥汗國) who got defeated by Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty (唐太宗), and the rumored birthplace of the famous Chinese poet 李白; Burana Tower was one of the oldest architectural construction (a minaret) in Central Asia, situated in the old capital of yet another Khaganate established by people of Iranian origin.

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People here still call Chinese "Khitan" (契丹) because that Chinese ethnic group came and established the Western Liao Dynasty (西遼王朝) and ruled them for 100 years during the 12-13th century.

After some unsuccessful rebellions against Qing Dynasty by Chinese Muslims living in northwest China (陝甘回亂) in late 19th century, many of them chose to emigrate to Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Central Asia, whose descendants are now called Dungan ( 東干，東甘 ，甘肅東部 ) people, with whom you can carry on simple conversations in modern Chinese without much trouble.

Around the same time, a group of German speaking Mennonite Christians migrated from Europe to the northeast of Kyrgyzstan to escape religious persecution from the Catholic and other Reformed churches.

And tens of thousands of Korean families living in Russian Far East were force-moved by Stalin to this part of the world for fear of them being used as Japanese spies pre-World War II era.

Economically speaking, Kyrgyzstan is a poor country. It has few natural resources other than some minerals and water from the high mountains. Whatever little manufacturing industry it had collapsed after the Soviet Union breakup, and agriculture remains a major contributor to the country's GDP. Indeed I had tasted great delicious beet soup and potato mash, devoured biggest shish-kabobs ever, and crossed path with horse and cow herds on country roads.

I spent my 9-day stay at the Christian foundation's office-residential building rather than a hotel. It was a small two-story complex with nice meeting hall and homey kitchen, among other things, and a staff of capable and devoted Kyrgyz Christians who have done many great charitable works in a Muslim country for the past 18 years. I gave thanks to each of them and shared my spiritual journey with them in their daily morning devotion on the day I left.

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Crossing path with horses:

https://youtu.be/ENbEoYjrFcc

For more photos and trip details: 

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/media_set?set=a.10220522230190907&type=3  

palindrome, semordnilap, etc.

Palindromes are words that read the same backwards as they do forwards. For example: racecar, kayak.

It can be a sentence too, like
Madam, I'm Adam.
Never odd or even.
Marge lets Norah see Sharon’s telegram.
Able was I ere I saw Elba. (A fictive saying by Napoleon as he was being exiled to the island of Elba)

It can be long:
Doc, note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.

Extraordinarily long:
Dennis, Nell, Edna, Leon, Nedra, Anita, Rolf, Nora, Alice, Carol, Leo, Jane, Reed, Dena, Dale, Basil, Rae, Penny, Lana, Dave, Denny, Lena, Ida, Bernadette, Ben, Ray, Lila, Nina, Jo, Ira, Mara, Sara, Mario, Jan, Ina, Lily, Arne, Bette, Dan, Reba, Diane, Lynn, Ed, Eva, Dana, Lynne, Pearl, Isabel, Ada, Ned, Dee, Rena, Joel, Lora, Cecil, Aaron, Flora, Tina, Arden, Noel, and Ellen sinned.

It can also be numerical, like those we use to keep dates. For example, these particular ones we just used for the past few days in September:

9-10-19 (September 10, 2019)
9-11-19
9-12-19
   .
   .
9-19-19

all mean the same whether read from left to right or right to left.

If you have picked November 11, 2011 (11-11-11) for your wedding date, there is really not much room for excuses for forgetting your anniversaries.

Legend has it that the famous Charles Bridge at Prague, Czech Republic was laid its first stone at 5:31 AM on 9th of July, 1357 by its superstitious namesake Holy Roman Emperor who believed such symmetrical, palindromic number (1357 9, 7 5:31) would bring extra strength to the bridge.

I always thought if these two big name companies, Adidas adding an "s", Toyota adding an "a" to the front of their names:

Adidas --> Sadidas
Toyota --> Atoyota

Then they both become palindromic, bringing additional fun to their marketing, maybe.

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In the case when reversing the letters of a word makes it a different one, it is called a semordnilap. (Notice semordnilap is the exact reverse spelling of the word palindromes) 

For example,

"desserts" spelled backwards makes "stressed"

"diaper" becomes "repaid"

“deliver no evil” becomes "live on reviled"  

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Look at the word SWIMS. Turn your head upside down. It still spells SWIMS! Such word is called an ambigram.

In many cases ambigrams are artistic designs that retain their meaning when viewed or interpreted from a different direction, perspective, or orientation. 

For example,

  

is a mirror image of the word wiki

 

conveys the idea of light being both a wave and a particle

 

is a mirror and rotational ambigram of an arithmetic operation illustrating the commutative property of 2+1+5=8

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Portmanteaus are the blending of two words into one to create a meaning for a singular concept. Words like brunch (breakfast lunch), motel (motor hotel) are among the most commonly used in our everyday vocabulary.

It can apply to people: Celebrity couple’s names such as Brangelina for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and Kimye for Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

Places: New York City neighborhoods like Soho (South of Houston Street) and Tribeca (Triangle Below Canal Street); Mexico-California border cities such as Calexico and Mexicali; and a descriptive one like Hotlanta that says much about the temperature of Atlanta, Georgia. ‌‌

Internet: Webinar is a web seminar; malware is malicious software; emoticons are emotions expressed in icon form; and netiquette is a guide to how netizens (net citizens) should behave on the internet. 

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Can't end this without sharing some Chinese word play fun as well, like this one you might find on a tea cup:

可以清心也 (soothe my soul it certainly can)  

Expanding it into a matrix:

可以清心也 (soothe my soul it certainly can)
以清心也可 (can be used to soothe my soul)
清心也可以 (soothe my soul it might as well do)
心也可以清 (hence my soul be soothed)

也可以清心 (might soothe my soul as well)  

Notice each character takes turn leading a sentence, producing a slightly different but totally legitimate and meaningful sentence each time. And this is a symmetrical set: you can read not only left to right, row by row, but also top to bottom, column by column, and get meaningful sentences each time.

A bad-ass all-in-one palindrome, semordnilap, and ambigram in its own right, don't you agree?

As for the portmanteau: A good portion of Chinese characters are by design portmanteaus already. Take the character 清 in these sentences as an example: It is a combination of water氵 and deep blue 青, therefore means "clear (with water)", transcended to mean spiritual cleansing, soul soothing here.

Fun fun fun words!

singing group

Singing in my opinion is one perfect example of how body and mind work closely together: First you "imagine" the note you want to sing--how high the pitch, how great the volume, what sound to make--then you open your mouth, strain your vocal cord, lift your abdomen (if you are doing it right) or chest (if not), and out comes that sound you intended...

You then need to be "confident" and "persistent" with your utterance, so you can stay the course and not easily get off-keyed or swayed over to other harmonic parts of the song that are being sung by your fellow singers. 

Not that you should mental-block your fellow singers' voices, quite the opposite, you need to listen closely to them all the time, for their harmonics, so you can blend in yours, and for the rise and fall, twist and turn of the melody, so you can vest your emotions in.

If, as they say, when doing meditation, you imagine your mind like a steady river, letting go all the disruptive thoughts and noises like boats floating by, then when singing, it's like that river packs and flows all your thoughts and feelings up and away to the far far land of no return... 

I have joined a few choir or chorus groups off and on through the years. This most recent one my wife dragged me into joining over a year ago is made up of a group of 20+ people, men and women about my age or older, veteran and half-baked singers like myself, from all over Orange County.

I like the songs the group picks to sing: be it English, Chinese, Taiwanese or Hakka (a minority dialect in Taiwan), spiritual, classical, folksy or pop... all are melodically and harmonically rich and beautiful; the fact we have some veteran pitch perfect "big brother" singers singing next to me boosts up my confidence (and covers up my faults); and a cheery, always smiley sweet lady conductor that patiently nudges us on like kids in school... all make the weekly two and a half hour practices go fast and easy.

Here are some video recordings of a recent performance we did at an event commemorating the many great foreign missionaries and the work they did in Taiwan to share with you:

A spiritual--also the official--song of the group, in English
https://youtu.be/8Y7j-FNHOhc

A song in Hakka, about a legendary old tree and the tale surrounding it
https://youtu.be/a01Ba7C-OCk

A poetic "fisherman's song" in Mandarin Chinese
https://youtu.be/rxE6Wq_qTIc

A song in Taiwanese, based on a poem by George MacKay, a Canadian missionary who came to Taiwan in 1871 and devoted the rest of his life (30 years) there
https://youtu.be/a-VHahEwpYY

A jolly folksy tune in Taiwanese about an old man trying having fun riding a bicycle around town with a bumpy ending  

https://youtu.be/98WkM06BKS4

Hope you have spotted me but not heard my voices 

meetup groups

A meetup group is an online creation. If you feel like doing something with a group of like minded people--be it outdoor activities, intellectual discussions, business networking, skill learning, etc., one thing you can do is go online to the website meetup.com, and you will find scores of groups under all the above categories in your geographical area for you to pick and choose and join (and if you can't find any you like, you can create one yourself and hope others will join you) for the activities you desire.

I have on record joined over 20 meetup groups in the past 4-5 years. Most of them have gone dormant either because the group organizers stop holding events, or I lose interest or can no longer attend (e.g., those I signed up when I was in Taiwan). But here are a few I still remain active:

THINK was originally founded by a Christian seeking intellectual honesty in San Jose and now has chapters in many cities. It is a place for "people who want to engage more critically with their faith and those who have no faith but are interested in Christian theology and want to know whether it, or religious thought more generally, can be reconciled with modern science and philosophy." True to its "mission statement", topics we have covered in our monthly meetups include

Let's discuss logical fallacies -- Learn how to avoid types of reasoning that are seductive but logically flawed

Let's discuss physics and theology -- From quantum mechanics to the Big Bang the 20th century changed how humans view the physical world, are we finally getting close to discovering a "theory of everything"?

Let's discuss cafeteria religion -- Many people belong to a church or other religious group without accepting all the group's teachings. Why might someone take this "cafeteria" approach to faith and religion? Is the approach intellectually defensible? 

How should I live? Three Chinese philosophers' answers -- Mozi 墨子 promoted "impartial care"; Mengzi 孟子, a follower of Confucius, taught that people are born with "sprouts" of goodness inside them and can become good by "extending" those sprouts; and Xunzi 荀子, another Confucian, asserted that humans are born selfish but can become good through practice

Why I believe what I believe -- A 7-part series presented by members who are atheist, agnostic, non-scriptural monotheist, Christian, ex-Christian, returning Christian...

Last Supper with XXX -- Similar to the "Why I believe" series, except the speakers are from the outside community whose perspectives and experiences may differ from those of most of THINK's members, and if we don't like what the guests have to say, then it's their last supper! :)

Our group organizer, Joseph, is a young community college philosophy professor, who picks the topics, provides supporting materials, and arbitrates the discussions with full knowledge, incisive views, and gentle manners. One key reason I think why this group has been successful and I enjoy attending it.

As for the group members, they run the gamut: We have Reba--an inquisitive Muslim woman--and Akbar--a composed Muslim businessman; Phil, a pharmacist and ex-Catholic who hosts a web forum for fact-belief debate; Caleb, a high school teacher whose knowledge and deep understanding of theology and philosophy amazes me; Dave, a gentle old man who often acts as a Christianity apologist even though he personally had been wronged by the church in his long journey of faith; and Rhett, an energetic, big-hearted man who became a born-again Christian in college, went to theological school, served at the church, then left and re-converted to an agnostic atheist and staunch humanist.

Forum for Humanist Association of Orange County is a chapter of American Humanist Association that focuses on the philosophy of secular humanism. It has often invited guest speakers (scholars, book authors, government officials) to address serious issues such as climate change, Mueller report, community relations development, or has its own members or those from sister organizations promote volunteer work (food bank, beach cleaning), social justice movement (poor people's campaign), etc., in addition to intellectual discussions on interesting concepts and ideas such as universal basic income, golden rule for humanism, etc.

Beginner's Practical Philosophy is a group I joined relatively recently in April, and was immediately drawn by its discussion topic ("How do scientists and artists make creative discoveries"), format (chatty discussions around tiny patio table under mid-morning sun), and the host, Richard, a retired ER surgeon doctor with whom I share very similar world views despite our very different backgrounds.

The group is now merged with another larger, older (14 years) "philosophy cafe" group led by a retired philosophy professor/minister and will focus their discussion on Existentialism starting September.

1 Million Cups has become my favorite and most regularly attended meetup group in the past 3 months even though I had joined it more than 2 years ago. It is a country wide public forum sponsored by a philanthropic foundation (Kauffman Foundation), Starbucks, who provides free coffee, and UC Irvine, who provides the venue, to help entrepreneurs and innovative businesses engage with local mentors, advisers, business people, and fellow entrepreneurs.

On every early Wednesday morning, one or two entrepreneurs from startup or early stage companies step forward to present their business or concept to the audience, who--after doing some round table discussions among themselves--give their feedback, questions, suggestions and referrals to the presenters. It then follows with a free-for-all, pick-whomever-you-like-to-talk-to hour long mixer session before the place is closed.

What I find most satisfying, besides hearing interesting startup ideas every week, is getting to know and bond with people of various backgrounds, such as

Rob, the owner of a 400-property real estate transaction and management company looking for good "PropTech" app for his business

Babak, a retired ophthalmologist screening for startup investment opportunities for his business network group

Cindy has a firm specializing in legal and intellectual property affairs for startup companies

Dan is developing a 3-D, holographic rendition software for big board advertisement while negotiating with a major web hosting company to sell the mail server business he's been holding on since the Linux days 

Josh is building gear that monitors eye movement and brain wave to predict viewer preference for independent TV series studios

Liam is a local boy and newly graduate from an east coast university developing an event scheduling, life style app with a developer partner

Wolfgang is a German industrial designer who travels between offices here and Paris

RJ is a marketing consultant fine-tuning a social media platform targeting non-profit organizations he has been developing for the past 18 months since I first talked to him

We come, we meet, we connect... May the world be better for it!

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​One day Dan brought his daughter to the meetup, who was also entrepreneurial spirited and just started selling her own doggie cookies online. I tried the cookie she showed me and became one of her doggie food's first human consumers (after her father).

book group

Though I love reading, I have never joined a book club or the sort. But then I heard there's a book group at a library in Irvine that meets once a week, one short story at a time, section by section discussion per meeting... that seemed to fit my liking, so I went, and have been going there for 8 consecutive weeks so far.

A short story is a challenging read as it is a challenging write for the writer. To tell a compelling story in the shortest stretch possible (typically between 10-20 pages), the author weaves it with tight sentences, power words, witty remarks, nuanced descriptions, twisted plots or interesting turn of events that capture your attention but require more efforts to follow than a plain-talking non-fiction book would.

And even after you have got all the words and expressions, syntax and semantics figured out, you only get half the story of what the author wants to convey... Those clues, metaphors, hidden meanings, etc., only get revealed during the section by section discussion when our discussion facilitator poses questions and we respond and ask our own questions and share our own thoughts... Then at the end of the two-hour session we suddenly realize how much more we have got out of the story than when we first read it by ourselves!

There are about 6 or 7 regular attendees to the meeting besides our discussion facilitator Doug, a thin, tall gentleman in his 70's who has been leading book groups like this and teaching English literature for years. Kathy has a well rounded reading voice and a perceptive mind; Cris is a fun loving lady who sometimes burst out laughing when reading a part of the story that seems so funny to her; Merrie is light speaking and articulate (they all are!); Marcy is a sharp Jewish lady who doesn't always read the story beforehand but can get the hang of it right as the story proceeds; Charles is analytical and inquisitive; Bob is a retired school principal with many interesting life stories to share; and for a couple weeks Frank is this neat, gentle, and relatively quiet guy who lives in a homeless shelter sitting right next to me.

The short stories we read are from the "Best American Short Stories" book series, a yearly collections of notable works from hundreds of periodicals selected by reputable editors per year. This particular one we are reading is from year 2006. ​The stories we have read so far include

Secret: An adolescent girl's coming of age story with hippie parents and some outsider kids in the 1960's

Dominion: The confusing, mythical fear of death in an old man's mind exemplified in real world as the hounding coyotes surrounding a pond and a country house, all cleared up in one fell swoop by his no-nonsense wife

So Much for Artemis: The frustrating story of a laid-off NASA engineer at the end of Space Age seen from his son's eyes

Self-Reliance: A rich reflection and surreal depiction of the life and death of a retired doctor who learned of her terminal cancer and decided to end her life her own way

Tattooizm: A dreamy, rootless young woman with an aspiring tattoo artist boy friend who she plans to dump but ends up having a "souvenir" non-tattoo done on her thigh

The Dog: Set in contemporary China, the story between a Beijing couple and their rural relatives and an outlawed fight dog exposes the conflicts the economic prosperity brings to the old communist social orders

After a Life: A touching story, also backgrounded in contemporary Beijing, on love and hope, lost and rebirthed, between couples and parents-children

How We Avenge the Blums: A somehow comical but realistic story on anti-Semitism that happened in suburban Long Island in the 1980's 

Can't wait to read the next story and for the next discussion!

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interfaith meditation walk

I felt America was so great again I went to an interfaith interdependence walking meditation to celebrate its independence day on 4th of July.

The event was held at a lake park just north of downtown LA. I met and picked up Grace--one of my fellow "Club Med" weekly meditation group friends in San Clemente--and her husband Kris at a local Costco parking lot and headed north.

If you want to experience what perfect traffic on LA freeway is like, pick 4th of July to drive. No stop-and-go, crawling or tailgate hugging, not even a single slowdown, but smooth-as-silk driving all the way, reaching our destination 60 miles away in less than 50 minutes that could take an hour and a half during normal weekday rush hour.

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We took a quick tour around this busy community park before the event started. Lots of people jogging, strolling, fishing around an elegant, curvy, placid lake, sufficed with a red bridge, white lotus, and a tall fountain at the center.

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About 20 people (that grew to about 30 as we proceeded) gathered when the procession started. Led by a couple of young ministers of the event's organizer, the Interfaith Ministry of Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, we walked along the lake in silence, stopping every few minutes at a "religion station", where a representative from said faith shared the essence of their belief or their personal take on it.

The Hindu station referenced Mahatma Gandhi's effort and skill in achieving justice while building harmonious relationships among people in community.

The Christian station cited the New Testament's metaphor of eyes, hands, heart and mind serving in harmony within one body of Christ, recognizing that all components of the body are needed for health and vitality.

The Jewish station, represented by a young Lecturer and "Diversity Consultant for Organic Communication" at UCLA, relayed the story in the Torah that finds the people of Israel dwelling in community, with tents respecting individual space, yet arranged to be part of the unified whole.

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At the Islamic station, a young woman shared her heart-touching understanding of the teaching from an Islamic sage "Ask questions, not to find fault, but to understand" that helps her practice a life of true loving that pleases God.

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The Sikh station pointed out their long standing tradition of providing generous hospitality that is currently exemplified by their daily feeding of 14,000 refugees at the Syrian border.

And the Buddhist, the Humanist, the Baha'i stations...

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After circling the lake and all 8 stations, a casual refreshments and mingle session was held at the indoor center for those who opted to stay. We each shared briefly our background and reflection on today's event. Two of them registered in my mind in particular:

A humanist/atheist: "Surveys consistently show we atheists are the most despised people in the US... even though our humanist beliefs dictate us to live by high ethical and moral standards... It looks to me our only hope of reconciliation with the religious people will have to go through progressives like those of you I see here today."

A mother who brought her two young children (one in a stroller) to the walk: "Though I left my Christian faith then later came back to the church myself, I want to bring my children to environments like this so they can see, feel and smell the air of diversity for themselves as they grow."

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The drive back home was smooth as well, ignoring the fact that there were more cars on the freeway and a wayward mini van almost grazed me by the side. We stopped by a fusion (or should I say "inter-culinary") restaurant in Aliso Viejo for a late lunch, where I had a delicious Ahi tuna salad and Grace and Kris had their favorite steak sandwiches.

It would have been a perfect driving day for me if I did not make a wrong turn at our final freeway exit, forgetting we were to return to the Costco parking lot not my home. But like a little aberration in life can only deter but not detour us from getting where we want to go if we know where we want to go, a swift U-turn at next light got us back on the right direction again and I delivered my two most pleasant companions of the day to their cute Mini at the Costco parking lot safe and sound!

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“We're all just walking each other home.”

― Ram Dass    

​At the Buddhist station, Marianne, born in Hawaii when it was still a US Territory, celebrated her 90th birthday with us all

  

ecuador, peru

Our recent South American adventure took us from an Andes Mountains high city (Quito), down to the Amazon rainforest, up to an Inca holy site (Machu Picchu), then to the capitals of old Inca (Cusco) and New Spain's (Lima), by plane, train, bus, canoe and hiking boots, all in 11 days.

Quito is the pleasant capital city of Ecuador. Its high altitude (9350 ft) probably contributes to the bluer skies, brighter sunshine, and fresher air we experienced, and its geographical spread on the hilly sides of a canyon made the long drives in the city scenic and tolerable.

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Outside the city we visited the country's namesake, the Equator of the world, where the Earth is scientifically and markedly divided into South and North halves.

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Going east, passing the continental divide we entered the western fringe of the Amazon rainforest, where we anchored ourselves in a cozy lodge by the river, and spent two days learning the indigenous way of life, trying exotic food, hiking and flying through the jungle on a zip line basket, canoeing and rafting and swimming in the river... things I never thought I would have done before I came here.

 

​Going up the 8000-ft high mountains of Machu Picchu--one of the New Seven Wonders of the World--sounded like another indomitable task to me, but in reality it only took a long train ride from a small valley town to an even smaller foothill village, a short bus transfer to the site, then final legwork of no more than 20 minutes of climbing up that strenuous as it might be was no more treacherous than trudging narrow muddy trails in the Amazon jungle.

It was open, serene, panoramic, misty and mystique all around.

In Cusco we watched an Indian shaman perform the old ritual of praying and presenting offerings to their pantheon gods, visited a historical cemetery that houses tens of thousands of deceased behind well decorated glass windows, and a local market flush with colorful fruits and vegetables and rows of eatery booths that offered exotic fruit juice and lamb head potato soup, etc.

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Outside the city, we explored an ancient fortress whose stony structures were mostly destroyed and not much was left to see except for the magnificent view of the city from its lookout point.

With one extra day of our own in Lima, we took to its ocean parks, shopped at a cliff side mall, then sauntered our way back through its busy streets, quiet neighborhoods, leisurely parks... to get a feel of what life in one of the oldest and largest metropolitan cities in the Spanish New World might be, before flying back to our own half of the continent en el norte!

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For more photos and trip details, click on the following (and swipe the photos upward for descriptions):

Quito

Amazon

Machu Picchu

Cusco

Lima

thus i know

There was a short stint in my IT career where I played the role of a liaison officer between a US telecom device design house and its manufacturing subsidiary in Taiwan, and one day my Japanese-American boss asked me a question with true curiosity: "Why do engineers in Taiwan always say they understand something when they don't?"

For reasons unfathomable to me now I came up with a wind-around answer that basically said it all came from the deep rooted respect for learned people in Chinese culture that came from the Confucian emphasis on education that people feel embarrassed if they admit they don't know something they are supposed to know for the position they hold...

"Blame it all on Confucius, huh", my Japanese American boss, who's at times my fellow interlocutor on Chinese history and philosophy, chuckled and said after musing my answer for a while.

Indeed I did an injustice to Confucius on this account, grossly missing one famous saying he made on what constitutes true knowing: "Knowing there are things you know and there are things you don't know means you do know" (知之為知之,不知為不知,是知也). If only these engineers stick to that teaching!

There is no shortage of things we know or can get to know in this info-saturated world of ours. Want to know who won the NCAA basketball championship last year, how to adjust a Kohler shower valve in your bathroom, where to eat when you come to a strange new town... Just pull a Google search, view a YouTube video, or ask Siri or Alexa, and you'll get your answer right then and there, like water from the tap, light at a switch. 

There is another kind of knowing that goes deeper than facts and data, how-to and what-is, though. It's passionate, like "to know you is to love you"; personal, that makes "I know who you are" sound even scarier than "I know what you did last summer"; intuitive and imaginative, so a visionary can see the forest from the trees and Michelangelo can see the statue of David in a rock of marble.

The sense of awe, wonder and curiosity about the universe indeed play a crucial part in many great discoveries in human enlightenment history. As Isaac Newton put it: "I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

There is knowledge that humankind can never apprehend unless it is revealed from above through prophets or God-incarnate, say the religionists; through direct spiritual experience, say the mystics; none of the above, say the agnostics.

No amount of scripture reading or spiritual prancing, however, can beat the emphatic knowing of the man who says "I was blind, but now I can see," or the fact "He is risen" in the minds of numerous believers through millenniums. 

Happy Easter!

indian ocean cruise

This is by far the longest cruise we've ever taken: From Singapore, it squiggled through the Malacca Strait to Phuket, Thailand, skidded west to Colombo, Sri Lanka, snugged up the southwestern and western coast of India, stopping by three cities along the way; skidded west again to the southeastern tips of Arabian Peninsula, for its final three destinations: Muscat of Oman, Dubai and Abu Dhabi of United Arab Emirates. All in 16 days.

From Southeastern Asia through South Asia to Western Asia, these were the places we got off to see:

Singapore, a perennial model city of neat and clean, had added to its flavor some marina extravaganza such as a star-ship capped Sands Hotel (the one you saw in the "Crazy Rich Asians" movie), and Gardens by the Bay where a "Supertree Grove" was truly spectacular.

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Phuket is a synonym for beaches: there are beaches with canoes, beaches with sailboats, beaches with body building machines, and beaches with just lounge chairs and umbrellas. Pick one you like and while away the day easy.

In Colombo I smelled the Zen-y calm in the rush hour traffic, and subtropical charm at a colonial style beach resort, in a Buddhist country that had been under British rule for over 150 years until mid-20th century.

Cochin was an ancient Indian spice trade center that had been touched by Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, and British influences from the 15th century on. We saw Chinese fishing nets, Portuguese fortresses, a "Dutch Palace", an Anglican church, and a Jewish synagogue that has stayed open for over 450 years to this day.

  

Goa was yet another crown jewel of colonial Portugal in India and remained its province for four and a half centuries before being forcibly taken back by India in 1961. It's now a laid back country with scattered farm houses and roaming cattle, and a resort beach where I trod my feet on the Indian Ocean water for the first time.

Mumbai is a congested, noisy, mega city with a nice looking beach that's too polluted to swim, luxury hotels sending their linens to an open laundry factory for cleaning, 700,000 people living in the largest slum in Asia while one rich family living in a billion dollar mansion... yet everyone seems to live happily with everyone else with what they have.    

  

Muscat was the first Muslim city we ever visited and surprised us with clean streets, neat buildings, friendly people, and a seagull hovering, dolphin visiting bay of peacefulness.

Contrasting Muscat's modesty, Dubai flaunts its wealth and modernity with glitzy high rises, luxury hotels, multi-entertainment malls, man-made islands... that look like and are indeed wonders in the desert land.

Abu Dhabi, the brotherly city next door to Dubai, then offers an over-the-top Grand Mosque that features world record breaking mosaicked marble courtyard, hand-woven carpet, crystal chandeliers, gem-stoned columns, etc., that make it a tourist attraction even more popular than St. Peter's Basilica and Taj Mahal Palace.

Traveling the route as we did, one could not help but realize fairly quickly that all these countries we visited were once directly under or influenced by the reign of British Empire. I noticed, for example, before we reached the Arabian countries, all the places we visited (Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India) drive their cars on the left side of the road, like UK. Even our fellow passengers came mostly from the British Commonwealth countries--Australia, New Zealand, Canada--and UK and US. One Scottish woman we met on our Sri Lanka excursion, who was of my same age, told me she was born in Singapore to a military family on the year when Britain withdrew their troops there... The fading of the British Empire was not such ancient history yet.

I also could not help but find some similarity of our route to those by the famous Chinese explorer Zheng He (鄭和), who led expedition fleets to this part of the world and beyond for no less than seven times and left his marks along the way as well. One obvious example is the Chinese fishing nets in Cochin he introduced to the locals for better fishing, and some say the name Cochin implies "Co-Chin", meaning "like-China".

Then I think back even further, to the days when scores of homo sapiens trekked over the shallow Red Sea out of Africa some 100,000 years ago, and through the ages migrated along Arabian peninsula then Indian subcontinent then to southeast Asia then to New Guinea and Australia... What a journey!

Stay hungry. Stay foolish. Keep traveling.

* For more photos and narrations, click on:

Singapore

Phuket

Colombo

Cochin

Goa

Mumbai

Muscat 

Dubai

Abu Dhabi

At Sea