a southerly run

We met our friends from the States Ray & Jenny for dinner a couple weeks ago. They were planning on going to Ray's hometown in southern Taiwan for Chinese New Year and suggested we went with them. We thought why not, since we'd been staying in Taipei long enough and the thought of going southerly for a change had occurred to us a couple times before.

Jiayi (嘉義) is a mid-size town some 150 miles south of Taipei. It took us about an hour and a half on a high-speed train to get there. We picked up the rental car at the station, then took a short drive to the newly opened National Palace Museum South for visit. This is a contemporary looking structure that hosts regional (South, Northeast and Southeast Asia) and topical (tea, fabrics, religions) exhibits rather than all-China treasures its majestic mother museum up north has been famous for. 

We then headed for the little village where Ray grew up and his mother still resides. Though growing up in Taiwan for the first 25 years of my life, this counted as one of the very few times I actually traveled in a little southern Taiwanese town like this. I found the streets wider and straighter and the city itself less cluttered than those bleak and drizzly coastal towns I am used to seeing in northern Taiwan.

Ray's mother is 80 but looked sprightly and treated us with great home cooking including some of her hand-made sausages. After the lunch Ray & Jenny took us for a tour of the town, strolling through his childhood elementary school and the river bank. We then encountered several public posters that tell how the town father Wongs (翁氏家族) emigrated from mainland China and settled here some 300+ years ago and their descendants thrived and became scholars, high officials, doctors and lawyers, etc. I found these stories quite amusing because I am a Wong myself but was born and grew up north in Taipei where my last name was a minority while here the whole town seems to pay utmost tribute to it!

We then headed southeast for a hot-spring resort for our final destination. We checked in a good-size, relatively modern hotel and took a hot soothing bath in the white muddy water that brings special reputation to this place before having a country style dinner--with free range chicken and wild boar meat, I suppose--and going to bed.

Then the earthquake struck, at around 4 AM, they say. With the epicenter just some 60 miles away, this Magnitude 6.4 temblor jolted us wide awake in bed. All things shaking and moving violently, windows chattering, desk jittering... my wife was confused and scared and I thought "wow this is a biggie..." Then it all stopped and went away and we fell asleep again.

We took some short hike up and down the resort area the next morning. Our train ticket was to take us home in the afternoon from the same station we arrived, but we heard from the news and the train's web site that all trains to and from the south were suspended due to that early morning earthquake. So Ray & Jenny drove us up north for about 80 miles to a main station in central Taiwan where it still operated and we boarded the train and went home Taipei safely, ending this short little venturous Chinese New Year excursion of 2016.

At National Palace Museum South

At hot-spring resort

           

An all-brick main street at Ray's hometown, paved and paid for by one well-to-do Wong family

Town posters telling great stories of the founding Wongs (翁) and their descendants,
who still make up 1/6 of local population 

        

Dentist 翁

Bete Nut 翁

Escrow 翁

Beef Noodle 翁

Congressman 翁

Soon to open "High-Heel-Shoe Church" at nearby township

better together

Did you ever really listen? Do you know how to say the right thing the right way? Would you like to reclaim the love and passion like you had them the first time? How about learning how to confront and resolve conflicts in life?

These were subjects covered by a 4-day "human relationship build-up" course I went to at a retreat center in suburban Taipei last week. It's a workshop-like course that stressed on hands-on practice besides teaching the "love" principle behind all these "techniques":

When listening, try all you can to put yourself in the other's shoes, without being condescending or judgmental or playing Mr. know-it-all, then rephrase what you hear with preambles such as "It sounds like..." "So you think..." "From what I hear...", ending with "Is that right?", to make sure you understand what they say accurately and more importantly to assure them that you do feel for them. "Empathy" is the word.

When you want to exercise "by golly somebody has to tell him/her the truth", remember it's the "truth" you must tell, not your own brand of justice or tantrum you want to throw at their expenses. And try to use the "I" statements to describe your honest feelings rather than accuse others of some sinister motivations you imagine they possess.

"New" doesn't necessarily mean "better", just something chronologically later than the earlier ones. When we say an antique looks "as new as it was a thousand years ago", we actually are praising the fact that it is in as good a condition as when it was first created. To keep or to revert back to the original goodness my heart was in, I need to check my thoughts (are they objective, double standard...), kick my psychotic trappings (escapism, perfectionism, victim mentality...), know my limitations (what I can do, what I cannot do...), and observe if any spiritual fruits are coming out of this.

Conflicts are a natural part of human relationships. Facing it and trying to resolve it can actually help us grow. To do so, empathize with your "enemy", explain your needs and desires honestly, keep your cool, and look all angles before coming up with a maximum possible common good solution for all. Mutual respect and understanding are thus earned and gained during the process, and all are winners already for that reason alone.

These were lessons taught and organized by Prof. Tsai Ren-Song (蔡仁松) and his wife and their ministry (佳美生命建造協會 Wonderful Life Ministries, www.wlmtw.org) in Taiwan. Prof. Tsai is a college friend of mine, who, after getting his PhD. degree at UC Berkeley and a couple of successful high-tech start-up ventures in Silicon Valley, went on to study theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and got a Master's degree there and became a "layman" pastor since. He has been a well liked and respected professor at Tsing Hua University and conducting this biblical principled human relationship betterment course with his wife since they came back to Taiwan 10 years ago, among other things.

I must admit I didn't plan on going through such intensive 4-day "boot camp" when I signed up for it a couple weeks ago. I was in fact lured by the swimming pool and gymnasium I saw at the website of the training center that came with the course info, that I thought I'd just come and see what's going on that Prof. Tsai has been doing for the last 10 years and relax and work out while I've got time to. It turned out I'd never got the time for those.

But it's a smooth sailing 4 days. Not only did I learn something useful, I got to hear some touching, personal stories, especially from Prof. Tsai's wife, about how they walked this long but joy-filled journey together throughout the years, spreading God's word in the most practical and realistic way they know how, helping people one heart at a time, humble and grand.

God bless Prof. Tsai, his wife, and the ministry!

Prof. Tsai is the 3rd from the left sitting at the front, his wife to his left in blue. All students except me and one couple are pastors or co-workers from churches and ministries all over Taiwan.

See what the clock says: 6 PM. We got one hour break for dinner after that, then the class resumed at 7 PM, lasted until 9 PM. It started at 8 in the morning.

This shows I didn't play hooky at all for four full days

man alone

Though my wife had scheduled and wanted to stay in Taiwan for four full months like we did last year, I decided to come back alone to the States for December just so to take care of things and have meetings I felt more comfortable conducting in person.

"Can you live well on your own?" that's what I figured had been on my wife's mind from the suspicious look and frequent reminding she'd been presenting me. So here's a testimonial of how a well domesticated man for 30+ years survived the trial of single living for 28 days. 

It sounds surprising (to myself at least), but the most challenging domestic chore to me was using the washer/dryer for the laundry. I practically had to write down the operating procedure and followed it methodically so I wouldn't pull the wrong knob or push the wrong button, select the wrong load size or forget throwing in a softener sheet when drying. (One of these days they'll come up with a touch-screen panel or a mobile app to make things easier).

When it came to sorting and folding the clothes after it's done, I didn't, just threw them all in one lump sack in the drawer. (Who's going to inspect how neat my underwear was arranged anyway).

Another serious doubt my wife had with me was my cooking competency. For that, as I proclaimed to her time and time again, a simple man like me needs only simple food: My default meal consisted of a hand-made sandwich of ham, tomato, lettuce, and a little mayo or salad dressing:

A kale wrapped hot-dog also qualified as simple and healthy food in my cookbook:

Sometimes just a piece of bread and a few pepperoni-wrapped cheese sticks with a glass of wine could very well a good meal make:

A $5 Costco barbeque chicken tided me over for 4+ meals:

And this generic hash I put together with left-over kale, tomato, onion, turkey, and minced hot-dog (that's why I called it "chopsuey salad") I brought to a New Year's Eve pot-luck party looked and tasted actually pretty good, in my humble opinion:

Then a man's chore in the house was never done: I cleaned the garage, 

propped up the leaning trees, 

harvested my organic garden (consisting of only one plant), 

replaced barbeque grill cover that could easily blow over, 

fixed the kitchen sink soap dispenser that took days of diagnosis and ordering the right parts, 

and dis-assembled an old bed and put up a new one.

                                  

I also did some human relationship uplifting by hand delivering Christmas presents to our gardener and house cleaner--boy were they glad to receive them!, and even got involved with local politics by voting out the incumbent board of our homeowners association that many of my neighbors hated!

I went biking with my cousin-in-law's, 

hiking on the new coastline trail near the new outlet mall in San Clemente, 

and almost went kayaking with my Club Med buddy Mel on New Year's Eve if I wasn't leaving so soon.

Nor did I slack up on my social activities. I attended small group birthday celebration, 

meditation group Advent celebration, 

men's group reunion at my backyard, 

and hosted friends from out of town.

All things proven and done, I happily returned to my wonderful, capable wife, where true home is, to be a pampered, defanged man of the house again for the next 11 months or so...

Happy New Year!

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:

​​ 

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!