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 

two months in taiwan

For the past 5 years or so, my wife and I have been traveling to Taiwan near the end of year and coming back early next, staying usually for two, three, and once even for four months, to spend time with family and friends there.

Our long stay this time, once we got there in early December, started with a family outing--with my mother-in-law, brothers-in-law, nephews, nieces--to a hot spring resort in southeastern Taiwan, followed by a field trip to some orange/strawberry farms in mid-central Taiwan with a group organized by a college friend of mine, then a day visit to the beautiful Mediterranean-blue coast of northeastern Taiwan, taking advantage of an unusual sunny weather break in January.

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​Unlike the 9-day round-the-island bicycle tour I took around this time of the year last year, I went conservative this time and took only a couple leisure rides close by: one in metro Taipei alongside a river embankment that I found surprisingly serene and scenic, the other on the northeastern coast where--instead of fighting rain, wind and cold like I did last year--I rode with ease and segued into the winding country roads to visit a historical old farmhouse sitting on the rice paddy fields, each time with a relatively new acquaintance whose companionship I enjoyed.

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Eating good food and dining out with good company are the run-of-the-mill activities you do in Taipei. Among the many feasts we had with family, friends, relatives, alums, etc., the one with my aunt and cousins and two Japanese born nephews who were all grown-up now should count as one of the more special, for the simple fact that we've been missing seeing them for years and will continue to miss if they had not happened to come to visit here on a rare vacation/holiday break from their work in Japan. As for fine dining, we found a gourmet Italian restaurant at an up-scale hotel that we thought gave us the best foreign cuisine experience we ever had in Taipei, exceeding even those Michelin rated ones we'd been to in the city.​ We took a photo with the Italian chef for the record.

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Continuing on my accidental intrigue into philosophical studies that started last May when I was here, I went to a couple of open seminars that same university philosophy department offered: one on Buddhism logic (present by a Japanese professor from Kyoto University), the other on a main Confucian philosophical derivative (朱熹理學) hosted by the same German professor whose seminar on Mysticism I attended last time.

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Also continuing on my general interest in keeping in touch with what the next generation people here are thinking and doing, I went to a couple of open interviews with some young entrepreneurs and their startup stories. The first one was a near-30 young man who started a social enterprise business that helped homeless and disenfranchised people some 4 years ago. As he explained why and how he started and operated his business, I was touched not only by his ideals but his realistic take on the societal, psychological issues that came from years of spending time with these socially marginalized people and his determination to have his business stay sustainable and build ever expanding community networks for society as a whole. The second interview was with a successful internet security product developer who started in Taiwan and made it in the Silicon Valley, who talked about the blockchain technology--the latest talk in town in the island, its security issues, opportunities, etc. Again I was impressed not only by his technical knowhow but more importantly his deep and all-around take on the technical-economical-social eco systems around the world, for now and in the future. Proud of these fine young men this tiny island country has produced and hope will continue to produce in the future!

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I was pretty ignorant about painting art, but there was a special exhibit at the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院) where the famous Pushkin Museum from Moscow had loaned a series of precious French paintings for such an event, and we knew a friend of ours was a volunteer docent there who would do a personal guided tour for us, so off we went.

Boy did we get the best museum tour experience ever! Our friend, Tiffany, a painter herself, not only knew the theories and singularities of all these different schools of paintings, she articulated the minute and obscure, the thoughts and sentiments, the stories in front and behind the paintings and their painters, and how they evolved from the realistic to the abstract to the surreal to the post modern in the span of 250 years. I felt like having taken a dose of fine art manna and my knowledge of painting just went up 10 points!

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"New York Cat English Workshop" was a meetup group I signed up after arriving here and finding it online. "Kat", the organizer of the group, was a Taiwanese American girl raised in Michigan and later became a writer and certified ESL teacher based in New York who taught in community colleges in the US and schools in China and Taiwan, before/while traveling and hosting such mixer events around Asia and other parts of the world. I was amazed not only by her prolific meetup topics that ran the gamut from philosophical (e.g., Stoicism) to contemporary (e.g., pros and cons of social media) to book studies (e.g., "1984", Chinese martial art novels) and writing practices, but also her ingenious ways of using little games to enable all in the group to dialogue with one another. The most energetic and enthusiastic meetup host I'd ever seen, as I commended and gave her top thumbs-up rating every time after I attended the event!

Due to its international nature (events were conducted entirely in English only), besides the locals, I met and talked with people who originated from Taiwan but later emigrated to Australia, Germany, Canada, US, etc. and now came back for visit or from break of work. To my great surprise I also met an American born Korean kid who lived in Aliso Viejo, and a Caucasian girl who came from San Clemente, both cities just miles away from where I live in Southern California. What a small world we do have today!

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Finally, I learned international standard dancing from my high school English teacher during this stay. Huh?! Let me explain:

We reunioned last year with our junior high school English teacher, who, besides being a great English teacher we all loved and respected, we learned later, had been a great ball room dancer also, with some international standard dancing championship title to his name! So before I went back to Taiwan this time, I chatted with him online and jestfully asked him to teach us how to dance right, just like he used to teach us how to speak and write English right, if he would.

And he complied, set up the date and place for those who were interested to come and learn from him. Three of us showed up, and immediately we found out to dance well is hard work, no fun job as we might have imagined it to be. After a couple weeks of practice, I was the only one left going.

Teacher Chang is indeed a great dancer--even though he said he stopped dancing since his wife (best partner ever, he said) died some 21 years ago, and a great teacher too, as we'd all known since our junior high years. He explained things well and spotted the wrong moves instantly and gave instructions clearly, with me being the sole beneficiary of such one-to-one, hands-on teaching. Because of that and because I was the one who initiated it, I hung in there for a full month, went practicing once or twice a week, 2 hours per session, and finally "graduated" with a passable grade of dancing all 18 steps of basic Waltz in one procession without any retake, as the following video can attest: https://youtu.be/ONrpxj_YCG4

And here are his hand written notes of those 18 steps:

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Great many thanks, Sir!

reflections

I was a very bland-charactered kid in primary school: no notable talents, peculiar traits, off-the-wall behavior... the only distinguishing thing about me was I did well in classes, and in those days that was good enough to earn great respect from teachers and fellow classmates... I was elected/designated class president year after year, and had no trouble making friends with every one... everyone liked me, and I liked everyone.

This pretty much ran true through my high school years, so I was shocked one day during my senior high years to hear a guy I acquainted with at a summer camp--one of those precocious, young leader type--give me some well-meant advice: "One day you will realize there are some people who are not worth spending time on..."  What kind of people was he talking about, I really couldn't get it.

Undiscriminating as my friends-making seemed to be, subconsciously, I realized later, I was readily drawn to people who I admired or possessed some personality traits I lacked I wanted to have. Friendships like these could be ephemeral when circumstances changed, or last for a life time even after the mystique of the initial attraction had disappeared.

Lincoln once said "every man over forty is responsible for his face". At age 61, I am well past the days when I blamed my character flaws on my inherited nature, or saw the "superior personality traits" in others. I am contented with who I am, finally falling in line with modern Western culture's rah-rah cry of "be what the best you can be!" 

And I found out I am not that easy-going, bland-charactered guy I thought I was. I have my quirks, likes and dislikes, just like the most peculiar people I know, that I tend more to assert than suppress as I get older.

And people are not all what they act to be. None of us has it all together, but many think or pretend they do, through analytical talking, rote recitation, always-up posture, etc.

I hold a positive attitude towards life, but I think everyone is entitled to be sad or sentimental sometimes.

I'll strive to be the best I can be, but an all-around, wholesome person, not a flat, functionality piece that modern Western culture also seems to encourage, in a world soon to abound with artificial intelligence machines anyway.  

I probably won't tell a young man "not to waste your time on some people", but "pay attention to whomever you happen to be with, and no time will be wasted".

And no matter what labels or hats we happen to don in life, or what character quirks we may have, I still believe what unites us is greater than what divides us, deep down we are more alike than different, good triumphs over evil, peace on earth, good will to men.

Merry Christmas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfPC0YrzHHM

tour de france

A 12-day "Kaleidoscope of France" tour we took in mid-October started in Paris, going through the central valley, to the northwest (Normandy), back to Paris, then to the southeast (Provence) via a high speed train, before flying back to the US.

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Here's the "executive summary" of it:

Paris

Compared to London and Berlin, Paris is a relatively small town, but definitely gave a live and charming feel from the moment our cab set in the tree-lined autumn-leafed somewhat-busy semi-tidy cityscape. We visited the usual high spots--the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Versailles, the Notre Dame Cathedral, the Seine River...--and kept notes of places we would like to come back to revisit or yet to visit and they were plenty...

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​Loire Valley

This central stretch of France where its longest river runs through it is called the "Cradle of the French" and the "Garden of France" for its rich cultural and agricultural heritages, and to that I may add the "Royal Backyard of the French" nobility for the many grand, fancy chateaus they built, of which we visited three, along with two unassuming little towns and a winery on this pleasant roam of the bucolic side of the country.

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​Normandy

The visits to the bleak beaches of the D-day Invasion and the soldiers' graves were certainly heavy and sad, but also reminded us of how monumental events such as this shaped civilizations and world history, like another invasion in reverse direction and of different nature some 1000 years ago that allowed the French to change the culture and history of the English, whose story we saw unfolded on a strip of tapestry in a little museum in a little French town. And what a geographical monument that "church/abbey-on-a-mount" is, on an island barely off the coast of this northwestern land of the Normans!

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Provence

Long famed for its village living, upscale Mediterranean resorts and artist enclaves, the southeast of France has much to offer: We visited an ancient Roman aqueduct, the Popes' palace, Van Gogh's asylum, a winery and a perfume factory, the festive Cannes, the glitzy and glammy Monaco/Monte Carlo, and the relaxing Nice where I took my virgin swim in the Mediterranean. A medieval hill side village that features a majestic cemetery, a chapel with contemporary interior design, and galleries of vibrant artworks lodged between winding alleys and cobblestone streets shows all's blended swell under the big blue of the French Riviera!

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France is a large country, Texas size, with diverse geography, changing demographics, various social and political issues, etc., but wherever I went, "livable" seemed to be the word that came to my mind: the climate is mild, the commute is convenient, the food is excellent, and the people are friendly--forget about the snotty French who refuse to speak English, a "bon jour" (good day, excuse me) and a "merci" (thank you) can carry you a long way, and they do and will speak English with a smile when they see you are in need of it!

This was the second time we used the same travel agency we used for our tour to Turkey four years ago, and were even more impressed this time by their service: the transport, the selection of hotels, the itinerary, etc. In addition, a super nice tour guide named Edo, whose passion, humor, and love of his job went beyond the usual professionalism that no amount of Google search or Wikipedia knowledge could replace, made this trip an extra pleasant one for all of us!

Vive le tour!

* For more photos and details of the tour, click on the following:

Paris

Loire Valley
Normandy
Provence

three evenings

Ken has been one great gentleman scholar I respect long before the days he attended the men's group I hosted at my home backyard a decade ago. He has a small group himself that I attended a couple times before and enjoyed the scintillating discussions with an eclectic group of spirited Christians and truth seekers at his home.

For last month's sharing he invited a neighbor of his who has been practicing Buddhism for years on the subject of "mindfulness":

There are 4 stages of mindfulness practice: through body (身),  through feeling (受), through mind (心), through mental objects (法). You start by sensing the world with your bio-receptors (eyes, ears, nose, tongue, touch), then with your non-bio (the 6th) sense, then from the pit of your soul, before the final enlightenment comes. 

One common mistake people make is try to reach the final enlightenment stage without going through the first three, making it almost impossible to achieve, or creating an ephemeral, delusional, false experience of it.

"Teacher Sho-Lee" (秀麗老師) is another long time friend of ours from the days when we were attending a Taiwanese church some 20+ years ago, whose nice ocean view house sits just minutes away from ours but we have rarely seen each other in recent years. She called the other day and invited us to a Sunday evening get-together party at her house that we gladly obliged and went.

There were about 5 or 6 other couples, some of them we knew and some we did not, and a pastor from her church at the party as well. Pastor Hu is a tactful conversationalist and threw a question at us at the dinner table: "Say you had all the freedom of the world, and you could do it with abandon, what would be the one thing you'd do now?" that stirred up some interesting musing and sharing from everyone. 

Some said simple things (watching good movies, helping others), some projected grander goals (teaching the young, spreading new ideas), some were actually doing it already (painting), some were still looking for it, or--my favorite answer from a lady--just doing everyday mundane things, but with spiritual sensitivity and aspiration to becoming a finer person, like a gem being chiseled out from the rough in God's hand.

Then Monday evening I went to the monthly meetup of a "THINK, the Critical Thinking and Discussion Forum" group I joined over a year ago. Our presenter this time was a fellow member Cary, a sharp but at times abrasive logical and lexical purist, on the importance of having clearly defined vocabulary and terms before one can have precise thinking and communication. 

"There may be scale of vagueness in phrases we commonly use," he said... for example, the term "truth seeker." On that I interjected (like we all did from time to time during his presentation): "That sounds like a pretty clear term to me: as long as one is seeking the truth one believes is out there, he/she is a truth seeker." 

Bruce, an atheist who is the organizer of a "Backyard Skeptics" group himself, cautioned that my statement might include people (such as flat-earth believers) who are pursuing false truths, while Phil, a Catholic turned atheist who once did a "believence" presentation for the group and hosted a podcast for a believer-nonbeliever debate series, concurred with me. In response to Bruce's comment, I added that the "truth" in my "truth seeker" definition refers to the one ultimate truth, rather than the many "suit-my-need" "alternative" truths that seem to be floating around abundantly in this post-truth era we live in.

Three consecutive evening events, all happening on a weekend and a Monday when we were supposed to be on a trip to New York City for my wife's best friend Jing-Ping (靜平)'s daughter's wedding that we had to cancel at last minute due to an unexpected eye surgery of my wife.

Congratulations, beautiful Jing-Ping and daughter!!