trip to turksland

A close couple friends of ours asked us to join them for a group tour to Turkey last year, we couldn't make up our mind until it's too late. This year, with my wife's early retirement and more time to plan ahead, we signed up early and went on to the tour and just got back this past Tuesday.

It was a wonderful trip!

Here's how our travel plan went: We started from Istanbul, drove south, crossed the channel that divides Europe and Asia, meandered around west Turkey, mostly along the coast line but occasionally going inland for site visits such as Pergamum and Ephesus, until we reached the southern Mediterranean metropolis Antalya, then traversed north to the central wild land Cappadocia, then flew back to Istanbul, where we spent one extra day and a half touring the city, then flew home.

* The map above provided by the travel company is mostly accurate, except it skips the parts of travel from Pamukkale to Antalya then Antalya to Konya.

What do I find fascinating about this trip?

1) The Country and the History

Modern Turkey is a diminutive remnant of what was once a great Ottoman Empire that straddled between Southeastern Europe (Greece, Bulgaria, the Balkans), North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt), West Asia (Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, western Iran), and Southern Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), controlling the East-West trade routes and lands around Mediterranean basin for over 5 centuries. It had been in steady decline through the whole of the 19th Century (and given a nick name "sick man of Europe", just like the Qing-dynasty China was called "sick man of Asia" during that same period), however, and finally dissolved after the end of World War I. 

The Turks were a nomadic people originated from North-Central Asia, between Altai and Ural mountains, neighboring the Mongolians, and probably mixing with the earlier Xiongnu (匈奴) tribes in northern China, and were first given a definitive reference as Tujue (突厥) in 6th century Chinese history records. They helped Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) quell An-Shi Rebellion (安史之亂), and founded 3 regional dynasties in northern China after Tang's demise (後唐,後晉,後漢, their founders all being Shatuo Turks 沙陀突厥人). 

One branch of the Turkic people migrated to the Anatolian Peninsula--present day Turkey--in the 11th century and started conquering and "Turkifying" local people, while defeating the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire at major battles, forming the Ottoman Empire in the process, that culminated with the eventual invasion of Constantinople (name changed to Istanbul after the take-over) that officially ended the thousand year old East Roman Empire in 1453.

​2) The Land and the Old Ruins

Being a land bridge between Europe and Asia continents, and with the Mesopotamia "Fertile Crescent" just around its southeastern corner, it's not surprising Anatolian Peninsula was where many ancient civilizations originated or crossed paths. The city of Troy was built and rebuilt 7 times even before it was destroyed by the Trojan War, and then two more times after that; Ephesus had been a prosperous town a thousand years before the Romans came; the Greeks kept coming from the west to colonize more lands here, and the Persians kept thrusting their army through from the east to complete their imperial conquest. The Romans, with their engineering and organizational prowess, after their conquest, picked their "Club Med" spots here for healing resorts, scenery retreats, strategic positioning, etc., criss-crossing the serene Mediterranean blue sea to visit these places just like strolling through their backyard... Life must be pretty darn good for those Roman emperors (before they were assassinated too soon) in their hay days...

3) The People

Turkey is a Muslim country, with 99.8% population following Islam religion. Mosques are everywhere, blasting out calls for prayer from their minaret towers every now and then. It may be annoying at times, but somehow also gives you a sense of community in a vast country like this. It kind of reminds me of those mobile peddlers roaming around the neighborhood with blaring microphones exhorting people to buy their goods or bring out the scrap metal for collection when I was little in Taipei City... busy, noisy, yet so full of life.

To give us a truer feel of Turkish people and their culture, our tour company included two specially arranged events in the itinerary: A lunch at a villager's home where we sat and ate their home-made cooking, and a visit to a rural elementary school where we donated gifts and met with its students. Even though we don't speak their language and they don't speak ours, the hospitality, good will, and fondness of each other were well sensed and as indelible as those fancy landscapes and grand old ruins we saw in their country.  

   

4) The Food

The majority of the meals we had were at the hotels, buffet style, so we got to explore different flavors of food this agriculturally endowed country and its culinary profession can cook up for us. Not being a vegetarian myself, I found nonetheless I enjoyed their green dishes more than the lamb or beef kabob that I was familiar with before I came here. Plates I liked were: marinated white broccoli, steamed Brussels sprouts, and spicy millet salad, etc.

We tried a couple times their fish servings outside the hotel as well, once at a sea side restaurant where they let us select their catches of the day at the front counter and cooked for us, and the other time we ordered a simple fish sandwich at a street corner in Istanbul. Both were fresh and simply good.

We also liked the pomegranate juice crushed by the street vendor right in front of our eyes. It's tinglingly refreshing with right balance of sweet and sour taste, not to mention 100% pure and natural.

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Then there was this thin-crust bread with tomato and minced, spicy meat topping, wrapped with some Turkish herb or cilantro we had at a restaurant nearby hotel that tasted so crispy and delicious but much less filling or fattening than the typical American pizza.

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5) The Things We Bought

I am no shopaholic and did not plan on buying anything in particular before the trip (my wife might have had different ideas I didn't know), but we ended up buying more stuff than usual during this trip. Altogether, we bought: 

3 leather jackets (two for my wife one for myself), one floor carpet (they ship direct from factory to the US or wherever you want to so we don't need to carry them), 3 scarves (cotton, wool, or silk), two leather belts, one hat because I needed it to deter the hot sun at Ephesus, one swimming trunk because I could not resist the grand swimming pool I saw at the hotel in Antalya, a vest and one pair of jeans at the clothing store right across the hotel we stayed in Istanbul, a miniature whirling dervish dancer because I enjoyed the dance by these Muslim mystics I saw at one optional event the tour arranged in Cappadocia.

   

I don't know if we got the best deals out of these items or not, especially on those bigger ticket ones, not being good bargain hagglers as we'd like to be, but I believe we got quality products at reasonable prices, and we are happy with them.

6) The Tour Guide and the Tourists

Our tour guide is a Turkish American who had lived many years in the States and been guiding tours in Turkey for almost 30 years and speaks flawless English, with great sense of humor and vast knowledge on arts and artifacts, history and hearsay, of all the places we traveled to. It's never a dull moment when he talked.

Our fellow tourists mostly came from the US and Canada region, each with different background and personality that we get to share ours with: Geraldine and Joseph are a gracious old couple from New York City and Geraldine is a practicing psychologist who seemed nervous about the food she ate every time while Joseph always smiled and looked so calm and gentlemanly with everything and everyone; Pete and Dell are a retired couple from New Jersey and Pete had been walking at least 10,000 steps a day for the past 10 years or so and said he had continued to keep at it even during the trip; Charles is a petro-mechanical engineer from San Antonio, Texas who seemed to be carrying a map exploring every new place by himself yet was very talkative and knowledgeable whenever you engaged with him; Ellen is a reporter from Detroit, Michigan who is going to write a column for this trip which she said she'll forward to us afterwards; and Galo and Sofia are the young couple from Ecuador who just got married a week before the trip and seemed to be late to the bus and sleep-deficient all the time... 

Isn't this a wonderful trip?

* If you want to see all the pictures and the photo-by-photo narration of the trip, you can go to:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205214237300652.1073741826.1387569224&type=1&l=b9f4d76a81

happy birthday suite 57

I wasn't expecting it, but near the end of our weekly small group gathering last Saturday evening, somebody started saying "We've got someone's birthday today," and I pretty much gathered that's me they were referring to, even though my birthday was one following day away. Our small group keeps records of each's birthday and celebrates them during the month they fall on. So this was not that unusual. Still, I was a bit surprised since this was the first time the group reconvened after a summer recess, and there must be quite some things still buzzing over everybody's mind.

Even more surprising was the birthday cake they had for me--not the usual creamy pasty kind, but 5 or 6 pieces of Chinese moon cake, in all varieties: lotus seed (蓮蓉), five kernel (五仁), sweet bean (豆沙), egg yolk (蛋黃).. all well shaped well stuffed and well flavored. And you'd be surprised to know, they were all made by one young fellow sister of ours who did this for the first time, she said. Wonderful work! I regret I didn't take photo of them before eating, but not to worry, I am intentionally leaving the space below empty so when she has her next culinary surprise for us I'll take photo and fill in the blank here:

(Coming soon from sister Janet's gourmet kitchen...)

The next day, Sunday, my birthday, I went out with a group of old friends--these are couples me and my wife have acquainted for the past 20+ years, some are my college friends, some tennis partners (before I quit playing it), etc.--to a local Chinese buffet restaurant for dinner. Nominally this was just one of those get-together dine-outs we did from time to time, but at the end they all sang Happy Birthday to me and another fellow who had the same birthday as I but one year younger. And the restaurant chipped in with a special one-free-meal certificate for my next visit after verifying my ID:

This requires me bringing 3 others to get mine free. Come with me and I'll split the check with you so we all get an equivalent of 25% discount.

Now came Monday. For that my wife and I did have a planned event: we had invited all my Monday evening meditation group members to our house for the usual meditation plus the birthday celebration, not just for myself but also for another group member whose birthday falls just 3 days apart from mine. Right around 6 PM--our usual meditation get-together time--they all appeared at our house, with flowers, wine, gift, and one great looking birthday cake made by yet another culinarily talented lady. We had wine and chatted and some toured around the house since this was the first time they were here, then sat down and enjoyed the 6-dish dinner my super wife prepared for this occasion. We then went out to the yard to have a (reduced) 20-minute meditation around the fire pit under the night stars, then came back for the cake and gift and cards unwrapping... It was a joyful and memorable evening for everyone.

 

The happy birthday girl and I   

Birthday cards now decorate the top shelf of my bookcase
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So what's to make of this middle of nowhere, obscure 57th birthday of insignificance of mine? If I am to pick up that jocular line I made on my 55th birthday (http://cdwong.blogspot.com/2012/10/memorables.html), that if turning 50 means "I know what on earth am I here for" (五十知天命), and turning 60 means "my wife's nagging becomes music to my ears" (六十耳順), then turning 55--or 57--means I am half way--or further on my way--to realizing that my purpose in life is to hear my wife's nagging as music to my ears. I am getting there, honey, just be patient.

Or to paraphrase someone, "What on earth is my birthday for?" I think it is just one explicit occasion for reconnecting, sharing, and being jolly, with friends and family, real and virtual, secular and spiritual, new and old, East and West, here and now.

And like one of my Facebook friends said on my wall: May we all be 天天安康喜樂--happy and healthy every day! 

i believe

I don't remember the date, or even just the year, I got baptized. It was in my house, and originally for my wife, though. While they were busy getting things ready upstairs in our master bathroom where the sacred ceremony would be conducted, I chatted with church elders downstairs about "why does one need to get through a ritual like this, if he knows deep down he believes already?" "Well, that's not how it works. You see, the Bible says..."  Long story short, I figured at the end even though I don't see a strong reason for it, I don't have a strong one against it either, so why not "give it a try," as they suggested, and see what happens. So I got baptized in the same bathtub my wife did on that same day. 

Nothing happened.

My "born-again" Christian life only began many years later, and in no dramatic fashion either, when I decided I had asked questions enough, done thinking enough, gone back and forth enough, since my youth, and I knew true religion is not philosophy or academic research, but commitment and actions based on that commitment to a truth you kind of know exists, vague and incomprehensible it may be.

So I told myself to make that commitment, started professing my beliefs outwardly, attending church regularly, joining groups and ministries... talking the talk and walking the walk, that's basically what I did, and that's when it worked. I felt my rubber hitting the road, screeching and reeling it might be, the smokes and sparks were pretty real for sure.

Not that I don't have doubts any more, but I tried to suppress them, because 1) I know my human intellect is limited, and 2) maybe this is God's way of taming my vain-glory pride that I know is the biggest sin of them all. Besides, you get liberated only if someone is holding it tight at the other end for you, don't you?

Until I got liberated again a few years later, realizing God doesn't really want to hold me back on some things that my limited human intellect finds puzzling, unnecessarily. Like:

* Though we humans are God's beloved creation, we are in no position to expect how we ought to be treated by him, or how the rest of the world has come into being.  If evolution is a process God uses to mold the world and human beings to its current physical-spiritual form, it's in his absolute sovereignty to do so, even though it may hurt our feelings a bit, to think we are somehow related to those big ugly apes, just like when we found out Earth was not the center of the world a few centuries ago.   

* Bible is a great reference book to God, but not God himself. It's the finger pointing to the moon, not the moon itself. Personally my favorite part of the Bible is still those books of Gospels, stories of Jesus and his teachings--what a true God-man he was and still is. And like some people say, the whole Bible is really just a love story told from God to man. Catch that spirit, and catch that man, and that's good enough for me. Not interested in finding out how far between two poles should be placed when ancient Israelis built their tabernacles, or how the world will end with what anti-Christ beast prophesied by what verse in what chapter of what book. Some people may find these interesting or meaningful, I don't. I'd rather get out and smell the roses, or hike in the awesome wilderness that's God's reference to himself too.

* Our words and terminologies are so limited and cumbersome and can cause misunderstandings even when they try to say the same thing. Protestants like to say (with a whiff of superiority air, maybe) that their salvation is an instant "imputation" while Catholics' a gradual "infusion"; worse yet, ours comes from free grace while theirs tries to gain it through hard works. But the fact is we all struggle to keep our daily walk with God (a process called "sanctification" in Protestantese), even after we know we are unconditionally accepted and loved by him, and from what I see, many great Catholic saints' "works" are just fervent and relentless efforts to get closer to the Lord they love ever so dearly, far from wanting to gain anything in return at all. 

I can go on and list more personal beliefs of mine like these, but I don't want to, because they are not important, just some static concepts I conclude based on my observations and logical thinking so far, not the real faith that actually inspires and moves me daily.  

What is the difference between faith and beliefs then? I can't say it better than someone already did:

"A way of faith, however, is not a dogged adherence to one point of view and to the belief systems and ritual traditions that express it. That would make it just ideology or sectarianism, not faith. Faith is a transformational journey that demands that we move in, through and beyond our frameworks of belief and external observances—not betraying or rejecting them but not being entrapped by their forms of expression either. St. Paul spoke of the Way of salvation as beginning and ending in faith. Faith is thus an open-endedness, from the very beginning of the human journey."

--- Fr. Laurence Freeman, Newsletter of the World Community for Christian Meditation

My faith is at work when I find I have the circumspection to stop arguing with my wife even though I think I am right; or go out to meet people I don't think I really like to meet and then find I genuinely like them; or seeing all the wars and disasters and inhumanity happening around the world and still know all's going to be well at the end.

May that faith increase day by day without end!

russia

A friend of mine shares some pictures of his recent trip to Moscow on Facebook, that brings back some old memories of mine...

Back in late August 1998, I was sent over to Russia by the company I joined earlier that year--a publicly traded company in LA that bought the intellectual property right of the voice-over-IP system I developed in exchange for company stock and a fat check VP Engineering position which really meant VP Traveling Salesman, to demonstrate and install my internet-voice systems with national telephone companies and internet service providers all over the world that the company was negotiating co-operating deals with.

It was the end of August when I arrived in Moscow, but the weather had already turned damp gloom cold there, totally taken me by surprise, coming from sunny California. A stodgy young man named Valery came picked me up at the airport, and would become my day-to-day care taker meeting arranger liaison officer buddy companion for the next two weeks in Russia.

I was arranged to stay in a "5-Star" hotel right across the Red Square/Kremlin Palace. It was where all the foreign dignitaries stayed during the Cold War, they said. But to me it's really an old and dingy place with 5-star room rate, and I had to batter my way through a slew of young women--sexual solicitors they were--gathering at the lobby every evening just to get back to my room. 

I met with a few people who were our local Russian contacts and associates for lunch and dinner, but my main mission was to install and demonstrate one of my VoIP systems there. And here came the Murphy's Law: One of the systems I brought showed no sign of life when I tried to turn it on for check. It seemed the mother board of the "luggable" PC I carried half the world over just wouldn't take the shaking and beating of travel any more.

"Is there anywhere I might get some PC parts?" I asked Valery the next day, doubtfully. "Hmm, let me check," he said, and surprise, he did locate a local computer store where I found a made-in-Taiwan PC mother board that was exactly what I needed. I then spent one night in my hotel room under dim night-stand light reassembling and rebuilding my proprietary system back to working order.

The testing and demonstration went well at an internet service provider that was the country's largest at the time. It was located in the same facility where they said the old Soviet Union's national science research center was. (Valery used to be a Red Army officer and had his connections, by the way). I don't remember much of the place or the testing process except the gusting cold winds blowing through the open hallways, that without the sweater Valery lent me I probably would have been frozen to death right there. 

Then off we went to St. Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia about 400 miles away from Moscow--just about the same distance between LA and San Francisco, on a midnight express. We visited and met a very gentleman-like manager of a national telephone company housed in a museum-esque building near the beautiful Baltic sea. We swiftly installed and tested another of my systems there in less than half a day's time so the gentleman manager took us to sight-see some famous palaces and then a canal cruise crisscrossing the city for the rest of the day. Valery and I then had a celebration dinner at a classy restaurant where we ordered full course Russian dishes that included the famous oxtail soup (or "Russian soup" 羅宋湯, as we call it in Chinese) that I forget how it tasted since I am no foodie except that it's quite different from the one we grew up eating Chinese style.

Perhaps encouraged by the success of the installations I made in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, the company back home decided to send me over to yet another city, this time Rostov-on-don, the largest metropolis in southern Russia, for another testing and installation. We flew this time, on a Russian domestic airlines flight. The Russian-made Ilyushin airplane might be notorious for its safety records, but the service and food on board was actually not too bad. The city itself, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, was calm and orderly, and the people friendly, but probably not as international conscious as the prior two. I felt being gawked at when walking on the streets as if I were the only foreigner in this town of 1 million people.

The Rostov-on-don testing and installation was a success too. Now it's time to go home. Valery dropped me off at the Moscow international airport and we said good-bye and parted ways. It was a totally strange, Russian airport to me, with no English signs or directions anywhere and long lines everywhere. I found my way to the airlines counter and handed in my passport and ticket to the clerk. After viewing my passport for a brief second she said "Sorry, but we cannot let you out of this country today... Your visa had just expired yesterday."

What happened was the visa I got for Russia was for 4 weeks only, and my departure from the States was postponed by two weeks in the first place, then my stay here was extended for one week. As a result I had just become an illegal in Russia by one day. Nobody noticed this until now probably because my passport was turned in for "safe-keeping" by the hotel as required by law the day I checked in.

I surely had no intention of overstaying my welcome in this country and asked the counter lady what recourse do I have other than going back to the hotel and applying and waiting for a new visa for God knows how many days. She told me there was a consular from Russian Foreign Ministry that could issue temporary visas to people like my situation. So I waded my way through to the place she referred me and found that consular and got him to put a stamp on my passport for $72, cash only, he said. I was damn glad I had that extra money at hand.

I then came back to the airlines counter and started going through multiple stands and checkpoints with multiple lines of solemn Russians, with no signs, no directions, and no flight information update panels along the way, for hours, until it was way past the scheduled departure time of my flight and I completely gave up on hope of getting on my plane in time.

Then when I finally reached the waiting area of my flight's departure gate, surprise, I saw a United Airlines plane still sitting down the tarmac, and a roomful of people still waiting. The flight had been delayed and would be for another few hours, they said. Sometimes many wrongs can make one right :)

I arrived safely home in California the next day.

* Here's a YouTube video converted from the tape Valery made for me using his hand camera during my stay in Russia. It started at the underground subway station mall, to the Red Square and Kremlin Palace, midnight express to St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg palaces and canal cruise, etc., and ended with some sagely advice on happiness from Valery, my top secret KGB agent companion :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR22LG7oYsA

** Here's a news announcement made by the company after my trip to Russia. The company's stock shot up from less than $2 to $8.5 a share in one week after the announcement: 

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Digitcom+Links+St.+Petersburg,+Moscow+and+Rostov-On-Don+for+Internet...-a021104820

on d

The most vivid fear I remember I have about death probably occurred when I was a little boy, when one day I heard a wild story at our kids' hang-out about a mother in our neighborhood who mysteriously disappeared and never returned. The thought of "what if this happens to my mom" caused great fear in my little mind.

And when I first heard the saying: "Death is part of nature," it was an uneasy and incomprehensible concept to me. Death is a terrible thing that ends life. If it's not outright anti-nature, it's definitely un-natural, I thought. 

We Chinese are pragmatic people, who don't think about things that are not of much practical value or grand ideas that are too much out-of-this-world. The old Confucius saying "Don't ask me the meaning of death, I am yet to figure out the meaning of life" (未知生, 焉知死) is pointed out by some as reason why Confucianism never developed into a full-blown religion in Chinese culture, because it shied away from that big "D" question. Without at least exploring and trying to understand the meaning of death, you can't understand the meaning of life either, they say.

So the Western (and other) religions delved deep into that question and came up with some answers, that our life on earth is transient by design, that it's a trial to better our character, and we'll have a perfect life in heaven once we get there, (or we may need to reincarnate quite a few times before we reach that Nirvana, according to Buddhism) ...

And there are people who say "I don't know if I even care for an eternal life, all I do is live one honest day at a time, and when my time is up, it's up." To these people I salute their integrity and even more, their continuous conscientious living. For not even the best of the Christians I know can maintain that "pray without ceasing" practice 24/7, and many people "live like they didn't know they will die one day, and die like they had never lived"--inertia seems to be the only force that keeps many hang on to life. 

Is there life after death, does our life continue to evolve in different form after our earthly body disintegrates? All right, I now accept decay is part of nature, just like growth is part of it, they form a cyclical process, like sunrise and sunset, flowers blossoming and wilting, and so on. But how about our spiritual or mental strength, that continues on an upward path through our life if nurtured right, so when we reach the end of our bodily existence, we are supposedly at the peak of our spiritual or mental climb. Do they then just drop out and disappear like our physical body?

My mother passed away some 19 years ago. It was a shocker for all of us. She was only 67, for one thing, and other than feeling a little short-breathed and palpitations just a couple weeks prior for which we took her for a thorough exam and the doctor assured us everything was OK, she showed no signs of illness. I still remember the shock and heart rending pain I felt when I received that mid-night phone call from my sister in Taiwan that Mother had just passed away in her arms.

The shock came from the loss of something I thought I would always have but now realized it's gone forever. It's no longer the fear, but the great pain that came from the sudden, ruthless take-away of my dear mother, and then the deep, nostalgic sorrow of feeling things better in my life have been lost for good.

In the end we sob for the dead not because we feel sorry for them, but because we feel sorry for ourselves. Rather than saying we fear death, we love life. Even those little, routine emotional highs and lows--those that make up inertia living, you may say--are enough to carry us through the day, every day, even though our hard-to-please soul always fancies something grander. 

And where do these precious little contentments come from mostly? Relationships, I gather. A bear hug from father to son, a complimenting smile from wife to husband, an encouraging note from one friend to another... These are what happy living is made of. 

Some relationships we have in life are born, such as familial relationships (parents, siblings, relatives); some are chosen (spouses, adoptions, business partners); and some are in-between (co-workers, classmates, church members). We tend to hold on to born relationships closest and longest simply because it's most natural thing to do, hence the pain deepest when that relationship is severed from us--like a death in the family, literally. 

But the truth is all relationships--like spiritual and mental growth--get richer and deeper if nurtured properly and continuously, and will give us same satisfaction whether it originates from familial, social, or cultural background. Thus we all have experience having friends with whom we are more intimate than with our own brothers or sisters, and adopted children are in general closer to their foster parents than their biological ones.

One dear uncle of mine just passed away last month. Out of the four brothers my father had, this was the one closest to him and to us since we were kids. It was again a sudden thing: In March he started coughing severely and went to the doctors, where it was diagnosed to be lung cancer at its terminal stage.

I visited him a couple times when I was there last month, didn't get a chance to talk to him. But then I heard from my sister who had once had a long talk with him at the sick bed, and he told her, after reflecting back on his life, "I have no regrets."  I was somehow quite moved and comforted hearing this.

No fear, no dissatisfaction, only peace at the end.

God rest your soul, dear uncle.

egypt, greece, rome ...

scotland? Yes, this according to an erst-while New York Times best seller "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" I picked up at Barnes & Noble bookstore a couple months ago. Though the title may make you chuckle at first (how in the world can a lowly country make such audacious claim), I was most impressed by this well researched and written 450-pager and enjoyed learning some interesting facts and stories that I didn't know before.

The book starts with an incident that occurred on one cold August day in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1696, when one inappropriate remark by a young theology student led to the relentless prosecution and eventual hanging of him by the authority-that-be of the day, the all-encompassing Presbyterian Church of Scotland founded some 150 years ago by John Knox, a devout Calvinist whose life-long mission was to make Scotland the "New Jerusalem" of the world during the days of fierce Protestant Reformation movement. 

Rigid and uncompromising as it was, the Presbyterian church-state of pre-modern day Scotland did instill a deep sense of self-governance and common people's rights against the monarchy, as well as awareness and establishment of universal education (boys and girls must know how to read Holy Scripture, therefore nearly every parish in Scotland had some sort of school and a regular teacher), making Scotland's literacy rate the highest in the world (it was probably not by coincidence that Encyclopedia Britannica was first compiled and published by a group of Scottish publishers in Edinburgh), and sowing the seeds for its intellectual enlightenment movement during the 18th century, when Scotland enjoyed economic prosperity after its successful union with England at the beginning of that century. 

The Scottish Enlightenment shared same humanist and rationalist outlook of European Enlightenment of the same period, with some firebrand ideas of its own, though. 

For more than two thousand years Western philosophers had praised the primacy of reason as the guide to all human action and virtue, that the job of reason was to master our emotions and appetites. With one earth-shaking book, "A Treatise of Human Nature," David Hume, one of the most influential Scottish thinkers of the day, and some call modernity's first great philosopher, turned the theory on its head. "Reason is," he wrote, "and ought to be, the slave of the passions."

"Human beings are not, and never have been, governed by their rational capacities," he elaborated, "Reason's role is purely instrumental: it teaches us how to get what we want. What we want is determined by our emotions, our passions, or our desire to live according to the rational principles. We are, in the end, creatures of habit, and of the physical and social environment within which our emotions and passions must operate."

For Hume, self-interest is all there is. The overriding guiding force in all our actions is not our reason, or our sense of obligation toward others, or any innate moral sense, but the most basic human passion of all, the desire for self-gratification.

Now Adam Smith, another great Scottish intellectual of the day, and later recognized to be father of modern science of economy by many, was a good friend of David Hume's. He was somewhat disturbed by such characterization of human nature, for his insight of man came from a different school of thoughts, one held and infused in him by his teacher/mentor, another great Scottish thinker, Francis Hutcheson, who insisted morality is inborn, a gift from God and nature, not something that has to be imposed from outside, as Hume suggested.

What Smith eventually came up with was what he called "fellow feeling," a natural sense of identification with other human beings. When we see someone suffer, we suffer; when we see others happy and celebrating their good fortune, it raises our own spirits. "Empathy," in today's term.

"Nature, when she formed man for society," Smith explained, "endowed him with an original desire to please, and an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him to feel pleasure in their favorable, and pain in their unfavorable regard."

So being moral demands that we put ourselves in another person's place, and put another person in our place. It leads us to promote the well-being of others, by making them as happy as ourselves.

For Adam Smith, then, our moral life, as well as our cultural life, is a matter of imagination. The richer the inventory of objects for its diversion, and the deeper our own fellow feeling, the happier we become, but also the more we can perceive happiness in others. The rich man is the man with the most fertile imagination. By devoting all his efforts and those of his employees and tenants to his land or his warehouse of factory, he ends up producing far more than he can consume himself. Thus, without intending it, without knowing it, as if led by an invisible hand, the rich "advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species," he said in his book "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," 17 years before publishing his other classic, "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776.

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The latter part of the book talks about the diaspora, or dispersion, of Scots around the world through expansion of the British Empire. From Canada (Nova Scotia, one of Canada's four founding colonies, is Latin for "New Scotland") to United States, South America, Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and so on, many Scots served the roles of valiant soldiers, shrewd merchants, prominent educators, devout missionaries, and hardy homesteaders that helped build and maintain the Empire upon which the sun never set. 

One particular branch of Scottish migration actually occurred well before the British colonial expansion to the world. Beginning in early 17th century, many Scots were lured to settle in Northern Ireland on lands confiscated from Irish nobility by King James I, who had been king of Scotland before becoming king of England, as well as driven by famine and poverty at home, through the whole of the 17th century. 

Waves of these "Scotch-Irish" (or "Ulster Scots," Ulster being the ancient provincial name of Northern Ireland) again began to move to British America in early 18th century, landing on Eastern seaports such as Philadelphia or Chester, then quickly expanding into the Appalachian Mountains, across southwest Virginia, North Carolina, and eventually Tennessee.

The habits of colonizing Ireland and seizing arable land from Catholic enemies carried over to the New World. Their insatiable desire for land, and the willingness to fight and die to keep it, laid the foundation of the frontier mentality of the American West.

Place names and language reflected their northern Irish or southern Scottish origins. They said "whar" for "where," "thar" for "there," "critter" for "creature," "nekkid" for "naked"... These were the first utterings of the American dialect of Appalachian mountaineers, cow boys, truck drivers, and back country politicians. The term used to describe them was redneck, a Scots border term meaning Presbyterians. Another was cracker, from the Scots word craik for "talk," meaning a loud talker or braggart. Both words became permanent parts of the American language, and a permanent part of the identity of the Deep South the Ulster Scots created.

Well known Americans of Scottish origin in the early pioneer days include Andrew Jackson, army general who defeated both Indians and the British army and the 7th President of the United States; William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the Pacific Northwest; Sam Houston, soldier politician who led Texas to the Union. Notable modern day Scottish Americans include Andrew Carnegie, steel industry tycoon and philanthropist; Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of telephone and his namesake telephone company; and President Woodrow Wilson, an idealistic politician whose father was one of the founders of Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States.

Nope, MacIntosh Computer was not invented by the Scots, nor were the McDonald's restaurants, even though the names sound Scottish and both are tell-tale contraptions of modern world :)

cool

I don't know if the Oxford Dictionary or Encyclopedia Britannica keeps a category for the "chic-est" words used in the world for the day. If they do, I think "cool" should be right up there. 

Say, 

You wear a new suit to a party, and people compliment you: "Cool outfit!"

You talk arrangement or business with a friend or partner, and to consummate the deal, you say "Are you cool with it?"

You give a fancy new toy to your kid, his/her eyes round up, mouth opens wide, and cheers out "Cool!", and you are the coolest dad in the world at that moment!

Just like a group of children, we expect our leaders to be cool, level headed, like they knew what they were doing all the time, so we feel secure. Witness General Haig's quivering "I am in control" statement right after President Reagan's failed assassination, or compare Richard Nixon's nervous appearance vs John Kennedy's calm demeanor during the presidential debate, and their political outcomes, you'll understand that the appearance of uncool can be detrimental to a politician's public life, just like some say the appearance of stupidity, more than stupidity itself, can hamper one's career advancement in the corporate world.

At the risk of seeming politically uncool, I'll say in general men are more cool than women. How else to explain that we always look for "the coolest man in Hollywood," (George Clooney, for that matter, for now, perhaps) but no woman in that category. (Instead, we have the "hottest woman" category we like to focus on). The flip side of this is jerks are always men, none woman.

One easy way to achieve coolness is to put oneself in a neutral position, like a TV anchorman/woman, for example, posing questions to their interviewees, jarring or intriguing as they might be, they are all asked on the audience's behalf, so he/she can stay above the fray and watch--as we audience do--their interviewees squirm and turn in their answering.

But once in a while, an interviewee might fire back an edgy jab towards the interviewer themselves, unexpectedly, then you might see that anchorman/woman get visibly disturbed, become defensive, and lose that professional calm air they've been wearing. It's not cool any more when things get personal, is it?

Probably because coolness is such looked-upon quality in our society, many try to fake it, or "play cool", even when they don't have it. Or they at least try to play it passively, to hide their uncoolness by following that "Never let them see you sweat" motto. Coolness over-or-mis-played can become downright cold-heartedness, or deranged mental cases like those zombie-like killers we see in many of Hollywood's violent movies. 

Like meekness that comes from reined-in strength, I think true coolness comes from a very warm heart, that can still cry and empathize, but with great wisdom and wit, humor and humility, that combined so enchants us we want to be surrounded by it, or by that person rather, all day long.

There was a guy born a couple thousand years ago, who didn't go with the "in" crowd, cried for the death of his friend, took all things personally, and sweated profusely in his last petition to his father God for life. Yet his magic brings life and hope to all people ever since. That's a very cool guy in my book.

Happy Easter!