mindfulness

Some little sharing I had with my meditation group the other day:

It seems on the surface there are two schools of ideas regarding the way of meditation: One says to go into a state of absolute nothingness, without a specter of thought or image, spending as little effort as possible, into the state of total detachment from anything and everything; the other, called "mindfulness", on the other hand, is to focus as intentionally as you can, on every little thing you are doing at the moment.

My meditation practice has been mostly on the former: Every morning I spend 30 minutes sitting in silence "trying-without-trying" to be calm and letting go and into the state of effortless flow of equanimity...

My mindfulness--or "living in the moment"--practice, on the other hand, has been pretty lacking, even though conceptually I understand the importance of it, I realize more and more that I am not doing it much.

For example, my wife has been criticizing me that I eat too fast, and I've been ignoring that criticism thinking that's just a matter of opinion (I think she eats too slowly), until I realize the reason why I eat that fast is because I am using my mouth like a food processor, my brain busily dictating it to mingle potato with meat, salty food with bland one, so to speak, in the most efficient way possible, to finish up the job fast, instead of slowly and truly savoring the taste of food or enjoying the process of eating.

And I read an article yesterday about how the Japanese people have long ingrained the mindfulness practice in their culture: From the train conductors announcing out loud every maintenance move they are taking (and statistics show this does dramatically reduce the rate of mistakes happening) to the ritualistic respect they pay to their tea ceremony, flower arrangement, cherry-blossom viewing, etc... 

I think these two practices are two sides of a coin, not contradictory to each other. Maybe I'll call the practice of mindfulness "meditation in action", and the other "meditation in segregation", since it requires segregated time and environment to do so. And probably because of such conspicuous efforts we make, it becomes the "formal" one, or the one we focus on. 

But the reality is 99% of our day is spent in action--eating, walking, talking, working, thinking, etc.--whether we like it or not. So maybe the practice of mindfulness meditation should be at least as important as the segregated, formal one, shouldn't it? At least that's what I am telling myself now.

Just a little "mindful" sharing with you 

the british & not-so-british isles

They call it "Essential Britain & Ireland" (or I may say "Britain & Ireland for Dummies"), this land tour we took in late April started in London, going west through Wales, crossing the Celtic Sea to Ireland, north to Northern Ireland, east across the Irish Sea to Scotland, then returning south to London, all in 10 days, through towns and villages, walls and ruins, (Scottish) Lowlands and (English) Midlands, sunshine and hail storm!

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Stonehenge & Bath

Two UNESCO designated world heritage sites both located in the southwest of England, the former a 5000 year old prehistoric monument without a shred of written records, the latter a well documented spa town built by the Romans and continued to be inhabited till this date.

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Wales
A country within a country (legally annexed by England since the mid 16th century), Wales was known for its coal mining and metallurgical industries during the Industrial Revolution heydays, and Tom Jones nowadays (for me). The 2000-year-old castle we visited in its capital city Cardiff featured not only Roman fort and Gothic towers, but lavish castle rooms with elaborate Italian and Arabian decoration and Mediterranean gardens, all commissioned by the world's richest Welsh man in the mid-19th century.

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Ireland
We landed this Emerald Isle via waterways not far from where the Danish Vikings invaded some 1200 years ago, stopping by a wool-weaving mill town and an old monastery village on our way north to Dublin, where we enjoyed an Irish cabaret evening with dinner, dance, song, and laughter. 

​​Edinburgh, Scotland
This hilly, chilly, windy city standing guard by the North Sea has a majestic old town straddling a jutted castle on one end and a retreat palace on the other with serene natural beauty surrounding, was also the focal point of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, writers, movers and shakers that made possible much of the modern world today.  

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York, Northeast England
Another Viking influenced town on this side of the British Isles, York lays claims to the first paved road and the second largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe, and shook us with about-face weathers of rains and sleets and sunny skies all within our one half-day visit.

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The Bard's Hometown
Stratford-upon-Avon was a medieval market town in midland England that honored the birth place of William Shakespeare (whose birthday parade we just missed) with live Shakespearean plays in the garden where one of the performers recited a flawless sonnet just for me. 

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London & Jo Malone's
We spent one extra day on our own after the group tour ended in London, visiting Buckingham Palace and British Museum, etc., and meeting with a fine young man--my wife's nephew--who gave up his comfy job in Taiwan and braved the strange new world here working at Jo Malone's flagship store in London, where I bought my first-ever bottle of perfume after a hypnotizing hand and arm massage by a sweet lady from Romania.

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Great Britain and its empire had no doubt played an important role shaping up the world we live in today, thus I had been fascinated by its history and heritage, character and constituencies long before I came on this tour.

Surely skimming 2 isles and a dozen towns in 10 days would not in-depth understanding of this great union and its people make. Still, riding through the rolling green pastures of Ireland I felt close grasping the despair of the great potato famine and the angst against centuries old Anglo-Norman suppression the Irish peasants must have felt; listening to the kilt wearing Scottish tour guide speaking of folklore in spirited high accent gave me impression how proud and tough a people the Scots are; and the bustling and hustling streets of London reminded me this world's 5th largest economy is busy moving forward, expending no time lamenting its lost empire or wallowing in memories of its old glory.

That bland tasting food the Brits are infamous for we didn't get to experience on this trip. All meals we had were surprisingly delicious. Black pudding (blood sausage) and cider beer were about the only exotic things I tried. And the chocolate we bought at York was very good--great flavor with moderate sweetness, as the unexpected cherry blossoms we encountered there were beautiful!

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Talking about visiting an old union, we had a bus load of people from all over the new union of America: the Dixie chicks (4 lady church friends) from Texas, Dick & Jane from Michigan, Ed & Jeanne from Virginia, Richard & Teresa from Pennsylvania..., and Robert and Nelda from New Zealand, Lonnie & Marilyn from Canada. All 44 of us under the auspicious care of our red hair English-Irish lady tour guide Patricia, whose rich historical and anecdotal knowledge and well-cadenced explanations fended off competition from Google search in a WiFi equipped bus just like the wall the Roman emperor built fending off attacks from the Scottish tribes some 1900 years ago!

For more photos and tour details, go to

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10212954083191962.1073741835.1387569224&type=1&l=abef9a873b

brothers, drought, and robots

Speaking for myself, I think I very much live in a post-1984 (which is literally true) world already. Not that there is no Big Brother watching, there are many of them: Besides good old Daddy Sam, Sister Facebook knows who my "friends" are and what stuff I "like", Uncle Amazon knows what ink cartridges I use and how often I need them, and Brother Google knows every single word I type in this blog.

But I don't really mind. Actually I appreciate they do what they do so

When I am in a strange place, I can hold my phone and walk around and know which direction I am going, or find a good place to eat, or translate a foreign language sign right on the spot; 

I can pull out my phone anywhere and shoot as many photos as I want to, not the least concerned about filing or storing them later, or how much they would cost me; 

I can then within a few finger swipes find out where I had been when, when I had been where, whom I had been with when and where...

I just hope they'd do a better job than what they've done so far, so they'd stop showing me ads for things I'd already bought, for example; and if they happen to catch me on a street photo, don't blot out my face, I want to be recognizable in their digital kingdom forever!

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We in California just received a record setting rainy season that pretty much wiped out the drought that's been haunting us for the past 5 years. But why don't I see people dancing on the streets celebrating?

Ah don't be fooled, they'll say. With global warming, we are going to have extreme weather swings like this: Two years ago we had the lowest snow fall in record in northern Sierra Nevada, and this year we have the highest. These are such unusual, unprecedented phenomena, they are signs of more bad things to come, you see.

I am all for green technologies and good stewardship for Mother Earth, they are the right things to do anyway, climate changing or not. But do we have to be so gloomy and doomy, so under the weather all the time?

From what I know, we humans have weathered through two verifiable climate changes in just one past millennium: one Medieval Warm Period (950-1250 AD), and one Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD). The former actually allowed the Vikings to explore and colonize Iceland and Greenland and tip of North America for a while, before the climate turned cold again. 

And throughout recorded history, we know of many great ancient cities got deserted because of desertification, harbors abandoned because of river changing courses or sea level drops, and people migrated because of droughts, famines, or drastic environmental changes... 

If our ancestors could adapt to these situations with bare hands and feet and rudimentary tools, why can't we, the latest and best of humankind (tongue in cheek), with the latest and best high technologies (no tongue in cheek) available today?

So go ahead, Jerry, say that you are very proud of us Californians who managed to use 22% less water in less than two years, and thank God our drought is finally over, for now.

And then I'll brace myself for the warning messages come late Spring I guarantee I am going to hear over and over: "It looks like we are going to have an early start of wildfire season this year... Due to the extraordinary rains we had in the winter, we have an extraordinarily large inventory of dry brushes that's like a stockpile of fireworks waiting to be lit... Be careful out there..."

Yes I will, Mother.

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The era of robots are getting up closer and more personal every day. I read this news article that FedEx is experimenting using a mobile roller as a gofer between backroom and front desk fetching stuff for customers, and hotels such as Sheraton and Westin are using them to deliver room services or toiletry items for guests. I am sure you can find dozens of other news pieces like this indicating more work are being replaced by machines as days go by.

Luddites have been complaining about machines taking away jobs from people since the days of first industrial revolution in the 18th century, so that part of the news is nothing new. If anything, I find it interesting that on one hand we worry about less young people will be available to take care of more older people, while on the other hand ignore--or actually also worry about--the fact that more machines will take care of more things therefore less people will be needed in the future.

What's different and scary about this latest wave of automation, they say, though, is the jobs machines are taking away are service oriented, rather than manufacturing or set and tedious ones like before.

Now if I ask a question: Do you want services from machines, or do you want them from real people? Before you give your obvious answer, let me ask another question: Do you like withdrawing money from ATM machines, or bank tellers; checking out at Walmart through self-help stands, or human cashiers?

The truth of the matter is many services today have been so standardized or streamlined the jobs of doing them become just as tedious or unimaginative as working at the assembly line of a factory.

People are afraid of machines replacing humans as service providers because they are afraid they'll lose that human touch, that deep warm fuzzy thing only human can relate to each other. But the irony of this is we ourselves rarely show that deep warm fuzzy thing to others in our day to day dealing with people. 

So why not let machines do all the pretense jobs and give us superficial feel-good while we humans choose to use all the reclaimed time available to develop and express our true deep humanity in all occasions dealing with other fellow human beings? 

Like next time when you say hi to a person, wear a genuine smile; when having a conversation with someone, truly listen, empathize, and engage. 

Act like no robot, and we humans shall prevail!

24 hour fitness

I've been going to this 24 Hour Fitness center down in San Clemente for almost two years by now. Like any "Super Sport" grade facility of this nationwide gym chain, it's a big, tall hall with rows of treadmills, ellipticals, weight lifting racks and benches, dance floor, bicycle room, basketball court, stretch aisle, etc.

And an aqua section of indoor swimming pool, steam room, sauna, and jacuzzi. 

Three or four times a week I check in, change, step in the steam room, simmer for 10 minutes, splash into the pool, swim laps for 20, slump into the jacuzzi, swelter for 10-15 minutes, sling back to the pool for a few more laps swim, slip into the sauna room, smolder for 10 minutes, then back to the swimming pool, the jacuzzi... you get the picture.

The steam room is a good place to start, not only because it oozes open all my body pores and gives me a good sweaty warm up, but also the foggy steam prevents me from seeing through the glass door how many swimming pool lanes out there are open that might perturb my Zen mind and make me want to rush over to the pool side before all lanes are taken up...

Ah but that was just my monkey mind thinking. The pool is never that busy, most of the time only one or two of its three-lane runway are used. And even in the rare occasions when all three are taken, each is wide enough to accommodate two swimmers at the same time. A few simple courteous words such as "do you mind sharing" would easily earn you a berth of the waterway you need.

And sharing we all do. Inside the jacuzzi pool, there is one corner where a "super jet" spout pumps out mighty streams that are 10 times more powerful than those other lame ones that most people want to get at. The unwritten and unspoken rules here are "take turns, no hogging." Or you may just ask straight for it if you really need it, like some older gentlemen do when they feel their knee or hip needs a few minutes of special massage treatment that they think only this powerful jet will suffice.

The sauna room is one place where no hissing steam engine or bubbling water churn annoys but only nice smell from fresh cedar bench pervades, that allows you to relax and do your own thing, which, for many people nowadays, you might have guessed, is looking down and playing with their phones. I am amazed not only by how modern technologies have invaded every crevice of our lives, but also the build quality of these little gadgets that acclimates them to such harsh environment of high heat and damp air. No report of any phone battery blowing up here so far.

A gym is a microcosm of the world outside, with all kinds of people coming in and out every day. People generally keep to themselves, but occasionally the ice is broken and they chat, and I sometimes engage with people with interesting backgrounds or life stories that I did not expect. 

Like once I struck a conversation with a middle aged man who was flapping the door at the steam room and I interjected, and he apologized and explained to me he was fanning out the steam so to hasten the triggering of another round of fresh steam. It turned out he was a professional opera singer catered to perform only for upscale customers on their premises, for example, a royal Thai family living in the Modjeska Canyon area.

Another time I met a one-legged man who lost his leg during an oil drilling accident in Alaska and became addicted to pain-killer drugs after the amputation and had to go through rehab and was now living at a post-treatment center nearby that shuttled him here daily for exercise as part of the program. 

And there was this loud speaking young man at the sauna room talking excitingly to an old business acquaintance he just bumped into about the many new business opportunities people were bringing him, asking him to help set up marijuana farms around Orange and far flung area of Los Angeles counties. That reminded me of the marijuana legalization proposition we just passed last November in California, didn't we?

Fun as it is, I must confess I was not the one who initiated this gym going thing two years ago. My wife did, quite to my surprise. For she has never impressed me as the athletic type, but after a few weeks of trial membership with this gym, she so enjoyed the aerobic dancing program she pulled me into joining it with her. 

Not that I didn't try to do the aerobic dancing with her in the beginning, but I failed miserably--just didn't have the nimble body-and-mind coordination the full room of women all seemed to have. I also tried some of those hard hitting "body pump" classes, and re-activated my chronicle foot pain right the next day. As for those fancy weight lifting/muscle toning machines, I find their exercises tedious and hard to persist.

So off to swimming I go, an old habit I used to do every day when I had a pool in my own backyard at my old residence. It's low impact, full body, and fun. And this being done in a community, I occasionally get tips from some good Samaritan swimmers to correct some wrong moves I've been doing for years without knowing. 

They say swimming is one of the best, if not the best, exercises in the world, I tend to agree.

Dive in!

atria san juan

It's been almost a year since I volunteered at an assisted living community nearby where I live. It's a ministry organized by Saddleback Church with a simple idea: For those seniors who like to attend Sunday service but cannot or do not want to go outside the facility, we set up a simple worship center at site for them. 

There are three of us volunteers: Bettyanne & Darrin, a wife and husband team, and I. Every Sunday morning we go in there, get the DVD/TV remote controls from the front desk, set up the CD/video players, pass out the hymn booklets and help them (those who come on wheelchairs or walkers) sit as they come in. Then we start with a few hymn songs sing-along, a 20 minutes or so short sermon or bible study video, then another few hymn songs, then it's done. 

And once a month we conduct a communion ceremony, with Bettyanne bringing the bread and I the grape juice. Also occasionally Bettyanne will bring some homemade cakes or cookies to celebrate special holidays or some of the attendees' birthdays.

The part I enjoy most, besides singing those good old melodial hymn songs that you don't usually get to do at contemporary services, is chatting with these gentle old people after the service, when they are in the mood--which they usually are. Sometimes just a few words, sometimes for a few minutes, week after week. I gradually get to know some of them better, all with interesting characters and backgrounds:

Bud is a retired teacher and a WW II veteran from New Jersey (he's 94 now), who is almost always the first to come for the service, in a suit jacket, and always picks his favorite hymn "How Great Thou Art" to sing.

Bonnie is from Washington state, she moved here at the urge of her daughter who's living at Coto De Caza, an affluent gated community nearby, after her husband passed away and herself had a stroke. She's about my mother's age--if she hadn't had passed away so many years ago--and her gentle demeanor and reserved, humble way of speaking sometimes remind me of my mom.

Connie is in her 80's, but still has a sharp mind and vivid memories, and always takes notes while watching the sermon video, and would volunteer to share with us what touched her during the service. 

Bruce was an engineer when he got a stroke at his 50's that left him completely paralyzed on the right side and unable to speak or walk. He had since picked up his passion on painting and become the on-premises artist for the center for the past 20+ years. They hold annual art exhibit events for him and he had invited us to visit his living quarters which really looks like an art studio.  

Fred is another 90+ gentleman that doesn't talk much but always wears a smile on his face. He has an adult son and daughter-in-law who would occasionally come to visit and sit with him through the service, but a more common companion of his was another old lady in the center who would sit adoringly next to him every week, until her memory and mobility deteriorated to the point she had to be moved to the special care quarters and did not show up at the service any more.

June is another sharp old lady, who is never shy about making prayer requests for herself (unresolved relationship with her sister), her relatives (a pastor nephew-in-law whose son just committed suicide), and people around her (those who were not well at the center) every time Bettyanne asks the audience for them.

Margie is a healthy looking old lady from Chicago with a shiny braid of golden hair, and a good voice--that's why I sometimes teased her to sing harmony with me during the hymn singing but she would shyly decline.

Nancy & Glenn (wife & husband) are the only non-Caucasian people I see in the audience (and probably for the whole center), and they share the same last name Wong as I, though they are the 3rd generation Chinese immigrants from Canton and their Wong means "yellow" in Cantonese while mine means "old man" in Mandarin Chinese. Glenn has an opera grade voice that I like to encourage him to give us a solo performance someday.

As the service proceeds, I like to stay in the background, handing out the hymn booklets, playing the music (I downloaded songs on the two CD's Saddleback Church gave us to an old smart phone of mine and installed a music player app to make it a random access MP3 music player, to avoid swapping CD's in and out and sequencing through sound tracks one by one just to find the song they pick to sing), and let Bettyanne and Darrin do the talking--sermon summary, prayer request, etc.

And that had been working fine, until one day, when I got back from out of town and went there for the first time after a few weeks' absence, and found out that I was the only volunteer there. 

So I tried to "wing" it: I picked the video session by hunch, played and sang more songs than usual, and instead of sermon summary and prayer request, I shared stories of my recent trip to Europe and thoughts on my recent birthday, etc., and I made it through. Some even liked it, it seemed.

So last Sunday, after we finished our usual first-Sunday-of-the-month communion ceremony, and while everyone was having the homemade cakes Bettyanne brought, I showed them some pictures on the big screen TV (through the hook-up with my tablet) of my recent trips to Taiwan and Japan, as well as some old photos of me, my high school reunion, where I live now, etc., and explained. They were in awe, probably by those places they'd never seen before, and/or maybe because they finally got to know more about this mysterious Asian man that they'd been seeing for almost a year without really knowing who he is.

And sure enough, Connie, the ever so diligent scholar of the class, asked me for the name of the city I showed that sits next to a volcano in south Japan, (I told her I'll get back to her next week), and Bruce, though speechless, stared at the photo of my home backyard that I showed last, thinking he could draw a painting out of it, maybe?

I'll find out in the weeks to come.

Atria San Juan is a privately owned and operated senior living center near where I live 

Their club room is where we set up the service

The attendance averages about 10-15 people per week

From left to right: Nancy, Connie, Margie, Bruce, Bud, Fred (with hat), and Bonnie (behind the dog)

Bettyanne and Darrin, with her homemade cakes

I went to Bruce's exhibit and bought one of his paintings

* For Saddleback Church Assisted Living Service Ministry, go to

http://saddleback.com/connect/ministry/assisted-living-center-worship/Laguna-Woods

smarter than we think

I always feel, when pulling weeds at my yard, that they know what I am doing. Right after I pluck out the first weed, the second, and the subsequent ones get tougher and tougher to remove, or their stems break so easily--almost voluntarily, sacrificing their upper part so I can't pull off their roots easily, a survival tactic they seem to enact seconds after receiving a warning message/red alert from their falling comrade, I suspect.

My suspicion got very much confirmed after reading the book "The Hidden Life of Trees" that explores and explains many amazing phenomena and behaviors of trees by a German forest care taker of 20+ years, and my subsequent research on the subject matters.

Trees/plants do communicate with one another, not only through electrical signals (they do have it, transmitting at much slower pace than ours, though), but also through the use of the senses of smell and taste. If a giraffe starts eating an African acacia, for example, the tree releases a chemical into the air that signals that a threat is at hand. As the chemical drifts through the air and reaches other trees, they "smell" it and are warned of the danger. If an insect starts eating the leaf of a tree, for another example, the saliva of the eating insect can be "tasted" by the leaf being eaten. In response, the tree sends out a chemical signal that attracts predators that feed on that particular leaf-eating insect.

And trees are social: they form a "wood wide web" with interconnected roots and soil fungi where they exchange nutrients, transmit/relay warning signals and messages against impeding dangers, take care of sick trees and "dead" stumps (Stumps keep water; without the crowd, hot sun and swirling wind can penetrate to the forest floor and disrupt the moist, cool climate), so they are better together in the long run.

They can "learn" and "remember". The sensitive leaves of Mimosa (the tickle-me-plant) that close up quickly after detecting droplets of water stop doing so after they learn that the repeated disturbance has no real damaging consequence. Trees need to know that warmer days are due to early spring or late summer so they know to grow more leaves if it's the former and drop foliage if it's the latter. They do this by keeping track of ("remembering") the combination of day length and temperature, and "deducing" that rising temperatures mean spring, falling temperatures mean fall. 

And if that's not enough already, plants can "hear" too. An experiment by University of Missouri recorded the sound of a caterpillar eating a plant's leaf and played it back to a set of plants, which later generated more mustard oils when attacked by caterpillars to deter them from eating more than another set of plants that were not pre-exposed to the recording.

If plants are so "intelligent", might they also have emotion, or even consciousness? Or have you heard the allegation that talking nice/showing affection to your plants makes them grow better than those you don't?

In a controversial documentary film made in 1978, researchers placed monitoring devices on both a plant and a man next to it watching a stimulus video and charted their responses. They found the needle movement of the plant's graph closely mirrored the man's emotional zig-zagging throughout the whole watching process.

Another experiment used two cabbages... one hooked with electrodes to a machine that converted its energetic expressions into audible tones. When the cabbage that was not hooked up to any instrument was being chopped to pieces by a human scientist, the plant hooked up to the machines was heard screaming or crying, with a very high pitch tone.

A similar, but even eerier experiment had a man chosen at random go into the lab and destroy one of three plants. The other two plants were then hooked up to electro-encephalographs (EEG – brain wave monitors) and they marched the men in one by one. The plants exhibited no alarm, but as soon as the one responsible for the plant death entered the room, the other two plants started registering wildly on the graphs. They knew who it was that killed their friend, so to speak.

Just like all the weeds in my yard know who their Top Enemy Number One is now.

reunion, in the evening

Then I went to another reunion in the evening. This was again a somewhat impromptu thing: Just about a couple weeks ago, I was invited to a chat group formed by alums of my junior high school (再興) and its senior high division. Right after the chat group was formed, they decided to have a meetup dinner for all who could attend, and I signed up for it.

In contrast to the senior high school I attended, which was a public school, 再興 was a private school with only 3 classes each for its junior high and senior high divisions, and therefore a smaller but closer-knit body.

The dinner was at an up-scale hotel at the heart of the town. We reserved a banquet room just for ourselves, 23 in total. Half of them I didn't know, since they were from the senior high division; half of the junior high people I sort of knew, since they were from different classes; and the remaining half I really knew, since they were literally the mates I sit in the same classroom with day in and day out through my junior high years, including one year living in the same dorm.

One of the main purpose of this reunion group is to promote health awareness and encourage one another to live healthier lives. Many of attendees today were doctors or of medical background. They shared their take on various health issues and real life encounters with them. One of them in particular has been promoting end-of-life care for years and is in charge of all the municipal hospitals in Taipei. He shared with us the sweat and tears, heart break and joy of working and developing relationships with towns folks and the theatrics of dealing with city council... All so endearing and interesting stories from a now avuncular looking buddy who was just a kid like me sitting a row or two behind some 43 years ago.

Besides doctors, the guy sitting to my left is a businessman, my right a lawyer, the chairman of the group himself the chief executive of a multi-national conglomerate, and many other alums who did not attend today are professionals working and living in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Southeast Asia, US, etc. Even the hotel restaurant manager is a 再興 alum.

They shared stories about a fun trip they made recently, a gathering of guys from different parts of the world flying all over to Hong Kong just to attend and celebrate the wedding of one of their own. The camaraderie and enthusiasm shown were enviable.

One incident that triggered the forming of this more formal alum group, I heard, happened last year, when one of the alums, after a late night business meeting in Shanghai, got injured in a serious traffic accident and remained in coma. Though they tried getting the best doctors and treatment through their alumni network to save him, he still didn't make it.

I remember when we were in school, every Monday morning there was a "Mental Rally Talk" (精神講話) session by the principal (who's also the founder of the school), and at the end of her speech, she would always exhort us to "invoke 再興 Spirit" (發揚再興精神) to do great things. It sounded so cliche at that time, and nobody really knew what "再興 Spirit" meant. But looking at what these fifty-somethings are doing, helping each other and the society in general in ways they can, I think I know what that "再興 Spirit" means, and that our long deceased lady principal would be smiling and very proud of her boys now!

Biggest round table I ever saw in Taipei, seating 23

Some of us only attended Junior High (such as I), some Senior High only, some both

These up close and personal classmates of my Junior High years. The big guy at the center in black, nick named "Uncle Jian", is one well known and respected end-of-life care advocate in Taiwan

One serious looking boy at 15