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

the baltics

We went on a Baltic cruise in early July. The 9-day sail took us from Copenhagen, Denmark, to a north German coast town, to Tallinn, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Russia, then headed back west to Helsinki, Finland, Stockholm, Sweden, before returning back to Copenhagen, Denmark.

​How was it, you may ask. Then here's my super shallow take on the 6 cities we visited:

Copenhagen
Was a very walker friendly city, and the two hotels we stayed in (one before the cruise the other after) were excellently located. We walked our way to the royal palace, the cathedral, the little mermaid, the shopping district... almost all the attraction points I pre-planted on my Google maps, and the city was bright and sun-shiny and blue-watery everywhere. I felt easy coming back to visit again some day.  

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​Berlin

Was 3-hour bus ride away from the north German coast town our ship docked. It's a serious city, with drab buildings and dense Cold War and Nazi histories behind, but also very cultured and vibrant with numerous museums and nouveau sky scrapers in the reclaimed heartland of the city since the fall of the Wall.

Tallinn

Was an unpretentious nice little town that seemed like bringing everyone's life back to the good old (medieval) time, when in reality theirs is a country with a female president and fast becoming the first e-country of the world!

​​St. Petersburg

The big-brother city of them all: Extravagant palaces, grand museums, tall cathedrals, endless streets... and gray skies, that seemed to cast a sullen pall on its residents, though I respect and admire the gritty spirit the Russian people must have had, well kept underneath their solemn expressions for centuries.

​​Helsinki

Another nice little capital city like its cross strait neighbor Tallinn. Just wished we had had more time strolling and enjoying the lovely tree-lined esplanade park at the heart of the city before being rushed back to the ship.

​​Stockholm

Was another sun-shiny, blue-sky-ish, watery, jovial city I liked. Have a yacht, cruise the river, walk the park, visit a theater, dine at a waterfront restaurant, and the day is still young--the sun won't set until 10 pm! Won't you love living in the Nordics, when it's summer time?

​Europe is an interesting old-world playhouse for human mixture and political conflict studies. Even around a bleak "backwater" little sea like the Baltic (in contrast to the warm, big, civilization birthing Mediterranean), we have had the Viking brothers the Danes and the Swedes vying for supremacy, expanding to convert and conquer the pagan Finns and Estonians in their own version of Christian crusades, before the power of rising Russian Empire put them in check, while merchants of cities around the region continued to do commerce and prosper under the protection of a German organized league of trade for centuries. 

But early Russian polities were established by the Vikings between the 8th-11th centuries, Catherine the Great of tsarian Russia was 100% German, and even though geographically Finland sits right next to its Scandinavian neighbor, ethnically and linguistically the Finns are related to the Estonians across the strait, who in turn are related to the Hungarians in Central Europe...

On a more personal level, one satisfactory thing I got to do in this trip was to visit the birthplace and memorable spots of my hero Danish Christian philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard in Copenhagen. Sitting at the bench opposite his statue in his memorial garden, watching some teen-age kids playing lawn bowls in front of it, care-freely and as-life-goes-on-ly, I wondered if he's still pursuing the incomprehensible, eternal truth he did all his life up there... 

Maybe he still is.

* For more photos and trip narratives, click on the items below:

Copenhagen

Copenhagen II 

Berlin

Tallinn

St. Petersburg

St. Petersburg II

Helsinki

Stockholm

At Sea

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euro exploreo

As things go so far, my vacation plans have been masterminded by my wife--leaving all the fun of finding great traveling deals and perfect touring itineraries to her highness while saving my brainpower for ignominious jobs such as watching college football games is a no-brainer to me. So when she told me she'd decided this 12-day (excluding the intercontinental flying in and out, it's actually only 10 days) Central/Eastern European tour provided by a reputable Chinese American travel agency was the best deal she found for us this year, I just nodded my head and said go.

Here's the map of the tour:

It rounded up 6 countries--Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Czech--and 12 cities--most of them well known big towns such as Munich, Vienna, Budapest, Prague--in 11 days.

How do I remember them? I remember

The Castle
By a real king wanting a dream castle and devoting his reigning lifetime building it, risking bankruptcy of his kingdom, this Disneyland emulated fairy tale castle in southern Germany was as real and fanciful as I imagined it to be before I visited it. 

The Salt
Was the source of wealth for Salzburg (Salt City), Austria, hometown of musical wizard Mozart. A two-hour underground tour of the salt mine was both entertaining and educational.

The Caves
Of Slovenia is another cool underworld I've never experienced before. Didn't they find some pre-historic Neanderthal remains in caves like these somewhere around this part of the world, I recall?

The Lakes

At Croatia's UNESCO sanctified world treasure 16 Lakes National Park are yet another pristine beauty hidden at one obscure corner of old Europe, while Lake Wolfgang in Alpine Austria is bustling with sailboats and swimmers and paragliders and resort villages and even appears in the movie "The Sound of Music".

The Rivers

Our "fill-in-the-gap" pre-tour Rhine River cruise took us through the famous Loreley Rock and gorge and views of some famous castles again; the Danube River in Budapest that divides the city into hilly Buda and plainy Pest brought us views of its grand cathedrals, palaces, monumental buildings on both sides as well.

The Music & The Dances
On the night in Vienna we went to an optional concert that was worth every penny for its impeccable performance of Mozart and Strauss pieces and operatic singing; on our arrival in Budapest a "Hungarian Night" dinner and entertainment featuring high-strung folk dancing and multi-lingual singing was equally enjoyable.

The Austro-Hungarian & The Holy Roman
The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of mostly German speaking states and principalities since the 17th century on (and is therefore neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, as some would joke), before it was finally dissolved by Napoleon in 1806, but was a formidable polity during High and Late Middle Ages when it was ruled by powerful kings and "cooperated" with the Pope and its territories extended to northern Italy and eastern Europe and parts of western Europe.

One powerful king of Bohemia (part of Czech today) who became a Holy Roman Emperor was Charles IV, who built the famous Charles Bridge in Prague by laying the first stone himself at 5:31am on 9 July 1357, believing the magical number 1357 9, 7 5:31 (same reading forward and backward) will add extra strength to the bridge.

They are celebrating King Charles' 700th birthday in Czech this year.

The House of Habsburg was one of the most influential royal houses of Europe. The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was continuously occupied by the Habsburgs between 1438 and 1740. The house also produced emperors and kings of England, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Russia, etc.

The Austrian Empire was created out of the realms of the Habsburgs by proclamation in 1804, in response to (or for fear of) Napoleon's First French Empire. Geographically it was the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire and the third most populous after Russia and France at the time.

Franz Joseph I, a Habsburg, of course, was the longest reigning emperor of the Austrian Empire. Probably due to the heavy lobbying of his famous wife Sisi, who was the cousin of the "loony" Bavarian King Ludwig II who built the said dream castle above, who detested the suffocating Austrian/Habsburg court rituals but was a great fan of Hungarian culture, he agreed to elevate the Kingdom of Hungary to the equal of the Austrian monarchy, thus the Austro-Hungarian Empire was formed, in 1867.

Franz Joseph died in 1916, two years before the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved at the end of World War I.

They are commemorating the 100th anniversary of Franz Joseph ("the forever Kaiser")'s death this year in Vienna.

Travelling today is quite different than yesteryears, by that I mean the omnipresence of WiFi and wireless internet makes self-help traveling even better and easier. During this trip, I used Google Maps to know where I was, Google Search for the stories behind the places I visited, and Google Translate to convert Slovenian and Croatian texts to English while at convenience stores or out in the wild. "Shoot (photos) first, ask Google later" was the new traveling motto I used to joke with my fellow tourists. I actually learned more through Google and internet about the places I visited than from all those tour guides combined.

But nothing beats going out there and seeing the real things, or talking to people from different parts of the world and learning through their perspectives, even when sometimes your feet were hurting tired or the crowd was too much and the time too little you couldn't see or enjoy as much as you wanted to. All's worthwhile, though, including the time you spent on hotel bed going through Wikipedia reading stories about the things you saw or places you visited that really roused your interest.

So next time when my highness presents her perfect tour plan I'll nod my head and say go again.

* For photo-by-photo explanations of the tour, go to my Facebook album
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10210668871703103.1073741833.1387569224&type=1&l=37e54b131c

* For the Hungarian Night dancing, go to
https://youtu.be/h7h1a-rURvY

* For the Hungarian Night hat play, go to
https://youtu.be/u0R1majorCg

* For the Hungarian Night singing American, go to
https://youtu.be/EP_C7DFbmAQ

* For the Hungarian Night singing Chinese, go to
https://youtu.be/MbhwDNUiZcE

* For the rail ride out of the caves, go to
https://youtu.be/vfIp4h9xgzk

* For the salt mine cruise, go to
https://youtu.be/uKh5C7NuXoQ

* For the Munich town hall glockenspiel show, go to
https://youtu.be/AzL09-I5JcU

war and peace (1)

A docu-video on the Napoleonic Wars piqued my interest in that early 19th century period of European history and made me decide to take on that world famous literature classic "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, a historical novel that centers on Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.

It seemed a daunting task at the beginning, to read through a 1800+ page long story set on a different land at different times by an iconic author of a different era, but once I got over those confusing Russian name look-alikes (Bezukhovs and Bolkonskys, Denisov and Dolokhov...), vintage military regiments and titles (dragoon and hussar, aide-de-camp and adjutant general...), the many princes/princesses, counts/countesses that seemed to come and go in one soiree after another, and the at times long, segmented sentences Tolstoy (or the book's English translator) liked to use elaborating human state of mind, it became an enjoyable read. I made it a daily pastime by going through two or three chapters a day (if I could refrain from going overboard when being carried away by the story at hand) and finished it in a couple of months.

Several Russian aristocratic families form the core of the story. One main character, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, hailed from a country estate headed by a retired old soldier, a strict disciplinarian and ill-tempered patriarch. A thoughtful and brave (if somewhat arrogant) young man dissatisfied with his married life and the vanity of Petersburg's high society, Prince Andrei embarked on a military career with a tinge of hero worship of Emperor Napoleon who's on a tear defeating European monarchies while nominally spreading French revolutionary ideals across the continent.

He soon met his imagined hero at a battlefield after being injured and taken prisoner, right at the same time an epiphany from his near death experience brought him an ever clearer visions of the world above and the one below:

"Looking into Napoleon’s eyes Prince Andrei thought of the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain."

The delusion of the glory of war gone, the hero image shattered, he became despondent with life, but as a capable man and a caring son went on to care for his father's estate, and observed how infinite power destroyed the ruler (such as his father) morally than the ruled physically:

"To liberate the serfs is a good thing, not for the serfs—for even if they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, they lead the same animal life, and the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it is a good thing for the liberator, for if they hold on to unlimited power, they in time grow more irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable.”

Then he met Natasha, a young, energetic girl with an angelic singing voice from another well-to-do family. He fell in love and found purpose in life again. He proposed marriage and she accepted, with a young girl's (perhaps over-zealous) infatuation of love and romance. However, in light of Andrei's father's objection to the marriage, the wedding had to be postponed for one year while Andrei went away on military duty.

A playboy son of a corrupted aristocratic family came to seduce the love-craze, distraught young Natasha to break her engagement with Andrei and elope with him. Though the plot fell through at the last minute, Andrei was heart broken and Natasha attempted suicide and became seriously ill afterwards.

At a fierce battle outside Moscow with the French army Andrei was seriously injured and escorted to Moscow along with the withdrawing Russian army, where Natasha's family were preparing to leave town. Though her family tried to keep her from knowing, once Natasha found out Andrei's presence with the family's processing out of town, she braced herself to meet him at his sick bed and started ceaseless nursing for his recovery with fortitude.

The following is to me the most romantically touching and spiritually stirring section of the book:

“Ah, she has come!” thought he. And so it was. Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced this physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from him, and was knitting a stocking. The needles clicked lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see the thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball rolled off her knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact movement, picked up the ball, and regained her former position. He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed cautiously.

At the Tróitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke of the future.

“Can it or can it not be?” he now thought as he looked at her and listened to the light click of the steel needles. “Can fate have brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible that the truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in the world! But what am I to do if I love her?” he thought, and he involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings.

On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to him and bent over him.

“You are not asleep?” “No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in. No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do... that light. I want to weep for joy.”

Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.

“Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world.”

“And I!”—She turned away for an instant.

“Why too much?” she asked.

“Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your soul, your whole soul—shall I live? What do you think?”

“I am sure of it, sure!” Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both his hands with a passionate movement.

He remained silent awhile.

“How good it would be!” and taking her hand he kissed it.

Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this would not do and that he had to be quiet.

“But you have not slept,” she said, repressing her joy. “Try to sleep... please!”

He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle and sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked at him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on her stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.

Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now always occupied his mind—about life and death, and chiefly about death. He felt himself nearer to it.

“Love? What is love?” he thought.

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.” These thoughts seemed to him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but that he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and discussed something trivial... Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went, and tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he would not be in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he was clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the other side was already pressing against it and forcing its way in. Something not human—death—was breaking in through that door, and had to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it back—to lock it was no longer possible—but his efforts were weak and clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened and closed again.

Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrei died.

war and peace (3)

Conventional wisdom says Napoleon Bonaparte was a military genius who won every major war and battle until got devastatingly crushed in his Russia campaign by the severe winter, poor logistics, and the scorched-earth strategy of his Russian opponents. While conceding weather and terrain being a major factor, Tolstoy has nothing but contempt for the so-called military genius and strategic maneuvering of the generals: “What theory and science is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the acting forces cannot be ascertained?"

One unascertainable force he refers to is the morale of the troops, the skittish human psyche that can easily flip the outcome of a battle one way or the other: "Sometimes—when there is not a coward at the front to shout ‘We are cut off!’ and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts ‘Hurrah!’—a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand, as at Schön Grabern (where the Russian army triumphed), while at times fifty thousand run from eight thousand, as at Austerlitz (where the Russians lost)."

That same morale, applied to all Russian people, peasants and soldiers alike, was what drove them to expel the French out of their fatherland by way of guerrilla warfare and self sacrifice, not any smart strategies or military maneuverings by the generals.

It is probably for the same reason Tolstoy gives a much more sympathetic light to the Russian commander-in-chief, Kutuzov, a one-eyed war veteran field marshal who had been accused of leading tardy, evasive retreats instead of confronting the French army head on to stop their advancing. In Tolstoy's mind, Kutuzov did what he did because "he knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power" without incurring unnecessary casualty on either the Russian or the French side.

The greatest antipathy Tolstoy shows toward in his novel, however, is the inhumanity war imposes on ordinary people.

During Pierre's imprisonment by the French in Moscow, he himself as well as other prisoners struck friendly, buddy-like relationships with their captors. But as the retreat from Moscow started, a mysterious force seemed to completely control their guards. "From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations." And as the long march continued and the simple, happy Russian peasant soldier Karataev whom they all used to like got sick and could not keep pace with the procession, they shot him to death.

Pierre also recalled how a French officer examining his case was about to release him but was interrupted by his staff member and went on to care for other business thus leaving him in prison along with others to be executed. Both the officer and his staff member showed no intention of killing him, Pierre could tell.

Then who was executing him, killing him, depriving him of life—him, Pierre, with all his memories, aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre felt that it was no one. It was a system—a concurrence of circumstances.

A system that kills, not only human bodies, but humanity itself.

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Two docu-videos on Napoleonic Wars for those who are interested: 

Napoleonic Wars 1805 - 09: March of the Eagles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91OmO2YMiDM

Napoleonic Wars 1809 - 14: Downfall:

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

privileged

My dentist chatted with me the other day, said his little daughter just learned from school that "there are so many people in the world!": One point four billion in India, ten million in Czechia (where the dentist's wife came from), and here in the US we have over three hundred million people... So many, she was amazed, and so few of them she knew or would ever know, she thought.

That triggered a tiny old memory of mine: As a young boy, I once saw a calendar poster on the wall, a blown-up tourism photo of sorts, showing a Parisian city scene, the Eiffel tower in the back, people strolling around on streets, parks, buildings, etc... And there, a young woman walking up some steps caught my eyes, and caused me to think: this is a real person... what happened to her after this picture was taken... where is she now... what's her life story like...

I came from a sentimental culture of the old, I remember on the day we finished our grade school, they had us kids grouped up and circle around the school yard while the PA speakers played some melancholy "I am going to miss all my dear teachers and classmates" music that actually made some of us twelve-year-olds cry...

Fast forward more than half a century later, I've come half a world to reside in a New World, picked a career path that took me traveling seven seas and five continents, met multitudes of people of various creeds and cultures, ethnicities and origins. And though most of these encounters were transitional or transactional and went by fast, a few of them did stick out.

Like the Russian "handler" that accompanied me through Moscow-Saint Petersburg-South Russia for my one-man technical show for two weeks, the "boys and girls" Japanese support team a Canadian and I used in our multi-city tele-promotion campaigns off and on for three years in Japan, and those young-and-restless, rebel-with-some-vague-cause computer whiz kids I recruited and "managed" for one and a half year for my startup company... Where have they all gone and how are they doing now, I sometimes wonder.

There is an old Chinese/Buddhism notion called 緣 (yuan), the serendipitous encounter between people and things, that seems both chancy and destined, unexplainable but meaningful, that ought to be taken blissfully.

Indeed, out of trillions of stars and planets in the cosmos, billions of people on Earth, what are the odds I meet these few people through this limited life span of mine, be it my blood-related family members, lifetime partner of my choosing, people I go to school with, seekers in the same pursuit, neighbors next door, fellow travelers I met at tours, lecturers whose teaching I enjoyed... my dentist.

"What a privilege to know you," I said to him.
 
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We humans are competitive animals, vying for resources, amassing fortunes, optimizing our own wellbeing... But don't blame me for it, blame it on my "selfish gene", that since day one has commanded all the cells in my body to take all the nutrients they can, grow bigger and fatter, get smarter and shrewder, gain advantages in the world, so I can pass down that same gene to my offspring, so it can start reproducing and multiplying again, over and over... It's just the law of nature.

But hold on, isn't that the same gene that also instructs my cells to differentiate, to become specialty organs that work together to make my body a functional whole? Isn't this cooperative, holistic, interdependent working between protein, cells, organism also a natural law in action, and a more intelligent and elegant version than the brute force grow-and-multiply-at-all-cost one mentioned earlier?

Further, those competitive, selfish "bad traits" notwithstanding, a natural human grown-up also possesses some "good traits" such as love, kindness and care for others. You may say these socially good traits are derived and kept because they bring benefits to the group, creating greater chances for survival for a greater number of people, thus it is still the natural law at work, and you are right. "Social Darwinism" means truly a good thing if interpreted this way.

As a matter of fact, I would argue from a strictly evolutionary point of view, that once such "emergent qualities" as cooperation, love and compassion appear, they become "winners" and non-discardable building blocks for evolution, forces that move life in the universe up a higher level.

With such qualities built-in us, maybe that's why we are naturally attracted to the "transcendentals": things that are good, beautiful or true, even when we are not entirely clear what they might be.

Or perhaps that higher level, such as loving enemies or meeting aggression with kindness, has been revealed in our religious ideals and by some "holy-man" examples, that teach and show us how it can be achieved through "the love or fear of God" and spiritual practices.

What a privileged position we humans are at, to be either pushed from below, or pulled from above, to our next high!


"The moral sense perhaps affords the best and highest distinction between man and the lower animals."
— Charles Darwin

"And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."
— Genesis 1:31

snæland, norge

On our previous trip to the Baltics, the only Nordic countries we didn't cover were Iceland and Norway, so when a cousin of mine in Vancouver asked us to join them for a cruise to these two countries, we gladly obliged.

This 12-day cruise started at the southwest of Iceland, made a half circle to its northeast, then headed north into the Arctic Circle to a Norwegian archipelago midway between North Pole and the northern coast of Norway, then southeast to the Norway mainland, where the tour ended.

It was a cold weather trip, as you might imagine, but not so cold really, averaging high 40's Fahrenheit, and could be balmy when the sun showed up, like when visiting a cookie cutter town center, or while cruising a fjord.

The coldest spot (low 30's Fahrenheit) was reserved for "the world's northernmost town" Longyearbyen (pop. 2500), 650 miles from the North Pole, where an underground "Global Seed Vault" keeps over one million seeds from all over the world and where there are more polar bears than people.

 

Old time, harsh living mining and fishing villages had been mostly converted to cozy, scenic tourist towns.

​But the rough terrain remains wild and beautiful.

As well as accessible, such as this geothermal spa that seemed to be a popular hangout place for local high-schoolers.

Unlike the many august, solemn looking cathedrals we are used to seeing in Europe, two contemporary churches in little northern Norwegian towns impressed us with their innovative and inspirational looks and design.

When in Viking countries, read Viking stories. I picked up and read a book on the Vikings from the ship's library and got an interesting side view of European history through the aggressive activities these Nordic "barbarians" brought on to the British Isles, the Frankish Empire, Russia, the Byzantine Empire, and the Mediterranean.

​And for my aggressive act to the edge of the world, I was awarded a certificate.

Happy traveling!
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* For more photos and details of the trip:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/E2tkvFrqyJbL9tA9/

that mysticism

I saw on a Facebook friend's posting last week while in Taipei that there was a scheduled discussion workshop on "Egocentricity and Mysticism" at a university in the city, and signed up for it since that subject title roused my interest.

It was a university (政治大學) located at the outer part of the town that I had never been to before therefore took me a while--thru subway, taxi, then some leg work--to finally reach its Philosophy Department at the campus.

​The workshop was at the department's library room, a Caucasian lady was sitting there already and smiled at me when I went in. She later introduced herself to be a professor emerita from a liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. A few other "foreigner" scholars stepped in later: Christian was a German philosophy professor teaching at a couple of colleges here, Konstantin was a PhD student from Russia studying philosophy here, and Kai, another German, was the teaching professor at the Department and the organizer of the event.

Our presenter today, Mario, was yet another German, who came from University of Macau, where he taught philosophy and co-translated the book of today's discussion subject from German to English. (Now you know why there were so many Germans here.)

We all had received a few chapters of the book Kai emailed us a few days ago, but Mario still gave us a fairly good summary of the book before the discussion:

Basically, the author (Ernst Tugendhat, a Czech-born German philosopher of Jewish descent) took a unique, somewhat nuanced approach to explain why people take to mysticism as their ultimate world view: Comparing to other animals, we humans are "I-sayers" that speak context independent sentences, which means from the moment we start using language to express ourselves or communicate with others, we possess a sense of self-perspective, the world as a whole (beyond the immediate environment where the speech is made), and the existence of other human beings who have their own self-perspectives as well. 

To achieve the "peace of mind," which seems to be what the author thinks the ultimate goal of life we humans like to pursue, we eventually reach a rational conclusion that the way to do this is to step back from our ego-centered self, accept other human beings' self-perspectives, so to integrate with the world as a whole.

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Simple as that, all based on one peculiar human linguistic characteristic, which Christian--who had read the book years ago and apparently was no fan of it--didn't feel convincing enough, and wrote a two page criticism ("Though animals may have no languages like ours, they could still have self consciousness like we do, for example") to share with us, for practically the remaining discussion of the day.

The second discussion session was two days later. This time we focused on the latter part of the book, regarding mysticism, and had another interesting and animated hours-long discussion for a Wednesday morning:

Konstantin raised questions on the subjects of free will and responsibility, crime and punishment... wondering if no punishment should be exerted on persons who act to achieve their goal of prudential good rather than moral good, as Tugendhat seems to argue based on his definition of free will and the affective responses society uses to groom its denizens.

  

Pointing out yet another peculiar approach Tugendhat uses in the book for his arguments, i.e., blending the phenomenological with the analytic, the ineffable with the reasonable, two fundamentally different ways of looking at and explaining the world by Western philosophers since the days of Plato and Aristotle, Kai said the book had been criticized for having done neither too well, though personally he still thought Tugendhat's arguments have merits and the book deserves credit for the efforts he puts in.

Mario agreed there are holes and loose ends in this "I-sayer" theory of Tugendhat's. For example, it was criticized heavily by German Christian community for its summary dismissal of monotheist religions (such as Judaism and Christianity) as purely contractual giver-taker relationships between God and the believers, ignoring the Western mystical traditions within the church; Does the "I-sayer" theory hold true for people whose language has radically different linguistic characteristics, e.g., with no personal pronouns? Is the peace of mind the ultimate goal of life?... etc.

Gustav, the guy I met a couple years ago through some business encounter and was a PhD graduate from the university, chimed in to clarify what he thought the book misleads about Buddhism's view on suffering and ways to be relieved from it: Buddhism is not an escapism from suffering, he said, but rather a practice to go right into it to eliminate it!

The question I raised, on the other hand, was regarding the "universal love" Tugendhat claims this rational mysticism would lead to. How could that happen? I looked through the chapters I had at hand and could only surmise that by stepping back and seeing one's self and others' as one, one would want others to be good as one wants oneself to be good. Also, from this passage on the book: "Where else would such kindheartedness...come from? It is not a genuinely moral concept; nor is kindheartedness to be understood as a genetic disposition. If some people give the impression that they possess kindheartedness 'by nature,' this apparent naturalness arises rather from the fact that the possibility of cultivating a mystical outlook—by stepping back from oneself—is rooted in the natural structure of I-sayers," I thought Tugendhat believes there is a built-in tendency to be a mystic in every human being.

Kathleen, the professor emerita from Pennsylvania I met first, contemplated on the dialogue form of discussion that ancient philosophers, most famously Plato and Socrates, had taken while searching for truths. "Could that be somehow called a 'kindheartedness relationship' as well?... Take us, as an example... two days ago we were all strangers to each other, but now after these discussions and exchanges, we kind of create a bonding, and the dialogue may continue on after we part from each other... Maybe mystics are people who continue to dialogue..." I really liked her way of thinking and saying it!

​

Time went by swiftly as we dialogued on, and we had to wrap up our meeting a few minutes ahead of schedule as Mario had to leave for the airport for his flight home to Macau, and I, too, for my flight back to California. I had a few words with my friend Gustav, thanking him for posting the event on his Facebook page so I got to come to such an interesting event, then a few words with Kathleen, saying I quite enjoyed her talk and got a business card from her and bid farewell to each other and went on our separate ways...

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