The Noodle Bowl Effect

1. With the world economy getting more integrated than ever, more trade agreements, covenants, framework, trade cartels, collusion, unions and etc were formed in the basic of common goods and benefits. FTAs after FTAs and hence the word spaghetti is coined thus resulting the spaghetti bowl effect. One can observed the similarities between the image left and right to have a clear understanding on the economic term widely used recently due to the discussion of TPP in Malaysia. (Enlightened by a journal paper courtesy of Dr. SK Goh from USM)
2. It is all too similar with my current stage of mind, perhaps the only different is the magnitude; the serving of the spaghetti.
3. The intelligence quest is a no brainer, it constituted most of the meaning i found in my life thus far. The creation of knowledge from the process of data collection, information gathering, analysis and finally the distillation to the elixir we called knowledge.
4. On the other side, there is this internal struggle. On staying in the comfort zone or breaking away from it. It is too often we heard about breaking away from it, to embrace growth, to experience the new and to get a re-start. What about staying put? How about giving the new a try ? The fear of loosing or the bravery to embrace a new ? 
5. We are all seeking for the truth about life, hacking into it for a happy and purposeful life. The realm of social norms, or perhaps the need of oneself to please the people around us, shaping our decision and way of life. Living in the human society, under the obscene monitoring of the realistic eyes, and our primitive desire to compare to be better had all shape our beliefs and our do's and don's. 
6. The hardship is on filtering through the noise; listening to the call from the inner self; looking at the gain and loss not as the finality but as the many events of life. After all, how much we can used ( to eat, to stay, to utilize the physical things we owned) is all limited, bounded by the nature cycle of life and death. The very essence of life lies on the very meaning we find, and if we got the higher knowledge of grasping and understand it.

Gatherings and Sister ROM

1) Festive celebrations always filled with gatherings with family and friends. I guess essentially this is what constituted the celebration.

2) This is a special year where my younger sister went into ROM last Sunday at Thean Hou Temple. During the making vows session, my elder sis, my mom and my younger sis were all reduced to tears. As for me, I felt abit at the end of the whole session. Always a very touching moment, life transition period, looking back the past and setting our sight to the future; how life and our fate had changed over the course of life. I wish them both Ka How and my Sis happy ever after.

3) As I am blogging, it just entered the ninth day of CNY coincided with the "Ti Gong" celebration. Fire crackers could be heard from near and afar. For the hokkien this auspicious day meant much more that the first day of CNY. For people who work at outstation, it is definitely a big trigger on the home sick button.

4) Just had a gathering with our fellow UM friends at New Paris, PJ. It was a good one, looking at how each of us had come to age, speaking about family, career and babies. Most importantly we had all dismissed around 11pm after he dinner and yum cha session. No more late night chatters, 3rd or 4th round, no more gambling session but more to catching up with each other's.

5) I also enjoyed very much the gathering with Sharon and Yee Ching, thanking them for making the effort to meet up despite all already having their significant half. More than 10 years of friendship and it is a real wow. Too many memories to recall and hopefully many more memories to gather too.

6) Of course not forgetting is my Subang kaki, CJ, Vinoth, Suria, Zhang Xin, Alex and Kagu. Haha, thank you for bearing with all my demands for endless monopoly deal session. Seriously I enjoy this game very much. Haha, a good replacement for CS and DOTA which we had all lost touch.

7) The blasting of Fire crackers still going strong now after nearly 30minutes. Hopefully it will be a blast for all of us, peace and joy for everyone.

The Fire Monkey Year

1) And the celebration here at my hometown, Perak is about to come to an end as we will dismiss by tomorrow after brunch. 

2) A familiar yet different feeling this time as all the cousins including myself is slowly aging haha. We no longer play DOTA or CS, and I miss the chit chatting session we used to had, gossiping about little little  things in life like our result, passion, like and dislike, also our crush, lovely stories as well as bitter experience. It was the days when we were not engulf by the life stress, by the mundane problem.

3) With new situation of course here comes the new life experiences. We started to have niece and nephew of our own, cousins getting married bringing along sister-in-law to join force our cny celebration, my sister and younger cousin sister getting married and this will be the last year they will be back here. Things will be more different next year this time.

4) I was reading this book 'Man Search For Meaning' during this CNY. Not finishing it yet, only half way through. About how war prisoners survived from all of the life and death incidents, about how people can live by knowing the WHY in life and thus can handle all the HOW in life. About not living in the past, instead to have some positive expectation in the future. Holistically viewing suffering, pain and death as part of meaning of life. That it is not about what do we expect in life in terms of creative output or enjoyment but rather what life is expecting from us. Our deeds and action in searching on ways that we could fit into life and really living it.

5) Indeed this book might be a bit heavy for the new year but I guess it was a great way to start a new year. When we are strip off everything, our identity, past, occupation and any form of recognition, when we have no control in our action and life, when everyday we have to deal with life or death situation; our dignity, and our capacity as human to feel empathy and humility is challenged and threatened. Our only liberation is only with our mind. Deciding on how do we come to accept things as it happened is only our true liberation. It is not giving up, but rather taking it as it is and opt for a positive action and thinking, in search for our meaning of life.