Positive Day 2: Keep moving. Keep going.

If

–  Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Citation: Plunkett, Adam. “If—by Rudyard Kipling.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Sept. 2014.

Wesbrook Talks – Influential BusinessWomen in B.C: 3 Babaras in the House

The late afternoon of the June 10th was just sunny and lovely as one could expect a summer day to be. But how it was different from any other days was that I had an opportunity to attend an event at Wesbrook Village where three successful female UBC alumnis gathered for a panel discussion moderated by a CBC’s host Renee Filippone  (CBC News Vancouver Saturday and Sunday). Three beautiful and empowering panelists present were Barbara Brink, Barbara Dunfield and Barbara Kaminsky; hence, three Babaras in the House.

Three most important takeaways on life and career success from these women are as followed:

  1. Be firm and determined.
  2. Love challenges. Push the buttons. Challenge the status quo.
  3. Be flexible.

I learnt about interesting stories these ladies shared about their career paths after graduation. It blew my mind to learn that Babara Brink chose to become a flight attendent upon graduation while Babara Kaminsky did two master degrees.

However what I found particularly intriguing is Babara Dunfield’s story with twists and turns. According to her, she initially wanted to become an interior designer, studied for about a year in Australia but moved back to B.C. to pursue a degree in teaching. Believing that she wanted to teach French, she even moved to France upon graduating but ended up being a skiing instructor, only to come back to B.C. later on to work in the mining industry and become a successful CFO (Chief Financial Officer) for four different companies. It was such a journey and I’m sure these experiences made her life more nourishing and alive.

From my perspecitive, an important question we all need to ask ourselves is

“What am I willing to give up in order to be at where I aim to be.”

This resonates a noteworthy qusetion Babara Brink asked: “what did you give up to be who you are and where you are (in life)?” She mentioned that for most successful women, the answer usually is the family or having children but for her, a mother of three healthy children, it is “friendship” or “friends.”

The whole evening was thought-provoking and inspiring simply from listening to these panelists and also having some conversations with other female UBC alumnis.

Love

This blog entry is a reflection on Paul Hudson‘s post on Elite Daily. His article really makes me reflect on 1) what love is about, 2) if I am really ready to love and 3) if I really understand what “ready to love” even mean. My takeaways are as followed:

1. Know thyself first! And know your lover. Why? Because Love is a choice. REALLY!

  • The majority of people you’ll meet won’t be compatible.
  • Out of those compatible few, the majority won’t be available at the time of interest.
  • Out of those who are available and compatible, only a select few will have real potential.

You love because you choose to love!” In order to make that sound choice, you’ll need to know who you really are in terms of what you value most and least, what your deal-breakers and deal-makers are, what your needs and wants are and your communication style. “The person you can be with forever is the person you decide you love. Deciding to love someone every day of your life can be difficult, as our lover’s flaws become more and more evident over time. So, the only thing we can do is make sure to understand what we can and can’t live with

What’s your minimum viable life partner?

What traits are necessary? What’s the order of importance?

It may seem like we’re objectifying a person. But I think each and all of us do have preferences, our own value systems, likes and dislikes that sometime with some people, it just won’t click. So to make ourselves happy, we can choose what clicks best.

2. “Love is something you create.”

You create love. You MAKE love. Love requires attention and needs work. Again, you love because you choose to love.

What matters is that you stop nitpicking on all those little flaws that really aren’t important to you and instead put more focus on loving all the great things about your partner.

 I think the above tip really speaks to a lot of us… or at least me. I used to have a perception that I know what a PERFECT love is and that I know how to make it there. But reflecting on it, I realise that the perfect love is NOT a constant thing. It doesn’t mean that love changes all the time and that love is temporary.  But what it means is that love is like an organic being or like a person who is alive or love is like a PLANT or a TREE! AND IT GROWS.

Love needs attention. Love does require work! In a relationship, love requires work from both partners who choose to love. It’s a learning process. It is not only an ends in itself but also is a means.

I believe the same goes for self-love; if you love yourself, it’d be best to stop nitpicking on all those little flaws that really aren’t important to you and instead put more focus on loving all the great things about yourself.

3. Love is NOT an answer to our problems – if it does, it won’t last.

“When love exists simply because it happened, the love is more likely to last.”

4. Reality Check: the perfect individual doesn’t, never did and never will exist.

We are all intrinsically flawed; it’s what makes us human. We can’t aim for perfect, but we can aim perfect for us. The more you get to know a person, the more you come to realize how flawed he or she really is.”

5. So…LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY!

It may sound a bit scary. But the point he makes is that “love should not come attached to any conditions. It should be an entity, a life of its own. It has to be something that survives no matter how much things change outside the relationship or how much more difficult life gets.”

“As the relationship matures and as all mental and emotional intensity begins to numb. The excitement will wither, just like any other once novel experience. When it does, staying in love requires consciously choosing to love – deciding every single day that you do love this person and he or she does mean the world to you.”

Now that we’ve reached the end of this post, I’ll leave it with a hope that all of us can learn to love ourselves better and also that we can learn how to love better with our significant others.

touch-phone, touch-watch and next, Touch windscreens!?

Technology has always fascinated me. How it can do so much in our lives. How innovation, research, learning and development around technology seem to move us forward for the better.

How unimaginables have become realities!

What’s been exciting me is the transparent electronics. The Economic Times article talks about how the car-makers are interested in the windscreens that can double up as the displays. Can you imagine the windscreen powering up with the displays (weather info/news, GPS, radio/itune, calendar and what not) as soon as you open the car-door? Rain or shine or snow, this windscreen just works fine. It may even have the advanced technology that assists those with the poor vision to see better because it comes with a sensor that can detect your vision and adjust the windscreen’s glass power accordingly. Even better is this car drives itself!!! Eureka! This may sound perhaps too good to be true but who knows what future beholds?

Since we’re at it, how about adding a few things that are on my wishlist? So this car will be an electric car (quite environmental friendly, save on gas and spare my purse) It’ll be large — about the size of SUV. Leather-interior. Nice leg-room. I should be able to eat nice meals in there or hang out with friends in there. You know what? I might as well live there. And before I go on and on even more, one might wonder how much this car would cost. Well, to be honest, it may probably cost more than how much this soon-to-be-graduate can make within the next five years … or ten… or even a lifetime. But hey, it’ll be pretty wicked if you can build this baby.

What is more? The article I read mentions about how the medical engineers are also looking into integrating the transparent electronics with the human body. Now, THIS is a bit out of my imagination since I don’t fancy about the possibility of humans being partly robots or being controlled by things other than flesh, blood, nerves and water. Or worse, dare I wonder if we’ll become touch-human-bodies! Technology can sound scary in that sense. Isn’t it?

I guess, enough with my futuristic fancy over a technologically-advanced super-car. And back to reality, I might as well start saving so I can eventually afford for an electric car I dream of driving one day. Yes, one day…hopefully one day.

 

Imagine being a 65 years old or 70 or 80 — how would you like to spend your precious time for the rest of your life?

If I am a 65 years old, … would I still want to work?

I wonder how much I would have in my personal saving as well as in pension?

Would I be able to spend the rest of my life comfortably and in peace?

In other words, would I be able to afford a comfortable and peaceful life?

Who would be around me? My loved ones? Family? Children/grandchildren? Would my friends be still around?

Would I be staying with family or at the nursing home? Would I feel lonely?

Who would take care of me when my body is no longer able and gets weaker?

How would people treat me?

Would they see me as an incapable and outdated? Would they discriminate me? Would they treat me with respect and dignity?

How would I look? What would I eat? Would my diet be restricted?

————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Simply trying to put myself in the elderly’s shoes,  I realize so many questions and thoughts have run through my small brain instantaneously.

Why are we concerned with being old or aging? Or should we?

We should because we are aging every moment from each second to hour to day to year and before we realize, we would be already in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. Assuming we would be lucky enough to live till then, we would face the situations that any elderly face, from health, emotions, money, diet and treatment from surrounding/community/society.

According to the United Nations (UN),

  • the actual number of the population aged 60 and over will  more than triple, reaching 2 billion by 2050 
  • in most countries, the number of those over 80 is likely to quadruple to  nearly 400 million by then
  • currently, 64 percent of all older persons  live in the less developed regions — a number expected to approach 80 percent  by 2050.
  • by the year 2050, for the first time in history, seniors older than 60 will outnumber children younger than 15.

According to the studies and reports by UN and other international organizations, many countries still lack a basic social protection floor that provides income, health care and housing for their senior citizens.

Some countries such as Vietnam and Afghanistan still do not have a pension plan for all of its citizens, thus forcing the elderly to continue working. Poverty is often an issue and some elderlies resort to begging as a result. Moreover, establishing a strong economy in itself does not guarantee that a country would be able to provide an adequate support to its aging population. For example, Germany, Europe’s economic power house, lacks affordable quality care for elderly that German elderlies either decide to live at or are sent to nursing homes in Poland — a phenomenon known as “Grandma Export.”

While the governments may take the lead in ensuring that their elderlies would have adequate health and pension support, individuals like you and me who would become the elderlies may also take our own parts in managing our future — to take control of and protect ourselves, our lives and our dignities. In the meantime, we may treat the elderlies with respect and dignity and support the ones in our social circle to our best ability so their remaining days and years are spent experiencing positive and inclusive moments.

Sources: [1] http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/ageing/

[2] http://undesadspd.org/Ageing.aspx

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/01/aging-population-support-world-elderly_n_4020858.html

[4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-16/germans-export-grandma-to-poland-as-costs-care-converge.html

Reflection on “I have to tell my story”: Forum theatre@UBC First Nations Longhouse

[Note: A forum theater is an audience-interactive theater in which a short (5-8 minutes) theatrical piece is run from the beginning to the end and is re-run again to allow for audience participation or intervention. It aims to address the social issues in the play and to generate the dialogue in the community. The joker – a mediator of the play – asks thought-provoking questions to the character(s) and the audience during the audience intervention to help with a better understanding of the struggles that certain characters are facing.]

On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival or the Moon Cake day, Sep 19th (Thursday) when the full moon shone brightly, the Circle of Learning presented a forum theatre “I have to tell my story.” The focus of the play is on the legacy of the residential school. Two pieces were presented: 1) healthy family & 2) healthy community.

Through these pieces, I came to realize how the Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals share similar and common lives in many ways. For example, the highlight of the healthy family was when the grandson came to the grandmother’s house to suggest that the family should put her in the (senior) “home.” And the family started discussing about what they “should” do “with” hertalking ABOUT her in her presence without talking TO her. Hence the phrase “Talk about me but not talking to me” really caught my attention and struck me.

Later, the grandmother declared that she would stay at home and her daughter (the mother) volunteered to take care of her. I believe many people from certain cultures, for instance Asian, can relate this idea of taking care of the elderly parents instead of sending them to the senior retirement homes.

As for the second piece [the healthy community], it centers around an Aboriginal teen (a foster child) with an angst and a self-withdrawal personality who is lost, confused and frustrated about his identity and hence staying on the sidelines with his family and the community. Again, what was remarkable is that the foster mother, the social worker and also the (real) sister talked about him in his presence without talking to him. Due to their behaviors, he felt more helpless and frustrated. Again, this is something that many, if not everyone, of us may have encountered at a certain point in life: experiencing “that time” when some people talk ABOUT us but not TO us. (On the side note, I wonder whether such situation falls under bullying — only if the intention of those who engage in the talk is negative.)

During the audience interventions in trying to change a challenging situation into a positive one, indeed there were many interesting ones that would possibly work in a real life. However, as David Diamond, the joker, highlighted, there were some “magic” moments when the interventions led to “sudden changes” of the character(s) which may not necessarily be realistic.

Also, there was a moment during the second play – an obvious struggle for the character – when no one in the audience intervened. It was when the teen’s sister mentioned the sensitive word “internal racism” directing at him and he refuted. Mr Diamond noted that the “silence” inside the Long House at that very time only highlights the “silence” out in the real world. To be frank, it was my first time hearing that word and was somewhat puzzled at what it would mean and how to even deal with it either at that moment in the play or in a real life. I assume it probably was the first time also for some of the audience. However, I am confident that it was a good learning experience for the audience as we left the plays with thoughts, concerns and solutions which we otherwise would not understand and realize.

Hong Kong’s human battery hens: slum families

With a land mass of 1,104sq km and a population of 7 million, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

The director of Society for Community Organisation (SoCO), Ho Hei Wah, told MailOnline: ‘Hong Kong is regarded as one of the richest cities in the world. However, lurking beneath this prosperity is great inequality in wealth and a forgotten group of poor people.

‘Hundreds of thousands still live in caged homes and wood-partitioned cubicles, while the unemployed, new-arrived families from China and children in poverty struggle for survival. SoCO’s underprivileged clients are increasing in numbers – while the city’s wealth continues to accumulate.’

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282764/Hong-Kongs-human-battery-hens-Claustrophobic-images-slum-families-squeeze-lives-tiniest-apartments.html