New York, New York

I've been doing a study on people's lives in large cities for a month now. I guess this could be why I've been unwittingly, or subconsciously, drawn to films about, or set in New York lately. Just yesterday, I saw three: New York, I Love You, The Visitor and Precious.

The first gives glimpses of love in the city, the other two discuss the hopes and dreams of New York's marginalised illegal immigrants and minorities. All have an ephemeral quality to them, which makes me very sad.

New York is a city of impermanence. Family is not permanent, but poverty creates troubles in places once sacred. Troubles are not permanent, but the road leading to the exit is treacherous, the only guiding light is one's own strong will. Like Precious'. Maybe the dire conditions she's been born into, psychological more than physical, have given her strength to clear her own path.

Love is not permanent. Neither is hate, loneliness, life. Everything comes and goes at will. It will be very easy to meet people and make friends in the Big Apple, just as easy as it is to lose them. That is why there is this constant dynamism that is the shifting undercurrent of the city's social fabric. Always nudging, pushing, shoving. Like the loom. In and out in a rhythm of beats that ease coloured threads of any make and quality, this way and that, to form and reform complex patterns on this giant piece of fabric that is New York City.

This outsider remains intrigued. For all the impermanence that it offers, she hopes to satiate this permanent dream of return to the City since that fine September day in 2001. This October.

The flitting presence, that permanent void

To the film-maker and her audience, the characters had only a flitting existence on screen, in their own roles of that certain brief moment in their lives. For some of the characters, those moments and everyone that existed in them were random marks left on an otherwise unmemorable life.

Random and flitting, nonetheless meaningful. They happened for a reason none can ever comprehend.

That's life, isn't it? People come and go in our lives. Some have a mere flitting presence, but oh, they are the ones who have managed to touch our very souls. They lift us from our sorrow. They bestow on us, laughter, happiness, love, anticipation, hope. And then, they leave. Like a mission accomplished.

The void again. Until it's filled again.

Unexpected birthday tea

Haha. I'd never have thought the girls - Pauline and Fauzie - would spring me some birthday surprises this early. But they say February is a short month. Hur hur.

The very pretty pink retro-style bag is just what I need. I'm sick of lugging my big bag around on my weekends out. The Good Earth is a Pulitzer Prize winning historical fiction set in the aftermath of China's Last Emperor and before the 1949 Revolution, chronicling some of the biggest events that shaped modern China. Sounds like an extremely good read, especially when it's highly recommended by Fauzie the avid reader, and given my newfound fascination with China, her culture and people as a personal interest and research subject.

Thank you girls!

A green spider-looking insect wanted a share of my yummy traditional home-made New York cheesecake. Oooh ... my obsession with New York. It's been planned, and I really mean to get there this year.

Hope For Haiti Now

It's so much worse than I'd thought. Please help.

International donations: Hope For Haiti Now

Vacation 2010

Hehe ... I've got my vacation dates for this year roughly figured out.

Hong Kong: Apr 2 - 5
Shanghai: May 28 - Jun 6
New York: Sep 10 - 19 or Oct 9 - 17
Family trip: Sometime in Dec, putting aside 5 - 6 days leave for it

(^___^*) Mid-day motivation on a work day.

Relativity of time

A friend who just turned 28 last month is having a bout of anxiety about approaching 30. What does he have to worry about?! He's still two years too far. Early anxiety is gonna make him an old man sooner than he can say thirty.

But then again, maybe it's good to have some sort of anxiety in order to get one fired up about life's goals and achievements. Unlike me, I've always been relaxed about my age, alway believing in young at heart: feeling young, looking young. How much longer can the hawker aunties call me 小妹?

Still the sands of time flow relentlessly. And days are flying past at accelerated rate now. Maybe it's time I felt that long overdue sense of anxiety and start worrying about getting on in years. Begin doing things people my age should be doing. Before 3-0 becomes 4-0 in the blink of an eye.

Update 23 Jan: I've figured out. He'll be 30 this Chinese New Year, by the Lunar calendar. LOL. That's why I refuse to let mom define my age by that calendar. Anxious for nothing.

幸福

I like the fondness in Daniel's voice everytime he speaks of Maria.

I hope one day, there will be someone, somewhere, who will speak of me like that.

Daniel also confides that sometimes in the middle of the day, in the middle of something, he suddenly misses her.

这就是幸福.

霎那的快乐

01:10, 10.01.10

It's 01:10, 10.01.10 now and I'm watching Love, Actually.

(n___n*)

I'm not sure why this is worth documenting, but it could be important.

命运不可以屈服, 要自己去争取的

不要以累为借口. 没有试过又怎么会知道?
不要做个胆小鬼. 但是每个方面都这样吗?
不屈服就一定有回报? 争取就绝对必胜吗?
我怕失望, 伤的更深.

Sometimes I feel like Charlene

Sometimes I've been to crying for unborn children that might have made me complete,
But I took the sweet life,
I never knew I'd be bitter from the sweet,
I've spent my life exploring the subtle whoring that costs too much to be free,
But I ran out of places and friendly faces because I had to be free,
I've been to paradise but I've never been to me.

Kawaii New Year!

Microsoft's lost 10 years

What a great way to start a new year reading this reflection on Microsoft's lost (not a typo) 10 years. I find myself laughing, nodding, agreeing with this dude. At least on the following:

Microsoft Should Have Fired all the MBAs

The new millennium's first 10 years is really Microsoft's lost decade. It is a decade of shattered dreams. Microsoft 2000-2009 is a casebook study why no company should allow its ranks of MBAs to swell too large. The company's 5,000-plus layoffs should have sacked 95 percent of the MBAs rather than the many good, hard-working employees sent packing. I repeatedly hear Microsoft employees privately complain about there seemingly being one MBA -- or lawyer -- on campus for every other employee.

I'm so hard on the MBAs (and lawyers), because Microsoft's problem during 2000-2009 wasn't lack of the aforementioned vision but of execution. Somebody had a good idea, Microsoft started to bring it to market and the project was cut clearly for some business or legal reason. A close examination shows a common trend: Repeated starts, stops, realignments, more starts and major directional changes or closure of many good projects. It's like some business dude spent too much time plowing through spreadsheets when he or she needed to get out into the real world.

Maybe because I'm a Design Researcher, and I love my job:

Innovators focus on the customer and creating something that people didn't know they needed. Apple has done this repeatedly over the years. Creating something people didn't know they needed is an axiom of good design and not easily achievable when the focus is on responding to competitors, which are a distraction. Google is Microsoft's biggest distraction. Microsoft leadership recognized Google to be a competitor long before it ever was. But Microsoft followed Google rather than leading with innovation. It's a stupid, sorry mess.

1st post, 1st day of a new decade

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Abundance. Prosperity. Happiness.
LOVE and HEALTH.
May all these be with
You. Your Family. And Friends.