Eyes and brain

The traditional proverb ever said, "The eyes are the window of the soul." But I would say, "The eyes are one of the parts of our body that absorb whatever we see and record it into our brains that others are unable to steal it. It's one of our treasure possession that we have to treasure." With it, I can see the incredible beauty in life.

I feel very grateful being able to travel to many places in my life. I've been seeing and witnessing many things that happen around the world. It always amazes me how people, plants, animals, language,  culture, buildings' structures, etc. are very different from one country to another. And 'Airport' has played lots of magic in my life. It transported me from one place to another within hours of journey. When I land, I have reached another place already. It always gives me surprise and wonders. I never stop saying "WOW!!!" when I reach the destination.

Yesterday my sis, her elder son, my hubby and I had a one night journey to Phillip Island, about 3 hours drive from her house. Well, when they said going to see Penguins, hmmm... I thought, I saw it before in Singapore Zoo. So, well, let's see how it looked like.

After browsing three other places, we finally reached the Penguin Parade area in the evening time, witnessing the sunset until the sky turned into the dark. We sat down in stage alike position, just in front of the beach. We had to pay AUD23.80 per pax in order to see it. And the best thing was, no photograph or video taking were allowed as it would scared the penguins. So we purely had to depend on our eyes and brain to see and record the whole process and couldn't share it to others.

Well, my first impression when we had to pay the money was - 'What??? It's supposed to be natural things to see penguins to return back to its burrows, and why we had to be charged for that?' But the staff had explained that these penguins were about to extinct in many years to come. They were there to protect them, take care of them and that's why we were charged just to see them.

Hmmm.. When I saw it myself how the group of penguins were returning from the sea back to the land, I admitted that they were all very cute and if they weren't protected, as the staff had just said, it would soon vanish from this island as people would kidnap them one by one and brought them back home and make them into one of their pets since they were all too cute to be true!

We were all amazed with the way they walked, how they ran sometimes, how they were mating too sometimes when being caught hehe..., and it brought everyone at all ages, to love them, to like them. And you know what? When we looked up at the sky, we found another thing that amazed us, which were the stars! There were billions of it shining beautifully high in the sky!!! They were the other things that we couldn't capture their beauty using photograph. Therefore, our eyes were the only things that witnesses the greatness of the nature beauty, that couldn't be shared with others in form of photographs. I was like having 'double fortune' for watching the penguins and the stars.

But soon, the third fortune appeared when we drove to our apartment. We saw the big round, bright and beautiful moon looked very close to the earth. That was the other nature that only our eyes could see but couldn't be captured by our camera.

My sister was right. The moon here in Australia looked bigger than in country where we lived. The stars looked so much more and bright than what we usually saw in Singapore. Well, perhaps I was just lucky? But I was very grateful being able to experience and see all that by myself and I would always remember those moments within my brain. Thank you SB for everything! Thank you, thank you, and thank you. And since no photograph was allowed or being able to be captured, no photos posted here ^^ Hope all of you have a great weekend!

A piece post from Tassie

Time flies. It's been 5th day I'm in Australia. Right now we're still at Tasmania. It's our last night being together actually. I didn't buy any phone card to connect to Internet here and depend a lot only to free Wi-fi connection. There were days where there was no free Wi-fi available. That's why I didn't have chance to write or post any blog here.

However, I just want to drop by and post this photo. Actually this photo was sent by my hubby who joined a tour in Melbourne. He saw this on the tour bus. The woman in the picture was looked just like me. Hahaha.... I was laughing out loud looking at that and decided to post it here. Let me know your opinion, was it looking like me? :D

Tasmania!

From my bestie’s photo in Facebook (his official trip to Hobart, Tasmania, from Sydney where he lived), I got to know about my besties’ (who were my ex-schoolmates) plan for a trip to Tasmania held this month. They had asked me before to travel together to Australia, but I had no idea where they wanted to go, when and how long. Perhaps they mentioned about Tasmania before, but I had no idea what Tasmania was, how it looked like, where was it, what to see, and so on. I rejected their offer right away since I had just traveled to Seoul beginning of the year for 10 days and I was afraid if I had no enough leave to spare in case I had a plan to travel to another place this year.

So, at the last week of March, I enquired their plan, like when, how long, where to visit, how many were going, and so on. They had already four in a group. Eh, I thought 1 car could fit max 5 persons no? I checked the dates. It would be middle of the month and seemed that I could make it. So, I asked them if they could still accept one more participant, which was me, to join in their trip. I checked with SJ, the planner, main organizer of most of the trip’s itinerary, car rental, accommodation, etc., if the hotels’ arrangement had been confirmed, or if there was any way for me to fit into their arrangement. After much consideration (perhaps she discussed it with my other friends beforehand), they allowed me to join in. Yayyy!!!! Thank you gals for letting me in!!!

Actually, the main enticement for me to join them was not the place. I wanted to join them because it was such a rare occasion that I could travel with a group of besties oversea together. I always said that life is short, enjoy life to the fullest. This way, I wanted to spend my precious time with my besties oversea, together: together we would experience what natures could offer; together we would spend time and create beautiful memories. 

They planned to fly to Sydney first though, because it was where SJ staying. I checked the available ticket from Singapore and tried to find the suitable timing and also checked how long I would be able to go. Well, I couldn’t book the same flight with them as the ticket price had already increased. But Jetstar had a direct flight from Singapore to Melbourne, and there was a connecting flight from Melbourne to Tasmania with the convenient timing as well. Moreover, the prices were reasonable.

Well, I tried to minimize the transport cost by not purchasing the airplane’s meal, not renting any flight entertainment (instead, I brought my own entertainment such as: book and journal), and not even choosing seat (let them choose whatever seat available for me). Anyway, it was a night flight, so I planned to sleep on the plane, if possible. No high expectation on the comfortable chair and location though, just prayed and hoped that I could go through, endure and manage it well (almost 8 hours’ flight!).

Perhaps, we were fated and destined to travel together ba? :) Oh ya, due to the ticket’s availability and timing, I decided to fly to Melbourne instead of Sydney. Too bad that I couldn’t join them to Sydney though, because there were many other ex-schoolmates living there and whom I wanted to meet. Luckily I had visited the place before, many years back and I stayed there for almost 3 weeks?

However, I would also like to finally visit and spend more time with my sister and her families. So while my besties planned to fly back to Sydney from Tasmania, I would fly back to Melbourne and spend the rest of my time there. So, it’s a double fortune. Half time spent with besties, and half time spent with sister and my hubby. My hubby?  Hehe.. Yup, he was coming too. In fact, he had traveled there earlier than me. It was a last minute decision to go there and he had two-week time to enjoy in Melbourne by staying at my sister’s place. So I would be meeting him in Melbourne right after I ended my trip in Tasmania ^^

Wish us luck for this trip!!! Hope everything will go smoothly as per planned and all of us have safe journey all the way until we return back to Singapore. Hope it will be a fun trip, full of joy and laughter, time spent fully with friendship and love, and at the same time we will have a great enjoyment to experience the cleanest air, the purest rainwater, unspoiled natural environment, stunning natural wonders, a rich history, made it the most beautiful places to visit. Most importantly, we are given a chance to avoid the hot weather of Singapore for a while. He-he.. Anyway, wish us all the best ba!!!

Life is in your hands

In life, we have to deal with our thought every millisecond of the time. It is how our brain created – to think. I often ask myself, why, O why, and why I always talk to myself, inside me. I always find it weird on how come we are created this way, to always think and ponder around within our thinking, and it is non-stop, unless when we were sleeping, with no dream appears.

Often time, I ask myself, why can’t we shut our thinking down when we are not sleeping? I often feel tired with it. Do you feel the same thing too? It can be an exhausting process. Imagine, like I said above, every millisecond of it!!!

“Only we know what we think, and nobody else.” 

The above is what I always say to everyone. We can think the devilish things inside our mind. We can think of killing, torturing, stealing, hating, jealousy, and so on. But we can also think the most angelic things inside our mind. We can think a great amount of love, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, etc.

How we behave towards others in the outside, may be different with what we feel in the inside. Often time, we hear from others – two faced people, hypocrite, liar, fake people, and so on. Or we also hear about “Life is like a drama. We act in different roles towards different people.” It is just like when we see the Korean drama, Japanese drama, or Taiwanese drama series. We often curse those who play good or holy at the outside but rotten in the inside, but at the end of the day, these people will always receive their karma and retribution due to their actions and behavior. It is just like, you can hide your bad deed from the outside but you can’t hide it forever. Eventually people will know your true color. But I am impressed to those who can hide it well. Even after so many bad deeds done, people still think he or she is the hero or the angel who rescue the world. These people still get support and trust and people believe that they are true color from the outside AND the inside. People still think that those bullied are the one in the wrong and these hero and the angel are always hero and angel.

Don’t you find that our mind scary? What we think is the source of what we will do next. We may do or may not do it. But all starts from our thinking. That is why in Buddhism, the first thing mention as the “Human Life’s Guides” is – The main enemy of the human being is him or herself. And it is all started from our mind, our thinking.

That is also why Buddha always conquered himself first before he could deal other challenges with others. And he found the enlightenment by doing meditation: practiced the consciousness of his thinking and be aware of what he was doing. Instead of making the mind blank – which some may think that is the way of doing it – by doing meditation, it trains our mind to relax, build our internal energy and force, and here, we can slowly develop the positive thinking, such as: love, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, patience, etc. (in generalization).

By right, this has to be practice daily since any negative thought may arise in every millisecond of our thought. Practice makes perfect. And many times, it is easy to say rather than to do. So, it will again depend on our goal and purpose in life. What do you want your life becomes? What kind of results in life that you want to create from your actions? 

I don’t say that we are perfect by doing this. After all, we are just normal human beings, who often make mistakes in our daily life. It is fine to make mistakes, as long as we realize that it is wrong and we try our best not to do the same mistake again (may do another type of mistake though, he-he.. just kidding. Lolx!).

But most importantly, we learn from our mistakes. We find out, what is the cause of it? Why we still do it despite knowing that it may be unwise to do so? And most of the time, the answer is that we do not control our mind properly. It goes haywire. It flows uncontrollably and the worse thing is that we make it happen and harm others unknowingly.

That is why controlling our mind in form of meditation is very important in our lives. Even if we don’t practice meditation regularly, we still can control our mind and let our mind to be reminded over and over again, through more practical ways in our daily life, such as: reading the positive quotes (print and paste it in any visible place of your room, office, etc.), thinking and doing positive things that benefit others, e.g. involve in volunteering work with the community, donate regularly for a good cause, and so on.

So, it will go back to you on what kind of life you want to have in your life. It is all in your HANDS.

Daily Teaching day 95

These days, when it was just too hot over here!

Tsk tsk...
I could feel the hot air penetrated through my skin. Both my arms, neck, face, even my skull was starting to sweat. And it wasn't only me. My friends were started complaining too. "Oh... What kind of weather these days? It's so hot!!!"
"Ya ya, not only that. It was humid too!" said another.

"See? Your son keeps sweating non-stop." I turned my head to my dear son. Front part of his shirt was all wet.

"Was it your drinking water that made your shirt wet like that?" I asked him. He shook his head and rolled his eyes to me, "No la, it's my sweat." His face was all wet from the non-stop sweat.

"Are you sure? Not because of you spilled your drinking water?" I asked again to get his conformation. Again, he said that it was really due to his sweat.

I walked closer to him. His back part was wet and I could smell some odour appearing from his body. Yalama! How come and since when Singapore became this hot lately?

Even after stepped out from my office's door, I could feel the rising temperature more than ordinary. No wonder I spent my time mostly inside my office after finishing lunch from the Cafetaria. It was too hot just to be in normal temperature. Not yet counting on the bright sunshine in the afternoon time.

I preferred sitting behind my desk, put the earpiece inside my earlobes, listened to Choe da nga song sent by my friend, Tshering, while letting the cool air blown from our two sets of air-con inside our office. Then, I took out the Angela's Ashes from my satchel bag and continued reading from the last part I read from inside the MRT until my lunch time was over.

Even after reaching back home, I faster took a bath, washed my hair and body using the hot water (to let go the tiredness from whole day working and non-stop meetings). But as soon as I finished bathing, I started to sweat again. Yalama Kheno! I warned myself to take cold water for bathing next time!!! Grrr.....!!!

While having dinner, I turned on the air-con inside my room, let the room cooling down before I entered it. Seemed like I couldn't live without air-con these days. Uh-oh! Not sure how long this would last. At the meantime, I was counting down on how many days more I could get rid of this hot weather and again enjoying winter time very soon out there. From the mirror I could see myself grinning and smiling, and daydreaming too, lost myself in another world with a popsicle on my hand.
Tsk tsk...

(P.S. Attributed this post by the current hot weather around Singapore and almost everyone I met complained about it)