Facebook, Restaurant City, and political angst

If you know the game Restaurant City then you'd have no doubts about the connections between the two topics in the title of this blog post. If you're a player, you know how addictive it can be, especially once you've got your little restaurant to look just the way that pleases you and you're earning those virtual dollars real fast.

You're probably scratching your head about the third part, though.

For someone who connects her disparate parts on the internet... son in one city, daughter in another, herself halfway across the globe from familiar friends, family and food, Facebook gives a comforting...maybe illusionary, sense of connected identity. Two years now, in a country where they don't speak my language, where I'm still licking my wounds from having to depart some very good friends in another country. I shy away from making new friends knowing that I'm going to have to pack up and leave in a year or so. So what've I got? Facebook and Restaurant City. Pathetic, isnt' it?  Even worse....

If you're reading this blog, you may have also noticed that there was a huge gap in my blogging. Where've I been? What have I been doing? Well, depressed. Uninspired by life. Angst...caused by politics.

Who would have thought that the state of one's country political falling apart can affect one's psychological health? How complex one's sense of identity is. Group belonging, so basic a need, so unaware of its central role in our sense of well-being until it's been challenged.

These past months have been spent flicking through The Nation and Bangkok Post pages in between Facebook news feed and feeding my workers in Restaurant City. Facebook news feed was also supplying me with tweets from Suthichai Yoon which kept me up to date on developments during critical nights faster than the newspaper could. I was also able to exchange and calm some of my angst with one or two more "friends" who were more vocal about their political feelings than others. Trying to explain it away gave some comfort, but we were all pretty much helpless and had to simply watch  violence unravel itself.

At the start of 2010, it looked like things were going to move for the better, there were clear signs of economic recovery from the sub-prime financial crisis, Thaksin's Judgement Day trial was closing.    Then Abhisit's government under-estimated the aggressiveness of the Red Shirts and an attempted clear up of the protestors botched up on April 10.

He should have known better, I thought. All those M79 grenades being lobbed around Bangkok since the demonstration started should have been fair warning.

To date there are 30 dead, plus a reported 7 more since last night. How many more during this weekend's second attempt to clear up the protestors?

Why do we have to resort to military action against the people? Why are such people constantly attracted like moths to camp out for a fight where everybody loses? Why do people feel that their life is worth giving up for a twisted, outdated notion of nationhood? Isn't there a better way to fight for democracy, for equality than to tear your country apart?  

What is wrong with the Thai people?!!!!

Wandering mind and body

It's been two weeks since I've finally moved into my own place, after three months of city exile in Herradura/Interlomas suburb with my husband's family. A lot of sorting out done: boxes of books, book shelves, knick-knacks, cutlery, clothes, carpets, plants, toiletries, groceries, etc. 

My wandering attention span took the ambulante spirit and went to explore hawkers, markets, and roads in my new neigborhood the same way I wandered Yonge street when I settled in Toronto six years ago. 

A fruit juice stand in front of a 7-11, a Center for Buddhists in Mexico, a park with David as a fountain, dentist for 30 dollars around the corner, Uruguay Street for unblocking my cell, accidental discovery of a street full of toiletry ceramics and hangings, oriental ingredients at San Juan market, cyclists on a closed Reforma Avenue on Sundays, public exhibition of a surrealist artist-Leonara Carrington, DVDs for $2 on Lazaro Cardenas.... no internet connection at home and relying on the charity of some neighbors unblocked wireless, hence no blogging for a long time. Too much raw material to organize.

Film School

Here's why I disappeared and a good reason to come back again. Last summer I went to Europe. Last September, I joined the Toronto Film School. Main reason, what better way to understand media, learn it from inside out, if you can't be an academic about it. I always thought the TV lacked the documentaries I wanted to see. Why not make them myself?

So here's my first vdo make from my new PalmOne Treo phone.

It's all still a really elementary learning process for me.

Some lessons learnt from Tai Chi

Two months ago, I started my first session of Tai Chi lessons with Ann Phillips, a Canadian teacher, who visits the sports facility in my condo. Compared to other physical centering techniques I've tried (yoga, thai massage, sports) I find this form of exercise appropriate for the stage of life I'm at. When I go through the Tai Chi routine that blends together slow and soft martial movements with a tone of spiritual focus, I find that I can shift from a dominant mental mode of being to a body-centered mode of being. I've learnt that the body has its own amazing kind of intelligence, one that is difficult to describe and explain via language which is a mental mode. The body simply "does" in its movements. I didn't think I could learn the seemingly complicated sets of movements demonstrated by my teacher during those first weeks.

"Drop" your mind, move your body, take action and move forward. AI (artificial intelligence) hardliners are missing an important point if they think we can exist on the mind alone without a body.

Tai Chi is an energy play. Some level of consciousness is required for any kind of meaningful energy play. Consciousness and centering is very linked, and Tai Chi helps me become aware of my centering.

What is value?

Thoughts about value and its meaning has been on my mind for some time. Are values concepts that have proven to be useful of a social unit (such as, the individual, family, society, or an organization)? I think values are learnt, that they are shaped by the environment and the unit of consciousness. Values don't seem to be inherent, something that grew naturally within the unit. Could values be a manisfestations or projections of patterns of self-consitency, inner tendencies that shape that unit's personalities? Are values like imprints coming from an implicate order?

There are universal values such as love, manifesting in other values such as the value of relatioship, friendship, brotherhood, security, connectivity, etc.) Some other values I find myself constantly thinking about have been: growth, evolution, change, duality, opposition, balance, knowledge, journeying, creativity and destruction.

I found from "Three Faces of Mind" (de Beauport & de Melesecca) these interesting references about values:

"Values are the collective wisdom of previous cultures passed on from generation to generation.

"Values indicate the action that was lived and valued in previous generations, valued because at some time in history it meant survival for the community.

"Values are patterns of action originating in the past and repeated again and again throughout history.

"Values are transmitted to us usually through a particular person that we loved and admired.

"Often we can recall the person and the event through which this value imprinted itself on our minds.

"Values come to us through our families, religion, school, or country, profession, heroes.

"The point is that values do not originate in the present."

Discuss

First day of snow

This is my first day of snow in Toronto! The morning started at -1C, it snowed sometime during the night, wished I could have seen it. I thought this first day of snow should be marked, my first winter in Toronto is definitely on its way. Before coming here to Toronto, so many people have told me stories of how harsh winter in Canada can be. Since arriving in July, I have found the weather to be suprisingly acceptable. The weather's unpredictability is actually quite entertaining! It gets cold, then warm again, then cold, then warm. Gives me hope that the winter wouldn't be as "cold" as many people have given me the impression that it should be. Even zero degree didn't seem so bad. My teenage son went out with only with a pullover last week (a surprisingly warm period), but I guess that should change now that snow's arrived, however, with teenagers you never know!



Discuss

A cycle's ending

I seem to be going through a period of doubting. A few responses from people close to me about my blog has left me feeling a bit disheartened. Why is it that I have to depend on my weak links to support me and my close links don't? I am also facing my constantly recurring fears about whether I take too much on myself. How do I sustain processes I've chosen? But then I look at the calendar and realize that, oh,...it's the end of the year's cycle for me. 

My birthday wil be coming up in a couple of weeks. I've been through so many of them that their passing by don't seem to register much with me anymore. But now I remember that the period before the beginning of my new birth-year cycle, at about the ending of the outgoing cycle have usually been accompanied by unexplainable feelings of melancholy. I remember some years in which I've taken harsh decisions to end certain processes probably as emotional reactions to the endings, not really the processes themselves, in truly impulsive Saggitarian style for which I've regretted. Well, I guess I'm posting this as a reminder to myself that I can come back to during these precarious days. I must let go of certain emotions that come out of habit, that don't serve me well, and that I must learn to let go of each cycle gracefully, and that I should keep my mind and my heart open.

Discuss

A Poem inspired by thoughts of electricity...

Electricity...

Electromagnetic Waves,

Light !

We are moving blobs of light!

blinking and non-blinking bytes,

day and night,

good and evil,

absence of light

only exists because

of the presence of light.

In the end, isn't it all the same...

Is it futile or not?

Discuss