Sitting cat

It's not easy to sit still, waiting and nothing to do, right? Hello, I am sitting cat, a wooden head cat sitting always and wait.

People ask me why can I doing nothing, but just sitting there, will it be a waste of time? I said, it's easy to make yourself busy, being important to be existing on earth and fill up your every minute; but if you can free up some space in your mind and your heart, it's not only good to yourself to clear up your thoughts, and at the same time, there will be a place always ready for someone who need to access, to retrieve from lost or fail. Would it be nice?

Especially for myself, I will wait to calm down when I am over-reacted, wait to forget the anger, so I can walk away from hatred; wait to forgive and be forgive, wait to be cured when I am sad, wait to think twice before I act......So I am happy to wait and it means a lot to me.

Spring

It must be Spring now, everywhere is sweating,
our walls, floors, furniture, even the air around,
so wet, so uncomfortable.

Small green leaves extrude from the old bark,
telling us a new cycle is happening,
will there be a new hope to the current status?
Seems not but may be the next moment,
who knows?

No more tears

This photo was taken on a beach in front of a hotel located in Phuket, year 2006. These flowers were attractive because they were growth after the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in 2004.

Here, Nai Yang Beach was not the major affected area during that disaster, but still, the beach was destroyed and was still under reconstruction when I had visited. Staff were busy in their seasonal maintenance, and began to replant in the sand. Gardening and decoration could be re-built, for the sea itself, it was not suitable for swimming yet, it needed more time to recover, like people who lived and worked there.

Whenever I took a break, stood there, and looked at these flowers; the big contrast of the desert like beach to these pure and dedicate petal would remind me how fragile life could be compared with the power of nature, but on the other hand, life could also be as tough as a "Flaming Phoenix" that reborn if only if we have belief......Blessing to Haiti.

Beautiful life

A lot of people said, they own their life, so they will live as they wish. How to live in such a short period? 50 years, 60 or 80 years...... are all depends of what we want it to be like.

We may wish to achieve success in our career, at least be a successful person in others' eye; so we keep on studying, work hard, being promoting, again and again until we get reach to the desire level as we think we should be.

We may wish to be accepted as part of the group, so we talk like them, think like them, dress like them; play what they play, ignore what they hate until we think we were in.

We may wish to tell others that we are meaningful and our life is full of fruitful rewards, so we arrange thousand and thousands of task for ourselves to achieve; helping others, learning new things, doing exercise, seek for new friends, participate in all events, chasing all new or hot technology...until we get exhausted and seems we are not wasting a minute.

Are these wrong? No! definitely not, there is no right or wrong of how we live as far as we know why & enjoy. But if we can take a break, I would like to ask, will it be nice if we can live as simple as a sunflower, it's life time is short, it is small, no pleasant aroma, fragile; but blossoms to reflect it's best, has confidence in her face, be what she is , being true to herself as simply as a small flower who wake up by the sun every morning, the only one task is to deliver the warm to anyone who meet her,I think...... this is a beautiful life.

Bilingual post

Hi! My Dear readers,

I decided to start a Chinese post whenever I have more free time. Originally, I think a Google translator may help, but after some tests, it is not working good, may be it's because of the sentence structure and the existing of some Cantonese. So, I finally prepare a bilingual post, hopefully all of you can enjoy.

In Hong Kong, we are going to have our Chinese New Year this Saturday with 4 continuous public holidays. This year is quite special because our first Lunar date is also Valentine's day, so may I take this chance to wish you all to have a

Happy Chinese New Year
and
Sweetest Valentine's Day
to
your family, lover, friends and pets!

protowork annie @2010

火機?火雞? Lighter ? Turkey?

自從911之後, 各国機場安檢相對變得嚴密. 那天我工幹後由北京機場準備回港, 人己是十二萬分疲倦,冷不防在出境時被叫停, 一位高傲冷漠的女同胞說: huo ji...(忘記告訴大家, 我的普通話實在普通過普通) 哎! 什麼呀? 請她再說一遍 :huo ji...火雞?怎麼可能, 又不是聖誕節.再問, 又是huo ji...開喼嗎?

我在人來人往的通道, 毫無頭緒之際, 突然想起, 呀! huo ji = 火機! 用以點香薰爉燭的打火機. 就這樣把"違禁品"交給那個目無表情的女同胞, 然後才回到現實.

事實上, 這絕對是我的錯, 因為国內習慣把完整字句縮短, 例如 : 廣交會 = 廣州交易會; 奧運開幕式=奧運開幕儀式; 無論如何總得比原文短一點. 所以, 除了學好普通話之外, "自動句子還原系統"設置是必需的......如果市面上有供應的話, 我想, 我很需要!

Security checking is more & more important in the airport after the disaster of 911, I remember I was returning from Beijing after a business trip, so tired that I wish I could sleep right away in the airport at least for an hour or two. When passing the security check, an airport officer - a cool lady stopped me in Putonghua :huo ji...what? Turkey? how come? it's not Christmas, there would not be a turkey in my suitcase. So I asked her again, she replied in the same tone: huo ji...(by the way, I have to confess that my Putonghua is only in kindergarten grade) did she said open the case? I wondered......

My mind was full of question mark, no body was willing to give a helping hand as they were rushing into the gate. Suddenly, I know what it should be, the lighter (similar pronunciation as turkey in Putonghua, except it's normally in 3 words in Cantonese). The one for my aroma candle that fly from Hong Kong. So, it was sacrifice and I was free.

Truly speaking, this is my fault, not only because of my poor Mandarin, but I forget people in China,they used to speak in short form, like : 廣交會 = 廣州交易會; 奧運開幕式=奧運開幕儀式,
one or two word less is still good to them; so if there is a kind of built in software something like "recovery to original phases", I definitely need to install one to survive !


廣州交易會= Guangzhou trade fair
奧運開幕儀式 = Olympic Game opening ceremony

Kunming - My first fly

Six years ago, I started my China business trip for one of my client. To me, it's a bit excited but not attractive; because I am the kind of person who don't have much good impression to the China cities, especially I had to deal with a big problem that time - my first client, my first project and my first fly.

Kunming is well known as a good travel spot, it has brilliant weather and scenery. It is quite far away from H.K., as far as I've remember it took almost 4 hours for me to fly, but fortunately was I took the Dragonair, so the facility and airplane lunch were good enough to me.

I was travel with my client, so we went to the site straight away after arrival and worked till 9 p.m., followed by a very deluxe dinner with their franchisee (actually I was already exhausted, so I needed a coffee instead of chicken) and went back to site by 11:30p.m. until......1 a.m. something......

It was around 8 in the morning, I was sitting in the hotel coffee shop, waiting for the confirmation of whether I needed to stay for another day to assist. The coffee was not good to taste, the world outside window was not attractive, but this was the moment that I waited so long, alone. I knew there were much more for me to discover other than the business zone here; but my time was so limited and my thought was full of work.

A few hours later, I left the city, the problem had not been totally solved yet, it had to be continue treated remotely from H.K.; but I have to say, you will forget all your tired when you saw your client feeling relief from their difficulties. By that time, I understood that, we are under the same sky.

中文網誌? Chinese Blog?

仍然考慮是否加入中文網誌? 因為打字很慢, 卻很想聯繫到"中文人". 或許先登出這篇呼籲, 看看有沒有人回應. 如果機緣巧合給你看到, 請留言提議, 謝謝!

I am still thinking whether I should add some Chinese blog here, so I can share with Chinese reader without open another blog in Yahoo, I like to use Blogger, especially when I discover "pages" can now be easily added. So I make an announcement here to see if the search engine can help me to connect any Chinese blog reader.

But I will continue to post my English blog, because it is where I've started and I enjoy a lot.

Being positive

The weather is very bad, cloudy and wet, it is the sign of Spring in Hong Kong. It also makes me depress and don't have the mood to write my blog. To deliver a positive message to reader is the original idea to this blog, but these days, I fail.

I try to gain some energy by reading others, it do work a bit. Hopefully I can return to my normal situation and write some good stuff next week!

Hi ! Stranger

Have you ever fear of one day when you wake up, you are no more in a place that you are familiar with? I am not talking about travel or work in other countries, but your hometown, the place where you've grown up.

I had this fear since Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997; and recently, this uncomfortable feeling do affect my daily life.

I love H.K. very much, I grown up here, we have our local culture as a small city, we work hard and play hard,too. This small international city was built bit by bit though different generations, so naturally.

These days, everything around me are so weird. The most frequent heard language is Mandarin, limousine buses to China cities everywhere on the street follow by hundred and hundreds of people nearby, bicycle rider on the pedestrian, fake products occupy the low end market; rarely international T.V. advertisement but wine, snack & health product from China. When I walk to the tourist area that used to be like Tsim Sha Tsui & Causeway Bay, what I can find are extraordinary luxurious brands target to big spender from China, too. Our city is operating only to serve our motherland - China.

I know this is the fact that I have no hope to change, but before I become a total stranger to this place, I wish I can take a break, just for one day, one hour or one minute, back to the H.K. that I loved, the place that I would like to spend the rest of my life there and stop being criticize like a "devil".