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The use of Zen as a tool for work and as a philosophy in everyday life

Recently my schedule became more and more hectic with assignments of drastically differing nature packed back to back.

Gradually I started to feel acutely the ineffectiveness on my part when I kepts thoughts from a previous assignment on my mind when I started working on an assignment occupying the next occuring time slot. Unconciously,  I started engaging myself in this mental practise which I came across many times in Zen literature as well as in modern literature works by Japanese Authors (Eiji Yoshikawa and Haruki Murakami).

Prior to the start of any time slot when an assignment was supposed to occur, I would mentally empty all thoughts in my mind and pictured myself as one with the work that will occur. Forgetting all notions of the past and the future.

When the past is forgotten, one forgets that one has ever exerted mental and physical effort in periods shortly past, the mind is not distracted with the notion that one needs rest to recuperate from this recent exertion.

When the future is forgotten, one forgets that one will need to exert more mental and physical effort in the periods shortly to come, hence one does not spare efforts to cater for the future and thus gives one’s all for every minute and second that comes to past.

In this state one enters into a state of trance, the work becomes the self and the self becomes the work. One is thus able to concentrate fully on the work at hand and fully exertly oneself in the task to be accomplished without prejudice for the past, the present, the future and all other manners of distraction that exist in this Saha World.

One interesting after effect I personally felt through this practise was the fact that my mind was able to come forth from my hectic schedules stress free and fresh.

Just the other day, while sitting in McDonalds doing some work, Alena started messaging her friend. Out of boredom she sent her time of birth to her friend for some online fortune telling. She was pretty much amused and tried to convince me to tell her the exact time of my birth promising to share the findings with me. I did so only after getting her to promise that she will get her friend to calculate the time of my passing from this life time as well. She spanked me thinking I was once again joking.

Interestingly she kept quiet and did not talk about the response she received from her friend. When I finally came out from another phase of trance, I asked her for the results. She had this worried look on her face. I forced her to tell me my fortune readings.

Strangely it conincided with what I have been thinking of for the longest time.

“Men born at this time, mostly reside within the temples and meditate from dusk to dawn.” was the fortune reading

“Well, I guess it will soon be over between you and me. Perhaps we should part soon. ” I joked.

She spanked me once again, but felt deeply worried about my wanton nature towards people in my personal life.

I suddenly recalled this psychic whom I met back at the Spiritualist church in London who had this strange vision when he first saw me of this smiling tibetan monk and a golden thread with four notes (knots) on it and a fifth missing. Probably the same monk whom I “imagined” when Sian tried to brought me on a stroll on the spiritual planes back when I was staying at her place in London.

Perhaps that is me in the future beckoning to the me in the present, the only divide being that missing fifth note (knot) on the golden thread. I wonder what that might be. It is all up for speculation actually

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The joy of living like nomad and the ease that comes with learning to fail properly

Yesterday I suddenly experienced a drastic paradigm shift. For the past few months, I always attempted at creating a peaceful and quiet environment back at home to allow for better concentrate while at work. It was a lost cause. The presence of mom and dad plus little blackie gave me no peace whateverso. Any attempts at doing so would have resulted in immediate failure.  Only short spans of peace could be achieved, this was when everyone was out and blackie was having his afternoon nap.

Satheesh was kind enough to pass me the use of his wireless mobile card. It had been sitting much use in my bag for the past few months excepts on occasions when I had to do some off shore co-ordination when I was at Toshiba’s data center and service center.

It was morning yesterday when I took my laptop and aigo’s demo kit for a trip to Aigo’s main office. After some hiccups here and then we managed to settle the outstanding matters with Aigo.

I met up with Alena for lunch this Taiwanese eatery near east coast beach. Shortly after lunch, I took out my laptop and started checking some mails which Kelvin sent over a short while ago. Quickly I forgot the presence of Alena and concentrate on my work at hand. After 1 hours of solid uninterrupted work I decided to take a break.

We arrived at East Coast beach where I decided read a book. It was not long before she dragged me into roller blading with her. While she attempted hard at keeping her balance and fall as little as possible, I took the more practical approach, an approach which I unconciously acquired during my work as a software developer.

I started by concentrating my efforts on learning how to fall properly while on blades. In fact I fell more 30 times during the short span of that 2 hours on blades suffering no injuries whateverso. This was totally weird in contrast to the pained expressions passerbys gave when they saw the scene.

Alena on the other hand whil attempting to stay on her foot, minimized her falls to less than 10 times during this entire period of 2 hours, managed successfully to sprain her right wrist which left her feeling somewhat hindered in her movements for the rest of the day.

One interesting thing to observe is this. Taking the notion of falling for granted, I was thereafter truly able to focus my mind on acquiring the techniques to manage the skates properly. Fear (of falling) is truly a most unneccessary distraction in this scenario. Also 40% of my time during this 2 hour period was spent sitting on the bench observing the techniques strangers while on blades as well as chatting up with any particular blader whom I wanted to clarify in more details th techniques they. In some instances, I received weird and uneasy expressions from bladers unused to speaking with total strangers on the streets. However being mechiavellic as I am, staunchly believing that the ends justify the ends, I ignored these and continued on my conquest of the blades.

After that two hours on blades, I believe given another two to three sessions on blades I should manage nicely.

Once again, I have deviated. Back to the discussion on life as a nomad, we sat down at coffee bean and enjoyed some coffee, bossa nova music and the view of the beach at night, while I once again started to work on the net. It was truly great, getting the peace and quiet I needed to concentrate on my work while not having to spend an ounce of effort at maintaining it. Alena mean while took a chinese book on Business Management from my bag which started reading it.

We left for dinner at bugis area. Thereafter I sent her home before finding a spot by the Singapore river to spend the night. Thus it is, I woke up the next day having a great view of the sun rise over the marina promenade. I was truly feeling that life for me is once now again free and the way it should be.

Now I sit just across the street from Hotel Rendevouz in the lobby of the SMU Business faculty enjoying the afternoon breeze and the lively scenary while surfing the net and charging my laptop free of charge, courtesy of  SMU. Haha. I think today I will spend once again out doors, enjoying my new found freedom and space. Life is GREAT!

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Using statcounter.com concurrently with Google Analytics

These two days I got really puzzled with Google Adsense. My page impressions were really high but apparently no clicks were registered on my page for the adsense. I wonder what went wrong. So ended up I started researching over the internet about Google Adsense click not registered. This was when I chanced upon this new tool called statcounter.com

This is a real time tool that shows you where visitors came into the site from and where they exited the site to. One of the really useful things about this is the fact that they could help track if someone actually clicked on the links in your adsense. This does provide a counter as to whether Google Adsense if just simply faking your click rates.

I would not have changed upon this site had I not found my adsense revenue to be suspiciously non-existant

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Capitalism : A love story

I just saw the greatest love story ever on Capitalism. It is a must watch, extremely satirical, but accurate and information giving us a good overview of why the US is in the state it is in today.

It is puzzling sometimes wondering how come humans do not conform to the normal behavior of natural predators. It was ever reported that lions, tigers and wolves normally leave their prey alone once they are done with their meals.

Are we really cursed with the inexplicable drive towards converting every known resource on earth into dollars and cents? What the hell is wrong with us?

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Bazaar happenings in the clementi neighborhood

I happened to chance across a post on Sammy Boy Forum last night. It was said there was actually a special massage parlour in Clementi Ave 2 area. It was just a few streets away from my place.

I got curious. It felt so strange that what normally happens in sleazy places like Geylang could actually happen in heartland areas like Clementi!

This afternoon after finishing my session at the gym, I decided to take a walk. I finally arrived at block 354, this is where commerce mainly takes place in this area.

I managed to locate the “Da Jie Niang Dou Fu” shop easily. The “Da Jie Niang Dou Fu” shop is a landmark which one of the members of the sammy boy forum posted.

I started walking down the main stretch of block 354. Upon detailed study, I realised there were actually three shops which looked quite suspicious. They were mainly located towards the end of the 5 foot way before it took a left turn. Out of the three shops two were empty while the first one was occupied by two PRC chinese looking ladies. I guess this must be the one. Having confirmed that this location that the members of the sammy boy forum posted was no bullshit but the real thing, I kept on walking down the 5 foot way and took the left turn.

It was not before long that i chanced upon this really eriee looking shop. I stood outstide trying to figure out what this shop was supposed to sell, when the proprietor of the shop beside that one told me to speak to the owner.

Apparently this shop is run by Shaiful. I wonder if he is related to the first shop keeper that talked to me.

This Shaiful is a pretty interesting character. His shop has been around for the past 5 months. He apparently runs tours to places around Southeast Asia to sites that a supposedly haunted.

Seems like his next trip is happening on the 9th this month to Vietnam. This whole thing seems pretty bazairre and interesting. If you are a really interested to find out more about his trips just head down to location stated here on Things To Do Singapore

His website is still under renovation, it is www.soulhunterz.org. I wonder when he would get it up. But I am definitely looking forward to it.

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Lunch Experiment Backfired

Today mom cooked glutinous rice for lunch. Recalling that glutinous rice is hard to digest because of the high amount of oil content in it, this idea occured to me. I saw a pile of lemon on the dining table. Thus I halved cut one of them into and proceeded to squeeze one half onto my rice.

Thinking that resulting dish should be quite yummy, I hurriedly shoved a spoon into my mouth. I was definitely in for a surprise. The whole taste was off. Ewwww….. The saltish taste of the rice did not go well with the overwhelmingly sour taste of the lemon. In fact they did not blend at all.

Not wanting to waste the food. I shoved the rest of the dish down my throat doing my best not to taste anything. Well at least I got for myself a healthy if not tasty meal today.

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Haka (KA MATE! KA MATE! KA ORA! KA ORA! …)

Seems like a tough year, this one.

Things were pretty messy for me this year. I don’t know whether it is good or whether it is bad.

I managed to get myself involved in a good paying IT project at the beginning of the year for two months for a pharmaceutical firm. The pay I ‘ve got would have been enough to get me to Europe and start the next leg of my journey downwards to Africa.

However, I got myself involved with a girl the second day I got back to Singapore. Ouch! I was having a lot of dilemma deciding between her and my dreams all these while. I couldn’t just leave her and pursue dreams of my own, it would have been too selfish. But having her around requires that I provide a certain level of security and comfort, which she wouldn’t have been able to provide herself in this city. She is from the rural areas. It was pretty stressful financially for me. We sometimes quarrel over these things as well, when her wants are too much for me to provide.

So what happened next was that I got myself involved with another project which was even more lucrative but involved a certain amount of risk.

That one blew up in my face. My client became illiquid and I had no choice but to pay up the team of staffs I hired for the project from my own pocket which pretty much amounts to what I have earned from my previous one.

So basically it got me nicely back to square one all over again. Now I am half decided between looking for a full time job which would be highly torturous or hanging on with my existing group of clients. The income I get is about the same either way.

However considering the fact that my girlfriend would be getting back to Singapore soon and I would need to rent a house, pay for both our daily expense until she gets work(if she does), plus giving allowances to my parents, it is a lot of stress for some one who is incomes is irregular.

Then again if I do indeed get myself a full time job, the salary I do get would be just enough for all these expenses I I listed above, nothing more to finance my dreams. It is really like becoming a wage slave.

My heart is divided. I am still stuck with this question everyday. Having sleepless nights still. Constantly I pray for a possible path to open up before me or for death to come swiftly…

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Every one has something to say – use a blog!

Recently I met a religio while on the bus on my way home. She took my contact number and started sending me lots of religious messages. Being a free thinker, most of these messages just came into my phone and went into the trash folder. It was just too long to read over an SMS. and I hate longs SMS s over the phone.

Then it occurred to me, I thought hey all these efforts by her should not be going to waste. so what happens immediately after that was that I set up a blog for her at adonis.name1price.com for her to send her message out to the world.

Now, my phone avoids getting overloaded with mesages not related to my essential day to day operations and at the same time she gains access to the whole world’s audience. And the whole world’s audiences may finally get themselves some salvation if indeed they are looking for some.

Who knows she with her vigor might just turn out to be the next Anthony Robbins or Robert Kiyosaki!

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Cold reading

Recently having gotten interested with astrology services on the internet, I decided to put my particulars into one particular site. The message I received was so convincing that I wandered the truth behind it.

Then again I recalled the fact that given a statement without anything to disprove it, the brain will automatically search for evidences to villify the truth of this statement.

Deciding to see how the actual system works on the internet I proceeded to the site of the fortune teller and started messing around with the site.

Pretty smart actually, the message, the only thing though is that it is a standard message for all to read except you are the one reading it and being convinced by it.

Click the refresh button or change the query string alittle and you will have either a different message from the whole collection of them or the same message again but with no name. Try it out yourself.

https://secure-astro.com/cgi-bin/request.cgi?p=request.cgi&r=2b&c=uht0s&f=tnel

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In Transit

Depiction of Lady Fortuna
Depiction of Lady Fortuna

Lady Fortuna

It would have been really easy had all three elements, the mind, the heart and the soul been after the same thing. Apparently it seems not the case, these past few weeks. It was a time of trial indeed.

The mind says for money and security, the heart says to go for love, while the soul says all the prior are not important, the quest for the truth ever beckons.

Here I stand stuck at the fork of the road in my journey. While most parts of the journey prior to this were clear and simple as the path in which the soul demanded, the heart and mind both concurred; this once was different. They each beckoned their own way.

I stand here at this junction examining all three paths, they all looked equally promising while at the same time seemingly disastrous. No amount of foresight I have seem to allow me the ability of sight to penetrate this fog of destiny.

Perhaps none of all three paths is the one, the true path lies hidden still. I could only wait and be patient meanwhile, before Fortuna deals me another card from her Deck of Fates which brings me to the true path.

Wait I shall then.