Connecting people

An unbelievable delay? I can hardly believe it myself. It took me all these years, ever since the first clunky Motorola handphone, to become the proud owner of a Nokia!

After the cloneable Motorola, I had a Philips with voice activation, then a Sony Ericsson P800, and finally two XDAs, the IIs and now the Atom Exec. So why get another phone now?

My powerful Atom developed a problem – I can only hear sound and speak through the headset (I use a bluetooth Jabra now). And the O2 service center told me that they need to replace the motherboard. But I can’t live without a phone!

And then, I travel abroad frequently and roaming costs are high. So having a second phone for using local sim cards makes good sense. Meanwhile, I keep my international phone on roaming so that my loved ones can reach me anywhere, anytime.

I had only one condition when I entered the Hello cell phone shop today – the new phone had to be red! No problem, my two daughters came with me and advised me which phone to select, and I liked it too: the new Nokia 5300 Xpress Music.

Connecting people, just what I want.

Photograph: Connecting people, creating life.

The Chi Connection Code

The fountain lives by virtue of the water that flows through it.

- David Peat

Imagine energy flowing deliciously through your body. Your warm feelings create a sense of wonder about the world around you. Your vitality is strong. We all enjoy moments when we experience this. And we want to stretch them, recreate them, to feel really good more often. Do we have to create such feelings, pump up such energy? Or is there a way we can attract them to come to us? Speak a magic word to invite them, like a genie out of a bottle?

When I and my fellow classmates joined morning exercises with teacher Mantak Chia a few years ago, he told us the secret, and I have nevery forgotten it. In fact, I think about it often, and I use it successfully. Master Chia said that it is as if we are swimming in a pool of Chi. "It’s all around you, he said, wherever you go. But most people don’t see it, don’t know it. That’s the secret," he said. And with his body shaking with laughter as usual, he told us “It is so easy, just connect to the Chi that’s all around you. You are swimming in it!”

I guess all of us who had gathered on that field at Tao Garden outside Chiang Mai in the early morning wondered quietly if it could really be that simple.* We smiled politely, and we tried. And in the following days, our smiles sometimes hid the agony of stretching muscles and tendons as we bent our bodies into ancient postures of peacock looks at its own tail, monkey prays with elbows and several other Tao Yin or “guide and pull” exercises that are older than Tai Chi. The Chinese already found out millennia ago that revitalization and longevity come with daily physical exercises that open up our spine. Stretching is good!

On the other hand, I have come to see that the worst thing we can do to live better is trying too hard. Trying hard is not enough to create good energy and nice feelings. This is also true with exercise. The real benefit comes afterwards, as you relax and consciously open up and focus your awareness on the moment. “Chi follows where our awareness leads it,” Master Chia explained. After we open up, as we focus our attention one by one on different parts of our body, Chi follows as if magically attracted to those parts. Try relaxing and focusing on the crown of your head, lift your closed eyes upward, and you will feel energy coming in. Stretch out your arms and twist your wrists, and you will feel energy entering your body through your hands.

Chi is all around us, and it follows our lead, our focused awareness. We live at a time when the Da Vinci Code has aroused the interest of millions around the world for the mysteries that surround us. Many other authors have jumped on the bandwagon and wrote about other codes. Yet one of the most powerful codes of all has been with us for as long as millennia. I would call it the Chi Connection Code. We can tap into it anytime. It used to be the secret of Tao alchemists and spiritual recluses. Masters who only passed it on to their most trusted pupils. Yet in this age of Aquarius, where spiritual growth is spreading like never before, modern masters like Mantak Chia have decided to disclose the secret way to anyone who wants to hear, all around the world. Just visit your local bookstore and you will find out. Look under New Age, Self-Enrichment, or Health.

* To watch Master Chia lead an early morning exercise, visit the Tao Training Center website and click on “internal exercise for morning” to see the video clip.

Photograph: Tao Fountain of the late Frank Polman.

Connecting dots

Today is Nyepi, the day of silence that falls on Bali’s lunar new year. It is a day of silence, fasting, and meditation, and even the island’s airport is shut down. What a great idea to dedicate the first day of the new year to silence. I wish I was there joining in the silent celebration of the day. For me, today was a travel day, flying from Manila to Hanoi through Hong Kong. However, I did spend time quietly reflecting on my life as I sat in my airplane seat.

Aldous Huxley said that “the more powerful and original a mind is, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” I reflected today on what it means to have private space where one can enjoy solitude. Private space can be virtual, meaning the type of space we can learn to create anywhere and anytime through our mind. For example, I could sit in an airplane full of people yet experience my own private space.

However, private space can also refer to physical space that is especially created with the idea of celebrating solitude. Part of my dream is to create a physical space that combines a studio with private living quarters with an outdoors bath and a walled terrace overlooking a green tropical valley. A space where I could be both private and intensily creative. Who knows, some day I might be able to realize this dream. I am working on it, actually.

For me, and many other introverts, I need to regenerate my energy in solitude before I can comfortably mingle with friends and acquaintances. One is a condition for the other, is how it works for me. Finding private space and private time become critically important. John Maxwell calls it “growth time”, and he encourages his readers to find such time every day.

Against the backdrop of a spectacular view of Hanoi by night, my discussion over dinner this evening centered unexpectedly on how life is marked by changes, how different these changes are experienced by women and men, and on the opportunities to make these differences work to complement each other’s needs. I realized that unless we learn to know and love ourself more, it would be different to help others. In fact, there is a Vietnamese proverb that cautions against trying to help others before being able to help ourselves.

The more I practice being quiet and receptive in my soul, the more I realize how rich I really am in the universe around me. The dots in my universe are connecting mysteriously whenever I care to take a look. And I am more and more excited to find ways to share this magic with people around me for their benefit. I am glad to be reborn at 50, and sometimes I wonder why it took me so long to find out life’s lessons. Oh well, it just takes longer for men than women, it seems!

Photograph: Wake Up - Espresso cup from Ubud, Bali.

How you want it

I missed writing the past days. A nasty cold kept me from doing anything apart from the most urgent tasks that I could not avoid. A test confirmed that the infection is viral, not bacterial, so no need for antibiotics – that was good news. And I was struck by the number of people who advised me to drink lots of water. Everyone seems to know this nowadays. Nice for a water expert to hear this.

Days of feeling physically low pushed me into “conservation” mode. I long to get back to “regeneration” and to feel more energetic again. But since I take life as it comes, I also embrace this feeling of conservation, being careful what to do and what not to do. The importance of rest becomes clear. Not taking adequate rest seems like a clear and present danger to me now. That’s good.

Even when low, however, there’s lots to learn. In fact, I found that listening becomes easier. Switching to receiving mode also helped me to get more ideas, and I’ve been writing these down as soon as I could.

Life is how you want it to be. And the sky is bright blue here!

Photograph: Temple in use, outside Ubud, Bali

Chaser to maker

This clipping from my first collage sums up how my life has changed. When I met Jim Paredes in his Tapping the Creative Universe seminar in Manila in December 2003, he challenged all of us to forego tv, radio, and books for the two week duration of the classes and to work on unlocking our own creativity in stead.

Apart from writing daily morning pages, one of the assignments was to make a collage at home about our life and what we saw changing in it, and to present it to the class. Those were touching moments. We all lowered our defences and opened up to connections with the creative universe, and many of us took the opportunity to embrace changes in our life.

In the four years that have passed since that class, I have spent a lot of time reading, writing, playing music, and sharing time with family and friends. And I realized today that I hardly ever watched tv anymore in all that time. I keep up with world news by taking a quick look at websites every day, but this takes me minutes rather than hours.

Everything seems to pass from one generation to the next, though. My daughter is now a fervent tv watcher. She seems perfectly content when she sits in her "command center" corner with computer and tv arranged closely around her and ipod available at all times. But then, she’s also investing much time in creativity, like singing, figure skating, guitar, and drawing Japanese mangas. She caught the creative bug as well.

For me, the tide in life has clearly turned. I am happy to live more inside out, in stead of letting my life be dominated by consumption as before. Like the shepherd boy in The Alchemist, I have come to realize that the treasure is buried at home, right where I am. So I continue walking on my path to grow and to help others. And it’s an exciting journey every day.

In between my coughing and sneezing this weekend, I managed to complete a number of tasks that increased my motivation to do more. Yesterday, I registered a domain name for a website that I want to develop this year in support of my life coaching plans. I also put my goals and targets for 2007 on paper, so I can prioritize my time and focus my energy.

John Maxwell quotes a Gregg Harris as having said that 67 of the 100 people he surveyed had set goals for themselves (that percentage includes me now!). However of those 67 people, he said, only 10 made realistic plans to achieve their goals, and of those 10, only 2 people followed through and made them happen. Ouch! What a powerful reminder to stop procrastinating and get on with our life as it should be lived! Except that each person’s purpose is different. So it is a personal journey of inquiry to figure out where each of us should go, how we get there, and to make sure that we do.

I am walking in that direction, and I am happy to have a better map in my hand after this weekend’s work. The other hand still holds a hanky for my sneezing.

Photograph: Detail of my life change collage in December 2003.

Easy choice

For the past two nights, I let my mind go blank and fell asleep early, in stead of staying up late blogging, reading, and web-browsing. I have been down with a cold, but not serious enough to stay home. I stuck with my daily routine, more or less.

I was buoyed by a friend today who shared that she was going through a midlife transition and had chosen to take matters into her own hands to change her life for the better. I found her experience remarkably similar to my own, and we felt encouraged by each other’s choice to live forward positively.

My teacher and friend Jim Paredes made a comment on my completion of the Reborn at 50 blog that also warmed my heart. Sharing life with positive people is so beneficial. And the opposite is equally powerful, as negative energy clings and is not easily shed. The choice is left to us. And it’s an easy choice to make after having discovered the power of being positive.

Once in a while, a storm will enter our life unexpectedly to shake us out of daily routines, hold up a mirror of self-reflection, and remind us of the journey ahead. Keep walking. Don’t stay too long in your comfort zone. Usually, the storm is short lived. And when our positive attitude takes over, storms cease to matter. Light always illuminates darkness.

I learned a lot this week about the benefit in taking small steps every day towards my goals, my dreams in life. I realized that each step counts and gives a surprising satisfaction when accomplished. Like magic, my motivation increased to take more steps.

Over the past few days, I started a new email address at GMail, learned about setting up a website for e-commerce, followed up on practical matters for the piece of land in Ubud that I am interested in, and enjoyed checking out websites on how to tie a sarong. All in a minimum of time, yet with great pleasure.

I discovered that spending time each day doing something I really enjoy, and hanging out with positive-minded people, are two great ways to charge my battery, especially when I’m feeling flat with a cold.

Photograph: Serious looking guy in the Archeological Museum of Bali in Pejeng.

Bulgarian spring

I observed my body as I was lying completely quiet in the bath tub. It was only the second time I used the bath in the three years I live here. I prefer showering.

But today, I went in recovery mode. A sore throat and aches attacked me suddenly this afternoon, the onset of a cold probably. I quickly took additional vitamin c and echinacaea tablets, but for the most part, I was just quietly relaxing and tuning in to my body’s signals.

I observed that while I have good stamina to continue working when I am not feeling well, my system is telling me to slow down and reflect on regeneration, to pay attention to my body and physiological systems, and my energy levels.

And so I slowed down this evening after coming home, and observed how I felt, and how my body is reacting, and my mind as well. It is such an interesting experience to be one’s own observer. Strangely enough, then, I felt I have to write about it, in stead of just turning in early and sicking it out.

I was touched today by a small red and white cloth string worn around the wrist by my Bulgarian colleague at work. He told me it is an age-old custom in Bulgaria to wear this string in early March to mark the coming of spring. We both remarked how similar it looked to wrist strings worn in several Asian countries to celebrate spiritual and community connections.

So spring is coming, at least in the northern hemisphere, and with it ideas of freshness, new growth, new opportunities. Fertility too, perhaps.

A shocking contrast with my journey home this evening on a road full of smoke-belching buses. I thought of severely polluted cities in other parts of the world that have been able to clean up their act, like London with its infamous and deadly smog in decades past.

What would it take to see air quality on the roads improve in this city that I have called home for many years now? Laws exist but lack enforcement, and what action is attempted is circumvented by operators who seem to put their dirtiest smoke-belching buses on the road in the evening and night when it is dark.

I believe that the heart of development lies in people themselves, both individual and in organizations. But admittedly, I find it hard to imagine how the good efforts of so many citizens in this city can continue to be negated by the folly of a few who still refuse to take responsibility to care about the environment.

So the best for me would be to make sure that these noxious fumes will no longer enter my car, as they do at the moment since my air inlet seems to be malfunctioning. But today’s experience was a lesson about what pedestrians, jeepney passengers, and straphangers in buses suffer on a daily basis. How sad, and what a reminder of great opportunities for improvement.

Regeneration can come at all levels, in body and soul, and in organized society as well. Is that why people these days refer to civil society? I associate the word civil with the knowledge and ability to do the right thing, and to live inside out from love and care for ourselves and our fellow citizens.

Perhaps the bus operators in this city could be given a holiday in Bali and learn from the people there who innately believe in the importance of maintaining balance between people, the spiritual world, and the environment around them.

Meanwhile, regeneration can start everywhere, and all the time. And I experience my part of it now, even as I am not opening my mouth because of a sore throat.

And I salute the Bulgarian custom of celebrating the promise of regeneration by wearing a small red and white string on the wrist at the start of spring.


Photograph: Harmony in pond and bamboo, at the Ayala Museum.

Culturally infused

Let me be honest… it is not everyday that I feel good, even if I know all the ways to live well from the inside out.

I got up late this morning with a burning desire to get out and do something enriching. The friend with whom I had planned to visit Ayala Museum couldn’t make it, and I decided to go anyway, to make good use of the morning mood.

The visit turned me on, really. I felt alive and vibrant! And by what, whom? By an unlikely combination of culture.

As I passed the M Café at Ayala Museum the Sunday morning brunch was in full swing, flavored with crisp sax sounds by Vince Lahorra. I found out his name in passing when I asked a waitress who he was. I listened for a few spell-bound moments, and then decided to continue what I had set out to do. I walked the few more steps to the museum entrance.

The Ayala Museum is seen from top to bottom, literally. You travel up by lift to the fourth floor of the stylishly designed modern building, and it’s all downstairs from there. Except when the exhibits are so good that you linger on each floor. As is usually the case. And although I had visited several times before, today it felt as new.

I was mesmerized by the exhibition on Chinese Diaspora – Art Streams from the Mainland. The Peranakan Legacy display of art objects, clothes, jewellery, and others from Southeast Asian countries allowed me a fresh peek inside the lives of the overseas Chinese who have made this corner of the world their home since they started migrating there from the mainland in the 15th century or earlier.

The beauty and creativity of each piece struck me, as did the humor in assuming the reasons why some pieces had less diamonds than in the original design, hinting that paying off gambling debts might have been to blame. In one case, a beautiful silver and golden belt had additional panels added over the years, presumably to accommodate an increasing waistline as years went by.

Most of all, I was touched that the beauty of the art and the intent of their creators and owners transcended time and place to meet me this morning. As always, there were some sad tinges too, like the wartime story of a family in Penang who plucked a diamond each week from their heirlooms to buy food. A remarkable case how art allowed them to make ends meet. They were lucky to have enough of it.

Another fascinating story was the evolution of clothes worn by overseas Chinese women. From long pants and conservative long-sleeve shirts (baju panjang) into the voluptuous sarong and kebaya introduced in the 1940s. The sarong sensually hugging a woman’s hips. The kebaya intricately designed to show ever more of the woman’s beauty through sheer material that retained traditional form only as a transparent whiff.

One century later, and after spending a week in Bali for my rebirth at 50, I admired the batik garments on show with a realization how they continue to adorn women today with a timeless sexy attraction.

And then there were the spended colors and designs of the batik designs, and of the porcelain. A feast for the eyes, in bright colors that merged the cultural origins from China with those of the Southeast Asian locale, in particular Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

I also learned that Damian Domingo, the first great Filipino painter who established the first Philippine art academy in 1823, was a Chinese Mestizo rather than from Spanish origin as had been assumed. China Gaze by Valeria Cavestany proved to be an enchanting collection of light boxes in a darkened room, with mixed media works depicting Chinese identity in foreign settings.

After more than an hour of feasting my eyes and imagination on the Chinese Diaspora exhibition, and dipping into a few other exhibits as well, I left with a promise to return soon for more.


Descending further and exiting the doors, I was greeted once again by the jazzy sound of Vince Lahorra at the M Café, and I enjoyed his musical hospitality over cappuccino and a pandan sans rival cake. After he finished his gig, we met and chatted, and he invited me to jam with him next time. I felt as if the Universe sent me a nudge to practise more on my sax.

Life without music would be a mistake, a store sign in Singapore said last year.

Today, I got a vivid reminder how much art, culture and music can do to invigorate my life and introduce new friends, connecting more dots. Neglecting that would indeed be a mistake.

Photographs: Ayala Museum Café (top), Chinese Diaspora exhibition (middle), and Vince Lahorra on sax (bottom).

Very alive

After my life-break and rebirth at 50 in Bali a week ago, I returned to work. But I didn’t experience it as going back, but rather as going forward!

Going back implies a stagnant mind, and I feel that I am moving into new territory. Actually, my work challenges are evolving all the time, and I found myself embracing some changes in the past week.

A good part of the late afternoon and early evening today was spent reading about hypnotic writing, and I found Joe Vitale’s book on the topic to be a fascinating read. Without proper writing skills and approach, I realized how much is likely to get “lost in translation” or simply never read because readers get bored easily and move on.

My reading time was spent in the spacious Starbucks store in 6750 office tower, and I enjoyed seeing a friend there who recently got promoted to manage this most prestigious of Starbucks locations in Makati.

Meanwhile, I’ve been following up on the interesting piece of land I saw last week in Bali, overlooking a quiet forested valley 20 minutes up-country from Ubud. I requested the agent if it could be properly measured, and I think I will find out soon if the piece is waiting for me.

The past two evenings saw me taking time off from writing to have a break and earlier sleep, but I found that I missed the rhythm of daily writing and posting. What nice feeling!

Photograph: Image of Atintya, the Balinese supreme unknowable God, shown as thoroughly alive with flames around his body, Photo by Rio Helmi in the Knopf Guide on Bali.