Village life

As I got up at 5, my inner voice told me to go walk in the park, so I donned my sports outfit, jogged down 14 floors, and walked to the park, which is only 200 m away. It was still dark when I started brisk-walking the track, which is attractively laid out. And I realized that my village wakes up early, at least some of its citizens. Several early risers were already walking, stretching, jogging, some alone, and some couples enjoying togetherness, walking hand in hand.

It seemed like a daily routine, because a few cats who were observing the proceedings from the edge of the path did not move an inch when I walked by closely. I enjoyed my morning walk, and on returning to my apartment I decided to walk up the stairs in stead of taking the lift. On Saturday mornings, the park hosts a market, which I will make sure to visit next time.

Wassenaar, the village where I grew up does not have any high-rises like Salcedo, yet is not at all rural either. As a suburban abode of the Netherlands’ seat of government, it hosts lots of diplomatic residences and up-market though small shops, and I enjoyed many walks in its parks, and bicycle rides in the dunes close to the sea.

In contrast, the village of Celab Bu’ung where I am developing my Bali home is very rural, and lacks the amenities I have taken for granted in the towns where I have lived so far. Whatever comfort is needed, I will have to create in my own compound. And yet, it has abundant charms of a natural environment and beautiful people, and I look forward to explore and enjoy living there later on.

Yesterday, I listened to the mayor of one of Metro Manila’s cities explain how she turned it from a non-descript bedroom suburb into an award-winning liveable community for its 500,000 souls, featuring a river-front jogging park, broad sidewalks without vendors, a healthy public market, affordable low-income housing, wifi-enabled schools and public buildings, and more than 50 km of bicycle tracks with 30,000 users. It took the husband-and-wife mayoral team 15 years of vision and values, legislation, social marketing, and enforcement to achieve this, and she is brimming with more ideas.

Through these musings, I am discovering that village life is about living and connecting with the people around me, about making my place of residence into a home, and about contributing to the community that hosts me. All around me, there are people who want to make the world a better place, starting with life in their "village".

Photograph: Small offerings are part of daily community life in Bali.

Morning mix

The light plays brightly around the skyscrapers. As I look around, the roofs of Salcedo village light up as they reflect the morning rays. All around me, people live in high-rises, yet I don’t see anyone on balconies savoring the morning light with me. The fact is, most apartments don’t have balconies and I feel privileged to enjoy sitting on mine, with two small palms and the wall tiles providing a green environment.

As the village comes alive, a fresh breeze greets me lightly. When I woke up at 5, the first sound I heard was birds chirping, which surprised me in such an urban environment. I can still here them now, mixed with cars that gently use their horns, as if hesitating to disturb the morning just yet. A school bus of the Manila International School rumbles down the street, and children are singing happy birthday in a classroom somewhere way below my 14th floor vista. Meanwhile, music from a Balinese ethnic jazz group wafts through the open doors of my apartment. And I suddenly realize that the miracle of life is repeating itself yet again. I feel reborn.

Last Friday marked the start of the Balinese new year, traditionally celebrated with a day of quiet, known as Nyepi. The coincidence only dawned on me in the evening, as I realized that my move to Makati’s Salcedo Village fell on the same day. A good time to celebrate, I reflected, as I entered my new life phase. I live by myself again, for the first time after 20 years.

Today, I will select photographs of my loved ones to display in my apartment. I love my new place, and I live forward.

Photograph: Salcedo morning.

Creating my Future

“Have you found joy? Has your life brought joy to others?”

- Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) explaining to Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) the questions asked of ancient Egyptians as they entered heaven, in The Bucket List

But why should I wait until the portals of an Egyptian heaven to answer these two questions? Four days ago I turned 51 and traveled to Bali to celebrate the day, like I did last year when I passed through the grand doorway of midlife. The future I am creating is now taking shape, and it is a perfect time for good questions.

Have I found joy in my life? My answer is a wholehearted yes. What comes to my mind is the movie Bienvenido a Casa, where actress Pilar Lopez de Ayala tells her boyfriend that she loves him for five minutes, and then another five, and so on. My love affair with life is growing in that way, as I learn to celebrate each moment, every five minutes, and every day.

Over the past few years, I have invested more and more in this love affair, and I enjoy the daily sense of thrill, joy and risk it brings into my life. I feel that Richard Carlson was right when he encouraged his male readers to nurture their passion for life with the intensity of having an affair. “The idea is to reignite your passion for living, and to see the extraordinary in the ordinary,” he wrote in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Men.

Have others found joy because of me? This question enters into my thoughts more often these days. It feels as if I am entertaining a smiling visitor with a mission, like “God” (Morgan Freeman – again!) popping repeatedly into the life of Congressman Baxter in the movie Evan Almighty, to remind him of life’s purpose. I know I am on the right track, and the results will surely follow.

My life coaching is one way to help others enrich their lives. I have been making good progress with my course in the past weeks, which encourages me. I also noticed that when I live in the moment, in “the zone”, it sends a good signal to those around me. It must be generating a field of positive energy that affects others in a good way.

Normally I like to keep the subject of my blog post to myself while I am reflecting and writing it. Yesterday, however, I decided to ask a good friend about the second question, and her response startled me.

Joy is a choice, she said, going on to illustrate this with her own experience. She explained how a lot of people she met from all walks of life, would find joy in meeting her, and were able to express it readily. However, some others would look as if they were caught up in a self-spun web, that prevented them from expressing joy, regardless of the circumstances or the people they met.

I appreciated and learned from her point of view, as I realized anew that making a difference in someone else’s life requires giving, as well as a willingness from the other side to benefit joyfully from the relationship.

Recently, I met a professional coach from Australia who told me of his first job as a parole officer, when he was still in his early twenties. The lesson he shared with me was that only a few of the delinquent boys under his care would show interest and benefit from their interaction with him, while the majority did not, or at least not yet. This pattern, he said, continued all through his career as a coach. He learned to enjoy the process of discovering the people who were ready to benefit from his service.

Here in Bali, where I am spending a week to select an architect to design my Ubud home, it seems to me that most people are innately endowed with an ability to find joy in meeting people. They show it with happy faces, warm smiles, and friendly words. I have experienced it with shop keepers, bank staff, farmers, architects, home owners, passers by, and even the manager of the laundry shop. Their smiles reflect, and amplify mine.

I feel that I can tick two boxes on my own bucket list, and will check out the Egyptian heaven some day.


Photograph: Carter and Cole discussing the Egyptian questions, in The Bucket List.

Bubbles and trinities

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

- Peter Drucker

Although it is still early in the new year, the first month has already come and gone. In magazines and websites around the world, sharing advice on personal resolutions for 2008 has made way for encouragements on how to spend money during Valentines, which is closing in fast on those who allow themselves to be led by such advertising.

I don’t mind at all that I am running behind on this score. The question how to live my life better in 2008 still keeps me wondering, and in fact I reflect on it every morning and evening. And why not? I know that if I don’t pay attention, I might end up joining the throngs of people whose lives are decided more by others than by themselves.

Brian Tracy says that only 10% of people are proactive and “take their lives into their own hands and make things happen.” He urges people to step on the accelerator of their own personal journey of discovery.

Yesterday morning I read Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. His enthusiasm and inquiry are infectious for me. They inspire me to keep finding ways to live life better.

Two weeks ago I threw out my old to-do list and replaced it with a new approach which is much more alive. I am blowing bubbles now, every morning. And in the evening I gaze at the results happily. I have learned to resist my habitual urge to write everything important (which adds up to an impossible number) and limit myself to jotting down, in long hand, what strikes me as most important for the day.

I have created bubbles for my current priority areas in life, all on one page. The tasks written are now part of areas of life I like to see prosper. Some are for my soul, one about music, another about writing practice, and growing money, and several for different aspects of my work.

Nothing much has come between me and my bubbles these past two weeks, especially in the early morning when I blow them. The rest of the day is for watching them grow and glow. My life has definitely become more successful and enjoyable as a result of this new practice.

Blowing bubbles also helps me to reconfirm that being positive is best. Even though my mind keeps churning out reasons for being negative and attention for what could go wrong this day, month, and year, I have decided that it is best to drop this thinking altogether. I have no wish to abuse myself or others.

Perfectionism is a form of self-abuse. As a friend pointed out, it blocks personal freedom. I was able to see it for what it was at Jim Paredes’ Tapping the Creative Universe workshop in 2003, and let it go.

As for criticism by others, I have no need to prove anything, as I am good and whole. I can clarify my track record if needed, and that's enough. I have limitless access to the resources of Dao. 2008 is a good time for upsizing, not criticizing. When criticized, I will turn that energy around and direct it to a positive purpose.

For sure, I could not manage to live my life in this way if I still followed my earlier evening pastimes of spending long hours watching TV or doing computer games (in my case flight simulation). I realized that it just consumed my time and stopped me from creating things myself.

I rarely watch TV at all nowadays, and just click on CNN’s website a few times a day to update myself on important news. I am happy for myself that I found more creative things to do than watching TV.

My life coaching study is on track again, and I got a good rating for the last assignment I sent in to my tutor. I discovered how to apply sets of 3 core messages to inspire people to change. I had to think of the holy trinity. What holy trinity? Well, any will do, as it seems that many leading spiritual traditions recognize a holy trinity at the core of their “beliefs”. Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism all pay respect to a trinity. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more to be found.

Is this because people cannot remember more than 3 core messages? That is what I learned from public relations friends. Tell people more points and they are likely to forget all, they said. So distilling 3 fundamentals on which to base action is key.

On the other hand, when trying to help people answer the question of why to change, good reasons to adopt a new practice are often presented in numbers of 10, I noticed. Firing more arrows at the target seems to be the more effective strategy here, because people face different situations and hurdles for change. We simply don’t know in advance which arrow will hit the target.

After accepting a key message, and understanding the reasons to change, it is time to stimulate people to take action, and set targets for results. In this third area of focus, it seems that 5 is an effective number. Ask people more than 5 things to do, and it will likely be too much. Actually 5 is still a lot.

But 5 actions fit nicely into a bubble! It works for me...

Photograph: the pleasure of blowing sax, courtesy of my Nokia Music Xpress 5300.

Ode to a Fire Horse

Born under the sign of the fire rooster, I warmly appreciate and empathize with other fiery inhabitants of the zodiac.

Here is a sample of what a collection of wise people have written about fire horses:

"Fire Horses are dynamic creatures, with a vigor that promises youth and freshness until the very end of life.

The will and the spirit of the Fire Horse cannot be broken. This Horse goes through life with philosophical patience and the ability to bounce back from adversity no matter how dire the circumstances.

In times of solitude, Fire Horses also have an insatiable need for intellectual stimulation and they satisfy their curiosity for learning through reading, listening, conversing, and travel abroad.

Fire Horses make inspiring leaders, revered and respected. They encourage their subordinates with kindness and just the right degree of strictness and work well with people in all stations of life.

Financial rewards fall in the middle ground, not too bad, not terrific, but always comfortable.

Being in love with the Fire Horse brings pure rapture. These noble Horses are generous with their love, with hugs and kisses.

Loved ones always know where they stand because Fire Horses demonstrate every day through their actions the love they feel deep within. Each day is a soft and tender love poem."

From: www.tuvy.com

"The Fire Horse is highly strung, powerful, inconsistent, alluring and motivated by strength of will."

From: www.paranormality.com

"Fire Horses are seen as outgoing, people-loving, ambitious, rebellious, and independent. They are supposedly freedom-loving and impossible to contain."

From: www.io.com

"When they fall in love, Horses seem to lose all logic, all sense of perspective. Unpredictable at the best of times, when they lose their hearts, there is simply no telling what the Horse-born will do next."

From: www.holymtn.com

I offer this ode as a salutation to the fire horse friend who will celebrate her birthday tomorrow.


Photograph: Fire horse

Blowing Bubbles in 2008

After deciding yesterday that upsizing will be my motto this year, I started wondering how this could help me forward in delivering results in priority areas of my life. And I realized that if there is anything I both loved and hated last year, it was my to-do list.

Like the saying goes about women, that men can neither live with them nor without them, the same applies to me and my to-do list. I love to have a place to jot down what to do, and I do so enthusiastically all through my waking hours. What happens after the jotting down is another story altogether. Once a good idea has landed on my to-do list, it seems prone to certain death. I find it so hard to transform these written exhortations back to life, to the real-time action that I needed to be reminded of in the first place!

What is in my head is chaos and I like it that way, the sheer creativity of it. I never stop to be amazed how many good ideas I can catch and cook in a day, particularly in the early morning. How to combine all that left-brain creativity and liveliness with some right-brain common sense about prioritizing and delivering? How to capture the ideas but not kill them in the process, and nurture them to live forward in a more organized space where important and feasible ideas are filtered and prioritized? A few months I wrote Work is Art on top of my to-do list, but even that didn’t bring the actions to life as I wished it would.

Then it hit me, that what I was looking for might be something like the bubbles I blew when I was a child, those temporary, fragile, living, moving, beautiful and transparent globules that I loved to see grow and rise until they popped! And some never did, they simply floated out of my sight. Could it be that some of the priority initiatives of my to-do list and life plan did not grow as I had wished because I hadn’t blown enough love and life into them? Could I revive the boy in me to blow bubbles, to see them grow, and to achieve more of my dreams that way in 2008?

I took this bull by the horns, and set to work. I decided that my written life plan for the new year would not look like the one for last year after all, and neither would my to-do list. If I couldn’t live without it, and I knew I could not, at least I could transform it into something much more alive. Et voilá, after half an hour, I had filled a blank page in MS Word with a collection of bubbles of various shapes, colors, and sizes (I quickly encountered my limits of experience in using clip art to create more forms of bubbles). The title…. Blowing Bubbles in 2008!

Another half hour passed and I had empty bubbles for my current priority areas in life, all on one page. Some were central to my life, like “my times for spirit, soul, and body”, “my times with loved ones”, “my music practice” (Paulo Coelho’s The Witch of Portobello reminded me once again how important music is to tease more life out of me) and, of course, “my money.” Other bubbles were created for important priorities in my personal life, and in my work life. This morning, I started using this new approach, and captured ideas into these bubbles, to be loved and nurtured to action there.

And I was surprised by the obvious when I found out that a positive side effect of using bubbles was that they have limits to what they can accommodate. Where to-do lists just kept expanding, the boundaries of the bubbles on the paper kept me focused on writing a few priorities into each one. Too much would weigh them down too, I reflected. And rather than having to scan up and down a to-do list, I looked at my bubbles, and realized that unless I loved them enough to blow life into each of them, the actions written there might surely wither and die. And if any bubble was found to be leaking, I would need to blow harder!

For a moment, I wondered if labeling each bubble “my this” and “my that” wasn’t being overly ego-centric. And then I realized it had to be that way. My priorities were only going to be achieved if I cared about them enough, and blew enough life and energy into them, so that, like real-life bubbles, they could bring me pleasure and dissolve in their own good time. If I wouldn’t care enough, the bubbles would have no meaning at all.

What a nice discovery, that blowing bubbles had a lot to do with making my new year resolutions and giving them life to succeed.

Photograph: Place to enjoy bubbles: a bath tub in the Maya Ubud resort hotel, Bali.

Downsize or upsize?

The new year is already in full swing, and I have been wondering what resolutions to make. Last year, I started on a life plan for 2007 and beyond. This came at the time of preparing for my rebirth at 50. I went through a process of working out my vision, mission, and values, capturing my dreams in words, determining main life goals, and mapping out results and actions for the year. I also wrote down what I should stop and avoid doing.

All in all, it was a thorough exercise involving my mind, soul, and spirit, and it helped me prioritize my life around three arenas: being true to myself, growing to my potential, and caring and sharing for others. I finished the life plan on April fool’s day, 9 months ago. And not surprisingly, what I wrote still looked fine to me when I reviewed it during the past week.

So what resolutions could I possibly make to add more value to my life? I pondered this question for many days, and today I found an answer that satisfied me. New year resolutions are, of course, about change, and about commitment to action that will achieve the desired results. That requires priority setting, and last year I learned that while I felt that I could do almost anything if I put my mind to it, most certainly I could not do everything I wished!

My list of actions for last year was already focused, yet still long, thereby reflecting my ambitious goals and big dreams. In fact, one of the questions I reflected on this past week was if I shouldn't downsize some of my life dreams and plans to fit better within my constraints, especially those of the obvious financial kind. The more I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make. In particular, I questioned if I should really pursue large investments in a dream house project in Bali at a time when I am facing high costs in my present situation, with likely increases on the way.

In fact, I had already started writing resolutions with a view to downsizing into my PDA when, yesterday morning, I came across an inspiring video clip on You Tube that helped me see and choose the opposite direction. In the clip, John and Cynthia Hardy explained how they decided to move on with their lives after spending the last 15 years building up a successful jewelry business, starting in Bali and expanding to Bangkok, Hong Kong and New York. They said they had realized that the time had come to pass on the company to a trusted partner, and spend their time and creativity on a variety of projects for promoting sustainable development in Bali, including a nature-friendly school and other environmentally sustainable investments.

In the message, John and Cynthia said that they felt it was time to pay back for all that Bali had given them so generously over the years. What struck me was that in making their decision, they kept thinking big, which had apparently already become a habit for them. And although I could see that each of their projects would involve substantial investments, it seemed to me that they were not much concerned about constraints. Rather, they exuded a sense of abundance and excitement, and were clearly ready to take risks with some confidence that resources would be attracted to finance whatever it would take, over time.

After watching their clip, I opened my PDA and deleted downsizing from my list. I knew instinctively that I had been on the right path in dreaming to upsize my life in stead. More important than the actual resources at hand was the realization that I can live my life better for myself and others by embracing a sense of abundance and by dropping my all too human fears of scarcity and inadequate resources. In fact, my own lessons learned over the past years came back to tell me to keep expanding, to visualize living forward and realizing my life dreams for the benefit of myself and those around me. I realized that this lesson needs to be revisited every day, and that this New Year’s day and week have been a perfect time to recheck my compass and course.

Photograph: Switches to choose from in the gazebo of the newly completed Villa Agnes in Ubud, Bali.

Year of the Door

Lots of things happened this past year. I just re-read some of what I wrote a year ago today, and have been reflecting on how I have grown. What made the year most memorable for me is that I turned a half century.

I will remember 2007 as my Year of the Door. For 83 days I prepared myself through a journey of daily reflection, and what a rich experience that was. I moved through my midlife passage like through a door, with great mindfulness, and was reborn at 50! As a Zen saying goes, "the mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

Yesteryear was good. Today is new. Next year will come tomorrow, and I find myself living forward. I am once again in Ubud, Bali this week, enjoying its rustic charm and the friendliness of its people. “It is truly a global village,” remarked Mark Ulyseas, the Indian local correspondent of the Bali Times, when we enjoyed live jazz last night at the local “As One” hangout. The place was filled with international and local residents from all over the world, and new contacts were made easily.

During a break, Mark and I walked over to the guest keyboard player who had jammed with the band, and I told him how I had appreciated his music. He turned out to be an American from Los Angeles, visiting Ubud for the umptieth time with his Dutch–Dominican girlfriend. There were many Japanese guests too, as the owner of As One is a Japanese painter, and his wife is a virtuoso soprano saxophonist who leads the band twice a week.

When I turned 50 earlier this year, I decided to buy a block of land here in Ubud and make it my home after some years. The process of registering the land is now almost complete, and over the past few days I have made arrangements to start construction of the access road. The previous owner has already used part of my money to build a new shop house, and his new property is now an easy landmark on the main village artery to find the turn-off into the private road that will lead to my Ubud home 50 meters inside.

I also contacted three local architects to visit the land and make proposals for developing my Ubud home project in a manner that blends into the natural environment of the surrounding forest and the terraces sloping down to the small river deep below. I actually climbed down to the river this time, and was rather painfully reminded of that journey for two days by aching thighs.

When I bid farewell to 2007 tonight, I will do so with a big smile, as I gratefully remember the palette of opportunities it offered me, many of which I was able to take action on.

I saw the door and appreciated all it stood for as I walked through it into the next phase of my life. I cannot think of a better accomplishment. It was the highlight of my year.

Photograph: Balinese door symbolizing my rebirth at 50 (top), and the location where the access road to my Ubud home will start (bottom).

Silence is golden

“How about just facing up to the void? … Each of us contains something within us that is unknown, but which, when it surfaces, is capable of producing miracles.”

Paulo Coelho in The Witch of Portobello

The gingko leaves turned a blazing gold against the autumn sunlight, and masses of people, mostly in beautiful and trendy attire, thronged the streets on the way to their destinations.

The sights in this megapolis never fail to amaze me, with so many people on the move, constantly. I watch them with interest, and then they fade out of my sight, never to be seen again, like flowing river water that never stays in one place.

It reminds me that everything changes, that my mind creates illusions of permanence where there is none. When will I grasp this? I do so as I write, and a warming smile follows uncontrollably. There are no prisons, only my mind’s fixations, and life to be lived forward.

I visualize waves rolling through me, without end, ever beautiful in their revolving chaos. Like chocolate, only taking on form temporarily, for the purpose of being admired and consumed, and then to melt again, into energy, then into no-thingness. My luck knows no end, it simply is, and evolves.

This forbidding city of concrete cubes, straight steel, and reflecting glass amazes me by its people and creative energy. Any visitor can join the experience to float on the surface of its sea of life. Street signs are bilingual, so getting lost is hard, and going with the flow is easy when you adapt to it, with so much to see.

In One Continuous Mistake – Four Noble Truths for Writers, Gail Sher challenged her readers to “find a way to describe five different silences precisely”, and “within each of five clamorous settings filter out the silent core and articulate its nature.”

As I listened to customer chatter and the repeated exclamations by Starbucks baristas to their incoming and outgoing guests, it came as a shock that I could find silence in myself, indestructible it seemed, like soundless water flowing over a weathered rock.

And as I met my silence, I smiled, at no one in particular, feeling quite at home among my fellow citizens in a store so brightly decorated for Christmas.


Seeking out silence, I felt like I was facing up to the swirling void inside and around me, knowing that miracles are calling out to be born, like shining stars appearing in a dark December night.

Photo: Golden gingko tree (top) and Tokyo’s skyline surrounding the Imperial Palace (bottom).

Unfolding powers

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."

Erich Fromm

"Art is beauty plus pity."

Vladimir Nabokov


I have known for some time that wisdom grows when I entertain doubt, uncertainty and confusion. When I am filled with knowledge and certainty, there is simply no space left to gain new insights and see the dots in the universe around me connecting. Being uncertain opens me up to question, to search for meaning, as Erich Fromm said.

In a cyclical process, I find that I can move forward after I question, search, listen, and see dots connecting. And then it is time to start all over again. Yesterday’s wisdom is rarely adequate to start the new day. It’s an attitude of continuous questioning that helps me. Cultivating a beginner’s mind, said Shunryu Suzuki, the wise Zen teacher in San Francisco.

In another way, however, I find that uncertainty works the opposite for me. It blocks me from what I want to do. I end up feeling powerless when I cannot decide, and uncertainty makes it easier for me to procrastinate. When I end up with inaction, I feel trapped doing little where I should have done a lot.

In the past days, I have struggled to act on my intention to get up an hour earlier, just before the crack of dawn. It is proving to be a great challenge. There is something that has blocked me so far, and with each sounding of the alarm, I end up snoozing it again in my uncertainty about getting up. This puzzles me, and I have yet to see my powers unfolding to deal with this straightforward challenge. I have already reflected that I need to be fired up with passion to adopt the new habit.

For me, passion means that I don’t want to miss out on something I treasure. In the past I felt passionate about playing golf and I did not mind getting up early for that. Nowadays I count myself lucky to be passionate for my work, and I have no trouble getting up early to get to the airport in time for an early flight. And of course passion for my significant other could also make me do new and unusual things.

It dawns on me that my solution lies in being aware and making choices. My grand intentions will get realized step by step. Like art holds beauty and pity, each of my moments holds a promise of both action and inaction, which live side by side. I can find inspiration in the words of other life travelers, and emulate their steps, as I need all the inspiration I can find.

The big picture around me is always changing, like clouds in the sky. Every day needs a new start, as I untangle the challenges of uncertainty and my snoozing alarm.

Photograph: Untangling a web, at Métissages, A Crossbreeding of Contemporary Art and Textiles, exhibition in the National Museum, Jakarta.

Sprinkling stardust

When Victoria opened the cloth placed in her hand there was only dust, not the star she had asked her boyfriend to bring her as proof of his love.

To find the star, Tristan had passed through the opening in the village wall into the unseen world where extraordinary magic was the staple food of everyday life.

When he came back to his girlfriend to set her free of their earlier vow, he was a changed man. He had fallen in love with a true star.

The movie kept my daughter’s eyes glued to the screen while she munched her popcorn quietly.

Crossing the walls between us and magic is easy to do for children, and for the boy in me, if only I allow myself to explore that realm on a daily basis.

The stories I bring back seem like dust, but through my own tranformation, I can sprinkle magical stardust whenever I like.

Photograph: From tears to art, at Métissages, A Crossbreeding of Contemporary Art and Textiles, exhibition in the National Museum, Jakarta.

Not what it seems

I liked the apartment, which had been renovated with cool furnishings that created a zen-like atmosphere. The broker said she knew the owner … and later I heard from another broker that it was her own apartment.

I was also shown several other attractive places … and it turned out that they had been taken already.

The soy cappuccino was frothy and smooth to the taste. The Starbucks barista had smiled like there was no tomorrow… and I had to repeat my order three times … and I received way too much change … and my friend was served a drink he hadn’t ordered.

Reality is different for each one of us, and everyone interprets it in their own way. And besides, the more I think I know reality, I realize that I don’t.

On that day that everything turned out differently, I felt as if I could see the world around me with new eyes … and that was probably an illusion too. But I felt lucky anyway.

Photograph: Unusual blouse at Métissages, A Crossbreeding of Contemporary Art and Textiles, exhibition in the National Museum, Jakarta.

Half step forward, a civilized stride

It was still early morning when I entered the restroom in the brand new airport of Jinan in China’s Shandong Province. I had arrived at 6 am to catch the 8 am flight to Hong Kong and found the airport still closed. For the first time in my life I saw an airport’s morning ritual of staff and travelers arriving and counters opening.

By 7 am I was through check-in and immigration, and found a coffee shop where I enjoyed a cup of “Minded Coffee”. It helped me with waking up. And then, when I visited the restroom before boarding, I saw another example of unusual English usage that broadened my horizon. "To preceding half step A civilized stride". The meaning was clear enough, even if the English was not. A half step forward goes a long way in maintaining cleanliness in that public place, so it is a step forward for civilization.

And as I did what was requested, it occurred to me that taking a half step forward can make a difference in other situations too. For me, it is often challenging to take that first small step to get me going in my journey to improve “civilization” in myself and my surroundings. The same challenge, time after time.

Photographs: Coffee (top) and restroom request (bottom) at Jinan international airport, Shandong Province, China.

On my nose

“Zen is like looking for the spectacles that are sitting on your nose.”
D. T. Suzuki

I remained silent as I listened to Ubud’s awakening. Purring motorcycles made their way through another splendid morning. Villas stood unmoving amidst the green. Birds sang to each other. Pink frangipani welcomed the morning freshness. The sun spread its rays for all. I remained quiet, savoring it all.

During my five days in Bali, one of the places I visited was Goa Gajah, a centuries old cave where the first kings of Bali came to meditate in alcoves hewn from the rock face. I found it full of positive energy, surrounded by ancient trees and a water temple where the spouts do not run dry. Ruins of a Buddhist vihara destroyed in an earthquake in 1917 strewn in a river bed. The community was finalizing preparations for the annual visit by the gods during the temple’s Odalan festival.
















A guide shared the history of the temple, and his personal history. A devout Hindu, he saw himself as the reincarnation of a temple abbot in the Java’s Majapahit era. For twelve years, he said, he allowed himself to be accompanied by a guardian from the “other world” with powers to make his wishes come true. In 2005, he broke the connection as he realized that he could move forward without such help. When he doesn’t guide visitors, he works as cook in the temple kitchen.

I found Bali full of contradictions and surprises. After days of enjoying the rustic rural charm of Ubud’s environs, spending a night in the rapidly expanding urban centers close to the airport seemed chaotic. Yet I also saw that temple festivals remain prominent in both rural areas and in the city. And I was told that Balinese people might spend as much as half of their income on temple festivals that are organized by their community. When dining in La Lucciola restaurant in trendy Seminyak (the Yak), I saw lots of devotees at the Odalan festival of the temple next door, praying on the beach.













Back at home, I marveled at life’s lessons from all around me. Open doors and windows bring a variety of smells of life, some pleasant, some not. Yet they all remind me how extraordinary life is. I think I found the glasses that Suzuki sensei was referring to.

Photographs: Temple guide (top) and meditation cave (middle) at Goa Gajah, and Odalan procession (bottom) in Ubud, Bali.

Forgot to laugh

They slipped out of my life.

Walking back with a friend from lunch break yesterday, I wondered out loud why I haven’t laughed much in the past months. As I thought about it, I smiled, and my smile turned into a laugh easily. My lunch mate laughed too. What happened to the activities that made me happy before?

Playing music and writing help me to feel good and relax. Sharing time with good friends does too. I should make them a part of my life again, schedule them to make sure they happen. Knowing what makes me happy is not enough, it’s the doing that matters. Do it!

But do I really need do to something to be happy? I can slip into happiness without reason, from the inside out, from knowing that I am walking my personal journey, that everything is going to work out, and that I am surrounded by positive energy I can tap. Sounds good, but do it!

Do I need to go back to activities that made me happy earlier, or try new things? That does not seem important. I don’t feel bored with nice activities that I like up till now. And I know that I can always explore new things. But it’s fine to return to activities I like, and make them a regular part of my life. Do it!

Or do I need to buy new things to be happy? Well, I have been wondering about buying an iPod recently, especially after Apple sliced the prices in half. The new models look great, and even the old ones. I like the idea of carrying a wide range of music to suit my moods, in a “form” that fits any of my pockets, but with enough memory to forget it has a limit.

Anyway, I am happy as I am and with what I have. More possessions won’t make a difference. Except, I admit, I keep buying books, and they keep enriching my life. I enjoy browsing, buying, reading, and digesting books. Keep doing it!

So on the whole, about laughter and happiness, it’s remembering to do it that matters most for me. I’ll be it, do it, and schedule it if a week passes by without it.

As for today, I decided to join band practice and enjoy playing sax and listening to the others.

Photograph: HAPPY CHAOS BE MY GOVERNMENT - pavement art at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Temporary art

It was marvelous, the way she was engrossed in her art. Right there on the pavement, on the river bank, as residents and tourists walked by. Some even walked over the works made by fellow artists on the same path.

A place full of creative expression and impression, that’s what I thought. I’m talking about the South bank along Melbourne’s Yarra river. You meet sidewalk artists, and throngs of people visiting Victoria’s National Gallery, where the Guggenheim collection of modern are is on display. And just across the bridge, Federation Square features continuous gatherings of artists, musicians, and their audience.

People come to see, and be seen, for art, dining, drinking, shopping, and sports, which are all located along the river banks in this vibrant city. Not long ago, though, decrepit dockland buildings stood here, and the river was a polluted sewer, like most rivers still are in Asia. Until Melbourne’s residents started to embrace their river, and the river banks turned into prime property. What a nice thing to make happen.

I saw the same development in Brisbane, where citizens tore out the old docklands and replaced them with public facilities like galleries, convention center, state library, lots of eateries, and pathways for skaters, lovers, and just about anybody. Citizens now refer to the river as the city’s life blood.

In Melbourne, I cruised the Yarra river, visited its vineyards, including Yering Station, Victoria’s first, and drank plenty of nice white and red wines. After stretching my mind watching Guggenheim’s art collection, I lay down on a carpeted section of the museum to admire the stained glass windows in the ceiling. And an hour later I lay down on the grassy banks of the Yarra river under a gum tree (one of the hundreds of species of Eucalyptus), looking upward in space.

All this I did in the company of good friends, who treated me like only good friends will, and expanded my understanding of friendship in the process. With a friend, it’s so inspiring and easy to make nice things happen. And when you part ways, you know the coming together was good. Like an artwork on the pavement, an offering was made with trust into the future. It may seem temporary, but it lasts in the eye of the beholder.

Photograph: Art on the pavement (top), and Melbourne by the Yarra River (bottom).

Mind your references

I read Robin Sharma this morning about the importance of having positive reference points. “Doors you never knew existed will begin to open,” he wrote. On the other hand, he continued “Often, we have weak reference points so we see the limitations of a scenario rather than the opportunities.”

So true, I thought. Right now, I need a positive male reference point who looks slim and athletic. I have been gaining weight over the past weeks, and it’s high time to shed some and return to the shape I feel happy in. Fortunately I know how to do that, and I’ve done it before. I can manage my weight, not by eating less, but by selecting what I eat. Eat yourself slim, à la Michel Montignac. So actually, I could be my own reference point this time around.

Although I have been posting less frequently on this blog, and feeling the poorer for it, I have continued my soul journey and learned a lot. And while I think it should not matter so much where I am, I found that it actually does. Traveling influences my inner journey. Just after returning from holiday with my kids in Holland and England, I flew back to Europe, to Stockholm this time, and stayed there for a week.

The center of Stockholm in summer is a great place for walking, and I did plenty of it, alone and more often with friends. Evenings spent walking in the old city and looking for a place to eat were especially memorable. There were times I wished I had brought my sax to play in the street, with a hat on the floor.

A few days after returning to Manila my next destination brought me forward to Singapore and Jakarta. During this trip, I thought a lot about my work as a passion. I love to see the bigger picture in the work I do, and I discovered that this is my calling. I also mused about “quality” and enjoyed reading how Robert Pirsig discovered its central importance in our lives when he wrote his classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

A friendly Indian professor remarked to me in Singapore that he realized the meaning of “quality” when a variety of smells filled his hotel room after he turned off the aircon which was too cold for him. Quality is about the care given to make things work well. Quality is made behind the scenes, in heart and mind. When it becomes a shared value among people working together, it will show up in the product or service they deliver. If we pay attention, we can observe the importance of quality as Robert Pirsig did, and it gives us new positive reference points to live by.

Sharma mentioned Lance Armstrong, his father and mother, Richard Branson, Madonna and Peter Drucker as some of his positive reference points, and most of all Mick Jagger who still captivates audiences by strutting on stage in live concerts at the mature age of 62. Other people might feel the end of their life approaching at that age. As Sharma said, it all comes down to choosing our reference points.

Photograph: New houses in Jakarta – is walled security or Polly Pocket design their reference point?

Believe the impossible

When Alice said in Wonderland that there is no use in trying to believe impossible things, the Queen responded “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Self-help bookshelves are full of titles about making dreams come true, and we spend much of our time trying to believe incredible things. In reflection of that, a cartoon movie The Incredibles became a box office hit not long ago. We believe in the fiction, romance, and anime stories we watch and read, and sometimes we get inspired by them. Yet like Alice it is all too easy to shrink back from believing in impossible things taking place in our own lives.

Rhonda Byrne and her friends explain in The Secret that it is not enough to think about what we want in our lives. For the law of attraction to work in our advantage, we need to believe in our dreams, to visualize them, and to feel them. That is more than reading a book or watching a movie, but these can inspire us to make a start and see the dots in our life connecting.

I love to take books with me when I travel, and some of them invariably are about self-enrichment. I get inspired by reading books ― well, some of them ― and it works much faster than seeing a 90 minute film. Just a few pages will do. Books are a source of inspiration to me everyday and wherever I go, and I don’t mind carrying the extra kilos in my bag.

Taking a two-week break in Holland and England helped me to simplify my life and learn to enjoy every moment more. I saw nature’s art in the bark of an oak tree in front of my primary school, enjoyed walking my friend’s South African dog Whiskey in a chilly dark night, raced with dizzying speed through London in a double-decker bus on the way to the theatre, shared my daughter’s thrill to feed a sharp-beaked emu from her open hand, danced to the beat of the Blue Man Group, and marveled at the sight of an English couple taking their new-born baby to the pub.

And, of course, I bought more books, including The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch, his best work according to the critics. I look forward to reading it.

I also received life lessons about friendship, going the extra mile, and about someone’s daily struggle with a fading determination to live when blessed old age seems to come with ever more weakness and fatigue. The time comes when we have to allow the souls of our elders to pass on, with our warmest wishes, and with an assurance that they and we “will be fine.” And yet, every day may bring unforeseen blessings, and who knows when our time of passing will arrive? I was reminded of Jim Paredes’ counsel to live every day as if it were our last.

Life is truly miraculous when we awake to believe the impossible, before or after breakfast!

Photograph: Feeding an Emu.

Sideways

Think sideways!
Edward de Bono

The past weeks saw me visiting Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Jakarta. I got to know people better in these three cities, and learned about their cultures and ways of getting things done. Malaysian friends explained me their love for bright colors and appreciation for form and decorum. Singaporean friends showed me how they achieve results through commitment and good relationships. And Indonesian friends demonstrated how each person’s view is taken into account, with care to find solutions together. I enjoyed being immersed in this kaleidoscope of cultures.

I also clocked lots of mileage on my soul journey and wrote page after page on the inner wall of my awareness. Meanwhile, my blog space remained quietly untouched. The direction of my musings was sideways and across my life. And I found that the way forward became clearer as a result.

Sending an SMS to the “wrong” person made me wonder if there is such a thing as a wrong address. We are all connected. Everything I write should be readable to all. And it often is, through myself or others. Every email and SMS is a packet of energy, easily shared with others. Sending positive energy helps us all. As for other energies, there is no need to send it anywhere.

Knowing how this works is to understand life’s biggest secret, which has been revealed in bookshops and television shows across the globe thanks to Rhonda Byrne and her team of empowerment gurus. The big Secret is the law of attraction. You invite into your life what you think and feel.

One of the books I read in the past weeks was Why Men Don’t Have A Clue & Women Always Need More Shoes by Allan and Barbara Pease. Appreciating the differences between women and men is fundamental to communicating and living well. I always try to keep the different perspectives in mind. So what did I learn from this book?

Nagging is a big problem for some, but not for me. I found that partners who are positively engaged in what they love to do have better things to do than nagging.

Women’s Top Secret Point-Scoring System – interesting and useful. Women score each activity separately, and give high scores to little attentions. Well, I knew that, but what is interesting to know is that women give men the same score for most activities (a “1”) regardless of how much work was involved.

I felt sad reading the chapter on retirement. Many men seem to get lost at that phase of their life. It is essential to plan for retirement early, so that “work” continues in a different form, and with it, the “recognition” that is so important to men. Living separately together is a formula for success for many, as many retired people find it hard to live together with their partner 24 x 7, and this is particularly true for women.

Yesterday I read Robin Sharma quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes “A mind once stretched by a new idea can never return to its original dimensions”. How true. Many ideas come to me through books. They are faithful companions on my journey. And they often take me sideways to a new point of view.

Photograph: Sideways in Beauty in Asia at Singapore's Asian Civilizations Museum.