When Silence Speaks...

A lot has happened this year and a lot went unaccomplished. 2025 once again reminded me of how unpredictable life is, how life happens when we are busy making other plans. Life surprises us and life shocks us.  There were many good things this year - backpacking entire Central America for a month and half, meeting new people, reconnecting with old school friends, learning Japanese and many other such memorable moments. But earlier this year while training for dragon boat race competition, I was diagnosed with a idiopathic health condition, that threw a wrench in my lifestyle. All those lab tests, scans for a person who rarely saw a doctor for years was stressful. Although it got diagnosed early because of my attention to health stats; not knowing the root cause for the illness nor being able to determine the length of the treatment plan disheartened me. At the time, I kind of understood a non-smoker’s reaction to being diagnosed with cancer; that reaction of “But I never smoked onc...

This year has been interesting. Strange and interesting. Yu's "Go where the wind is" song best describes my mood for 2024. It went by fast yet it felt like an eternity. It was exhausting at times for reasons I don't know.  I can't describe it in words.  Of course, 2024 had its moments. A new country, a new language, a new fitness goal and many memorable experiences. Some good ones and others unwanted.  It's just the general mood of 2024. It's been kind of heavy on my mind, my heart. Not on the negative side, nothing sad or painful. Just ... Anyway, want to just record this monologue somewhere before this year ends, so here goes nothing. Jeff Satur's Dum Dum, Lake of Bays Forest Floor, Machu Picchu shots, Dominos Pizza, Rainy night, The Demon Slayer comic strip, Some scribbles, Random notes, Uke plucking,  Wang Yibo's smile, The Double C drama and the Fireworks outside. Just some of the last moments of 2024.  Thank you 2024, you have been good to me...

Last week a customer service lady at self-checkout area of Loblaws walked up to me and asked if I was at the store the previous day. I indeed was.  I was surprised she remembered me, and was also confused as to why would it matter if I showed up on consecutive days. You know how at times your brain goes a million miles per sec and causes you to question all your life choices? I was running all the reasons in my head as to why someone would care about my grocery schedule. So, it was in that slightly confused state I replied, albeit politely “ Yes, I was here yesterday. The huge watermelon I bought did not allow me to complete my entire grocery checklist as I had reached my single trip haul limit, so I am here again to buy rest of my items ”. Meanwhile, my inner voice was shouting “ Why are you justifying your grocery trip to this random lady? Like who cares? ” Me being me, where my face clear as water always shows what I feel inside; she must have seen that confusion clearly danci...

Been a while.   Not because my life stopped being interesting. But because I stopped listening. Somewhere between me running my life and life running me around, I lost track of stillness.  There’s this weird sense of not belonging to a place or time. I know with every passing second, a part of me is getting lost to the past; like this dandelion, loosing a part of itself to the wind. (Clicked this pic during my walk earlier this week). It’s not about growing old or fighting the battle against time. It’s just…I know I always advocate the sense of contentment. But being content also makes you lose sight of future. I am always present, always immersed in what’s at hand which works really well; until I stop and lift my head to look around, and all of a sudden I feel like a lost kid in a crowded fair.  There’s this sense of uneasiness, like everyone’s headed somewhere and I am just aimlessly floating away. It’s kind of what people call existential crisis, which generally is tri...

  “ We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ” - Aristotle “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” - Michelangelo Buonarroti . Ancient gurus always attributed a great deal of importance to hard-work. Although it has constantly been deemed as out of fashion in 21st century, every successful person out there even today pays homage to hard-work.  (And before we get too deep into this, let me clarify, when I say hard-work, I also mean smart-work. In my world, it’s one and the same, has always been the same. Basically, accomplish a task in the best way possible. Smart-work does not advertise dishonesty or using shortcuts that impact quality. Some over zealous pundit in the 1930s wanted to make an impression and created this difference between the two, making hard-work look like a negative trait.   To spell it out, if you are genuine at your work, you are putting your heart and ...