Reading on the aftermath of WW2 in Asia

This book.

Eckhart Tolle on awakening to your life’s purpose, part 2

Excerpts from the book “A New Earth”.

…

• When you are still, you are who you are beyond your temporal existence: counsciousness-unconditioned, formless, eternal.
• Your inner purpose is to awaken.
• What is the relationship between awareness and thinking? Awareness is the space in which thoughts exist when that space has become conscious of itself.
• Many people who are going through the early stages of the awakening process are no longer certain what their outer purpose is. What drives the world no longer drives them. Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they may feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them.
• If helping others gives meaning to your life, you depend on others being worse off than yourself so that your life can continue to be meaningful and you can feel good about yourself.
• We are not speaking of clock time, but of psychological time, which is the mind’s deep-seated habit of seeking the fullness of life in the future where it cannot be found and ignoring the only point of access to it: the present moment.
• But why did anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? You thought something else was more important. You forgot your main purpose. One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.
• Through the present moment, you have access to the power of life itself…
• When you meet with people, at work or wherever it may be, give them your fullest attention… The field of awareness that arises between you becomes the primary purpose for the interaction.
• Whereas the notion of purpose before was always associated with future, there is now a deeper purpose that can only be found in the present, through the denial of time.
• Seen from beyond the limitations of thinking and therefore incomprehensible to the human mind, everything is happening now. All that ever has been or will be is now, outside of time, which is a mental construct.

Recent reads

Japanese language

Tanizaki Junichirou

In ei rai san
Chijin no ai
Yukiguni

Natsume Souseki

Kokoro

Kawabata Yasunari

Yama no oto

Sakaguchi Ango

Darakuron

Akutagawa Ryuunosuke

Rashoumon
Torokko
To Shishun
Hana
etc. short stories

Yu Miri

Kazoku Cinema (Family Cinema)

Oooka Shouhei

Nobi (Field Fires)

Murakami Haruki

Norway no mori (Norwegian Wood)
Dance Dance Dance
Hitsuji wo meguru bouken (Sheep Adventure)
Sekai no owari to hardboiled wonderland (The End of the World and the Hardboiled Wonderland)
1973 nen no natsu no pinball (Pinball of Summer 1973)
Kaze no uta wo kike (Listen to the Wind’s Song)

Ooe Kensaburou

Hiroshima nooto (Hiroshima Notes)
Shisha no ogori

Dazai Osamu

Shayou
Ningen Shikkaku

German language

Max Frisch

Homo Faber
Stiller

Hermann Hesse

Siddharta
Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game)
Steppenwolf

French language

Albert Camus

L’etranger

Russian literature (translated)

Dostoyevsky

Crime and Punishment

English language

John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men

J.D.Salinger

Catcher in the Rye

Shakespeare

Macbeth

Norman Mailer

The Naked and the Dead
Executioner’s Song

Eckhart Tolle on how to live in the present

Read “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle.

I surely don’t buy all that spiritual level speculation, but there are still plenty of good ideas in the book. Here some excerpts (including some of the spiritual stuff which I find hard to agree with, and some observations which I do find good. Decide for yourself which parts to agree with…)

• …our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?
• … our state of consciousness creates our world…
• On our planet, the human ego represents the final stage of universal sleep, the identification of consciousness with form. It was a necessary stage in the evolution of consciousness.
• The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.
• The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment, and enthusiasm.
• If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do – stop.
• You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need.
• Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.
• Here is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life…activities that you may consider uninteresting, boring, tedious, irritating, or stressful. But don’t include anything that you hate or detest doing… whenever you are engaged in those activities, let them be a vehicle for alertness. Be absolutely present in what you do and sense the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity. You will soon find that what you do in such a state of heightened awareness, instead of being stressful, tedious, or irritating, is actually becoming enjoyable… This is finding the joy of Being in what you are doing.
• The ego’s wanting always tries to take from something or someone; enthusiasm gives out of its own abundance.
• Instead of seeing yourself as a famous actor and writer and so on, see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of all.
• At the core of all utopian visions lies one of the main structural dysfyunctions of the old consciousness: looking to the future for salvation. The only existence the future actually has is as a thought form in your mind, so when you look to the future for salvation, you are unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form, and that is ego.
• Nothing is going to make us free because only the present moment can make us free. That realization is the awakening. Awakening as a future event has no meaning because awakening is the realization of Presence.
• ”Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth”… The meek are the egoless. They are those who have awakened to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in all “others”, all life-forms. They live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the Source.

Random recent readings on airplane

MIT Technology Review, August 2008

1) Personal genomics services: have your DNA analysed! Service providers available, from cheap to expensive: Genographic Project ($99.95), DeCode, 23andMe, Navigenics, DNA Direct, Knome ($350,000)

2) Transoceanic cables.

3) Article by Bryant Urstadt: “Social Networking Is Not a Business* But It Might Be Soon“.

10 web startups to watch
Pinger
Pownce
Qik
Dash Navigation
Ushahidi
QTech (couldn’t find the website quickly)
33Across
Peer39
Anagran
Mashery

Upcoming tech event: 23-25 September: www.technologyreview.com/emtech

-21st Century Business Herald on Nokia & Qualcomm patent agreement and Nokia’s Symbian response to Google Android.

-Scientific American MIND magazine:

1) Some stuff on synesthesia, e.g. someone can “hear colors” or “taste shapes” (I have been interested in this weird phenomenon for a long time)

2) 14-17 August there will be the American Psychological Association’s 116th Annual Convention. Malcom Gladwell will give the keynote address.

3) An article on easing depression through manual tasks like cooking, washing etc.

4) Installation by James Auger: “smell blind date” at NY MOMA.

5) 2007 chocolate sniffing experiment at UC Berkeley.

6) Androstenone, Androstadienone, substances.

7) Storytelling theories of “literary Darwinists”: they propose that stories from around the world have universal themes reflecting our common underlying biology.

8 ) Wolfgang Köhler chimp experiment at University of Muenster in Germany: the chimp devised strategies for solving mazes.

9) Feng Shui. It has been experimentally proven that “spatial priming” affects peoples’ response to subsequent situations. Experiment by Lawrence E. Williams and John A. Bargh at Yale.

10) www.psychologicalscience.org/onlyhuman

Harper’s Magazine, August 2008

-Findings:

1) A 380-million year old fossil of fish giving live birth has been found.

2) A Welsh geobiologist has discovered populations of prokaryotic cells which may individually be more than 100 million years old, living a mile beneath the ocean floor. The buried cells are possible equal in biomass to all plant life on the earth’s surface.

-It has been revealed that the earth once had 3 moons. The 2 lost ones may have crashed into the surviving moon, sucked into the sun, of flung out of the solar system.

-There is evidence of time before the Big Bang.

-Website www.harpers.org

Newsweek, August 4th 2008

Several articles on US and the world, but also of a couple in their fifties both starting their third marriage.. “It’s not about the flatware”.

Obama’s church & Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

NASA research: northern lights’ movement are magnetic explosions between the moon and earth.

Randy Pausch, “Last Lecture” about making the most of each day.

China & olympics article by Orville Schell: “China’s agony of defeat”.

Sharon Begley: ” Who’ll stop the rain” on rain control technologies.

Back online!!!!!!!!!!

I’m back!

New subjects of study!

Looking into the intricacies of paroles, langues and myths.

L’existentialisme est un humanisme

Nous entendons par existentialisme une doctrine qui rend la vie humaine possible et qui, par ailleurs, déclare que toute vérité et toute action impliquent un milieu et une subjectivité humaine. Le reproche essentiel qu’on nous fait, on le sait, c’est de mettre l’accent sur le mauvais côté de la vie humaine.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Tang dynasty poetry I like

问刘十九

绿蚁新醅酒，红泥小火炉。晚来天欲雪，能饮一杯无。

Asking Liu Shijiu

I have new fresh wine and a small clay stove. Night is falling and the sky yearns for snow.

Would you raise a toast with me?

Haikus I like

雲の峰いくつ崩れて月の山

Peaking clouds, tumbling away and finally, Mount Moon.

(a mountain in Japan)

Chinese metal / rock bands

Saw some of these in a live show the other day.

www.myspace.com/thetumbleweedchina

www.youzhidadou.com

www.jimoxiari.com

www.hanggaiband.com

http://buyiband.blogcn.com

Boris Vian, citations aléatoires (random citations)

Le plus clair de mon temps, je le passe à l’obscurcir. (I spend my clearest time blurring it away.)

J’ai le fâcheux travers de ne me satisfaire que de l’ultime. Aussi comprendrez-vous que je sois toujours mécontent. (I have the annoying characteristic of being satisfied only by the ultimate. You must understand how discontended I always am.)

Personellement dans mes classements, j’ai toujours un tiroir étiqueté “choses inclassables ailleurs”. Tiroir qui est extrêmement commode. Il y a beaucoup de choses dedans et c’est souvent parmi les choses les plus amusantes, justement parce que ce sont les choses exceptionnelles et, comme tout bon pataphysicien, ce qui m’intrésse c’est l’exception, le cas général pouvant être considéré comme une exception non exceptionnelle et par conséquent sans aucun intérêt. (In my categorization of things, I always have one drawer labeled “other inclassifiable things”. That drawer is very convenient. There are many things in that drawer, and they are often some of the most amusing things, exactly because they are exceptional things, and like any good pataphysician, what interests me is the exception, the general case being and unexceptional exception and therefore without any interest.)

Il est beaucoup moins indécent de coucher ensemble que de se regarder dans les yeux. (It is much less indecent to sleep together that to look each other in the eyes.)

Pour qu’il y ait passion, c’est-à-dire réaction explosive, il faut que l’union soit brutale, que l’un des corps soit très avide de ce dont il est privé et que l’autre possède en très grande quantité. (For there to be passion, that is to say explosive reaction, the union has to be brutal, that one of the bodies is very keen on that which is private and the other possesses is great quantities.)

Chez une femme, la beauté est signe de modestie. (In a woman, beauty is a sign of modesty.)

Pourquoi les chanteuses jolies sont-elles toujours mariées au saxo-ténor de l’orchestre? Et est-ce pour ca que tout le monde joue du saxo-ténor? (Why are the pretty singers always married with the sax-tenor of the orchestra? And is this the reason why everyone plays the sax-tenor?)

Les femmes compliquent la vie des hommes pour obliger ceux-ci à la simplifier et entretenir en eux la flamme créatrice. (Women complicate the lives of men in order to have them simplify it, and to maintain in themselves the creative flame.)

Quant à être galant… si on admet l’égalité de l’homme et de la femme, la politesse suffit et l’on n’a pas de raison de traiter une femme plus politement qu’un homme. (As of being gentlemanly… if we admit to equality of man and woman, politeness is enough and we have no reason to treat a woman more politely than a man.)

Ce qui compte, ce n’est pas le bonheur de tout le monde, c’est le bonheur de chacun. (What counts is not the happiness of everyone, it is be happiness of each one.)

On se rappelle beucoup mieux les bons moments; alors, à quoi servent les mauvais? (One recalls much better the good moments; so what are the bad ones for?)

On passe sa vie à romancer les motifs et à simplifier les faits. (One passes one’s life romanticizing the motives and simplifying the facts.)

Books read and books in progress. Anyone who read or is interested in reading these, do comment!

In progress of reading:

• Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Freud)
• 万葉集　Manyôshû (old Japanese poetry collection) 
• Hamlet (Shakespeare) 
• Chinese Art at the End of the Millennium (New Art Media Limited, 2000) 
• Investment in China – Opportunities in Private Equity and Venture Capital (Tsinghua University Press, 2003) 
• Les Plus Belles Formules Mathématiques (Salem, Testard & Salem) 
• 血卡门（黄碧云） Blood Carmen (Huang Biyun)
• 道德经探玄（培真著）  Dao De Jing – In Search of the Mystery (Pei Zhen)
• L’étranger (Albert Camus)
• Winning with Software: An Exective Strategy (Watts S. Humphrey)
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Thomas S. Kuhn)
• En Verve, mots propos aphorismes. A collection of Boris Vian citations, Pierre Horay editeur 1970, 2002, Paris.
• Paroles. A collection of poems by Jacques Prévert, Éditions Gallimard, 1949, France.
• 奥の細道　Oku no hosomichi. Original haikus bu Bashô, as well as elaborations on the poems and the poet by Kadokawa Bunko, Heisei year 13, Japan.

Recent reads:

• 白痴　二流の人　Hakuchi. Niryuu no hito. (collection of short stories by Sakaguchi Ango; published by Kadokawa Bunko)
• Imperial Ambitions (Noam Chomsky)
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Prahalad)
• Essays by Georg Simmel : sociology of modern life, esthetics, cities as works of art, feelings etc.
• Understanding Power (Noam Chomsky)
• Journal d’un génie (diary of Salvador Dali)
• From Alchemy to IPO (a book on biotech by Robbins-Roth)

Cantonese

My learning project…

Cantonese particles and key vocab: o既 ke33 (genitive), o地 tei22 (as in 我o地), o刺 la33 (an exclamation), o系 hai35 (is located), 系 hai22 (is, to be), o个 ko35 (as in o个度)

Some useful (?) basic sayings:

上课soeng foo, 多的讲doo dit keng,韩语hoonyuu,部分boufen，集中zapzhong,学习hogsap,最近zoeigam,复习fok zap,已经yii geng,资料tzii liu，语言yu_yam,必须bit soei,太懒了 taai laan le,生日saang yatt,后生 hausaang,一暂 yad zan (过一会),录音log yam,(别送了 m sai soong la),多得doo dak,我返左工,泰医生，药yoek,屋企okkhei,laau,maaai yeeee, 10 fan zhong etc etc…

tau sîn, ngaam ngaam, ngaam sîn (a while ago)

zôi gan (recently)

fât yamm (pronunciation)

sôn hou (signal, as in, your mobile phone signal is bad)

okkhei (home)

sap fan zhung (10 minutes)

laau (angry)

gam maan (tonight)

gen ju (and then)

maâi yê (buy stuff)

ha_ng gâai (walk on the street)

lo_k gâai (go out on the street)

li yât zî (this time)

 

i go buy stuff =我要去買D野

i will start talking to myself in cantonese = 我會開始同自己講廣東話

my company wants me to take photos in Asia =  我既公司希望我係亞洲影D相

they will put the photos in our presentation material and perhaps some brochures   =  佢地會擺d相 公開資料度,,或者會擺 d小冊子度

i want to open an account in a bank =  我想係銀行開go戶口

我地 we, ngo dei

乜ye what, mat ye

o黎 come, lai

聖誕節 Christmas, seng daan jit

你唔好逼我出絕招！ Don’t force me to use my ultimate attack on you! lei m’hou ? ngo choet ? ?

睇下先。 let’s see first, tai ha si’n

我唔啱你（对）适合 。 ngo m ngaam lei ? ?

有冇大啲嘅size? do you have a bigger size, yao mou daai di ge size?

唔该，你知唔知边度有按摩嘅地方？ excuse me, do you know where to find a massage place? m goi, lei ji m ji bin dou yao an mo ge dei fong?

做咩呀佢？what is he doing? zuo me a khoei?

教我有用嘅廣東话。 teach me some useful cantonese. gaau ngo yao yong ge gong dong waa.

你今晚想去邊？ 想做啲咩呀？ where do you want to fo tonight? what do you want to do? lei gam man soeng hoei bin? soeng zuo di me a?

我諗／想去睇戏。 我想去睇戏呀。唔，我諗下先啦  i think/want to watch a movie. i want to go to see a movie. no, i will think about it first. ngo lam/soeng hoei tai hei. ngo soeng hoei tai hei a. m, wo lam ha siin la.

我依家去睇戏 i am going to see a movie now. ngo yi ga hoei tai hei.

戏院。 movie theatre. hei yun.

仲（zhom？）有咩？ what else? zhom yau me?

你有D咩啊？你想要D咩啊？ what do you have? what do you want? lei yau di me a? lei soeng yiu di me a?

仲（zhom？）有啲咩？ what else do you have? zhom yao di me?

baa lau都咁嘅了　(I am always like this) 我不溜都系甘噶啦　　ngo baat lau dou hai gam ? la

我成日都係咁　　 我不嬲都係咁  ??

成日用嘅 usually/always used. seeng yat yong ge.

搵／揾。 search. wan.

呢度嘅电视广告好多  tv here has so many commercials. ni dou ge diin sii gong gou? hou do

揾机会讲廣東话。 look for opportunities to speak Cantonese. wan gei wui gong gong dong wa.

学讲白话。 learn to speak Cantonese. hok gong bak wa.

你话呢 ？ what do you say? lei wa le?

see daan le。是但啦 whatever you say.

乜都无所谓，是但啦 whatever goes, whatever you say. mat dou ？？？ see daan le

你鍾意啦。你讲算。 whatever you like. what you say goes. lei zong yi la. lei gong suyn.

我觉得。 i think/feel. ngo gok dak.

我可以每日都用廣東話唸嘢 i think (to myself) in Cantonese every day. ngo ho yi mui yat dou yong gong dong wa lam ye.

對唔住，我要寫D嘢先 sorry, i have to write something (now). doei m ju, ngo yiu seh di ye siin.

我希望 到一月底 就識講一D廣東話，一D有用o既，平時成日都要講o既廣東話  i hope by the end of January to be able to speak some Cantonese, some useful Cantonese, Cantonese that is spoken daily. ngo hei mang dou yat yut dei(?) jau sik gong yat di gong dong wa, yat di yau yong ge, peng si seeng yat dou yiu gong ge gong dong wa.

電視都無嘢睇，仲有幾個鐘頭先到紐約機場，好悶呀 there is nothing to watch on tv, there are still several hours to go before we land in New York, so boring. diin sii dou mou ye tai, zhom yau gei go zong tou seen dou Niu Yoek gei choeng, hou mun a.

Jacques Prévert, French poems

 

La Belle Saison

A jeun perdue glacée

Toute seule sans un sou

Une fille de seize ans

Immobile debout

Place de la Concorde

A midi le Quinze Août. 

 

Le Jardin 

Des milliers et des milliers d’années

Ne sauraient suffire

Pour dire

Le petite seconde d’éternité

Où tu m’as embrassé

Où je t’ai embrassée

Un matin dans la lumière de l’hiver

Au parc Montsouris à Paris

A Paris

Sur la terre

La terre qui est un astre.

Economy and indicators

Collecting a batch of informative or insightful speeches, documents etc. 

~~~

Speech by Peter Mandelson, EU Trade Commissioner; “A World of Opportunity: China and the future of international trade”; June 2006 at Renmin University, Beijing. http://www.europa-eu-un.org/articles/en/article_6024_en.htm

~~~

European innovation, problems and solutions (a collection of keywords from various sources)

• Lisbon agenda not enough?

• Market for innovative goods and services (needs action on internal market, services, regulations, culture, IPR/patent system, procurement, standards etc.)

• Focusing of resources (implies also withdrawing resources from some fields)

• Financial tools and environment, and mobilizing venture capital

• Mobility of resources, including people

• Political will and action (including real budgeting)

• Technology platforms, European Institute of Technology etc.

• Improving university-industry partnerships

• Improving national as well as EU level innovation systems and policy

~~~

Collecting a batch of economic indicators that make SENSE in analyzing a country & the global economy without going into esoteric calculations… Welcome all contributions.

• Exchange rates, dollar vs. euro etc.

• Oil prices, supply and demand

• US Federal Reserve, rates

• Stock exchange indices, quarterly and annual reports from companies

• Labor statistics

• Geopolitics
• Gold etc prices