Mich Mosh

So yesterday when I decided to grab a quick bite to eat down the street at Crystal Mall, I noticed a lot of celebrating going on. Decorations were up in the plaza, eight roast pigs were neatly lined up on a table, dragon dance performances were being held, lettuce with red envelopes were hanging from the rafters and a photographer was on site to document all of it. Then I realized it must have been Mid-Autumn Festival, though it seemed quite early for it in the year. But we are in mid-August after all and Chinese holidays never fall exactly on the same dates every year in the Western calendar.

I kept thinking how I wished I had carried my dslr with me, but all I had was my camera phone so I followed the dragon dancers snapping photos and videos as they went from stall to stall performing their lettuce-eating dance. It wasn’t until I passed a table with two five-foot length sheet cakes with the words written on them celebrating the tenth anniversary of Crystal Mall that I realized the reason for the celebrations. So after confirming with a co-worker, Mid-Autumn Festival isn’t until mid-September actually. Oops! False alarm, hehe… but now I can be prepared for when it arrives so that I have my camera in hand.

I’ve been meaning to post this illustration that I finished a couple weeks ago. It’s my ode to bubble tea and all its fantastic goodness. Sometimes I meet people who have never tried bubble tea before and I’m astonished especially living in Vancouver. How can you not have ever had the curiosity to try such a unique drink? I tell people that it’s like a drink that fills two needs at once: you can drink tea and snack on the chewy tapioca balls at the same time.

In the beginning I didn’t like the tapioca pearls because I thought it got in the way of drinking the tea, but over the years it has grown on me and I can’t order one without them! Recently I’ve discovered a new flavor—tiramisu—that’s now my second favorite next to the classic milk tea flavor.

I’m not a believer in destiny for the reason that I hate the thought of not being able to have control over one’s life. To think that everything is predetermined for you leads me to think what is the point of life then? Are we just robots in this universe programmed to follow a certain path like avatars in a game? This idea is too depressing for me which is why I’d rather not accept it. But a thought just occurred to me. Can destiny be actually a good thing and not something to be considered negative in the way I view it? Sure there could be this possibility, but for what reasons, I don’t know.

Could my views be affected by my western upbringing where in the West the culture tends to be more individualistic and independent while in the East it is more focused on the “we” mentality rather than “I”? Are eastern cultures more accepting of the idea of destiny if they already believe in serving the greater good? How would my life be like if I was brought up in the East instead of the West? Would I have entirely different beliefs which would lead me to make decisions that would lead to a much different life than the one I lead now? Or is it possible that whatever decisions you make which can lead to multiple paths, the outcomes will always be the same? If I believed in destiny then wouldn’t my life be much easier in terms of making decisions? I wouldn’t get caught up in worrying about making the wrong decisions and pondering the what if’s. It just is.

Would I be happier if I can accept the idea of destiny? If yes, then isn’t that a good enough reason to see it as something positive? This thought leads me to the idea of Gross National Happiness (GNH). You must have heard of it before. The king of Bhutan was the first to come up with this concept of measuring his nation’s happiness rather than its wealth. Though the Bhutanese can hardly be considered wealthy in terms of money, they are certainly wealthy in happiness. They are one of the happiest in the world and perhaps it’s because they have no trouble accepting that though they don’t have much, it just is.

So back to destiny… maybe I should think of it this way—we may not have control over predetermined outcomes based on whatever decisions we make in our lives, but we may have control over the decisions we choose to make. In other words, it’s not important what the outcomes are, but rather how we arrive there that makes the difference.

My fingers are poised over the keypad.

You have no idea how long it took me to get there and formulate the thoughts in my head to press the keys that would form the words and eventually the sentences that appear here on this page. I’m currently experiencing a condition that is commonly known as severe lack of motivation. Every day I go through the motions of life of waking up, brushing my teeth, getting dressed, going to work, sitting in front of the computer, coming home, eating dinner, getting online, going to bed and doing it all over again the next day. I’m having my very own Ground Hog’s Day experience.

What’s worse is knowing that I’m in this never-ending cycle. I almost think it would be better to be completely unaware like a robot. It’s like moving through quicksand. The harder I try to get out of it, the deeper I sink.

Something said by somebody important during one of the Ted talks I watched recently has stood out and stuck in my head. You’d think it be something inspiring, but it was actually depressing and made me think about the condition I’m in now. To think that of the two groups of people in the world there exists, that I’m in the camp that simply endures life and waits for the weekend is sad. But I can’t deny it, which makes it even more sad.

So as you can see, I’ve lost my motivation and I’m desperately searching for it. I certainly hope that whatever terrible funk I’m in now doesn’t last long ‘cause it sure is depressing.

It’s hard to visualize exactly how much area the oil gush covers in the Gulf of Mexico until you compare it to the area in relation to where you live. IfItWasMyHome.com provides a tool that allows you to overlay the oil gush in Google Maps.

After comparing the size to different places in the world, it gave me a better sense of the scope of this disaster. It’s quite astonishing to say the least. As you can see in the map above, all of Vancouver is covered and stretches west over parts of Vancouver Island. It reaches as far east as Kamloops, about a four hour drive from Vancouver and about 1.5 hours drive south across the Canadian-US border. The oil gush easily covers all of the islands of Hawaii and most certainly the entire island of Taiwan.

It does baffle me that even after a little over a month, no one seems to know how to stop the oil from spewing out into the Gulf. Of all the engineers that work for BP, the government officials and the consultants brought in to help solve this problem, you’d think with all that collective brain power that hole would be plugged up by now. And of all those groups of people, you’d think that BP should have the most know how on handling this issue. After all they deal with oil day in and day out. They are the oil experts, but maybe that’s stretching it. BP’s ineptness at bringing the situation under control is near to being a farce. You can’t help but think they’d have as much trouble handling a coffee spill. Their unsuccessful attempts to stop the flow of oil and their inability to mitigate this risk in the first place shows that they’re incapable of doing their jobs and have no right to be in the oil business. By “they” I mean BP as a company and not specifically the employees that work there. It’s the management and leadership of this company that has failed tremendously.

This video from the Los Angeles Times provides an insightful look into Phan Plork’s life after the oil disaster who used to catch shrimp in the waters of the Gulf, but now works for BP cleaning up the mess. It’s sad to see how the oil disaster has disrupted the livelihoods of the many fishermen who depend on the Gulf of Mexico.

Cognitive Media’s visual animation of Phillip Zimbardo’s talk on The Secret Powers of Time is a great way of visually translating the concepts into a more tangible and engaging approach similar to The Story… videos I wrote about not too long ago. The talk itself is thought-provoking, but the addition of the time-lapse drawings makes it much more fun to listen and watch. The drawings help add meaning and aid in the recall of information presented.

The six perspectives of time that Zimbardo discusses are: past positive (focus on happy memories), past negative (focus on regret and failure), present hedonistic (live in the moment and seek pleasure), present fatalistic (life is fated, no use in planning), future focused (work comes before play) and future transcendent (life begins after death.)

I can probably relate to most perspectives and have spent more time in one view over another at different stages throughout my life. Though I don’t quite agree with the present fatalistic view. It seems rather depressing to think that you have no control over your future. Presently (no pun intended), I’d say my view of life right now is majority in the present hedonistic perspective with a future focused view to provide a bit of balance and self restraint. I can’t exactly claim that I indulge in every pleasure without a care in the world, but I also don’t exactly have the discipline to plan everything ahead in my life.

Zimbardo brings up a funny point that I totally relate to at 8:06 in the video. That is our digital life has made us all impatient. Anything that takes a minute or more to download is considered too slow. Though the talk is American-centric, I think most of the developed society can relate to this point.

Technology is getting better and faster, but this has affected our perceptions of time in every part of our lives. We have grown more impatient over the years. Remember dial up? Remember when it used to take forever to boot up the computer? Almost every invention or trend these days has something to do with saving time and making ordinary tasks more efficient.

Think of the Slap Chop (cut and slice faster), the Magic Bullet (a blender that does everything), Twitter (instantly tell the world what you’re up to in under 140 characters), Facebook (get instant updates from all your friends in one place) or the iPhone (a phone, computer, gaming device, music player and camera all in one)—all devices or apps designed to do more in less time.

In a USA Today poll that Zimbardo points out, Americans were asked what they would do if they had an extra day in the week and fifty percent said they would work harder to achieve more rather than spend time with their family, friends or sleeping. Hmm, there seems to be something wrong with that picture. (That’s also why I’m not entirely future focused. I’d much prefer to have a 3-day weekend!)

There are more RSAnimate videos here. Daniel Pink’s talk on what motivates us is also an interesting one to listen and watch. Money may seem to be the ultimate motivation for people. However, in an experiment that Pink highlights, when the level of rewards are linked to performance, the results provide a surprising outcome.

The sun is finally showing its face here in Vancouver, but it’s still not as warm as I’d like it to be. I’m ready for another vacation.