Capoeira

last night was great with nigel, ee lin, renee, rachel, kelvin and mei xian.

basically the night was food, of vegetables, mashed potato, fried chicken mountain, and friggin whole body of lamb. we ate, chatted and waited for the show to start. before that we went into the monash library and got stunned by how nice it was there.

  the night started with maculele, the dancers in grass skirts doing the tribal dance with sticks. i heard for the first time real and live authentic maculele music, involing drums, congo and the guy singing the maculele song. the story of maculele was that they were all dancing the dance, and one person causes some commotion, and happens to kill one of the people, everyone scorns him, but they end up dancing together with the dead guy in the middle, and then leave the stage. the witchdocter comes and rattles her dead man concoction around him for awhile, then lets him drink it, then she leaves. he stumbles up alive, and suddenly is full of more strength and start jumping and dancing again. the end.

 later was the capoeira. which the bantus people came. they danced to the beat, exchanged people by others coming it and staring the person he wants to duel. exchanging kicks and doing ground moves, they dueled and spun and handstanded. it was amazing watching them. such grace and core body strength in a powerful concoction of dance and martial arts. it was even better when the president and a guy with dreadlocks came out. they did fancy and advance moves that stunned the crowd. how i wish i could do those. the dreadlocks guy had so much arm strength, that he started his cartwheel or Au but just stayed in a handstand. the president could do some crazy jumping kicking moves too. there was this girl who had these nice toned muscles, even bigger than mine! at the end, they asked the crowd to go up and try to do capoeira too, which was embarrassing, haha. but they had fun. i got to see shafiq in action, the malay dude who had huge muscles.

later on in the night, they got some samba girls to dance. then they opened up the floor for everyone to dance along with their samba beat. after a long session of it, they ended it but started with clubbing songs. and at that time, things got fun as we all danced and moved along with the familiar popular tunes. i went crazy when they played 'club cant handle me right now' as i went into a dancing frenzy and breakdanced whatever i could with the music. ah, i had a little spotlight for myself that time :). . exhilarating. . . all the rest had a good time too, swaying and moving with the music.

  the night went on until 12.30 or so. later we went to play lame games and tell lame jokes. we also chilled at the mamak stall and chatted will 2.30 or so. ah, it was a fun night. totally unexpectedly good

Finally!!

 a special someone asked me to change my blog and put up something happier. 

well. . . . woohooo. i finally discovered how to change the darn background picture, and its looking so much brighter! 

nice stuff

this instruction sheet gives 

a lot of life's simple packages

to you and to those around. 

want some joy everyday?

then spread it with these 

. . . . . . .

. . . complexity leads to more complexity. is simplicity around?

Worship

Better is a few minutes of true heartfelt worship to a man’s soul than many professional concerts.

One can ask for forgiveness, but only his heart may qualify him for it. 

The garden of the Mind

Last week I went to Singapore for holiday. It has been awhile since I wanted to post something up in the blog. But I was always carried away by something else.

Well Singapore is not the reason for this entry. Although it was good family time and lots of fun, some in the sun, and some in one of Singapore’s thousands of malls, this entry is about a thought I read from an article in the newspaper while I was on the 6 hour journey to Singapore via transnational bus.

  The phrase inside the article said that the mind is like a garden. I found it interesting, and this is what I was able to think about this ‘garden’ in every persons head.

  It is fertile. It can change appearance. It is able to grow all sorts of plants. The soil nurses all kinds of flora, like flowers, trees, bushes and many more. However, in any garden, there will be one thing that grows unchecked, those are the weeds. Allow me to explain the metaphors.

  A persons mind is the centre of human conscience. It is the master control of all that one does. It harbors thoughts, beliefs, habits and thinking styles. How a person lives is based on a method of thinking that a person acquires from his environment over the years. In our mind, we can aspire for greater things. For example dreams, success, hope, happiness and others. These things lead to a fruitful, purposed and all that is positive in our lives. However, there are other things, things that are negative that inhabit our minds, and left unchecked, do quite the opposite, and even blot out all that brings betterment to our being. Fear, hopelessness, insecurity, doubt, evil and all sorts of negative thinking can easily just come in and ruin or lessen what we can potentially be or become.

  To further clarify, flowers, trees and bushes are attitudes and traits that are desired. It takes constant trimming or what can be called as discipline to grow these. Once grown to maturity, they can produce fruits of productivity, love and success. Just as trimming allows more sun to reach the areas of the plant for maximum growth, one need to analyze and meditate on life to know where he is going and if there is any area for self improvement and correction.

  For Christians out there, the bible has said in psalm 1:1-3 Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

  So brothers and sister, blessed are you who does what is right and loves the bible, contemplates about it and apply it into your lives.

  Weeds are the negativity in our minds. Just like how weeds grow and sap the good resources form the soil, so too, are negative thoughts to our mental energy. Unproductivity, procrastination, laziness, apathy, guilt, fears, insecurity are some of them. These bind to us whether we like it or not, settle and grows. Some take roots and grow to be big weeds that establish their roots deep into us, manifesting in the future as potential problems. Whatever it is, some need the proper tools and a lot of effort to pull out, in other words, we night need help from others and strong will to overcome these traits. Though we can somehow overcome these weeds in our lives, there will be stumps in the earth or scars that become a part of our garden, or who we are. Weeds tend to regrow no matter how many times you pull them out. in the same way, negative thoughts do not go away, but we should be wary that it returns so we may react accordingly.

   Apart from the metaphor, there are other things in the garden that can be made as other metaphors. One of it is the seeds. Seeds of thought come from the outside world. What we see and hear are all seeds sown into our minds. One with too many seeds and plants leave the garden in a haphazard state.

 Hey another one for my bro and sis in Christ. Jesus gave the parable that the gospel was a seed sown into people. Some fall on good soil which grows to produce tens of thousands of fruit. Others fall on rocky ground, the roadside and even eaten up by the birds of the air. Hope that most of us are the good soil.

Another thing that affects the garden is the weather, which is volatile and changing. It can be coined as the emotions and moods that we have. Now thoughts and emotions are not the same. Ones thoughts can be controlled by emotions, but emotions can be willed by thoughts too. One with a strong mind can possess self control to live by his principles and values no matter what mood he is in. moods are controlled by external factors. But values are controlled from within, or internally. One who masters himself internally is able to influence situations and others around him better.

 In my conclusion, a well attended, trimmed garden leads to a good lifestyle. One that is unattended leaves a messy screwed up life. One can have a purpose for their garden, or just let things happen by chance or by accident. It is up to us to decide which the best is because ultimately, we are the ones in charge of our lives, not anything else. 

how to solve a problem

  Well, most of the time, we face problems and there are difficulties which lie in solving them. We just realize that there are many things which make us unhappy or dissatisfied with what we do, let’s say our work, our relationships, running our organizations and to a simple boy like me, games.  This is my experience of playing games and finding what I actually do and some practical things to realize and do when we find ourselves in this spot.

  So this is me, most of the time when I am doing something.

So I’m like playing a game and it just goes on and on .. . and on. … . and on. . . .

Then I lose

And if I really just become an angry monster, I’ll either, stop playing, or brainlessly just go for another round.

This brings me to the topic of this blog. My first question is, do we even know that we have a problem?

I find this critical and it is just called troubleshooting.

What are the common things that we do when facing a problem?

1)      Bang against the same wall again and again 

We do not see our error of our ways and so keep doing the same thing expecting different results, hoping that it will work in the end. They just accept it as it is and leave it like that.  Dude! You’re barking up the wrong tree! 

2)      Rage quit!!

  Ah the hot tempered way of running from a game to continue to fume at the how unfair the game was or that your teammates were a bunch of noobs, people how dunno how to play.

 L

Just another way of saying that we are just getting emotionally flustered over the situation/ problem. These are the type of people who blame and are not really nice people sometimes. They lack the self control and lose themselves while they vent their anger on the poor people around them, causing them to be disliked. So be careful when you get angry.

So these are the 2 reactions that we usually fall into, which leads me to the third and more appropriate reaction.

3)      Troubleshoot

Ah these people are the ones who rise above. They think hard and recall to identify the problem, find answers on google, discuss about it or go on forums to find answers.  

And that’s my thought of the day. I think the main things is that we constantly recall our situations and think of improving them, rather than being stuck in the same place the whole time. It feels good to get better at something. So just keep those brain juices flowing and improve day by day. 

leon

(all work of art was created from microsoft paint)