Back!

Hello, oh gosh I'm supposed to blog last night but I've been knocked out early the past two days ever since I returned from Singapore. Anyway yes I returned from Singapore on Monday night. I was so sleepy and I had some work to be done as well. I really wanted to blog but well, too bad.

Anyway yes Neon Lights was amazing! I had such a great time there. I'm going to blog a special post for it soon. Well I just love everything there. Maybe not the mud....

Okay won't be talking much now, let me just share you the awesome music of November!

Great Music of November:

- Meeting points at 2 AM by dne

- So Alive by Gill Bondy

- Kids by One Republic

- Born by One Republic

- Fever by Roosevelt

- Heart by Roosevelt

Okay not many music in this month. But anyway I discovered both dne and Gill Bondy through Majestic Casual! I love "Meeting points at 2 AM" by dne... Try listening to it in the middle of the night and whew, everything is amazing haha. It kinda reminds me of late nights in Singapore hmm.

My copy of One Republic's Oh My My is finally here! I really love the album. It's such a... I'm not sure how to put it but grand would be a great word? A grand album. The fact that they went all over the world to record this album (even in hotel rooms!) is pretty amazing. I am hooked to Kids and Born now. The album is awesome, although I kinda feel that Native is better heh. Great album nevertheless!

I discovered Roosevelt back in 2014 during Java Soundsfair. Not sure how, but I missed the news that he released his debut album earlier in August this year! So I went to get it in Amazon and wow, definitely one of the best albums ever released in 2016! I love the production of the album, all the 80s vibe and everything. Fever is a favourite of mine. Roosevelt really brings back the 80s fever heh.

Alright that's all for now. One more month to the end of 2016 and I am excited to discover more music in the last month of this year! Don't think there are albums that I am anticipating hmm. Okay maybe Mondo Gascaro's debut album. Hoping to get its physical format! Okay I hope November has been well for you. Let us all end of this year beautifully! Have a great December everybody.

Rant

I don't usually rant, and I always tell myself not to. But today I feel like it urgh haha. Okay so as you might know, Coldplay is coming next year to Singapore on the first of April. I failed to get ticket, both on the pre-sale and today's general sale. And it's fucking sold out right now. 

I logged in at 9 AM here (10 AM Singapore time) just to wait for an hour for the site to crash, and the announcement that the tickets have sold out. Yet after that people are showing how there are tickets being re-sold in other websites like Viagogo. WTF man seriously, it's so unfair!

I'm just so annoyed because I've waited for them to come to Southeast Asia and yes, this is the time. Yet I couldn't get the ticket. The whole situation was just mis-handled by Sports Hub I feel. First of all the pre-sale was so poorly managed. I mean the pre-sale code was the same for everyone. I saw someone screenshot the code and share it on Facebook. It shouldn't even be called a pre-sale because everyone can do it as long as they have the code! They should use different codes instead isn't it.

It's so disappointing how big fans of Coldplay (like me) couldn't get tickets, while horrible people who get tickets to resell them can get them so easily. It's so urghh whenever I think about it.

I feel like giving up. Although there are news that they might add more seats or even another night of show. I'm just going to let life takes its course. Will still try my best to get a ticket. If the universe has conspired with me to let me catch them live next year, so be it. It's just so.... Sigh....

Tiny Grain of Sand

"You can meet with an ocean of disappointments

but should never lose a single grain of sand of hope"

Unnecessary Hope and Fear

I came across with this quote by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche on Facebook... Which comes at the right time for me hah. It goes like this:

"If we could not be bought by praise or defeated by criticism, we would have incredible strength. We would be extraordinarily free, there would be no more unnecessary hopes and fears, sweat and blood and emotional reactions. We would finally be able to practice “I don’t give a damn.” Free from chasing after, and avoiding other people’s acceptance and rejection, we would be able to appreciate what we have in the present moment."

What intrigued me the most is the phrase there would be no more unnecessary hopes and fears. Many times in life, we hold on too much to both of these two things. Hope and fear. When we're waiting for some good news, we hold on so much to a hope that it will come true that we'll be devastated if it doesn't come as planned. The same goes vice versa when we're in tough times - the thought that the condition will last forever, or even become worst. These two thoughts make us suffer.

At the same time, we fail to realise that these two thoughts are unnecessary. We fall into the delusion that "we have to feel this way". Only when the mind is still and awake, that we realise that we shouldn't live inside the bubbles of these thoughts. The Buddha taught the middle way, where we should not indulge too much, and suffer too much. When we practice the middle way, we won't suffer!

Not exactly as totally not suffering, but we'll realise that there's no need for us to do so.

After reading the Dalai Lama's interpretation of the Prajnaparamita Sutra a few months back, I gained a deeper and clearer understanding of emptiness. How all phenomena has a mark of emptiness. And this is why the Sutra said that the mantra can quell all hardships and difficulties. I used to not understand the context of emptiness in Buddhism. It feels so dull and empty to me, like why would we even bother to study emptiness! Hahaha. But now I understand, and I'm grateful that I do.

Many times in life, I fall into a situation where there's nothing else that I can do but wait. This wait can be torturous. Waiting for some good news, or an outcome and so on. I used to feel worried and excited and stuff but now that I'm learning to grasp the concept of emptiness, I've been learning to let go. To feel neutral in spite of the ordeal that I am facing. Trust me, it is not easy, but it's liberating.

2016 has been such a year. And I'm still waiting. And I'm still liberating myself.

From all of these unnecessary hopes, and fears.

Thank you Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche for this wonderful quote!

No Rest For The Wicked

It's been such a tiring and busy November for me. Like without realising, I just suddenly have lots of work to do heh. Okay probably it's my fault, I've been leaving work behind, thinking I can one shot them in one day or something. And also I went to Jakarta last week for 2 days so that contributes to the lack of time as well. Like on last weekend, I was doing work till 5.30 AM! Heh.

Weekends used to be something that I enjoy and look forward to. Well I still look forward to them, but now it just feels different. And don't get me wrong too, weekend is still a part of the week that I enjoy. Just that I have to do work even on weekends! Heh. Thus the title, no rest for the wicked.

I'm kind of okay with work on weekends. I often feel like it's part of growing up. It's like you know you're growing up when you're not complaining about doing work on weekends. Also besides that, it's like as if I have the whole weekend to myself doing things that I enjoy, not really. But less busy, definitely.

Anyway things were looking pretty busy for me the past week but today, I found something. Kind of a solution to this "busy-ness" mwahaha. Okay so I used to pile up my work and finish them in one day. Usually it's a Wednesday. But these days I feel like I always have something to do. So the solution is: Do a bit of work here and there every day! Then I won't have to feel stressed out to finish them.

And so it begins tomorrow. I just finished doing work and finally got the chance to blog now hah.

I think life is about finding rhythms. So perhaps in the past week (or all these while) I've been playing this symphony with the wrong rhythm. Now I found a new one and hopefully it helps. It feels kinda awesome and nice to explore new rhythms and see if they work or not. And by finding new rhythms, we can perhaps play this symphony better and better. In the next week, month, year, and life. And so on.

Sorry for not blogging often this month. Life has been crazy hectic! But I'm still trying to blog ten posts this month as usual. I have a couple of posts to talk about so yup, see you soon :)

Speechless

Okay I'm two days late to write about this but yep, the US election is over now and... I am very surprised and shocked with the outcome. I'm not a political guy, I don't know much about the Us politics, but the outcome wasn't something I hoped for, but it was something I expected heh.

I really hoped that Clinton won. I mean, seriously, the whole election campaign explains why. 

I am now just very worried about Muslims, immigrants, LGBTQ community, women of the US. And of course, the environment. Okay I've been reading articles and news about how Trump will no be doing whatever he said during his campaign. I am just hoping whatever he said was some form of trash talking. Which is still kinda ridiculous even if they are thrash talks heh.

But whatever the case is, this is democracy. The people have voted what kind of leader they want for their country. The same is happening everywhere, there will be a group of people that will be against the president-elect. Same goes with my country back in 2014. It was a divisive period for us.

I'm not defending Trump. But I'm just hoping maybe he is the change that the US needs. Maybe he will make America great again. Nobody knows, we haven't given him the chance to do so. At the same time I'm wondering if he does make America great again, at what expense though?

Whatever the case is, people are worried, people are assaulted and so on and forth. At the end of the day, love trumps hate. No matter who the leader is, everyone has a part to spread compassion and kindness to everyone to make this world a better place. Like Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in this world. And this is in our hands, not our president's hands.

Things will get very interesting for America and the world. I just hope that there won't be any negative impacts on everyone. All the best to all of us at this moment.

Making Life Complicated

Last Saturday, one of our neighbours complained to us that during heavy rains, the rainwater would flood the drainage and the water would overflow to his plot of land. I called my workers for a discussion on how to rectify the issue. And also I called one of the local people for his opinion. He was the one who made the drains so yeah we need a bit of explanation and inputs from him.

In the middle of our fruitful discussion, suddenly this local guy just went on rambling about how irresponsible that neighbour is, how uncooperative the local people are and yada yada yada. My workers and I just stared at him rambling about until I told him this:

"Sir, we're here to find a solution to solve a problem. Can we focus on this?"

After which he kept quiet and so did everyone else.

I feel a bit bad-ass when this happened haha. But I mean seriously though, I don't quite understand why people need to go on saying and doing unnecessary stuff instead of focusing on the problem. I think this is one of the bad characteristics of some people here - we don't focus on finding a solution, but to blame and divert our energy on something/someone else. Which is pretty unnecessary.

I'm not gonna lie but I used to be this kind of person. I love complaining when there's a problem haha. I'll complain to my sister/friends/parents instead of asking them for a solution. But then as I grow up, I really realise how short our life is. And how we shouldn't really waste every sweet moment of it. So nowadays when there is a problem, I'll just go directly to finding the solution.

I try my best to avoid anger too. When there's a problem at the farm, I just gather my workers, ask their opinion on the solutions, carry out the solution, see result and that's it. If there are still things to be done and managed, we'll just change our ways. I don't scold my workers first, then look for a solution. I've kind of realised how futile anger is. It yields nothing but a sulky feeling inside.

What happened on last Saturday made me remember Confucius' wise words:

"Life is really simple, but we insist of making it complicated"

Sometimes when I am reminded about how short our life is, I just really focus on making the best full use of my time here. And now waste moments on what I'd like to call it - unnecessary thoughts and emotions. That's why I always wonder if we're every mindful of whatever we do, say and think. I'm pretty sure the major population of this world is not. Cause if we do, we'll be the happiest planet ever. 

So yeah don't make our lives difficult my friends. We're all here in a blink of an eye. Or a clap of a thunder. Without realising, our lives will simply end.