I have listened to the Les Misérables CD for more than 2 decades, and watched the musical live. But still, the latest movie version has not lost any appeal. In fact, the movie even led me to pay attention to a lot of details which I had missed in the musical years back. The impact of  the story lines was magnified, through  shaky-cam, wide-angle lenses and vertiginous crane shots, all designed to please the mainstream audience, including myself.


In recent years, one of my favourite songs which I would play over and over again, especially when I am in need of a boost of courage, is "One More Day". There is one line of lyrics which I can always remember, "I did not live until today". In fact, I never learned to truly appreciate this musical until today. I never realized that Jean Valjean's encounter with Bishop Myriel was so powerful. Bishop Myriel touched his soul and bought his soul in the name of God:

"Yet why did I allow that man
To touch my soul and teach me love?
He treated me like any other
He gave me his trust
He called me brother
My life he claims for God above
Can such things be?
For I had come to hate the world
This world that always hated me

Take an eye for an eye!
Turn your heart into stone!
This is all I have lived for!
This is all I have known!

One word from him and I'd be back
Beneath the lash, upon the rack
Instead he offers me my freedom
I feel my shame inside me like a knife
He told me that I have a soul,
How does he know?
What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?"

The ending with the reunion of souls, Fantine and the Bishop is another example of how the movie version has a grander and more definitive impact compared with the other iterations in the past.

"To love another person is to see the face of God." How could I have missed this line for the past 20 years?

I live alone in a small apartment, smaller than B-612.

I have been living alone ever since university graduation and I don't recall having friends staying with me for more than a couple of days during all these years. Recently I offered a new friend to stay in my place while he was in town for a few weeks.

I was very humbled listening to his experience of growing up, the difficulty and the pain he went through.  There was also a fun side, listening to his adventurous past. Living in Hong Kong, I have always considered myself outside of mainstream. And having heard him talking about his life, I feel that I am not even close. In Hong Kong, a person's occupation defines him or her. If I apply the same theory to this friend, his path is certainly one of spiritual freedom, choosing nomadic travelling above mainstream ordinary life.

This friend is so different from what he appears to be. Beneath the quiet and reserved appearance is a kind, caring, gentle and yet misunderstood soul. It breaks my heart to see someone going through so much suffering since childhood, physically and mentally. I also have a lot of respect and admiration for someone who despite all these challenges, is not crushed and still has the determination to move on. It takes talent and lots of inner strength.


I remember in The Little Prince, the fox said, "Bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux." ("One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.") He also said, "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed" and "It is the time you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important." Don't know why these quotes came up when I was thinking about the time we spent together.

A few months ago I thought I would only sign up for Gobi March 2013 when I feel my body is ready.

I finally got myself to sign up last week. I was sitting in the office and in-between tasks, and suddenly a thought came up. It's really not so much about the body, but the heart. I realized that the time when I really felt like signing up was the moment when I finally decided on my fundraising goals. I was finally able to put my wish list together. That was a wish list which made me feel a greater sense of mission, a wish list which would propel me to persist with training in the next few months.

As for the body? I can't help but remember a beautiful and cute all time children's classic which I found last year at Bring Me A Book.

A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill. "I can't; that is too much a pull for me," said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. In desperation, the train asked the little switch engine  to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. "I think I can," puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can."
As it neared the top of the grade, which had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly. However, it still kept saying, "I—think—I—can, I—think—I—can." It reached the top by drawing on bravery and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself by saying, "I thought I could, I thought I could."

 The underlying theme is — a stranded train is unable to find an engine willing to take it on over difficult terrain to its destination. Only a little blue engine is willing to try and, with hard work and courage, overcomes a seemingly impossible task. That has been my mantra for the past few months and it really kept me motivated when I was about to die at the Action Asia Lantau 27k trail last week. I think I can.

This morning I woke up feeling really happy with lots of gratitude, even though I also felt the pain and swelling everywhere…

The Raleigh Challenge 2012 is my first ultra. When I first received the flyer of this race, I thought it would be an ideal distance for a first ultra, 78K. It turns out that distance is not an indication of the level of difficulty. As one of the runners put it quite well yesterday, “I can’t even begin to describe what this race is about…”

The mountain ranges of the Wilson Trail are paced in such a way that one has to deal with the toughest challenge at the most exhausted and weakest moment.

I got a lot out of joining this race. I started training from almost zero in July to finishing a race after 8 weeks and saw improvement of my physical ability and mental strength. The race also compressed a lot of interesting experience in some 20 odd hours. 

 

There were two weakest moments when I almost cracked. We were done with about two-third of the distance but by then it was already past 2 am and I was completely exhausted. The remaining distance to be covered was the Pat Sin Leng. At that point, sitting in the park, I really felt that I had no energy left, and to have to handle one of the toughest mountain trails in Hong Kong was almost unthinkable. But looking at my teammates, thinking about their encouragement and support over the past months, I couldn't get myself round to say withdraw.

 

As I was making my way up Cloudy Hill, I started to remember how Sam took me to do a first hike there two months ago. Up till the time of the race, I still was not able to piece all the different sections of the competition trail together. I went up the stairs and started to realize how everything finally came together at that point of time and it was a perfect moment of completion. 

There were also iconic moments. It was 6 am when we arrived at the entrance of the Pat Sin Leng country park, along with a few dozens of runners. By then everyone had been running for almost 20 hours and were almost dead. Everyone just laid flat on the ground, motionless and it was almost complete silence. It felt like the scene of a disaster movie where everyone had died. By 6:45 am, the runners were up one by one like zombies, dragging their heavy bodies up Pat Sin Leng.  

It still amazes me as to how I managed to have this wonderful mix of team members. I am so grateful to my teammates. Each one offered me something unique, and helped me improve my physical ability and the mental preparation for handling the race.

Thanks Sam for friendship, care, support and expertise and for taking me through this journey in the past few months, helping me with training, preparation and crisis management. I still think that it was an act of God that you decided to join our team, purely to test your patience in waiting and sleep deprivation. But I really appreciate and enjoyed every moment of it!

Thanks Bo for being a great and caring training buddy, helping me improve physically and my mental strength. Also thx for your patience in waiting and for helping me with details (coz I am very weak on details). Again, your fitness levels belong to a different league, but then I guess you didn’t know how slow I was when you first signed up.

Thanks Yellow for exploring the Wilson and other trails with me earlier on, and for going through the toughest stage of this race with me when I almost cracked. I will always remember the two of us limping through the Pat Sin Leng and the last 8K together, supporting each other.  

The encouragement and support of all three of you was what got me going and the experience wouldn’t have been awesome without you. I have also really enjoyed the interesting conversations during the past few months of training. I owe you all a lifetime of good cooking!

As much as it is a monster, there is something fascinating about the Raleigh. Someday, I might want to be back to do a night race or to attempt under 22 hrs.

I feel as if my new life as an ultra junkie has just begun. 

If I have to describe this movie in a few words - I would say "rich texture and intense flavours", the words I would use to describe food or wine. Rich texture because it feels like the weaving of fabrics. Using food as a backbone, the stories are divided into three segments -  breakfast, lunch and dinner. A number of the characters cross from one story to another, some even play the role of linking up all stories. Intense, because of the cinematography. The shots were very close and dynamic and there were some heavy emotions expressed through some of the characters.


The film explores the human relationships behind the 18 meals. There is some discussion on the food itself, but much less than I expected. The narrative at the opening sets out the theme clearly - that food not only opens the appetite, but opens our souls.

When I was small, my dad used to say that good food brings the family together. I was certainly brought up to understand the value of good food and the importance of family values, but probably those values were separately registered in my system rather than integrated. Good food has always been a matter of family obligation and practical necessity ever since I was small. As I grew up, graduated from college and moved away from my family, it ceased to be a matter of obligation. I realized that I had a choice, on what to enjoy, when to enjoy it, how to enjoy it and with whom to enjoy it etc.. It then became a matter of personal enjoyment and passion, and above all, the obsession with quality. The concept of family does not exist in this equation.

My parents' ageing eventually brought me back to cooking more at home, and I began to have a deeper understanding of the relationship between food and family. Cooking becomes a labour of love and compensates for the inadequacies of verbal communication. But something has changed over the years. Whilst my dad enjoys my cooking, he doesn't care much about the food anymore.

For me, there is no doubt that food is a life-long passion, a major sensory indulgence, and a powerful tool allowing me to express love and artistic creativity. Modern society is a lot more complex now. Whether it is fate or luck, having a family is not a must for the younger generations. Yet, good food has not lost its appeal, because its importance has elevated to binding and enhancing all kinds of human relationships.



“Desserts are like mistresses. They are bad for you. So if you are having one,
you might as well have two.”
 - Chef Alain Ducasse

“I prefer to regard a dessert as I would imagine the perfect woman: subtle, a little bittersweet, not blowsy and extrovert. Delicately made up, not highly rouged. Holding back, not exposing everything and, of course, with a flavor that lasts.”
- Graham Kerr

"When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of us is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It's also a way of getting at something else: who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be." 
- Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, 2009

 

 

One can learn a lot about compassion and wisdom through crisis.

Saw this on the news the other day. Some tourists from mainland China were asked what they thought about the ferry collision tragedy off the Lamma waters. They thought that the whole incident, whether the people who helped, the attitude of the government all showed a very human touch.

I consider it a very fortunate thing living in Hong Kong. When disaster happens, rescue is available within a very short time. The government is quick to react and provide relief to those injured or families of victims. People are generally kind and helpful to one another.

I remember it was May 2008 when I heard from the news about a cyclone in Myanmar. But since there was not much transparency, I could only imagine the impact. I later got calls from my local colleagues who heard by word of mouth that the delta area was almost like living hell. In a few days, it was clear that almost 130,000 people had died overnight and tens of thousands of corpses were floating along rivers.

By the time I arrived in Myanmar a few weeks later,  I was shocked by the extent of damage done by the cyclone, but strangely I couldn't feel as much grief in the people. There were probably many reasons explaining this. In a developed city, if there is a major natural disaster, the rescue efforts would stir up people's compassion and emotions. In the delta, huts were built with the most primitive branches and leaves. A cyclone with a magnitude higher than a typhoon no. 10 would mean that people were literally blown away and disappear. No drama with rescue efforts then, not to mention that the government didn't even care about rescue or collecting the dead bodies in the rivers. There were many monks who tried to collect the dead bodies were arrested and put in jail. So basically no rescue, no grief, no drama, but mostly fear.

But from interacting with local people, I was able to share their grief. However, the grief was only minor, I learnt so much from their compassion and wisdom. There were days when I couldn't find a guest house to accept me. The disaster zone was a restricted area and foreigners were not supposed to be there. Military and police check points were everywhere and people were generally terrified. Whenever I showed my passport at a guesthouse, I was fearfully and politely turned down. A Catholic church kindly took me on, as they were generally off the radar. I was talking to a Catholic sister who was the only survivor in her convent. She saw everyone blown away that night but she was able to hold onto the power generator and saved her life. I could feel a lot of sadness but I was very touched to see that she had devoted all her energy to restoring the convent and the orphanage.

Another day I took a long 5 hour boat ride to one of the islands. We helped this village to rebuild houses and fishing boats. The island was beautiful, peaceful and quiet. But it was also probably because 900 were swept away by the cyclone and died. I met a young man about 18 years old. He was one of the carpenters who helped us to build fishing boats so that villagers could return to normal life. He told me that he was the only survivor in a family of 8. Even though he felt very sad, he channeled his energy to building fishing boats to help fellow villagers to make a living. His family used to own a piece of land which was a few thousand square feet but he felt he didn't need it anymore. He donated it to a family of 6 which had survived the cyclone and he was contented to living in a small wooden house. He said life and death was only part of karma and he was able to find peace.

I will always remember the time when I was working there. In a place where there is literally no electricity, running water, life comes down to the very basics. Enjoy working when the sun comes out, take a shower when there is rain, and families just sit around a burning candle every night for an hour sharing love and happiness and that's the only entertainment one can have. That was my major lesson on contentment.

  

"The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate." - Oprah Winfrey.

Let's see if I can come up with my own menu of celebration....


1. Be a child
 
2. Watch "the world is just awesome" on YouTube over and over again

3. Help others and make others happy

4. Be loving, kind and caring

5. Nurture family relationship and friendships

6. Go hiking and enjoy the freshness of the trees and plants

7. Buy all sorts of lovely flowers and bring them home

8. Photography

9. Cook a hearty meal

10. Yoga, meditation and prayer

11. Music

12. Read

13.Watch "When Harry Met Sally" over and over again

14. Enjoy every moment

15. Have a cup of tea



This is not a long list, but by now I am so grateful since I am doing the things that make me very happy all the time. I'm so glad that the things that make me happy are just small and simple things.