The Past Twelve Months

CHRISTMAS  2018

Reflecting beside the lapping waves of a remote bay…….

It has been a year different from others, but yet rewarding and eye opening.

I have had an opportunity, albeit unexpected, to look more into my inner self,

clear the decks of past practices, letting go of temporal distractions and

enhance my appreciation of life.

The mind and the heart synchronized better, like the stars in an alignment to

reaffirm and learn more important things.

Time is relative and the passing of time by itself, a man made concept.   I got more in tune with my biological clock.  I realized how much more our body can heal itself, how our potential is much unutilized, to avoid inflammation (in the widest meaning of the word) and to savour oxidation  ( in all implications of the word).

Some things are never done and seem repetitive in a cyclic process, but it does

add to the transformation.   Other things are done once and we move on.   Some things will never be and others yet can be “Why Not?”

To break free, I woke up to stop accumulating things that add to bother, diversion, hesitancy and clutter.   Yet I acknowledged why I had been attracted to such things.   A want or a need has to be fed, but once I cut off the want, I am liberated to do other things.

Cyberspace and physical reality merged more on all fronts  - work, business, down time and social time.   The ease with which virtual reality offers can be a two edged sword, as there is nothing more refreshing than meeting up face to face and chatting vocally.

I appreciated more the removal of clutter.   I value more the ability to be independent, to be more patient, to be cognizant of higher things.

Society, with a larger population and more demands put upon it, can have its seams breaking down in lowered standards and practice of ethics.   I watched with bewilderment the blatant disregard in how corporations mistreated customers, how individuals in business and politics just took care of the very selfish needs of themselves  - and how compliance requirements are disregarded when they should not be.

I continue to observe the greater intensity with which, in my own country, excessive drinking, drug addiction, rude driving, uncontrolled gambling with the dice and a coddled and dependent mentality can wreck havoc and malfeasance for my society and community.   I acknowledge the dangerous addiction with smart phone apps and social media.

Yet there have been magical moments of being able to catch up with friends and relatives from far and near…….London, Hong Kong, Zurich, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Auckland, George Town, Brisbane and Melbourne.   It was a wedding, it was a dinner and drinks, it was shopping, it was a home meal, it was a car ride.

I never take for granted the cool breezes coming form the ocean where I live.  I accept with a renewed gratitude that there is still a shared sense of community where I choose to reside.   I treasure the option of meeting new people.   I do not take for granted the cocoon supported by reliable friends.   I have tried new culinary dishes  - maybe more by consuming them than cooking them.  

I am more eager to try natural food to feed my body than swallow manufactured tablets and the hype of fake news nutrition.    The way that moderation has not been practiced is more observed by me, whether it is in the shopping malls, reactions of negative people, the manner some people carry on their shoulders and in my not using all of my capability and capacity.

There have been iconic moments this past year……walking along the river at Port Macquarie at dawn, spending time with beautiful souls, missing the company of significant individuals, being able to try diverse cooking and more.   Challenges have been taken by the bull’s horns, outcomes enjoyed like with a doggie on my lap and the passion not reduced for life.

Kindly yours,

Kevin Yong

The State of the Barista Coffee Business

There are single origins and blends. Is the Australian retail coffee sector waiting for a shake up, more innovation and a less fragmented industry framework?

It is reported there are at least 650 micro coffee roasters for a nation with a population less than that for the greater Tokyo region.

The retail coffee business is said to be only growing at 5 per cent per annum. More players are entering an already crowded field that is crying out from a possible bubble. Some apply social media to enhance marketing and presence in a competitive field.

If you are a barista cafe owner, do you still depend on early morning turnover and the brunch margins? Labour costs make you think twice of offering cuppas at midnight, like they do in Asia. The multi business model of having a licensed bar on your rented premises is attracting customers, but it depends on which market you are operating in.

Coffee beans are a commodity in world trade and are subject to the vagaries and volatility of supply and prices. The question of minimum pay for workers in cafes, especially those working part time and on a casual basis, can raise its ugly head. For the business operator, there is a constant and hawkish need to monitor margins and costs.

It can be said that if you do well in three important things at your cafe, your regular customers can be relied upon. Your coffee has to stand out in bean taste, espresso texture, coffee varietal, body, serving temperature, crema consistency and roast freshness. You need to have an addictive food item, savoury or sweet, on your cafe display shelf or menu. And you need one engaging personality based in your cafe to close the deal.

Running workshops on creating coffees, holding community catch ups and offering different styles for cold and warm weather are useful options, but require resources with which sole proprietors can ill afford.

The strength of the barista business can be its weakness. 

We love the fact that many in the coffee business at street level can shape their own parameters - unique, focused, hipster or down to earth.

Having coffee can be like in the perfume business - reflect on the aroma, the elegance, the reliability, the special moment. Once a particular offering captivates you, you as a customer will return for more.

At the same time, how a barista prepares
from the same blend (say Campos or White Horse) can result in different nuances on the tongue. This also echoes the different skills in making the cuppa.

It has been beneficial for serious coffee lovers in Australia for the market to break away from straitlaced processed coffee from the supermarkets, commercial fast food like chains and bland ground bean blends. The significant influence and inspiration from Italian espresso making is much appreciated. 

Are consumers tending towards consuming more bold coffee on a daily basis? Will there be more negative health pronouncements
for your customers having their fourth cup for a single day? Is there an opportunity for more cooperation by the disparate spectrum of players?

#yongkevthoughts

#baristacoffee

Social Media Addiction and Downside

It is scary. The three apps I most often use are Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook.

They are all owned by the same business entity, which has more customers than many corporates, more users than populations of many nations and more followers than some religions.

I ask myself, what happened to the pleasure of speaking on the phone? Increasingly we can use our fingers more than our vocal chords. 

Our life routines and special moments are punctuated by electronic images and words that can be disposed as fast as they are created, or so we think. The huge number of records of every human being having access to wi-fi grows exponentially and are not just kept by the person who created them. Data is over analysed but not necesarily for benign and progressive purposes.

Data is not just kept on an aggregate basis, but details can be sliced and detailed. 

The addiction to using apps can be experienced akin to the pleasure of drug induced states, gambling thrills and rewards of repeatitive behaviour. Is communicating through social media really the same as meeting up face to face with social friends?

Have you observed how often software updates are required of you? Are such updates of more benefit to your provider than to you as a user?

It is easier to access electronic records than physical ones. And not just by you.
Each of us resents being manipulated by others in the face, but can willingly increase our risks of further manipulation by forces unseen, unheard and unrealised.

We have been induced to look for information the easier way by Googling, but have we truly stopped to query about the validity of such purported facts? 

It is easier to search for news on screens than to read them on paper. This simple situation illustrates the two edged sword nature of electronic information - easier does not mean true, harder does not mean fake, faster does not mean sincerity, slower does not mean not meaningful.

The sanctity of ethics is not protected, because it can be subserviant to other demands and priorities of your provider of the data and information you digest. Your personal data, life moments and images which you happily contribute to cyberspace are not yours for privacy anymore, but swallowed up to in turn sell you not just consumer goods, but ideas, politics and cultural beliefs. 

The Big Brother is smiling - even more as it is so easy for individual human beings to tell Him everything. 

You, as a speck on this Earth of human beings, can be naive to want to share and connect, but you have compromised yourself in this process. You are also possibly connecting unwittingly to forces darker than what you thought exist.

Such forces can be too big to fail and each of us are too small to resist. Despite regulation, protests and hearings, the relentless push of the giants carries on.

#yongkevthoughts

Using Facebook

In view of the greater risks to privacy, security and integrity when posting on Facebook, I emphasise my policy when using this facility.

1. Not everything that happens in my life are posted on Facebook - when scanning my FB postings, you do not know all my friends, relatives and positive people in my life - many choose not to be seen, photographed or mentioned in Facebook. Several of my friends have asked me not to post them or their activities with me in real life on Facebook. You do not see all events I am involved in, and most of the time if a photograph appears, thay are not on line real time.

2. I shall use Facebook to share positive, significant, inspiring matters - and topics which need thoughtfulness, decision making and action to follow up with. I shall try my best not to post speculative, rabble rousing and false news from external websites. Facebook users must think more for themselves and not accept that news feed on Facebook is necesarily true, just like we do not fully trust the traditional press, Tv news channels and other social media outlets.

3. Unless stated, the images and videos that appear on my Facebook postings are copyright to me and protected under Creative Commons. Do ask permission from me if you wish to use them for commercial profit.

4. I encourage you to let me know if any of my statements or third party reports that appear on my Facebook postings are not accurate or correct - and I shall follow up to acknowledge your concerns.

5. If I have emerging trends in my Facebook postings, it does not necessarily mean I want to buy them, or are interested forever in such things, or have a mindset that reflects such implied views. I retain the right to change my views or mindset on products, people, politics, social matters and more. 

6. My Facebook postings are subject to my own actions on deletions, changes and retention.

7. I utilise Facebook for moderate fun, positive diversion and sharing on an intelligent basis. I do not believe in applying to a wide extent that everybody is interested in me, wants to connect with me or wants to share with me. I do not want to connect with every one , only individuals who give me positive vibes.

8. I do use other means of communication apart from Facebook. So my Facebook is not totally me, and I am not just living a Facebook life.

#yongkevthoughts

When the Days Did not Make Sense - and When They Did

The passage of time can be relative.

There are exactly six full blooming deep red roses in my garden right now, a delightful salute to life, as I move over from another another significant past twelve months.   They are especially captivating, with many elegant folds in each rose, an usually bright countenance and a magical moment about them.

The extreme dry conditions for most of the past several months, apart from a recent spate of persistent rain, have devastated the lawn.   Some individuals whom I am close to have had a variety of life's issues, but they still wake up each morning with a gusto to face the new day.   Some of them have created new opportunity for themselves despite the challenge, hassle and personal devastation.  Yet some others are in the prime of life, planting as much for the unpredictable future as much as they can and relentlessly moving forward, as if impregnable.

Just like the weather may do to us, each of us can be kept on our toes by a variety of personal experiences.    What can seem over bearing at first sight can free up our mindsets in managing the different scenarios.   A few hassles can make us fed up at the attacks on the status quo in our lives   - and then this experience can make us take flight in our inner selves and assume a different posture to over come the problem.   In so doing, the  interim problem does not become an issue anymore, but liberates us to better take care of ourselves.

Our human make up can be complex, but has better potential than most of us take credit for.   Healing can occur not by the intake of artificially made stuff alone, but by seemingly intangible influences such as shared laughter, friendship, faith, mutual conversation, someone opening his or heart to you and other natural processes of detoxification.  

Beliefs built up in us by the norms of society - especially in commercialisation, consumerism, reduction in morals, distraction and rise of various forms of addiction - are increasingly challenged by each of us, as the levels of trust in established institutional practices are eroded.   

If we reflect, do we still have as much faith as before in our medical practitioners; our religious institutions; our political leaders; our fellow vehicle drivers on the road we share with; the value of financial currency; the quality of our purchases of produce and products; the reliability of our white goods in the house; the integrity of our privatised providers, as for utilities and airports; our own ears, with the onslaught of media over load from people and parties with their own agendas; and the security of our own personal information, given the more regular corporate confession of privacy breaches?

At the same time, I remind myself of the gratitude in apparently smaller things.....  the tank fish are still alive, I have not had a vehicle tyre puncture for another year running, we are reducing the use of frivolous plastic, darling doggies still show us unconditional love, the food allocation system in our community has not broken down as in Venezuela and my neighbours still communicate with each other.   And I can still leave on-line purchased parcels at my front door, with no one stealing them.

Yet in our attempts to exercise more gratefulness, how does one handle deaths, emphatically negative people and parties that seem to communicate less with you than ever before?

Death for biological beings like us is part of the cycle of life, an all encompassing event like the shelf life expiry of supermarket items, not an option but an inevitable landmark that can indicate a significant transformation beyond a physical demise.  For me, the importance of a human being is what memory he or she retains in the rest of us, a process more meaningful to interact with when the person is alive.

When it is so much easier to communicate with each other, there is a growing impression that there is actually less meaningful communication happening.   What an irony, what a conundrum.   Persons who do not take the effort to communicate with me may have their own issues and I can only try.   It is a blessing to not have to deal with individuals who show such negativity that they do not even realise this.

In a world of increasing physical mobility, I come across more individuals travelling more often.  Increasing communicative ability in cyberspace means we can look at images created only a minute ago.  I sense the positive feelings of people finding themselves far away from their usual base and rejoice in their excitement.  Many come back from a holiday to go away again.  The network of airlines, agents, organisers, restaurants, accommodation outlets and guides is growing fast in a sector that provides for cruises, private tours, commission related incentives and more.  The holiday trade has customers who need to explore, get away and keep occupied.

Yet I get a more intense glow of comfort eating at my favourite ramen stall (Gumshara in Haymarket NSW), walking along a river (Port Macquarie) somewhere far out from an over burdened city and observing the signs of the change in the seasons in a countryside village (between Canberra and Goulburn NSW).  I have over utilised the joys of a share economy in the past year.  I continue to appreciate the detailed art of a barista made cup of coffee in my home town.  Not to forget, munching on a packet of naked corn chips laced with quinoa, chia and sorghum.   To each, his or her own pleasures,

In the past year I have come to understand better the traditional saying  of accepting what cannot be changed, changing what cannot be accepted and accepting the power of change as well.

Some books remain not read,  what had been de-cluttered are replaced with more clutter and then it finally dawns on me that human beings are creatures of habit.  It can be crucially the habits in our mind that we have to purposefully change to better ourselves and our experience of life.

I realise instinctively the pace and nature of our cycles on Earth.   The roses are at the top of their game right now, but the only certainty in life is constant change.    And as sure as they will fade, new buds will grow on the very same stem.

And so be it, as one can embrace life fully, making it happen, responding wisely and being always grateful for the journey.