To be Grateful For

When we have it, it is easy to take many things for granted.

Take a moment to think about it. The level of prosperity and quality of life has reached more individuals than ever in the history of the planet Earth. Give a thought to those who have less, and not just in terms of material things. Give a thought to those caught up in the materialistic warp, do they have true wealth?

For 2018, do give a thanks of prayer for the following in your life.

To have access to fresh air, clean water, beautiful sunrises and sunsets and what seems to be complimentary from Nature.

To get an honest smile and hello from a neighbour or stranger.

To feel safe in your neighbourhood or workplace.

To have the ability to responsibly express your opinion.

To experience the adrenalin rush that comes from exercise and mobility of travel.

To have an unexpected hello, because the caller is thinking of you, even if both parties have been busy.

To work towards truly meaningful goals with benefits that last instead of being trapped in temporary delusion.

To have the capacity to develop and practise your religious or cultural beliefs.

To have the opportunity to integrate with your community and national values.

To be empowered to effectively think for yourself, as we get increasingly diverted, distracted and hoodwinked by things and parties that are not really what they purport to be.

To be able to contact anyone around the world at a minimal cost and with ease.

To witness and experience tolerance.

To maintain the peace despite having gone through the sabre rattling.

To understand each other's view points without bullying each other.

To make use of our five senses in a much more involved manner.

To be not affected by violence, natural diasaster and military conflict.

To sit down with the family for dinner.

To exercise your vote at political elections.

To not suffer discrimination of whatever kind.

To have people who encourage and not discourage.

To have that opportunity to positively surprise the world.

Lunar New Year - Symbolic Meanings and Good Omens

Lunar New Year of the EARTH PIG

5 Feb 2019 to 24 Jan 2020

Note: Lunar New Years usually start any date between the 19th of January and the 19th of February of any Gregorian calendar year.

Rat 2008 – Ox 2009 – Tiger 2010 - Rabbit 2011 – Dragon 2012 – Snake 2013  – Horse 2014 – Goat or Sheep 2015 – Monkey 2016 – Rooster 2017 – Dog 2018 – Pig 2019.   Apply multiples of 12 to identify past and future years.

No sweeping of the broom or cleaning the house or doing laundry for at least the first 3 days of the Lunar New Year, lest good luck is inadvertently lost.   Get a haircut before New Year's Eve and avoid doing so in the first lunar month.

The Yee Sang is a raw fish salad that nurtures the stirring of positive vibes.  Banquet dishes are chosen carefully to be consumed for positive vibes and play on Chinese language pronunciation:

Lively prawns Prawns or Ha sound like laughter!   Steamed fish is served whole, for its connotation is to be well off.    Chicken sounds like luck.   Lettuce, or Sang Choy in Cantonese, refers to growing money.

Dried oyster, or Ho Si, means good things.  Zyu Dau, or pork knuckles in Mandarin, suggests of good things being achieved effortlessly.  Black moss or Fatt Choi alludes to wealth and prosperity.    Pork represents strength, wealth and blessings.    Scallops and clams served encourage the opening of new horizons.

Lotus seeds, pomegranates and duck in the menu wish young couples of fertility and to multiply.

Spring rolls represent gold bars for wealth.     Melons are signs of family unity.   Noodles signify a long and fulfilling life.    Mandarin oranges represent gold and are especially exchanged between relatives and friends. Pomelo gifts signify abundance and prosperity.   Dumplings look like gold ingots.

The tangerine plant or Kat is placed proudly in the front of houses, especially modified miniature shrubs, as its name in Chinese refers to good luck.   The Li or plum blossom stands for hope and renewal.  

  

It is a must to obtain a new wardrobe for the Lunar New Year. New Year means a new start. Maybe commercialism has added pressure to this philosophy.   Avoid buying shoes during the traditional first 15 days of the Lunar New Year. In Cantonese, the word for shoes also suspiciously sounds like having a regretful sigh!

Red packets (Hong Bao or Lai See) are filled with money and given for good luck by married members of a family to younger relatives and children of good friends.

Sweetness is exemplified by the making of a variety of snacks and cakes. The glutinous sticky rice cake or Nin Gou means tall cake, emphasising one getting to higher achievements or growing taller in stature year after year. Tong Jyun or sweet dough balls signify the roundness of a reunion.

It is popular for households to display red cuts of festive designs like lanterns, calligraphy and zodiac animals. Good sayings with Chinese characters are often hung upside down, for such an arrangement also suggests the "arrival" of good luck.

Traditional greetings during the festive period emphasise on good fortune, prosperity, a wonderful and smooth path, excellent luck, family happiness, an achieving career, good business and scoring good results in study.    Avoid using, giving or receiving sharp pointed objects during the first few days of the Lunar New Year.    Lion dances bring good vibes to businesses and households.

Culture, Community, Country

In a world of increased mobility, do you feel if your country is the same as your culture, if your goverment synchronises with your personal values, if your religion or language remains part of the national tapestry and if your citizenship is your ethnicity?

There are still homogenous demographics remaining within several nations, despite the rise of multi-cultural diversity in Western societies and the historical mixing of different races within countries formed from the legacy of colonialism.

Thailand, Japan, China, both North and South Korea, Russia and Latin American nations have a high degree of having a shared spoken and written language, which further strengthens their sense of cultural heritage. Thailand is perhaps the only non European country in the world to be not subject to colonialism.

In terms of having less diverse populations, Japan does stand out due to their de-emphasis on accepting migrants and their geographical nature of being a string of islands. 

In contrast, Australia, Israel and Canada have allowed the settlement of peoples from around 200 other nations. Israel welcomes migrants with a shared cultural and religious background. Australia and Canada especially encourage the use of languages other than English.

The USA had been heralded as a promised land attracting, amongst many, war torn migrants from Europe, Spanish speakers from south of its borders, students from an Asia with rising incomes and Middle Easterners. The USA claims to be the original melting pot in nation building in recent history.

The European continent saw the regular redrawing of national boundaries due to war, political alliances, royal marriages, religious transformations and internal migrations, especially in the past 200 years before the 21st century.

Immigration can change the nature of societies - look at France, Australian capital cities, the proportion of non Muslims falling in Malaysia, Birmingham in the United Kingdom and Germany in recent years.

The island nation of Singapore utilises racial numbers as a critical factor in ensuring racial harmony in a small country. South Africa has up to a dozen official languages. The modern Republic of India was federated from lands with different languages and ethnicities collated under the rule of Britain and the former British East India Company.

There are small islands in the South Pacific that are still linked politically, culturally and financially to European masters, a legacy of the 19th century.

The carving of territories by colonial powers, at times subjectively, has divided people of the same culture across different nation states - think for example, of the Kurdish; the indigenous peoples of Papua New Guinea; and the Arabs.

Indigenous peoples across many parts of the world have lost their original nationhood. Those still having some structural sense of independence are grouped around New Zealand, where the Maoris perhaps maintain the highest level of political dignity for indigenous peoples.

Increasingly it can get harder for an individual to assert that my country, my government, my culture, my religion, my personal values, my citizenship, my mother tongue and my ethnicity share a high degree of commonality.

Perhaps the idea of a nation state is increasingly irrelevant. World citizenship can resolve many administrative issues. However the inherent nature of mankind can continue to be divisive, to differentiate and to dominate over others.

#yongkevthoughts

Reflections

The water supply to my neighbourhood was cut off unexpectedly last night. This unplanned event had several of my neighbours talking to each other. Not that they do not in otherwise normal circumstances. There was a Sydney Water website live update on this supply interruption, but it was more fulfiling with chat amongst the neighbours.

Have you ever written a letter to your Prime Minister?

When was the most recent time you gathered with family or friends just to talk of happy things?

Do you have a chill out from screen time regularly to admire Nature, smell the roses or dabble in some artistic pursuit?

Does it really matter if you did not know about significant happening in news from the media?

How did you stay in touch with your mates before apps like Facebook?

When was the last time you walked with your pet to the beach?

What is the most impressionable thing that gives a glow in your heart, despite the clutter and rush of contemporary routine?

How was your walk doing nothing today, and yet who or what did you come across?

Did you just do something, big or small, that you normally would not, with positive vibes for yourself or others?

For once, do you consciously recognise the ability of your own body and mind to self heal?

Can you reflect and choose one thing, habit or act, that commercial society expects of you, but which you and family do not need?

Have you got into touch with a long lost friend or family member still deep in your heart but somehow not been communicating with?

Have you allowed yourself to fly, not literally, but with your own possibilities?

Do you occasionally ask yourself, "Why Not", and proceed at times with your gut feel?

Other people may offer a sympathetic and listening ear, but in the end, it is only you, and you alone, who can liberate yourself.

My house water supply was restored this morning. For a fleeting moment, I realised how I had long taken for granted the gush of still clean water from the turn of a tap - and how rare such a cut off in residential water supply occurs in suburban Australia.

To close, I have one more question for you ........

Is it more upsetting to have your wifi connections cut off for a longer time than you had to do without water or electricity supply?

#yongkevthoughts

Selective Reasoning

Selective reasoning....

My cause is more important than yours. I hurt more as a victim than other clamaints.The masses cannot do this due to breach of institutional and constititional laws, but the most powerful in the land can do anything.

We have to accept collateral damage for the greater good of our nation. Read: We can sacrifice the small fry to protect the big man, me, the one in power.What happens in state election outcomes does not apply to the national level, due to state issues.

What happens in state election outcomes will be echoed at national level elections, it is a warning sign.

Research can produce engineered outcomes, as long as we do not detail the sample size, pre-existing conditions, test limitations and who really sponsors the activity.I shall dish out my advice which is good for you, but I will not in practice follow what I say to you when I face the same situation.

To distract the masses within your own disrupted nation, make negative accusations of foreign leaders and nations in what you have already done yourself as a leader.Ensure your own top level renumeration and get rid of dispensible people who actually do the work to cut costs, as to meet the agreed indicators for getting more incentives for yourself.

Socio-political victors rewriting history, forgetting specific parties who helped them win and destroying any evidence of help from the perceived opposition.

Twisting the positive intents of people you want to destroy, while over stacking and exagerating your own postive virtues and achievements. This can include unfairly belittling people you do not like and basking in your own bizzare personal glory.

Biting the hand of the one who feeds you. Even dogs do not stoop so low, or at least those I have come across.

Not realising that it takes both hands to work in a marriage - and forgetting that magical moment when the romance started.

#yongkevthoughts