Learning Google Spreadsheet - Part 1

For some reason I have been fascinated by the amazement of how the spreadsheet can process complicated data since the end of October 2010.

It all began with Chenny's request for my assistance in sorting out a three-page name list which he scribbled notes all over the blank areas about the class time changes, students contact details and etc. the notes were so messy that even Chenny was not sure what some of the notes were about.

It was not a big task. Before long I had it finished by putting those notes in a Google spreadsheet. But by the time I was going to give it back to him, I was curious to know if he had any administration system in place to help him managing his music teaching job. All he showed to me was a timetable which sets the week days on the top row and a time with an increment of 30 minutes ran on the first column starting from 9 AM till 9:30 PM, and about 30 students names were scattering over the grid of the table. This table serves to tell him the class time of his student. Other than this timetable, is the three pages of a computer print which the music Center gives him for the purpose of contact with students. As time goes by these three-page prints became very messy, and Chenny was the only one who could get information out of them, but I believe even him would find it hard. I think that was why he asked me to retype it.

I vaguely know that database is the answer, but I aim at making it possible to access on the Internet so that Chenny can refer to his database through his iPhone when he is on the road. So I searched for the functions on the Web and landed at the webpages of Google docs.

I knew Google docs contains spreadsheet application, but I had only learned how to use the most basic formulas like addition, subsection, modification and division. After some searches, I found that the functions I had in mind had also been asked by many other Google docs users in the help forum, so I knew I was on the right direction of my adventure in the exploration of creating a working system for Chenny.

First of all, I created the main worksheet which I labeled it "Student". This is for Chenny to enter their contact details, class time, class day, fee to charge. Then the challenge came when I created the second worksheet labeled as "Time window".

In the "Time window", my idea was placing a formula in each of the cells that was able to grab the data in the column of class day and class time in the "Student" worksheet and to place the student's name in the corresponding cells in the "Time window" worksheet.

It took me about two weeks in reading many many relevant posts in Google's help forum and playing with the formula which I thought should work but always ended up with a return of "N/A", "ERROR", "REF" or anything but not what I wanted. Gradually my frustration was rising and my patience was running out, suddenly the right data turned up in the cell when I pressed "enter". That feeling was wonderful. It was like you had just won a big prize of Lotto.

For almost one whole month, most of my time day and night were spent in the exploration and
experiment of the formulas. Due to this sudden change in my everyday living style, I spent very little time on the Internet. Some of my friends noticed this change, e-mailed and asked me why I was suddenly so quiet on the Web.

Once I had sorted out the first working formula, it became easier to interpret the strange language used in the formula. Below are some of the formulas which I figured out after innumerable experiments:

=sort(filter('Lesson log'!A2:K,'Lesson log'!J2:J="y",'Lesson log'!I2:I<='Lesson log'!G2:G,'Lesson log'!A2:A>=(today()-14)),2,true,1,true)

=count(iferror(filter(Student!A2:A,Student!F2:F=E4,Student!G2:G<>""),"0"))

=iferror(iferror(filter(Student!A:A,Student!F:F=F1,Student!G:G=A15);filter(Student!A:A,Student!F:F=F1,Student!G:G=A14,Student!H:H=2)),"")

=index(filter(C1:C243,search(H34,B1:B243)),1)

By the end of November, I had accomplished a Google spreadsheet that was able to accommodate Chenny’s need for queries, information check, statistics of his earning. And he finds it helpful, and I feel I am still useful.

Our Thai Neighbor

This is the house neighboring to ours where lived a Serbian family. In April of 2008, the Serbian family moved to Australia, and Nede, the owner of this house had to rent his house before he left for his new job in Brisbane. Nede promised me that he would find a good neighbor for us. A couple of days later, he appeared at the door steps with two Asian ladies. I knew instantly they must be his tenant. Nede introduced them to us: Noreen the mother, and Chompoo the eldest daughter of the family from Thailand.

My first impression about Noreen and Chompoo was that they were very friendly and polite. After they moved in, I found that Noreen was always with a hat on whenever she was out in the garden, seen on the driveway; especially when she goes to a formal occasion, then the hat is always one that seemed to be a tailor-made matching her dress. "They must be a family of high social status in Thailand." I thought to myself.

Before long, we have become friend, and we know each other more day by day. She is a retired lecturer of Chingmai university in Thailand. She has three daughters, all are named by fruit-- Passna(passion fruit), the eldest daughter, Pear and Peach, the second and third respectively. She came to live with her daughters from 2007 in order to make them proper meals for their health sake. "Chompoo and the two other girls are always Mama noodle (the instant noodle) when I'm not around", she once said.

She speaks excellent English. Most Asian people of my age group are generally not confident English speakers, but she is different. She speaks confidently and grammatically correct and she is even 11 years older than me. Her language skill and her socialable temperament enables her to befriend with people of all sort of fields wherever she goes.

She embraces the olden day social etiquette. She always tries to give generously to others and humbly take less when she is offered something as a return of her previous favor. Sometimes this give-and-receive between she and us appears to be as if we are fighting for something. And at the end of the giggling fighting, we follow her etiquette -- we receive more from her and she gets less back, and she is happy with that result.

Noreen loves her homeland. When there is any cultural event being celebrate by the Thai community, she always earnestly inviting us to go with her. When we have a shared meal together, she usually gives comment on each dish of her make and explains how Thai people make it. In our daily conversation, she will more or less use some Thai language such as "Ko kun klap", "sawa dika".

Time seems to be passing faster when Noreen is around. Two and half a years has gone by when Noreen came to discuss with us in mid October about their plan of shifting to other place and she herself to go back to live in Thailand permanently.

As the date they return the house to the landlord is only less than a month away, Noreen asked if Jean would be interested in having a sightseeing tour to South Island with her before her departure, Jean agreed and I helped them with the tour and flight bookings.

The time passes even faster than normal after their return from the tour trip on Nov. 11 and we have meals together more offen. In one of the last few meetings, Jean cited a Chinese quote as a conclusion of our being neighbors for the past two and half years and for the eve of the parting: “但願人長久﹐千里共蟬娟”, and I tried my best in the translation-- ”only am I wishing that we all live long, and let’s get in touch through watching this full moon despite that we are being thousand miles away from each other, ”

On 18th November morning at 10:30am, half hour before she left for airport, Noreen came to say goodbye, and Jean captured the best photo of her before we all said goodbye the last time to each other.

My adventure in making sourdough bread

It is hard to believe that somehow I could become fascinated by the craft of making sourdough bread starting from July 2010.

About three months of time has past since the day I started the adventure in the exploration of this ancient art. From the quality of the breakfast rolls that I made yesterday with my own formulated sourdough starter, I think I can now announce my success in taming the sourdough starter with which I make my breakfast buns.

The reason I refer to sourdough bread making as an "art" is because of the unpredictable nature of its most important ingredient, the sourdough starter, which the baker uses to rise the dough. There are so many factors to think about, to stick to, and to experiment with in order to cultivate the healthy yeast for making the best bread that can win your sincere praise and your highest satisfaction. It cannot be just jotted down on paper as a step-by-step instruction for you to follow through, instead, it can only tell you the principles, the ideas, the hypothesis that you must know when you work through the process of making bread using your homemade sourdough starter. And this is how the sourdough bread making captivated my heart.

My first step in the adventure was googling this topic in the website. I'm grateful to the contributors who share their experience and knowledge about the sourdough bread making on the Internet, that just by a flick of the fingers, I got all the relevant information. I learned that some sourdough enthusiasts cultivating yeast by soaking raisins in water, some from boiled potato water, some from apple or other fruits, and various other ideas of all sorts of stuff. I adopted the method of raising my yeast in flour batter after I had tried one with raisins.

My wife advocates healthy food, so I use wholemeal flour in the whole process of making bread, although I personally like using white flour because it can make the bread texture more fluffy and softer. But we should not pursue the pleasure for our taste buds only, Health issue should be taken into account seriously too, so I satisfied her by using hundred percent wholemeal flour plus approximately 5% of gluten flour, which one of the posts in the web says will compensate the fluffiness and the softness of the bread when you use only wholemeal flour.

We had been using the commercially formulated dry yeast available in super market for five dollars per bottle of 150 g. This kind of yeast is recommended to be used up within six months otherwise you will see a sharp decrease or even zero of its leavening strength. But since I started experimenting on sourdough starter from mid July of 2010, we have completely stopped using the commercial dry yeast.

Every 2 to 3 days I will make breakfast bread once for the family. During the first few weeks, the bread I made was too tense in texture because it only raised the dough slightly even though I left it in a warm space to rise for as long as 10 hours or more. I pondered on the cause of this problem and I came up with the following conclusions:

• The ratio of sourdough starter and the flour is too far off the right one.
• The concentration of the yeast raised in the flour batter is far less than the required level.

Gradually I adjusted here and there in the process of growing the sourdough starter and it is now settled at this protocol:

1. The birth of first sourdough starter:
1. make a flour batter by mixing 1/2 cup wholemeal flour, 1 tsp commercial dry yeast and 100ml water. Keep in a transparent container and mark where the mixture is up to on the container. Leave it with lid loosely closed on the top of the container enabling the preferment process to go on in room temperature for about two hours, or when you see a layer of foam forming on the surface of the batter. This is the first generation of sourdough starter.
2. Thereafter, you need to feed the starter with 1/2 cup wholemeal flour and 100ml water. Stir the whole lot till the flour is wet, then leave it with lid slightly open in room temperature for a maximum of 4 hours or before you feel the yeast is beginning to become hungry again. It is time to put the lid tightly on and keep it in the fridge to sleep. If you don’t put the sourdough starter to sleep at this point of time, the yeast will begin to turn sourer and sourer and end up with a pail of rotten stuff and no longer edible, I believe.
2. Preparing to make a dough:
1. Take the sourdough starter in sleeping out of the fridge. I call this “wake up” and leave it in room temperature. You can imagine the yeasts are yearning and begining to work again.
2. Add 1 cup wholemeal flour and 200ml of water, stir the mixture till the flour is thoroughly wet. Then leave it on the working bench with lid lightly closed for about 2 hours depending on the temperature of that day, or when you see a layer of foam emerged on the surface.
3. Pour the batter into the mixing bowl till the remaining in the container falls down to the mark. This is the start point of another new cycle of the whole process. Refer to point 1.a.
4. Now the ingredients of the batter in the mixing bowl are 300ml water and 1.5 cups flour if you trace back the records. For making the softest buns of 16 pieces of the size of 5cm in diameter and 4cm in height, I add 3 cups flour, one tsp salt, 150ml water and 2 tbsp olive oil. Mix and knead till it becomes a dough and leave it in a proper space to rise. This takes about two hours depending on the temperature.
3. Shape the bread:
1. It is your turn now to exercise your inventive and creative capability in the art of bread making.

Having read "The Shack"

A friend, a devoted Christian and dentist based in North Shore City, recommended I read a book titled “The Shack” by William P Young.

The book begins with an explanation of the childhood of the main character, McKenzie, nicknamed ‘Mack’.

My reading took about two weeks, leaving me with the impression the content is quite philosophical because of the great amount of discussion between Mack and the Holy Trinity during a weekend spent in the shack. The discussion is centred on the tragedy which Mack had experienced.

Composed of 18 chapters, the book begins with a prologue of Mack’s childhood wherein the author tells of Mack’s father, abusive when drunk, always seeking forgiveness when sober. These details help me make sense of following episodes.

The core of the story is Missy, Mack’s youngest daughter aged 6 who was abducted from the camp yard where Mack was picnicking with his three children. Only Missy’s red clothes were found on the table by the fireplace of an abandoned shack in the bush. Overwhelmed by his tragic loss, Mack began to question the truth of God’s love.

One day, two years after the tragedy, Mack received a note left in his letter box inviting him to re-visit the shack in which Missy’s clothes were found. It astonished him to see the note was signed “Papa”, in the way his wife Nan refers to God.

Curiosity, anger and guilt, buried deep in his mind frequently haunting him, made him determined to revisit the place to face and challenge the negativities he had been embracing.

One Friday afternoon, unknown to his wife and children, he set off. On entering the bush near his destination, the surrounding atmosphere became so peaceful, refreshing and solemn as he sighted the shack in the distance. It was there he encountered the Holy Trinity - God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

The following chapters of the book contain and explain the questions, answers and hot debate which ensue between Mack and God. The main point of the questions being that if God loves his creation, why are there tragedies and sufferings in the world.

I feel the author, William Young must be a very knowledgeable theologian or is a senior Christianity scholar as the arguments he weaves in the story are very deep and incomprehensible to me. Although difficult for me to read, I completed the book in order to improve my reading capacity.

After the two-day stay in the shack with God, Mack felt an inner transformation leaving him with a feeling of light and peace replacing the anger and guilt. He felt it was time to go home and back to reality.

At this point of the story, the author makes a technical twist to involve Mack in a massive traffic accident on his way home. Mack loses consciousness, falls into a coma and on awakening asked his wife what happened. It was then he knew he had been in hospital during the whole weekend whereas for him, he had been in the shack with God.

(Great thanks go to my English mentor Neville who corrected the grammar of the original post for me.)

Chan family (詹家)

In the afternoon of 18/09/2010, someone was knocking the door. I slowly moved to unlock the door and found it was Mr. Chan standing at the door step with a warm and kind smile on his face, both of his hands holding two boxes of something. "Some freshly baked moon cake for you" he said to me. Suddenly I realized that the moon festival was around the corner, another year had slipped into the history silently and rapidly. Since Mr. and Mrs. Chan retired in 2006, they had been presenting us with their homemade moon cake prior to the moon festival.

I thanked and received the two boxes from him. I opened the boxes and saw 16 pieces of assorted moon cakes. To me these are not just cakes, they represent solid friendship.

We made acquaintance with Chan family in September of 1992 in a Taiwan countrymen party held in a Taiwanese family somewhere in Northcote of Auckland city. Since then our two families have been in contact now and then and have never lost in touch in the past 18 years of time.

My impression of this family is hard working, intellectual and humble. They raised three sons. And not only that all of them are good boys at home, they all have outstanding performance at school. No wonder in 2010, when their youngest son was granted doctorate degree of Biochemistry, we witnessed their success in creating three doctors for New Zealand in 20 years of time.

Mr. Chan himself led a good example to his three boys. He possessed bachelor degree of Chemistry from Tonghai University in Taiwan. Having immigrated to New Zealand, he worked as a Baker in a supermarket. The work hour of a Baker is normally in the midnight, so Mr. Chan enrolled himself on a further study course in the University, and won himself a master degree of chemical engineering two years later.

Mrs. Chan worked at an electrical supplies company as an assembler. In order to help with her husband supporting their three children, she took extra jobs to be done at home. The children saw their mother worked so hard, they spared their studying time voluntarily to work on the job that mother took home.

Mrs. Chan is famous in the Taiwanese community for her very talented cooking skill. During the first half of the 90s, Asian food was very rare in the market. However we've got a chance to learn from her how to make those Taiwan delicacies at home. There is almost nothing that she doesn't know how to make in terms of cooking. Although she is famous of her talent, she lives quietly in the community. Every day she goes to work in the morning, and rushes back to make dinner for the family in the evening. Unless it is necessary, never have I heard that she drops in someone's home to chat. All her time is for the children and the family, and for their friends who are in need of help.

When I was going through my career crisis in early 2003, she quietly sought for any job vacancy through her personal networking for me. She has a nephew working for a computer company in Auckland. Her nephew is in a position of recruiting new staff to assist him. And one day when I paid a visit to their place, she said to me in a kind tone, "don't have to worry about job, go to see my nephew when your current job is vanished." Though I did not turn to her for help that time because a miracle fell upon me and made me secure a good job, her kind enthusiastic support conveyed through that few words is never erased from my memory.

Having three excellent grown-up sons, their retirement life is very secure of course and they are simply able to enjoy a very wealthy style of life, but they are not. Almost every time I rang them to make an appointment of visiting them at their place, they are always at home to answer my call. Mr. Chan is always working in the garden or on some housework, while Mrs. Chan makes simple but delicious food in the kitchen.

Although their three children secretly discussing which one among them should be living close to where their parents are so as to look after them. But Mr. and Mrs. Chan frankly told the three children that they should not be worrying for them for the time being, and it is okay for them to go to any place in the world to actualize their potentiality. So now all three of their children are in big international research or financial institutions in Europe and Australia. Here, in Auckland live this pair of very happy mum and dad being busy in the kitchen and in the garden respectively.

Pass over the slack months (度小月)

Well before I was in courtship with my wife in 1975, I had already heard of the story about "Du Xiao Yue” 度小月, meaning "pass over the slack months".

Du Xiao Yue is a small restaurant serving very delicious and traditional Taiwan delicacy located on the corner of two streets in Tainan city. Since Tainan is my wife's maiden home town, so when I paid my first visit to her family, she naturally took me to this restaurant and told me the story of the founder, Mr. Hung, a ferry boat operator in mid 1800's.

"In order to feed a big family, Mr. Hung worked very hard. But there were always a few months in a year during which he could not earn a living for the family due that the demand for ferry transportation was very low." Jean continued, "people called the months when they were put in the idling state as Xiao Yue, small months. We can appreciate how anxious Mr. Hung were during those small months. He saw that his time was wasted in waiting for passengers, he brainstormed for ideas of using of the slack months for other ways of income."

"He withdrew from the ferry boat gang during the small months and ran a mobile food stand selling fast food. His food featured with a unique recipe of the spoonful of very aromatic stir-fried pork mince put on top of the noodle with soup cooked out of the big bone. Very few people could resist the temptation of that aroma drifted over in the air when they passed by where his stand was located, and by and by he gradually built up a solid base of loyal customers, thus his story became a popular legend and has been used as an inspirational example to encourage people to face to the challenge when their business gets stuck."

The story Jean had told me 35 years ago vividly flashed through my mind. When my thought came out of the story, it immediately associated the story with my son’s current issue -- job-hunting.

Through the unimaginable cause-and-factor process, my son landed in a job serving as guitar tutor since 2007 when he was in the second year of university. To a student, this is a good job for earning some pocket money while on school study. However, the nature of this job is being unstable with income because the wage he earns is based on the actual hours he teaches. For example, during the school holidays, there will be many students asking for leaves so as to go on holiday with their families; students may quit at any time for any possible reason. Therefore, in some months he may earn a lot more, and in some other months he has to eat into his reserve. So my son has been concerned about the disadvantage of his current job now that he has graduated he is desperate for a full-time job.

It is fine to change to other path of career if the circumstance cooperates, but I know he loves music and being passionate with one’s job is very important, so I have been trying to make him understand about this point and stay in where he is and try to develop his guitar tuition business into full-time scale, or even follow the example of “Du Xiao Yue” by doing some sideline casual jobs. This kind of father and son interaction has been found pretty active in my home recently.

In a chat with my wife this morning, the topic was unintentionally switched to Taiwan delicacy, and it naturally went into our mutual memory of that morning in Tainan 35 years ago when we were in that reminiscent small restaurant called Du Xiao Yue devouring that very yummy Dan Zi Mian. And the conversation swerved to the story of Mr. Hung, the founder of Du Xiao Yue.

I found Du Xiao Yue story is very inspirational. It’s a story about how a father identified his problem; figured out the cause of his problem; worked out a practical plan and took action to achieve it. The part I extolled the most is his spirit of not wasting his energy and time in self-pity or complaining about his miserable destination. Instead, he did what he could or should do step-by-step toward his goal. His descendants seem to have discovered that the secret of Mr. Hung’s success is in his strategy of earning extra income by using of the slack months that they later in some time branded the fast food stand Mr. Hung has passed down to be “Du Xiao Yue”. A brand name that fully reflects the founder’s spirit.

Jean paid a visit to her mother in hospital in Taiwan

Chenny and I got up at 5:45 AM in order to drive to airport during the busy traffic hours of the motorway and arrived there in time to meet with his mother. From my observation, Chenny is nice to his mother although very often he is impatient with her.

Jean's mother, aged 90, had a fall at home and then lost consciousness during the daytime one day in late June of 2010, and was thus rushed to the hospital. On July 5, Chenny and I sent Jean to airport early in the morning to get on board of the earliest flight of Korean airline for Taiwan to pay a visit to her mother in hospital. Time flies by very quickly, Jean's scheduled returning date is up, and here we are going on the way in the raining dark early morning toward Auckland airport to meet her.

The traffic was not as bad as we expected, so by the time of 6:45 AM, we were already sitting in the waiting room of the arrival exit, while well ahead of the 7:30 AM arriving time of the flight. I estimated Jean would not be able to get through the customs and everything within one and a half hour, so we both dozed off in the waiting zone. Suddenly Jean appeared at the exit with a cart loaded with three luggage on it. Chenny briskly stood up and walked forward to greet his mom with an affectionate hug and a sheepish smile. I found these 2 to 3 seconds Chenny's greeting to his mother was very moving and beautiful, and I regretted I was not able to capture that few seconds in the camera.

After having settled everything at home, Jean told me that once her mother was in a very dangerous state, "mother's face showed great pain, nervousness, horror; hands and legs pushing and kicking as if being horrified or annoyed by something, and everyone of the family was expecting the very worst and showed extreme anxiety." she continued, "Suddenly an idea flashed through my mind that I should go to the pure land Buddhist group nearby to make pray for a peaceful pass away for mother and/or do a repentance service on behalf of mother."

So she told her siblings about what she thought and wanted to do for the rest of the day, and she immediately left for that pure land Buddhist center.

At the receptionist's desk, a female Buddhist told her that they were undergoing a 21 day service called "the three-time reminder (三時繫念法會)" which were exactly suitable to her mother's case. So she enrolled on straightaway and took part in the ritual wholeheartedly through the rest of that day.

Having returned to the hospital, she told her siblings what she had done that day, and then they began to notice that their mothers facial expression radiated peacefulness, and the doctor discharged her from the ICU that night, and every one of the family were greatly relieved and unanimously attributed this dramatic change to what Jean had done in the Temple.

Jean has told me many stories about what she experienced, saw, heard in this trip to Taiwan. To get the cheapest airfare, she flew with Korean airline, and thus had to stop by Seoul airport on both ways to change airplane. On her flying to Taiwan, they were supposed to stay overnight in Seoul and change airplane the next morning. That was her first time in life she had to travel on a journey through which she must use her limited English to solve any problem that could possibly arise, so although she still smiled all the time when she was telling me the story, I believe she must be pretty nervous when the aircraft was descending to land and that would be the beginning of using her English in making inquiries relating to accommodation, meals, and etc..

She said that she could feel all the single female passengers who needed to spend one night in Seoul to change airplane in the next morning were anxiously looking for someone of same-sex to join as a group. And soon there came two ladies toward her, one Asian and one European. They friendly and politely asked if Jean was going to change airplane in the next morning? And so three of them naturally became a group, and they went to the transition desk, to the bus stop, to the hotel, to the check-in desk, to the restaurant for dinner, and etc. together. and Jean's innate enthusiasm naturally made her become the leader of the three member group. The Asian lady was heading for Qingdao, and she had no English almost. The old Europeans lady was to fly to London to see her granddaughter. She was living in Tauranga. Jean's limited English turned out to be helpful to the two nervous ladies during the trip.

In the next early morning after Jean's arrival, I found this e-mail in the inbox when I turned on the computer after I finished my morning practice. The message indicates that mom's condition is still improving. Amituofo!

姐夫與真姐您好！

真姐安全抵達，我們也放心了。

今(8/2)早進病房，媽張著眼睛看我，跟媽講話她會點頭；把手套拿掉，跟她作手部運動，幫她作合十動作說"謝謝妳啊！"，之後她說"謝謝妳啊!"媽就自己拱手了。

今天這些進步都讓我與敢非常驚喜，但媽手上的傷口發炎紅腫，倒是令人耽心。皮膚乾癢讓媽常想抓癢，幫媽剪了指甲，擦了E油，情況緩解。

陪伴中，敢早晚都幫媽作腿部伸曲運動各50次，避免僵硬。

下午2：00遷移到安養中心，照顧雖不如醫院周到但也不錯了，敢晚上可以回家好好休息了，他也夠辛苦了。

你們多保重！

阿健

Another visit to Mitre 10

I had been thinking of wrapping up the hot water pipes of my home so as to retain the heat for a longer time. To do this project, I have to go to Mitre 10 to buy the insulation material which is 2 m long, although not heavy, it is quite a hassle travelling by bus. So this project had been left in my "wish list" ever since until....

One morning on 17/07/2010 when my wife was away in Taiwan to see her mother, and my daughter, Tessie, came back home to look after me. I told her about my wish of doing the hot water pipe insulation project, and she happily promised to go with me by her car to buy the material.

So I had yet another visit to Mitre10 on 17/07/2010. This time, Tessie was my private driver. It was a beautiful sunny day, and was a weekend, so at the time as early as 10:30 AM in the morning, Mitre 10 was already packed with shoppers. As Tessie had to go to office to do some overtime extras after helping me with the shopping, so I had to do a quick buy and go. Instead of browsing from aisle to aisle, I spotted a guy in a red T-shirt with a big "ask me" printed on the back, so I approached him. He is lanky, tall and quite old, I estimate he must be older than 70, and his face seems to be ready to give you a cheeky smile at any time when his eyes are in contact with yours.

"Hi, Mr. Ask Me" I greeted him with my humor, and without any confused facial expression, obviously he knew I was calling them. "Good morning sir, what can I help you?" I gave him the note which wrote the product code and its description.

Seemingly he is a new staff, as it took him a while to figure out where should he guide me to. And when he had finally got the idea of where the product should be, he looked relieved and quite proud of himself. "Follow me sir, I take you down there." He said to me.

We past by another red T-shirt man on the way to the aisle where my product might be in, that guy stopped and said to him, "hey! I hope you are not playing around again." "Hey? I'm not playing around, I'm helping this gentleman to find his product. And I have a name, my name is 'ask me', look! It is printed on my back." he fought back. I knew they were teasing each other.

When we got to the section where he thought my product should be in, I already spot the product sitting on the second level from the ground, but before I walked to get them, he asked me to wait where I was and he was going to find the product for me. But I saw him stood in the middle of the aisle, his eyes scanned up and down and left to right through each shelf, his face was full of uncertainty as a small child got lost in downtown.

I said to him, "look! it is there". "Oh! You know what they look like?", instantly he was relieved and happily followed me to that shelf. He carefully checked the product description on my note against the sticky label on the product. "Ah ha! This is exactly the product you want." He helped me to get three pieces from the shelf. I thanked him, and he happily wished me a good day and walked away to serve another customer.

At the checkout point, I put my hand into the pocket to get some money for the payment, but Tessie stopped me, she insisted to pay for the family. The feeling of seeing children demonstrating their ability and willingness of support is very nice and indescribable.

Outside of the Mitre 10 building, by the entrance was a sausage sizzle stand. Four Westlake Boys high school students were cooking sausage for raising fund for traveling to South Africa. I had not had enjoyed a sausage sizzle for long time, and my last visit of Mitre 10 in April failed me in buying one due to lack of coins, so I asked Tessie to buy two.

It was yummy in the mouth; it was warm in the heart.

When My Wife Is Away

My wife left for Taiwan yesterday to pay a visit to her mother, aged 90, who was sent to hospital urgently a few days ago.

In the past three years since her last visit to her mother in Taiwan in 2007, we had never parted from each other. We saw each other in the day and in the night; we had meals together every day; we talked on children and on life now and then; we helped each other and actually I relied on her more because of my Parkinson's disease. I thought all of these would be just repeated on and on till the last day of hers or mine, but we knew that sooner or later she would have to fly to Taiwan for her mother's sake.

Of course we had many occasions of parting from each other for a few days or even a few weeks in the past 33 years of marriage life, but the longing to see her again was never be so strong as this time. I don't know what's wrong with me.

She is scheduled to come back on August 2, and the countdown process has been activated yesterday at the time when she passed through the departure gate.

My Hands-free Telephone

I call this telephone set hands-free because when I am engaged in a telephone conversation, I don't have to hold the handset and attach it to my ear and mouth throughout the duration, instead, I put on the headset and talk on and on with my hands free for other things like taking notes at the same time.

I know a genuine hands-free device should be something like this.

The first time I saw a real hands-free device in use was from Robbie, my ex-colleague, who is an enthusiast of high technology product. One day in 2005 when we were in a cruise of visiting students, I saw there was a light blue object attaching to his right ear. I asked him what that was for? And he said it was called Bluetooth hands-free phone. He demonstrated for me how that device worked. The device sent the music from the stereo audio of the car into his earpiece with the wireless technology. And when the device detected an incoming call, it switched from music to the call automatically. And when the conversation finished, it came back to music at Robbie's will.

The memory of the encounter with a real hands-free device that time inspired me of making my version of hands-free device when my PD began to affect me with a phone conversation about a half year ago. What happened was when I was engaged in a chat over the phone for longer than 10 minutes or if the content of the conversation was serious, then my hand that held the handset tended to shake and thus the tip of the handset would be taping on my cheek or the temporal area around my ear repeatedly like a woodpecker does to a tree, and that is very annoying and uncomfortable, but it is also uncontrollable.

So I thought to myself if I could convert one of those discarded old telephone sets out in the corner of our garage into one that has two sockets -- one for my earphone plug and the other for my microphone plug. Then when I am engaged in a conversation over the phone, the "woodpecker symptom" will not trouble me again.

When this idea was matured in late May, I started gathering up materials and tools. I had a headset that was no longer in use, so this saved me a lot of time and energy in making one from scratches. I have soldering set and the tin core; I have a voltmeter for checking if the connection is good; I have a set of electronic tools and power drill, and I am pretty sure this project should be a piece of cake and could be expected to be finished the next day.

Then I found I needed to go to Jaycar to buy two mono audio sockets of 3.5 mm. So I made a journey to Jaycar by walk and that was a great struggle. And then I found I had to extend the two pairs of cables to the two desired areas in the phone set where there were enough rooms to accommodate the two audio sockets.

The cables were so fine that peeling their skins on the two ends for soldering was very challenging. I finally found a way to get this job done -- burned the tip of the cable using a candlelight and nipped the softened skin of the cable immediately when it was moved away from the flame.

Then I found I had to do the soldering within a very small space without making the soldering stick contact with the neighboring cable or circuit and get them damaged. That was the most challenging part of this project.

On and on, I could see some progress every day, and I realized that it was not a case as simple as a piece of cake to me and I accepted the reality. A couple of times, I thought I had done all the soldering and assembled the whole thing up, only to discover that it could not work. apparently I had damaged the soldered points, or I had connected the extended cable to the wrong point of the socket. So the process of unpacking, disconnecting, line checking, were all done over again with fingers crossed hoping this time would be a successful one. Unfortunately it was not until the fourth repeat that I could finally see it functioning as was expected.

Seeing me absorbed in the project so deeply my wife suggested many times that she would be happy to buy me a genuine hands-free phone. She could not understand what the self-satisfaction, self-fulfillment and the lot of fun that I had had throughout the process of converting a discarded old telephone set into a model that enables me to be free from the woodpecker symptom in a telephone conversation.:-)

On happiness

I ponder on this topic very often, especially often when I'm getting older.

I am 59 at the time of writing this article. It is said that Buddha began his exploration on this issue from early part of his teens stage, and resolved to find out the cause of suffering. So compared to Buddha, I am late awakened to this issue. I think most of the creatures are late awakened, or are never awakened to this subject.

Some people disagree that life is full of sufferings. "Life is happy! At least mine is a happy one." they would say. But, "are you really happy all the time? Throughout your life?" if you ask them so. "Well, of course not all the time, never it will be throughout our lives. But why do you have to pay attention to those miserable periods and embrace them all the time? Isn't life short, and we should be happy?" they would so argue, and defend their proposition.

But if life is supposed to be happy, why are there so many unhappy, or even horrible news such as homicide, kidnap, domestic violence, divorce, sickness, aging, mortality, having to deal with people whom you dislike, having to part from the people whom you love dearly, and etc. maybe these are just examples of trifling matters. What about the unhappy things of the far more significant incidents? World war, ethnic groups conflict, political conflict, economical conflict, SARS, swine flu epidemic, and many other examples which you are more knowledgeable to help listing them on here.

We cannot ignore the fact that we do have unhappy period of time in our lives despite that it is also true that we have happy period of time in our lives as well.

I'm only trying to sort out why people are not happy; when will people feel unhappy...this sort of questions. Because if we know the answers, then we should know how to remain happy all the time, throughout our life, and even eternally. I believe many other people in the world agree with my logic -- admit that people are not happy, then go to find the answer, then at last we all can be happy.

I searched on the web; I deciphered the thoughts of the authors through reading; I discuss on it with other people who also pondering on this issue, but I have not found any solution that is effective enough to make one happy instantly when he is unhappy.

As a matter of fact, all my effort in searching for solution of making people happy is an unnecessary waste of time. Because what? That solution was already found by the Buddha some 2500 odds years ago. You can be as happy as a Buddha if you are resolved to practice what the Buddha has taught.

He said the cause of suffering is from "the three poisons", and if one drops off these three poisons completely, he attains the Buddhahood, and he will be really happy eternally, and never suffers. How cool this guarantee is! But how to actually shake them off? It is always a matter of easy to say but hard to do.

What are the three poisons? They are craving, hatred, and ignorance. Indeed if we analyze any evil act, we will find there is always one, or are two or all of the three poisons involved in the incident. All the news we read from newspaper are good examples for finding the traces of these three poisons involved in the cases reported.

I want to raise an example about a homicide case which occurred about three years ago in New Zealand. A martial art master killed his young wife, then he took his daughter, three or four years old at that time, and fled to Melbourne. There he dumped his daughter in the railway station, and escaped to the United States. Let's use this example for tracing the root cause of this family tragedy. Obviously a great deal of hatred was in the husband's mind. Of course there were other factors preceding his killing, and logically those factors were unhappy ones. His evil compulsion that drove him to grab the knife to terminate his wife's life had made many people not just unhappy, but suffering, acute suffering.

If we are convinced that the three poisons are the causes of suffering, then we would like to know how to clear the three poisons from our mind?

The answer from the Buddha was the "three trainings" -- precepts, meditative stabilization and wisdom. These terms sound bleak, heavy and very serious. But that is because they are recorded in the Sutra which of course is meant to be sacred and serious in every way, but their actual meaning in today's language is like this -- obey the rules, Mindful of what you are doing, and finally you are enlightened.

Despite that the teaching has been followed, interpreted, and yet only a very few wise beings are enlightened, or enter the eternally happy state, or have completely transformed to be free of the three poisons. Obviously it is not easy to achieve that goal, so what is the point for those compassionate Saints and sages to be preaching this teaching diligently, perseveringly and wholeheartedly?

My understanding is like this. We know it is good to be happy; we were taught the method to achieve the happy state and sustain it; we all agree that the logic of this teaching is true. Now because we see that only a very few mortal beings mastered this skill in the past two thousand and five hundred years, we think perhaps it is wiser to just indulge ourselves in the wordly pleasures. What will be the outcome if this logic is adopted by every single mortal being on the planet? All gone to the hell realm ultimately, the theory points out.

In contrary, if every single mortal being on this planet has at least awakened by the belief that what they are endeavored to achieve is unlikely to come true in this life, but it is a bit of positive effort in the process of evolution toward the divine realms -- the eternally happy state; the non-birth and non-death realm, so he just wades through the difficulties inch by inch, then one day, either in this life or the life after the next, he will attain that state, definitely.

I think this is the only way and the only hope to obtain a genuine happiness -- even if not in this life, but definitely will be obtained when the notion of time is ignored and only the effort of walking on the right path is being focused on.

This concludes my ages long contemplation about why people are not happy-- we all embrace more or less the "three poisons".