Spot's last day

Tessie placed a bunch of flower in
front of Spot's shelter on the deck.
(photo Oct. 1, 2012)

 It is five o'clock early in the morning, September 30, 2012. I'm writing this blog post to commemorate Spot, our family pet. Before I started writing and was sorting my thoughts, a cat was crying outside on the driveway, sounded to me as if the cat was asking me "where has Spot gone?"

"Spot is gone at 3:30 this morning." Chenny sadly told me when I woke up to toilet at about 4:30 this morning. He continued, "the vet has called me not long ago." On hearing this news, I felt a loss of something that had attached to me day and night for the past 13 years since our adoption of Spot. Although Spot had not been a very obedient dog, there were bits and pieces about him won our hearts. There are two blog posts (post links: 1   2   ) I have written previously talking about the loveliness of his personality.


I would never believe that yesterday will be the last day of Spot's life because every thing was occurring as usual on this day. When I came down to the garage in the morning, he was greeting me by waving his tail as usual. After I had opened his pan door, he rushed out of his pan and ran back and forth urging me to be quick to get out of the garage to the garden for the morning walk. Out in the garden, he sniffed here and there, nibbled some grass; had his wee and poo done and then came back in the garage as usual. Then I put a handful of his dog biscuit in the bowl in front of him, and as usual, he raised his head and stared at me for a few seconds with a facial expression of gratefulness, as if saying "thank you Dad", before he started eating as usual.

Spot on neighborhood watch duty
on the deck (photo Sep. 17, 2011)

Having had all of these usual routines done, I took him off the garage at around eight o'clock and set him free on the deck. That is where he carries out his daily watch for the neighborhood.

Everything was running well as usual. The only thing that was unusual in the last two or three months since his surgery in May this year to remove three tumors in his abdomen, was that he slept more during his daytime duty. And we also noticed that he had tremor now and then, and yesterday he trembled a lot; and for the first time he didn't bark around two o'clock to ask for lunch. I told Jean about his recent unusual behavior and Jean said "he is old, he is very old."

When it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, that was the time he finished his daytime duty usually, but yesterday he didn't argue by lightly barking at me to take him in, instead, he was still sleeping in his little hut on the check.

This was unusual too. I woke him up, and he stood up very slowly. And when he walked into the livingroom, he immediately sat down and then lied down on the floor. And this really worried me. I asked Jean to come over to have a look, and she said "probably he is going to die." We had thought about this quite often since spot had the surgery in May this year. "Take him down to his pan and play the Amituofo chanting to help him pass away peacefully", Jean said.

Photo taken on Sep 29, 2012. after
I held him down to his bed. He
curled up straight away to sleep
upon landing on the mat. That was
about 11 hours prior to his death.

Spot was very weak, so weak that he could not walk down to the garage himself as he usually does so I held him down and put him in his sleeping mat, and played the Amituofo chanting.

Chenny came home at around nine o'clock. He noticed that Spot was very very sick because he saw Spot vomited twice and pooed right beside his sleeping mat. I came down to the garage and realized that Spot was not just sick but terribly sick, so sick that he couldn't even stand up. Chenny asked if we should take him to the vet immediately. But it was Saturday.

Tessie transported Spot home after
his surgery done on  May 10, 2012

Chenny must have been accompanying spot all the time since his returning home that at around 11:30pm he woke me up from sleep and told me "Spot vomited on his sleeping mat and pooed. he looked at me as if asking me to help him. Dad we must go to see the vet immediately, Spot is in pain."

I agreed with what Chenny suggested. When I came down to the garage, Spot looked at me as if saying "dad I'm very uncomfortable." His eyes were full of helplessness. I said to Chenny "okay, let's go." Chenny already located the nearest vet available for emergency clinic. I grabbed a piece of cloth to wrap up spot with my hands and legs shaking seriously.

Photo taken on Aug 19, 2012

The vet is called Sean. He quickly and carefully made a thorough check and set up a bottle injection. He explained to Chenny that the medicine he used was to help to relieve Spot's pain and enable him to sleep through the night. But because spot was so sick that he would believe the night might be his last night in the world. The vet held spot to a chamber to rest and there we left for home feeling a bit better but could not forget what the vet said that tonight might be Spot's last night in the world.

Back to home, I checked my mobile and there were three messages all sent from Tessie. She said that Lily has informed her of what happened to Spot, and she asked me to call her anytime if we needed her to come home to help.

Photo taken on Sep 17, 2011

When Chenny told me that Spot had passed away at 3:30 this morning, I felt an undescribable loss in my mind. Then I thought if I should call Tessie immediately to inform her of Spot's death, but then I thought now that Spot had died why to ruin her sleep?

Here are links to some photos of Spot's. We wish Spot well in the other realm of the universe and Amituofo has guided him to His extremely blissful world.

Diamond ring

Son,

In a shallow meditation I had yesterday morning, a topic I like to discuss with you emerged and my concentration was ruined so I set my thought free to roam all over this one, Diamond Ring.

I remember that you recently told mom after you finished dinner and was leaving for your room to practice your guitar, that you probably will propose to your girlfriend during the upcoming school holiday trip to Melbourne. But you had not got the diamond ring ready yet for the proposal.

I did not know that diamond ring is a must-have when a pair of boyfriend and girlfriend in relationship has come to the stage of planning a wedding, then, the first thing the boy has to buy is a diamond ring. As if among the many stages of the young people’s journey toward marriage nowadays, there is one stage that can be referred to as “diamond ring stage”.

Diamond is known as being unbeatable, undestroyable, most bright, most sparkling and etc, all in all, it symbolizes every positiveness of one's marriage. Everyone is longing for a harmonious relationship, an eternal loyalty, and may be out of their subconsciousness, they think their marriage can be assured to achieve all of these quality a diamond ring has.

However, that is just a symbol, just a stage where young people of your generation all believe it can bring happiness and harmony to them throughout their marriage life, or it is simply a fashion to them and everyone simply doesn’t want to be left out. Less people are calm enough to realize that all that is indeed a blessing or a guarantee to retaining their affectionate marriage life is not from the external diamond ring but the internal virtues both of them cultivate and observe constantly.

From the movies depicting the marriage life of a couple, usually see their very affectionate wedding photo magnificently framed and hung over the most outstanding position of the living room. And one day, they begin to fight on trivial problems, and it goes on and on, often and more often, and then finally one of them erupts anger and throw the glass of wine they are holding in hand onto the photo, drag it down from the wall, and shatter it. Interestingly, this kind of scenarios are seen in the movies or TV dramas a lot, and I believe there must be a lot happening in real life. It reflects a fact, the external decorative jewelry or magnificent wedding photos are not reliable, are not the guarantee of a happy long lasting marriage. They are just items wasted; items to make the expectation seem to be very absurd.

Of course, there are examples that they follow all of these fashions of large framed wedding photo, expensive diamond ring, and are in a profound marriage throughout their lives. But those items are not necessarily to have to be pursued, are they?

Suppose you treasure my opinions about your plan of buying a diamond ring for your beloved, the following is my idea that I take it as being significant, sacred and meaningful:

• Donate the money you originally planned to spend on diamond or huge framed wedding photo to a charity such as World Vision or Red Cross. They know how to help the people in need on behalf of you.
• Follow the most basic etiquette of engagement customs only. A no frill gold ring, an outdoor ceremony party with tea, lots of photos out of your iPhone camera.
• Observe constantly and consistently the virtues you have been taught.

Forget the diamond ring. Be liberated from ironic belief.

Father's Day 2012

Today is Father's Day in New Zealand, probably in most of the Western countries, the first Sunday of September. Tessie contacted me a few days before by texting message asking how would I like my day be celebrated? Would I like to have a lunch in the restaurant?

It seems to have been a fixed customary to our family that when there is something worthwhile to celebrate, the one who proposed will organize for the whole family to have a lunch together in a nearby restaurant, and of course pays for the bill too. But this customary has been changing gradually in the past two years when I am the main character to be offered a free lunch celebrating either my birthday or Father's Day, I opted having the celebration at home with the meal purchased from a nearby takeaway. So when Tessie asked me what would I like to choose, I said to her "thank you very much, just bring a couple of dishes from the takeaways near you."

Because she will be available on Saturday, and Chenny will have his music classes on Sunday, so we decided to change it to Saturday.

Since the date and time were decided last week, I have been looking forward to its arrival. After all, having the whole family together for a meal is such a precious occasion.

The lunch was a very pleasant one. Everyone enjoyed the food from takeaway restaurant, everyone laughed. Tessie told us that she went to watch 10 movies during the film festival, and the two of them impressed her the most were "the last ocean" and "the climate change". Tessie has been a happy and talkative girl since she was very small. So she talked a lot about the two movies. I know she is very enthusiastic about the environmental issues. Chenny talked about his plan to organize a performance concert for his student, and Lily gave him her ideas and suggestions about how should the concert be presented.

When the celebration was coming to an end, I asked Jean for that pack of sticky rice she bought the other day from T-mark, and moved to the kitchen to demonstrate how to cook sticky rice in only one pot for Tessie. The demonstration was a success, and I packed the whole lot of the stir fried sticky rice in a recycled lunchbox for her to take home.

And this concludes my Father's Day celebration of 2012.

On destined fortune

This link leads to a listing of web pages containing a statement the honorable Minister of Qing Empire, Zeng Guo Fan, once said: "... believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...(信運氣﹐不信書)". My understanding of his statement is that he believes that any of our achievement manifests by our destined fortune and not just simply from careful planning and persistent effort. He must have made this conclusion from all of his life experience.

I also agree with some other bloggers' view point of this quote. Some said that Zeng's statement was just a reflection of his characteristic of being humble and modest. while some said that instead of emphasizing his accomplishments were the result of his intelligence and hard working, he attributed all of the abundant fruition to the manifestation of his good luck. However, I personally believe that either of the aforesaid point of view shares only 30% of the truth, There is this thing labeled as Karma which is similar to the notion of fortune moving all the trivial and major incidents of our life around, and that force takes up 70% or even more of the end result.

What triggered my intent of writing on this topic was from a chat with my wife this morning. "Jean, Chi-an (our son), started his first class at 9 am, he is teaching those school boys in the school now," I continued, "how lucky he is to get a good jobuch as this." Jean replied,"yeah, two months ago, we were still worried about his job issue, and suddenly the changes brought up this happy opportunity." she said while doing the laundry. "This reminded me of a remark the honorable scholar and government minister of Qing Dynasty, Zeng Guo Fan, once said '...believe in the destined fortune and not the acquired knowledge...'" I said, "I am going to write a blog about my perception of his famous remark."

May 2 of 2011 marked the day my son started his involvement in the music education in a state run college and another five primary schools and intermediate schools. A few days earlier, he was required to be interviewed by the head of the school's music department and the principal to make sure he was the right one they wanted to recruit to train the four rock bands of the school.

The interview went well and Chi-an was formerly employed by that college. His first class will be on May 5. With this guitar tuition in the state schools plus his other two sectors of practices, his work day hours are reasonably fully booked, and so his income is expected to be sustainable. All that had happened to result in this reality to come true were so unbelievably played one after another, just as dramatic as a playwright containing the various parts of longing , anxious, frustrated, nervous, exciting, disappointing, and all sorts of feelings you name it. Fortunately the desired and expected ending turns out to be a happy one. And now I am, as the father, is noting down the bits and pieces of thoughts with regard to this remarkable episode of Chen family.

My 60th birthday - part 2

The day of 25th of February came and went quietly and swiftly. That was the one marking the birthday of mine and my wife's.

Prior to its arrival, Chenny asked us whether if we would like to have a lunch as our 60th birthday celebration in the restaurant or at home. I knew he cared about making a good one for us, I was very pleased to feel his caring thoughts. I said "I prefer to have a simple one at home rather than a big one at a restaurant." "just buy a pack of chips, one stir-fried Rice, one sweet-sour pork from the take-away", added mom.

Young people tend to look birthday party as a very important event. They celebrate their birthdays for each other, so if one has a group of close friends more than 12 then he will be very likely to be invited to a birthday party almost every month through out a year, and they take it as a must-attend occassion. So I appreciate how Chenny felt and cared about our birthday celebration, particularly this 60th one.

As was discussed by us, Chenny called the take-away shop and placed the order. At 6:45 pm that evening, Chenny set out the three dishes on the table plus four glasses of beer.

Jean and I were so happy. Birthday song was sung; wishes were made; photos were shot; the party foods were entirely consumed, and finally had our profound 60th birthday party completed.

I am aware of the truth that I belong to the 60 age group from now on.

My 60th birthday - part 1

I am turning to 60 years old when the calendar comes to the 25th of February. It is approaching soon. I should be excitedly looking forward to it; I must have worked out a plan of travelling with Jean in a cruise tour visiting popular destinations in the world. But I know it will just be another ordinary day filling up with routine activities--morning practice, check e-mails, shift dog to do his watch duty on the deck, reading, medication and meditation etc..

But, it is a 60th birthday, as the majority of the 60 year old fellows do, I should be entitled to do something special and joyful to spoil myself and celebrate it. After all, it only comes once in our life...!@#$%%.... What a good and justified excuse!

In my parents' days, a few particular birthdays of the family members' or their close relations' are just can not be omitted. The 6th birthday, the 16th, the 30th, and the 60th, and even the 80th if you live long enough. On these particular birthdays, to some well off family, a feast will be held, and close family friends and relatives will be invited to attend. As to ordinary families, a rather special food such as glutenous cake made in the shape of turtle and dyed in red symbolizing longevity will be offered to the ancestors and Buddha with a simple worship service held in front of the family shrine altar.

So far I did not skip any of the above mentioned peculiar birthdays of mine except the 60th and the 80th ones because they aren't due yet.

I remember my parents undertook a very costly celebration on my 6th birthday--dedicated to the heavenly deities by offering a whole male pig. I still vividly remember I was awaken from sound sleep by my mother before dawn. It was still dark in a cold but clear morning. The twinkling stars were still in the clear sky. Mother took me to the make-shift altar setup by the road side in front of our home. Before me was the corpse of a poor pig, supposed to be male as tradition required. The pig was displayed on a specially constructed wooden frame; its mouth was pulled open and an orange inserted in its mouth; its eyes shut but looked like smiling, the whole body on the frame with head up and tail end down in a 30 degrees elevation.

Mother held my two palms together with a burning incense held in between my palms. She stooped down, holding my hands together with the incense and said the prayer on behalf of me. As I can remember, the prayer went like this, "ah! the heavenly deities and the most revered heavenly emperor, we are so grateful to your constant protecting over Ah-sium (this was how I was called in Taiwanese dialect) that he has turned 6 years old today. Your continuing protecting and blessing him through the rest of his life is sincerely implored." Then, I think, I went straight back to bed after that ritual.

Then my 16th birthday. 1967 was the year, and I was in my first school term of senior high school. A same service was held; a poor male pig was slaughtered for the sake of my 16th birthday. I ever asked my mother why this kind of costly event had to be held? She said, "we do this to thank the heavenly deities." As I grew older, I understood the reasons: a son is important to a family as he is supposed to carry the linage of this family on; I was the only son survived after my two preceding brothers died in their infanthood, my parents were just too scared of the loss of me and therefore seek for blessing through the folk belief such as this; 16th birthday marks the critically important stage of life in terms of reproductivity, a stage of being able to fulfill the mission soon.

Time flied by. I married at age 26. I remember once before I was turning 30, my mother mentioned about who is supposed to be responsible for the celebration of my 30th birthday. She told me that according the customary, a son-in-law's 30th birthday celebration was at the cost of the wife's maiden home. I cannot remember now whether I had mentioned about the 30th birthday celebration to my wife and she passed the words on to her maiden home, or my father-in-law just knew about the etiquette, anyway, we were asked to travel to my wife's maiden home in Tainan on my birthday one day. I was not aware of the arrangement that my father-in-law had planned prior to our arrival.

After we arrived home, settled and were ready to dinner, my father-in-law summoned everyone to be in the living room, and seated me in the center of the couch and presented a short speech. I could not remember the speech he presented, but it was generally like this: "today is your 30th birthday", he continued "mom and dad wish you healthy, happy and lucky throughout the rest of your life. Offered to you is a bowl of wheat flour noodle with egg and a pan of homemade birthday cake that symbolize long life and everlasting descendants. Here you go."

Then I started my devouring of the whole bowl of the food under the surveillance of the whole family and got my 30th birthday celebration done without having to slaughter a pig.

Now, the 60th birthday is coming toward me. Time flies even faster than I imagine. I am here in New Zealand; have become a Buddhist of the Pure Land path.. What the birthday celebration of this important one will be like? I don't know. But I am definitely sure for one thing, that no pig will be sacrificed for the sake of my 60th birthday. Who will be responsible for this important event? I think it will be my wife, and she will make a bowl of wheat flour noodle with boiled egg for me, and presents a short speech which will be "Amituofo!"

An even more important one that follows the 60th one will be of the 80th birthday which I don't think will be held for me on the planet but in the pure land hopefully.

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.

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.

Mother's Day 2010

The Mother's Day of 2010 has three features worthwhile to record.

Tessie and Chenny celebrated Mother's Day for their mom on the 8th (Saturday) and 9th (Sunday) of May respectively due that their activities clashed.

Chenny arranged to celebrate Mother's Day for his mom on Sunday. He sent a text message to my mobile asking me to tell mum that he would bought some stuff home in the evening so she should not bother prepare for dinner. It was exactly 7:30 PM as he had specified in the text message when he put two big size of pizzas, one pack of french fries and four bottles of beer on the table. Three of us a great fun time.

Tessie chose Bluebird vegetarian café on the Dominion Road. It was a very small but elegant family restaurant. This restaurant is pervaded with air of peacefulness and tranquility. The interior decoration, the indoor plants, and the paintings on the walls are rich in the belief of Hinduism.

Before long, the course of meal was delivered to our table. Surely we would not forget to snap some pictures to record the joy of the mother. Then, we started enjoying these exotic food with happy chats throughout the time of the meal. A good variety of topics were covered, but the one story that mom contributed made all of us laugh to death.

The story goes like this. To protect the privacy of the main character of the story, let's call her Mrs. Soso.

Sometime in the year 2009, mum was told of this story occurred actually in the public toilet on the roadside of Pearn Crescent opposite the food court of Northcote shopping center. "Mrs. Soso, a middle aged Asian woman, hurriedly walked to the public toilet. Obviously she was in a hurry to get her business done without unnecessary delay. Fortunately the indicator on the doorknob was in a green, so she opened it and walked in." mom said with a bit of mysterious facial expression.

"It must be a great relief to her being in it that she decided to do her job relaxedly, with no rush at all. Apparently she was having some degree of constipation that in almost 10 minutes she still remained on the toilet seat.

Suddenly a string of narrative message of female came out of the hidden speaker inside the toilet. She could not understood any word that was said, so she ignored it and carried on her business. But the speaker was only in silence for one minute before the next bombardment of message shot out one more time." mom started to laugh at this point as she knew what happened next. Tessie and I were still in the cloud. Mom carried on.

"This time she was more uneasy with the second round of narrative message which she also could not understand a word, so she decided to leave the business incomplete as it was. Suddenly, the electric door "Zooooom" slided wide open and made her dumbfounded on the seat. Swiftly she jumped up, pulled up the pants, rushed toward the door side, and pressed on the button trying to get the door shut, but it stubbornly remained open." up to this point, mom spoke on and off in an effort to compress her laughing nerves.

Tessie and I burst into wild laugh when the story was coming to this point. And we both prompted mum to complete the story with the remainder of the episode anxiously.

"Mrs. Soso gathered up her consciousness now, then she heard there was the siren going apart from the passersby throwing their curious eyesights over the toilet which was normally shut. She left the scene as quickly as she could and harbourd at a corner of a shop concerning that she might have damaged the toilet. Fortunately, in about one minute of chaos, the siren stopped and the electric door shut close. Mrs. Soso relieved upon seeing everything of the toilet restored to normal, and resolved to improve her English proficiency from then on."

And that was the end of the story, and was also the end of yet another unforgettable Mother's Day celebration.