aPleasant Surprise(s)

Kodak Moments at Lettuce Lake Park

2010-09-11T10:15:00.010-05:00

It used to be free admission for visitors to Lettuce Lake Park located just within minutes from our home; however, donations were welcome. Since recently (was it last year?), visitors are now charged $2 per vehicle. Still a great deal, considering what the park has to offer in terms of the scenic appeal of nature in close proximity to an urban center: a refuge for tired minds and a chance at communion with nature, even though it is for some brief moments.

Every time we visit Lettuce Lake Park, we always manage to notice different things from our previous trip, if we look hard enough. A different shade of color; a different encounter with the same denizens of the Park; kind of like a nuanced image that evokes differing responses based on the mood of the day.

This last visit was no difference: plenty of kodak moments, a mix of expansive vistas of the flowing river and the distant tree line and up close and personal shots of the various insects going about their business, not to mention a good workout from the walk-about, along the boardwalk and up the observation tower; in the shade and under the glare of the sun. Then there is also the pleasant surprise of meeting fellow visitors, some with sophisticated cameras with long zoom lens, but all eager to share their experiences of park hopping. On this trip, we met a gentleman who does a lot of boating at a little boat ramp that we chanced upon. He told us about the Hillsborough River State Park which we duly earmarked as a future destination. Here then is a smorgasbord of the sights that enthralled us during our most recent visit.

Wify with by now her favorite wrap-around sun glasses on the boardwalk, and another of her constant companion (other than me I mean) whenever she steps out of the home: a bottle of water, perched on top of the wooden railing.

Purplish flowers of the aquatic plants that populate the lake waters. The lettuce-like plants are what earned the name of the Park: water lettuce.

An island of plants with stems sprouting out of the water radiating outward in all directions, which are matched by their reflections but of darker hue on a unique one-to-one corresponse. Such is the symmetry of nature.

Another symmetry shot, but this time the sky and the water are reversed. I simply inverted the image as I prefer the sky to be azure blue. The obvious giveaway is the floating leaves at the top of image.

Mushroooms inserting themselves around the girth of the tree, subsisting on their host. The nature way of live and let live.

Fall is in the air already, though this hardly qualifies as the fall foliage.

Now this is the azure sky for sure, the upright observation tower is proof of that.

This would appear to be a bee ensconced comfortably at the end of a stalk that seems to defy gravity by sticking itself up. Of course this is not to be as the image has been inverted; the bee was actually clinging on to the underside of the stalk that hangs down.

Another bee exploring the floral bed, doing its assigned job as a vector of pollination.

A dragonfly with its gossamer wings alighting on a stalk.

A kind of half-way house for birds, courtesy of the homo sapiens, the gaudy color is perhaps incongruent with the lush green surrounding.
A limpkin perched high on the tree top, possibly scanning the surrounding for apple snails (I was looking up from the top of the nearby observation tower to take this shot). Just look at the long pointy beak, which is excellent for prying open the shells of apple snails: the nature law of one species holding an edge over another.

Cruising Weekend

2010-08-29T14:40:00.010-05:00

With CE doing a semester-long overseas college stint in Korea and WT well-ensconced in Gainesville to work with his professor in preparation for Grad school in the coming Spring, Wify and I are having a rare time of being a two-some, just like a pair of newly-wed, at least in spirit.

Now, how does a pair of “newly-wed” spend their weekend? Well, ours is not a good, may not even be credible at all, example. But this is what we did.

Yesterday was spent on visiting WT at Gainesville, what else? Today, we decided to cruise around town. We took I-275 toward downtown, but swang by Tampa Bay Park, wanting to revisit the water lily pond located by the side of M.L. King Jr. Blvd. I pass by it every working day and know that the sprouting season is on.

The first inkling of something was not right when our digital camera failed to respond when the on switch was pressed. And I guessed it right, I forgot to reload the batteries. We always remove the batteries when the camera is not in use, to prevent power leakage from the non-chargeable variety that we have been using. So we found a CVS store not far down the road on Dale Mabry. And it was back to the Park again.

We managed to shoot a few scenes around where we parked and were moving across the road to the pond when somebody called us from a distance. It was a security guard in a buggy. Well, the place is a private property after all, and we needed the approval from the property owner even to be on the premises. On our defense, the place is a business park and not gated, and we were here the last time around with no incident. However, we did miss a sign by the road side that says cars will be towed. So all we ended up with to show for the visit are the photos below, before we were asked to leave.

Some nice reflections from the office glass facade at Tampa Bay Park. There is the white cloud (top panel), and there is the Tampa Bay Bucaneers' (NFL team) Flag (bottom panel, left). Then there are the reed plants just being themselves, abiding by the wind, and some low-level palms.

Wify standing in front of the reed plant community.

Wify by the railing, and there is the Bucaneers' flag again, fluttering in the wind; but this is no reflection.

Yellow flowers, the same kind that abounds in Malaysia, as Wify intoned.

It was around lunch time, and we decided to cruise along Dale Mabry looking for a lunch place. And we found the Golden Phoenix Restaurant, offering Vietnamese and HongKong cuisine. Wify had seafood noodle, and me, golden beach fried rice. Plus three servings of the dim sum, two marked in blue circles in the dim sum menu below (stuffed eggplant and steamed spareribs) and a third, a tofu (similar to the Yong Tau Foo in Malaysia) dish that is not on the menu (the full menu can be found here).

The front of the Golden Phoenix Restaurant located at 8199 N. Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33614.

The dim sum menu showing our choices for the lunch dessert in blue circles (stuffed eggplant and steamed spareribs).

The ambience was great, the service top-notched, and the food, tasty. We left behind a handsome tip, at least by our standard. Then it was some grocery shopping followed by some routine home-bound activities like me blogging (with the College Football SEC Preview on TV on the same time) and Wify catching up with the world's ongoing through Internet, followed by a brief nap and later, painting. Then it's the beginning of another work week.

My way, the highway

2010-08-28T17:45:00.009-05:00

One of the 5C's that are the aspirations of the yuppies is Car, or automobile as it is better known here. Not for its utility value though, but as a status symbol. However, for the majority of us who works 9 to 5, car is a necessity of sort, at least in a city like Tampa, not large enough to support its own Mass Rail Transit; and sufficiently sprawling for the other public transport modes to be stretched to their limits. Car ownership is also encouraged by its relatively low price, and further egged on by the similarly low-priced gasoline.

Driving in US in general is facilitated by the well laid-out road network, practically reaching every nook and corner. Public free car-parks are aplenty (except the downtown which we avoid), so is road courtesy bountiful, making it a real pleasure to drive on the road. At the same time, there is no log jam that afflicts big cities, other than the frequent crawls during rush hours and the occasional grid-lock during heaving downpour. But you learn to avoid these foreseeable trouble spots, and plan your trip around them.

I used to be the only driver in our family, faithfully ferrying anyone who needed a ride. Then CY got her driver license and car, but she is too far away to cause any dent on my driving load. Then this summer, it was WT's turn. And he got through on his second try, though the abortive first attempt was not exactly his fault.

Here's what I gathered from WT and the tester after the fact as we were waiting in the office. WT had just gone around the carpark next to the RMV office, with the tester on his side. Then while he was planning to move out of the carpark for the road test, a truck came out of nowhere and cut him off, missing him by half a foot (based on the distance between the tester's two open palms when he was relating to us the circumstances of WT's failing grade back in the office). The tester actually had to ask WT to stop the car to avoid a clash; and that was enough ground for failing the road test. But he assured me that WT definitely had the right of way. However, he does need to be more observant, which is the essence of defensive driving. Having the right of way does not mean accidents will not happen as we have no control over how others will behave on the road. The next day, we received the thumb up sign from another tester who administered the road test. Now I have somebody to share my driving duty.

However, before WT can measure up to that onerous task, he needed to develop his driving repertoire further, which includes being highway-worthy, driving-wise. So both of us drove in tandem to Gainesville last weekend. We debated whether he should lead or not. The pros: he could drive at his own pace. The cons: he might not be able to react if the front driver behaves erratically. With me in front, at least he knows I will have him on my rear mirror at all times. As for the pros, I have driven long enough, including many times as the lead car, to know how to maintain a pace that is comfortable to those who follow as well as making sure the distance between us is safe. So it was no contest at all: I had to lead.

So for the next 120 miles or so, most of them on Interstate 75, we hogged the inner lane, keeping at a constant speed of 60-65 mph, i.e., a notch under the posted speed limit. Well, frankly, I had never been overtaken by so many cars in one trip. But I persevered, looking more frequently at my rear mirror than through the front wind screen.

Yes, that's what we did, dutifully, though not to Tijuana Flats.

We stopped at the first rest area without any incident, thinking that it might do a lot of good to WT's jitters after his maiden drive on the Interstate for about 40miles. If he had any, he didn't show. Just cool and calm.

At the first rest area. Mr. Cool and Calm with his even cooler Mom, spotting the large wrap-around of a pair of sun-glasses.

After finding nothing was amiss, we rejoined the interstate, but not before telling WT to watch out for traffic joining the Interstate from the right since we were on the inner lane. “If the car is slightly ahead, slow down and let him merge,” I instructed.

We decided to skip the second rest area coming up at about the half-way point and continued. The next test was when the northbound Interstate that we were on joins the Florida Turnpike from Miami where we came in from the left. If we were to stay in the inner lane as planned, we needed to navigate across three lanes. Fortunately, there was a break in the traffic flow from Miami and we were able to do that with no car to our right.

When we were approaching the third and last rest area, which is practically just out-of-town from Gainesville, I was preparing to only stop at our destination when I caught something in my rear mirror. WT's car suddenly veered off to the roadside and then it was steered back, but luckily no over-steering, which many novice drivers are prone to do. I tell you, my heart just got a jolt. And I slowed down and led him to the rest area not far ahead, speculating that perhaps he almost feel asleep at the wheels, which could be the result of the initial adrenaline rush and sustained intensity during the drive.

When confronted, he nonchalantly attributed that to trying to adjust the radio dial. I told him in no uncertain terms, don't ever do that again. Even for experienced driver like me who can at least keep one eye on the road, it's also a No-No. A car moving at 60mph is moving at about 27m a second. That is, in a split second, the car has already moved ahead by 20 some meters, more than enough to end up in the road-side ditch, and worse still, smash into the front car if the front driver decides to slow down.

Once I had a burst front tire when it grated the road-side curb while I was adjusting my rear-view mirror. And the bursting motion propelled the wheel hub cover into the air, across a fence, and landed in the lawn behind it, rather harmlessly. Though I was able to control the car, now wobbling along with one wheel on the flat, it was a frightful experience. So many things could have gone wrong. I could have careened toward an on-coming car, the flung hub could have hit somebody …

So WT make it through his first maiden trek on the Interstate. I'm sure he will have many many more of that now that he has his own car. And I hope he will remember what he learned on this very first trip of his. Yes, remind me to tell him about the burst tire episode.

Actually, this was taken today, the different dresses obviously a giveaway. Yes, we drove to Gainesville again and had lunch with WT at Merlion, which serves a nice vegan menu.

Glimpses of Nature and the Built Environment

2010-08-20T11:26:00.015-05:00

While we cannot forestall development for the sake of progress, we certainly do not need, and cannot afford anyway, to let development frittle away the riches of nature. I have tried to catch the juxtaposition of these built and the natural environments, sometimes in a rather comical way by chance, on film of course.

I have picked a dozen or so of these images, and rendered each of them with captions that would, hopefully, evoke in you a sense of nostalgia, deja vu, comic relief, or some other sentiments that just missed me totally.

Captioning is an artform the timeliness, the relevance, and the poignancy of which seems to grow with the age of caption dabblers as our experiential base expands with our constant wrestling with life's many challenges. Certainly reading and travelling widely would infuse perspectives that will escape even the most astute of the home-bound observers. In this respect, I would very much like to hear from you your own renditions as a sharing adventure. Let the fun begin.

Bouquets of clouds drifting toward my home ... This is the starting lyrics of a popular Chinese children song that we sang while in elementary school. Those were care-free rustic days ...

A climb to nowhere or a giant white hat?

Boy, it's difficult to find anythng to eat on this hard surface.

"No argument there, pal. But what about that stuff by your side? Don't they look yummy?" (in reply to the birdie above)

Hooray, the light beacon.

Watch out, giant light bulb in front.

Hanging loose.

Control Tower to pilot: Follow the skylight to get out of the storm cloud. Oops, scratch that, the light is out. In that case, use human pilot.

Giant earth-bound arms in sync. Result: beautiful sunset.

Giant earth-bounds arms at odd. Result: Storm brewing.

(Development =) Prosperity and Leafless trees (=renewal).

The way I see it. You have two choices. Go down the ladder or the chute. Which is it going to be?

Camouflage, of the avian kind.

What are you gawking at? At least I'm more real than that guy hanging on the top right, though only one guy (yours truly) shoots at me.

Yes, ladies, I can jump.

Don't mess with my watch.

Broken wings.

Marie Selby Gardens: Communion with Nature

2010-08-18T20:51:00.011-05:00

After several days of sort of technical blogging on SEO in succession, it's time to take a breather and to infuse some levity or leisure moments into my blog for a change. Let's see, flipping through our digital photo album, my eyes settled on the sub-folder labeled Selby Gardens. And my memory drifted back, though it was not that long ago that we visited the Selby Gardens located at Sarasoto. It was a comfortable hour-long drive, and the exhibits therein blending the splendor of the floral kingdom with the natural bay-side ambience was well-worth the paid admission, and more.

The full name is Marie Selby Gardens. The tagline on its website refers to "a tropical oasis nestled on the bayfront of Sarasota, Florida" and "where fun is in full bloom". Opened in 1975, the Gardens now occupies a bay fringe tract of 13 acres. Guided by the vision that "the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens is the leader in the study, conservation, and display of epiphytes and their canopy habitats", the Gardens hosts the best collection of epiphytes in the world. A throng of 180,000 visitors visit the Gardens on an annual basis where they marvel at the beautiful horticultural displays and learn from its offerings of educational programs as well. The Gardens maintains a plant collection numbering more than 20,000 greenhouse plants, plus thousands more in the outdoor gardens.

And we are glad that we decided to undertake this trip, primarily on wify's urging after I defaulted on my ferrying duty several times, and took away with us "a better understanding and greater appreciation of the natural world and the challenges it faces," as what the website promises.

Here then are the unforgetable sights of the Selby Gardens, as my lens captured them.

Right at the entrance.

Reaching out.

Catch me not.

Long tongues.

Horse-faced.

Drooping ribbons.

Color me pink.

Rafts in the air.

Horticulture in a saucer, Japanese style.

Petite beauty, all the way from Malaysia (click image to read the plaque).

The butterfly effect, in poetic expression.

The ripple effect, cast across the koi pond.

The epitome of relaxation.

The joy of carefree bare-foot saunter.

Serenity amidst the hustle and bustle where impermanence rules.

Unde the Bodhi tree, at the seat of enlightenment.

The Bodhi leave, cascading in wisdom.

The bay bridge framed by the Bodhi leaves, while the bench beckons.

V-J Day, but in Sarasota.

The Power of Keywords

2010-08-17T20:34:00.005-05:00

Keywords form the gist of Chapter 5 of Michael Miller's The Complete Idiot's Guide to SEO, immediately following Content.

If Content is viewed as a wheel in motion, ferrying you to places, then keywords would be the spokes that radiate out from the center hub. They are essential for motion, but one can readily observe that the number of spokes is just adequate for the purpose at hand: too few and the wheel will become rickety; too many it makes a solid wheel, lacking the spatial mix that renders it attractive.

Of course coming up with a list of relevant, and hopefully highly searchable, words is just the beginning. But it's a huge beginning. You would think that coming up with the list is intuitive. After all we do this everyday, looking up stuff online.

Long before these web search keywords come into vogue, the academic community is already using the system in printed journals for the ease of indexing and sourcing relevant journal articles. Drive along an urban road, you can see giant billboards of an advertisement, feasting your eyes with countless keywords that could practically last a life time. However, this mental imprints do not stay long in the mind, or they are quickly shoved off to the deep recesses of the memory bank, being pushed into oblivion by new arrivals.

Hence, the keyword trackers or research tools that will do the memorizing, and also prompting, for you. They are supposedly based on what users actually type in the query box. They can also do the reverse by back-tracing to the original search terms if you want to know how successful articles were searched.

Once the proper list of keywords is up, the next step, which requires more planning, is their insertion into the webpage at just the right dosage: having too many leads to keyword stuffing, a definite No-No that can even disbar you from the search engine fraternity; having too few diminishes the impact and severely limiting the prospect of being taken seriously.

Hence, keyword density, a concept borrowed from the measure of the amount of material within a specified volume, in this case, applied in the two-dimensional sense represented by a surface area. Recommended densities in this respect can vary from 5% to 20%, depending on the length of the page. Obviously a longer page with a higher percentage of keywords sprinkled throughout may still be readable compared to a shorter page but strewn with the same percentage of keywords.

Then there are placement locations to consider. Michael Miller recommends at least once in the preamble/introduction and another time in the concluding paragraph. Another way is to partition the page into sections with headings, which are then legitimately colonized by the keywords.

Whatever the techniques, ultimately, it's still the human reader who will be the arbiter of whether the page is a forced concoction arranged to suit the keywords or it is a enjoyable read, regardless of whether it is ranked high or not.

That said, one can also argue that if the page is not ranked high in the first place, chances are it would not be read. Therefore, in addition to appealing to the human eye, the page also needs to be searchbot-friendly, in a way pandering to their set ways of sniffing. And this is most efficiently, and effectively as well, done through optimizing the HTML tags, the subject of Chapter 6 of Michael Miller's book.

That prospect led me down the memory lane, going back to the mid-1990s when I took some introductory courses in HTML codes, and even experimented with my own off-line personal journal, complete with photos interspersed between the HTML tags. It will be a long overdue refresher course of sort.

My Attempts at Demystifying The PageRank Algorithm

2010-08-15T13:58:00.006-05:00

One habit of mine is reading multiple books at any one time. Not holding the books at exactly the same time, but rotating the books after finishing one chapter or a section of each book. The habit is borne out of another habit at cross-referencing, comparing different perspectives offered by different authors and oftentimes supplementing each other. The two books I am reading the same time as Michael Miller's The Complete Idiot's Guide to SEO are Donna L. Baker's How to Do Everything with Google Tools (McGraw Hill 2008) and Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest (O' Reilly, 2nd Ed., 2005).

In Chapter 8 (Webmastering) of the latter book, I bumped into the PageRank algorithm of Google reproduced below in its equation form (Hack #87 by Mark Horrell):

PR(A) = (1 – d) + d[PR(T1)/C(T1) + ….. + PR(Tn)/C(Tn)]

where PR(A) is the PageRank (hereinafter shortened to PR) of a page A, PR(T1) is the PR of a page T1 (that links to page A and is considered an incoming link of page A), n is the total number of incoming links, C(T1) is the number of outgoing (outbound) links from the page T1 and so on for C(Tn), and d is a damping factor in the range 0 Wikipedia has given the mathematical background to the this now famous equation, purported named after Larry Page, one of the two co-founders of Google together with Sergey Brin, including a variant of the above equation where each PR is divided by the total number of pages, N, and is touted to be the one actually meant by Larry and Prin based on the statement in their paper that "the sum of all PageRanks is one”.

Wikipedia explains further:

“PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page. … The PageRank computations require several passes, called "iterations", through the collection to adjust approximate PageRank values to more closely reflect the theoretical true value.”

It is easy to infer from the structure of the equation that the higher the number of incoming link (n), the higher will be the value PR(A), i.e., its PR, since each incoming PR, PR(T1) to PR(Tn) always has a positive value. its. This is the quantity aspect, the more the merrier, which perhaps helped spawn the proliferation of link farms.

Similarly, the higher the PR of individual incoming links, PR(T1) to PR(Tn), the higher will also be the numeric value of PR(A). This then constitutes the quality aspect. This has another subtle twist to it based on the fact the new webpages invariably start with a low PR simply because it takes time for them to be crawled and indexed and be linked. Thus, there is a preference for webpage A to be linked by older webpages than the new ones.

However, do not forget about the denominator term, C(T), the presence of which will alter the fractional value in the opposite sense to that of PR(T), i.e., the larger the number of the outgoing links of each incoming link, PR(T), the smaller is its contribution to the overall value of PR(A). In other words, you would like each of your incoming links to have less outgoing links of their own.

Now, is that not a paradox of sort that tends to foster selfish thinking? Certainly it would not appear to be a win-win situation for all. But, wait. There is another facet to it, as amply expounded by Wikipedia:

“Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 (but 0 is used just for penalized or non analyzed-pages) for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale.”

The practical implication of using a log (short for logarithmic) scale is that the difference between successive ranking numerals is not in algebraic, but geometric progression, or more specifically in the case, it is an order-of-magnitude difference, i.e., 10 times. Imagine thus:

A PR of 1 may have the actual values from 0.1 to 9.9;
A PR of 2 may have the actual values from 10 to 99.9;
A PR of 3 may have the actual values from 100 to 999.9; and so on.

Thus an increase of a PR by 1 can only come from tremendous efforts, certainly not in the linear trend of climbing from 1 to 2, the higher the PR, the much higher effort to elevate to the next higher ranking. Thus, in the grand scheme of things, having links to webpages with a higher or lower number of outgoing links would matter less than linking to a larger number of link, plus it is out of one's control anyway. Now I can really appreciate the chasm that separates this blog site of mine and Wikipedia's as I may have seen to remark rather casually when pitting a PageRank of 1-2 against a 9.

If PR were the only criterion used by Google, then getting a high rank is no difference than winning a popularity context. In the words of Wikipedia, “a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.”

Reality is of course a different story. There is another part to the rank determination conducted by Google, a much greater part I hope, as reflected in the following:

“Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.”

Now I do not have retract my previous blog on content being king and all and all the content writers can sleep better.

Upon further Google (what else?) search, I came upon an excellent explanation of the PageRank algorithm by Phil Craven that alerted me to two more features:

- That a website's internal links are included. Therefore, the more pages a website holds, the higher the PR as they contribute the same as would an incoming link. The only caveat is that the pages have to be indexed by Google, that means on their own merit, and no cookie cutter stuff.

- “That when a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn't give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn't a transfer of PageRank.” That is, do not be afraid to link and plunge into the world of inter-connectedness, even though these links may be virtual, and the spirit of reciprocity (an outbound link begets a inbound one) lives on.

The last piece of the PageRank puzzle is the little d. What role does it play? Wikipedia puts it thus:

“The PageRank theory holds that even an imaginary surfer who is randomly clicking on links will eventually stop clicking. The probability, at any step, that the person will continue is a damping factor d.”

And in Page and Brin's own words:

“The d damping factor is the probability at each page the "random surfer" will get bored and request another random page.”

This fits in with our perception of human nature for we are not machines and are not capable of executing infinite number of clicks. Other than physical exhaustion, boredom will set in much quicker, and the rate of quickening seems to be a function of age as we can all attest to. Mathematically, we know that its inclusion depreciates the overall value of PR. If it were zero, all webpages will have the same PR of 1, a non-starter in the first place. Another thing to note is that the PR can never be zero. If a complete introvert writes a single webpage with no links whatsoever, it would still garner a PR of (1 – d), or 0.15, practically.

Is all the above that I spent a better half of the morning transiting into the afternoon understanding and collating worth the trouble? Intellectually, a resounding YES. It has been a long while that I have killed so much of my brain cells within such a short span of time. It's invigorating to say the least. My analytical mind still works.

Practically though, I am sobered by the recent clarification from Google as appearing almost as a epilogue in Wikipedia:

“On October 15, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true."”

The actual post by Susan Moskwa was actually more explicit through further elaboration punctuated by a smiley at the end (tongue in cheek?):

"We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it. :-)"

Then why retained it in the Google ToolBar? Perhaps the whole situation is better explained in a separate post that Susan Moskwa pointed to, which I will get to it later.

Ah well, life moves on. And so will we.

Writing content well first, then go for SEO worthiness

2010-08-14T15:49:00.006-05:00

Optimizing Your Website for Search Engines. That is the Title of Part 2 of Michael Miller's The Idiot's Guide to Search Engine Optimization, and is also what I have been talking about being inline with the normal usage of English when used to describe the SEO business. It is another variation of Website Optimization for Search Engines (WOSE).

Anyway, Miller has described Part 2 as the meat of the SEO business. It is action-oriented, applying SEO principles to a live website, in a step-wise fashion. The first rung, the most important foundation of all, is Content. Aptly entitled Optimizing Your Site's Content, it is a drill section on CONTENT, CONTENT, and nothing but CONTENT.

Engaging, flowing, flawless, and pertinent. The content must be able to captivate and sustain the attention of the users/visitors, the style must be flowing like water with continuity in a natural progression, the grammar must be the envy of the language enthusiasts (meeting the expectations of the purists will be too tall an order) with judiciously placed punctuation marks to indicate change in thought, in emphasis, and in re-direction, and the coverage must be clearly delineated, shorn of extraneous materials and excessive self-peddling. So much for content quality, which is the organic part.

One can be trained to write well, but the skills need to be acquired prior to launching the website. A website that is on the public gallery is hardly a place to learn the ropes of writing engagingly as parading language weakness in a published website degrades the perception of content worthiness. Fortunately, for those who are predisposed to be better doers than writers, help is at hand: copy writers. They are a niche unto themselves for a reason.

The rest of the optimization would appear to be more mechanistic: prudent sprinkling of keywords, sprucing up the HTML tags, and creating links that serve to elevate (inspire trust) rather than downgrade (engender distrust). Remember not all links are created equal, and they do vary widely in link reputation or worthiness. Official domains such as the edu's and the gov's command much higher respect than the lowly com's, some of them anyway.

As for the requisite length, most agree that being longer is better than shorter premised on the well-regarded observation that amplification trumps precis. And a thousand words or thereabout seems to be the consensus. For comparison, the length of this blog up to this point is about 380 words. Thus, I still have some grounds to cover until that magical threshold is reached.

Whether it is a webpage, or an article in hardcopy form like in a printed magazine or newspaper, the techniques and rules for good writing differ little. There are essentially two parts: the what (the content) and the how (the writing style).

As the progenitor of the webpage prompted by an idea, an urge to fill a need, or an opportunity to start, run and own an e-business by providing services, you are the best judge of the what part, and hence, the best person to articulate these core propositions. To this end:

1) Focus on the core theme, be it to verbalize a message, to convey a piece of information, to deliver a sales pitch for a specific product or to solicit feedback. Say it out-front, say it in the middle, and say it again at the end.

2) Focus on the needs of the readers: speak to them, with respect, and humility, and be truthful about the benefits that will accrue so that they could walk away with their needs met, or a way to meet their needs identified. Always remember to cultivate a lasting impression to encourage repeat business. If you're not in for the long haul, you have no business to be in it in the first place. In and out is certain to spell doom from day one. As in an oral presentation, audience analysis is vital so as to be able to write in a tone that the targeted audience is most comfortable with. Not condescending, nor overly didactic.

3) Then support the core theme with well-thought out procedure/applications/examples/cases in a clear sequence that culminates in the realization of the core theme through a series of success stories. After all, it is no difference than telling a story at the end of which the audience, or a portion thereof, must be sold on the story. In that regard, nothing sells better than one that is rooted in authenticity.

Once we know what to write and for whom, the success of the how part hinges on our ability to achieve readability and to exude elegance of the written word. While a written work may lack the reinforcement via body language, one can still aim to blend in the non-verbal cues through the use of evocative prose and sentiment-laden words to evince passion, sincerity, eagerness, and empathy. Here's where creativity can know no bounds, transcending platitudes and rising above sloganeering.

Regardless, good writing traits revolve around simplicity, economy, writing in the active voice/first person, coherence, and avoidance of slang/jargons and repetitions of the same words. Reading widely, having a wide command of vocabulary, and knowing the nuances will go a long way in presenting the what in a highly readable and elegant manner. If this seems daunting or the learning process is too time consuming, engage professional help.

There is one more step to insure SEO worthiness though. That's where SEO skills are called for, and that is also where Michael Miller lays bare the meat of his book for everyone's picking, starting from hereon right up to the last chapter, which is 24, of his book.

One chapter at a time now. And the threshold met.

The Battle for Supremacy in the Rarefied Realm of Search Engines

2010-08-13T22:44:00.010-05:00

I always google. That the noun has now become a verb speaks volumes about the popularity of Google as the search engine of choice. However, lately I have also tried out Bing, which was launched in June last year, simply because my new desktop came with Bing as the default search engine.

Google's search page is minimalist, as Michael Miller states in Chapter 3 of his book (A Complete Idiot's Guide to SEO), fringed by a wide band of white thickened at the two sides. However, one can import any image as the backdrop if the space seems disconcerting, including Google's own selections. A pleasant feature here is that on some days of historical significance, the word Google will be encased in a banner of image drawn to depict the historical event with the word skillfully blended into the image. Each time it appears, rather randomly for those who do not keep tab of past events, is a moment of pleasant surprise. Clicking the image produces a textual account of that day in history. Below are some of these dainty Google banners that I have collected over time from dating back to 2008.

A collection of Google banners, courtesy of the Google People.

Bing's search page similarly spots a white buffer zone at all the sides, but the search box overlies an image that changes every day. Clicking the flashing boxes when the cursor is moved over the image invokes accompanying texts that tell more about the image. On exploring further, readers are admonished to “kiss that sea of blue links goodbye” and to enjoy the Bing's version that has been “visually organized to help you make more informed decisions.” Sometimes a change of scenery does help to relieve some of the tedium of having to conduct a serious search; otherwise I think the sea of blue links should get me to where I want more expeditiously, especially when I am doing a scholar(ly) search.

According to the book, Google is said to capture about 55-65% of the internet searches, with Yahoo! As a distant second, laying claim to about 20%. Next comes Live Search of Microsoft, knocking on 10%. After the Fab Three, AOL Search and Ask.com ante up the rear with about 4% and 2%, respectively, with the balance of less than 2% comprising all the minority stake-holders.

Out of curiosity, I binged “Bing's market share in search engines” and was rewarded with the #1 result page dated Sep 14, 2009 at the Search Engine Land website that lists the latest search engine stats from Nielsen wherein MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search's share has surged to 10.7%, primarily at the expense of Yahoo Search, which dropped to 16%. Google continued to solidly lead the number game, steadied at 64.6%.

To be fair, I entered the same query in Google. Of the top ten results, all but one (it came in at #9) are dated this year. I clicked on the one results with the most recent date, July 14, 2010, a BBC news article that displayed a new set of numbers. These did not change the order, but reflected a gain for Bing (12.7%) while Goggle registered a drop to 62.6%. Yahoo also regained some lost ground by chipping in at 18.9%.

Obviously I will be remiss if I did not accord the same courtesy to Yahoo!. It listed the same BBC article as the #1 result. However, by continuing to the 2nd ranked page I was rewarded with the market share battle at the global level. And guess where Google (- Global) stands? A whooping 85% based on the July 2010 stats. Yahoo (- Global) trailed far far behind with 6%, and Baidu, which I sometimes use for searching items in Chinese, was neck-to-neck with Bing, at 3.3% a piece.

Since US is not a small market, I have to venture that the rest of the world is much more in tune with Google than US users. So if you are on the global stage, you will be kissing off 85% of the potential site traffic, certainly making ignoring Google as your SEO target a much more shakier proposition than Michael Miller would allow in his book.

Content rules, but only the textual kind

2010-08-12T20:42:00.005-05:00

The second chapter (How SEO works) of Michael Miller's Complete idiot's Guide to SEO is now history. That history was made while we were waiting for WT to sit for his driving test at a local DMV office this morning. Before that, we made him drive us round the carpark where the office is located and the adjacent road several times just to get him acclimatized to the route and traffic setting. And it paid off. A huge thumb-up sign from him at the end of his driving test announced another new legal driver on the road.

OK, back to the second chapter. In two words, Content Rules. Not just any content, but the textual kind, relegating the non-textual genre to irrelevance, at least for now until such time as and when some kind of image recognition capability is achieved.

The chapter is about what search engines look for and armed with that knowledge, how one can optimize the website to provide strategically, repeatedly, and refreshingly what these search engines look for, which are tuned to users' needs. That means also understanding what people in general look for.

In this respect, search engines can be viewed as a match maker, trying to consummate a marriage of sort that is only made in heaven, both parties' wishes fulfilled: the user's query is answered, and the website gets its top ranking.

Crawlers and searchbots, the unseen sniffers that prowl the cyberspace dispatched by the Search Engine Enterprise, are busy and impatient beings and do not linger long on any abodes of the internet denizens (think home page). They have got a zillion places to cover and therefore only look for what that are trained to do at selecetd places to send the content back to the Mothership. And there are three staples in this mix: keywords, HTML tags, and links.

Keywords are descriptors of items that are of interest to the users. HTML tags are codes that structure the website both for viewing and underlying it all, for providing a detailed schematic of where things are kept in a neat hierarchical arrangement. Not all HTML tags are created the same and the trick is know which are the favorite hangouts of these crawlers or spiders during their brief sojourn. Fortunately for people for do not bother with HTML coding like yours truly, structure means there is a well-defined path to follow and even the uninitiated is unlikely to go wrong in identifying these alcoves.

Links are connections or conduits that point to another webpage. Apparently, the more the merrier is the motto here suggestive of a popularity contest. To a point, since quality and relevance matter as well. Links have become a commodity that one can actually buy them, abiding by the economic model that where there is a demand, there will be a supply.

It would appear that SEO is nothing more than manipulating the keywords, the HTML tags, and the links to work in concert to improve a website's search ranking. And to that end, Michael Miller offers ten key factors to doing just that. And the associated optimization techniques are further amplified in others chapters of the book, plus a whole slew of other things that one can try.

And in the final analysis, it's all about trying. No venture no gain. Let the adventure begin. Mine started with the tinkling of this blog' visual look by experimenting with several HTML codes in the blog template, albeit at a rudimentary level. Yes, taking baby steps is good.

Whether SEO or WOSE, Text is KING

2010-08-11T21:10:00.005-05:00

My take-away message from the introductory chapter of Michael Miller's book is that Text is King as far as searches go. It's a very text-centric world out there and the crawlers and searchbots are trained to sniff out web pages based on text only. Hence, text analysis is featured as one of the primary considerations that determine page rank. At least this is as things stand now. It does not mean that images become immaterial, but that one has to anchor it with some kind of text in order to score any point.

While quantity, or length in this case, might not be all that important, a shorter text can be deemed as less relevant, and is often accorded a lower page rank, all things being equal. Then again the page ranking algorithm reputed to be the top secret of the highest degree can sense any word padding, no matter how subtle it is, from a mile away, easily. Thus pruning a page for readability and more important, substance, is much more rewarding than playing the word game.

Another thing that struck me is pages are stored verbatim in the so-called document servers operated by these search engines for lightning-fast retrieval. Once stored, a page only gets updated, but is never totally removed from cyber storage. That would mean that a simple click of the delete key to annihilate even those files in the trash folder or Recycle Bin to oblivion is as good as out of sight but still floating in limbo somewhere in cyberspace, ready to be resurrected to inflict nightmares via another click by those who have the means and the incentive to do so. Wonder whether there is any kind of virtual shredder that makes stitching back so difficult that it becomes a futile venture for those who are so inclined.

Then it struck me, again, that SEO as Search Engine Optimization is actually a misnomer. What we try to achieve in raising the profile of our web pages as denoted by page rank through SEO is more like Website Optimization for Search Engines, rather than Optimization of the Search Engines themselves as the common usage of English would dictate. So, perhaps they should have been WOSE consultants.

I learned today too that the Google ToolBar actually includes a PageRank icon that displays the page rank of a particular webpage/site, but visually in the form of a filling horizontal bar. Readers can judge the page rank by mentally dividing the bar into ten slots (corresponding to the range of 0 to 10) and see how many slots are filled. This website of mine was adjudged by yours truly to have a page rank of 1 to 2. On the other hand, the Wikipedia website is like a 9.

This would appear to be a quick way to find out whether my SEO (or WOSE) efforts actually make any headway, or not.

My Initiation Rites to SEO

2010-08-08T10:55:00.009-05:00

I recently came across a similarly crowded term, Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I think for the sake of brevity, this three-noun version appears crispier than Optimization of Search Engines, or, God forbid, Optimization of Engines that Search. So SEO it is.

Thanks to Wei Joo, my elder son, as the intermediary, and to Daniel Tan, my nephew, who is an SEO guy (in his own words), I was initiated into the amazing realm of e-marketing, and in particular, the rat race for website ranking. Rat race is definitely apt here, not unlike the Wild Wild West known for the mad scramble for the pot of gold, as attested to by the proliferation of SEO websites.

From my limited online browsing thus far covering a span of a few days and that also outside my working hours and is thus meager at best by any measure, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) websites operate under the notion that nobody is going to be bothered with what is under the virtual pile, especially in cyberspace, as time is of the essence, no matter how useful the information can be. And Search Engine is the virtual equivalent of the Yellow Pages of the brick and mortar world, except that it's more nimble, expansive, and best of all, prioritized based on some objective criteria that presumably hold the interests of the consumers supreme. The latter aspect is where optimization matters, exclusively for those offering their services in the e-marketplace.

I think a disclaimer is apt here. There is no bashing of any kind whatsoever intended; it just so happened that I was recently awakened to what SEO can do, though what I'm about to blog may not be exclusive to SEO websites only.

My cursory search in cyberspace churned up so many SEO websites that it would last many life times of reading. Many of them will guarantee top billings for one's website, some even going as far as assuring the Uno. However, logic dictates that some in the latter category may be an exercise in futility based on simple arithmatic that goes something like this:

Number of SEO websites: countless (in relative terms as it most likely ranges in the thousands at most);

Number of niches: finite since regardless of the possible permutations of qualifying words and variants of the terms (here rarely used terms of practically no utility value as judged by the failure to elicit any recognizable response from an average Joe are excluded), the lexicons grow only at an excruciatingly slow pace and one can only drill down that far;

Number of top ranks: countable, with both hands at most for those interested in the Top 10 list.

Simple conclusion: there is just too many monks to share the few bowls of congee (to borrow from a opt-used Chinese idiom, loosely translated) given the fact that the pinnacle is always pointy at the top by definition. In other words, some unwary customers will not get their wishes granted. However, the ability to level the playing field such that big players don't simply win by sheer might in the e-business milieu is not in doubt. And therein perhaps lies its appeal where both the Davids and the Goliaths can match their creativity for supremacy.

Thus, a SEO consultant worth his/her salt will settle at “top billings”, implying that perhaps the pedestal is not as narrow a ledge as some would prefer it to be, leaving the numerals out to make room for creative maneuvers. So, caveat emptor, which, come to think of it, would apply to the procurement of any service, online or otherwise.

And a good way not to fall for any sales pitch is to learn some basics of what SEO can do and cannot do. In this regard, the Complete Idiot's Guide to Search Engine Optimization by Michael Miller (Alpha Books, 2009), courtesy of the local public library from which I collected the book just yesterday, will show me the way, hopefully. From its first few pages, I think I already like the even-keeled approach of the author, no promising the sky but "improving your search engine rankings" and "making your site rank higher". To me, these are realistic and achievable goals, if one knows what to do as the author assures in the Introductory chapter of his book, but with a reality check, it's not a quick and easy job. And my journey toward an improved website ranking just got started!

Writing Simply

2010-08-07T16:23:00.004-05:00

When I was taking a technical writing course during my grad school days back in the mid-1980s, one of the cardinal sins of writing hammered into my head was stringing several nouns to form a new term. This “abuse” was especially rampant among engineering students whom I suspect have been responsible for what is euphemistically referred to as jargon. I vaguely remember the admonition that three is a crowd.

To prove my point, I walked over to my bookshelf and randomly picked up a magazine that happened to be Civil Engineering, a publication of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a premier engineering society. Flipping the pages, the following terms rolled:

Downhole Data Management.

Borehole Log Software.

Construction Management Services.

Client Relation Management (OK, I did not see this term in there. It just kind of popped up in my head but it is a standard management buzzword these days).

Here I'm excluding the proper noun genre (Oops, guilty as charged) that abounds in the stringing of many nouns with impunity such as (any locality) River Basin Restoration Project.

Today, engaging in triple noun terms has become a norm as people get used to mouthing them effortlessly.

In my mind, these strung terms are a different kettle from verbiage, or verbosity, or circumlocution, a term my English teacher threw at me when I was at the tender age commensurate with being a middle school student. More commonly characterized as wordiness, this at best irritable habit can result without us resorting to using a slew of multiple-noun terms, though it can be exacerbated by their inclusion.

As in all things in life, good writing is simply as simple as is needed to convey the message with clarity. All other embellishments including over-zealous padding are superfluous and often can engender the opposite effect: tune off.

Whirlwind Tour on a shoe string and in contracted space

2010-06-06T20:09:00.010-05:00

[This post also appears in Wify's As I Draw Them ... to present the same blog but appearing on two different-colored backgrounds]

Residents of the Sunshine State enjoy certain privileges that come with the territory. One is the bestowal of the Bright Futures Scholarships that pay for college tuition, academic record permitting. Yet another one is the discount fares of theme park tickets, such as the “Buy for less than a day, Come back for a year” deal offered by Busch Gardens Tampa, which we took up earlier in the year. And we never looked back. But we are always game if other good things come along, doing our small part to stimulate the economy because we can.

The more recent offer that we snatched up is the Disneyworld tickets that charged $99 for a 4-day pass (presumably one day for each park since there are four associated theme parks), which expired on May 25. That made for several consecutive weekends of day trips to Orlando where we left our footprints behind on each of the theme parks. Brisk, and sun-soaked but otherwise fun-filled sojourns, with a tinge of nostalgia at three of them (the Animal Kingdom having come into being only after our prior flurry of visits during our Gainesville days in the first half of the 1990s).

We debated on which was to be the first on our list, and settled on the Epcot Center because Wify had been wanting to visit the Flower and Garden Festival since last year. And we were not disappointed, which could be an understatement. Here's why, pictorially told. That WT and CE are enjoying their summer breaks right now (WT actually graduated in early May but his commencement that we attended on May 2 will be the subject of another blog) meant that we were destined to be featured prominently in the pictorial tale.

The iconic silver globe, the Spaceship Earth, has come to be synonymous with the Epcot Center, its rough surface texture and its enormous size becoming evident in close proximity. It houses a ride that is both easy on my heart and titillates the mind at the same time, offering glimpses of space travel as the Mother Ship courses through the vast universe that is as expansive as the mind could imagine.

That's why we were there as the draping sign beckons, surrounded by a luxuriant display of greenery dotted with multi-hued flowers.

Topiaries at their best featuring clockwise from top left: Timon and Pumba of the Lion King fame; Mickey and Minnie; Peter Pan and Captain Hook; and the tea pot gang of the Beauty and the Beast fame.

Seven of the eleven World Showcase pavilions that skirt the bank of the central lake arranged in three at the top row and four at the bottom row. These are facades and edifices that are distinctive and unique to each country, supposedly anyway. How about a Geography pop quiz? Answers are provided at the end to gage how insular you are.

Yes, the American Adventure where visitors are treated to a melodious display of American folk songs rendered a cappella harmonized by the seamless voice meshing of the members and enhanced by the sound acoustics offered by the high dome directly above them.

This should be obvious: the torii (top row) and the Pagoda (bottom row) are a dead giveaway. A torii, literally meaning bird perch, is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine. The Goju-No-To, or "Five Storey Pagoda," traditionally represents the five elements from which Buddhists believe all things in the universe are produced. In ascending order, the elements are earth, water, fire, wind and sky. So says a plaque erected in front of the pagoda.

Equally ubiquitous in China are the arch portal (here it says the Sun-Facing Gate), the cuddly pandas, especially the flurry kind here that Wify is enamored to, and the Lotus flower.

Scenes of China, as revealed in the 360 degree panoramic theatrical display where the patrons stand for ease of the 360 degree viewing pleasure. I think the contents may have stayed essentially the same since we saw the same show more than fifteen years ago, narrated by the famous Tang Dynasty poet, Li Bai, his role obviously played by an actor. From the scenic (Su Chow), the desert (Gobi), the rural (Yunan) to the Urban (Shanghai), going clockwise from the top left.

From top left going clockwise: Here's Li Bai in a traditional Chinese garb gesticulating from the top of the Great Wall of China, purportedly shown up as a twisting dragon in satellite images; next the mythical dragon where Chinese are descendants from, at least according to the name of a popular Chinese song; the Beijing opera show involving actors with painted faces in various stances; and the ever-popular Tai Chi practitioners, soaking up the morning essence perched on a hillside (deduced from the misty environ).

Wify likes Chinese calligraphy. So here are the shots taken within the Gift Shop after exiting the 360 degree theater. These are the three auspicious Chinese characters meaning Blessings, Wealth, and Longevity from right to left.

More Chinese calligraphy, Love (right) and Forbearance (left) flanking the bamboo/panda painting depicting summer joy.

Wify's favorite pastime: shots of Chinese brush painting of birds/flowers (top left), Chinese crane (bottom left); Girl in traditional Chinese dress, and the awe-inspiring roar of the tiger, all found in the same gift shop.

The mountain and water painting, contrasted with real mountain (Yellow mountain?) and water (Gui-Ling).

From left: the famous historical find of the Terra Cotta Warriors of the Qing Dynasty (circa 210 B.C.) discovered in 1974 near Xian, China (top) and the craftsmen restoring the artifacts (middle). A sitting Buddha evincing compassion and wisdom; concluding (bottom left) with the popular Chinese saying that has "seeing is believing" as its closest English equivalent.

That was truly a whirlwind tour, covering some of the major continents within a span of a few hours, so much so that we ran out of time to visit the other offerings at the Future World. However, there will be other time ...

[Answers to the country pavilions, from top left going clockwise: France, UK, Canada, Germany, Norway, Italy and Mexico.]

Up in the Air, or Not

2010-02-13T12:43:00.009-05:00

I was drawn by the storyline of this movie with a somewhat opportunistic theme of letting go people by minimizing the pain of the aggrieved. In the present climate of rampant unemployment, it hits a rather raw nerve; but at the same time, it also invites a sense of empathy from those who are in the same boat, yours truly included. While the passage of time, and thankfully, being accepted back into the fold of the gainfully employed, did ease off some of the agony spawned by the traumatic experience, the looming sense of anxiety does not seem to go away anytime soon.

So Wify and I found ourselves in one of the smaller movie theaters at Muvico along Highway Preserve, with a pleasant surprise of sort: we qualified for the Senior discount, as we have always thought you have to hit 60. Not surprisingly, most of the patrons (I assessed the turnout to be less than half full as the movie has been running for some time now) are silver-haired, and by that I meant they are decidedly older than us. Let's take a sneak peek at some scenes from the movie. Don't worry, it's not enough to make you want to give it a miss; instead, it might just get you intrigued enough to give it a try actually.

Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is a consultant who makes his career out of firing people. He amasses frequent flyer miles, carries a neatly packed suitcase for carry-on, and methodologically moves toward his frequent mile target that he was evasive for most part of the movie.

He goes on the speaking circuit too, with a backbag placed on a table next to him, and delivers his usual opening line about what is in your backbag. He challenges the audience to start with the small stuff, small momentos, things on the shelf, and start putting them into the backbag one by one. Then move on to the bigger stuff, tables, bed, etc. And even bigger stuff, your car, your house. And now strap on the filled backbag. Do you fill the weight overwhelming, the strap cutting into your body? And he declares famously, that's what we do.

At the next speaking engagement, he changes tack a bit. Now imagine putting all your relationships, starting with the casual acquaintance, postman, cable guy, delivery guy, into the backbag. Next, your friends, and finally, the loved ones. And feel the weight again.

The next speaking engagement has him cajoling folks to put their memories into the proverbial back bag. And relive the overbearing burden.

Is there a message, sublime or otherwise, somewhere in there? Mr. Bingham is not forthright. But the recurring theme resonates in me: it's about letting go. After one has lived in the moment. Being weighed down is not the best way, obviously not the fun way for sure, to go through life. That does not mean we merely go through the motion without a purpose in life. Purpose is what drives us, what makes us stumble is our groping around to find the purpose.

As one of the characters in the movie puts it, after he was let go: The next morning when I wake up, and I see my wife sleeping next to me, I find my sense of purpose.

Bidding farewell to the Old and Welcoming the New

2010-01-01T12:26:00.011-05:00

The year that is. 2009 is now history while 2010 is barely one-day old. With memory still fresh, I was trying to recollect the few last things I did in the past decade. There was this Time Square countdown, seen through my sleepy eyes as I had succumbed to fatigue while watching the bowl game between Virginia Tech and Tennessee last night. Then there was my having finished reading “The Lost Symbol” (a scanned image book cover shown on the right below and hereon referred to as the Book) by Dan Brown, a Christmas gift from CY, alternating between watching the football game and flipping through the last few chapters of the book. That in itself would tell you how the ending part of the book appealed to me. I started with great expectations, having read several of Brown's previous works (and two movies based on his books), about a week back, until the latter part dealing with the near-drowning death experience of Robert Langdon, the story's main character, which was not to be. Along the way, I kind of lost some steam and started to read chunks of text at one go. However, I like the last word of the Book, “HOPE”.

The start of a new year is always synonymous with hope, starting afresh, and myriad possibilities. Of course starting afresh does not imply from a clean slate, but building on past efforts so as to be on a firmer footing to chart new territory, or a variation of a trodden path, tuning if you will, or looking at things from a new perspective (a change of mindset encouraged in the Book).

Going further back in time, there was this “Buy for less than a day, Come back for a year” deal offered by Busch Gardens for Florida residents, which we took advantage off. In the short span of a week, we have already visited the Park twice, the second trip accompanied by WT and CE, ostensibly to watch Christmas on Ice presented by some world class ice skaters. And we were not disappointed. The one-time tickets are valid till the end of 2010. And we will monitor how many visits to the Park, a mere minutes away by car, we will manage to chalk up in 2010. But first, here are some end-of-the-year memorable images of the year gone by.

Wify, relaxed and poised, sitting on a low wall made of stacked circular blocks not far after the entrance.

Now indoor by the fire place with stockings hung from its top ledge, Frosty standing outside the window, like real.

The Man of Note, belting out Christmas Carols in the pre-show to the Christmas on Ice, harmonious melodies without the accompaniment of music, a musical performance termed "acappella" as CE pointed out.

The team of ice skaters in snow attire opening the long-waited show, Christmas on Ice. We arrived about 35 minutes before the show and we were glad we did that as the seats filled up quickly.

The Russian duo, easily the highlight of the show with their breath-taking display of well choreographed dance moves in perfect synchronicity ...

... as seen here in the face brushing while swinging around act.

The last act of the Dinner Show during which kids went on stage to sit with Santa.

The closing of the Katonga, the dancers having performed to four stories being narrated successively, all contributing to the grandeur.

Sheikra, touted as the first America's dive coaster featuring the vertical drop here. Obviously it's out of our league.

Sheikra again, next to the Blue Moon, so called because it's the second full month in a month, which occurs once in 2.5 years. However, New Year's Eve blue moons are rarer, occurring every 19 years, which means the next one won't happen until 2028 (as read in today's St Petersburg Times, front page). This significance did not dawn on me until so informed by St. Petersburg Times.

A fully stretched rabbit, its head resting on crossed arms.

Pink birds (Wify said they look more orange to her), long legs. Who can miss these gregarious waders, the Flemingos, here using the head for balance as one of the legs is retracted?

Pick-a-lock? Will that work?

A fully extended plumage of a peacock.

Cuddling for warmth, our way.

Head touching pose, as picked up by a nice passer-by.

The Tale of Airports and While Up In The Air

2009-12-19T20:13:00.009-05:00

For the recent trip back to Malaysia, we transited at two new airports, new to us I mean. The first is the George Bush Inter-Continental Airport at Houston (IAH), and the other, the (Moscow) Domodedovo International Airport (DME). Not only are the airports new to us, so are the place. And courtesy of Singapore Airline (SIA), we can now put these two cities under our belt, even though we did not venture beyond the confines of the airport, or to be exact, the Transit Lounge. However, nobody can deny that we were physically on the ground at these places. That dubious distinction would also apply to Taipei and HongKong (for me since Wify has been to HongKong).

We are not new to the Changi Airport in Singapore, which, as a home-port of SIA, is necessarily a transit point in the route. But what amazed us is the décor, putting space to optimal use for visual pleasure and also some learning experience for the benefit of the weary travelers.

The return trip also means that we spent about 2 days high up in the air, at a height of 35,000 – 40,000 ft above sea level, which placed us at the stratosphere (6 – 31 miles above the surface). And the view out of the window was really spectacular. The wide expanse really dwarfs the human presence, invoking a sense of awe that helps put everything into perspective, or cut us down to sizes, all made possible by having a window seat, not my preferred emplacement, but one that I have grown accustomed to with age, especially when armed with a camera.

Let me then bring you on a whirlwind tour of the airports and the airspace that connects them, a chance at a bird's eye view of the atmosphere up close, and terra firma, from a distance, vertically that is.

At IAH, in the lone star state, or in the parlance of college football, the Longhorns.

At IAH. I was wondering what has chilli got to do with AT&T and mobiles, until I was alerted by Wify to look closer. How uncanny. Then it all makes sense.

One of the eateries at DME, Moscow. But they were out of bound to us as they only deal in Russian rubles. We had better luck at the Tax-free shop, buying some chocolate with US dollars.

The Transit concourse, Changi Airport, with kois swimming in an elongated pond fringed by plants and flowers and graced by Wify.

Wify guarding the entrance to the giant festive decoration, Changi Airport.

Wify trying her hand at one of the hand presses for making motifs of Symbolic Asia out of papers, Changi Airport.

One of the many symbols of Asia on display (hint: learning experience).

Our claim to the grand sending off, at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Sepang.

And now, (drum roll ...), the panorama extravaganza, views up in the air or from up in the air.

A river debauching into the Straits of Melaka, with stationary boats dotting the seascape, watched by distant clouds.

A distant sun beaming down on us at high altitude, the shot captured understandbly without the aid of me looking at the LCD screen. I simply pressed the camera lens against the plane's window in that general direction, and hope for the best.

A sunrise, illuminated by the distant glow on the horizontal.

A sea of icebergs? No, just ice-berg lookalike clouds buffering us from below.

A cotton field in the air.

I caught this plane flying by us. Talk about airspace ... Wonder whether anybody on it saw us too. What are the odds of two people clutching their cameras and fixating on things outside the window at the same time?

Then another one jetted by, leaving a linear contrails behind, though I think this happened on the return trip. Nah, can't be the same guy on his return trip too, but I wonder.

Family Reunion in the Food Haven

2009-12-06T09:54:00.023-05:00

Wify and I recently made a trip back to Malaysia, ostensibly as an occasion for family reunion since this was to be our first trans-continental trip in almost six years, and secondarily, to relish the diversified food delicacies that Malaysia as a food haven rightly offers. While there, our primary accommodation has been the homely abode of Wify's sis, Bee Yuan, who has a keen eye for exquisite and yet affordable décor, not to mention an equally demanding palate that searches out gastronomic delights in the vicinity of her environs. At the same time, her husband, Boon Hin, took time from his hectic work schedule to be both the gracious host and the ever-ready chauffeur ferrying us on numerous trips in our food quest, chaperoned by their three affable daughters who regaled us with local tales. And to top it all, these outings were graced by our siblings from near and afar who descended on the same spot on cue.

The result is an exciting trip down the memory lane, rekindling our suspended taste for great and yet economic food forays that has long been held in abeyance (just think currency exchange). And I can find no better way of illustrating our good fortune other than the pictorial account below, in no particular chronological order.

This restaurant (or in the Malaysian lingo, restoran), sits right across from a vegetarian restaurant that we have been frequenting for dinners, but remained closed during those occasions. Apparently, the restaurant that features one of my favorite meals, Lei Cha, a taste I developed while working at the Ampang Area in KL, does not operate during dinner time. One fine morning, we decided to give it a try.

What is Lei Cha, a delicacy popularized by the Hakka clan? Here's an account of its historical origin, and its varied medicinal benefits, courtesy of the San Pao restaurant (click on the image for a clearer read). I always empty the entire Lei Cha onto the rice served in a bowl to partake of the congee-like mix, the tea leaving a lasting flavor in my mouth. I enjoyed so much that I forgot to digitalize our patronage.

This is the vegetarian restaurant referenced above. A corner lot, its relatively open configuration permits free flow of the cool night (about the only time when the weather seems comfy to us, save for the air-conditioned indoor setting) air. The service was prompt, delivering just-cooked delicious dishes in quick succession, and the price tag, extremely reasonable. No wonder we made several repeat visits during our sojourn. The name, Guan Zi, literally means self introspection.

We went to KL only once, to visit a Chinese bookstore for arts supplies. En-route, we made a stop for tea tasting here, a retreat from the hustle and bustle of city life. Several foreign tourists came it to purchase tea. The white pot in the foreground contains a famous Chinese delicacy, tea leaf eggs brewed in herbal concoctions that are just what the Sinseh (traditional doctors in the Chinese lingo) orders. "Kedai Teh" is tea shop, while the Chinese character for tea appears next to it.

We were treated to a free demonstration of Chinese tea brewing and tasting by the young sifu (in red), flanked by Wei Joo, our eldest child. The tea shop is stack-ful of all kinds of tea paraphernalia.

And yes, Bak Kut Teh, the toast of the Klang Town in Selangor. "Kedai Makanan" is eatery, used interchangeably with "restoran", while Tatusia is the phonetic equivalent for the name in Chinese, which means "Under the Big Tree", presumably the best setting for savoring the offering. However, being served indoor under a concrete roof works equally for me.

"Bak Kut" means pork rib, and teh, is, no surprise, tea. The pork rib is cooked in clay pot, served with the usual condiment of flour sticks (deep fried in oil) on plates, and Chinese tea served in dainty little cups, complete with rice soaked in the Bak Kut soup (that's the way I like it). The combination works wonder on our palate, necessitating several subsequent trips to the treadmill or the exercise bike, for redemption.

The Legend of Congees and Noodles. They serve both vegetarian and meat congees, and each is delightful in its own right.

On this day, when we were not observing a vegetarian diet in accordance with the Buddhist calendar, we had fish porridge (a local term for congees) served in clay pots, with home-cooked flour sticks (in a basket). Each clay pot of content fills up four mid-sized bowls; so it is rare that a patron would order a pot all to him/herself, we were thus advised by the gracious hostess.

Having dispensed with Chinese food, we now come to the culinary delights of other Malaysian brethrens. First off, roti canai, an Indian food staple that has served me well when I first left the comfort of home and the always on-call Mom's cooking for Kluang located 24 miles away from my home town, for my junior high school. It was my primary breakfast item because of its fast delivery and consumption. Made with a lot of oil, some people may balk at it. No worry, there is an alternative that is served with the same gravy dishes of dhall and curry, which I gravitated to when working in the Ampang area as my appreciation of nutritional balance grew.

Thosai is the alternative for the nutrition-conscious. According to the December 2009 issue of the SIA in-flight magazine (pg. 022), Going Places, that I happened to skim through during our return flight, thosai "has half the amount of calories of roti canai but equally delicious with dhall and curry," to which I concur unreservedly. And those are the hands of my Mom-in-law, a very wise choice by her.

Nasi Lemak, a traditional Malay dish, has found itself ensconced now in the offerings of food vendors of all races, a testimony to its tremendous popularity. The same article referenced above entitled "Trim the fat" that invites readers to "enjoy your favorite Malaysian dishes with less guilt" has the following healthier options to offer: "This dish of coconut milk steamed rice is often served with condiments such as fried ikan bilis (whitebait) [or anchovies?], roasted peanuts and a fried egg. Leave out the first two and replace the latter with a hard-boiled egg." Sound advice, but be prepared to lower your expectations for the reduced package just doesn't taste the same. I believe in occasional indulgence.

Satay, another mainstay of the Malay cuisine, is another must-taste, which we did at the KLIA just prior to our departure for our return flight. For a leaner version, here's what the same issue of Going Places has to say: "The BBQ-skewered meat is a great source of protein and only contains around 140 calories per skewer but you can have a leaner version by skipping the accompanying peanut source - the meat is flavored enough to be eaten on its own." However, I hasten to add the same caveat as above.

And the pride of Malaysian Bakery, Secret Recipe, backed by its inroads into the Asian markets. Truly Malaysia Boleh (Malaysia Can do credo).

The toast of Secret Recipe, the cheese cake. And the contented smile on Wify's face says it all.

The extended family gathered at the Old Town White Coffee, having high tea the Malaysian way.

Another variation of the three-generational family complement taken at Bee Yuan and Boon Hin's home (the smiling couple on the left in the front row, with Bee Yuan holding Bibi, one of the two family doggies. Try to spot the other one, Bubu).

Lessons in Nature

2009-10-25T10:47:00.010-05:00

Another potpourri of life as my camera lens sees it constitutes my adventure into Bloggerdom for the day. These are the scenes that meet my eyes on a daily basis, or at least, at places where I go to work or to shop, or to relax, regardless whether it is up in the air or down on the ground. Some have managed to trigger the gems of witticism from me, or so I thought. Still others seem to convey some hidden messages, if you choose to think out of the box. Of course it is largely a matter of perception really, just like one can see a bottle as half full, while another, half empty. So, just observe and let go.

Looking for extra-terrestrial assistance for Earth's problems? An array of ground receiving satellite discs seen in the USF campus.

Rumbling along above the hustle and bustle.

Converging, or diverging, depending on one's perspective.

Below every dark cloud, there is a gold pot.

Island in the sky, 'cos it resembles the outline of England, with latitude crossings.

The invasion of the gray that is no fight for the rainbow streak, as seen through a rain-pattered windscreen.

Ribbons in the sky. Taken at the front of the newly opened HHGREGG store along Bruce B. Down Blvd.

Birds of Paradise, also known as Crane flowers, are one of the most beautiful Exotic Flowers. Birds of Paradise are native to South Africa. They bloom from September through May. The flowers of the Birds of Paradise resemble a brightly colored bird in flight and so the name Birds of Paradise. Taken in USF Campus.

Multi-threading in nature. As seen on USF Campus.

Multi-directionality of a cluster of ... (I have no idea).

Hypermetropic, as in far-sighted, i.e., blurred near vision. Actually it is a focus trick of the camera.

A lone lily bud sprouting out of the water, over the lily pads/leaves, some verdant, some variegated, symbolizing the transitory nature of life. Seen on a road-side lake along Martin Luther King Blvd on my way to work every morning.

The lone lily flower bursting forth.

Casting shadows, the work of the saucer-like lily leaves working in tandem with the sun.

Hydrophobicity (from the combining form of water in Attic Greek hydro- and for fear phobos) is the physical property of a molecule (known as a hydrophobe) that is repelled from a mass of water. Superhydrophobic surfaces such as the leaves of the lotus plant have surfaces that are extremely difficult to wet. The contact angles of a water droplet exceeds 150° and the roll-off angle is less than 10°. This is referred to as the Lotus effect. This is physics at work in nature.

Optical illusion that results from a mere rotation of the photo image. Actually, it is the cactus plant that is inclined, and the buildings upright, demonstrating the importance of context.

"Now, fellow fearless duckies, we have hydrophobic plummage, we have webbed feet. And we are all hard-wired to swim. So, go ahead, take the plunge," the duckie general, dressed in white, cajoles.

The pretender.

A fountain whose watery emissions seem to merge into the clouds, their brethren in the sky. Taken in front of the building where my office is located, graced by wify.

Discovering Nature

2009-10-04T19:02:00.009-05:00

We completed one out of three discoveries offered at the Florida Botanical Gardens located off Ulmerton Road, Largo this morning: Nature. For Art, presented at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, and History to be experienced at the Heritage Village, the newest of the three, they will have to await our next trip. We were at hand to watch the gardens grow, to witness the symbiosis that exists, and to marvel at the richness of nature unfolding by "taking a refreshing pause in nature and enjoying a pleasant walk though 150 acres of formal gardens, scenic landscapes, and native habitats", as the brochure beckons invitingly. Admission is free, at least for the nature discovery part, and the exercise in coursing through the garden maze really does the body good.

While you may not have been there, let me help you out by guiding you through a digital display of captured sights that will surely nudge you into seeing them for yourself.

Wify, the chief architect of the visit, by the flower hedge along the bridge railing.

The tree portal fronting one of the three bridges crossing McKay Creek that runs through the heart of the Gardens. And the sky seems to be lending its own fireworks to the occasion.

The Oak wearing a skirt of ferns.

"Mushrooms" on tree. Maybe not.

Bumper harvest.

The leaves look like they have gone through a shredder. Wonder what secrets have been exterminated.

Free falling.

Weighing down.

Random bloom.

Breaking though the phalanx.

Mutual admiration.

Pitstop.

Swagger.

Peaceful coexistence.

Bee at work.

Bee at rest?

Dandy stop.

On solid ground.

Easy does it.

Picture perfect, if you miss it. (we rewarded ourselves at the China Pearl Super Buffet located along Dale Mabry Highway and the painting appears on the wall of the front office.)

A Close Encounter with Park Residents

2009-09-05T16:54:00.008-05:00

After the torrential deluge of yesterday evening, this morning was extra crisp and sunny. Just the perfect day to visit a park. and that's where we headed, with Mary and her daughter, Jasmine, in tow.

And it was a good day for photographic pursuit too when many other park visitors (or rather residents?) parking themselves along the river bank of the Hillsborough River at Riverhills Park, just next to the boardwalk that skirts along the river edge for a short stretch. With Jasmine in between being seated in the stroller or in the folds of Mary or Wify, we promenaded on the boardwalk. Armed with my Coolpix L100, I trained my camera on the park residents in turn. The result is a mix of candid camera on the park residents and the rustic environment that surrounds them. Truly a day at the park that is worth a thousand words.

A kind passer-by volunteered to take a picture of us, and the baby girl was seen clamoring to partake of the kind gesture too by raising her little hands.

And her wish was answered, warmly enconced in the soft hold of Wify.

The sky and the land merging into one in the water as framed by the two trees.

Perfect symmetry, almost anyway.

Rolling, and rolling across the water surface, the water reflection doing its trick on the eye.

Taking flight, wings spread and the legs just about to be stowed in under the belly.

Feeling my presence, turning to check out, and staring me in the face, the squirrel way.

The Gators in Bulls country (The Bull is the mascot of USF located in Tampa), making waves or just floating motionless, the bulging eyes scanning and scanning.

Dragonfly is not easy to shoot because of its tendency to scurry away at the slightest disturbance. Thanks to the 15X zoom, I was able to stay sufficiently distant to be invisible.

It's might as well be gecko country too, darting across all surfaces.

Synchronized activity, the way of the birds and the ducks.

Then something is just best done alone: jumping, guarding, and feasting across the top while the duck is trying to shoo away the squirrel to maintain its solitary status.

The Eureka Moment rooted in Purity

2009-08-30T13:28:00.014-05:00

We have been planning to have a repeat of the Eureka moment that we felt more than a year ago. So a couple of months ago we came acalling, and was surprised to see the entrance barricaded on a bright sunny Sunday morning. On closer examination, we realized that it was our own folly for not checking ahead of time. The park had been closed for reconstruction and would be out-of-bound for the entire summer.

Two weeks ago, we were hit by the Eureka itch again, but this time we called in first, and was informed that the park has reopened. And we relived the Eureka moment this morning. We spent about an hour walking through the Eurepa Springs Park, following the gravel trail and boardwalk. The results of the reconstruction were not obvious to me; however, the expanse of lily pads was a huge surprise, teeming with water lilies of different hues and pads of different sizes that blanket the water surface with a lush green.

All in we took more than a hundred shots of the botanical galore, with a better camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) than before (Nikon Coolpix L11 at 3X digital zoom), especially with the close-up mode where the wide 15X optical zoom really comes in handy. And the various shots of the Water Lilies, the subject of today, bear testimony to the above claim. Thanks CY and Brian for the wonderful gift.

As always, Wify started the camera rolling by gracing the water lilies patch. Afterall, it's her exquisite taste of beauty and a keen sense of poise that come naturally to one who engages in the creative expression of drawing and painting that have led me up this garden path, to be taken literally and not metaphorically.

The water lilies sprouting haphazardly out of the uniform tapestry of green.

This scene is rather uncanny, being reminiscent of the legendary Grand Duke Jiang (the human form of a stump) fishing for whomever desires to be hooked, aka, a willing victim. Read the link to find out how he fished.

These and the following shots belong to the Water Liliies, in all its pristine milieux that do not detract from this symbol of purity (it seems that water lily is a common phrase that includes the lotus family as well, but there are distinct differences in appearance) enshrined in Buddhism.

The Skyscape as a metaphor for Impermanence

2009-08-29T11:31:00.012-05:00

The only thing preditable about weather, as revealed by changes in the sky, especially the cloud formation, is its unpreditability. Whimsical, capricious, thy name is weather. In a way, these are all manifestations of impermanence, the Buddhist worldview of the material world. Somewhat paradoxically, recognizing this phenomenon is essential to attaining mindfulness, a state of mind that does not revolve with the external environments.

Let's then see the following images of vagarious sky taken from my personal image library for what that are, just observe and let them pass.

Looks like fire in the sky, exuding smoke from a location just about the street light and forming an expanding blanket that rolls across the sky toward the left.

A mushroom-top cloud formation, but with much less ill-portent than one that heralds a pending nuclear winter, sitting on top a billboard that warns of, of all things, when the weather turns bad.

A two-in-one collage of the same piece of sky as viewed from the Keys Hall at UF, but at different times that truly exemplifies the whimsical sky.

A big blob of cloud now overshadows the same grandstand as the image above.

A prototypical silver lining, with beams of light struggling to break through the tenacious dark clouds.

Sky in the water, reflection that is.

We often see these pinkish clouds in the evening near our place.

A cotton field in the sky.

A dragon on land, rather than up in the sky, twisting its serpentine form and chasing after the proverbial pearl seen at Fo Guang Shan Temple, Orlando at the occasion of this year's Buddha's Birthday celebration.

Birds scurrying away in disarray from the tree canopy, perhaps sensing something amiss. Animal instincts fare better than human instincts in warning of impending danger.

A rare treat of a double rainbow arching across our piece of sky seen from our apartment.

A hind view of a airplane seemingly flying into the cloud ahead as seen from the ground of Fo Guang Shan Temple, Orlando, the green tent roofs being part of the setup in commemoration of Buddha's Birthday held on 11 May, 2009.

The Whimsical, the Creative, and the Spontaneous

2009-08-09T09:13:00.013-05:00

A scouring mission through my image bank resulted in another smargasbord of photo memories, registering first the whimsical Nature in terms of cloud formation and some unusual tree forms of the plant world, possibly in response to external stimuli. These are followed by the seeming unboundedness of human creativity and lastly, one demonstrating the fact that age nor status is a barrier to spontaneity, all in good taste, and being sporting, kind of finding the child in us, the elusive epitome of the non-judgmental. Sit back, but let the finger walk you through this photographic journey as my camera lens sees it.

The billowing ominous-looking dark cloud looming large, portending the stormy deluge that will surely follow as seen while on Interstate I4 enroute home from Daytona Beach, a real bane for road travellers.

I guess this is somewhere on I-95 (Virginia?) as we were NY-bound, but we were more worried about the plane flying just below the dark cloud canopy, conjuring up images of being tossed around by the maelstrom of air turbulence.

Contrasting Wify' sunny smile with the less than sunny sky and the roaring surf in the background at Daytona Beach. The seemingly distant storm, if it ever evolved into one, is perhaps furthest from the minds of the relaxation-seeking beach goers.

The discrete cloud formation, floating easily and dotting the sky, like little sails plying the vast expanse of ocean.

Backdropped by a cloudless sky, the lone leafless, at least the top half, tree, extending its welcome bare branches to a weary bird, making a pitstop on its flight in search of sustenance (seen across the Keys Residential Hall at UF).

Another fully-leaved tree in the neighborhood of the above, preferentially growing its branches away from the unyielding lamp post, and so it seems, a case of adapting to environmental constraints dictated by survival instincts.

A montage of artistic expressions of the (Chinese) mind, in Chinese brush paintings of the lotus, the cranes, the Chinese Plums) and poems, displayed in the homes of various friends that we are fortunate to have visited. These seem to confer a sense of serenity, a pristine aura rising above worldly materialism.

A montage of classic chinese brush paintings: the Four Gentlemen, as they are affectionately named, the Chinese Plum, the Orchid, the Chrysanthemum and the Bamboo, as seen adorning the walls of The Ivory restaurant, a Chinese Bistro in Dunedin where Betty Toh and her husband treated us to a lunch sometime ago.

Fruit (e.g., pumpkin, water melon) carving on display at the same restaurant above, packing creativity, patience, dexterity of the hand, and meticulous execution into their making.

And yes, being middle-aged and devoted to the call of the monastic order do not preclude being spontaneous and sporting at the same time, all mimicking the gesture of the Venerable Master Hsing Yun at the Fo Guang Shan Temple, Orlando, led by Venerable Chueh Yen flanked on the left by Viky (now Wes)'s Mom.

Picture-Perfect Memories

2009-08-02T09:58:00.013-05:00

A picture diary is perhaps the best way to capture the sight (the sound will have to be self-generated in the mind as we have yet to invest in a videocam, talk about techno-phobia) bites of a road trip. The many frozen moments will help generate a memory-triggering trip in years to come, just when memory lapses will surely start to escalate.

Here then is another smargasbord of Nikon moments (wonder why it has always been the Kodak moments), documenting our trails to the Northeast, principally NYC, in recent months.

The Interior of the St. Patrick Cathedral, NYC, the pillar arrangement bestowing a profound sense of depth.

One of the many words of wisdom inscribed on plates affixed to the pavement surface somewhere in NYC. It pays to keep your head down and eyes on the road, literally. While taking the words to heart, don't be a smart alec, but rather a paragon of humility.

A disarmed torpedo on land, its size belying the tremendous destructive power packed into it while in service.

Turtle country, a great draw for environment-conscious tourists.

One of the many monuments conveying global messages that dot the landscape of the UN Plaza, NYC; this one with a twisted barrel symbolizing the call to cease wars.

Seen affixed to a lamp post along a street in NYC leading to the UN Plaza. I sought out this one that bears the Malaysian Flag.

Another monument (vertical tubes attached together at different heights) in the UN Plaza backed by trees with flat-top canopies.

A scene at Newark Airport as seen from a moving airtrain showing the Malaysian Airline System (MAS) logo behind that of a Virgin Airline with a line of crane gantries at Port Elizabeth (?) at the background.

The Macy Facade of rather intricate design seen in NYC.

The entrails of Grand Central Station. The view did not change much from a similar scene in the movie, The Curious Story of Benjamin Button (2008) starring Brad Pitt. Come to think of it, while the movie setting is the early and middle of the last century, it must have been shot in this century.

The Malaysian Flag fluttering in UN Plaza, NYC.

A sunny July 4th weekend in Washington DC, drawing a throng of visitors to the Reflection Pool and the Lincoln Memorial lying yonder.

Stacks of buildings surrounding Central Park, NYC, as seen atop the Empire State Building through Wify's camera lens, much like an oasis.

Two wash basins sharing the same drain pipe seen in a restroom at a rest stop along I-95.

Now, this is how you shoot from a moving airtrain, legs astride, body slightly prone, hand steady holding the zoom, no time even to put down the beg as the scene is fleeting.

A Slice of Wilderness

2009-07-26T17:18:00.008-05:00

We have been to the home of Peter and Nancy Kau located on the St. Pete's end of Gandy Bridge several times already, but this was the first time Peter acted as a tour guide for my first visit to the Weedon Island Preserve yesterday morning. While Wify and her Buddhist friends stayed home to participate in the Great Compassion Mantra Chanting session, Peter and I braved the warm morning sun to explore the Preserve on foot, after a 5-min drive from his home.

The Island is a misnomer of sort as I was expecting to cross a long bridge or to access it by boat. Unlike the Lettuce Lake Park close to our home, the preserve is covered with a short shrub type of vegetation, hardly providing any shade. However, the mangroves are criss-crossed by narrow meandering waterways amenable to kayaking, which is not exactly my cup of tea. So despite a well-meaning offer from Peter, I decided to plant my foot on terra firma, or the boardwalk rather.

Along the way, Peter explained the various types of fish that can be expected to be seen in the waters from the vantage points of the several platforms strategically located thoughout. Among our visual catches are the snook, the needle fish, and the horse-shore crab. The boardwalk ended in a observation tower rising four storeys high that affords a paranomic view of the pristine wilderness that once served as an airport and the surrounding bayous and communities. However, our visit ended in the cool comfort of the Education Center.

Just when we were about to explore the Center, Nancy called Peter signalling that lunch was ready to be served. Being the gentlemen that we are who do not relish the thought of keeping the ladies waiting, we bade farewell but not before I made a promise to return later with Wify, possibly in the fall when the weather is more conducive for the outdoors.

But for now, the images below are for your vicarious experience.

The entrance sign, visually portraying what wildlife can be expected to be encountered. including the armadillo.

We covered part of the paved trail (black) and the entire network of boardwalk (light brown), a 40-min workout that does the body a lot of good.

The photowall in the Education Center, but one can hardly expect to sight all of these in a single visit.

The kayak enthusiasts exiting the circuitous inner water trails in the mangroves and heading to the great expanse of bay waters.

This is hard to see since the shot was taken without the proper lens filter, but after some time, hopefully not too long, you should be able to make up the faint outline of a needle fish lengthwise from right to left.

The spidey kingdom of two, seemingly dangling in mid-air next to the propagules, patiently waiting for any unsuspecting prey to land on the gossamer cobweb.

The imminent assault on the observation tower, topped up by corner lightning protectors, was just about to begin.

And here are the rewards of our scaling expedition: this one featuring the Bartow Plant of Progressive Energy with a stretch of boardwalk visible in the foreground, and several that follow.

The fishing pier, like a bridge to nowhere.

Pockets of lush vegetations divide the bayous.

And the summit conquerors, the broad grin says it all, thanks to a couple of like-minded visitors but armed with heavy artillery, for photography that is.

Back at Peter's home: a slightly forward leaning Guanyin radiating compassion with a backdrop of an equally serene tapestry of the azure.

An admonishment from the late Venerable Master Sheng Yen hung on the wall of Peter's home: Do not worry over the matters dealt to us, but rather be happy in their absence.

And on the way home, beach goers were already lining their vehiciles along the narrow strip of sand abutting the bay side of the approach to the Gandy Bridge.

The newly expanded Gandy Blvd, lined with new street lights under the gentle billows of the low-level cloud formation.

More vignettes of life's moments

2009-07-21T20:37:00.009-05:00

Selecting the pictures, cropping, and combining them to project a fresh perspective, and captioning them can be both a creative and fun-filled exercise, while preserving traces of life as it weaves through our life. The world out there is the target, no agenda, no interference, no judgment, just passive observance. Whatever it conjures up is plainly personal, a passing thought, a blip on the beta-wave, and then it is archived for later retrieval, when the next wave of recognition hits, launching a chain of thought and adding to the memory store.

Inanimate objects, animals, outdoor scenes, the cloud formation, the urban sprawl, the rustic setting, the azure sky, the turquoise sea. All are game for the digital capture.

A row of stripped down plants next to the road leading to Key Largo backed by another row of mechanical construct, the pylons or towers that support the power lines. One seems lifeless while the other serves to sustain life, or rather, life's amenities.

Peek-a-boo, the jawfish style, as seen in the aquarium in John D. Pennekamp Corals Park at Key Largo.

Spirally shells on display at the same aquarium. You can use my reflection for size.

Two birds or one? These two are actually the same bird. It is able to be at two different places, though proximate, at the same time is my doctoring/morphing effort, combining two pictures into one.

This is more conventional, a mosaic of four different shots of palm trees that dominate the streetscape in Miami.

It's a bird. No, it's a plane, seemingly skimming over the water at Miami Beach.

Yup, the smart car with an attitude.

Dandy flowers on our table at La Rosa Restaurant, Miami.

For a fee that is. Seen on Ocean Blvd, Miami Beach. There are ride-me bikes, the human pedaled kind, as well.

A mirage? Sort of, being a reflection from our car's windscreen while Wify was taking a shot in the moving car.

Why is it shaped like a ship anchor? That's the question.

Miami's cityscape, sprawling like little boxes.

Vignettes of Life's Moments

2009-07-20T17:57:00.012-05:00

The advent of the digital camera has led to a flourish of home-bred photographers with nothing more than a steady hand and a keen eye for the Kodak moment. Being not afraid to make mistakes because they could just be erased with a simple "delete" key stroke has made for bolder experimentation at any setting, including while in a moving car. And that's Wify's department while I focus on steering the car. Here then are some of the results borne out of such fearless aim-and-shoot executions, with appropriate cropping in PAINT to focus on the message.

A berthed cruise ship seen while driving toward Miami Beach, it's distinct fish-tail top jutting skyward.

A scene on Miami Beach, with an American Flag staked into the ground announcing the July 4th weekend. The cordoned area on the right as marked by a traffic cone is a turtle nesting spot, sharing space with the humans.

The Beach Rules. Here "beach" can be either a noun or an adjective. Eitherway it is where sand, sun, surf converge to earn Florida the moniker, the Sunshine State. The 5am opening time means that visitors can laze on the beach while watching the sun rise.

The bamboo (?) facade, save for its color seen along the drive to Miami Beach.

There is a kind of hush ... (sign seen along the Ocean Drive next to Miami Beach).

These giraffes lookalikes are port cranes where the amount of containers moved is called the throughput (Port of Miami).

A garden maze that seems clear from the top (Vizcaya Museum, Miami).

Getting the feet wet is Wify's first taste of the waters of the Atlantic (at Miami Beach).

Wify let her footprints behind at Miami Beach. Sure they would be washed off during the next high tide as such is the impermanence of worldly things, but the imprint in the mind will tend to linger longer ...

A fleeting scene of the viaducts circumscribing a lens of sky and a piece of the Miami downtown.

Mom and daughter in the Orchidarium, Vizcaya Musem.

The moon bouncing off the highway deck, in broad daylight.

Couple Portraits

2009-07-14T18:43:00.009-05:00

A drawback, or rather inconvenience, of being the designated cameraman, that it being largely self-appointed notwithstanding, is that I'm almost always missing from the family album. So whenever there is a family outing involving more than the usual party of two, I always delegate, camera duty that is.

It's opportune that we have had a couple of outstation family trips in the last two months. And boy was I glad to be the "shooting target", with Wify sharing the center stage, for a change. Here then is a collection of such "rare" features, leaving traces of our sojourns in print.

At the base of the Washington Monument. Notice anything strange about the photo? The flags and my hair move in opposite directions. Perhaps our relative positions with respect to the Monument has something to do with that.

One of the portals at the outdoor garden of Vizcaya Museum, Miami after we had toured the interior of the Mansion built by John Deering in the mid 1910s. At the height of the construction of Mr. Deering's attempt to blend European architecture with the tropical foliage that Florida is famous for, the work crew (about 1000) accounted for about 10% of Miami's population of 10,000 then, at a hefty (even by today's standard) cost of 25 mil.

Posing in front of the array of the portraits of UN Secretary Generals, past to present, in the UN Building, NYC.

Posing beside the UN Emblem in the UN Building, NYC.

At the southern end of Miami Beach (1st St), right next to the famed South Beach, Miami. We walked twelve blocks along the Ocean Drive from the 12th Street where we had parked our car at 8.30am, thinking that we would be the early birds and hence get a headstart. The street is relatively quiet because all the action is either on the beach or in the businesses lining up both sides of the street.

Below the lion that guards the NYC Public Library, after we had rested our tired feet in its cool and expansive interior.

Just before our dinner at the Penang Restaurant, run by a lady from Road SS2/4, Petaling Jaya, literally a stone throw from our own abode back home. This is one of several in the family run restaurant chain located at Chapel Hill, NC, right in the heartland of the Tar Heels.

At a city park in mid-town Manhattan, on our way to the Malaysian Consulate at 42nd St, NYC.

Outside one of the many Marriot hotels that we stayed on our trips. This one could be at Durham, NC.

The very first Cuban restaurant that we patronized, not far from the SpringHill Suites south of Maimi International Airport that we stayed on our Miami trip. In fact, the hospitality and the food were so fabulous that we made a return visit the very next night, with Howie and his family.

When we arrived just before 10.30am at the Fo Guang Shan Temple in Miami, a buddhist ceremony was just about to start. Wify participated while I visited its library. We then stayed on for the vegetarian lunch and even interacted with a teacher of the Chinese Brush Painting class scheduled in the afternoon.

A rare surrounding of any hotel, a corn field. We just could not resist falling into an embrace, half expecting some bristling motion from within reminiscent of the happenings in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs.

At the Mangrove Trail fringing John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Key Largo. We were planning to continue to Key West but the long line of traffic even at the 85th milestone changed our mind.

Outside the Malaysian Consulate Office in NYC, a rather nondescript office by size and appearance but we spotted it from afar because of the fluttering Malaysian Flag above. Later we found that it is located next to the office of the Malaysian Permanent Representative to the UN.

At the playground at Bayside, Miami. Howie's family is just behind us. We wanted to watch the July 4th fireworks from here, but were forced to vacate the premises by the stifling heat. Instead, we watched it from the hotel room of Howie located at the 7th floor and more importantly, on the right side.

At one of the many rest places that dot the interstate. This one could be in Georgia.

At the main entrance to the American Museum of Natural History. We entered from the subway exit undergound and almost missed this imposing entrance facade if not for us wanting to walk over to the Central Park located across the road. But then it began to rain ...

We thought we would end with one making it a foursome, in front of the NYC Public Library.

Some photograph to remember ...

2009-07-11T19:45:00.014-05:00

With my camera that is, and sung to the tune of “... some dance to remember, some dance to forget ...” the inspiration having struck as The Eagles was belting out Hotel California from my car radio, courtesy of Magic 94.9, while I was part of the morning commute along I-275 on a drizzling morning.

The target: the seemingly timeless Times Square of NYC during our last trip to the Big Apple, in the company of two really nice folks from Upstate, John and Gloria. Hitherto, the only sight we have of Times Square is on TV, during the traditional New Year Countdown, the arrival of which is signified by the dropping of the sparkling Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year's Eve Ball (seriously, I did not know the name until I accessed here) at One Times Square, the air filled with the chorus of Auld Lang Syne, a collective farewell bidding to the year just past.

This time though, it is for real, captured in my Nikon Coolpix L100, a Father Day's gift from CY and Brian, as we navigated through the milling crowd, the square grid of streets, but safe on the wide pedestrian pavements that abut these busy streets.

Times Square, to me, is BillBoard City, the electronic and animated, but silent kind, a real feast for the eyes and a marvel of human ingenuity, portraying visual messages in its simplicity. Enjoy these moments, frozen for eternity, then again, perhaps not quite.

How did we know it's Times Square? Because it said so here.

And here's the Ball, just above 2009, presumably reinstated to its original position after the countdown.

The M-Kong, doing a chocolatey imitation of the King Kong.

The river seems to be about to cascade over the building.

Even Albert Einstein has to have a piece of the action.

Whatever it takes to have a vantage shot.

A vantage shot of the Flags of the Nations from the upstair floor of NBC News. The Malaysian Flag is somewhere in that.

Anybody can tell me which God is that according to Greek Mythology, seemingly presiding over the sea of knowledge? Poseidon? Tritan? Hermes? Athena?

I chanced upon the identity of this sculpture, Prometheus, while looking up the Internet for the one in the previous image.

A divine messge with earthly repercussions?

This message is more down to earth, from the World's local bank.

The Sights of our NY Road Trip, the Empire State and the Big Apple

2009-06-24T07:37:00.009-05:00

The Big Apple is a moniker for NYC popularized by John FitzGerald in the 1920s, and New York obviously derives its nickname from the Empire State Building right? Wrong, it's the other way round, the Empire State actually came first, acquired in recognition of its vast wealth and variety of resources .

Meeting our Atlanta host at at the shopping mall where the World Journal Bookstore is located.

At Courtyard Marriot, Jersey City, our temporary abode during our NYC trip. Since then, we have always stayed at the Marriot chain of hotels, trying to accumulate points for some free nights' stay in the future.

At the entrance to the PATH WTC terminal station. To the left and cordoned off is the reconstruction site of Ground Zero.

At the World Journal Bookstore on Broadway Avenue, Manhattan. Wify bought several chinese brush painting books by Chung-lin Yi at 20% discount lodged in the brown beg I was carrying.

This is as high as Wify would get to see "eye-to-eye" with a bird perched at the top of Empire State Building.

At the edge of Chinatown, NYC, along Canal Street.

Wify and CE "scaled" the Empire State Building, starting from the ground as shown. The red open-top double-decker bus is the Hop-on-Hop-off, a favorite among tourists while we prefer to explore on foot.

The Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island captured from the top of the Empire State Building.

Honey, I shrunk the Empire State Building!

The Chrysler Building, another iconic structure that dots the NYC skyscape, captured similarly.

The iron grill fencing that surrounds the observation deck at the top of the Empire State Building makes it seem safe even for the weak hearted, whom CE obviously is not.

Sights on Our NY Road Trip

2009-06-23T07:02:00.008-05:00

We (Wify and CE) made a road trip to NY during the last week of May. It started as a vacation trip to Atlanta only to visit some old friends. Then it was extended into a NY road trip when I was called to NY for a meeting, capitalizing on the Memorial Day weekend. While I attended to my business over the four days, each day braving the NY crowd during the morning and evening commutes in a PATH train, Wify and CE went on their own to explore NY city, a very first for them in my absence. Through it all they evinced their adventurous self, one that has eluded me when I was acting like a family protector, chaperoning most outdoor trips they have engaged in. And I was pleasantly surprised at how they were able to ask their ways around, and to adhere to safety and security measures that any sensible visitor to NYC would adopt. This pictorial travelogue, and those they follow, are a testimony to them having broken the mold as well as a tribute to their "new-found" confidence in taking on the world in the microcosm that is NYC. However, I would be featured here and there on the road trip as well since I'm the only driver in the family, or one authorized, by me, to drive anyway.

Flower bed in front of SpringHill Suites Edgewood Aberdeen, Bel Air, MD where we put up a night. The leaves with different shades of green seem like painted on.

On the Airtrain at Newark International Airport looking out while getting to the pickup point of the Hotel Shuttle Bus (SpringHill Suites by Marriot Newark Liberty International Airport). I fortuitously took a shot of the MAS plane (only the distinct tail logo is visible) behind one belonging to the Virgin Airline.

A flower pot on the pavement walkway along Broadway Avenue, NY City, just before the array of courthouses the front facades of which are inscribed with some insightful quotations on justice and government.

Upon entering the Museum of Natural History, Washington DC: The Sea of Dinasaurs encircling the Lee Family (you have to look really hard).

The Penang Restaurant tucked away besides the campus of UNC, Chapel Hill where we had authentic Malaysian food for dinner, but no chengdoh lah (the last is Manglish, a Malaysian colloquial equivalent of "man") .

Wify`s dinner order at Penang Restaurant. It`s a popular Malay dish, nasi lemak.

Yes, the Peach State, our immediate neighbor to the north.

A hole in the sky, seemingly about to lock itself over the Washington Monument!

Career Change

2009-05-16T14:22:00.002-05:00

In the course of joining the University of Hard Knocks, a life-long learning environment that encapsulates all the group dynamics imaginable and then some, one may undergone career change, some self-initiated such as driven by career advancement, while still some other, externally imposed but not always beyond one's control. As alluded to, those in the latter category may include under-performance, negligence, insubordination, disciplinary transgressions, etc. that could be self-inflicted.

However, being conscientious and capable is no guarantee for continuous employment too. Personality clash with superiors is one, though that is usually not the stated reason, and the resulting egress may be effected through a series of subtle job reassignment ranging from a less favorable deployment to outright cold storage.

At times of economic downturn, an oft-used “scapegoat” is business downsizing, right-sizing, cost cutting, and others of a similar ilk, and the decision as to whose tie is to be severed, no matter how hard thought and seemingly justified these decisions would seem, invariably leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those at the short end of the deal.

Involuntary termination, layoff, retrenchment, the proverbial pink slip, all are euphemisms for losing a job, joining the rank of the unemployed. And the emotional stampede that “stroke-of-the-pen decision” sets off can range across the spectrum of disbelief, disappointment, bitterness, shock, self doubt, to resignation.

Understandably, these initial reactions are to be expected, and one may well spend the first few days in wallowing, shutting off, one's mettle being put to a severe test of resiliency. These are also the times when one is most in need of the caring presence of loved ones and close friends, not necessarily to help reverse the fateful event, but rather to lend a listening ear, to empathize and share in the misery, so to speak. Having someone to talk to in times of emotional distress can be therapeutic, and goes some distance in helping one to rebound.

After a time of grief, it's essential that one picks up the pieces, and embarks on what can be a long and arduous road toward recovery, gainful (re)employment that is simply because life goes on. There are expenses to be met, bills to be paid, and obligations to be discharged. These don't just vanish when one is out of work.

It's also vital that one regains confidence, banishing any self doubt of one's capability to oblivion. As the popular saying goes, one door closes, another one opens, provided one seeks, one canvasses, one networks, perhaps lowering expectations somewhat to be realistic, even relocation just to buy time if need be. It's also a good time to review one's past achievements, or the lack thereof, and re-evaluates the way one handles matters, including inter-personal ones. Be less outspoken perhaps, or more networking. And more important, be prepared, both financially and emotionally, the former meaning putting funds aside for raining days, the latter, cultivating a calm mind and understanding that one cannot change the environment, but one does have the means to decide how one would respond to changes in the environment.

To achieve that positive of mind, perceive the layoff as an enforced rest, affording opportunity to have quality time for family, to pursue one's interest that has been put on the back burner due to work commitment, and to contribute one's time to a worthy cause, to volunteer for community service. In other words, to live more like a member of the community, cognizant of the many things that are crying out for attention, and give, rather than being obsessed with forging ahead in the rat race driven by wants than needs.

After undergoing the “ordeal”, one may realize that there is more to life than working for a living. There are roses to be smelled, love and kindness to be shared, and nature to be savored. If nothing else, this realization (hence, the Chinese character at the top) could well be the best thing that could ever emerge from the energy-sapping, emotion-draining, confidence-decimating experience of layoff.

Spring Plant Festival

2009-04-21T21:11:00.006-05:00

It has been a while since we were at the USF Botanical Garden. So this year's Spring Plant Festival seemed like an opportune time to revisit this garden at our backyard, so to speak. And it happened on April 12, 2009, a typically sunny afternoon at this time of the year.

While many of the visitors were either lugging pots of flower/plants or pulling a wagon/trolley of similar purchases, we were criss-crossing the make-shift stalls practically empty-handed, except for the digital camera in my hand. Only our eyes were feted to the colorful display of the plant kingdom as captured in the following digital tapestry.

A butterfly clinging to a flower, no surprise there.

Wify and her favorite painting subject, the bamboo.

As the name plate indicates, this is bonsai territory.

Hooded pitcher plants.

A hibiscus hybrid, unbelievable indeed, covering Wify's both palms.

Another unbelievable hibiscus, wielded in the same hand as above.

This is actually a cut plant affixed to the tent pole.

Another flower species seemingly spanning across the sky.

Wify knows the Chinese name translated as the embroidered ball flower. And I did the rest using the Internet search to come up with, viola, Hydrangea.

An Australian import: Ptilotus exaltatus.

Blink all you want but think

2009-04-10T09:57:00.005-05:00

We blink all the time, as naturally as we breathe. However, blinking is also one of those few motor functions that we can control, at least for a time. Recall the blinking contest we used to have when young, out-staring each other until the eyes got so dilated that we began to see stars. For example, Don’t Blink is an exhortation to stay attentive, calling on the mind to exercise control over the eye-lid motion.

On the other hand, the phrase, in the blink of an eye, describes a fleeting moment of seeing, a happenstance so quick that the brain has hardly anytime to register and decode, a scintillating flash that apparently leaves no trace.

As an engineer, I have been trained to be analytical, to consider all things from all possible angles, to think long and hard, leaving no stones unturned so to speak, but within the time, budget, and resource constraints. So we engineers often have to base our decisions on imperfect information, to exercise judgment that, ironically, comes from bad experience. Indeed, uncertainty is a given in our profession. The natural, and actually logical, tendency under these circumstances is to err on the side of conservatism through the use of safety factors, and redundancies, sometimes too liberally at the expense of cost.

Invariably, these decisions are made after comprehensive studies and painstaking deliberations within a shortened time span, but never in the blink of an eye. This is simply because engineering works have a typically long gestation period, sometimes stretching into decades such as the Delta Works in Holland, which is a mammoth flood protection project started in the early 1950s after numerous studies, and was also accompanied by many more concurrent studies during construction and completed just before the turn of the present millennium.

Thus, engineers are accustomed to these planning horizons, some even protracted, inherent in engineering works, except perhaps in emergency response when calamities hit or are about to hit such as those in the aftermath of earthquakes, tsunami and hurricane landfalls. But even in emergencies, split second decisions are a rarity. There is usually time for deliberations to allow for informed decisions.

It is then understandable that I would view the book BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Co., NY, 2005), a copy of which I bought at the Temple Terrace Used Book Center some time ago, with healthy skepticism, healthy because I hold that authors of note, an esteemed category to which Mr. Gladwell definitely belongs because of the success of his prior publications, must have some insightful views to share upon which I will reserve judgment until I have read the book.

And that I did, over the last few days, a rare accomplishment for me these days since my now regular habit of intermittent reading means that I could only finish a book in weeks or even months.

When viewed in the context of the author’s tasks in writing the book as enumerated in pg. 14-15 (Introduction: The Statue that Didn’t Look Right), the expose does make sense when one goes beyond its cover that has the subtitle “The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”. These tasks are:

a) to convince the readers that “decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately”;

b) To acknowledge that our adapted unconsciousness, the celebratory source of our power of the glance, and the worthy counterpart to consciousness that is the seat of our considered decisions, is fallible, and by extension, to identify and understand the reasons when these powers of rapid cognition would go awry; and

c) To convince the readers that “our snap judgments and first impressions can be educated and controlled”.

And there are a litany of rear-world situations (in battlefield while engaged in tactical combat; in a basketball game when sub-second heroics matter; in emergency room when prompt diagnostics and response can mean the difference between life and death; and in improv shows when a moment of lapse can ruin the whole show) as cited in the book that lend credibility to the notion enshrined in (a), (b) and (c) above.

I especially like this particular quote by Keith Payne, a psychologist, quoted in the book (pg. 233) to caution us on one specific circumstance of (b):

“When we make a split-second decision, we are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereo-types and prejudices, even one we may not necessarily endorse or believe.”

In a nutshell, I enjoy reading the book enormously, not the least of which is the section on autism, and the notion of mind-blindness. It’s definitely not an indictment of our thinking faculty as one would judge by its cover. And I realize that thin-slicing, instinct, hunch, gut feeling, and an assortment of other names subsumed under the BLINK, all have a place in decision making. Conversely, there is also a place for THINK, the rational analysis, the deliberate assessment, the elaborate evaluation that engineers are enamored and wont to doing by training, the risk of paralysis by analysis notwithstanding.

And understandably so, THINK: Why Crucial Decisions Can’t be Made in the Blink (2006) has been conceived as a repartee to BLINK by Michael LeGault. Maintaining the same position as before, I would too refrain from judging the book by its cover, though by kindred spirit I may be better aligned with Mr. LeGault’s thinking by virtue of my professional training. Fortunately, all this would be made clear soon as I had just received a call from the Temple Terrace Public Library this morning that my reserved copy of THINK is now available for collection. I figure I would take the same length of time to finish reading THINK whence I would most likely echo the sentiment of this particular reader (Dave Lakhani as quoted here):

“This [THINK] is a book about critical thinking, Blink is a book about intuitive thinking.”

But we shall see.

Enabling Karmic Blessing and Admiring Nature

2009-04-03T10:09:00.010-05:00

It's hard to remain focused these days when newspapers continue to churn out daily the worsening state of the sputtering economy. One of the MSN Top news is titled “Jobless rate soars to 8.5 percent in March”, the highest since 1983. The Tampa area is especially hard hit, the unemployment rate escalating to more than 10% in the past weeks. That means 1 out of 10 is out of work, and with that, out of means of sustenance as well. The figure is even more staggering, bordering on being mind-boggling, when part-timers and discouraged workers are factored in.

How did we get to this sorry state of affair? The rational side in us would want to blame it on cyclicity, as if such troughs in the business cycle, a rather ominous term, are an immutable facet of life, even citing past crashes as indisputable evidence. But is it? Or is it self denial, it being easier and less painful to ascribe the downturn to some unknown forces that we have no control over? However, the truth, no matter how unpalatable it seems, is largely human greed, too little money chasing after too much wants instead of being contented with satisfying our needs.

Some may say this is Karma, a collective one, being retributions for the collective wrong that we have inflicted on each other and the environment. While karmic retributions cannot be eliminated in the sense that past wrong cannot be undone, they can be transformed into karmic blessing by doing good and not merely avoiding committing wrong, by being compassionate toward all sentient beings, by giving, by putting others before self, and by imbuing wisdom in what we do, day in and day out, starting right this minute.

Indeed the power to change things for the better is wielded by no one but us. No good deeds, however insignificant it may seem, is beyond nor beneath us. Each of us just has to do our part, all of us being the cogs, big or small, that push the wheel of life forward for the betterment of all.

And while doing that, do take an occasional rest here and there to savor what nature brings, even in photos and painting. Those calm-inspiring and awe-instilling moments engendered in the process, the unraveling of nature's wonder and human creativity, are therapeutic to say the least.

This is a painting of Mudan (Peony) taken at Brother Yang (Wify's Chinese calligraphy teacher)'s residence.

This is a shot of a potted flower plant taken at Linda's residence.

And a blooming bunch of flowers brightening up our home.

Backdropped against the azure sky, a seemingly "dress-up" tree exemplifies the interdependence, and synergy, observed in Nature.

Bundled and yet discrete leaves of a pine tree taken skyward at USF.

Three boats approaching the shore, leaving a trail of square wave pattern in their wake, fronted by a curvilinear near continuous wave crest pattern that is wind-induced. No, they are actually duckies, as seen on the scenic pond across from the Psych Building, USF.

Trees on wheels, at the end of a transit trip and awaiting replanting on ground seen at USF.

And here's one lady who knows a thing or two about enjoying nature, the locality being sandwiched between the duck pond and the trees on wheels seen on the previous two images.

Beyond desolateness ...

2009-03-26T10:11:00.006-05:00

The notion of impermanence can be exemplified by the seasonality of change exhibited by the plant world: the verdancy of spring, the luxuriance of summer, the crimson foliage of the fall, and the desolateness of winter. And the cycle repeats. Thus, impermanence should be accepted as renewal, celebrated as rejuvenation, and embraced as hope. At the same time, we must recognize that glory is fleeting, that success and accolades will come to pass, and that beyond the peak is descent. Conversely, being down is not the same as being out, and there is always hope when there is a tomorrow. Just live each day to the fullest, undeterred by the tribulations of the past, nor cowed by the challenges of the future.

When the mind is calm, anticipatory but not mired in fatalism, we can see elegance in desolateness, as the following images of the plant world, all taken during our evening walks, would conjure up, and await the exuberance that would surely ensue.

Pondering on the Expressway

2009-01-26T19:22:00.004-05:00

Wify attended a Buddhist Chanting session in the morning last Saturday at Connie’s home after which we were invited by her to a vegetarian lunch at her home to celebrate the arrival of the NIU (Niu being the Chinese character for the ox/bull/buffalo that is pronounced in the same way as New) year. After dropping off Wify and her entourage at Connie’s house, I proceeded to the office to do some works. In order to save time, I decided to take the only tolled expressway in town to the office, thinking that it will be a swift journey, what with the weekend traffic that is at worst light.

However, I sensed something amiss the moment I exited the first toll: traffic was piling up ahead, but I was too far to identify the cause. It’s only when I was inching near the next entry point that the reason became apparent, first being alerted by the strobic blue light emitting from the top of police cars, stopping all cars behind them. Then, one by one, the convoy of motorized floats began to emerge from the toll, flanked by police outriders on motorcycles. All in there was about a dozen of them. Then only it dawned upon me that it was time for Gasparilla Children Parade, which usually precedes the Gasparilla Pirate Invasion a week later. However, I found out later that this was to be postponed by another week because of the Super Bowl weekend on Feb 1.

For the rest of the way till my exit point, we all toed the line, doing about 30mph on the expressway, a trip that would have taken me less time if I had taken the state road. So much for my planning, as if echoing the adage that man proposes, but God disposes.

That would have been an uneventful end to the traffic disruption if not for the fact that I committed another mental error, due to my haste in getting out of the imposed delay. I normally exit at the Hyde Park Toll. Those days we were staying at South Tampa, and taking the Expressway to Connie’s home was expedient. Occasionally, we have also exited via an earlier westbound toll at Willow Avenue, which is unmanned. That is, either one pays with the right amount of change (75 cents) by throwing three quarters (or other combinations of coin denominations) into a funneling receptacle (I think it does not recognize notes, even though if one does not mind not getting the change back), or SunPass, an electronic prepaid card. Then I had neither, and worse, completely forgot that the station was unattended and yet took the approach to the Willow Avenue Exit.

By the time I realized my folly, I had already covered three quarters of the approach way, which is decidedly one-way toward the toll house. For several seconds, but it seemed like ages, I was considering my options. The first thought was to engage the reverse gear, and I actually reversed about a car length, skirting along the anti-impact rail. The constant stream of approaching cars from my rear view mirror convinced me not to compound my error with yet a bigger one.

So I pulled to the side, took out a dollar note, locked the car, and walked next to the receptacle. The first car had a SunPass, so could not be stopped. The next one was a van, driven by a middle-aged man in work shirts, ferrying other passengers spotting similar attire.

As the car stopped at the toll, I accosted him, putting on my best earnest look. “Could I have a change for quarters?” I blurted out, and at the same time noticed that he had a palmful of change. “Sure, I have just what you wanted.” And the exchange was concluded promptly, with profuse thanks from me to the good Samaritan. And the next moment I was in my office, reliving the eventful morning and being convinced that doing things the right way would always turn out to be right and expedient.

The MacDonald's float followed by another entering the highway to my right.

Another float just exiting the tollhouse, flanked by a police outrider (shot through my car's front passenger side window).

The caravan of motorized floats making its facilitated way into the Expressway ahead of us.

Global Warming on My Car's Windscreen

2009-01-24T15:06:00.006-05:00

For one who has acclimatized to the Malaysian climate, Tampa seems like the next best thing if one were to choose a home away from home. The summer is just like the normal Malaysian weather but minus the sweltering heat, perhaps because of the relatively lower humidity here. Spring time and fall time are the best, with frequent breezy days that make outing that much more inviting, except for the dreaded hurricane season, officially running from June 1 to Nov 30. However, we have been here for about five years now and have yet to experience the wrath unleashed by these gigantic weather “anomalies”, which are actually Nature’s way of self cleansing, releasing pent-up energy just like humans do.

That leaves winter, which is what one can reasonably expect of a mild winter weather, and never the frigid cold that pummels the northern swath of US from the northwest to the northeast. But when a cold spell hits, like in the past few days reaching a season low two nights ago, things can get a bit unsettling, necessitating switching on the heater, even blanketing oneself while on couch potato duty.

And a rare scene presented itself yesterday morning: a thin veneer of frost on cars, even though it was already past 8am. I was on my morning routine of garbage disposal but detoured back to home to get my camera for evidence gathering. The car's windscreen was rendered translucent, hardly conducive to driving. So I emptied half of my daily ration of bottled water as part of the thawing operation, but managed only to create two irregular “holes” through which I could peer through during driving.

And the camera came in handy, capturing the progress of the meltdown over time, being bombarded by the warm morning sun rays. It is as if I was watching the phenomenon of global warming unfolding before my very eyes, only on a vastly accelerated scale. Imagine the ice sheets thawing, filling up the ocean. But here the liquid water just forms rivulets that creep off the wind screen harmlessly. In the real world, the water has no place to go but up. And that would translate into a sea level rise, with potential to inundate low-lying coastal areas. Granted the analogy is tenuous, but the mechanism is not that much dissimilar. Some would argue that the jury is still out there on whether this supposedly anthropogenically induced doomsday scenario is part of the natural cycle of change. That is, humans are not at fault. But are we really above blame, collectively, I wonder.

The thin veneer of frost visible on car tops.

My windscreen, before the thawing operation. The tea-pot and the rosary beads hanging from the rear view mirror are a lucky charm for traffic safety given to us by Connie.

While I was driving through the USF Campus, under partial thawing.

Dropping off CE at Psych Building, the view improving.

And the meltdown continues ...

Along Fowler, the remnants of the ice sheet on an epic struggle to stay in shape.

And the meltdown was now complete while cruising along I-275. This was taken at an instant when traffic came to a halt, when some days are worse than others.

The Soothing Green in Nature

2009-01-19T19:11:00.005-05:00

If only we could pause sometimes, we would be able to smell the roses. While roses may not be ubiquitous, we would definitely be able to see the trees, standing erect on the ground and looking askance at all the hustle and bustle that infiltrates our life. Then we would begin to appreciate how wonderful the world is, the symbiosis that inter-connects all lifeforms, and the synergy that ensues because of the connectivity. More important, the greenery is soothing, the leaves swaying in the breeze, the gentle caress seemingly lifting the day's gloom away. That was my state of mind while standing outside the town hall of the Regency Oaks community at Clearwater, during the intermission of the Dharma talk by Teacher Guo Gu organized by Peter and Nancy Kau last Saturday.

The subject of the Dharma talk on Zen Buddhism will be featured in a later blog. Meanwhile, enjoy the enveloping greenery as seen through my camera lens.

The lamp post and the tree trunk are joined as one, an unintentional quirk of my fortuitously chosen line of sight.

The earth path bisecting the green vista, but seemingly ending in green too.

The expanse of green, skirting the community in the garden.

The fish bone-shaped branches, giving a gapped appearance of the circular canopy.

Divergent at the top but joined at the hip, separate and yet co-joined: isn't that an apt analogy of life's connectedness?

Pattern in chaos.

Wify took this while we were crossing the W. Courtney Campbell Causeway flanked by the ubiquitous palms, being slowed down by the traffic pile up in front sufficiently for a scenic view of Tampa Bay.

A relaxing afternoon of music appreciation

2009-01-13T21:31:00.010-05:00

Like art, music is another form of creative expression that can be uplifting. Also as in the case of art, my role vis-a-vis music is limited to one of appreciation, being swarmed by a feeling of awe at the relative ease at which the handful of notes are arranged and converted into melodies that soothe, guide, and invigorate.

Such an opportunity presented itself last Saturday when Linda gave us two tickets to attend the 2009 All-State Concerts organized by Florida Music Educators' Association (fmea) held at the Tampa Convention Center. The members representing the All-State school bands were selected from individual school bands throughout the State and Linda's younger boy, Aaron, who plays the tuba, was the lone representative from his school in the Middle School Honors Band.

Prior to the day of the performance, Linda and her husband, Victor, had been taking turns ferrying Aaron and also chaperoning the budding musicians for practice and rehearsal. A demanding but rewarding duty indeed.

This was our first visit to the Tampa Convention Center, located downtown flanking the scenic Hillsborough River, and that showed in our having to spend half an hour going round and round the vicinity looking for a place to park. We eventually found one further away that necessitated a 10-minute walk to our destination.

When we finally reached the front door of the Ballroom, we joined a small queue waiting for a break in the performance before we could enter. And as luck would have it, we were admitted just prior to the start of the Middle School Honor Band's performance at the conclusion of the one before, Small Schools Honors Band (the day's performance would end with the All-State Middle School Band).

The Ballroom (combining A and B to cater for the turnout) was standing room only. Luckily a sizable segment of the audience comprised family members and friends of the performers who stayed only for one of the three band performances. So at the conclusion of one band, there was a throng of people streaming in, and a reverse one exiting, creating a high turnover that enabled new arrivals to find seats.

We knew only one or two of the tunes in a medley song in an array of six (seven were listed but we counted only six that were played). But that did not diminish our enjoyment, being thoroughly entertained by the smooth flow of music exuding from 120 some instruments of all shapes and sizes under the flawless guidance of the conductor, Mr. Christopher Treadway. We intuited that much for the latter since we were blocked by the huge pillar rising in the middle of the venue (see one of the images below to see what I mean) and the seats on both sides that had an obstructed view of the stage had already been taken up.

As Wify said, music can be enjoyed just by listening alone. Once we reconciled to the fact that we do not need a vantage view of the band, we found our seats readily, and settled down to a relaxing afternoon treat of musical extravaganza serenaded by each and every member of the Middle School Honors Band at the end of which we gladly vacated our seats for the next ensemble of audience.

Now that pillar is huge, but then again this venue is combining two ballrooms that when used separately, the pillar would become an unobstrusive part of the partition.

The young musicians filing in to take their seats.

Wify spotting the beautiful scarf, a birthday gift from Mrs. Kim (so is the blouse), her painting buddy, while enroute to the car park.

The soaring birds, as if buoyed by the uplifting music exuding from the Tampa Convention Center.

The Western and Chinese New Years of 2009

2009-01-03T16:12:00.004-05:00

The live telecast of the New Year countdown at Time Square, NY during the last remaining moments of 2008 helped usher in another 365 days of living, affording a renewed time frame to realize the goals of 2008 yet unfulfilled, to get over and to learn from the disappointments of 2008, or to chart a new territory to explore, new goals to reach. And the annual wheel of new year resolutions continues to roll on, gaining momentum or struggling over the ruts as the case may be.

Looking over my past year, there has been no major upheavals, just the normal dose of hiccups that sometimes make life that much more eventful, reminding me once again how blessed I have been.

Work-wise, I continued to be gainfully employed, capitalizing on some slack time to learn new modeling suites to augment my repertoire. I'm glad that I still retain the capacity to be excited by new advances, and receptive to the nitty-gritty of getting down to the basics and the hands dirty, metaphorically speaking.

On the spiritual side, we remained the staunch supporters of the Middle Way Buddhist Association, and attended their monthly Dharma sessions without fail as reported through my other blog. In between, we also participated in several local activities organized by the Orlando Chapter of Tzu Chi Organization, having subscribed to the Buddhist missions set forth by Master Cheng Yen, the founder. On a daily basis, I maintained an English translation of the Verses of Silent Thoughts published by Master Cheng Yen, either taken from the Tzu Chi's website or from the daily weekday email attachments received by Wify here. This daily activity confers two major benefits at the personal level: partaking of the Buddhist wisdom embedded therein, and honing my translation skills. On a wider scale, it helps to propagate these universal messages of loving kindness, compassion, wisdom, and giving among the English-speaking populace, at least that is my hope through my own small way, in addition to those published in the Tzu Chi's website on their own.

In the realm of hobby, we have cut back substantially on traveling to visit new places, having not stepped out of the state in the past year and being content with traversing along I-75 between Tampa and Gainesville periodically to pick up and drop off WT at UF. In-state travel was also in the doldrums, except for a few trips to the Guang Ming Temple in Orlando. However, missing out on physically being out there was more than made up through virtual travel courtesy of the Internet, deriving equally thrilling vicarious experience circumscribed only by the extent of our imagination.

On reading, our library of used books continued to expand apace, the used book store at the Temple Terrace Public Library remaining our primary choice of acquisition, supplemented by book gifts from CY who shares in our passion for reading. I continued to read a variety of books (novels, Buddhist texts, engineering magazines and journals, etc.), following my usual style of intermittent reading when the time and the venue permit. The one that straddles this new year is Odd Hours by Dean Koontz (Bantam Books, 2008), leaving the last 30 odd pages out of 280+ pages for 2009. In fact, I just finished it this morning, captivated by another fascinating “tour of duty” by Odd Thomas who, time and again, used his naturally endowed ability to communicate with the departed to thwart the evil plans of the few megalomaniacs among the human species, and emerged victorious.

On movies, we stuck to our judiciously mixed schedule of buying pre-viewed DVD movies from Hollywood Videos, and less frequently, Blockbuster Videos, and visiting the cinemas for the rare new releases adjudged to be of high quality that deserved the increased expenditure tag that we could afford, including at IMAX theaters. Those in the latter category include Eagle Eye, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Hancock, and The Dark Night. Lately, we have also been drawn to Korean dramas , the serialized kind, averaging about 16 episodes each, sometimes eliciting tear shedding while at other times, hearty laughs, from us because of the realistic themes, credible plots, fabulous cast and acting interspersed with flawless serenading of melodious tunes. Along the way, we also picked up some simple Korean phrases while relying on the Chinese subtitles to follow the drama. They actually utter the word, “fighting”, as a rallying call to instill encouragement. All these dramas came highly recommended by CE, who in turn follows a rating guide issued by a Korean blogger.

Turning to health, I was the only one who succumbed to illness, specifically stomach ulcers, brought about more than anything else by my procrastination in seeking medical help, until it blew over, requiring my first ever hospitalization for redressal. The experience has been a humbling one, and I have emerged the wiser and become a firm believer of preventive care, and nipping things in the bud, so to speak.

These rambling account of events in 2008 has put me in good stead to see with clarity things I need to continue, to change, and to improve, both in terms of personal enrichment, and in relationship and social interaction. Just my own way of starting off my blogging in the new year.

And talking about the new year, the lunar one, which the Chinese people celebrate, is not far behind. In 2009, the Chinese year will usher in the Ox, taking over from the Mouse as the Chinese zodiac signs go in an eternal cycle of twelve years per rotation, each bearing the symbol of an animal in consonance with Chinese astrology. While it is an endless loop, the sequence does start with the mouse and end with the boar. How the mouse got to be first in the line is the subject of blogging for another day. And we await its arrival with anticipation. Plus I would blog about the general characteristics of each animal zodiac symbol in the next instalment. Stay tuned.

The twelve zodiac signs in Chinese astrology, encircling the Chinese character for blessings and anchored at the four corners by the Chinese expression "Good Luck Every Year", taken from the 2009 calendar given by Oriental MD Store, Tampa.

The Season of Love

2008-12-25T09:50:00.005-05:00

My momma always said, "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

This famous movie line by Forrest Gump has etched its way into the consciousness of many since the movie bearing the same name as the lead character made its debut in 1994. But long before that, chocolate has always been the most popular gift item in addition to being a favorite bite now and then.

So it’s not surprising that we received a variety of chocolate during this festive season when gift exchange is at the top of everyone’s mind. And more, as borne out by the image below.

The stack of gifts, featuring a range of merchandise. The ribboned multi-storeyed boxes on the right, housing various sweet goodies of The Popcorn Factory, are from Brian and CY, guarded by the mascot of the home perched atop.

We seldom pay attention to the wrappers that come with gift items. The outside package perhaps, but definitely not the individual wrappers encapsulating the items within. However, some of us are more discerning, and do pay heed to little details, like those inside the box of Baci chocolate, a product of Italy, as noted by CE.

This is on the front, two wrapped chocolates placed on the left and the opened wrappers, at the top.

This is the inside flap, chocolate wrapped in love literally (as in words), and symbolically (the two chocolates seated on opposite corners).

Each individual chocolate wrapper contains a popular saying, centered around the universal theme of love. Therefore, in addition to enjoying the mouth-watering delights, one is also immersed in the gushing flow of love evoked by the laconic statements on relationships. Creativity is in the air, as it unfolds in a box of chocolate, pleasant surprises unraveled, a fitting analogy for life.

Here are some samples:

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao –Tzu, Chinese Philosopher

To love a person is to learn the song in his/her heart.
Anonymous

He who gives immediately gives twice.
Proverb

The most praise-worthy deeds are those that remain hidden.
Blaise Pascal, French mathematician

Love is sudden revelation, a kiss is always a discovery.
Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright/poet

We’ve spoken a lot about love. Now lets’ try to listen to it, shall we?
Anonymous

A New Lease of Life, the Fickled-Minded, and the Discerning

2008-12-20T09:31:00.013-05:00

I have a new work station, yet not costing me an arm and a leg, but just by rearranging things around and resurrecting things kept away for good, and so I thought. We used to have a Compaq Presario that was retired last year because it was acting up, rebooting by itself at the most inconvenient of time, causing grief in the process. Then recently we bought a 28" LCD Monitor, the largest of its kind as far as I know, of I-INC make, from CompUSA shortly after we upgraded our cable TV service to HDTV, ostensibly to be used as a HDTV (our present one is an analog make but still working fine). However, it can also double as a computer monitor, if only I had an extra computer to hook up to. And buying a new desktop seems redundant (though I'm sharing one with Wify).

So I ferreted out that retired computer, thinking perhaps a more than one year hibernation would have kept it even-tempered by now. So it was back to the living room, and it has not yet missed a beat since it launched its second life, much to my joy. So there it is, my new workstation entirely to myself, and since we have a 4-way router, my own internet connection as well (leaving the other three nodes for Wify, WT and CE). One happy surfing family.

The printer under the table is still unpacked, awaiting WT's deft hands for hook-up.

This is the very first blog done using the newly reinstated computer, and the display is huge, though glaring a bit.

Lately, the weather has gone a bit crazy, alternating between cold and crisp, warm and rainy, and foggy like a white veil draping from sky to ground. I would let the pictures speak for themselves, taken at different times.

This was taken outside WT's dorm when we went to pick him up for the Thanksgiving holidays during one evening on the last week of Nov. Everything was clear and crisp.

This was when we sent WT back after the Thanksgiving holidays several days later. It was raining cats and dogs. The torrents only relented when we reached Gainesville. The "watery" view is not a camara trick. I was just shooting from inside of our van, through the rivulets-filled front screen.

The same view, but after the wiper had done its job, rather admirably.

Same place, but taken this Thursday, when we picked up WT again at the end of his fall semester, thickly shrouded in mist. This was at about 8.45am, the sun still failing to shine through, lending an eeric feel to the scene.

Closer to home, this morning at about 9am. I saw a patch of white through the kitchen window, and decided to test the visibility level. It's bad, I'm supposed to see the traffic light further down the road. The car seemed to be heading toward a big void.

The Sun Dome of USF normally visible behind these trees, at least its top, is entirely white-outed.

Taken this Thursday enroute home from Gainesville, just further down the road from UF. I guess this would only happen in Gator Country, foretelling the outcome of the National Collegiate Football Championship Game between the Gators and the Sooners of U. Oklahoma to be played in Miami on January 8, 2008. But shouldn't it be "LOSES THE BATTLE ...", a case of homonymic misidentity? Then Wify came up with a fresh perspective. The "SOONER" is actually used in the comparative sense, leaving "OKLAHOMA" to represent the Sooners. And suddenly the whole things makes sense to me. And I had a jaw-drop moment. Me and my analytical mind, and yet I missed the missing s ... Or when you don't see, you just don't see.

Photo Shootout on a Saturday Morning in December

2008-12-14T07:09:00.024-05:00

I drove Wify and her Buddhist friends to Valrico for a Sutra chanting session on the occasion of the birthday of Amitabha at Brian and Connie's place yesterday morning. Having completed the front end of the duty as a chauffeur, I headed off to the nearby Brandon Public Library to look for used books and to seek out new arrivals as usual, little realizing that the opening hour has been delayed, manifesting one of the sure signs of economic downturn, cutting back on overhead. Arriving one hour ahead of the revised opening hour of 10am, I debated whether to adjourn to a mall further down the road or to stick around to read a book in the car. Then again, I was not sure whether the businesses would do likewise whence I would end up reading too, but in a different parking lot.

Looking out the car's window, my scan was met with a placid landscape of buildings and park amidst trees and hedges of varying shades and shapes. Devoid of any obvious human intrusion save for the sporadic passing of vehicles cruising down the road at this hour, the vista was a relaxing one, unhurried in the absence of the hustle and bustle and fully revealing nature's glory. Then an idea sprang up: why don't I go on a shooting expedition around the area using my newly acquired point and shoot Nikon L18?

Yes, it seemed like a waste of resources and opportunity when one has access to the tools of digital photography replete with its advantages of unparalleled experimentation and instant feedback, and more importantly, such a wide array of shooting materials virtually frozen in time to work with. This has to be one of the occasions during which one's foray is limited by one's imagination, only circumscribed by one's ability for juxtapositional arrangement of different subjects and capturing their interactions and fusing the different parts into a coherent whole, much like an artist putting different elements into a masterpiece for posterity, or a musician blending different notes into an ensemble of melody for a virtuoso performance.

Thus convinced, I immediately launched into what turned out to be a refreshing experience, trekking through the lightly wooded area surrounding the Library and selecting the theme (message) and the emphasis (subject) driven by simplicity (nothing to distract from the subject), the chilly morning perhaps making me tuck at my jacket's collar from time to time. [I read about these three elements of a photo composition from an online article here, Composition: Part I, by Wendy Folse when I was preparing the blog outline in a library computer after my morning quest so as to flesh out the meat later at home.]

And here I would like to share these captured moments, done with time but no monetary (as in recurrent) investment.

This furry critter is the only subject of dynamism captured, effortlessly darting around the tree trunk from top to bottom, a picture of nimbleness.

The collage of signages, which are ubiquitous, but not the normal run of the mill type like traffic signs, superposed on a montage of children drawings in the center, testifying to the highly visual world we live in.

A jumbotron of sort, except that I'm in it, hoisting the camera up above my head for a panaromic shot of the relecting windows, and the reflected scenery.

Another jumbotron shot, but this time at a corner of the same building, capturing two reflections intercepting each other forming a tree arch with truncated top.

An empty baseball field, one of many adjacent to each other in Clayton Park across from the Library, one of which is the home of the South Brandon Little League, conjuring up images of the cacophonous atmosphere and shouts of "let's play ball" when filled. Ain't the sky gorgeous with graduated blue hues and uncluttered by clouds? I did hear some clanking noises of people batting from further back. Winter training perhaps?

These constructions to the left, with layered netting all round, have a somewhat ominous sounding name, Cages. Of course they are meant for practice sessions to prevent pitched or batted balls from flying all over the place.

This image, backdropped against the azure sky, features two common sights in the Sunshine State, the stately palms, a perennial symbolizing one of the three S's (sun, sand, and surf) linked to Florida, and a squarish one-storey flat-topped buildings populating the sprawling suburbia, reflecting the plentiful land space without the soaring heights that dominate the city skyscape, leaving the turquoise expanse unencumbered.

Plants soaring through the roof, literally, actually a purposeful opening on the roof, blending green into and through the premises, a variation of the theme of rooftop garden.

And this is the entire view of the above phenomenon from a distance, differentiating between the featured plants through the roof from the others.

A view of the lake abutting one side of the Library, displaying the color of the Fall (foliage) and the impending change of season (Christmas tree in the middle of the lake next to the water fountain, heralding the approach of another season of festivity). Note the timber elevated walkway and the gazebo on the river bank for visitors to stage a scenic viewing, simple amenities that enhance the experience of suburban dwelling.

Sky-piercing poles, the central one with eyes in the sky gazing down at the ongoings of earthly affairs, with leaves intruding from the right, encapsulating a streak of white (the contrails from a jet zooming by).

The multi-hues of the fall foliage, exhibiting individualism that's the spirit of the life on the land of the free.

The usual vertical/oblique and the unusual horizontal elements of trees, silhouetting against the walls and the road surface, highlighting the pliancy of plants in adapting to the rigor of the environment, the epitome of resilience in nature.

I could have been fooled by the "imposter", the lone representative of the inanimate amidst the thriving, a poignant reminder of what we bring to the nature, often in jarring ways.

Black Friday of 2008

2008-11-29T12:19:00.013-05:00

For shoppers with an attitude, partial to huge discounts that is, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, both on the heels of Thanksgiving Day, are not to be missed. This is especially so in 2008, with the economy practically in the gutters, and consumer confidence, in shambles. The logical conclusion is that businesses would go the extra length to entice the consumers to part with their dollars, hopefully stimulating the economy back on track through spending (it was reported in today's St. Pete Times that consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of the economy).

Well, as it turned out, if my experience at Staples is anything to go by, the result is at best ho-hum. I have never been one to wake up in the wee hours in the morning, and to join the throng of people staking their stand in front of the shop doors. Rather, I prefer to saunter in at earthly hours to just try my luck. And that's what I did on Black Friday, finding myself in the relatively thin crowd in Staples shortly after 8am.

However, the preparation on the night prior was no less intense, diligently poring over the sales brochures, meticulously comparing the offered prices, and dutifully circling the items to be procured.

And the convoluted path to making an item appearing on my wish list, or unceremoniously dropped, days before was at times nerve wrecking, and at others, illuminating in the sense that reason has prevailed. You see, a big item on my list is a HDTV, especially when it can be gotten for under 1K these days. After paring down my list, primarily based on price, I had marked a Polaroid 42in 1080P LCD HDTV offered by Walmart as the final selection. The next few days were spent in a recurring discussion with Wify on the practicality of the buy. Her points: our 37in analog TV bought five years ago is still delivering great images and sound (obviously she has not seen the intensively detailed images delivered by a HDTV or chose to ignore it. After all she is due to for a cataract operation soon and her vision is less capable of differentiation right now). Then she would refer to my blog here (need to have versus love to have) at various times, insinuatinging that I should walk the talk. Oops, a taste of my own medicine. I did not concede defeat right away, coming out with different suites of concessions to soften the blow as it were, like that will be the absolute last thing that I will buy for the year. Or we can place the new TV in our bedroom for bedtime viewing. But Wify was steadfast, even despite my efforts to put on a hurt look, what being the sole breadwinner of the house and yet having to be vetoed in decisions on household procurement. It seemed like the attrition was coming to a head with no backing down on either side, which is quite rare these days.

Then on the morning of Black Friday when I woke up and was engaging in an inner battle whether to still have my own way, I suddenly had a moment of clarity, bordering on enlightenment. And Wify's admonishment on making sound choices was making sense. Visual enjoyment is just that. Instead, we should be appreciating the fact that we are not visually impaired, and rejoicing at our good fortune of even having a TV to watch in the nice comfort of home. I began to re-evaluate my buy list to be in line with genuine needs and yet ensuring the best bang for the buck. In the end, in place of the HDTV, I bought some computer peripherals: a 640 GB harddisk to archive our picture and video collections; a color laser printer to print out Wify's painting works (right now we have an inkjet printer); a 7” digital photo frame to display Wify's scanned paintings while she is at work to augment the experience of immersion; a digital camera so that we can pass on our current one to WT; a bunch of photo frames and canvas arts frames for Wify to display her works and to paint on.; and a set of four cordless phones to be placed strategically around the house for accessibility. And all that, still with some to spare compared to if I had purchased the HDTV.

In future, I will always think back on this Black Friday, especially the revealing moment of truth that I had been through, sitting at the edge of the bed, and the understanding nod from Wify when I broke the news of having risen above the shackles of self-centered indulgence to her (I think she knows in her heart that I would always eventually come around, despite my posturing). And any decision making emanating from that is going to be effortless since it is guided by meeting the larger good.

Wify's immersive painting environment, taken with the newly acquired Nikon Coolpix L18. Some of the new purchases are visible at the back.

Thanksgiving of 2008

2008-11-28T15:24:00.004-05:00

Thanksgiving 2008 arrived in the thick of the economic maelstrom now gripping US. But this did not dampen the celebratory mood usually associated with this festive season marked by family get-together over a turkey dinner, reminiscing about the cherished past. This year we were invited by Linda and Victor to spend Thanksgiving with their family and friends.

Having underestimated the driving time to their home, we arrived ten minutes ahead of the schedule. Being the gracious hosts they have always been, they were unruffled by our premature appearance, their two sons, Kevin and Aaron, standing in attention welcoming us into their home. Linda was still fussing over her culinary preparation, leaving her two sons to engage us in a game of table tennis. Actually it was Wify against her two sons in a double formation while I sat watching the play unfolding before my watchful eyes, watchful because I assumed the self-appointed role as the coach, dishing out warnings and pointers such as service in a doubles game is made diagonally across the table and the players alternate in receiving the return shots. Meanwhile, WT was ensconced in a seat reading a Dilbert comic book while CE, well she was around somewhere in the house.

Then I heard Wify greeted Victor as he descended the stairs into the kitchen. Soon I left the game and joined Victor while he was skillfully cutting out the ham as the machine cutting had left a big chuck untouched. I could see that he is an old hand at the operation, both hands deftly working over the nicely cooked meat chunk, a fork in one and a knife in another. Next he worked on the oven-cooked turkey, a 20 pounder that seemed too big too fit into the over-matched container. He explained the need to feel out the grain alignment of the turkey meat so that each slice is cleanly cut. Otherwise, the cut piece would just crumble into a mess of dishevelled concoction.

Brain and Connie were then ushered in, bearing gifts Connie had bought from Hawaii (I knew that she had just recently returned from the Pacific island and the gift cover belied the provenance). We helped out in laying the scrumptious array of food on the table. Last to arrive was Madam Layko and her two children, Darren and Dream (no kidding here). Madam Layko is Linda's teacher of Japanese.

With the full complement of the host and guests in place, the food treat began in earnest. The young and restless adjourned to another table so that they would not be bored by all the adult talk that was about to circulate (just kidding! They are all extremely well-behaved kids, including our own, or are they just reticent?).

Wify leading off the serving line, while Kevin (left) and Aaron conferring on what dishes to partake. Can you see the huge turkey drumstick on the nearest plate?

The line grew, showing WT's and CE's backs and Brian to the right and Darren to the left (I believe he was sharing tips with her sis, Dream (not in pic) and hence the rather strange pose). Victor's outline can be seen on the window's reflection.

The young and restless bunch, with a clear shot of Dream seated next to her brother.

The food was great, so was the company. And inevitably, nostalgic recollections began to ensue. Since Mdm. Layko is from Japan, Japan the country and her people logically became the topic of discourse, based on personal experience.

I have visited Japan way back in the mid-1980 on a two-month stint as part of a counterpart training for government officers under the JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) program. I did some extensive training as part of the course, visiting various water resources projects (mainly dams, river training works, and flood mitigation measures) both on the islands of Honshu and Shikoku. I think it's about the same time or perhaps earlier, Brian and Connie had live in Okinawa for six years. Much later, Linda and Victor have visited Japan on several occasions this decade. So those are our credentials, and those of Mdm. Layko, being a Japanese herself, is beyond scrutiny.

I asked her whether she knows Akira Kobayashi, my childhood idol of a Japanese movie star who captured the audience with his maverick heroics, fighting the bad guys and singing his way into hearts, a guitar slung across his body. His genre of films then was based on the character nicked name the Black Whirlwind. And I think I watched everyone of his movies. She did and even related to me the recent happenings involving his run-in with the law. Then there were the samurai movies with Toshiro Mifune and drama movies of Sayuri Yoshinaga. We also studied the Meiji Restoration Era in Asian History while in Middle school, which marked the first step Japan was opening out to the world from her insular past. Also names like General Tokugawa were imprinted into our mind through Hollywood movies such as The Last Samura starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe.

Time passed seemingly in a snap of the finger when in congenial company with a common topic of conversation. In between Wify had another table tennis game with Brian, while I declined to partake because of an over-stuffed stomach.
We left just before 9pm, at my urging as my eyes became dazed with sleepiness. Later in the car, Wify told me that the four ladies was actually planning to have a karoake session later in the night. But my untimely retreat put paid to that plan, all because I woke up too early in the morning and also over-indulged during the dinner treat. Well, there will be a next time, I assured Wify since I know here to be a karoake fan, having bought a portable karoake machine for her just the other night.

And that's the end of Thanksgiving of 2008 for us, giving way to the Black Friday that'll be the subject of my next blog.

Gift Bearing Season

2008-11-27T09:38:00.008-05:00

The end of the year always ushers in the festive mood, one celebration of sort following another. That Wify's birthday falls right smack in the midst of this merry season is pure bonus. And gifts are especially ubiquitous during this time, bearers seemingly grabbing the slightest excuse to express gratitude, to celebrate friendship, and to remember a good time by.

Wify's now painting partner, Mrs. Kim, has always brought gifts whenever she visits us, regardless of the occasion. Over time, we have had a nice collection of gifts from her, some of which are consumables the existence of which can only be inferred from photographic evidence. Armed with foresight, we did just that. Then there are gifts that can last a lifetime, or the remaining of a life time anyway.

One's siblings and children are another source of the gift stream, flowing and sometimes gushing on occasions that one may not have remembered, either due to memory lapses brought on by advancing age or more pertinently, the mellow state of mind one inevitably gravitates to with each passing day, no doubt hardened by life's vicissitude with its associated emotional rising and ebbing. But when the gift, in whatever form, appears, the joy, the sense of being remembered and appreciated, is no less exciting and warm.

In this respect, Wify is the proactive one, remembering the birthday of each and everyone of her siblings, even mine, not forgetting the parents and the children. Since we are apart from her folks back home, she always makes it a point to send a congratulatory message by phone when the occasion calls for it. Likewise, her thoughtful gestures are always reciprocated, a family thing of sort on her side of the family. Apparently, kind gestures tend to rub on others, evoking a voluntary response in kind.

Here then is a potpourri of gifts that have come through our door, and we will always cherish them, especially the thoughts that underlie each and everyone. Thanks to all for the good time, and the associated camaraderie, the congeniality, and the heart-warming feelings that they never fail to elicit.

This is one of six in the collection of coasters depicting traditional painting of Korean scenes from Mrs. Kim. Wify, enthralled by the vivid color and the delicate painting strokes, is planning to paint this one as a start.

This is the fruit basket from Mrs. Kim on another occasion. The yummy Fuji apples and the persimmons have long served their purpose. We especially marvel at her choice of the gift receptacle, its aptness, elegance, complementary nature, and utility value bearing testimony to the thoughts that go into it.

These are the gifts from our children on Wify's most recent birthday that fell on last week. The bouquet of flowers in the green globe from CY and Brian, the Godiva chocolate from WT, and the fragrant candles from CE. And WJ sent his birthday greetings from Malaysia. What nice kids we have.

Just to tag along, this is the fruit plate, comprising alternate concentric rows of water melon scooped out from a whole, seedless grapes, more water melon bulbs, kumquats from Sister Harriet, and organic grapes, just prepared by Wify this morning to bring to a Thanksgiving dinner over at Linda's later in the evening. The match with the underlying table cloth is simply uncanny.

And why not, a reminder of fall is in the air, the fall foliage just outside the Keys Dorm, taken on Tuesday when we fetched WT from Gainesville.

Remembering a Famed Chinese Calligrapher

2008-11-17T07:52:00.007-05:00

Wify has been looking for a Tampa-based teacher for Chinese calligraphy for some time now. It's actually not an active search, but rather one based on word of mouth or chance encounter. We met Mr. Godwin Kou two weeks ago at a local Arts Festival who seems to fit the bill except that he is domiciled in Atlanta.

Then last Saturday, we were at Brother Yang's house to participate in the Tzu Chi Tampa training camp. We have been to his house before and have seen the various posters of Chinese calligraphy adorning the walls of his house but it has never entered our minds to ask him whose works these were.

This is "Buddha" written by Brother Yang's uncle, Master Yap. Wify's own version is here.

"Mesmerized by the Waves", another of Master Yap's work, here shown with his pseudonym, Amazing Cloud.

This is a popular poem penned during the Tang Dynasty by Jiǎ Dǎo entitled Looking for the Hermit And Not finding.

This time though, he volunteered that the Chinese calligraphy was by his late uncle when he saw me looking admiringly at one of the wall posters. Wify got excited and immediately asked Brother Yang for any published calligraphy anthology by his uncle. He answered in the negative but did hand over an old invitation card announcing the calligraphy exhibition held in commemoration of his uncle. When pressed further, he acknowledged that he was under his uncle's tutelage when young but added modestly he was not good.

We could not make out the Chinese calligraphy. Anybody?

The next day, and reminded by the popular Chinese saying that Famed Teachers Produce Excellent Students, we started speculating that perhaps Mr. Yang could perhaps be the one that Wify has been looking for. I made a mental note that we would bring up the matter with him the next time we meet again.

Around noon, we decided to do our weekly grocery shopping, starting at Publix and double-backing to Oriental after that. While in the car, Wify decided to reverse the order, and to drop by Oriental first. When we were getting out of the car at the Oriental's parking lot, out stepped a familiar face from a car nearby. It was none other than Brother Yang.

Wasting no time, we tendered our request that we had just discussed in the morning. After some hesitation, Brother Yang agreed to our proposal, but only as a fellow companion in learning, saying that being a teacher is too onerous a duty.

After a quick round at Oriental, Brother Yang followed us to our house so as to give him an idea of Wify's present level of attainment in Chinese calligraphy and preparedness in terms of the four treasures of Arts room in Chinese parlance: brushes, ink, paper, and ink stone.

At home, Wify took out all her collections of the four treasures and the various calligraphy anthologies sourced through all her friends from China, Taiwan, and Malaysia, including her works in Chinese calligraphy, and laid them all on the table for Brother Yang to view. Visibly impressed by Wify's talent, especially since she has been learning on her own all this while (save learning some of the calligraphy basics from her late father when young), mimicking the anthologies without the benefit of instructions from a learned teacher, Brother Yang gave his critiques on the spot, while offering some fundamentals of Chinese calligraphy. The stage was then set for the first Chinese Calligraphy class to be held in Brother Yang's house on the coming Saturday. And best of all, he welcomed Wify to bring along her friends who would like to “dabble” in Chinese calligraphy as well.

This is the best illustration of what the mind desires, manifests. In turn, we would always be grateful for the opportunity to embark on an artistic journey with a dear friend.

Temple Terrace Arts Festival

2008-11-09T17:34:00.010-05:00

We have been to several arts festivals around the area in the past, most notably while we were staying near South Tampa, which was a stone's throw away from Old Hyde Park, a popular venue for such events.

Since moving next to USF, we have planned to visit more of these events that serve as artistic outlets for the richly creative veins of painters and crafters, most recently several that were held across the Bay at St. Pete when CY visited us in October. However, my then unanticipated medical predicament led to their last-minute cancellations.

Then the Temple Terrace Arts Festival (Nov 8-9, 2008) came around, and the fact that the venue was another stone's throw away (by driving) from our new home made it too hard to resist. Earlier today, Linda called Wify and informed that she had just returned from the site and had met a Chinese artist who exhibited Chinese brush paintings.

So there we were, in the midst of festivity brought about by the open-air performances, and the rows and rows of gaily-decorated exhibition booths, each showcasing the works of the respective artists.

At first, we followed a row-by-row coverage to look for the display of Chinese brush paintings. The first one we came upon had Chinese ink paintings (the display board identified as such), but the calligraphy was obviously not by a traditional Chinese calligrapher.

Just when the search was going to be an exhaustive one, we chanced upon an unmanned table with festival programs. Thumbing through the Festival map therein, we located the name of the artist that was given to us by Linda, a Mr. Kou, at Booth 36. I oriented the map to be parallel to the abutting Hillsborogh River, and pinpointed Booth 36 to be just behind the Gazebo.

And the next instant we found ourselves looking with admiration at the exquisitely done paintings of Bamboo, Orchid, Chinese Plums, Fish, Panda, Shrimp, and many more adorning the booth. A table at the front of the booth held several tools for Chinese calligraphy: a wet Chinese brush resting on a partially filled small ink container, a name stamp, and several book marks for writing names in Chinese for patrons, at a charge of $4.

A tall thin Chinese man emerged from within and introducted himself as Godwin Kuansoi Kau, the proprietor. While Wify rummaged through the arts collection vertically stacked inside the many boxes occupying the center of the booth, having gone through those hung along the three walls, I struck up a conversation with Mr. Kou.

Mr. Kau hailed from GuangZhou, China, where he started learning the intricacy of Chinese brush painting and calligraphy since young. He moved to the US in 1986 and has since won numerous accolades for his fine Chinse brush paintings in addition to being a stalwart of the Chinese artists association in US. He has participated in arts exhibitions in Taiwan, and is now a full-time artist exhibiting his works in primarily the southeast US area covering from his homebase, Alpharetta in Atlanta, Georgia.

He had an Arts gallery before, but found the cost of maintaining one with a fixed premises taxing, and has since stayed on the roving Arts festivals circuit. He has stopped teaching Chinese brush painting becuase of his busy schedule, neither has he published his works nor established an online presence. But he can be reached via phone and email contacts, both of which appear in the cover of the Festival program below.

Wify bought two of his works, one a painting of bamboo and two birds obviously in love (he said he had had to do the background layer depicting a moon-lit setting first), and a hand-painted card of butterfly and flowers, respectively at $40 and $5. The prices levied gave us a sense of the prevailing selling prices for such works, and also the different charges for original and printed works, in case Wify wanted to plunge into the painting for sale market (just kidding!). The fact of the matter is she really likes them, from one budding artist (see her painting blog here) to an established one. And she added that the card was actually recommended by Mr. Kou.

I also elicited valuable feedback as regards the practical side of operating a painting for sale business on one's own, and its business costs including whether one could make a comfortable living from such pursuits. Mr. Kou was forthright in his responses, willingly sharing his experiences gleaned from many years of personal involvement for which we are grateful.

He is also a devout Buddhist (I grathered as much from glancing at a paper lying under the table depicting the seven-day buddhist retreat, and Wify, from the Chinese word, Zen, inscribed on his name card over a partial extract of the Diamond Sutra). He said practicing Buddhism has given him serenity and tranquility, which we concurred unreservedly, having enjoyed the same benefits ourselves.

Armed with our new purchases, we bade farewell to Mr. Kou, and would like to wish him a fulfilling life ahead on propagating the essence of Chinese civilization as embodied in Chinese brush painting and calligraphy, and also on the path to Buddhahood.

The cover of the Festival Program book, with a copy of Mr. Kou's namecard.

A group of yound cheer-leaders just finishing their dance routine at the center court.

Yours truly and Wify in front of Mr. Kou's booth (this is the very first shot of me just after recovering from my medical condition with relief written all over my radiant face. Photo taken by Mr. Kou who was gracious in returing the favor.)

A proud and beaming Mr. Kou standing in from of his booth.

Moonstruck (the horizontal lines are caused by the three-parter scanning as it is too large to fit into our letter-size scanner).

The romance of the butterfly and the flower.