If you've just dropped by or random'ed into me, please leave a comment and say hello.

Let me know how you found me, where you're from, why you're here, a little about yourself, recommend a book, recommend a movie, tell me a secret, tell me something, ask me a question, etc. =)

Ad Astra,

The Bride of the First House.
bride (at) livejournal (dot) com

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weather	:		partially cloudy
outside	:		8.7°C
mood	:

I've said this to a few people and it seemed to make a significant impact on them, so I thought I'd write it down here.

In an effort to save money, I used to refrained from buying what I want and, in some cases, even refrained from buying what I need.

This usually lead to some degree of misery, disappointment or discomfort.

I have tried to completely change that. I will pay for whatever I need. I even pay for things I want — merely want, but don't really need.

But the difference is that, now, I work towards keeping my needs and wants as minimal as possible.

I'm much happier for it.

It makes a lot of sense from a modern quality management perspective too. It's less costly, less stressful to find and fix problems earlier in the process rather than later. And by "earlier", I mean in both the temporal and causal sense.

If you walk backwards within yourself and trace what causes you to spend money in the first place, you can change the cause and the "spending too much" problem takes care of itself without you having to worry about it. =)

weather	:		clear
outside	:		7.0°C
mood	:		...

Doing some reflection tonight on a difficult situation.

It's that sinking, helpless feeling you get when something you really don't want to happen is just about a done deal.

The obvious thing would be to talk to the right people about it and prevent it from happening. But it's not that simple. It's never that simple when it's you. =}

I could potentially prevent it from happening, but that's not 100% certain. It could be worse if I couldn't prevent it from happening and my feelings were made known in the process. Even if confidentiality is kept, the circumstances of the situation are unique enough that I'd be identified immediately as having spoken up.

I feel like the only thing I can do is remove myself from the situation. And I don't want to. I'm happy with where I am and I'm really angry that I've been put in the position of having to consider that.

I could just say nothing and do nothing and see how it plays out. But that's leaving a lot more up to chance than I'm comfortable with.

I don't know. I really don't know.

weather	:		mainly clear
outside	:		16.7°C
mood	:		tired

So, I have to include a self-addressed stamped envelope for something that's going to be sent back to me from the US (I'm guessing "regular snail mail" is First-Class Mail International).

I'm having issues figuring out what the postage is supposed to be. I know that letters are usually 3½-4oz. but how would I really know for sure? The envelope is 4"x8" and will contain at most two pieces of paper folded up.

It's for this thing.

I have a feeling I'll have to make a run down to Blaine to get this done. *sigh* Crossing the border is not getting any funner these days.

[Update - Tuesday, August 07, 2007 - 0750h]

*eesh* I didn't realize how heavy ounces were. Three of my envelopes together are 0.4oz. I think I'll just slap CAD$1.00 on it and that should be more than enough to cover the wobbling exchange rate.

weather	:		light rain
outside	:		4.6°C
mood	:		cheerful

I've never been too comfortable travelling with my wedding rings. I know that it's an easily noticeable thing. People approach me about it from time to time. It sometimes makes me uncomfortable to think of how many people would be noticing it and not saying anything, especially in a foreign country.

Husband Guy and I have also wanted a pair of matching rings. Our wedding rings don't match. Not that they have to, but it's just kinda nice if they do.

For a few years now, I've been looking around for a pair of matching rings, for travel purposes. This way, I don't have to haul around a photocopy of the papers for the diamond so that Canada Customs doesn't hassle me for importing (I'm surprised that I didn't get questions about it coming back from South Africa). And, this way, I also wouldn't have to spend my vacations fretting about losing my ring =P A more plain wedding band would mean my clothes don't get shredded by the prongs and I won't have to worry as much about hurting 甜蜜蜜, my Ex-Co-Worker's baby girl, when I go over to play D&D with The Ex-Co-Worker Buddies and inevitably play with the baby. =)

But all the rings I saw were either expensive, too girly, too ugly, too blah or some combination of negativeness that I didn't want. I wanted something simple and elegant, so that the husband could wear it without looking too frilly. But I wanted it to be interesting and cool at the same time. All the simpler designs I saw that were appropriate for men were just blah and nothing on women.

Today, we were wandering through the gift shop of the Steveston Guan Yin Temple and we got a pair of matching rings. They're inscribed with the Om Mani Padme Hom mantra. The outer layer has the words on it and it spins like a mani wheel. =)

It looks like this, except ours are entirely 18K white gold, not a combination yellow/white gold like the one in the picture. From far away, they look like plain wedding bands. It's not until you get closer that you see and understand them... just like the two of us. And up close, if you're not looking carefully, it kinda looks like The One Ring... which makes it all that much cooler =)

Our Om Mani Padme Hom rings are now consecrated and bound to us. They weren't expensive, they're tasteful, simple, elegant, yet very interesting and deeply meaningful to us.

Now we're trying to decide when to wear them. We were originally only wanting them as a travel set, but now we want to wear them regularly as well. But the rings we were originally married with are also special =]

weather	:		cloudy
outside	:		-5.4°C
mood	:		pensive

What is "shyness" to you? - from psychology

This was a randomly interesting question because I'm sometimes mistaken for a "shy" person when I'm not. =) Generally, people who think I'm shy, just don't really know me... or they don't know what "shy" means.

Shyness, to me, is wanting more social interaction, but being unable to due to a self-perceived reason that doesn't have to be an inhibitor. Those are the two main components as I see it.

The reasons for it can be from fear, anxiety, lack of understanding, heightened sensitivity to environmental factors... people say a lot of things. They can all apply or not apply to each individual situation to varying degrees and varying combinations. But, in my mind, it doesn't matter as much as the fact that it's a perceived obstacle and can be overcome under the right circumstances.

If there are external reasons why someone can't engage in social interaction — like being in a remote physical location away from civilization or being in a coma — that doesn't necessarily indicate shyness, obviously. Sometimes, external reasons can be contributing factors to shyness. Words or actions from other people can cause the shy person to withdraw even more. The lack of experience in general — and, thus, positive experience — in social situations in childhood could contribute to shyness.

If someone doesn't actually want social interaction at all and they're completely comfortable with that, that's not shyness either. That's introversion, which is not the same thing.

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		19.5°C
mood	:		...

I was having lunch in a small Lebanese café, they make fantastic chicken shawarma wraps.

As I was finishing up, I noticed a tall, medium build gentleman a few tables over, dressed in a crisp dark suit that fit well in the shoulders. Suit jackets that don't fit the shoulders well, so profoundly throw off the look regardless of everything else.

He held his fork like a shovel =) and carefully but briskly pushed every last piece of food onto his fork with his knife.

I watched him for a while. He didn't notice me watching. I was just appreciating that he didn't waste his food like so many do, as evidenced by all the half eaten plates left on the tables in so many places I've been to.

Work went through a hairy and stressful technical audit a few weeks ago. The IT Group did very well, but it was still icky to go through a week-long audit. At one point during our team debrief, we were talking about what features went into which release. We were hemming and hawing and struggling to remember. Everyone had to collaborate on matching the things to the numbers.

In software, the inability to remember the features in each release is actually a good sign. It means you're releasing a lot of projects into Operations which is a good thing. It also means that people are happily moving on from project to project. People tend to remember projects with clarity if they've gone badly.

It's so uplifting to see simple, but true earnestness, diligence and purity of intent and know that it can't be faked or staged.

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		13.7°C
mood	:		...

The Husband Guy and I were playing with Prezzle.Com over the Easter long weekend. They've changed/de-scoped a lot of things and the whole thing feels less unwieldy of a project now.

At each step in the process, both the Sender and the Recipient get e-mail notification about what's going on. That might sound like a bit much, but each e-mail also came with a Scratch-&-Win Prezzle that gave us a one-in-three chance at getting a USD$10 gift certificate for Amazon.com or iTunes.

We kept winning.

And I only sent ONE $20 Amazon gift certificate to the Husband through Prezzle... mostly because we both found the "punching" sound effect the funniest thing on the planet. We sat there for what must have been 15 minutes laughing and playing with the punching sound... because we're just dorky like that XD

But it got to the point where we were starting to feel bad about winning all these $10 things. I know they have their budget already allotted and they expect to be paying it out and everything, but we still felt bad and stopped playing. =P

At least now, other people can have a chance at it. =P

The loot that the Husband got out of it:

• NBA Furious Finishes
• And 1 Mixtape, Vol. 7 (Street Basketball)
• NBA - 100 Greatest Plays

He was quite chuffed. And I'm sure our Hate Points with VISA went down by a few since we did put part of our purchase on the credit card too. =D

I got my long coveted Water's Edge CD by Tim Janis, the composer of Beautiful America. The short exerpts of Beautiful America that I did hear, I really liked. It's very much my kind of music. But even so, the reviews seem to indicate that they're all "the same-old-same-old" and "repetitive", so I may not get myself more than one Tim Janis CD. I picked the one that got the best reviews all around. But we'll see... it looks like Beautiful America is his centerpiece album. I might give in one day and get it. =}

Speaking of music, while I was in Taiwan last year, I got 綠度母心咒 (Mantra of the Green Tara) — composed, arranged, sung and produced by 黃慧音 (Imee Ooi). If you have Flash installed, you can listen to the tracks. There's a blue "試聽" (Listen) button with an earmuff icon at the bottom of the widest content panel on the right of the product page.

There are only two tracks, one with vocal and one instrumental only. They're both just under half an hour, so I find they're REALLY good for timing meditation or yoga practice.

I saw it on one of those specialty box displays in a gift shop on the upper floor of the Taipei CKS airport as we were leaving Taiwan for Singapore/South Africa. I had resolved to buy them on my way back to YVR from TPE. I was originally going to get the GuanYin Sutra, Heart Sutra or the Om Mani Padme Hum one. But on the way home, they were sold out of everything except the Green Tara chant. Disappointing to say the least, but I'd been thinking about it since I saw them and got what they had left anyway, just to satisfy the want.

And now that I listen to the samples of the other CDs online, I like mine best out of the entire series. Funny how things work out. =)

weather	:		mostly cloudy
outside	:		4.8°C
mood	:		...

I've never been really terrible at remembering names to begin with, but occasionally I used to.

I took a Study Skills course in the summer before my first year of University... many many moons ago. One of the topics that we covered was on Memory. Terry, the instructor, said something very profound that I take with me to this very day:

"If you don't remember someone's name, it means you didn't bother to learn it in the first place."

I was a bit put off by that at first, as I'm sure the other participants were as well. But on reflection, I realize that I was offended because it was true and it hit too close to home.

Brain damage aside, it's literally impossible to forget the name of someone who is important to you or has some kind of meaning to you, whether positive or negative. You'll always remember the names of people you like; you'll always remember the names of people you hate.

It, then, becomes a matter of having respect for people and valuing them enough that they have a name in your mind. No one deserves to be a nothing even for the short time they spend interacting with you. Admitting out loud that "I'm bad with names" is tantamount to saying "You're not important to me; you're not worth it for me to even bother trying to remember the ONE key piece of information about you."

No it's not a fashionable thing to say. It's not a favorable trait to have. It's an excuse. And a really terrible one at that.

Once I accepted that truth and began to consciously value people the moment I met them, every single name that I actually learned, stuck.

weather	:		cloudy
outside	:		7.2°C
mood	:		...

I'm not vegetarian. I have no intention of becoming entirely vegetarian either... except maybe at lunch. =) I believe in balance and moderation, which includes a meat and non-meat diet.

We were never asked to be vegetarian; we were only asked to observe a few main principles. Refraining from eating meat was just one of the interpretations.

I'm sure many, if not all, of the highest Buddhist clerics, as close to enlightenment as we will ever know on Earth, are vegetarian. But the most hypocritical, delusional, dark-hearted person I know, also happens to be vegetarian and aligns himself with "Buddhism".

You're not any more right, noble or compassionate than anyone else because you are vegetarian or identify yourself under a banner or label. You will be more right, more noble, more compassionate than others when you are more right, more noble, more compassionate than others.

We'll harm many things in our lifetime. Eating requires killing, whether it's an animal or a plant. Plants are living organisms too. They satisfy all the criteria: they move on their own, they grow, they respond to stimuli, they reproduce, they consume nutrients, they expel waste, they have cells that demonstrate specific cell grouping/organization.

Some cultures don't consider eating certain animals to be eating meat. In many places, fish are not considered "animals" as land animals are. They're not vegetables either, but traditionally in Vedic cultures and many Asian cultures via the spread of Buddhism, fish don't have higher intellect, "a third eye" or the spiritual centre that other animals have. This is why many vegetarians will eat fish and insect meat. Their culture and belief system are not wrong for classifying living things differently and they certainly don't deserve the narrow-minded snarking I've seen.

Every step you take, there's a chance you'll trample an insect or some living creature. If you live in a house, apartment or any kind of modern structure, you've contributed to the demand that involved trees being clear cut and forest animals being displaced. No matter how careful you think you are, how participatory or non-participatory you are in whatever way, in whatever society you choose to live in, you'll always be a part of a long chain of events that involves killing and destroying at some point. Even if you live completely "off the grid", you need to eat, you need to survive. That's always been the natural cycle of life.

Use what you need, but be modest about your needs. Be mindful of the origins of your resources and consequences of your usage. And if those criteria are satisfied to the best of your abilities, then there's no sense worrying about things that are truly not yours to worry about.

weather	:		light rain
outside	:		10.6°C
mood	:		calm/satisfied/pensive

The end-of-year season has to be one of the worst displays of humanity. The atmosphere of excess that it creates is repugnant. Eating, drinking, buying, spending, using, discarding.

Even in doing good, volunteering and donating to charitable causes, it's such an act. A) Statistically, special occasions seem to be the only time people really think of anything like that; and B) charitable causes are in much more need at other times of the year. Which says, to me, that people only do it to satisfy their own sense of guilt.

It's also a bit disturbing to see huge case-switch statements of different holiday greetings trying to exhaustively enumerate every possible one for whatever could be celebrated by anyone on the planet. There's usually even a default value. There's a difference between trying to include everyone and getting ridiculous about it.

A Hungry Ghost is a soul with an insatiable appetite for attention, stimulation, wealth and benefit, whether or not it's justified or deserved. They are materially and emotionally greedy. I'm not sure if it's worse that people act like such Hungry Ghosts at this time of year or that people feed the Hungry Ghost phenomenon.

What exactly does it matter that you are greeted by the holiday you don't celebrate?

Whether it's "Happy Hanukkah" or "here, I'll help you with the groceries", they're just noises. The meaning behind the noise is much more important. I'm happy that someone thought of me at whatever time they did and expressed as much.

I say again:

I'm just happy that someone thought of me at whatever time they did and expressed as much.

weather	:		cold & wet
outside	:		7.8°C
mood	:		brooding

Excerpt from the Foreword of the Tao Teh Ching translated by John C. H. Wu:

Both Confucianism and Taoism complement each other, however incompatible they seem at first sight to be. The former places a man in his proper relation to his fellow-men, the latter in proper relation to nature. A third philosphy, Buddhism, though introduced from India, deals with the problem of human suffering and with man's ultimate destiny. These three inheritances ... have moulded the thinking not only of the Chinese people but of all Eastern Asia. There is truth, then, in the common saying that every Chinese wears a Confucian cap, a Taoist robe and Buddhist sandals.

Whereas Confucius counseled his people to labor untiringly for the welfare and dignity of man in society, Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu on the other hand cautioned them against excessive interference. In their view, the urge to change what by nature is already good only increases the sum-total of human unhappiness. These two urges: on the one hand, to do something, and on the other hand, not to do too much, are forever contending in our natures. The man who can maintain a just balance between them is on the road to social and intellectual maturity.

Arthur W. Hummel,
Former Head, Division of Orientalia
Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
1962

I bought it because it has the 道德經 text in Traditional characters alongside Dr. Wu's English translation.

weather	:		sunny
outside	:		13.9°C
mood	:		cheerful
music	:	Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64

Q: What are four of your favorite words?
— from the October 7, 2005 edition of Four For Friday

These have been in my Interest list for a long time now:

勤奮 meaning "diligence", "industriousness".
忍耐 meaning "patience", "restraint".
誠懇 meaning "sincerity".
謙遜 meaning "modesty", "humility".

Unlike most others, persuit of happiness is not my goal. Rather, I believe it will be a side effect of living well, living within the constraints of my circumstances and accepting such. I don't ask to be happy. I only ask to be able to handle whatever life throws at me, good or bad, with dignity and discipline. And happiness will follow.

"Are you happy?" was the question posed to me.

My left hand, alone, is worth more than most peoples' entire estate. I have too much to be thankful for, too much going for me, too many good things happening and really, way too wonderful of a life to be miserable. I simply don't have the right to be unhappy about anything.

I don't care to be happy per se. I accept my life. I accept who I am, where I was, what has been. I make the best of what I have. There's a lot that can be improved. There's never enough time/money/motivation/resources to do everything I want to, but that's the reality of anyone's existence. I do what I can.

weather	:		raining
outside	:		12.0°C
mood	:		calm

I have nothing to say, so I'll just transplant a comment for archiving:

I wear a bodhi seed wristlet every day. I only take it off when I go to bed or do something that might get it wet. I got it at a local temple where I had it bound to me and blessed. Wearing one as cheap jewelry that was bought on a whim from a random trinket kiosk, without understanding the significance of its purpose and meaning, is irreverent and disrespectful... or at least plain not nice.

There are a specific number of beads. Mine has 18 beads and one guru bead because I have a small wrist. You can also have 21 beads plus a guru bead for wristlets. These numbers correspond to the number of lines or verses in something, I don't quite know what (it could be the Heart Sutra, but I'm not sure). I don't know how many are on the neck malas... 100+8, I think? Not sure.

It's supposed to serve as protection from evil spirits or any form of evil and accident, but I've found that in all practicality, it protects me from being accosted by overzealous Christians wanting to convert me on the spot or invite me to fellowship meetings. =) Vancouver, Canada is home to a large population of Chinese immigrants who, regardless of the worship they have chosen, usually would not be ignorant of basic Buddhist principles and have the utmost respect for them.

The wristlet is used as a counter. I sit and recite the Guan Yin Sutra once per bead for one full circle. The Guan Yin Sutra is an exerpt of Chapter 25 of the Lotus Sutra. But I'm very unsure of what part.

( Here's one English translation I found of The Guan Yin Sutra. )

Guan Yin is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the Observer of the World's Cries. The Guan Yin is actually a Buddha and has attained the highest level of enlightenment, entitled to enter Heaven, but has refused it so as to stay behind and assist every soul to enlightenment.