Delightful News from a Musician Friend (使人雀躍的音樂好友最新消息)

It was a really long time ago. I had just returned to Hong Kong from the UK and was living alone on the highest building overlooking Yung Shue Wan, Lamma Island, enjoying the silence, the solitude, the sun, the cool breezes, the unobstructed vista of sea and sky. Back then, the power plant there had not yet been built. There were not very many foreigners or even locals living there in that epoque and one met a lot of them on the 45 minute-journey to and from Lamma and Hong Kong. I struck up a few friendships. On weekdays and especially on weekends, we'd meet for meals, drinks and chit chat. One of them was young Dale Wilson, the son of a Baptist pastor then working in Hong Kong. He loves music. So do I and a few others.  We'd gather in the home of some fellow music lovers and listen to or play music together. We didn't have a care in the world. The only thing which counted was that the music, the snacks, the beers be good. It was a time I recall with fondness. Today, one of them, Guy,  has become a professional jazz guitarist and a Shaolin Kungfu coach and Dale has become a professor in musical anthropology at Columbia University in New York and a well-known jazz composer on the side and whenever he passes by Hong Kong, we'd meet and have a meal together for old times sake.

Saturday Fun (星期六趣味)

It's always nice to have friends, especially those who love to surf on the internet and love to pass on whatever it is they find interesting  to you. In that way, I'm truly blessed. Often when I'm racking my brain about what I should post on the Saturday or weekend fun blog, all I got to do to check my emails. If you're giggling sheepishly before quickly recovering your dignified composure or smiling your knowing smile and choking with laughter or wiping the tears off your eyes whilst doing your best to restrain the uncontrollable spasms around your abdomen area, you know that the true object of your your thanks should be my friends and not me. 

Just got the following from my friend. It's about the life of ordinary folks like me. They're in Chinese and should be more enjoyable that way because of the end rhymes. But they're not too bad in translations. Here they are.

1. 

Wish to get into the fast lane in your career rise? Split your hair in the middle.
  (中間分界，升職最快)

Another side to Central (另一面的中環)

Central sometimes seems little more than a heavy concentration of shadows and reflections.

 

But if it is, it's full of splits and divisions

Saturday Fun (星期六趣味)

It's often said that Chinese people have no sense of humor. I think that if ever that were true, then it's fast changing.  They can play on words too.

1.

The Chinese literature teacher asks his student to complete the following Chinese couplet by giving the starting line:  "Got money, willful" (有錢，任性)
Tiny Bright replies "No money, fateful" ( 小明回答:「沒錢，認命」。)

Man Mo Temple (文武廟)

Temples are always fascinating places. Maybe there's something in the human psyche which yearns for the kind of unconditional care and protection one receives from one's mother and one's father whilst one is still too feeble to fend for oneself. One remembers with fondness the intimate sweet smell and warmth of the female body as one snuggles in complete trust as close as possible to the smooth and soft bosom of one's nurturer and looks back nostalgically to getting the kind of feeling of complete ease and restfulness one receives as a vulnerable child and hopes that somehow, one may magically be blessed by such experience again from the gods, especially when one is facing a new personal crisis in which one doesn't really know what will or will not happen the following day, the following week, the following month or the following year.  Perhaps one has just met a potential new mate. Perhaps one is thinking about the impending school or professional examination. Perhaps one is thinking about a new job interview. Perhaps a member of one's family is about to undergo a major surgery or maybe the one about to go undergo the life threatening surgery is oneself. Perhaps one has just signed a contract the outcome of which may make or break one's fortune. There are so many uncertainties in life. Of course, one can always make or has already made all the necessary preparations. But as the common saying goes, "man proposes, God disposes." There is always an element of chance, of randomness, of luck, of fortune, of destiny which one is not and cannot be in control of. During such periods of confusion, of anxiety, of fear, of hope, one longs to recover a little the kind of peace of mind one feels during more "normal" times. During such times, what does one do? One prays to whatever gods one's culture provides for such purposes. Perhaps that's the reason why we still got all kinds of chapels, all kinds of churches, all kinds of temples, all kinds of mosques, all kinds of shrines etc although theoretically we have entered into the age of electronic information, of routine jet travel and of universal education which encourages us to think that our future should really be in our own hands.

So many coils of incense, each burning with the hope embodied by the prayer sheet or wish list in red, the color of life.