Pattern 4

4th floor


3rd floor


2nd floor


1st floor

Pattern 3

Pattern 2

Pattern 1

ten thoughts on quality time

1. quality time is any amount of time spent not thinking you'd rather be somewhere else.

2. if every moment in life is a new experience, why should you be thinking about another experience that you cannot yet fully know?

3. while holidays create a period that increases the probability of quality time, do they also decrease the probability of quality time occurring while not on a holiday?

4. 100% quality time should really be the minimum we should aim for in any situation.

5. when we predict what a situation would be like we also define for ourselves the boundaries in which we allow ourselves to experience that situation.

6. my guess is that courage is not calculating risks and going into the situation knowing what will happen, as much as it is being in the situation and simply knowing what needs to be done there.

7. too much of life is lived looking back at the past and into the future. i suspect it has to do with the idea of living life and wanting to look back at it like it's a masterpiece of art.

8. evaluating art, is what a curator does. the artist moves on. once a piece of work is created, it should be already outdated, in the artist's time-frame.

9. in the curator's world, money can buy you quality time. but in the artist's world, quality time is as abundant as the air that you breathe.

10. you can either find time that has more quality in it, or you can put more quality into the time that you have. given any instant, everybody alive has the same amount of time. if that time isn't quality time, by elimination, you must be the problem.

In the face of Struggle, there are those who are resigned to their fate, those who try but don't manage, and then there are two camps that cross the Mountain.

First are those who tear apart what binds them to claim Victory, crossing the Mountain and growing from strength to strength. They are celebrated in history, because when they stood on the mountain, they were standing taller than the mountain. It is always inspiring that a man so small, can be at the same time so tall.

And there are those who struggle. Because when you struggle until you have no more strength left to continue struggling, you can find a place where you can reach out and feel with your hands what had been binding you. And you will know its true nature, precisely because you had so struggled with it. And you will no longer see the Mountain, but the flowers and the trees on the Mountain. And when you reach out to touch the mountain, the mountain will cross under you.

But then Age presents a different mountain. It had always bothered me what would happen when Age decides to take away my strength, take away my sight, take away my hearing. How can i scale a mountain like that? How do folks live with the constant pain in their bodies? How do you come to terms with the permanent handicap?

It is there that I remember our blind and deaf friends. If everybody is unique, what is a handicap? If we cannot see, how much more will we be able to hear?

Age must be life's greatest Justice. It gives everybody one chance to live a struggle you cannot conquer, so that once in your life, you get one compelling chance, to come to terms with yourself. It is not life wanting have the last laugh, but life, telling you, in case you never managed to see, that the biggest mountain that you have unknowingly been struggling with all this while, is really yourself.

Photography, when paired with Tourism, is a very frightening thing. It does not speak of experience; it speaks of conquest. That is why I don't really take photographs anymore. When I do, I try not to be part of the picture - so that my photographs would not tell a story about what I have conquered, but the story of what conquered me.

The premise of photography shouldn't be about what you can capture on film, but how the world around you had so captivated you.

fashion

Give me anything, anything at all, and I can tell you what I like about it, and why. But it would be my own perspective, run through my own design sense; I cannot really say I understand fashion - at least not in the sense of being able to give you a reason why I would love a prada and hate an LV. But I think Fashion, is one of the most important industries in recent civilization.

For a lot of people, glamor is the heart of Fashion. The Runway, the price tag, the Names. Fashion has this power to infect people with its own sense of design - why one color is "correct" and another is "wrong". It creates an idea about what a bag or a shoe is, packages that idea into a product, brands the product into a merchandise, broadcasts the merchandise through the media and retail to create a sensation, and finally runs it through Society's set of values and mechanisms and filters it into a Desire. Fashion transforms an Ideas into a Desire - the dream of every industry with a commercial focus. Other industries tend to squeeze every last drop of commercial value out of each Desire, cascading less desired products down to more budget-friendly lines to present a "fuller" range of products, but Fashion, doesn't recycle. It creates new Ideas all the time.

In Fashion, new ideas supersede old ideas rapidly. As much as each idea creates in its own right a unique desire that shapes people's shopping lists and budgets, old ideas get thrown out like it's worth nothing, all the time. This change, to me, is not unlike the change of the times. Every time a new world order comes into play, the old one would be worth nothing from its perspective. Some choose to persist in the old order - many would view these as not coming to terms with reality. For most people, what reality is, would depend on the size and shape of the Desire that created it. Just like how gods in ancient times were defined by the shape and size of the demographics of their worshipers. That's right - through the times, so much has changed, yet so much more hasn't.

I'm not trying to saying that Fashion is the new Religion. What I'm trying to say here is that, all history has one single theme - constant change. And as far as I can understand Fashion, no industry rests its whole existence on constant change, as much as Fashion. If I could be given two words to sum up what Fashion is, it would have to be "changing glamor".

Yes, Fashion represents how our lives are run and how the seasons weave in and out of the times. It's a way of life. It's my way of life. That being said, I still hold that buying branded is, strictly optional.

f(action) -> reality
f(style) -> action
f(character) -> style
f(development) -> character
f(ambition) -> development
f(inclination) -> ambition
f(self, reality) -> inclination

我如是海。有水而满，却不可满。有水而是，却不是水。无水而空，却不是空。取尽其水则见不得，换尽其水则灭不得。如水滴，滴入海则见不得，分不得，取不得。反问何是海何非海？无海既是海，分不得是海与非海。无我既是我，分不得是我与非我。

你看到空，还是看到色？

Perhaps one of the great mis-accidents of the English Language is its differentiation between "hearing" and "listening", "looking" and "seeing". It creates in the English-speaking psyche an awareness of the cognitive mind that interprets the signals sent out by the senses. Fortunately or not, it makes us always eager to seek out the intention in the words and the meaning in the sights, so that we can perceive what is critical, and understand what is important. We want not just to be hearing, but to be listening, not just to be looking, but to be seeing. We interpret sights and sounds once we sense the slightest indicators - and pigeonhole them into our library of experiences.

But sometimes, we get so caught up with this business of experiencing that we forget to feel what's really around us. Once we match what we see or feel to our experiences, we don't hear the sound in the ears, but the sounds in our minds; we don't see the sight before our eyes, but the visuals in our heads - we try so hard to listen to that "inner voice" that we become deaf the music of the spheres.

Our vocabulary of experiences is both our greatest ability and our biggest handicap. When we attach words to experiences, we give meaning to them. We become able to contain all our experiences within the framework of a language - and words, in representing our experiences, become our experiences.

That is when we need to take a step back, and feel what is really around us instead of rushing into finding meaning in it. We need to learn to hear the "white noise" our brains so conveniently filter out, we need to smell the air, and we need to see the circle in the letter "o". We need to connect back to reality, and not let language remove us from our surroundings. We need to be here now. We need to be "here" in location, and "here" in time.

And I hope you don't manage to read this far. Because if you do, then you are here with me, and that's not where I hope you to be. Words have led you here. Words have created for you Meaning for being here. Words have created Questions. And Questions have created the Need for Answers.

Don't come here searching for answers, because there is none. Go, go back to where you are and find the reality around you. When you sit on the floor, don't ponder. Feel the floor, and feel yourself sitting on the floor. The floor you sit on is not asking you a question - why should you try so hard to find an answer on it?

Listen to the noise
-------------------

Our brains cannot handle a lot of things at one time. But the brain does very clever tricks. It learns to attach meaning to things. It then categorizes, prioritizes and filters out unimportant things so that we need to pay attention only to "important" things - things that threaten our survival, or things that can ensure our safety. I think it's all part of evolution, and the peak of our survival instinct. Attaching meaning to things keeps us in the game; it makes sense of the world - it makes sense of fear, it makes sense of happiness, and it makes sense of desire, and of sadness.

But the problem is, sometimes, the brain decides that so many things are important that we have everything in our face and nothing we can ignore. In trying to minimize the amount of noise we hear, our brain as a result gives us more noise - noise created by meaning - and we fail to hear the real noise - we stop hearing noise as it is, and stop seeing the world as it is. Reality gets filtered by our perceptions, and I think the opinion of most people is that there's nothing you can do about it.

But i think if you try really hard, and listen to the noise - you will start hearing the noise as it is. Your inner noise will be stilled. And you will find the place where meaning is made. And if you can stop that meaning from being made, I think fear, happiness, desire, and sadness can disappear. But I had a lot of difficulty listening to the noise - my mind tries to form images to match the noise i hear. That would create meaning. But my unfamiliarity with hearing the world, did make it easier to hear the world as it is. I wonder what it is like to be profoundly blind. Would hearing be as sight? Or is there no blindness where there is no sight?

I'm sorry this is written with such an assuming voice. I just need to put down what's in my mind.

It's the second time we met
---------------------------

Ten years
In the galaxies' history
Would be a single momment, held still in a thought
Like us now
With my body curled up in the orbit of your embrace.

I have seen your thoughts from afar
Radiating like light from a sea of flames
Dancing to a rhythm I had taken for granted to be
The ticking of your mind, until now. I am surprised
By this warmth near your face,
Surprised by these full lips
And the gentleness of your gaze - it is strange
How an hour could put away
Distances separated by time.

In a while we would be back each to our own orbit
And it leaves me wondering,
How the math of two orbital periods
Shall let us meet again.

Give me a song
  for the feint hearted
  when the night stretches itself out too long
  and the noise of day long departed
  in the darkness that swallows up every word
  written in the sand
Give me a song that dives below the surface
  and gently lifts
  fallen notes with its chords into a harmony
  that puts the beating back into the heart
  in the night of disappointment and fatigue
  the heart cannot speak

And I will wrap it around myself
Like a down blanket in winter
And learn to believe again
In its promises of Spring

Read me a poem
  not weaved with words but with pauses
  in between words that just happen to be there;
  Words are always eager to spell out every sin the mind can conceive
  but broken lines can fit together
  the sky and the sea
Read me a poem
  and breathe it into my ears
  and let it embrace my being
  like a cocoon wrapping around a caterpillar
  eager to know 
  the smell of the wind

And I will sleep like a baby in the cradle
I will learn to forget the future I know
And perhaps when I wake up in the middle of the night
The breasts will be there for me to suckle.

the morning i die

what will it be like
on the morning i die
will there be quarrels left unsettled
last minute goodbyes
i love yous left unspoken
will it be a rainy morning with mozarts requiem playing in a chapel
will it be peacetime or war among the debris
the morning it is proclaimed
eddie is dead

will dad and mum be still alive
or will i outlive them and be able to spare them of such deep loss
will the languages of capitalism and kindness still be spoken
the morning on the day
i exist no more

what will it be like
on the morning i die
will this text be read
by who and to who
and what memories should it invoke what legacy should it recount
on the day dear ones gather in my name
because i exist no more

will they be there
those who knew my soul
and those who knew my body
who saw how exitement tingled through my whole being
and breathed the same air
that kept me alive in my darkest hours
will they be there
those who had been there the day i arrived
who celebrated thence giving thanks for every hour eddie was there

(still editing)

想念以前 -- 想念以前的将来，想念以前的梦。

happiness, i think, is a response to an exciting energy.

when you hit a drum with a mallet, it makes what is usually called a "sound".
perhaps happiness is like this "sound" thing.
when some invisible mallet hits you, you vibrate and emit "happiness".

happiness is not an emotion. happiness is not a motion.
it is a response to an exciting energy.
it is the product of an energy in motion rather than an objective or a feeling.

happiness is not love. love may end in happiness. but it may not.
different people vibrate to different energies, so not everyone
vibrates to love.

that is why nobody can tell you what happiness is, or how you can be happy.

happiness is not a specific manifestation, but manifestations add to
describe what happiness is. happiness is a class of manifestations. it is a template, a virtual class, an idea, rather than a particular instance.

some people find happiness in purpose. some people find happiness in being together. some people find happiness in discovery. some people find happiness in being able to hold together ideas and make sense in its totality.

some people find happiness in roller coaster rides.

but since happiness is the product of an energy, sustained happiness would require a sustained source of that energy.

of course you will first have to figure out what that energy is.

perhaps conditioning and religion can help condition you to resonate to a prescribed energy.

but everybody is different.

some people may find happiness in disrespect, in unbelief, in putting people down. is it fair to say that their unfortunate past made them so?
you are just as unfortunate that your past made you whatever you are.

ideas evolve because ideas get shared. we are all part of some brainwashing.

so let's have a little respect for other people's happinesses, and see how we can fit them in.

Make your mbox attachments searchable in Thunderbird.

#!/bin/perl 
# filename : mboxtagattachments
# usaage   : cat Inbox | mboxtagattachments > newInbox
#            searcch tag "X-META-01" in thunderbird

$OUTPUTENCODING = "UTF-8";

use MIME::Base64 qw( encode_base64 decode_base64 );
use Text::Iconv;
use Data::Dumper;

$STATE = "INIT";
$LASTLINE = 1;
while (($_=) || $LASTLINE) {
        if (!$_) {
                $LASTLINE = 0;
                $_ = "From -";
        }
        s/[\n\r]*$//g;
        $_ .= "\r\n";
        if (/^From -/) {
                if ($RAW_PROLOG) {
                        ## -------------------------------------------
                        ## HANDLE MAIL THAT ENDED
                        ## -------------------------------------------

                        %subvalues = getSubValues($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"});
                        $CHARSET = $subvalues{"charset"};

                        # print STDERR "$CHARSET\n";
                        # if ($CHARSET) {
                        #        $MAIL_BODY = Text::Iconv->new($CHARSET, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert($MAIL_BODY);
                        #}
                        #print STDERR Dumper(\%MAIL_HEADER);

                        print $RAW_PROLOG;
                        for (keys %MAIL_ATTACHMENTS) {
                                $fn = $MAIL_ATTACHMENTS{$_};
                                if ($fn =~ /[^[:alnum:][:punct:][:space:]]/) {
                                        if ($CHARSET) {
                                                $fn = Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $CHARSET)->convert($fn);
                                        }
                                }
                                print "X-META-01: $fn\r\n";
                        }
                        print $RAW_HEADER;
                        print "\r\n";
                        print $RAW_BODY;
                }
                $RAW_PROLOG = $_;
                $RAW_HEADER = "";
                $RAW_BODY = "";
                %MAIL_HEADER = ();
                $MAIL_BODY = "";
                %MAIL_ATTACHMENTS = ();
                $STATE = "HEADER";
                $KEY = "";
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "HEADER") {
                if (/^\s*$/ && ($MAIL_HEADER{"From"} ne "")) {
                        $STATE = "BODY";
                        if ($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"} =~ /multipart/) {

                                %subvalues = getSubValues($MAIL_HEADER{"Content-Type"});
                                $partbody_boundary = $subvalues{"boundary"};

                                %partbody_headers = ();
                                $partbody_count = 0;
                                $partbody_filename = "";
                                $KEY = "";
                                $STATE = "PART-HEADER";
                        }
                } else {
                        if (/^X-META-01:/) {
                                next;
                        } else {
                                $RAW_HEADER .= $_;
                        }
                }
                if (/^\s/) {
                        chomp;
                        $KEY = $PREVKEY;
                        $VALUE = $_;
                } else {
                        ($KEY, $VALUE) = /^(\S[^:]*):(.*)/;
                        $PREVKEY = $KEY;
                }
                if ($KEY eq "Subject") {
                        $VALUE =~ s/^\s*//;
                        $VALUE = decode($VALUE);
                }
                if ($KEY) {
                        $MAIL_HEADER{$KEY} .= $VALUE;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "PART-BODY") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                if (/$partbody_boundary/) {
                        {
                                ## -----------------------------------
                                ## HANDLE COMPLETED PART
                                ## -----------------------------------

                                %subvalues = getSubValues($partbody_headers{"Content-Type"});
                                $partbody_filename = decode($subvalues{"name"});

                                if ($partbody_filename eq "") {
                                        %subvalues = getSubValues($partbody_headers{"Content-Disposition"});
                                        $partbody_filename = $subvalues{"filename"};
                                }

                                # if ($partbody_filename eq "") {
                                #         for (my $c=0 ; $subvalues{"filename*$c*"}; $c++) {
                                #                 $partbody_filename .= $subvalues{"filename*$c*"};
                                #         }
                                #        $partbody_filename = decode($partbody_filename, "url");
                                # }

                                if ($partbody_filename) {
                                        $MAIL_ATTACHMENTS{$partbody_count} = $partbody_filename;
                                }

                                # print "PART $partbody_count\n";
                                # print Dumper(\%partbody_headers);
                                # print "FILENAME $partbody_filename\n";
                                # print $partbody;
                        }
                        $STATE = "PART-HEADER";
                        $partbody = "";
                        $partbody_count++;
                        $partbody_filename = "";
                } else {
                        $partbody .= $_;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "PART-HEADER") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                if (/^\s*$/) {
                        $STATE = "PART-BODY";
                }
                if (/^\s/) {
                        chomp;
                        if ($_) {
                                $partbody_headers{$PREVKEY} .= "\n".$_;
                        }
                        next;
                } else {
                        ($KEY, $VALUE) = /^(\S[^:]*):(.*)/;
                        if ($KEY && $VALUE) {
                                $partbody_headers{$KEY} = $VALUE;
                        }
                        $PREVKEY = $KEY;
                }
                next;
        }
        if ($STATE eq "BODY") {
                $RAW_BODY .= $_;
                $MAIL_BODY .= $_;
                next;
        }
}

sub getSubValues {
        my $value = shift @_;
        my %subvalues = ();
        my $initial;
        my $oldvalue = "";

        ($initial, $value) = $value =~ m/^([^;\n\r]*)[;[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/sg;
        $subvalues{""} = $initial;
        while ($value) {
                ($key, $value) = $value =~ /([^=]*)=(.*)/s;
                if ($value =~ /^"/) {
                        ($keyvalue, $value) = $value =~ /"([^"]*)"[[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/s;
                } else {
                        ($keyvalue, $value) = $value =~ /\s*([^;[:space:]]*)[;[:space:]\n\r]*(.*)/s;
                }
                $subvalues{$key} = $keyvalue;
                if ($oldvalue eq $value) {
                        break;
                }
                $oldvalue = $value;
        }
        return %subvalues;
}

sub encode {
        my $fn = shift @_;
        my $encoding = shift @_;
        my $charset = shift @_;
        if ($charset eq "") {
                $charset = $OUTPUTENCODING;
        }
        if ($encoding eq "url") {
                $fn = "$charset''".URLEncode(Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $charset)->convert($fn));
        } else {
                $fn = encode_base64(Text::Iconv->new($OUTPUTENCODING, $charset)->convert($fn));
                chomp($fn);
                $fn = "=?$charset?$fn?=";
        }
        return $fn;
}
sub decode {
        my $fn = shift @_;
        my $encoding = shift;
        if ($encoding eq "url") {
                $fn =~ s/([^']*?)''([^;]*?);/Text::Iconv->new($1, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert(URLDecode($2))/eg;
        } else {
                $fn =~ s/=\?([^\?]*?)\?([^\?]*?)\?([^\?]*?)\?=/Text::Iconv->new($1, $OUTPUTENCODING)->convert(decode_base64($3))/eg;
        }
        return $fn;
}
sub URLDecode {
        my $theURL = $_[0];
        $theURL =~ tr/+/ /;
        $theURL =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9]{2,2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
        $theURL =~ s///g;
        return $theURL;
}
sub URLEncode {
        my $theURL = $_[0];
        $theURL =~ s/([\W])/%".uc(sprintf("%2.2x",ord($1)))/eg;
        return $theURL;
}
exit;

And remember that you're a star.

If there are so many people on earth past and present
Then surely every star must be special to someone;
Someone, who will look up each night
To whisper his thoughts in a voice so soft that
It can only be heard by the very star he is talking to.

Surely every star has a story to listen to each night -
The story of a busy day, the story of a day lost in the streets,
The story of a sudden joy in the heart, the story of deep grief -
Surely, in the wide vacuum of space,
Someone is out there to paint your universe with the colors of the earth, because
Space is so cold, it's hard to stay alive
Out there all alone, trying to shine
If there isn't a someone to shine for.

Yes, there are the brighter stars
Who have a larger following
But remember that you are less bright
Only because you are a little further away,
A little more special,
And a little more precious,
Casting your light through the distances of space -
The same distance that stretches out your light so thin,
Is the only ruler long enough to measure
The inspiration you give that someone, so precious,
You had chosen to shine all your life for
But just haven't met.