being true to oneself when faced with change

Whatever Path we choose in this life, we must always try to be true to ourselves.

It is interesting, I think almost every year I think about this. I think this is the essence of walking a Path, we must always look and watch our steps otherwise it will be easy to loose one's way. I am seeing another side of this too, there are many people out there who, usually with good intentions, try to teach/guide someone along a Path. This is the essence of any student/teacher relationship, and it is necessary to learning. But I think the trick is not to fight this during the teaching, but more about how we decide to truly integrate and use that teaching afterwards. But on the other hand, if the teaching is a completely wrong match, there is nothing wrong with realizing its a wrong direction early on.
Being true to oneself in the face of change and teaching is a difficult thing.

Was it worth it ....

I just finished watching the movie "Life or Something like it" again. It really is pretty good especially for career women types. It is a love story and career story and a story about choices. Of course it is a bit hollywood and the basic message is again trying to tell career women that a power life without love is "meaningless". Of course the main character sees the lights and finds a balance between career, partner, and family. Balance is good and we should always try to search for it. But if one can get past the Hollywood it actually is a good emotional movie with things to think about.

But then the interesting thing was that after the movie I stumbling on a story in Japan Times about a dysfunctional family/marriage. And the thing is that these stories are not uncommon (in any country). I have experienced a dysfunctional relationship and I have friends who have gone through it too.

So was it worth it? Was it worth it choosing a partner, helping raising a family and ending up in a dysfunctional hell for a couple years before deciding to move on? Was it worth choosing a career and finding peace and serenity in a life and oneself and trying to do something to change the world for the better? Was it worth learning to live life and waiting for the right person, but being too old to have children, but being OK with that? Life is choice and there are many potential paths for us to walk down every single minute of every day? What is a "meaningful life"? Is that not something everyone has to figure out for themselves? I don't think anyone can advice others on how to choose the path we each walk. If we are aware of our path and the choices we make, then we should never have doubt about our life and where it has bought us.

Was it worth it ... はい yes, every part and every choice

power and violence

I saw this great quote in the comments of a youtube video

... but I do not care what other people say, violence is never the answer.

Unless there's inescapable cruelty then you should retaliate with whatever you have.

But generally, I'm the one with power, so I like everything to be nice.

Totally sums up human power interactions!!
- People with power want others to be nice so that they retain their power.
- People with power never see the cruelty they cause for others.
- People who do fight back usually do so because they are being treated cruelly and without power.
- Most people who want power do so, not because they want to be cruel to other, but because they want to escape the cruelty being imposed on them by someone who is in power.

30 months in Japan

Wow I just looked back through my blog posts and realized that I arrived in Japan on April 17th, 2007. My 30 month anniversary was 2 days ago. My Japanese language skills are still horrible, but I do still feel completely at home here. In England I was already starting to get itchy feet after 2 years. While here in Japan I just feel like every week I just feel a little more at home. So here is to hoping that I can navigate the bizarre minefield that is personal networking here.

Dating and the City

A friend was telling me all about the series "Sex and the City" so I decided to watch the whole series from start to end. I really love it. Talk about something that really speaks to my generation of career women. wow. But it also makes me realize how much I have fallen out of the dating scene. I tried last year and had some luck .. kind of, but really I think that thing about being away too long and re-virginization may be true. It really does feel like starting all over again. Probably not a bad thing.

But immersing myself in this little TV fantasy may be helping me to focus and build up some courage. The funny thing is that last week, out of the blue, several friends told me that I looked sexy and did I have a date? Funny. Maybe somehow this TV show is helping me realize that I do look good and that I can attract someone right for me in this city of absolutely stunning Japanese women.

Thine own self be true

Not the most earth shattering realization, but just a small thing that I really need to be a better judge of people's character. I am also realizing that people who freely give advice, usually have a personal reason. I have rarely found that someone gives unsolicited advice because they truly care about the other person and are trying to help them avoid some pain. It is just this small little awakening that if I believe in something and am getting close to manifesting a dream, that I should not listen to other people's "advice" at a time like this. I am also seeing that even if someone gives such "bad advice" and are trying to stop me or slow me down, that there is no need for me to get angry at them or change my opinion about them. Yes it means that I really should not trust their "advice", but I already know that.

It is funny, but it is like a person who starts a fight with me and throws a punch. The first time the punch hits me, it hurts, I am shocked and I may get emotional. But over time I become more skilled and aware. And then I reach a point where I see the punch and I deflect it. At that point the anger of the attack, the motivation for the strike no longer matters. The other has become transparent. Today that basically happened to me. I had only a moment of shock when I realized that this person tried to strike me again, to try to knock me off course. But I see how close I am to my dream and how futile his attack was and how weak his point really was.

I saw that wonderful quote of Ayumi Hamasaki about dreams I quoted in a previous blog entry today which helped me put this all together.

disoriented

Yesterday some friends meet up in Yokohama for a very casual B-day day with our friend Alistair. We were all in a very mellow mood so we just enjoyed a lot of walking and drinking. We found a wonderful outdoor cafe area with chairs overlooking part of yokohama bay. We had great dinner and then went to a couple bars. Since the guys were leading, we ended up in some "gaijin" bars (since they knew them). Only my second time in a gaijin bar, but it really is a surreal experience. Both bars where more or less pick-up places for foreign guys and japanese girls. there were the occasional japanese guys, but I think most where there for the bar and not really looking for foreign girls. But the second bar was really disorienting. It was really american and obviously lots of regulars, with people high-fiving the bartenders. Also the waitress had really strong american mannerisms even though she was japanese. I felt like I had to be very american in that bar, and there were lots of american navy types there. really really surreal and disorienting. I actually felt completely out of place there. Not that I have assimilated or become this perfect japanese-like foreigner, but more that I so like and enjoy Tokyo for itself that stepping into such an overt little pocket of American bar scene was really strange and a bit of culture shock. It is strange though because I guess that many would find such a place like home, or a nice relief from Tokyo. Not me.
It did make me realize that most likely any Japanese guy who would consider dating an American, would probably want an American girl who acts like an American. I guess it would be the same in the states, if a foreigner did not speak English well and was trying really hard to fit in and be American, it would just be odd and not really attractive. Now if I spoke japanese then that might be different. Like I said... disorienting...

the sky is falling....

So I am a bit bored and instead of my normal posts I thought I'd do the "blogger" thing of talking about someone elses post. A recent think tank study is showing that that the internet may collapse in a traffic-jam by 2012 and that the first signs of this may start appearing next year in 2010. The internet for all its "distributed-ness" still basically bottlenecks at a few backbone points. The funny thing is that I have been starting to see this over the last year. I used to be able to use most American sites very easily, but recently I have noticed some sites just not responding, but the Japanese version will work nicely. I know there are a lot of "doom" stories going around and a lot of scare tactics and FUD, but this one might actually be not so far off the mark... How many people (myself included) would be able to cope if the internet went down?

an engineers story

I just read an amazing article at Anadtech about the engineering back-story to the ATI RV770 chip. The story is titled The RV770 Story- documenting ATI's road to success. As an engineer who will also devote years to a particular design idea, going from dream, to concrete ideas, to prototypes, to working examples to polishing and enhancing versions this is an amazing story. The life of an engineer or scientist or artist is so different to most people. We devote years of our lives to the creation of a single thing, to a single focus because we believe in it. Most of the rest of world lives under much shorter time scales of focus (quarterly or weekly or 2hr tasks). It is so refreshing to have such a well written story about an engineering story where a team bucked the trend, took a chance, and they got lucky and it paid off.

Bodies Beautiful - Mitsuhiro Mouri

There was an absolutely amazing article in the Japan Times about the work of Mitsuhiro Mouri. Really inspiring and uplifting. So much in life is not very glamorous, that it is really important to appreciate those people who try to walk that fine line of capturing the glamour and elegance of the human body. Makes me really want to try to find a copy of his photobook with Keiko Matsuzaka called さくら伝説 (sakura densetsu).

Nice horoscope

I really like my horoscope today. Just good motivational advice for anyone really

You may be dreaming an impossible dream today, but the truth is that nothing is totally out of the question. Although your fantasies can seem far-fetched to others, you are capable of extraordinary feats this year as long as you maintain your focus on your ambitions. Nevertheless, it's healthier to concentrate on a future that contains a strong practical side to it as well. Keeping one foot on the ground will give you the traction you need to reach your goals with greater success.