Wisdom is the integral essence of inner beauty, and to achieve this essence, one must be enthusiastic and open-minded. Enthusiastic to learn as many things as possible, open-minded enough to not discriminate against anything one reads, sees and listens. It should not matter whether you agree with the subjects or objects, you should accept that you want to learn the subjects or the objects, then the rest should come from your deepest truth to analyze them, just bare in mind that your truth is your truth, even when people disagree with you. If you find that you cannot decide if you agree or disagree with the subject matter, try to look for more truth to that matter, you should repeat the process till you are comfortable with what you think is the ultimate truth.
In addition, you should always have an open mind to evaluated others point of view. I get really angry when people are so myopic to the point that they only select what they “believe” is the true even when evidences from others present themselves. Close mindedness like this is as good as Ann Coulter, Bill O’Railey, and many others from Fox News.
Sometimes I just do not understand that with a handful of modern technology, especially internet, people should be able to improve their knowledge leaps and bounds. I am always telling people whom I come in contact with that if I have had internet as advance as right now, I would have been a million time wiser then what I am right now.
I remember when we were doing research for our paper back then, we have to bury ourselves in the library for days on ends just to get a topic down. Friends my age should be able to remember what microfiche is all about. Now, you have can google or baidu for almost anything under the sun. I can google my Rick Tan and the internet will come up with millions of hits on me, sometimes I think that the computer knows me better then I know myself.
I do believe that one should be very good at what they do for a living but too much concentration on your only job knowledge and disregard other interest outside you working environment or things that does not concern you is just as good as living your life like a zombie. Ask yourself what you think zombies do everyday? They just have one thing in their “dead minds”, if they even have one to begin with, they just want to feed themselves even when they have so much time at their hand, since they can’t get any deader, I feel sad that they don’t do anything else at all.
Only ignorant people say ignorance is bliss. Only an ignorant person believes that ignorance is bliss. For those who find themselves being lazy to work on their mind, I really pity them. I'm blessed for the quest of knowledge and wisdom, by pursuing the truth and wisdom makes me feel alive and happy.
I choose not to agree with clichés. I feel sorry for the people who do. Always remember, material goods and money can disappear in many circumstances like fire, quakes, robbery... but no one can actually rob you from your intellect while you are still alive.
Ignorant people, being oblivious to their environment, tend not to possess a sense of emergency quality. They won’t weight out their options and give alternative solutions to the future unforeseeable disasters, why would they? Being ignorance is, by definition, simply not wanting to know anything else… period!
I’m anything but an ignorant person; I like to know many things under the sun, from technology to archeology, from philosophy to psychology and the list goes on, the only thing I’m not interested in is sports but, by no mean, not all sports, it’s the contact sports that I’m applaud. I can tell you why contact sports are so profitable? It’s rough, it’s easy to understand, there is not days and nights of rehearsals. If half of the money that goes to sports can be redirected to the artistic fields, then I think the world could be more beautiful.
Sports, in general, do not create beauty, on the contrary art does. If male leaders of each individual country could stop telling the world which sport team they follow, and start telling people which ballet or opera they love, maybe we will have a world that’s less indulgence to war and genocide. Sport is about winners and loosers, do you see ballet or opera dwelling in this concept? It’s the “superego” the leader has been shaped.
Sport is associated with toughness, on the other hand, art is associated with being feminine. In order not to show their soft spot, they have to build a façade of a mindless “terminator from the future”. Not that there is anything wrong with showing off the softer side of a man, only the ultimate man who is secured enough has the sensibility to not hide that quality that’s, in my eyes, admirable. I don’t hide my disdain towards anything associated with sport for the mere fact that the money could have been better utilize for beautifying the world.
The above mention was just a minuet portion of my Zen and view towards the differences between stupidity vs. smart, hooligans vs. sophistication, masculine vs. feminine, but I haven’t even touch on the subject of intellect vs. wisdom. And to me wisdom is the ultimate nirvana that an individual could achieve.
Wisdom is utmost you can do to achieve the ultimate inner beauty. If you are able to philosophize you knowledge, then you will be able to accumulate your wisdom much easier. Knowledge is like a piece of raw material and philosophy is like a sculptor, a sculptor might be given a piece of beautiful marble; it’s raw, unpolished, unimaginative, but when Michael Angelo starts to put his creativity into the stone, he starts chipping away the rough edges, follow by refining his work with finer tools revealing every curves and every lines of David, Michael Angelo start nurturing David into life by polishing him. Viola, David was born.
Some people have a “philosophizing deficiency”. It’s as unexplainable an most of the auto immune disease, no body can explain why and there is no known cure. You can explain it as old soul vs. new soul. I don’t want to quote anybody around that has the deficiency, people gets to testy about that, but I can tell you who don’t; My mentor Dee, Dan, Michael, my friend Rebecca, Damien, Gidania, Jane, my Friday Night Café Flore Gang, and they are all consider old soul.
For those who hasn’t been tested for this deficiency, you don’t have to rush to clinic nearby for screening but you should know yourself better. The only screening I can think of is to talk to me and within 5 minutes I size you up enough to tell you if you suffer from this deficiency. But how can people like us lead if we expect everybody to be like us? The truth is, if everybody is philosophical enough, we don’t leader nor do we need followers. Now, imagine a world that we able to talk about issues with one another, exchange ideas and philosophize thought with one another, we can take and reciprocate at the same time one an equal level without watering the conversation down… What a wonderful world it would have been.
“Beauty comes from inside” is an age old common expression, though it’s an utter cliché, it’s hold some truth to it. To see if a person has inner beauty all you have to if a very has self-confidence. To have self-confidence is to be secure, to be secure is to have enough wisdom. Self-confidence and secure is not mutually exclusive; a person exuding self-confidence does not automatically make a person secure, where as if a person is secure, the possibility that a person is confidence is more evident then not.
The thing around our waistline is call white fat, those are bad fat. Remember when we were still babies, we were fat but that was "baby fat". Guess what, i want my baby fat back. Here is why...
While I was writing the sequal to Vanity Insanity. I stumbled across somthing that's so interesting that I'm willing to be the guinea pig for the human trial.
It is true, it’s coming to fruition in probably about a few years. Imagine, a fat cell that doesn’t look like a fat cell, instead it looks like muscle cell. That’s not the end of it; it helps metabolize your white fat.
Wow, now all I have to do is just probably a little bit of weight training and a little bit of cardio, and yippy, I don’t have to slave myself in the gym anymore!!! It’s a win win.
Here I have to stress that the entire working out five days a week for me is purely vanity, and if the up side to this vanity benefits my health? Hey I’m not complaining.
Recently, I have been working out five days a week. It is though to wake up in the crack of dawn and hit the gym at 7am in morning, by the way, I love working out at this time is because I don’t have to wait for any machine. There are less people around so the air is way fresher in the gym in the early morning.
Everyday, Monday to Friday, I have my share of about 1 to 1.5 hours of work out and 10 to 15 minutes of shower room routine, i.e. from hitting the shower to finishing up my hair to walking out the gym looking like a supermodel just finishing a fashion shoot. It’s not narcissistic talking; I can sense numerous pairs of eyes following me everyday when I get out of the shower room heading towards the exit. I might strike a magnum to just shock them while they are working out sometime, and be content when they drop their weight.
Pop two hydroxycuts, two eggs in 30 minutes before workout, 30 minutes of Cardio follow by another 30 minutes to an hour of free weight exercise, an hour thereafter before I eat my breakfast for energy, all for in the name of vanity.
The heaviest I’ve ever been is 90kgs or 198 lbs, after the routine, though I weigh in at 83kgs or 182 lbs. Although I wish I could have gone back to my 78kg or 172lbs, I’m happy that I have gain muscle mass and loose at least 15% of body fat. If I’m consistent, I might be able to reduce my body fat to 12%.
That’s just the anatomy side of the story. I haven’t even touched on the subject of exterior and inner beauty yet. I have been plugged, and buffed and quaffed for at least a quarter of a century. I will disassemble my body into three parts, head, torso and lower body, and explain what I have to do in order to be a “contemporary perfect” person. I’ll explain what I meant by “contemporary perfect”.
First, let’s start with my head, top down. I’m a guy who knows what I want and can actually direct my hairstylists to create a look that I look good in. In hindsight, I believe that one style should be able to create several looks. I have been a model since I can remember, I have seen million of looks been created on me during photo shoot and fashion shows. Process of elimination allows me to understand myself better, and trust me, not all the looks that were been created suited me. Now that I’m older and wiser, I understand that you don’t have to look like a clown even when the situation ask for it.
In a perfect world, you will be able to work with the only one hairstylist who know how to create a perfect hairdo for you, and he will experiment his new stylistic expression that quaff a perfect hairdo that compliment your face structure.
Ask yourself this question, who knows you better then yourself? The answer is not really simple but obvious; it’s obvious because you spend 24/7 with yourself, and it is not simple because if you aren’t a sensitive person, it’s hard to know yourself even if you spend your sleeping hour dreaming about yourself.
Maybe I’m luckier than many people for I have been through all these makeover, or maybe I’m the unlucky one for been scrutinized and judge by the circle I’m in, may it be my work or social life, how I look everyday. Either way, I never complaint for this is what I have chosen and I’ll live with the consequences. In my opinion, this influences my judgment on beauty. They say, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, but when a colossal of people didn’t appreciate the beauty, the beauty in that beholder will fade.
Let’s continue with my face, I plug my eyebrow as soon as my eyebrow start bushing up. I’m Chinese and Chinese eyebrow tends to be less streamline. I have friends that urge me not to even touch my eyebrow cause that’s the sign of manliness. I ask them, so when your hair starts growing, and you feel like it’s out of control, you look bad when your hair has grown out, you look like a scarecrow, what would you do? The answer is usually, “a haircut”.
Well, what’s the different between cutting one’s hair and plugging one’s brow? Different era defines beauty differently; in the western world, there are words like baroque, gothic, rococo, art deco, modern and post modern to name a few. These are words that describe art movements in a certain era. So, aren’t these movements a way beauty standards are defined? We live in a different era right now, an era that uses the word metrosexual to describe man with an “exquisite” taste that is acquired by a straight man with gay sensitivity.
We, or at least my friends and I, are more cosmopolitan these days, we are expose to the latest trend, and there is a certain etiquette we must observe to make the cut. We manicure ourselves from head to toe, taking the cue from InStyle, GQ, Esquire and Wallpaper alike, to make us feel like super stars. Their skins are smooth and flawless, their brow are streamline and symmetry, lips are plum and bee stunk…
There are also this thing that pertain to the bible and Confucius that I find explain my point of view; bible says: “Do to others what you would have them do to you”, and Confucius said: “己所不欲,勿施于人”; having seen these images, we can’t help ourselves but to subscript to the new definition of beauty, in my case, these new standards of male image, lure me into plugging my brow, wearing light, “almost invisible”, makeup when attending events, manicure and buff my nails, wax armpit and legs even when my sight of body hair is negligible. I even have mankini waxed and trimmed to look like a porn star.
What I do don’t take away my masculinity, neither does it take robe me from my appeal to whoever I go to bed with. Many, when they notice, were amazed at how much I have to go through to keep myself “perfect”. People might think that keeping this “perfect” image is taxing, but you will come up on top of anyone within your age group.
For my facial routine, it’s very simple, let me break it down: Cleanse, tone and moisturize - daily
Exoliate or Peal - 2-3 times/week
Deep Cleasing Mask - 2-3 times/week
Detox Mask - 2-3 times/week
Deep Moisturizing Mask - 2-3 times/week
Vitimin Mask - 2-3 times/week
While you are doing that, don’t neglect your hands and neck. These age many times faster then your face.
I know this article sounds like a drag, but if you know how you want yourself to look like in the mirror, that’s just what you to have to do to achieve that, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I haven’t even dwelt upon the subject of inner beauty, that’s even more taxing then your appearance maintenance.
If you are a fast driver like me, speeding through highway in Singapore you should know how frustrated one could be, and by the way, speeding don't kill but driver with bad reflexes do. Imagine a 5-lane highway with only no fast lane, trucks and slow cars occupying the rest of the four lanes, leaving only the 5th lane for fast car. And 80% of the time, the only one lane that’s supposedly meant for over taking, was occupied by taxi cruising at speed below the 90km/hr. In my opinion, reeducation on road etiquette is the first step to ease up the congested highway.
I have been driving for more then a quarter of a century, traveled around the world where I have the opportunity to drive in some of the countries I have traveled to and live like France, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, the U.S., Spain, Hong Kong just to name a few. Hence, I’m totally qualified to compare and give my viewpoints on my driving and road traveling experience in these different countries.
First of all, I would like to do a generalization on these countries driving etiquette. Drivers generally fall into two categories, the western and the eastern mentality. In the western mentality, they are polite, patient and respectful while they are in their own premise but once they drive in Non-western countries, they act no better then their eastern counterparts. The phenomenon is just the contrary, when eastern drivers drive in their own countries, they are just the worst driver without any good reflexes, inconsiderate, inpatient and rude but once they drive outside their own countries, you will notice that these drivers are very out of character. Why the behavioral changes you may ask? The answer is simple, it’s know as “lead by examples”
So, is this ill accredited to individuals or the environment? The answer, through my years of observation, is the environment. Though environment is created by the individuals but most importantly, these individuals’ mentalities or lack there of are sculpted by each individual culture and society. Take Singapore for example; a country raised by a government body they encourage a “Kia Su” or “afraid of Loosing”. With this notion instilled in Singaporean’s head, the drivers in Singapore would rather not let you overtake him because that will mean that they are loosing out to you.
I drive in Singapore everyday whenever I come back for vacation . Most of the time, I commute along CTE between Upper Serangoon to KJE exit. Here is what I encounter every time I’m on the highway; streaks of cars trailing behind a very slow moving car on the overtaking fast lane, usually it’s behind a cab and, mind you, I’m not discriminating but this is what I observe so far. Furthermore, to rub salt on the wound, none of the faster cars can overtake using the next left lane, I know it’s wrong to do that but if there is an window of opportunity open to ease the flow of traffic we will have to do it. Here is the kick; the next lane left lane to the overtaking lane is mostly occupied by trucks, which are suppose to drive not faster then 70km/hr. Now, I might not be a prophet but I can pretty much predict that this might cause a slow down in overall traffic flow.
I have notice this time, when I got back recently, that the section of CTE that I mention above had added an additional lane or two to the highway. I personally feel that there is no point adding lane if Singapore driver doesn’t know to stick to their respectively lane. Awareness public announcement is an essential tool to educate them on the etiquette each driver have to observe.
We advertise to the world as a 1st world infrastructure, 1st world building, 1st world financial system, and first world everything, well, except our 3rd world local talents or work force, as advertised by our government, sorry I can resist the temptation to add this statement in… So, while we offer the world our 1st world services, we can must also bare in mind a 1st world mentality goes a long way to show how civilize we are.
I bet anyone who has tuned in Channel 5 of MediaCorp in Singapore would not be able to ignore a bunch or SPG mother fuckers, and trust me, you can’t help but noticed that these girls are not only ugly mother fuckers epitomizing most of the SPG in Singapore but also highlighted their lowly educated dumbness, on TV promoting the recently inaugurated series sponsored and created by FHM.
The question that they asked were simple, though it wasn’t raise throughout the trailer but one should know how the question was phrase for these girls were so straight forward with their answers; The question being… What do you think “S” stands for in S Factor? These were their answers: “Sassy, sexy… Sophisticated…” What da fuck? Sophisticated!!! Don’t they know what they signed up for? Sassy? Maybe… Sexy? I think they are so dumb that they can’t distinguish between sexy and slutty but sophisticated??? What da fuck!!!
This must me the trashiest programming coming from any production ever. I though Keeping up with the Kardashians and Paris Hilton’s Simple life is trashy but, trust me, these are these reality shows pale compare to S Factor which also, come to think about it, gives girls gone wild a run of their money. At least the neither Paris nor the Kardashians speak with an atrocious accent; though contents of their speech that utter out of Paris and the Kardashians mouth sounds dumb but when the girls on S Factor talks, they make me cringe. What are the foreigners that watch out show without any preconception of Singaporean culture thinks? Why is this show approved by the MDA?
I remember that the show I hosted and exec produce for Channel 12, Party Guide for an Urbanite, a few years ago didn’t survive after the first season but yet they kept repeating the show over and over again on TV. I remember that one of the reasons given was that this show is too gay. I was hosted by garret and me, two eloquent presentable metrosexual guy teaching the world how to throw a party, teaching them how to design and cook is way too gay for MDA’s comfort, hence we are asked to inject a girl, another wonderful brianiac host, Vivian Tan to join us after the 5th episodes to “degaify” it. I would like to take this opportunity to urge anyone has a chance to watch it, I have a feeling that you will think that it is not gay at all
This show is demeaning to participants though they don’t mind making a fool of themselves, they should at least have the self-respect. My personal thought for this series is simple; throw in some dumb ugly girls without any self-respect, make them wear as skimpy as possible, have them participate in all the lesbian/homoerotic girl on girl mud fight, and there you have it; a show which the expats would be able to fantasize and objectify the “exotic” looking girls. And I know it’s going to be mostly expat cause many Asian friends of my thought that these girls are so ugly that even with the homoerotic girl on girl is not going to turn them on.
Here is truly my moment of Zen on Singapore programming; I have been in this industry working in many countries and my latest gig was in Beijing, I personally think that Beijing produce has surpass our creativity and production value at least 30 years ahead of Singapore.
Here is what I think MediaCorp is doing. MediaCorp is afraid that they might hurt their rating if then produce any sophisticated or smart content which require comprehending and contemplating on their program, and knowing that Singaporean really don’t mind anything of less quality but it has to be instant gratification, hence the term I coined “seven eleven mentality”, Singapore Media is all about dumbing down to the public, with this direction behind a TV network, you know it’s creating a vicious cycle. This concept of dumbing down to the audience just baffled me, it’s not like Singapore audiences have that many choice of public network to choose from, and having said that, there is no time to loose in upgrading our audience mentality.
Take CCTV for example, they produce highly intelligent series with in old Chinese language. I was lucky to be able to understand cause I was Chinese educated when I was young hence I could understand at least 90% of what the series offer. Being able to host and propose a show in China goes to prove my point. Some of my subordinate’s Chinese are on even up to half of my par. My point is, if I can only understand 90% of classic Chinese conversation without any modern paraphrasing, this is a latent action to have the audience do their own homework so that they don’t have to produce dumb content.
Same goes for Oprah, I would strongly suggest that MediaCorp use Oprah as an role model. Her followings used to be only the lower to lower middle class audience, turning up only trashy programming for her target audience, but with her persistence she finally prevail, and look at her audience right now. She inspires the lower and lower middle class to become a middle to upper middle class.
I hope MediaCorp should take my advise and veer their direction on a complete different path so that wet market “Ah So” or “Ah Chec” know quality when they sees it. And only with this direction can Singaporean shake that stereotype that all the foreigners have towards us.
This is how most of Singapore Females sound like... And I rest my case.
I came across a news from KGO, San Francisco Channel 7 news, about food compost. I have heard of compost from yard trimmings and manure, but food compost? Now, I’m extremely ecstatic, jumping through the roof for this great news.
Each day, despite the hunger that’s going on around the world, first world or the better off developing countries, with excess food supply, threw away tons of perishable to the garbage costing the world it’s environmental and financial baggage. Though we can’t put the waste to a halt but we can’t ease our environment and financial burden composting our putrescible scrapes into a better use. Food compost is the only way we can help our environment when dealing with inconsumable perishables.
We all know that carbon is harmful to the environment. Carbon is been released into the air at a rate that’s so fast our rainforest can’t replace the depleted atmosphere but carbon in the soil is essential to our mother earth. Hence, it’s essential that we replenish our earth with more carbon. The way to go about introducing carbon to the soil is composting food.
Here is the CliffsNotes for food composting. Normally, food scraps are thrown into the garbage much like other household trash. The trash is then trucked to landfills. When decomposition is taking place, they release methane gas to the atmosphere which is 27 times more potent then carbon dioxide.
With the advent for latest composting technology, they are able to trap more carbon in the soil. Microbes love carbon in the soil and with more microbes available, the plants are protected by them, as a result, the plant yield more without introducing pesticide, making them really organic.
I just can’t imagine why we don’t use this technology when it’s available to us. I do urge that Singapore and other countries could follow suite ASAP.
of David, Michael Angelo start nurturing David into life by polishing him. Viola, David was born.
“Beauty comes from inside” is an age old common expression, though it’s an utter cliché, it’s hold some truth to it. To see if a person has inner beauty all you have to if a very has self-confidence. To have self-confidence is to be secure, to be secure is to have enough wisdom.
