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Saturday, November 20, 2010

Simple Pleasures


Each of us can draw our own rainbow. I remember my science teacher teaching us to remember the colors using this: VIBGYOR

V is for Violet, I is for Indigo, B is for Blue, G is for Green, Y is for Yellow, O is for Orange and R is for Red. The colors come in this spectrum.

It is interesting to think of our days as rainbow days. An important day would be a Red Day,like a red letter day.

My day today is Green as there is a feeling of peace and calm. I look at my potted plants and they give me this feeling. The different variety of foliage that I have potted all have their own beauty. Nothing in Nature is ugly. Even the weed has its own beauty. Look at the dandelion, an obnoxious weed to some but its flower is pretty and the weed has some medicinal value too.

To me, looking at my green plants gives me a great deal of pleasure, especially when I see those that have withered and dried up, perking up in new growth after loosening the soil and pushing in some surviving shoots. There is a resilience in these plants just as there is within us, a tenacity to live.
Breathing in the fragrance of the jasmine, which has started to bloom again, is another pleasure. The rainy weather has dampened the flowering and there are few buds but this morning, a shy little jasmine peeked out from the leaves surrounding it. Even the size of the blooms is affected.
Nevertheless it was a lovely surprise.


Just as the flowers need the sun to bloom well, so do our souls need some encouragement to open up and grow. So often we grow but without any real growth within us. Maybe looking on our days as rainbow days and coloring them as such can make a difference. Maybe we can help others to color their days too?

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Celebration, Bonding, & Renewal of Old Friendships

After the tea ceremony in the afternoon, there was a small and cosy dinner in the evening for relatives and old friends, friends from school and college days.

I feel very blessed that my classmates
and college mates came to celebrate my son's wedding.

Most of us are grandparents and there are still avid golfers among us, myself included. Here is one of my golfing buddies, although we don't golf together now as we live in different states, separated by the South China Sea.
Relatives are my siblings and their children and grandchildren and my sole surviving aunt and her daughter. Since we have a big family, there are many of us, the young ones included.

Midway during the dinner there was a rousing "Yam Seng", the toast to the newly married couple. Guests and relatives toasted to their happiness and a fruitful, long-lasting marriage. In Chinese it goes something like this, "till they grow white-haired together".