Journeymen, Random Thoughts from "Life of Pi"

I started reading "Life of Pi" and came across the following. I guess in my post ("Swim Like Pi, Metuchen Y - Dec 24, 2012"), I was not that far off in my interpretation of what Ang Lee was trying to visually represent in the movie.

It was about Mamaji (respectful uncle in Hindi) teaching Pi swimming:

"Swimming instruction, which in time became swimming practice, was grueling, but there was the deep pleasure of doing a stroke with increasing ease and speed, over and over, till hypnosis practically, the water turning from molten lead to liquid light."

Ang Lee is indeed a master. He precisely staged and delivered the image from the original novel.

Masterful!

Well, in my previous post, I was begging for the question, "if it is so effortless, as if you could go on forever like you said, then why only the meager 1,750m as a new record?"

Here is the thing. The record is really the means to an end. It's the way to keep me going. It's not used comparatively to others but rather to my oldself.

In the final analysis, it's not really a matter of how fast you go, neither it is how much you go in one sitting. What's the most important is how often and how far you keep going.

I guess for that matter, life is a journey and we are all journeymen. There is always a new goal, a new record, a new height, or a new.... including new

...pods and pads for you to work hard on.

Next stop $2000m.

Swim Like Pi, Metuchen Y - Dec 24, 2012

New personal swimming record of 70 laps = ~1750m.

I had one takeaway from "Life of Pi" - the smooth swimming, in water so crystal clear, seemingly weightless, obviously effortlessly.

I experienced such a moment when swimming today... as if I could have continued forever, like
Pi=3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510 5820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067982148086513282 3066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055 5964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527 1201909145648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273724587 0066063155881748815209209628292540917153643678925903600113305305 4882046652138414695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193 2611793105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011949 129833673362440656643086021394946395224737190....;

- doggedly pursuing a goal
- never lose hope
- try or die trying.

I digressed.

Swimming, if well controlled, should be a relatively effortless endeavor relative to walking, running or other forms of exercise.

- In the water, you are in an almost weightless environment, you don't have the burden of carrying your own weight.

- The water resistance, of course. That's what the swimming style is for - an optimal combination of position, posture, stroke, etc..

Today with my breast stroke, I seemed to get that touch of effortlessness, trying but not trying, with well controlled breathing pattern. The physical exertion is really not that significant relative to the distance of the swimming.

Instead of a tedious physical exercise, I felt various moments of wonder - of the body gliding through the water.

Now it's time to adjust my free style.

"Swim like Pi."

A Nation in Mourning

A Remembrance

It's as if an old wound never heals but this time it cut to the heart. It got very close and personal as if the enemy is within and around the corner.

How could that happen? People are trying to reconcile an irrational situation.

What happened to our society? People are looking for a deeper cause.

Gun control! That must be THE answer. People are finding a cure.

However, when we are facing someone who is willing to take his own life, no gun control of any kind can stop him. It may check the flows of new guns into the society but how do you deal with 200 million private-owned firearms currently in circulation? When someone is on a mission, he will find access. Gun control is a deterrent but not a cure.

When our 24/7 news cycle intensified the campaign of and increased the publicity of random killings, this is not the kind of journalism that helps a nation heal but rather feeding on the fear and anger of people and satisfying the media's insatiable hunger for sensationalism and an edge over the other networks.

Killers are watching. Crazies are listening. They found the nation's old wound and raw nerves. They will exploit it. They will copycat. That's their way of getting back to a society that, they think, has abandoned them. They have nothing to lose. They are willing to die.

As we are mourning the loss of lives, feeling for the deep pains of the families who lost their dear children, and singing the heroism of the brave guardians, let's take a step back and look at the big picture.

- 911
- Syrian
- Earthquake
- Tsunami
- Holocaust
- World Wars

No innocent deaths are tolerable. No heartless killings are justifiable. Don't want to sound defeatism. Unfortunately, it happened, it is happening, and it will happen again.

So what should we do?

As we are steeling ourselves to look to the future, we need to constantly remind ourselves how fortunate we are who we are and where we are. Our own worries and concerns become trivia and inconveniences in a larger context.

- Hold your loved one tighter.

- Be kind to people around you.

- Lend a helping hand when you can.

- Be more tolerable. Don't feel crossed of YOUR parking slot taken or if someone cut in front of you in the traffic.

- Be thankful of little moments life has to offer.

Live to the fullest!

Random Musings

- went to the mall yesterday. 3pm, parking lot packed. 5:30pm, still packed.

- a relatively large display of sub $200 North Face winter jackets (same price range even for the teenager sizes). Impressive foot traffic.

Prosperity is back. (not sure if it's an "exclamation mark" or a "question mark." I will leave it neutral as a "period" for now.)

- E-Z pass makes life easy but it makes rate increases easy too. A random check of the statement a few weeks ago revealed that a $2.15 charge used-to-be (don't know how long ago) is now over $6. Thought a second, sort of making sense (not economically but for the sake of clerical processing errors), since the standard fare of Garden State Parkway is now $1.50 instead of an easy quarter and a dime.

- my parents came over the weekend. My dad told me that the charge for the luggage cart is now, guess how much, a whopping $5 at JFK.

When the ATM is now dishing out $20s and $50s instead of $10s and $20s, you can tell that inflation is not just lurking around the corner. It's here.

So, low interest rate, easy credit, creeping inflation, persisting high unemployment, those are signs of time. I admire the unsuppressible optimism of our people, but the big question remains, "have we learned from our mistakes that led to the credit crisis?" The pains seemed fading fast in the rear-view mirror and into distant memory.

IS the prosperity truly back?

p.s. Btw, the Christmas gift giving and exchange has become a custom that I found increasingly hard to understand:

- when all things equalized and cancelled out, you end up buying a bunch of stuff for yourself.

- it's not an efficient way of buying either. You are paying someone to guess and get what you really want. Go figure how that will go! The long return line, maybe.

Not being cynical, holiday is a happy time. I am all for spending more than a few hard earned bucks to have some well deserved fun. But keeping boxes of gifts in storage is not one of those grand ideas.

On that note, here is my view of a bargain:

No matter how much of a discount it is, if it's something that you don't really need, a dollar spent is a dollar wasted. It's not a bargain except for the rush or the excitement of the bargain hunting process.

One last word of wisdom, on dealing with the clutter at home, I had this idea for a long while: that is, for everything you get new, you have to get rid of something old. A new pair of pants for an old one ... the list goes on. Pretty straightforward idea but never had the discipline to enforce.

Now, in the weekend's Chinese speech contest, my friend's view, "exposed" by his son's speech, reinforced my idea. A true bargain is:

"Buy one and get rid of one free."

Then you know you are really get what you need and your money has been wisely spent.

Have a happy holiday season!

Note: Originally posted to Facebook on Dec 3, 2012, with some minor touch-ups.