Seven bloody pounds

A while ago, someone mentioned that Seven Pounds is a great film. Recently I watched it in order to appreciate how great this film was but it appeared to me a total nonsense. It was about a man, out of negligence involved in a traffic accident which killed seven people (including his beloved wife). Then, he was living in guilt and tried to do something to compensate this irreversible fault. So this film was all about his ‘over-compensation’, and the most ridiculous part at the end, he killed himself in order to spare his heart to somebody. To me, this is merely transferring his guilt to somebody else. If I were the receiver of the organ, I would probably unable to live with myself if I knew that someone committed suicide to have his heart recycled, for my sake!!

A lot of time, people showing some ‘nice’ gestures to other people are not solely out of kindness. They are more or less doing it for themselves. What they did will make themselves feel good, or at least better, but not really for the sake of other people, or genuinely care about them. There are all kinds of selfish act in this world, but I guess being kind to be selfish is the easiest way to camouflage your own shortcoming. For example, you beg for forgiveness not because you thought you have hurt someone. You probably want to get rid of the guilt which is bothering you, or at some point, you still want the relationship to continue. Sometimes I wonder if I am getting less and less appreciative to people’s kindness. But deep inside me, I just cannot convinced myself that what they did are really so selfless! I don’t find things as ‘touching’ as they appeared to be, like tears do not necessary represent sadness or how deep one’s feeling. It represents a moment of emotional turmoil. The more I see, the more distant I feel my connection to this world of humans, and the things they did! To me, it is nothing wrong to be selfish and self-centred, as long as it does not affect other people, or they have to bear any adverse consequences to make your life complete.

Eclipse

We can see the eclipse today in Hong Kong! Colleagues got a sun filter so we take our turn to watch the eclipse and it was amazing! I called my friend at once so he could see it from his end but he said he has not got a sun filter. On the news they said we can use an x’ray negative as a filter but I mean it is ugly to hold out our lungs’ x’ray and probably what we thought as an eclipse could be the spot on our lung!

Just to share with you, this is a tiny picture of what happened. If you enlarge the picture to 200%, you can actually see it quite clearly. It is the middle spot I am talking about, which is in the shape of a half moon but it is in fact the remaining part of the sun. The rest of the sun is being shadowed by the moon. In Shanghai, they can see the full eclipse which means about 6 minutes of day time has turned into the night.

In India, eclipse meant bad luck and a lot of people have to wash out their bad luck in the river. As it turned out, two people were squash to death. Bad luck, I think most of the time, we induce it into ourselves!

How to be environmental friendly

All the stores and supermarkets in Hong Kong have stopped giving plastic bags, and a waste disposal tax has to be charged if you asked for one.

In fact, I realized that I got far too many environmental friendly bags at home. When I purchased a pair of shoes, they put them inside an environmental protection bag. When I purchased a dress, they put it in a trendy environmental reusable bag. Something perhaps one will not chuck out but will never take it out to reuse again. They don’t really go with carrots and onions. Then I found my cupboard is now full of bags which I never reuse, but I am still asking for plastic bags to hold my grocery shopping, even they aren’t free. The fact it, it isn’t really wasted. I used them to dispose my garbage or as bin liners. It works the same way.

Perhaps I should try to remember taking a bag with me when I am going out, just like checking on my keys before I shut the door (remembering the consequences if I don’t) but I am not used to the idea yet. Or perhaps the supermarket till should give out a siren when one is paying for a plastic bag, telling people that this alien here is contaminating the earth, then I shall probably bear that in mind the next time. 

What next if I am now finding too guilty to ask for a bag? I juggle with the items instead. The other day, I was juggling with a carton of milk, two cups of yogurt and a bag of French beans. And I saw my flat mate coming home holding a lemon on top of the Marigold. In fact, outside the supermarket, it is not unusual to see people balancing 5 kg of rice with a packet of 12 eggs, or struggling with a big water melon, walking like a heavily pregnant woman. With constant training, I guess we can all work in the circus but the end of the year.

Conditional and unconditional

I spent my entire life searching for love, and most of the time I was disappointed and hurt. From the time I was only a kid to my adulthood, and into my mid-life, I felt I was going round in a circle and had learned nothing about love at all. Until I have my dog Champagne three years ago, (in fact I longed for a dog since I was a kid), I learned all about love from a dog, and that kind of love is unconditional. There and then I know that for us human, when we talk about love, we are fooling ourselves and other people. How much do we actually know about love?

To me, the most immature kind of love is the love between men and women. A lot of time, we want to be loved more than we want to love, or at least we expect everything to be reciprocated. If it did not happen that way, we felt hurt, disappointed and being cheated. When I came to think about this, love to most people is just a deal, a bargain. I love you subject to this and that. There are always some conditions attached.

I am just one of these people not until I have kept a puppy three years ago. I love him, just as simple as that. He makes me happy and even he annoys me, I love him all the same. I just want the best for him. And if someone loves him more, I won’t feel jealous but only grateful, and want him to share more of their love. It was only then that I realized when you really love somebody, your love can be unconditional and not possessive. You won’t throw your tantrum, or return the same bitter ‘favour’ simply because he/she does not fulfill your expectation. I mean when you still feel that way, perhaps you have to rethink. Your love to someone may not as deep as you claim/thought. Since then, I would only appreciate an unconditional love, either to others or others unto me. And only you can give your love unconditionally can you feel it the same way from other people, i.e. he may not say a lot on how much you meant to him, but you know he does through his act, and not merely words. This is the deepest kind of love.

Valentine’s Day on Saturday

Unlike some post I read in Xanga, I do not detest Valentine’s Day as much those bloggers. I just think it is an occasion for a laugh, and quite entertaining indeed. Imagine you eat heart shape chocolates, heart shape steak and heart shape dessert, I wonder your poo will come in heart shape too!

The fact that it falls on a Saturday this year brings a lot of disappointment to the florists. Certainly less people will order flowers because it is on a Saturday. The office is closed and hence no chance for the girls to show off their bouquet. They don’t really want their bouquet to be sent to their home. There’s no point to show them to their parents or siblings. They want to show them to their colleagues, you see.

For some show-off addicts, they simply want flowers to be delivered to their office on Friday, a day before Valentine’s Day, just to satisfy their show off desire. And I love to identify those people too. I just found the whole scenario amusing more than anything else. You got that bunch of flowers so everybody can see it, and it will be left in the office for the weekend, and by the time you come back on Monday, it is about time to bin it! But under our current financial crisis, we do need these lousy people to boost the economy.