Water water everywhere….

And speaking of crazy relentless monsoon rains …… even sunny Singapore is not spared.

Full story here.

I’m starting with the man in the mirror…….

It was one of those days in the office last week and Chas was with me….

I needed a break and we found our way to a nearby coffee shop; it was raining crazy, the monsoons have hit, and I didn’t want to go far.

And we bumped into an old acquaintance, James Anthony, a local mixed-race gentleman who must be in his late 30s or early 40s …. It is so hard to tell with some of these locals…

James is a very articulate man, even Chas thought so, with his own views on many subjects. A well-traveled man, his job entails that, and exposed, evidently, to many schools of thoughts on many issues of the day. He and Chas talked and the subject of H1N1 vaccine came into focus……James is working for a company marketing one of these vaccines.

Then the topic turned to “ignorance” and how that created much misunderstandings and even conflicts in the world today.

Sarawak, to many and even West Malaysians, is still shrouded in “mystery”. A, believe it or not, frequent question is “Do you still live on trees?” that many Sarawakians find amusing and at the same time, irking.

Most Sarawakians now reply with “Yes, but we got escalators running and every now and then when tree top  wi-fi reception is no good, we head on to the nearest StarBucks for better connectivity” hahahaha…..

And the conversation stretched onto the topic of lack of knowledge and how that might be one of the roots of racism.

I think you would concur with me that most of us fear what we don’t understand and when it comes to kung fu, the same applies.

If I see something done in a different way then it must be wrong; discrimination that is to me, synonymous to racism.

I don’t know, maybe it is the environment that I was brought up in; a multi-ethnic, culturally diversified and varied manner of lifestyles melting pot that taught me to be more inquisitive and at the same time, sensitive and tolerant.

Then of course there is Bob Dylan with his “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand” wisdom that seems to have been forgotten by most these days.

Personally, my biggest beef is with those who have just seen a little bit and then go on to public forums to make big noise and cyberspace is now noise-polluted and heated up by this hot air…..

For me, I still think the more I investigate, the more I realize how little I really know………..

Some are just too blinded, thick or insulated to sense that.

Anyway, here is a clip of Zhao Bao Tai Chi; a stream that we don’t get to see too much of in this region. I remember seeing classes taught in Singapore some time back, a mainland teacher with a thick northern accent was brought over to introduce this.

Got to tell you that he was astonishing everyone watching with his free style push hands and even then, I heard some one whispered “This is not pure Tai Chi”………

Well, what can I say???