I Am TIME Person of the Year

Woohoo! Congratulations to me!

Love Your Life

By Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest. The fault finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town's poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. Maybe they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old, return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts."

Holiday Mood

I flew into Hong Kong from Shanghai this afternoon. It was drizzling at the HKIA and on my way back home. It hadn't been raining for a very long time in Hong Kong and the air smelled fresher than usual. The lingering haze since October is now gone. Then, for the first time in 2 months I open my room’s window to enjoy the fleeting fresh air after a late autumn shower. The view, although clichéd, is sparkling with Christmas lights. Combined with the Christmas Jazz music that is playing on my iPod, I’m really in a holiday mood…

Random Thoughts

Taipei, 01:10 in the morning… from the view of my hotel window, it seems like the city isn’t going to sleep anytime soon; neither am I.

I can’t sleep because there are a lot of things going through my mind right now: a friend’s friend who just slashed the throat of her 3-year old son and is now charged with first-degree murder; a colossal project ahead at work to overhaul the company’s quality culture; the blood diamond article I read in Fortune magazine in-flight; the seemingly never-ending middle-east conflict and war on the news… all these, when considered in perspective, shall mean nothing when we look back 20 years from now…

Yet, they matter because I, we, live in the present time; and this is life.