The Smoothie
The temperature begun to go up this weekend in Hong Kong, and the
shorts and t-shirts were back out again. I walked back with two bags full of
fruits; mangoes, papayas, grapes, red plums, blueberries, and a pineapple. I took
a twenty minute walk back in the Sun, and carrying the bags I was sweating before
even a third of the way home. I got back and used a big portion of the fruits
to make a smoothie. I was quite thirsty and consumed about six plums, two large
bunches of grapes, and two small portions of blueberries in one drink; perhaps
around two glasses worth. It went down so well, I felt like another. So I had two
mangoes and a small papaya in the next round. Before I knew it, there wasn’t
much fruit left; I’d consumed everything except the pineapple within thirty minutes
at most! I recalled how much it all seemed in the bags, however within a few
moments, I had consumed them. This time last year, when I wasn’t so accustomed
to making smoothies, I recalled how I’d chop up large plates of fruits, and perhaps
eat half of what I’d made, and be quite full up. It made perfect sense though;
drinking smoothies makes the digestion process extremely efficient. You do all
the peeling and chopping at one, all the chewing is done at one go by the
machine, and all you do is drink it. That do, whilst the machine “smoothes” the
fruit; it becomes perfectly compressed into less space than before and also
removes the wastage; two big bags simply become a few glasses of fluid. What I’d
certainly struggle to digest in a conventional way by eating the fruits; was
made into a very invigourating and thirst quenching experience through changing
the way the same substance was taken; the grapes are the same grapes, but just
crushed.
When I was a boy…
When I was a boy, we used to work with floppy discs, which would
each store 1.4MB of data. Such a concept would seem incomprehensible today,
what to imagine in future. It previously took travellers thirty years to go from
one side of America to the other; now it takes just a few hours. As time goes
on, much of what a generation has to pass to the next may become incomprehensible;
not only in terms of technological developments, but also in terms of ways of
living. How countries are ruled, how families are structured, how wars are
conducted; all of these have changed drastically. The way business is done different
to the way it was done before. We must always be conscious of how things are
changing, continually, and how the next generation has it’s ways. There are
many ways we can give to the next generation and empower them; and there are
also many ways we can keep from them and try to hold on to so called authority
and legitimacy and not equipping them with what we may have. We can give them
the raw fruits, which will take time to digest; using our own terms our own
ways of working, etc; or we can be fluid, like the smoothie. We can genuinely
try our best to give them as much substance as possible. To do this can be
extremely dangerous; we must do it in a way that we never compromise our
values. We must assess the moral and ethical maturity of the individuals we
seek to empower otherwise, there will be a very quick spiral downwards for
where there is power and a lack of responsibility; there will certainly be
quick destruction.
Hey PJ, check this out!
Learning requires an open mind that is not limited by self-imposed
limits. As part of the Muay Thai training, skipping is one of the traditional
warm up exercises. I had tried to skip when I was in junior school, but once I
realised I wasn’t so good, I decided to leave it to the girls who were expert
at it. But now, it was different, I really wanted to learn to skip, so slowly I
began, and gradually got faster, and the technique got better, and then set
time limits, or count limits. It took time. One day, I was in the pool and a
few kids were playing around in the water splashing each other etc. They
stopped by and said Hi etc. I made friends with one of the kids, whose name
happened to be PJ; my initials. We spoke for some time, and then went on our
ways. A few days ago, I saw him as I was walking into the gym down the stairs,
and from the bottom of the stairs in an excited tone, he said “Hey PJ! Check
this out!” He had what’s called a ‘diabolo,’ a toy consisting of two bars, with
strings attached to each other, and a spindle, which he would throw into the
air, and then catch again with the strings. It would have to land specifically
on the strings in order to get into groove and start spinning side to side
again. He managed to throw it a good eight meters high and catch it. I was quite
impressed, congratulated him and asked, where did you learn to do that? He
said, oh at school. I asked when, and he replied on Monday. It was Wednesday. In
three days he had learnt it so well. I then thought; a child like him, they don’t
place barriers on what is possible. There is a gulf of difference between
someone who is striving in the corporate field, having the responsibility of
their family on their shoulders; job security to worry about, and so many other
constraints; compared to the mindset of PJ when he was tossing the spindle into
the air 8 meters high and catching it again. A truly open minded person does
not see barriers; they are not phased by differences in culture, norms,
technologies; they only have one thing in mind; the need to progress, and
facilitate others to progress.
