Mushroom Trap

Mr. Vijay Sheth asked me to join a meeting with one of the New People Party representative Mr. Gary two days back.  I was not knowing that it was a Christmas party organised by the Retired Civil Servants Association.

This blog is written about the 13 course veggie dinner that we got during that time.  If you dont eat mushroom, the restaurant or caterer will surely be lost. If you are fond of mushroom, you will surely get fed up of eating it thereafter. You get trapped in eating so many mushroom based items in such parties. Ooo god... I have never seen so many varieties of mushrooms in the recent past.

I remembered attending my Chinese friend wedding more than 15 years back.  It was similar, but got different varieties of greens that time. I had to waste most of them as some of the greens were not known to me and they were very thick stems with little leaves. After living for 2 decades, I have improved little bit to eat few varieties and identify the difference.

Three served items looked Indian, carrot pakoda, brinjal bajji and kheer.  All others were based on mushroom, even the main course noodles. It was little too much for me. I did not touch few courses as I felt very heavy eating so many varieties. 

I returned back with the guilty feeling of wasting food. I think better to eat greens than these mushrooms. I have made up my mind to inform that I dont eat mushroom to escape from this kind of mushroom trap if at all I am invited for any Chinese dinner.

Where there is a will, there is a way…

This saying came true to me today.  Yes, I could run continuously for 15 minutes, around 1.5km near the place I live in.

In these 22 years stay in Hong Kong, I am always slow in walking and incapable of walking continuously.  While going for trekking, I need rest at regular intervals to continue my journey. We moved to Tung Chung 11 years before.  It has a very calm surrounding with many parks and jogging paths.  When I go for walking or trekking with my husband or friends, I need to rest frequently before continuing to walk.

This year I had a major change in my walking skill. I jumped from the incapability of walking even 1km without break to walking 5km at one stretch because of the City U Walk of City University of Hong Kong in February and Step Challenge of FACE Club of Hong Kong Computer Society in November. Thanks to both the contests. 

I have enrolled for 10km running in Standard Charted Marathon 2019. I found that I need to complete it in stipulated time.  My walking speed is very slow. I am sure that I will not be able to complete the Marathon at my walking pace. So while contesting for the Step Challenge, I decided to pick up running skill. When I hear my friend Raji sharing about her daily running experience and participating in Marathons, I always look upon her.  Within one year, my husband picked up running and now he is able to participate in Marathon.  I used to admire his spirit. When I see many people doing long distance run, I always admire their spirit as well.  Therefore, I wanted to try. When I do running practice, I found that my capability to run was less than 50m at one time. 

Slowly and steadily, I increased the running stretch to 100m, 200m and 300m on the days I went for walk.  In last 3 days, I was capable of completing 2km with intermittent walking while running.  The spirit of running ebbed high today and was successful to run the whole stretch of 1.5km without any break.  I am very excited as it is building my confidence to run.

When I think back to few decades of my life, I am happy to know that I have been constantly walking at least 1km almost every day. However, my walking experience is always less than 2km at one go. Went to college for around 7 years walking every day for around 500km one way.  Went to work in Bharat Electronics for 3 years where I need to walk a corridor of length around 1.2km one-way from the bus stop to our department. During my pregnancy for my first child, I walked every day to office 1km one way. Later when I was having training in Kyoto, I walked around 1km every day for around 6 months from Kyoto railway station to the company named Nissen. Coming to Hong Kong, during my pregnancy for my second child, again I went for walking every day. Once my children were little grown up, we started to go for trekking where we easily walk for 5km.  In Tung Chung, whenever possible, we go for a walk of 2km around our area. However, all these walking will be at a very slow pace with stops at regular intervals.

Wow… I had walked so much in my life.  Now I got the confidence to run.  I need to see how much of running I will be able to do in future. When there is a will, surely there will be a way.

We have a friend in our block whose mother was sick and admitted to hospital for few months.  He was very upset when he was sharing that experience.  However, now she had recovered and goes for walk every day. During that time, I always think that she had the will to recover and now she is happy to go for that walk. In her case also, will gave the way to survive and be happy.

Life is a magic

(This was written as soon as I received the shocking news of a departed soul I know on 14th Dec 2018.)

Today I heard the death news of a friend whom I just met last Saturday 8^th December 2018.  I just met him on the walkway.  Within few minutes, he told his wish to do Ph.D and to contact me in few days time.  He had so many plans for his future life but was out of this world this Friday.  Instead of telling Life is uncertain, I think it is apt to say Life is a magic.  We see all stunning things before our eyes, but there is someone working at the back to show those illusions. 

Both happiness and sad are part of life.  It is true.  We smile, laugh and enjoy our life when there is success. We cry, weep and gloomy when there is a failure.  God creates these magic illusions to all of us to have such feelings in our life. 

What is certain in this world?  The power of the magician (God) is stable and influences everyone in this world.  There are many who have disbelief in God.  There are many who avoid doing prayers.  However, there is a supreme power who controls each act of this universe.  The toy of Universe made by the Supreme God is really the greatest invention of this universe, greatest illusion created by a magician. 

Life is magic full of illusions…

Believe it or not

Supreme Power… doing the magic

We are the kits used by him

Body, till we have one..

Plans.. Lot of them in our life..

Gone.. The soul is out into the space

Plans.. Disappear in the air…

Memories.. Remain in the minds of near and dears

Illusions continue in this world.

Tribute to a Tamil Linguiphile of Hong Kong - Mr. Mohamed Yoonus

I came to know about Yoonus uncle from the time I first saw him judging a debate during a Tamil Cultural Association event in the year 1996.  Personal communication started much later.  As I gave birth to my daughter, I missed few of the event in next three years.  When Ilakkya vattam started, I was happy to attend it once and I could not continue to attend the Ilakkya vattam programs due to my family commitments. In next few years, I would have attended just two to three of them only. I did not have opportunity to listen to him talking about his life in Burma.

During the time I attend some of the gatherings, I used to get a chance to talk to him.  Moreover, he attends all Tamil Cultural Association programs.  So I used to meet him and talk to him.  With this type of acquaintance, once I happened to meet him at his place one on one.  On that day, he spoke about many things.

When this book project, I received the mail from the compiler asking to help in this project for typing.  During that period, I had severe pain in my hand that led to quit my job later.  Therefore, I was not in a position to help in typing.  I requested them to give some proof reading task that I looked forward to do.  However, I missed that as well.

The book was published in a grand manner on February 20, 2010.  Everyone appreciated. 

After some months, I had a training session in TST near to Yoonus uncle’s house.  So I thought of asking him about his Hong Kong experience as a continuation of Burma experience.  Ramanathan’s group has to be congratulated for taking up the task of compiling all the speeches he had made about Burma. Since it was a herculean task of typing all the content, I thought of recording all the speeches and released as youtube videos in the year 2011.

During that time, he was telling about translating his book Burma Memoirs in English. When I met him for two Ilakkya vattam meetings at his place, he mentioned it as well.  Mr. Ramanathan was also having an idea of translating it to reach more audience for this book.

My father wrote the translation for Bhagavad Gita.  I request him to check it and publish it when he was alive.  However, he did not pay attention to that at all.  Nevertheless, when he passed away, I took his writings and made it a point to read one of the chapter on the day of the death ceremony we had on the third day.  When it was well received by our relatives, I took all the handwritten manuscript and requested my sister-in-law to rewrite all the contents, as the digital publisher was not able to understand his handwriting.  Then we gave it for typing. I always missed my father when I completed the typing and later on making a CD on the same. 

So when Yoonus uncle used to mention his wish, I thought of taking up the translation work many a times. However, because of tardiness, I was not able to do it. However, on April 19, 2013, when I was in Bengaluru supporting my son during his undergraduate exam, I made up my mind to translate how work and immediately started the task. 

Why did I take up this task? Is it not a foolish idea to take up the task for which lot of effort has been done by another group?  Am I thinking of taking some part in the success of this project?  All these questions always haunt me while doing this work. There may be many more questions from the team that had worked so hard in this project.  I did not want to take any advantage in doing this work at any cost.  I just did it to fulfil the wish of uncle and set off in the journey. 

I liked the chapter on Netaji the most and so took it up as my first step.  After completing it, I sent to Yoonus uncle on 20^th 2013. He was happy that I could do that task. I completed translating all the chapters. I sent some of the chapters to the compiler Mr. Ramanathan and requested whether my translation work was apt on 1^st June 2013.

While I was waiting for the reply, I reviewed it repeatedly and fixed my grammatical errors to certain extent.  Once I completed, I thought of sending the translated version to uncle.  So I sent it to Yoonus uncle by mail and he was really happy to reply.  I met him in person and requested him to send it to the compiler to get their consent.  Then I got the reply that they are planning to translate it using a professional translator so that the true feeling of uncle’s experience will be reflected well.

In 2014, I got the idea of publishing an E-magazine named Tamil Malar to cover all activities by Tamil people in Hong Kong and encourage the writing skill of local Tamils. I requested uncle to give an article to start with.  He was very happy to give it and I published it happily. After receiving the monthly issue, he used to call and comment on the published items.

During such conversations, he tells about people contacting him after reading his book in Tamil.  He wished to have it in English to reach more readers all around the world. Then I thought that I would present the translated version as 90^th birthday gift to uncle.

Since there was no reply for my earlier mail, I thought that my work is not to the expected standard. I know that I am not that good in translation.  This was my maiden attempt in doing it.  Thought of getting some help from someone.  So I thought of giving it for review to one of our friend. During that time, Mr. Sampath Kumar use to be in contact through mail.  Then I requested him to check my translation if he has time to do so in the month of March 2014.  Thanks to him for he corrected the mistakes in my writing and sent the reviewed copy by May 2014.  All the chapters were revised and I informed uncle about it. 

I am lucky enough to see the happy face of uncle when he saw the complete translated work in hardcopy.  He told all his plans of publication.  However, I told that permission has to be sort from the compiler before going forward.  He then asked Mr. Ramanathan to find the progress of translation.  

Again, I sent the mail to the compiler with the new translation on May 23^rd. This time I got the reply immediately from the compiler on June 3^rd 2014.

“Thank you for your interest in translating Bhai's Memoirs. But I have already got it translated through a professional translator. Bhai has also reviewed and made few corrections. I am trying to publish through a reputed English language publisher. Copyright formalities are also being processed simultaneously. My contact person has asked me to add a chapter on the political developments subsequent to Bhai's exit; and I am currently working on this with Bhai,

Thank you again for your interest, and sorry that I could not use your text.”

I was really happy that the work was done and we can see the book in the near future. I put my translated content into the shelf.

Uncle passed away on November 23^rd, 2016.  I had a chance to present my acquaintance as eulogy in a ceremony organised by our friends. It is two years of his passing away. However, I did not hear about the English version of the book until year 2018.

Meanwhile, I completed my Ph.D and had improved in my English writing.  I had written many articles and translated stories.  I went through all of them and compile them. During that time, this work also came to my notice.  I went through some of the chapters and understood that it needed some revision to make it complete. So during the month of November 2018, I thought of revisiting my translation work.  This time, I was able to use better words to explain the situations narrated. I revised it to best of my knowledge.  Hope now the translation is much better than the one done four years back.

I don’t know much about copyright problems. I thought of dedicating the work of mine to uncle on the day of his 95^th birth Anniversary 25^th December 2018 though it will stay in my Laptop.

Looking forward to see the translated work in immediate future.

TCA – Close to my heart

My friend Jhanvi called me to have a chat about performing in Indian consulate events.  I told my experience how I sent a mail to the culture consul, met her to brief about our organization and got the opportunity to perform.  She wanted to bring a group from her organization to perform though her personal dance group performs in various events around Hong Kong.

During the conversation, she mentioned that her organization is very close to her heart as it gave her the necessary impetus to stay in Hong Kong by introducing the community to her when she had to stay alone while her husband was travelling for many days in a month. 

Similarly, TCA was close to my heart as it gave us the opportunity to showcase our talent, though I acquainted with a Tamil friend’s circle in Sai Ying Pun as soon as I arrived here. My first TCA programme was a debate (Patti mandram) headed by Mr. Mohammed Yoonus.  I used to participate in Tamil debates during my college days. While watching, my mind was thinking when I would participate in such an event.  Surprisingly I was able to join them the next year itself.  I started attending the programmes regularly and saw many children performing. Solos were not encouraged that time. There will be only one annual event during that time.

When my son joined us in Hong Kong after three years, I started longing for my children to participate in such events.  I was looking for opportunities.  Since our friend’s circle was very small, we were not familiar with those groups who perform. Therefore, my son was not able to participate in such events. Meanwhile, my daughter, born in Hong Kong, starting walking and speak.  She was two and half years old by then.

Instead of looking for opportunities, I thought of taking it up on my own. I decided to take up my chance of forming a group to perform. I made a very simple script in pure Tamil on Prahalada.  TCA gave us the chance to perform.  Somewhere I thought that I would gave a name to our group for that first performance and named the group as Siruvargal Kalai Kuzhu (Translated as Children Cultural Group in English). It was the first stage performance of CCG.  After that, we did not turn back.  Every year we would present variety of items. 

Due to the encouragement by TCA for past 20 years, CCG could flourish well and now teams are able to perform in various events all around Hong Kong. Though I had many disappointments and hurting comments during the TCA meeting sessions, TCA is still close to my heart like Jhanvi mentioned about her feeling. 

Just her comment made me write this blog to write about my feeling about TCA.  Thanks for her call on that day.

India - Punya Bhoomi – Sacred Land

An evening session to know about the significance of chanting in our lives presented by two volunteers from Spiritual Science Research Foundation Goa (a French male and a Malaysian female) was really worth attending.  Manish Maharaj invited us to this session a week back and asked me whether I could translate the presentation in Hindi.  I really wondered why he asked that without knowing who the speakers were. After getting back home, I thought it might me because the speakers may know Indian language other than Hindi. I did not expect two foreigners presenting such a lecture. This is the first time I attended a session to know about our Indian spiritual concepts from people born out of India.  

The way they delivered the lecture was appreciable.  They shared their experiences to show the worth of chanting.  The answers to our questions were appropriate. After the session while talking to them, my friend appreciated them and told we are very happy to know about our religion from foreigners when some Indian themselves do not value that much. The comment given by the French person was splendid.  “You are all born in the Punya Bhoomi due to your good karma in your earlier births. I am lucky at least to live in India now though my karma made me to be born in France.” 

The sacred land, punya bhoomi Bharat has to be valued that way.  We must be proud to be born in India.  Spirituality sets the path for a good and happy life. That was the take away from that session for me.

Failure at Decisive Moment - 1

Put your efforts, don’t worry about results.  Have a stable mind and strike a balance with self-control during extreme excitement and extreme frustration due to success and failure respectively.  These are words from Bhagavat Gita.  Very nice to tell and listen too.  However, when the occasion comes, it is very difficult to tackle the situation with stable mind.

This happens to me very often in my life.  Put in all efforts and when the results are out, there will be great fall from the peak of expectation.  How will be feeling be?

There was a lesson in a Coursera course on innovation where you need to write a failure resume.  I wrote three of my failures at that time. I want to share one such failure, which can be quoted in my failure resume.

Hong Kong Computer Society has a women wing called FACE Club to attract Female IT personnel, connect and engage them in activities together to increase the number of women folk entering the IT field in Hong Kong from 18% to higher levels. 

To engage the women, we brainstormed various activities and implemented few of them.  Out of that, one of the activity we thought about was Step Challenge, which will help the women folk to work out after their busy work schedule. Objective was to create an awareness to a healthier life style for them through this. We planned to have it in the start of 2018 but succeeded to start in the month of November after negotiating with the App development companies, training and testing. 

I had the experience of such step challenge with City U Walk, which used to be held in the month of March for past 4 years.  My Ph.D Supervisor, Dr. Ron Kwok is the brainchild of the scheme for university and it was taken care by my co-researcher Mrs. Clara Choi Ki.  The App was improved every year after lot of study. She obtained her Ph.D degree after a thorough research on how people get interested and motivated in such sport activity with a goal to achieve and a contest to compete. I was not able to compete for first three years as I had always problem with my mobile version.

I should introduce my nature before going any further. Firstly, I was not a person who is interested in walking.  Secondly, cannot walk even 1km without a break. However, last year somehow I managed to be in the contest as I got a new mobile. I enrolled in the Alumni category. Due to lot of promotion, more than 20 of my friends joined the contest in the Friends of City University of Hong Kong category. We were all enthusiastically walking and having fun. I was consistently around 6^th place but pushed further down on the last few days under Alumni category. However, under Friend’s category there was a dramatic finish in that event when the first place winner suddenly appeared from down the line with a big margin on the last day. Previous year 2^nd place winner (2017) and the 1^st place contender until that time (2018) was literally shocked.

I was given a target to get 5 groups and few individuals to participate in this contest. I promoted FACE Club Step Challenge contest with my friends in the field of IT and others.  However, I could not succeed in getting any enrollments to form a group due to that dramatic finish of the earlier contest .  Then I enrolled my husband and son in the contest under individual category.  Finally, there were 33 female and 26 male participants under individual category when the contest started.

My target was to walk as much as I can with a target of 10000 steps a day. contest started. On the first day, there was one women participant, who reached more than 42000 steps. My participating fever went up seeing such a competitor.  No hope of getting any first place in this contest . However, I thought I would go through the contest, as I was one of the Chairperson in setting up this contest. 

Next few days, there was no activity by that contender. However, the first place participant was way ahead of all of us in the next week. I think, though she does not run consistently, she could manage to do a marathon on weekends.

That was the week I started my incubator office at Inno Center Kowloon Tong.  I started to walk around Kowloon Tong after my lunch for more than one hour regularly to complete my quota of 10000 steps.  Since my enrollment for 10km Standard Charted Marathon was successful, I thought this would be my training period to succeed in that.

Until 15^th November, I was shuttling between 4^th and 5^th place.  On 16^th, suddenly I reached 3^rd place.  Then my contest fever picked up.  I wanted to maintain that status.  On that weekend, I could reach the second place.  I was truly excited that I can aim for 2^nd place as well.  I sent a message in the app to both the nearest competitors. I found that the second place participant did not walk on the weekend because of her Bipasana Yoga classes.  After 21^st, there was a true contest for 2^nd and 3^rd place. I was very keen on getting on to second place then on.  On 24^th November, I got my best record of more than 24500 steps. So I targeted to walk at least 15000 steps every day instead of my daily target of 10000 steps till that date.  For few days of that week, I could maintain my 2^nd place.  However, on the last three days, the contest got severe. We were shuttling between 2^nd and 3^rd place. 

On the final day, there was a nail biting finish.  I made myself available to walk for more hours to target that 2^nd place.  By afternoon, I had completed my quota of 10000 steps.  After reaching home, I started walking with my husband Siva to make sure to reach the second place.  When I completed 22000 steps, I synchronized my steps with the MoveSpring App.  I saw that the 2^nd place contender was 2500 steps ahead of me.  Then I made up my mind to walk more though my legs needed rest.  I walked to reach more than 26500 steps (my personal best) so that I will be ahead of my nearest contender. At 11:50 and at 12 midnight, I was 2400 steps ahead and I went to sleep thinking that I would be placed in second place finally. 

The decisive moment failure happened on next day morning. I checked the MoveSpring App as soon as I woke up. I found that I was trailing from 2^nd place with 250 steps.  I was crest-fallen.  I had put so much of effort and worked beyond my capacity. However, I could not achieve what I wanted to.

It was really too hard to take it at that moment. But that feeling faded away in a day or two. I have faced many such failures but after sometime, that feeling of failure fades out and I will raise to the occasion again to try my chances.  Good or bad, I have that characteristic. 

One good thing in this contest is that my husband got the first place and son the 4^th place in the men’s category. We as a family have crossed 1 million steps in this month with my husband around 550000, my son around 378000 and myself around 470000, which we could not have imagined without this contest.  I am satisfied with that though could not win the position that I targeted.

The greatest take away for me was to realize that I am capable of walking more than 15km in a day.  I am not afraid of walking long distance any more. That is the fruit for my efforts during this one month. I learnt how such events can be organised.

(Note: When the results were announced on 5th Dec, I found that the second contender was more than 11500 steps ahead of me.  I had noticed that the contender was working on US timing earlier.  I was working on HK timing.  My chase to 2nd place was worthless because of that.  I should have set a larger margin (80000 steps) like my husband to get a place on the top. Wishes to the winners for taking up this challenge and putting efforts to get placed on the top.)