Pat: Yeah, and when you get out, you only have a couple of hours left to do, what, eat and sleep.

me: Yeah... It's sad when I think about how time just passes you by... I think time flies so fast because we spend 75% of our days doing routine work every single day, and at the end of the day you really only have so little time left... and then you only have 2 days in the weekend to really do the things that matter.

Pat: Girl, you don't know half of "time passing by so quickly" (Pat is in her 60s)... 2/3rds of my life is gone; it's like I was 20 just yesterday.

me: *smile*

Pat: You live each moment, girl... live each moment. It's all about the attitude... doesn't matter where you are, just live each moment.

Tales of Mere Existence

consists not in seeking

new landscapes

but in having new eyes.

- Marcel Proust

While reading some of his entries I ran across a link to another blogger who had the entry below on his Zen Blogger Manifesto:

Zen Blogger’s Manifesto

Do not follow in the footsteps of others,
seek what they sought and make your own footsteps.
Write not for others, as there are too many.
Write for yourself, as there is only one.
Subtract before you add.
Listen more than you speak.
Give more than you take.
Make but do not measure.
If you want to change the world, love someone.
All manifestos are dung.

Thought I'd share those with you. That's all. I can't really say much else as I am at work, and should be.

:-)

• Just a couple of nights ago, in answering a question about who I want to meet, I wrote that I would like to meet people who are able to live life on their own terms, each day to the very brim. Today, I got a free facial massage from a woman who fit that exact description. While telling each other a little bit about ourselves over the massage, I discovered that she was quite alarmingly one of the most fearless women I've ever met who knew exactly what she wanted, did what she had to do to reach that goal, even though it was a completely un-ideal situation she had to stick out for a while. This is quite cliched, but nevertheless something I didn't expect to hear today over a free facial; she'd said that she never knew if the next day was going to be her hour, so she might as well have as much fun as she could and make the most out of it.
• Over dinner today, while catching up with a girlfriend of mine, we started talking about money and the different obstacles it has brought to our lives. Then the waitress came and brought us a bottle of water, which had the word "wealth" imprinted on it. Then, my friend pulled out a card from a stack that the restaurant provides for every table (it's like a little q&a game you're supposed to play with whomever you're having a meal with), and it had a series of questions on it dealing with money issues, such as what your relationship with money is like; what would you criticize about yourself in relation to finances; are you proud of the way you think about money and what it matters to you; would you treat your friends the way you treat money, etc. Then, my friend pulled out another card and it eeriely echoed another topic that we had just been discussing a minute before. The questions on this card now had to do with the subject of worth, such as (paraphrased): do you know that considering yourself as wrong will put you in a constant state of judgment? Let go of judgments on yourself and see that you are worthy.
• So then of course by this time it felt like a tarot card reading. I told my friend that she probably has talents for it and should think about doing that.

I am currently in Indonesia, and the internet connection here at my place is terrible. I think it took 5 minutes just to open Buzznet. lol

Bush was here in town (Bogor) last week and it was like the biggest event of the year. He came on the day of my father's birthday, and all the roads were either jammed or closed, so we couldn't get out at all. Protests were happening everywhere in town, but it was interesting to see the more light-hearted reactions of other locals: villagers/farmers who were here at my dad's factory to sell their harvest were eagerly waiting for the helicopters, and when it suddenly started pouring (our town is nicknamed "city of rain" for good reason), they gushed, "Bush is going to get drenched!" He was supposed to land on a helipad specially built for his arrival, but he ended up landing somewhere else. The locals aren't too happy about that because a lot of the natural foliage had to be destroyed in our famous botanical garden just for this helipad. A ridiculous decision in the first place: all that for nothing.

But that was not what I was here to write about. Let me leave you with some words I ran across recently that I really like, and thought would be appropriate for this Thanksgiving weekend:

"This book is dedicated to Patricia Fumerton, who, with our daughter, Lian, makes up my closest, most important network. The intellectual interest that Paddy shares with me in the question of history and culture, the tolerance she has shown for the long hours of digital activity I have had to devote to this book...and the fine interweaving of our life... these remind me how precious is human life -- far more robust and fragile, both, than any virtual or 'posthuman' life we now know. In this, my nearest netword, we may not be cool, but we are warm."

- Alan Liu, The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information, a book that explores what roles literature and the humanities in general have to play in the face of an increasingly digitized world.

"If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival... As we rush to explore the new vistas that cyberspace has made available for colonization, let us remember the fragility of a material world that cannot be replaced."

- Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, a book that deals with the question of embodiment in an information age.