Which raindrop are you?

It’s Day 4 in Penang. A rainy Sunday.

As I quietly looked at the pouring rain outside through my room’s window, with soulful music playing at the background, a sudden urge to write secretly crawled back to me. I visited this blog and realized that I’ve not been writing because unknowingly I got suck back into the hectic work cycle. Well, that’s the beauty of being cut off from comfort zone and living in a new place. More quiet time to reflect, more quality time to think deeper about everything.

When I looked at the trickling raindrops slowly rolled down on my window, I realized that everything in the world has its own rhythm of life. No doubt, even all these rain droplets on my window have their unique rhythms. Some abided to the force of gravity and slide quickly to the bottom edge of the window, some moved in millimeters while others hung on to the window.

Which kind of raindrops are you? Have you given up in chasing your dream and fell with the negative force that fetch you away from your dream? Or maybe, other water droplets have caught onto you and dragged you down? Or, are you struggling and losing grip of your dream? I hope not. I hope that you are hanging strong on your dream and waiting for the sun and warm wind to return to vaporize you and take you to the sky.

The wait at a stationary place could feel lonely and uncertain sometimes but keep this in mind… a pause could be stronger than a fast rhythm.

As long as we hang on and believe that our Sun and wind will come for us, one day they will come and take us to our destinations. Life is so beautiful, isn’t it? All we need to do is to hang on with faith and our dreams will be fulfilled. Yes, I believe that it’s so simple. Quoting Captain Jack Sparrow, “The problem is not a problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem”.

Furthermore, hanging on with faith is part of living our dreams. Sometimes, without us knowing, we could have surpassed our dream and be ready to reach for greater dreams.

Don’t be demoralized by the great negative force or be dragged down by people around you who never believe in dream-chasing. No matter which part of the window you are at right now, just hang on tight because soon your Sun and wind will come and take you to your dream.  Keep believing!

DT

I am, or am I not 年花?

As I was sipping my coffee when seated across my friend who was on the phone, I looked around the house and saw a familiar pot of 年花 (‘nian hua’), a range of flowers commonly displayed at home by Chinese during the lunar new year season, right behind me. The reason I said it’s familiar because it looks like the one I saw a week ago but this one has almost lost all its beautiful flowers. It has lost its original charisma.

I then remembered the brief conversation I had with my friend a week ago regarding the fate of 年花.

Me: 年花 are so beautiful. How long do they last?

Friend: Just a few weeks, good enough to last through the Chinese new year.

Me: That’s such a pity. What happens to them after that? Can we return them to the florists or something?

Friend: Nope, we just gotta throw them away.

As I looked at the withering 年花 before me, I felt a sudden sort of sadness for this pot of 年花. I thought, ‘How beautiful you were a week ago and now here you are facing an inevitable death and will soon be thrown away like a trash.’ Am I being too negative about its fate? Is there any other ways to look at this? I thought to myself that there must be another way to look at this. Then I realized, there’s really practically nothing we could do to revive it.

I thought deeper and learned something. It is not about doing it right to succeed but it is about believing it right. If one sees oneself as 年花, no matter whatever one does right, it will not change the fact that one will soon walk the unchangeable lane of death. We gotta believe that we are the flowers of another kind with unceasing fruitfulness in our own contexts and we will not have to fear the precedent end of 年花 but just flourish as the flowers we are meant to be in life.

Are we believing it right? Are we believing that we are believing it right because of the last flower hanging on our branch? Shall we rethink about our directions, avoid being 年花 and find out what flowers are we instead?

DT

P.S. It’s almost a year since I last wrote on this blog. I just realized how busy I have been and almost lost my sensitiveness to my daily surroundings. Have I been living it right or have I became a living zombie in my little hectic world? Whatever it is, I am just thankful that I am awoken and I am back to put breaths into my life and this blog again.

 

The Moment of Impact

Just watched “The Vow (2012)” and was surprised how a line in the movie summarized this certain concept of how I see life all these while. The raw definitions and scattered thoughts in my version of the experiment, life, remains as a vague hypothesis in my laboratory. Yet with simple words, the writer put things into perspective elegantly.

A great line in film is like an unprecedented discovery that encapsulate conclusions of the many, many experiments from many, many laboratories around the world. Paired with touching story and good acting, great lines will be remembered and become, like what the quote below says, ‘our own personal greatest hits of memories’. Of course great lines are sometimes subjective, or rather personal. I’m sure everyone has their favorites and I’m about to share one of my favorites in the film that I felt great resonance with:

“I have a theory too my theory is about moments, moments of impact. My theory is that these moments of impact, these flashes of high intensity that completely turn our lives upside down actually end up defining who we are. The thing is each one of us is the sum total of every moment that we’ve ever experienced with all the people we’ve ever known. And it’s these moments that become our history. Like our own personal greatest hits of memories that we play and replay in our minds over and over again.” Leo, The Vow

Another line that I particularly love in the film is this…

“The moment of impact. The moment of impact proves potential for change. Has ripples effects far beyond what we can predict. Sending some particles crashing together. Making them closer than before. While sending others spinning off into great ventures. Landing them where you’ve never thought you’ve found them. That’s the thing about moments like these. You can’t, no matter how hard you try, controlling how it’s gonna affect you. You just gotta let the colliding part goes where they may. And wait. For the next collision.” Leo, The Vow

I pray for more elegant scripts that will continue to inspire people.

DT

红星大奖2012：大惊喜！

昨晚红星大奖晚会让我好感动。 谢谢你们的祝福！你们的祝福给这奖项增添了一份温馨。

“人生就像茶叶蛋，有裂痕才入味。。。人生中的挫折于伤痛，都是不可缺乏的香料。”我感到很欣慰，因为我这些年的香料终于有效地让我入味了。很开心努力得到肯定。

我昨晚就想上线发个谢词什么的，但因为我还处于在那惊讶壮观，所以想好好睡一觉、平静一些后了才‘动笔’。

我根本没想到我昨晚会获奖。那也是我首次上台领奖。没做任何准备和没有经验的菜鸟－我，上台时除了感动、开心外，心里其实紧张得很，拼命在想上台后要说什么。怕说不出话、怕说废话、怕少说什么话。入行5年后，突然又有当新人的感觉。感觉好奇妙。

晚会后 ，我在受访时淡定一些了才开始想这奖项的意义。 这个奖项不代表我最强，因为比我赞的艺人朋友好多。 对我而言，它只是象征了罗小小比我之前的角色有明显的亮眼。我觉得今年我只是比较幸运，但我也希望这幸运星会一直陪着我。

谢谢你们喜欢罗小小。我会更努力给观众带来更多更棒的表演！

PTL!

公益献爱心2011：从中领悟的道理。

前晚公益献爱心的筹款活动让我领悟了一个道理。

我再度学会了自我突破。为了这筹款活动，我同时苦练了两项我不擅长的才艺。虽然我经常运动，对自己的体能更是信心十足，自认是半个运动家，但是，当武术和舞蹈的特训开始时才发现我在这两方面是一如白纸。为了呈献一段能感动观众的表演，我不断地自我突破。从一个对舞蹈和武术陌生的我，变成一个不再是木头人的舞者和一个带有些杀气的武者。还有，在表演当天成功地克服自己的心理障碍完成做了个难度动作 － 后空翻！

没有什么是办不了的。只要有决心，白纸也会变成一幅值得多看几眼的彩画。这幅彩画经过一些修饰和时间的酝酿后，总有一天也有可能会成为一幅能与其他名画相比的作品。有些人可能不看好白纸，不了解画的背景故事，也不想给白纸转变成彩画的空间。他们并没错，因为白纸终究只是一张白纸嘛。谁管它啊？但有些人却试着了解白纸的特质。有些白纸是撕不破的，吸收彩色功能是不一样的。他们就相信一些白纸将来，一定会有那么一个将来。对于后者，我是深深的敬佩的。因为有他们，白纸才能变成名画。也因为有他们，艺术界才会色彩缤纷。

没有什么是办不了的。像张白纸这只是开始，白纸是有可以变成让人着迷的名画的。为它加油吧！

The Dream by Pablo Picasso

Video #3 for Celebrity Blog for ASTR

Finally, I’ve completed my third blog post for the celebrity blog for “A Song to Remember”! The time gap between this and the second blog is even longer than the previous one. It was mainly because of a software glitch, which forced me to redo the video halfway though the making! Hook!!! (a term I learned to use to remind myself not to get angry)

In addition to the glitch, I adopted an editing style that differs from my usual ‘moody-feeling’ style for this video, in order to accentuate the characteristics of Hanwei’s character in the drama. I employed some editing techniques to create the eeriness and sense of discomfort, for example the ‘flickering’ effect that I’m new at. With the many variants, the entire making of the video took me longer than usual. I spent about 3 days in total – from the scripting of text, photo selection and research, photo editing…. etc. Also, my inspiration for the text for the video didn’t come as smoothly this time round, and it took me quite a while to conceptualize the theme for the video. Although it took me longer than usual, I felt quite good after completing the video.

Here’s the video:

I feel more could be done to enhance the video. I wish I could have more time refining the cuts! But I think I gotta let it go, otherwise I won’t have time for the videos for my subsequent posts. Anyhow, I wish you guys love this video!

Check out the full blog post about Chen Hanwei at BaguaTV (Link).

Cheers,

DT

Second video for “A Song to Remember” Celebrity Blog

I just posted an second installment for my “A Song to Remember” Celebrity Blog on BaguaTV, titled “Secrets about Qi Yuwu”.

Here’s my second video made for the blog:

Check out the full write up at http://blogs.xin.sg/baguatv/new-stuff/a-song-to-remember-%E6%98%9F%E6%B4%B2%E4%B9%8B%E5%A4%9C/secrets-about-qi-yuwu/

Hope you will enjoy the video and post. Cheers!

DT

What’s life all about?

Everyday in the past 3 months, I would be greeted with an interesting sight – my aging parents playing with my baby niece. It’s just so amazing to see my parents and their dear granddaughter physically together and generations apart. I imagined how my parents were once babies and then the many years after that led them to who they are and where they are today. What would lie ahead of my baby niece? Playing with her own grandchildren in 60-70 years?

It set me to ponder more about life. I even tried to define ‘life’, which is attempted by many great philosophers. How bold I was! However, I later realized that despite the many attempts by the great people in history to define ‘life’, non could actually accurately conceptualize it. That’s because life is just so subjective, broad and omni-inclusive. How can anyone possibly define it for everyone?

I once heard of this saying “Life is half spent before we know what it is.”, I’m not sure if I’m there yet (I hope not because I wanna live longer!). But as I looked at my parents and niece, I learned that the years between infancy and old age is the only time we have to truly explore life, discover ourselves and set our destiny. Every decisions made during this phase of the timeline would determine the directions of your life and where you will be in the future. Every decisions?! Yes, I believe every single decisions would make a difference in our lives. Small decisions like making a right or left would possibly save your life from an accident (like how it’s in movies) or even big decisions like which university course to study and who to be with etc. See? Every decision does have a certain level of impact in life. But I learned that we should never be afraid to make decisions! Life cannot stop for us to make decisions all the time. If we spend all our time thinking what to decide on, we will end up being stagnant or left behind. Make the decisions bravely and live by it!

I’m sometimes sadden when I read news of people ending their lives at young age or friends’ tweets cursing about life. “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. (Mark Twain)” I always believe that life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well! Know your cards well and play with the flow of the game of life with joy. Game is bounded by ups and downs, instead of whining about it since it is a matter of fact, enjoy it! Embrace life! Be bold, make the decisions. We will see how life would unfold before us and we will all find our own definition of life!

By the way, this is my cute niece, Lovelle:

DT