YOGAYUGA

I have been watching lots and lots of documentaries on CNN and BBC lately. Firing Line is my favourite documentary, which is broadcasted by BBC world. Firing line is the documentary that recorded by freelance cameramen and women, who risk their lives in the war zones and the world most dangerous areas in order to present to the viewers what is happening in the world. I adore those journalists so much as they are so brave by risking their lives to show us the real world. I can never do such things in my life. I watched the part about Gaza and Iraq tonight. They presented how the American soldiers live in Iraq and how they treat the Iraqis on the streets, who they caught.  The way they present is totally different from what you usually see on CNN official news programme. Some of the scenes were taken with cellphone cameras. There are some on youtube, but those were old ones. Anyway, I highly recommend Firing Line.

Apart from the Firing Line, I like watching the news programme presented by Anderson Cooper.  He is very sharp with very strong opinions and being very provocative.

My new channels also broadcast so many programmes about traveling and living. Those outdoor cooking programmes are awesome. I wish I could cook in somewhere outdoor one day with my best dishes. What I mean is somewhere with sea view behind me. I am not really a T.V. drama person. There are few dramas I am interested in, but don’t watch them regularly. I am not interested in watching local T.V. much as most of them are only for entertainment apart from news. Modeling programmes are no more of my interest as they all are the same no matter where they are from. I guess I am probably just a serious T.V. viewer.

I like watching 60 Minutes every Thursday. It was very interesting interview of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. I like those challenging questions of what Mike Wallace asked, especially at the end of interview, he asked “Do you want to have relations now, after 26, 27 years, with the United States?” And the last answer made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “I do hope that the Americans will give up this practice of threatening other nations so that you are not forced to ask me such questions. I wish you well and further success.”

It’s not really about how Americans like practicing of threatening foreign affairs, is just the way how the leader/government wants to satisfy their own ambition. If the leader of a nation who can take care of its domestic problems well, then naturally the nation will become much stronger. In this case, any diplomatic issues won’t become burden of the country.

I have just watched a TV programme called Unfit Kids. It was a UK programme about how kids lose weight as life objective. All the kids of programme are over 200 pounds. They all are around 12 to 14. Their parents can’t do anything anymore about their weight problems. The programme trainer set up various outdoor activities for their participation such as running, hockey, and any kind of games that they can join to be active. Their daily meals were set as well as activities were well planned. A month later, some kids did have significant weight lose, but there were two having weight gained by 5 pounds and 10 pounds. They were so pissed off. They blamed the trainer to speak up their weights in front of camera. They complained that they were lack of enouragement by the trainer, so they ended up giving up themselves. Although, the trainer did have difficulties to begin with, he ended up helping them to get back on the right track. The programme will continue next week, but it seems that those two kids will lose certain weights in the end.

There is another programme on Chinese channel also about life and objective. That programme did make me weep as it was so touching. They invited guest presenters to share their past difficult time in their life along with the places they introduced in the programme as a background. They introduced India, Cambodia, Israel, Thailand, Egypt, and many many places. It wasn’t a complete travel programme but mainly introduced the value of local life related to family, love, health, religion, and wealth. Each presenter did go through hard time in one of those themes. They all turned their negative experiences into positive thinking. They all found the goals and support that encouraged by others or themselves. They all are mature adults, but are still learning and improving. We all need encouragements and support; however, the most important goal of life is how we face the difficulties, and how we solve it. There must be a way out unless you give up on yourself. In Chinese saying, “there are no ugly women in the world, but there are only lazy women around” It does actually mean that any difficulties can be solved unless you give up on yourself. (I don’t understand why it applies to women on the surface wordings! Maybe, it’s true that there are women too lazy to dress up, so they ended up looking ugly :P) The most toughest part of life is how we face our true self. We do challenge ourselves from time to time and end up having hard time. Many things can be easily solved but sometimes we lock ourselves in the corner. The programme is all about these realities and discusses how to tackle them with various values and perceptions such as love, family power, and religion.
Be optimistic! Life is not easy but also not filled with failures. When we look back, we gained more than we lost. What we need is a little bit of courage! ^_^

I watched a travel series about Cambodia on TV just now. It wasn’t a normal travel programme but a programme about life discovery in various places of the world.

It was an upsetting story. A 8 years old boy sells books and postcards on streets of tourist area in Cambodia. He works 8 to 9 hours a day on the street. The money he earned is for the tuition of school. He earns USD1.00 for every book he sells, so he tries his very best to sell books to English speaking tourists. He speaks fluent English and learns it at school. When the tourists refused to buy his books; he asked them why, and explained to them that if they didn’t buy his books he would have no money to continue to study. I can’t help to weep a little when I heard what he said. The presenter asked him what his wish is. He pointed at the book counter, and said his wish is to buy all the books in the counter if he had the money. I suddenly feel so bad about myself. When I was a kid, my wish was just only to have a box of Lego if I did well at school. I asked my Mum to buy it for me. My parents took me to Taiwan and Japan for holiday when I was 8. It was my first time to go to overseas by plane. I was the second kid in the class at school, who took plane to another country for holiday. It wasn’t very common to travel by plane for holiday 20 years ago in HK. I am so lucky! How fortunate I am! I just can’t help to feel bad about myself. I was ever 8 years old, and same as what age Koo is at now.
I realise that life is not easy. It is always filled with challenges and difficulties. However, when I think of there are many others, who live in this world without food and basic shelters that make me feel so small. “Cherish” is the great word I always remember in my mind. If we didn’t cherish with what we have, we will regret for what we lose.

I had just finished watching Hotel Babylon. It was the last one of first series shown on TV. I watched it every Thursday. It was a really good one. I wonder if we would have second series coming up at all. It seems that our TV channel always likes to show the first series of the whole drama, and never shows the rest of it later on unless there are some special popular ones such as OC and Desperate Housewives. I am not a great fan of Desperate Housewives though. I know many women love to watch Desperate Housewives but I just don’t get the story much. I am not into it. Nip/Tuck wasn’t very popular in here as our TV channel only showed first series of it, and no more showing. I don’t blame them as it was quite sick watching it. I really can’t stand to watch those terrible scenes of various plastic surgeries on TV. Apparently, Prison Break is quite popular here. It’s a very typical story with prison scene that HK audiences usually like. It’s not for me though.
Anyway, it seems that we have no more interesting dramas on TV in short term. Sigh!!

Take the risk, change your life! I watched this programme tonight. It was about how people set up their business. Today topic was about the hotel business set up by four people. They are friends, and decided to run a hotel together. Each person is responsible for different jobs upon their talent. One of them is a chef, and one is an interior designer responsible for all the furnishing and building works. One is an accountant, and one is for administration. The work wasn’t smooth as each person had his or her own opinions. They couldn’t compromise easily. They stated it was easy to set up a goal but it was hard to compromise with eachother. Each of them didn’t open up completely, and voice what they want to do so it made the project to run so slow. At last, four of them found the balance, and successfully had the hotel opened.

This programme is a series. It talks about how friends run business together and how they achieve it. Many work groups were good friends to begin with, but ended up with lots of disagreement at work. Such story is very common, and inevitably. However, when you try to think everyone is an individual person then you would understand the differences. You can always find the gap and the common in between the difference, then naturally you can just fit into it, and compromise with eachother. I think it works in work relationship, friendship and also relationship as well as no matter what situation people are in. This is the reason why I like to pick “circle” if there are choices of triangle, square and whatsoever shapes for selection.

I watched the Miss Hong Kong Pageant 2006 with my parents tonight. It was ok, kind of boring. The programme itself is actually getting worse. There is no more new idea going on. Miss Hong Kong is no longer joining any international pageants anyway.

However, my post isn’t about the topic of pageant. The presenter asked one of the contestants a question related to the meaning of family. She was alright giving a reasonable answer but the presenter told her an additional answer about the meaning of family - “Family” = Father and Mother I love you! He said it in funny way, but it does make sense.