I Love You Man

It's a taboo for a man to say "I love you" to another man in any culture in our world especially that of Asian culture. The presumption is always made as homosexuality if a man dares enough to say "I love you" to another man. No one can deny that there is love between or among brothers, male cousins, male friends and male colleagues but normally not said out loud. What are men afraid of? Afraid of being classified as "soft", not masculine enough, as a particular group - homosexuals, that would put them in shame??

In my life, the only male friend I have ever said "I love you" to is Steven Ngo, my very good Vietnamese friend in California. I have only seen him three times since I moved back from San Francisco in 1994, twice when I went back to visit and once in Sydney recently in 3/2009.

I remember it was in Sydney Fitness First Center, when we were sweating away on the threadmills side by side. Suddenly, I was thinking of another very good friend of ours, Asad, and wishing he were with us. At that moment, I was so appreciative of life because after all these years, I could still meet Steven and having a good workout at the same gym on the other side of the planet. I just couldn't control myself and said to Steven how much I miss him in all these years and really love him as a friend, and my friendship for him is eternal. Steven reacted as "Tan, you are being too sentimental now!!", but I could tell, he was touched by what I said, and I am quite sure he felt the same for me.

Even if I never said "I love you" to Steven, I am quite sure he knows I love him dearly as a friend. It's definitely a different kind of feeling when it's said than felt. Saying "I love you" to a man, even a very very close friend, takes courage and lots of emotion...why is that?

In our male dominant society, we as men should break the ice, we should express ourselves and say what's in our mind out loud so that we would not be so suppressed by our emotion and sentiment. Let the love things out, to whoever you feel for, just say it "I love you" to anyone you care for or love regardless of sexes!!

When was the last time you said "I love you man" to a man?? And, are you man enough to say it??

For those men who still don't have the guts to say "I love you" to a man, please go to watch the movie, "I Love You Man"....learn something from the movie, it may serve you good in life!!!

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

It scared the heck out of me after reading the article in Time about Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD is a mental disorder illness that when human mind is unable to regulate emotions. It afflicts and tortures mind so severe that it causes patients to hurt themselves physically or in worse case, commit suicide if not treated. According to the article, patients must meet at least five of the nine criteria to get a diagnosis of BPD, they are: stress-related paranoia, inappropriate anger, chronic feelings of emptiness, mood instability, recurrent suicidal behavior, impulsivity, unstable self-image, unstable relationships and frantic efforts to avoid abandonment.

In different stages of my life especially in these few years, I have met not five but all those nine criteria. Does it mean I got a diagnosis of BPD? At times, when I am stressed out, I got paranoia; when things don’t go my way, I got really angry; I routinely feel empty in quiet lonely nights when my mind is not occupied; I have not got one stable relationship for the past 14 years; sometime, I am impulsive; because of aging, I have unstable self-image; when feeling really down, I would feel like there is no meanings in life (suicidal implication); my mood swings when I have a bad day; and I am terrified when I think of my old parents will abandon me (pass away) one day, I frantically call them to make sure they take their daily doses of medications for their old folks diseases and monitor or I should say order them to exercise daily.

My sister told me once that I really think too much and too far, she advised me to live life the way it is and let go of things that we have no control over. I know she is right about it, but for some reasons, I just can’t help myself….

I know, I am going to loose sleep over the thoughts….and I just ran out of sleeping pills, tonight is going to be a long night….

LV and Gucci

LV and Gucci have got overly popular in Asia, the phenomenon is just like overheated stock market, it feels like it's going to burst at any time.

When I visited Hong Kong in last August, I stayed at the Marco Polo Hotel in the Harbor City on Canton Road, Kowloon. This stretch of Canton Road is flourishing with all the world class branded boutiques like Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Lanvin, Hugo Boss, Givenchy, Bottega Veneta, etc. etc...just name it, you'd find it! Almost every dressy shoppers, women or men, were carrying either LV or Gucci bags. It really made me feel like a natural jungle boy with a The North Face backpack clinging to my shoulder.

I am never a shopping craze, but being surrounded by all those fancily decorated world class boutiques, I couldn't help myself to snoop around. World class boutiques indeed have world class price tags on all their products. Amazingly, most of the customers in those boutiques especially LV and Gucci were Chinese speaking with very distinctive Mandarin accents from different parts of mainland China. The shopping scenes demonstrated LV and Gucci are very very popular in mainland China too.

In the 45-minute brunch at a typical Tawau coffee shop in late morning today, to my surprise, I saw about 10 Chinese women carrying LV or Gucci bags. Tawau, like most Malaysian towns, the economy is agriculturally dependent; but like Hong Kong, many women carry either LV or Gucci bags. Among these women, many of them carry the bags just because they want to have "face" to show in their social peers not because they are rich in cash.

For the working class women in Tawau, a LV or Gucci bag may be 3 to 10 times of their monthly salary. Lord, why do these women made such unwise decision just for a hand bag??



A typical Hong Kong street.

Dream Cage

After a few Martinis at Franco's house for Jeff's birthday party last night, I think I had enough alcohol for the month. To avoid alcohol drinking, I made an excuse not to attend a friend's brother's house warming party. I know if I were to attend, all those guys I used to hangout for fishing would make me drink, and that is the last thing I want for tonight although it is a Saturday night.

Home alone again on a Saturday night, I went through my Christmas present sent by Steven from San Francisco. It was very sweet of Steven to send me a box full of DVD's as Christmas present, Breakfast at Tiffany's by Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard is one of them. I was like, hey, this may be a good movie to watch for the night, the last time I saw this movie was more than 15 years ago.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a movie depicting a young lost glamor girl played by Audrey Hepburn who uses a phony name and dreams to marry into the rich and high class society in New York City or anywhere in the world for that matter. She has built a "dream cage" that locks herself so deep inside that it makes her life miserable. Whenever she tries to run away from unhappiness, she ends up running into herself in the cage until the handsome poor writer played by George Peppard rescues her with his undemanding love.

In real life, people unintentionally build desperation, depression, perplexity, confusion...etc "cages" for themselves. We all have lived in one of these "cages" that we built at one time or another. Some may live in their "cages" for their lives, only the lucky ones got out of them in one piece....


1961 - Audrey Hepburn as the glamor girl in Breakfast at Tiffany's

Looking for myself (1)...

Being back to Malaysia for about 15 years, when things get complicated in life sometimes, I still tend to feel lost. The feeling is like I am not living in a life that I really wanted. Thus, I feel the need to look for my trues elf by going back to the place, San Francisco, where my mind became mature. I obstinately thought that the place where my mind grew up would be the best place for me to find my true self.

After debating for sometimes within myself, I finally decided to make a trip to San Francisco. I know, it really sounded complicated, but that was exactly how I felt when I decided to make the two-week trip to San Francisco attempting to find traces of me in the past and hopefully to find the “real me” in the present.

While waiting for Steven’s pick up at the San Francisco International Airport, it was intriguing that I could smell freedom in the air although it was full of smog and carbon dioxide exhausted from waiting and passing cars and taxis. I would have hated that smog filled disgusting environment if it were in Kuala Lumpur; but I didn’t mind that, and aberrantly I was loving it at that time!

Freedom in the air, it is so abstruse, what did it mean.....?

San Francisco Montgomery Station where I got off and walked to my work for years....

Bette Davis

Bette Davis gave me an unforgettable first impression in the opening scene in The Letter that she fires a few shots and kills a man and claims that she is innocent.  Only Bette Davis dared to play the vicious murderess role back in early 1940’s. The movie must have had created a big controversy and commotion in the conservative 40’s in America.

My friend, Phil, was not a big fan of Davis, but it was really nice of him to show me all Davis’ famous movies at the nearby Tower Records store in Berkeley. To my surprise, the store carried almost all Davis’ released movies range from 1930’s to early 1980’s. From her movies, I grew to be a crazy fan of hers. Davis, a star of yesterday, still had that enchantment to capture me, a young man in my mid 20’s then, to be crazy for her. Since then, I could say I had watched 95%, except those that were not released, of Davis’ movies.

From all Davis’ movies that I had watched, I like All About Eve the most. I thought the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, a fading star in her early 40’s like Davis was back then suits her perfectly. It was like her real life story being transformed to a movie, she practically played herself in All About Eve, maybe that explained her exceptionally superb acting in the movie.

Besides having a pair of big eyes, Bette Davis was never considered a beautiful nor sexy woman back in Warner Brothers time. It was her strong character in her movies and in real life that made her so successful through the 60 years of her acting career in the male dominant movie industry that only preferred beautiful or goddess female actresses.

1950 - Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve

Withering Flowers

Like my mum, I love flowers, any flowers with a few favorites. I was blessed to have lived in US and China for about 15 years, during the stay, I got the opportunities to see different types of flowers in different seasons....

In every season, blooming flowers are stunningly beautiful but withering flowers are extremely depressive at the end of their season, it feels like:
(I welcome those who are good in Chinese-English translation to translate my sentiments for the withering flowers to English.)

《心碎花落又一朵》
春去桃花院绝迹
雨后梨花落满地
初夏牡丹瓣铺根
秋寒玫瑰飘落墙
深秋败荷满孤塘
寒秋菊黄谢满亭
雪后残梅留枯枝



初春盛开美丽的桃花 (Stunning peach blossom in early spring)


春天纯洁的梨花 (Pure & white pear blossom in spring)


春末艳丽的牡丹 (Gorgeous pink Peony in late spring)


夏天的红玫瑰 (Lovely red roses in summer)


仲夏满塘高尚的荷花 (Noble pink Lotus in mid summer)


开了满地的秋菊 (Common but beautiful yellow Chrysanthemum in autumn)


耐寒凋零的冬梅 (Cold-resistant plum blossom in late winter)

Old dream comes true....

When I was in high school, my dream was to be a writer when I grow up. However, upon high school graduation, I was too young and naive to have a direction for future. I took my dad's advice to study something that would be easy to find a job after graduation. Passively, I chose accounting to be my major in university, and I am stuck for life since.

Unfortunately, I was never trained in writing academically, I do not possess the story telling writing skills. In reality, either in the past or present, I have so many real life experiences and sentiments in different environments especially those 15 years in US and China to write about. I really wanted to write the bits and pieces of my experiences in the the past and present just for myself even if no one cares for it.

By coincidence, I found out Joshua is writing a secret blog in Blogger like a diary that is not published to the public. I asked him about how to do it, he was very enthusiastic to show me the way to create a blog and how to use it.

That's how I started "playing" with writing blogs. Writing blogs is like an old dream comes true to me, it makes me feel like a "writer" because it is published openly, there are readers out there. When one writes something and there are interested some who read them, it makes the writer "writer". I was like, hey, it's a dream comes true to me, why not? I should be excited and thrilled about it, who cares if I don't write well!

I think blog writing is the perfect way for me to be the "writer" to write the bits and pieces of my real life experiences in the form of prose. Prose writing doesn't have to be particularly coherent and chronically precise, that suits me perfectly.

Who knows, a screen writer may be interested to put all my stories together and have Ann Lee to make a film out of my life one day. Again, it is a dream, a new one.....