Although we are already the forth generation immigrants, our family is still practicing some traditional Chinese eating culture. Soup has been a major emphasis in the Chinese eating culture, especially for Southern Chinese. Since my ancestors originated from the South of China, soup is common in our menu.
What is so special about soup and Chinese eating culture? Of course like other eating cultures, Chinese also emphasize on tasty and delicious food.Yet what makes Chinese eating culture worth mentioning is Chinese also believe we could rejuvenate or revitalize our body and thus staying healthily by eating. What does this mean? Basically Chinese believe that the natural phenomena are classified by the five elements (Wu Xing, in Mandarin). This philosophy also forms the fundamental of Chinese medicine. And like all things in nature, food that are obtained in this world can be grouped into those five elements. Therefore Chinese apply the medicine theory in their eating culture.
Like many traditional Chinese family, our family also believes in Chinese medicine philosophy. My maternal grandmother, the chef of our family, has been taking great care of our well-being. She's been feeding us with soups regularly; soups containing the "cool" effect during hot days, potent ginseng soups when we are deprived of sleep, "warm" soup in winters, or soups that are considered "neutral" to buffer our system. Although I have not been picking up my grandmother's habit, it does have some influence on me. Once in a long while, I do make myself some Chinese soups. Recently I'm even hooked up with a show on authentic Chinese soups from various parts of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. I so wanted to travel to those places and taste their local soups. I guess that would be a good motivator for me to write my thesis. Just when people around my age are engaging in some youthful modern activities, here I am talking about culture and tradition. It is either I think like an old lady or I'm a food lover. Hmmm...
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The advancement of technology does not seem to help in better communication. Telephones, pagers, cellular phones, text messaging, internet chatting, internet talking..all these tools should have facilitated in better communication between human-beings, at least it could connect one individual from the north hemisphere to the south, or basically anywhere in the world, one way or the other. Yet are we truly utilizing them to better communicate with our family and friends?The first year or two after I left home alone, I owned no phones nor internet. All I relied on was my mother calling me once a week. Although I am not too close with my mother, my impression was I still looked forward to her calls. I do not usually share my secrets with my mother, but at least I always tried to fill her in of my daily updates. As years go by, I got myself a phone and then subsequently adapted the internet teleconferencing with family and friends. Yet I also noticed the quality of communication with my family and friends have significantly dropped throughout all these years, despite the duration of the calls has been more or less the same. The conversations have been pretty superficial.
Maybe we have generation gap with our parents? That is very possible. Some of our parents might not be able to follow the mind of the younger generations. Yet what makes it more pathetic is some of us do not even communicate well with our siblings or partners. Communication gap is not restricted to physical distance. I have seen my own sisters living under the same roof hardly communicate deeper and they do not know where each other is up to.
Perhaps we are more busy now? Actually no. It is because we are not putting effort in opening up to communicate with others. Others as in our parents, family members and close friends. We rather spend time surfing TV channels after channels for the whole night, rather than spending just 10 minutes or so to talk to our family members properly.
We can't deny the importance of communication. Misunderstanding or conflicts happen due to lack of communication. It is difficult to juggle our busy daily life. But I think spending just some quality time interacting and communicating with our family and loved ones is essential.
♥ every page of my imagination
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It's been quite some time since I last dropped by here. There were times random thoughts were formulated but when I had blogger opened with a few lines typed, the urge of writing vanished completely. There has been a lot on my plate for the last few months. "This is an extremely stressful time for you. I remembered the last few months before my dissertation (also the thesis writing time), I was extremely stressed out. So I could really imagine how you are feeling right now. Plus it happens that you have more ongoing issues to take care of, as compared to others who just need to deal with dissertation. You just have to stay focused."Not only I have to stay focused, I am learning to be calm and positive. Because of so much going on right now, posting should be fairly easy for me. I'm sure those topics should be interesting for you to read, well, at least some of them.
With this being said, I still have no intention in discontinuing this site. In fact please join me in celebrating the birthday of this site today. I just realized that jaderays turned TWO today. Wow, was it really two years ago that I wrote the first entry here? Anyways for those who still come and visit, thanks for coming. Come, have a piece of cake. More to come...
♥ every page of my imagination
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