A schedule for doing nothing?

The following is from a Psychology Today blog called “When’s the Last Time You Did Nothing? 9 Easy Ways to Relax”:

One particular client… had such an incredibly difficult time relaxing on weekends that we had to actually make a schedule for her to be able to do “nothing”. E.g. “10 am: Go for leisurely walk with dog in nearby park; 11 am: Go to a bookstore and browse the titles casually, buy a fiction book that you’d really like to read; 12 pm: Enjoy leisurely lunch; 1 pm – 3 pm: Lie on couch and read fiction book.”

My immediate reaction was: Hey, it’s just “doing nothing” we are talking about here. Do we really need a schedule for that? While this sounds like the ultimate irony, doing nothing, for some, including myself, really is not as simple as it seems. It is not as if anyone can allow himself to sprawl on the couch or the beach all day without a bad conscience.

How I try to fill up my time commuting to and from work is a good illustration of how I do not allow myself to “do nothing”. The moment I leave home, I put on the earphones and listen to my favourite Internet radio programmes. When I get on the train, I switch off the iPhone and pull out my Kindle and start reading. As soon as I alight, the reading gives way to the listening again. One gadget takes over the other to take over me.

I tell myself that I make good use of the travel time. But is there something wrong with doing nothing? Why is it so difficult to just relax or be still? How different is what I’m doing from what I observe with scorn  the things other commuters do, such as speaking on the phone, playing games and watching movies or TV programmes? By not allowing myself to do nothing, I am none the wiser.

In her book The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin talked about how she tried to make better use of her time to increase efficiency. She did that by changing the way she thought about productive time. For example, while previously she considered fifteen minutes to be “too short a period in which to get anything done”, she started to push herself to squeeze in an extra fifteen minutes somewhere during the day, such as between two appointments or at the end of the workday.

Of course, I do not agree we should cramp tasks and activities into every minute of our time. But it is true that during the day, short spells of time do get wasted, either because of a lack of planning or because of the belief that these small bits of time are too short for doing something worthwhile. But as Rubin suggests, you can use the time for drafting a blog post, making notes on some research, or answering some emails. Over a long period of time, insignificant fifteen-minute spells add up, considerable amounts of time is saved, and a number of small things are done. And that is no small achievement at all.

Beautiful islands

I took this picture of these islands on the flight from Hong Kong to Singapore. Seen from above, they were absolutely beautiful.

The route did not cover the Maldives, although these islands look like some of those in the country to me. I should have checked the on-screen flight details on the plane to see where they were.

A driving license or a cycling license?

It was only during a recent cycling outing with friends that I learned that the point reduction penalty for drivers also applies to cyclists with a driving license. In Hong Kong, if a driver commits a serious traffic offence, such as speeding or ignoring the red traffic light, it would lead to a deduction of points. An accumulation of 15 points would result in suspension of the license. According to my cycling friends, if a cyclist commits such offences, points will be deducted from his driving license, if he has one.

The rationale, I was told, is that cyclists are road users and they should abide by traffic regulations. While this may sound fair, I do have a couple of fundamental reasons for contesting the linkage of a cyclist’s traffic offence to the driving license he may possess. First, a driving license is exactly what the name suggests – it’s a license for driving, not cycling. One gets it after passing a driving test. The whole process has nothing to do with cycling so why should cycling have anything to do with it? Second, why should a cyclist in possession of a driving license receive additional penalty for committing the same offence as another cyclist without the license? Third, if a cyclist is a road user because he is cycling on the road, is a pedestrian not also a road user when he crosses the road? Is there a difference between a cyclist ignoring a red light and a pedestrian doing the same? If not, shouldn’t a pedestrian in possession of a driving license receive the additional penalty because he, too, is a road user?

The whole thing doesn’t seem to make sense to me. I wonder what the court would say if a cyclist being so penalised were to take legal action one day.

Even the flowers are fake

Spot the differences in the photos.

Difficult, isn’t it? Don’t they both show Hallstatt, the beautiful Austrian town which has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Of course, the picture below shows the outcome of an ambitious housing project by Minmetals Land Ltd., a subsidiary of China’s mining company Minmetals Corporation – a full scale replica of the town in Huizhou, Guangdong, which is about 100 miles north of Hong Kong. According to Crystal He, the person in charge of the project, this 20,000-square metre upmarket residential area not only targets the well-to-do in China but also the foreigners living in Hong Kong, helping the latter cure their homesickness. There is no doubt that those foreigners will fall for it, especially because, according to He, there will be a shop selling “Austrian-style” (not Austrian, mind you!) crystal and other souvenirs. I’m sure they will feel more at home than in their own countries.

Authenticity issue apart, there is also the integrity issue. The fact is that China has copied the town of another country, having been clandestinely conducting the research and surveying the town for years. Even if it does not amount to infringement of intellectual property, as Moniker Wenger, owner of a guest house in Hallstatt claimed. "They should have asked the owners of the hotel and the other buildings if we agree with the idea to rebuild Hallstatt in China, and they did not," said Wenger. The copycat version has angered the residents of Hallstatt, who think that this sort of copying without permission is like “a painter stealing the works of others”. The local media had requested that the government try to intervene on their behalf, and the residents were furious about the tolerant attitude of the government. When a Hallstatt delegation attended the opening of the replica town on 2 June, Mayor Alexander Scheutz, who signed a cultural exchange agreement Saturday with the new Hallstatt, diplomatically said that "we are very proud".

The truth is that not even the residents of Huizhou were proud of the project, as some were skeptical that the replica would ever match the beauty of the original. "Chinese architecture is very characteristic and stylish," said Zhong Ping, a Huizhou resident. "Just work on your own style. Why do you have to copy others? Even the flowers are fake, I can tell they are fake at first glance."

Shout Cry Laugh

Shout Cry Laugh.

This is not the title of the sequel to the book Eat Pray Love I have been reading. Rather, it is Jo Wilfried Tsonga’s reaction to his heartbreaking five-set loss to Novak Djokovic, the world no.1 tennis player, in this year’s French Open. He somehow failed to convert four match points and let Djokovic off the hook. Talking about his emotions in the final set, he said:

"Well, it was a bit of everything. I was tired; I was frustrated; I was disappointed. You get all kinds of feelings going through your mind. You want to break your racquet. You want to shout. You want to cry. You want to laugh and say, 'Oh, come on, that's a joke.' How could I lose this match?"

The following extract is from the book Eat Pray Love:

"It is strange and true that sometimes intense emotion can cause us to respond to cataclysmic news in exactly the opposite manner logic might dictate. This is the absolute value of human emotion - joyful events can sometimes register on the Richter scale as pure trauma; dreadful grief makes us sometimes burst out laughing."

It seems to be a fitting description of Tsonga's situation.

Thanking Us?

Around June 4 every year, what we consistently hear from the human right activists in China - those who have been threatened, imprisoned, tortured or maimed because of their insistence on justice and making the truth known - is how they are deeply moved by and grateful for the tenacity of the Hong Kong people in the matter.

I fully understand why. While, in China, the activities to commemorate, and seek accountability, for the massacre have been heavily suppressed in the last twenty-three years and those engaging in them have been ruthlessly persecuted, the sea of candle light at the Victoria Park year after year must be hugely comforting and empowering to these gallant fighters.

But I also find those compliments very humbling. What are the prices we have had to pay, compared with the sacrifices that those in China have had to make, such as their liberty, their limbs or their loved ones? Spending an evening to pay our respect and homage, and maybe shed some sweat and tears, is all we have to do. It is also the least we can do. In that sense, do we dare to take credit for our little bloodless and painless act?