This is how $270 million and 4000 tons of brass and copper will look like.

Envisioned to be much, much taller than our current Statue of Liberty which is 151 feet, Garuda Wisnu Kencana, when completed will stand at 479 feet when it is completed, sitting on the hill of Bukit, Bali, Indonesia.

Seriously, when I stared at Garuda Wisnu Kencana I couldn’t help but think, what the hell is Malaysia doing?

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

Really, when you see a project this big you can’t help gasp in awe. This is something that we thought that is what the crazy people of Ancient Egypt or Greece will ever dream up of doing. But our neighbor Indonesia is already halfway through creating another wonder of the world.

Just look at the size of that big bird!

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

In case you’re wondering, Wisnu, otherwise known as Vishnu in India, is the Hindu god of preservation, the god of all gods. And Garuda is Vishnu’s divine vehicle, the big protector of choice.

Well, I just love to refer Him as the Big Bird.

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

Bali is highly influenced by Hinduism since the 11th century, thus you can see exquisite levels of crafts and culture lingering on even after decades. And today Hinduism still makes up more than 80% of the religious devotees in Bali. Well, save the tourists, of course.

Seriously, Garuda Wisnu Kencana is huge. Really, really huge. If they need to separate the head/torso, the hands and the Big Bird to put them at three different places because it’s too huge to put them together, you know how huge it is.

Alright, maybe not. Let me show you the hugeness of it. 479 feet is like 1/3rd of the height of our proud Petronas Towers (KLCC).

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

And what about the $270 million? Well half of it goes to completing the statue, the other half goes to creating a shopping mall around it.

According to my reliable sources apparently what they’re going to do with the empty spaces around is to create a giant shopping mall which is projected to attract 10,000 visitors a day.

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

But then, apparently they ran out of cash to do it now. :x So yeah, it’s still half completed, lol.

Anyway, this is how the Garuda Wisnu Kencana will look like when it is done, this is a miniature version of it that they did.

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

Of course, I’m sure they will continue the work very soon. The tour guide speaks of the place with great passion and hope, and he’s really proud of this creation of their country. I’m sure Bali won’t disappoint them.

You just ought to admire their effort, no? I would like to share a quote I have heard,

“When you wake up in the morning,you have two choices, to sleep and continue to dream or to wake up and chase them.”

Obviously, they did. ;)

Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali, Indonesia

And ooo, cute monster thingy! Let’s camwhore!

Camwhore with cute monster thingy at GWK, Bali, Indonesia

Work has been busy, and I haven’t found much time to blog, sadly! :(

So, to make up for my lack of activeness in this blog, here’s a lil quiz for you guys to win the little dickies from Bali, Indonesia!

Guess what the 5 Indonesian words are, and if you get the most right you’re going to get the cute lil dickie keychain from Bali!

Just drop your answers or comments here, and ask your friends to join in the fun! That’s it! :D

The Bali Dick Keychains

Yep, I will be giving out 3 of these cute little things for 3 people who got the most answers right. In case you’ve missed it, here’s my post about dicks and penises everywhere in Bali, Indonesia!

Hey, no cheating! I know you’re opening your browser to Google Translator now. Shame on you, naughty boy! Now eat this!

Grey eating the Bali dick keychain

:x

Anyway, the five Indonesian words that you’re going to guess are:

Bebek

Cumi-cumi

Kepiting

Ayam Malam

Bebek Kotor

Well here’s some hints… They are all food (well, technically one isn’t exactly a food :x), and they call him Donald Bebek.

End Date: 10th April 2010, enough time for you to ask your kakaks or makciks or Ahmads xD

So just drop your comments here, if you got the most rights I will give you, or if you’re too far away, I’ll mail to you the cute lil dickie keychain! :D

Hey they’re damn cute!

Don’t forget to ask your friends to join in the fun too!

Oh yes, I’m talking about dicks. Also known as penises, cocks, wieners, sausages, or whatever name you fancy.

Dicks are everywhere in Bali. Seriously, everywhere.

And no I don’t mean them on the surfer boys. I mean them as key-chains, accesories, sculptures, decorations, and bottle openers.

No kidding. Have you seen a dick this big?

Giant Bali Dick Sculpture!

Apparently the popularity of the penises in Bali has something to do with some spiritual practice known as phallic worship. According to some sources, people worship the phallus (read: erect dicks) to “worship of the reproductive powers of nature as symbolized by the male generative organ”.

Phallic worship in ancient Greece centered around Priapus (the son of Aphrodite) and the Orphic and Dionysiac cults. In Rome, the most important form of phallic worship was that of the cult of Cybele and Attis; prominent during the empire, this cult was notorious for its festive excesses and its yearly “Day of Blood,” during which the frenzied participants wounded themselves with knives; self-inflicted castration, a prerequisite for admittance into the priest caste of this phallic cult, took place during the festival. In India, the deity Shiva was often represented by and worshiped as a phallic symbol called the lingam. Phallic worship has also been practiced among the Egyptians in the worship of Osiris; among the Japanese, who incorporated it into Shinto; and among the Native Americans, such as the Mandan, who had a phallic buffalo dance.

In case you’re wondering, Bali is heavily influenced by Hinduism since the 10th century. Lord Shiva is part of Hinduism.

The Bali Dick Keychains

Wooden Bali Dick Carvings

Bali Dick Bottle Openers

Hodder M. Westropp wrote this in a 1870 article when studying phallic worship practices around the world:

“Three phases in the representation of the phallus should be distinguished–first, when it was the object of reverence and religious worship; secondly, when it was used as a protecting power against evil influences of various kinds, and as a charm or amulet against envy and the evil eye… thirdly, when it was the result of mere licentiousness and dissolute morals.”

Hmm, so the dick can be a charm or amulet against envy and the evil eye? So I guess that explains why guys with bigger dicks have bigger ego. Ahem.

The Bali Dick Keychains

It is also said that by worshiping the phallus you can have better reproductive and regenerative powers. Read: better sex life.

Well anyway, spiritual or not, it is kind of peculiar when you see a country that is famous for its traditionalism and spirituality to have so many artifacts of the male reproductive organ around. Perhaps it’s just us that makes so much of a taboo out of sex. The Balinese sees sex as just a natural passage of life, and children from the young age are already accustomed to being open about sex and sexuality, with their peers and family.

So sometimes we have to wonder, who are the peculiar ones, them or us?

Yee and the Bali Dick Keychains

Aki and the Giant Bali Dick Sculpture

Culture shock, hmm. But ooh, the girls go gaga when they see dicks everywhere. You can’t blame them, can you?

Same to the gays as well. 0:)

Grey, Nick and the Bali Dick Keychains

Grey and The Giant Dick Sculpture in Bali!

And I’d bet the dildo whores will be happy to see one this big too. It’s like up to my knee height. Like just barely shorter than 1 meter. I can see the size queens drooling from miles away already. Yes you. Wipe em off.

Wooden Bali Dick Carvings

So who wants a Bali dick?

Grey is finally… proudly GREY!

Yep, it’s my childhood dream to be GREY, maybe I’ve been playing too much of Final Fantasy and I adore Sephiroth too much. But woot, GREY is COOL!

Now let’s just hope it won’t fall off too soon. :P

This is a narcissistic brainless post unlike my previous artsy-fartsy stuffs, so if you don’t mind to bear with my ramblings, read on! :P

Grey Before Bleaching

Grey before the hair makeover

Well actually, before my latest bleaching feat I already bleached my hair before, like well, a month ago before Chinese New Year, lol. At first I bleached then I tried to dye it grey too, but it failed as apparently i didn’t bleach light enough, the yellow pigment mixed with the blueish-grey dye made my hair turn out being greenish.

And it all came out within 3 days. Yep, 3 days, and the dye went off. Argh!

So I became the blondie for a month now. Well I wouldn’t mind acting dumb in the meantime, it’s fun! ;)

Anyway, I asked my hair stylist Elson Tang after, and he said that I wasn’t using the proper shampoo to wash my hair after dyeing. Apparently after dyeing your hair with different colors you need to wash them with the color retaining shampoos , or else your colors will fall off pretty quickly. There are color retaining shampoos for almost all colors, in my case I have to use the silver color retaining shampoo.

So aight, this time, I’m determined to do two things:

To go totally GREY, and to keep it there!

And off with BLEACH!

Grey's Bleaching Adventure: Bleaching the hair

This is how you’ll look like when you have a pile of bleach stuck on your hair for 3 hours. Yep, I sat there for three hours bleaching my hair, trying to get the result I want.

At first I thought of bleaching the whole head as well, but that will kill all of my hair, and while that looks pretty it’s actually pretty much an ass to maintain. So I opted for bleaching my fringes, as you can see here.

It doesn’t look pretty, and it hurts. Though it doesn’t hurt like hell, it hurts annoyingly on your scalp leaving you squirming on your seat thinking when will it be over. Yep, it’s chemicals after all, what do you expect?

Grey's Bleaching Adventure: Done Bleaching

So this is how my hair looks like after bleaching. The shampoo girl commented, “it’s like meehoon”. :x

Yep, it’s that soft and easy to break. Bleaching your hair to total white kills all pigments and minerals inside the hair until they are dead, totally dead. The whiter you bleach, the more you’re bringing it to death.

First time in my life I bleached white. Bye-bye healthy hair, I will see you in a year.

Grey's Bleaching Adventure: Dyeing the hair color

You didn’t really think that I will just go around with that super golden hair and white hair, would ya?

My goal is GREY, yeah, GREY. I wanna be well, GREY!

So we went on to put that GREY dye onto my hair. The technically correct term for it is actually silver, but well, it sounds cooler as GREY. (Actually, silver sounds cooler but don’t mind me :X)

And this is how you looks like when you’re bored on the forth hour already trying to figure out something to do. I brought my PSP and I played it till battery ran out. Forgot to charge em the previous day, lulz.

Grey's Bleaching Adventure: Done dyeing!

And here I am, done dyeing my GREY hair! The golden hair part now appear greenish as silver/grey is actually blue pigments, and added with the golden yellow it appears green. But on the white bleached hair, it appears as GREY!

And yeah, GREY is cool!

The End Product!

Grey's Bleaching Adventure: The End Product!

Okay, so it may appear blueish and all, but really, it’s really GREY! Or silver. Or ungh, I don’t know what to call it. :X

But anyhow, I’m happy with my hair now. Even though I have to deal with hardcore hair tangles, and the bleached hair takes forever to dry. The normal hair takes like half an hour max to dry, while the bleached part takes an hour plus. Ouch. Not to mention they fall off pretty easily too. :X

But ungh, for my childhood dream — GREY hair, I will deal with it!! Wahahaha!

And thank you for sitting through this endless stream of babbles! I’ll give you some fallen grey hair as a reward… Any takers?

Yep, I will redesign your blog, starting from head to toe, a total change. With a small price of kindness, starting from RM100.

And each cent of that will go to charity.

This is my offer to the Twestival event, an annual global charity event held on March 25th to raise funds for a charity body. This year, the charity body that is going to benefit is Concern Worldwide, a non-profit organization dedicated to help people in poverty through education programmes across Africa, Asia and the Carribean.

Twestival KL last year was a big hit, and this year I’m sure even more people is going to take part!

The bid for my services of complete blog redesign starts from RM100. Each single cent of that goes to Concern Worldwide. If you think that my services worth more than that, and our friends and children could have deserve more than what you get, start bidding for your best price! :D

Twestival Kuala Lumpur Poster

How It Works

Twestival is all about raising funds by bidding on services or items offered by other users through Twitter. You can bid on an offer made by another user, pay that amount, if you’re the highest bidder you get that offer, and the money goes to the charity.

What, you don’t have a Twitter account yet? What are you waiting for, go get one!

If you already have an account, you can already start bidding on the various services that are being offered by numerous other Twitter veterans! Here’s how:

To bid for a service/item

1. Visit the Twestival KL Wikispaces Page to see what services or items are up for grabs.

2. Bid for items by tweeting:

[Bid number - associated with the service/item you want] [Your bid amount] #twestklbid
(e.g. “[005 @aprilyim pole dance RM100 #twestklbid]

Note: We will scan the tag for bids everyday and edit them into the Wiki. The amount by the highest bidder will be updated in the Wiki.

3. On March 25, we will open all auctions from the last online bid, and all those present will have the opportunity to outbid the highest bidder from online. If you are unable to attend, but still want to bid for an item/service, please make a bid and drop us another Tweet using the #twestklbid informing us. We will be in touch.

Yep, that’s it! And if you’re curious about what kind of things or services people are offering now and the starting bid prices, here’s a glimpse:

[002] @nikicheong Guest Tweet for you (5 Tweets) — RM 50
[005] @aprilyim — My Pole Dance –RM 50
[006] @dustyhawk –Three IDE Harddrive 120gb,80gb,320gb +1external cove — RM 100
[008] @azrinarizz – A 1 hour street Photoshoot(KL area): Shoot+1DVD copy of shoot — RM 50
[012] @joshlim — One night of clubbing with Josh & hot bloggers — RM 100

There are a huge range of other things up for bids too, so be sure to check out the Twestival KL Wikispaces Page! If you pay attention, those are some huge names around. And yep, they’re joining the cause too!

What About My Offer??

Well, to put it simply, if you get my bid, here’s what you’ll get:

• A custom designed blog template  for your blog tailored to you: for your personality, your topic, your readers, your market, your ideas.
• In Photoshop format, so that you can edit and change things later on if you wish,
• In HTML/CSS/Javascript. In Blogger or WordPress or any blog platform of your choice. Yes, I will code that design to be your blog template unique to you. So for God’s sake, don’t sell it! :P
• Advices and a lil bit of training on blog housekeeping to make your blog accessible, user friendly and well, nice. :)

And the T&Cs:

1. No commercial or corporate blogs. Only for personal blogs.
2. Project lasts for 3 weeks. I will try my best to finish up within the period, so please work with me, will you? :)
3. Communications will be made through email, Skype, any IM services, or if you’re in the KL/PJ area, we can come out for yum-cha sessions. :D
4. Blogs of any genre welcome. Food porn blogs encouraged. Porn blogs… uhh, we’ll have to see about that.

If you’re wondering, I have just started working in the web design industry since last year, and falling in love with it day by day. Just a matter of trivia, I hated web design back in my college days. I got my first job as a web designer in this web design agency, and well, I’m still on my first job. :P

Why so cheap, you ask? Firstly, I take this as an opportunity to do some charity work, to practice my skills a bit as well as to expand my portfolio. Secondly, I think that a mere small part of modification to a blog such as just the header or maybe a few buttons doesn’t do it justice, so I’ll go for the whole thing instead. :D And hey, it’s all fun!

If you’re still skeptical, well here’s some of the works I’ve done before:

Brillany Photography Website, my brother's photography blog :D

Brussels Beer Cafe Website

Caramelz.my, do I need to explain? :)

EverythingBabything.com, a website that sells baby products

Orient Rewards website mockup, development in progress :)

My company, Shinjiru's internal business portal (Sharepoint)

Enough of me, now it’s YOUR turn!

If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, GO GET ONE!

If you got a Twitter account, start bidding!

And if you don’t just want to bid, but want to offer something, some services or even yourself to be up for bid, EVEN BETTER! Read here for more information on how to put your services up for bid!

And hey, bid on me, will ya? ;)

Well, I’m as surprised as you!

It was my friends that told me first that I was featured on The Star Newspaper R.AGE Featured Blogger’s section.

At first I thought it was a prank. Well it was my birthday 2 days ago, I guess people can play pranks.

Then throughout the day I got friends buzzing me on MSN and Twitter saying that, “Hey, I saw you on newspaper!”

It was until WillyCW (visit his blog here) sent a Twitpic of the newspaper clipping.

Oh my!

So how did it happen??

Some people asked if I paid for the “ad”. The answer is, no.

Kenwooi from the infamous Kenwooi.com asked if I wrote to R.AGE to asked to be featured.

The short answer is, yes.

The long answer, is that all you have to do is write to them at alltherage@thestar.com.my introducing yourself and your blog. They will take your blog into consideration, and if your blog fits the bill, someone will contact you for more details. You can find the blog post about R.AGE looking for bloggers to be featured over here.

As I quote,

“As The Star’s youth section, R.AGE has always been about representing young voices and giving Malaysian youths a platform to express themselves.

This featured blogger section was created to partially fulfill that commitment. While bloggers already have their own ”publishing tools” to air their views, we hope to bring them together to build a community.

This way, we add another filter to the information available on the net — a repository of sorts to find out what young people are into these days, what they are thinking and what they are all about.

So, it doesn’t matter if you’re a top blogger or a n00b (yes, there’s space for you too!), or if you blog about travels, technology, cars or your daily life — we want you to share it with us.”

Then two weeks ago, the someone who contacted me was the infamous Niki Cheong (Twitterers look here) who asked me for a picture. And the rest is history.

Lesson of the story? Get A Thick Skin

And make that first move.

I was probably one of those n00bs that thinks that being a n00b I am just started blogging a few months ago will probably not fit in there, but now I am glad that I made that first move.

Dengan muka tebalnya I sent in my introduction. It paid off. Now it’s your turn! :D

The other two bloggers that got featured on this issue are:

• Eugene Lee from Food From Thoughts
• Serge Norguard from DustyHawk

And thank you everyone for reading and supporting this blog! And if you happen to fumble upon this blog after reading the feature on the newspaper, do drop a word so that I can say HI to you!

I was talking with my friends about change. Apparently, change seems to be quite a controversial topic, in some cases. No matter if it’s a change of place, a change of environment, perhaps a change of career or relationship status, there is always one element something that is taken into consideration:

Time.

Apparently, a change is waste of time. Not the time for the process of changing itself, but the time spent on the activity before the change.

It is as if that if you made a change, whatever that you have done before is just wasted down the drain and the change is “not worth it”.

Or is that really the case?

Image by TW Collins on Flickr

When do you need change?

Change comes in two forms: by fate, or by will. Usually the former is uncontrollable, if it happens, it happens, and you can’t do anything about it. But the latter is a decision that is in our hands, that we can choose if we want it to happen.

And usually it’s a tough decision indeed.

If we are to choose if we want to change, it is usually out of desperation, tiredness, or boredom. It is ultimately a loss of interest in something that only then, the idea of change comes to mind.

However, apparently, the longer the time we have invested in the subject, the harder it is for us to change.

If you have been dating for the guy for 5 years, and even though you have gone so tired of his feats you are afraid of change, because it would be a waste of what you have done for him.

If you have been working in the company for 8 years, and a change of career will probably bring new prospects and new developments, the fear of change strikes when the sense of insecurity and the idea of adaptation to a new environment makes you feel even more tired of your job now.

If you have started studying the course for a few semesters and you find that it is not something you would like to do for life, but you are afraid to switch your course because of the time and money you have paid to get this far.

But, seriously, what is better for you? Being stuck in a bad state, or taking that step to make things happen for better?

Making that step to change for better

Sometimes when we are afraid to make that change, we will just sit back and pray that everything else will change to be what we want it to be.

But as the old saying goes, “If you can’t change the others, you’ll have to change yourself.”

If you want to have a better life, make that step. Time is an irrelevant measure, because if today isn’t good, tomorrow is not likely to be better. Of course I’m not encouraging you to throw your resignation letter just because you had a bad day at work, it’s an analogy, well you know what I mean. :P

Observe for a period of time before the change. And when you’re sure that things will not get better, go for it.

It doesn’t matter if things will get better or worse, most importantly you have made that step to change what was not good before.

If it gets better, congratulations, you’ve made the right choice!

If it gets worse, congratulations too, it’s time for another change!

Change, anyone?

So, are you considering making that change now? ;) Or are you still in doubt, weighting the consequences and the “price”?

Well, I admit, that statement is an exaggeration. But really, just Google the word “how to be famous” and you have millions of websites and spamsites dedicated to “help you grow famous”.

This post is NOT a guide to teach you how to become a famous person, no, I don’t know how to do that because I’m NOT famous. But here’s an exploration of why being famous can be good.

You should know by now there are plenty of stories to hear on this blog. Here’s another one. ;)

Art, or fart?

My last post on Hyperminimalism Writing had gotten some pretty interesting comments. Many commented that it sounds like a Tweet or how things is nicer to be kept short and simple, but here’s one that caught my attention:

Sounds more like a riddle to me…or…well…the author is just too plain lazy. :p

No deny to that, really. We can’t say that he’s wrong, because to everyone of us with the average eye and mind, it does sound like crap and the author is freaking lazy to come up with crap.

But, lets make an assumption that Bill Gates one day say, “I like Hyperminimalism.” One single word will result in speculation across the net with thousands of tweets and retweets every minute scrutinizing the sentence from head to tail.

The Fountain

Almost one hundred year ago, a man submitted a urinal to an arts exhibition and requested for it to be exhibited. He named the urinal as “The Fountain“, and his rationale behind the artwork is on Dadaism philosophy, which disregards traditional notions of art and calling his Fountain “found art”.

It was rejected.

But that doesn’t stop from it launching Marcel Duchamp into fame. His Dada movement peers were angered by the rejection, and instead of making Marcel a fool of the time, he got famous as an avant-garde which made a major contribution in the 20th century arts movment.

The point is, if Duchamp did not have the network of friends and the level of fame he has around his friends at the art scene as a Post-Impressionist artist, he would not have survived the attack as he would be so lack of supporters. With a bit of fame and networking, it’s different.

You know what an editorial said about why Duchamp’s The Fountain is so important?

“Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

Well, let’s not care about how that contributes to the art scene and how is that affecting the art philosophy today.

Our focus here is Duchamp’s fame: if it wasn’t because of Duchamp’s fame before, nobody could have given a shit about what he did, let alone defend Duchamp’s feats. Enough said.

So, do you want to be famous now?

Or do you already want to be famous? ;)

Today if you have a very famous blog or Tweet, you are pretty much guaranteed a good living from all the advertising offers or endorsements or free iPhones and Nexus One being given out for you to test. Not to mention you’ll probably have a few thousand followers watching your back, tweeting (pun intended) about your good moves and clattering about your bad ones.

Famous Spiderman quote, “With great power comes great responsibility.” But oh, power is something so hard to resist.

With the Internet and today’s development in social networking, being famous is a matter of strategy, time, and of course, luck. But I am not going to teach you how to, because I am not famous neither, and without the fame and authority whatever I said does not weight as much as what the people at Mashable said. ;)

Do you have anything to say about people trying to be famous? Or what’s your take on today’s fight for fame?

So we have hyperminimalism in the visual arts and architecture (pretty much thanks to the modernists and Kasimir Malevich for starting Suprematism), but have you heard of hyperminimalist writing?

I first came across this idea from Unpublished Guy’s blog. His blog is:

“Something happened. A man with glasses was involved.”

So what about that?

The idea is to dip and dap into the ideas that you’re presenting, then leave everything else for the reader to fill in the blanks. As our Unpublished Guy puts it, “Minimalism leaves the reader to take an active role in the creation of the story by filling in the blanks left by the author’s spare prose.”

So lets see what kind of interesting ideas can we get from here? ;)

Of course, you don’t get the picture until you’ve seen more of these. Here’s more example from Naissance, a blog by Shelli,

“It shattered like the glass embedded in her hand.”

Somehow, the power of hyperminimalist writing seperates you from everything else on the page, and when you read that single line your head spins to imagine the scene and everything else around it too — the shattering sound, her face as it shattered, the environment, or what is it that actually shattered. Her heart, perhaps?

Another example from Crockstar Blog,

“Sometimes shorter really is better.”

Or is it?

You question and it keeps you thinking, don’t you? So there, it’s successful. ;)

So to try my hand at this… here’s some of my plays:

“Two mice and a cheese. One has to go.”

Maybe that’s too long. Here’s another:

“Reaching my hands out to touch, yet it’s a mirage too far.”

One last one:

“He moans and shoot into the air.”

Ahem. :P

Perhaps these can make a good Twitter or Tumblr idea. :P

So come on, try your hand with this and see what you can come out with. I’m wanna know what’s in your head!

We’ve talked about maximizing your strengths on the previous post, now what do we do with your weaknesses?

We all have our bad times. Or perhaps some of us are already born with the certain disadvantages that put us a notch below the others. But actually, who is it that is there to determine what is normal or success? And how do we weight ourselves, is it from your heart, or is it from how others see you?

After watching this talk by Aimee Mullins on TEDs, I guess she gave us a very simple but powerful answer.

“It is not so much about overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves to it, embracing it. Grappling with it. Maybe even dancing with it. Perhaps as we see adversity as something natural, consistent and useful, we’re less burdened by the presence of it. “

Dancing with adversity, making it your partner. Now that’s some new idea that we all can use.

Aimee Mullins: A Living Miracle

Image courtesy of Rams Sports Performance

Aimee Mullins was born without fibulae in both legs. In other words, she had to amputate both legs off when she was 1 year old, and theoretically she will have to live on a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

That’s what the doctors think.

And of course, as of all stories of all great people in this world, she did not buy that idea and made a miracle out of her adversity. She learned to walk using prosthetic legs by the age of two, and went on to do all what other “normal” kids will do — walk, swim, play, and run.

Oh yes, she can run really well. With her specially designed prosthetic legs she had set World Records on 100 meter, 200 meter and the long jump during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. No, she did not compete with the other “handicapped” group, she competed with the “normal” bunch who had meat on both sides of the legs, just like you and me.

Oh, instead you’re wondering why she looks so pretty and hot, she did model for Alexander McQueen back in the late 90s. Yep, she’s a model. A hot one at that.

And that is determination. And of course, she did what she preached in this video: to embrace your weaknesses and dance with it.

I am a huge fan of TEDTalks, and this video is another reason why you should watch them.

“The Opportunity Of Adversity”

Accepting And Embracing Your Weaknesses

Well, I’m sure not every one of you are patient enough to sit through the 22 minutes of the video. Let me just summarize the story for you here.

If you have a weakness, or at bad times, accept it to be part of you, embrace it and turn it into an opportunity to do great things.

A lot of us know that we have our own problems. It may be a physical, mental or spiritual problem. And a lot of us chose to just nod our heads at it, and decide to tuck them under the bed or the old dusty chest of the unknown in our hearts and hope we’ll never see them again.

Wrong.

Running away from your problems will not make them go away. They are still there, and they will be back to haunt you no matter how hard you try to hide them.

And if the problems won’t go away, why not just accept and embrace it, and make it a part of you to be proud of?

I personally have problems of my own too. I have been living with the pain of arthritis for the past 15 years, and still counting. I do admit that sometimes I will feel that I can’t achieve what many others can due to my own problems, mostly physically, but I know that I can excel in other parts of life if I work hard (and maybe smart) enough.

Aimee Mullins achieved what many has deemed “impossible” and became a living motivation for all of us. Now, I am passing on the motivation love to you. :)

Turning “Disable” To “Poss-able”

At the end of the video, Aimee shared her version of the word “Disable”, different from that from the dictionary:

Disable, (verb)
To crush a spirit, to withdraw hope, to deflate curiousity, to promote an inability to see beauty, to deprive of imagination. To make abject.

Ant. To make poss-able.

Someone with problems is not disabled until you crush their hope. And you are not disabled until you have lost hope.

The day you accepted yourself as a whole, the day you have gained so much more. Perhaps more than many others in this world will ever find, because everything about you, including your weaknesses and problems, are special to your own. Keep them.