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Chronodex July - December 2013 Weekly Diary Free Download Released

Chronodex friends here you go!  The July to December 2013 version is released, feel free to download and plan ahead your visual scheduling for the rest of the year.

Here are some of the places you can interact with other Chronodex users:

1. Chronodex
2. Chronodex Facebook Page
3. Chronodex Flickr Group
4. The Fountain Pen Network thread about Chronodex
5. Lifehacker's cover of Chronodex

Yes Chronodex is kind of weird, it looks a bit too complicated, it is not like any other traditional scheduling tools, but it is inspirational and free style.  I made it so as to break the rules of scheduling, most diaries/schedule books have rigid grids and timeline which limit the available space for you to write notes related to your schedule, you can use any space on the paper to link your time specific entries thus free from the traditional constraints.

Look at our beautiful cross harbour tunnel, it is a 'grid', it is 'rigid' but it works in mass transportation because it provides a system and create order.  It is dull too, especially in times of traffic jam and rainy days.  What you have to dissect is that there is a difference between mass order and personal creativity.  Chronodex is for your personal creativity in what seems to be a rigid time system, it is for you to exploit/explore the space nobody ever made constraints of.

I've also made Chronodex a free download to share in 2011 when my father was too old and too sick lying on bed struggling, questioning himself feeling useless.  We had no way to help, prayers from all of you mysteriously helped somehow IMHO, but the thing is, I wanted to prove that everything is connected, he was not and never useless, if people appreciate Chronodex, it was because of him I existed and being educated by him into a person with inquisitive mind.  He should be proud of himself, even though there was no way I could convey this to him during his deterioriation.  Today on the Star Ferry lower deck, I saw a grandfather holding his grandson's T-shirt looking over the harbour an European tall ship cruising by, the light tug, the togetherness and a sense of exploration made me sob inside, recalling my own exploration with Dad and his brief time with my own kid.

Tonight, Mom told me her encounter with Dad on his 140th day of passing which happens to be my little brother's birthday.  A cicada was standing weakly on the floor where Dad used to stay often, she picked it up with both hands and prayed the Great Compassion Mantra (大悲咒), bringing it to the window seam and left it there.  Minutes later, it flew away energetically full of life.  The scene reminds us of the Chao Shao-an (趙少昂)'s painting which my Dad loved so much and had been on our living room wall for the longest time, AND it is Lychee season now.  Can you see all the connections and emotions?

The stuffs we hold dear of, always leave impressions for people close and around us, these things are proves of our existence painted over with emotions and mysterious connections.

So this coming week, like the last, I will be out of my home town heading Shanghai for a week of intensive preparation of a new store launch.  Love the travel, hate the separation, enjoying everything in between.

Meanwhile, Traveler's Notebook fans in Hong Kong had a great time in the Star Ferry ride, after-party and small meet-ups.  I hope to do it more often, feel free to drop by our Facebook group.  Now, follow me for a 15 seconds tranquil journey across the lovely Victoria Harbour.

 

Tangled

So out of touch with you all for a long while, currently in a very difficult and high pressure situation which work volume is humungous and somebody in my team is leaving too, not to mention Dad's health.  Meditation has been helpful to bring calmness, still meeting a lot of great people and loving my work.

Talking about calmness, relaxed focus, Zen and Tao, it was probably no coincidence that I bumped into Richard Zawitz the other day who is currently exhibiting his work in IFC Hong Kong.  It is kind of synchronicity to me, people you met in life would mean something at the beginning, but turns out a few minutes of re-encounter years later could mean an entirely new thing, just in time when you are in need.  I met Richard 6 years ago when we had business selling his ingenious creation - Tangle.  (Sorry Richard, this photo made you look older than your typical handsome look :)) This encounter got me into thinking deeper into this earthling's journey and the reason why we met again.

Did you know I work for two departments called "Station(a,e)ry" and "Moving"?

Behind These Photos, People and Products - Yet Another Blast Update

I'm heading Shanghai tomorrow for 1 week (like every month), so here's an update before I leave.

As usual, my Dad needs your prayer, which has been helpful in many ways.  He was admitted to hospital because of fever last week, he shall be fine and come out in a few days, just wish him less painful and more happiness.

Things Organized Neatly is a very nice place to see the beauty of neat arrangement.  I hope one day they will post my arrangements.  Yesterday I was just thinking about how to effectively carry nothing but a few essential objects yet all of them look beautiful, kind of impossible for tomorrow's travel but a little thought experiement is always pleasing.  Carrying my Turtlejacket Tri-Eye on a leather holster worn on cross shoulder leather strap sure got me a lot of attention :)  I had a dinner with the guy behind Turtleback last week, they will have some beautiful lenses coming out soon which fit the Tri-Eye.  I'm so happy he lusted after my DIY holster the entire time :)

As for the Chronodex self-inking stamp many has been asking for, I nailed the way to keep the wooden cover attached to the body by adding magnets, problem solved.  There are still a few adjustments here and there in millimeters, but the outlook is great.

I can't let somebody carry the Chronodex stamp without the most stunning look (in my own terms), so the cover will be laser engraved!  Been simulating how it will look for days, I still have a few technical problems to solve on the specification but it won't be long to start production, yay!

My day job is full of excitement to see future products and challenges with people and systems (social and computer), mind boggling to think things through, switching beta and alpha all the time.  But I'm glad, the satisfaction is within.  Gee I wish I had this new Fisheye Baby 110 camera with me for the trip starting tomorrow, super cute and handy, they didn't let me keep it.

Every year our Managing Director would send out a long email thanking everybody and sum up our achievements, one sentence stood out this year: "we never put 'maximizing sales and profit' our company's core value". I guess he detected an imbalance somehow, so I'm gonna quote him once in a while in difficult situations :) Some people thought it was just a lie coz any business is after profit afterall, but I look at it differently and I hope this little voice won't die, working hard on it.

Remember I introduced nLostnFound shop a while ago?  I've finally come into agreement with the owner to create a corner with a little more content than just focus on selling products.  The first implementation will be something related to missal books and bakerlite, hopefully we will set up the shelf in Times Square city'super right after I come back from Shanghai in July.  Every antique item is hand picked by the owner and we hope we can share the stories we know about these objects to people visiting.

Smartphone photography is definitely the future, probably 95% of us will not carry a modern day camera 95% of the time, besides Apple just patented a changeable lens phone system, that tells a lot about our future too.  Smartphone photography gadgets are popping up here and there, just that it is not yet a viable business for many.  Like the iPhone cases ecosystem, one great innovation will change everything.  Anyway, we have so many photos we take everyday, we never print them out anymore.  So we worked with Fotomax to offer printing service for smartphone photos, after 2 months of testing and procrastination, finally it is moving forward, customer can now print square photos, make Instagram photo stickers and photo books.  This is a comparison of their booth revamp (in Harbour City city'super) simulation vs. the actual outcome, proud to be able to faciliate ideas into reality.  If you can visualize your ideas, making it happen is just a matter of gathering all necessary elements.  I hope I'm not sounding too arrogant here.

Last week a colleague of mine thought I knew someone who could fix a phone, but I don't, so I took the challenge myself.  Err, not an iPhone but a retro rotary one with a slightly improved 1970s circuit board.  Everything worked except the unbearable noise on the speaker rendering conversation impossible.  First I thought it was a problem with the phone line plugging into an ADSL broadband line so the separator screwed up, but after checking with the phone company that was not the case.  So I picked up my screw driver and tempered with every circuit route inside with a magnifier.  Turned out it was caused by a poor circuit board layout design, there is this one place where a screw is supposed to fix the board onto the phone but the screw was not insulated by eyelets, so the circuit was damaged, not enough electricity could pass through at that point.  A simple bypass using wire fixed the phone.  I had so much fun so instead of charging her HK$200 to fix a HK$165 phone, I wavied it :P  Like how I used to play with making Gundam models, it is tremenduous fun to isolate problems and create solutions for the fun of it.  Great education, are kids exposed to these experience these days?  Probably not from the system.

So now the topic changed to kids.  This is an evil kid, on the surface :)  My niece is actually a super cute kid with a lot of smile and very talkative.  She was just playing a disturbed look with my fisheye lens, don't worry we are good.  Her dad my little brother is a hard working architect building schools.  We just had a family gathering in this Dragon Boat festival.

And a week ago, we had a gathering of 14 kids on a squid hunting boat trip on a rainy day.  We got nothing, not even one squid, and it was funny that all their energy were used up in anticipating and preparation so the boat trip was like the last stop of a great hang out :)

Watching them all together was a bit sentimental, they were kindergarten friends, some went to other schools some stayed and more of them will definitely scatter.  Where are my kindergarten friends?  They were so close to me and we are no longer in touch, we don't even remember each other's name anymore.  This generation of kids is probably the best connected kids ever found on earth, at least their parents have facebook.  I wondered, when we/they look back in 14 years, how will they feel about this video and their time spent together?  Well, in our next gathering, I'm gonna ban iPhones and iPads, they are evil products in this type of gathering.

 

Only You Can Figure It Out

Today I brought a young visiting couple from Shanghai to see my version of the world in this tiny little city of Hong Kong.  They were not looking for comfort, they were not rushing, they were curious.  So I had the freedom to show them around not worrying too much whether they like it or not.  Imagine you had those young minds regardless of your age, you will have no shortage of teachers.

I was hauling 3 analogue cameras trying to spend all the films left in them, it was great fun, plain shooting at anything as I pleased.  At the back of my mind, there was this phone call from Mom being nervous about Dad's condition, whom called my name in bed with huge discomforts in the afternoon.  On my left shoulder, a camera bag from Korea I was testing, compact and light at relatively low price.  Bringing friends to shops I know, chatting with owners and telling stories, finding pleasures in every turn of events.  Finding tiny pleasures while I can, that's probably the single most important constant I can find in life.

Don't look down at them tiny pleasures, they always show you something beautiful.  When you taste that delicious feedback loop, you will never quit.  No matter how bad a trade show would look, I keep walking, and walking and telling myself "that's not it!" until I found something interesting or somebody worth chatting to.  Next week it is going to be a Taiwan trip, let's see whom I'll meet or what I'll find.

The secret of a balanced life?  There is no balanced life I figured, there is just constants, which ones you hold onto, it is just up to you.  Again, City Slickers quote "just one thing, you stick to it and the rest don't mean shit… that's what you have to find out."

A short time to regroup your thinking (Feb, Tokyo)

A beam of warm sunlight and fresh air from outside of an airport (Feb, Tokyo)

A burst of inspirations from objects (Feb, Tokyo)

A sense of peace at your desk (Feb, Hong Kong)

 

 

 

A glimpse of people's lives from photos (Feb, Tokyo)

That's all.  Tiny pleasures.

Shelves and Shelves of Treasured Things and Stories to Tell

If I were to have my own place (gee it is almost impossible now given the high property price here in Hong Kong and I am probably too late, too unwilling to work my butts off giving my entire salary to mortgage), I would have all walls filled with bookshelves, custom made or genuine trays of the letterpress shelves, boxes and blackboards etc to build memories, concepts and ideas.

In these shelves/trays, they hold small chunks of memories though collection of objects and visuals.  Each object tells a story of my adventures, places I've been to and concepts coming from my little brain.  A real life Akashic Record of myself open to everybody.  I don't know what it means in front of God, or if it means anything to anybody, but at least being able to see those shelves of my life in my mind already gives me the basic grasp of who I am, that's what life is about isn't it?  To discover yourself.  Now I accept donations :P

We Had No Idea What Was Precious

I feel terribly proud to live and be born in this magic place called Hong Kong.  The hub of many things, the opportunities it unveils, the speed and flexibility it embraces…. .  In the movie The Book of Eli, Danzel Washington acting as Eli said to a young woman "People had more than they needed, we had no idea what was precious or wasn't, we threw away things people would kill each other for now."

We are definitely in the era of abundance now.  We have things people before us (and after?) would be in awe of.  That's how treasurable these "things" are.  Well, refrained myself from being too far away in thoughts, here's what I got earlier this month from small shops here in Hong Kong: Waxed nylon thread @HK$50, leather buttons HK$63, Mink oil HK$36, metal rings HK$26.

The other stuffs I got earlier are just around HK$10 each.  Thank you for letting me to live in this time and this place.