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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/1101898-The-Dharma-Force/sort_by/entry_order DESC, entry_creation_time DESC/page/3
Rated: 13+ · Book · Opinion · #1101898
For every dark cloud, there is a silver lining. Does anyone has change for mine?
We are the BORG. Resistance is Futile!
Excuse me.
We are the BLOG, read, comment or be assimilated.

(If that joke is old, please drop me a line. Thank you very much!)

I never took myself seriously. Why should you? But at least I have some good qualities.
I am a good listener even though I am not that good of a writer.
I don't like to talk about myself that much, so please comment on your thoughts.
I am satisfied with my life, which makes me a very unbalanced person.
I do not get bored easily, but please feel free to try.
I do not have much free time, so that makes me a Dad.
Oh, and because of the previous three items, I can only write in Fantasy Genre. I fantasize about the time the kids will move out.
(I will delete and deny ever wrote the above sentences when the time comes that either my wife or my kids found out about my blog.)

OK. Let's pull up a chair!

No, wait! Where are you going?
Please come back! Please!
(A bit too much? Tune down a little bit? )

** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only **
That's my new picture.
No, not the toilet.
Didn't you see me wave in the tank?
Previous ... 1 2 -3- 4 5 6 ... Next
November 28, 2006 at 12:48pm
November 28, 2006 at 12:48pm
#471746
The San Franciso Zoo has a little petting zoo inside of its Children's Zoo.

(Boy, try to say that ten times faster.)

It has a few goats and sheep inside for the children to touch, to brush and to feed.

The first time I let my son touched one of these little lambs, his eyes lit up. Then for the next half hour, I was chasing him while he was chasing all the goats. It was quite chaotic.

So, as you can understand, I lost track of my 7 years old daughter for a moment. Then I found her. As a matter of fact, she found me. As I finally caught up with my son, my daughter ran towards me with a small black goat chasing after her.

Yeah, she was the only child inside of the zoo who was afraid of anything dared to chase her.

The culpit was the goat feed inside her hand. There were feed machines all around the zoo. If you put a coin in, turn the knob, and a handful of feeds will come out of the bottom.

My daughter got a handful, and she was too afraid to hand them to any of the goats. But of course, the goats did not see it that way. They all thought she was just playing hard to get. So they ran after her, eyeing her hand all the time.

So finally, she dropped her feed, and stopped the chase. But of course, she was crying now. So I had to go to another machine and got her some more feeds.

As I put in the coin, and turned the knob, a black figure darted in front of me. A big black goat jumped up with both of its front legs circling the machine, and its mouth at the outlet of the machine.

The feed ran out of the outlet and directly down its mouth, through its throat and down its stomach.

Both my daughter and my son stared at the goat with wide eyes, while I was laughing so hard, I almost dropped my son.

A goat robber!

And after it is done, he dropped down, and gave me a look. It was as if to say, "Well, dumb man, don't just stand there, put another quarter in!"

As I only got two more coins left, I did not give him another chance to perform. So I went to another machine at the back. That machine was the territory of a fat gray sheep. It was too fat and hence too slow to climb the fence like the nimble goat.

So I got the feed, shared them among my daughter and my son.
And I gave the anxious sheep some of the feed for its trouble.

November 27, 2006 at 8:08pm
November 27, 2006 at 8:08pm
#471603
This is what you get, when you accuse someone of not blogging for a long period of time ...

The jinx backfired on myself.

I had dozed off during one of my lunch break, and woke up to find WDC in white.

What did I miss? Besides Halloween, and Thanksgiving, I mean?

Is it winter already? Wow!

I drove my family down to San Francisco during the Thanksgiving holiday.

The goal was simple. "Our son is at the stage that he is very much interested in animals, " my wife said, "We should go down to S.F. to visit the zoo there."

So, four hours later, we were staring at a snoring hippo in a small pond. The stench was very much real.

My son looked at it for a moment and declared, "Ga, Ga."
Wow, what a revelation! When he said those words, tears welled up in my eyes. My son, the scholar!

Ok, for all of you folks out there, a little bit of background information was necessary. When my wife and I taught my son how to distinguish animals, we happened to point at a duck and said, "Ga, Ga". The sound was a crude inmitation of how a duck call sounds.

So, now hearing the words to declare a 800 pound hoppo as a fat duck, how can I contain my excitement!

This one is locked in my memory. I can already imagine my son, at 18 years old, yelling at me, "You know nothing!" I will give a wryly smile, and reply, "Well, at least I know a hippo from a duck!"

Ha Ha!

Well, I can still see how my son's brain works. He considers all four-legged land animals as "Woof, woof." --- Dog.
He considers all creatures in the water as "Shh..." --- Fish
And he considers all creatures floating in the water, but not all the way submerged as "Ga, Ga." --- Duck.

Simple for him to say with authority, and interesting for us to translate for him.

Ahhh! The simple life!

Boy, I wish I can have his life!
October 19, 2006 at 12:25am
October 19, 2006 at 12:25am
#462796
Hey!
It seemed that I had not blogged for a long time!
Bad Josh! Bad! Bad!
Well, I have an excuse for it! Although I don't have a note from my parents to authenticate my excuse, I have evidence!

I just got back from Texas. Dallas, Texas, to be exact.

I tried to blog from my hotel, but the wireless network there had been ... troublesome. (I want to take a hammer to the servers, but I restrained myself. It was late, 2AM to be exact, and I was not decent, in my shorts to be exact, so I let it go.)

Anyway, to prove I was in Dallas, TX, I can report that the gas price there is $2.09, a whoopie $0.60 cheaper than Nevada!

And I met a man there. Well, I kind of know him, and he did not know me. I saw him on TV. He was talking about it was not right for the great state of Texas to buy oil while itself produces oil. He came to the conclusion that if all good Texasians vote him as governor, he will make sure all oils are produced in Texas.

OK, I am not going to debate the theories of Macroeconomics either with him, or with Y'all, (With my fake Texas accent no less), but the reason I brought that up was that he looked funny.

He wore a black jacket with a huge black cowboy hat. He had a huge handlebar mustache, and he looked like a classic bad guy in a classic western movie.

In which, he would try to knock the good guy over with a whisky bottle, but the beautiful barmaid would have yanked the bottle from his hand and smashed it on his head.

In another words, he was a classic badguy Nobody, not even important enough to pull a gun on the good guy.

Anyway, just that reason alone, I would not have give him a second thought, but at the end of his blabbing, he said, "Please vote for me!" and he gave out his web address. http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/

At that point, my jaw was on the floor, and my neck was screeching to a halt.
"Kinky?"
His name is actually "Kinky"?

I can't even imagine any state can have a governor named "Kinky".

Well, I can imagine the great State of California have a governor named "Kinky", but certainly not Texas.

Anyway, I thought I share that with you. I don't care how great his ideas are, but if someone is to tell me to go voting for "Kinky", I'd say this through my teeth, "Over my dead body!"

Nothing against the guy though, you understand, this is just one of these stupid manly principle thing.

Like I'd never drink from a toilet even if I am dying of thirst.
... You know, one of these principle things.

This was my first real trip to Dallas. And I did not stay long enough to find out if I really liked the place.

The weather was hot and humid, around 85 degrees. And to my daughter's utter disappointment, there were no cactus in sight.

The local TV was showing "Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Make the Team", and "International Miss Hooters Beauty Pagent".

Or something like that. I am not sure if it was the place, or just my luck in TV channel surfing.

Kinky! Very Kinky!

*Laugh*

October 7, 2006 at 12:16am
October 7, 2006 at 12:16am
#459813
Today is the Chinese Moon Festival. On this day, the moon shines the most bright of all year. On this night, if possible, we are supposed to spread a feast in the backyard of our home and everyone sat around under the bright moon light, sing, dance and be merry!
Unfortunately, tonight, it was rainy outside, and the moon hid from us here.
But I do have a couple stories to share with you.
In ancient Chinese myth, the sky used to have 10 suns. Each sun was actually a raven with three feet. Now, the rules of heaven at the time was that each raven will travel the length of the sky during the day, and rest for the night.
Then one day, the ravens said to themselves, "Why should we follow these stupid rules. We should come out whenever we like." So, they came out whenever they please, and the world was in chaos. Sometimes, they came out at night, so there was no night anymore. Sometimes, they came out all at the same time, so the earth was cooked by ten suns.
Finally, one day, one of the human king had just about enough of this. So he shot down nine ravens, and wounded the last one. And he chased after the last sun and made it promise to rise and set at a regular time.
So for his heroic deed, he was awarded with a magic pill by the gods. If he ate the pill, he would ascend to heaven immediately. But he was reluctant to do that because of his beloved queen. What would happen to her if he did that?
Now, at this point, the thread of the story diverged into different directions.
One legend said there was a evil minister who wanted the pill for himself. So he poisoned the king, and tried to take the pill. The queen Chang Er swollowed the pill to spoil his plan.
Another legend said that the Queen Chang Er got curious of the locked up pill, and she found a way to try to taste it.
And yet another legend said that she got envious of her husband's chance to become immortal, so she took the pill without him knowing about it.
But the end result was same. She took the pill on the night of the moon festival, and ascended to the moon. To this day, she lived there alone in a huge palace, with only a jade bunny as her companion, and mourning her lost husband.
Tragic, huh? The lesson of the story was to be careful of what you wish for. Immortality was not you thought it was.
The other story was about the moon cakes we ate at the moon festival. The legend started on one of the moon festival in the Yuan Dynasty.
Yuan Dynasty was actually ruled by the Mongolian Khans. Their rule of China was harsh and brutal. Finally, the people rebelled. Their first meeting was set on the day of the moon festival. And they hid their plan and their communique on a piece of paper and put into a set of round cakes. So instead of passing around pieces of paper which could rouse suspicions, they passed out the cakes.
The tradition survived the rebellion, and the moon cakes became part of the feast.
But you won't find any pieces of paper in them though.
Maybe that part of the tradition got passed down in another way, --- The Fortune Cookies.

*Bigsmile*
October 2, 2006 at 6:57pm
October 2, 2006 at 6:57pm
#458720
There was an underground parking garage under my In-laws apartment building.

It was barred by a red striped gate arm. If a car stopped at the gate, the driver will swipe a card over the reader located next to the door, and the plastic 6 inch wide gate arm will raise up for the vehicle to go through.

Every morning there was an middle aged lady walked to the gate arm. She would take out a card, swipe it, and the gate arm would raise. Then she would go inside of the garage.

......

It never occurred to her that the gate arm was there to stop cars, not humans. She only needed to duck her head a few inches, or walked around the gate arm and she would just walk straight through!

It is just amazing how single-minded a person can be. How many of us can take a step back and notice how laughable our actions had become.

Reading through my friend Kåre Enga in Udon Thani 's blog entry on Qur'an and Ramadan, it just occurred to me that if you peeled through centuries of blood and hatred and taboos, as an outsider looking in, weren't Christians and Muslims and Jews worshipping the same GOD?

OK, before all you nice faithful people of various religions throw rocks at this poor miserable infidel, please read the following story, (while gathering bigger rocks.)

Four blind men sat near a river bank. A man rode an elephant came by to drink. When the man chatted with the four blind men, he found that the blind men had never seen an elephant before. So he invited them to touch and felt the animal.
The first blind man found the elephant's trunk. "OK, I know now! An elephant is just like a python."
The second blind man nodded, "I agree it was like a snake, but I don't know about a python, obviously, it was just the size of a regular snake." He was holding the elephant's tail.
The third man was touching the elephant's back, "I had no idea what you guys drank last night, what python, what snake? This is huge. Huge I am telling you."

The fourth man agreed, "I did not think it was anywhere near the shape of snake, and I noticed it was huge too. ... And it certainly stank!"

The herdsman and the elephant moved on while the four blink men argued and argued.
The End!

Oh, by the way, did I tell you what the fourth man touched? *Bigsmile*

September 22, 2006 at 1:09am
September 22, 2006 at 1:09am
#456499
I just saw this on a Chinese news website:
There was a drunk man broke into the Giant Panda Habitat of the local zoo, and had a wrestling party with the hapless Pandas inside.
He was in the local hospital now, with broken ribs, claw marks on his torso, and bite marks on his limbs.
Here comes the funny ... I mean shocking part:
A local journalist interviewed him and asked him this question:" So I heard that you bit back?"
The man vigoriously denied the rumor.
The nurse who was changing his bandages at the time cut in, "What do you mean? When we treated you in the ER, you still had furs hanging from your mouth."
*Laugh* ... Oh, I mean, poor Panda. *Cry*
The article continued to say that this was not the first time that the habitat was broken into.

So I think, what should the zoo management did was to change the habitat with the polar bears. Let's see the idiots do with a 8 feet 600 pound bear who loves some fresh meat.

I considered the tigers first, but I also saw another article earlier that said the tigers in the zoo nowadays were all bred in capitivity. When the management tried to give the tigers some wilderness training and introduced them live chicken instead of cuts of meat, the tigers ran from the clucking chickens!

*Laugh*

Anyway, back to the first story. My question, my main concern, the only thing that I could not drive from my mind was this:

What was the man drinking? ... And how can I get some of that?

*Bigsmile*
September 19, 2006 at 1:27am
September 19, 2006 at 1:27am
#455805
I decided to do another blog on Master Da Yuan, the holy man.
It seemed that I forgot to mention his name in previous blogs.

My friend Kåre Enga in Udon Thani had this comment when he saw the picture of the monk:

"I asked my friend about this picture. He said 'serenity'. Some people radiate. Even through a picture. "

I believe that he is absolutely right!

Master Da Yuan had been in my thoughts since we met. Looking through the pictures, I discovered that he had almost the same expression on his face in every picture.

And yet, I did not feel that he was faking it. It felt that it was truly from the heart. It was a reflection of inner peace.

I thought back on my meeting with Master Da Yuan. I did not believe he offered any widom of words that I had not already known.

He did not seem to have the aura that I was expecting of a holy man.

Like I said before, he just seemed like Forrest Gump. An ordinary person.

And yet, I cannot forget him. His image sometimes fills my mind for no particular reason. There is no words to describe it, actually.

It just seemed to be funny. The world seemed to be funny somehow. All the tension, all the frustration, all the drama, all the anger, just seemed to be petty and funny.

Yeah, serenity, that is it!


September 12, 2006 at 1:46pm
September 12, 2006 at 1:46pm
#454281
I just got a Friendship Badge from Miss Pencil pencilsoverpens .

And ... and ... I am choking with emotions.

Tears falling down like waterfall. Artifical and fake, true, but the emotions are real.

Finally! Finally! I can get rid of that stupid (1) next to my name.
I shall be ... JoshCham with the (2) next to it.

And a shining new (and the only one) badge to go with it.

MY PRECIOUS!!! HE HE HE!!!

I so hope that it can be print out.

Then I will pet it, hug it, kiss it, play with it and call it George ...

OK. I hope you are all fans of Bugs Bunny, otherwise, you will just think I am crazy.

Well, come to think of it, that is probably true.

But I am the crazy online guy with (2) next to it!
HA!

I am so giddy, and I am so happy.
I am like that poky little puppy dropped in a bowl of strawberry shortcakes.(I was reading the story to the kids before bed.)
I am like Robin Williams with a six-pack Starbuck Double-Shot Expresso for breakfast.
I am like a rat dropped in a peanut butter jar.
I am like a dungbettle dropped in a open sewer ....

Ok, too much and too graphic!

And Miss Pencil, my friend, my muse! What a gal! What a pal!
I remember her first comment for my newly written blog, and I quote:

" ... the story's kind of dumb. *Pthb*"
....
Well, what about this one:

"... you are nuts."

Let me see, there is got to be a nice comment here from Miss Pencil....
...
Let me see, there is got to be a nice comment here from anyone ...
...

Huh, how about this one:
"You make me sick!"
Oops! This should be deleted

"Mommy, Mommy, the sick man is online again."
Let's forget about that one.


Anyway, hehe, this is kind of embarassing... Maybe I should do a tap dance here to entertain you.

Oh yeah, you can't see ... And I can't tap dance either.

Maybe next time.
But ... thank you Miss Pencil, and Good night!
*Bigsmile*
September 11, 2006 at 5:19pm
September 11, 2006 at 5:19pm
#454104
Last weekend was pretty nice here in Reno, Nevada, USA.
You can smell the fall in the air.

*Cough, Cough, Cough*
Well, if you try, the chances are you'd get a lungful of ash.
Somewhere, way out there, was a wild fire. It was so far off that it was in another state, California. But you can still feel and smell here.

However, good things are still happening.

We had our annual Hot Balloon Race last weekend.

They called a race, but to me, it was more like a Hot Balloon Hanging.

Beautiful ballons suspended in the air, dotting the skyline. If only, I'd get out of the bed to watch them, I was sure I'd been impressed.

Sleep was precious to me, especially the short time between my kids woke up, and they woke me up.

My mother actually called me up to tell me that the ballons were in the air.

Bless her! If she did not give me birth, I'd hang up on her rudely.

But it worked out for me actually. The same phone call woke my wife, and she actually took the kids to see the ballons and left me in bed!

Nice, comfy mattress! If you guys do not mind, I'd like to be alone with the thought for a while.

....

Oh, you are still here. How ... interesting.

My friend the Party Dude partyof5dj hated wasted time.

But I love to waste time. Not only I'd like to waste my own time, I'd like to waste yours also.

So, there now, how do you feel about 5 minutes of your precious time that you could never claim again.

The fall is here,
the time is slipping away,
and you are drifting slowly into hypernation.
Not a care in the world... for about 5 minutes, except the blazing hatred for a lazy bum --- me.

Please, don't thank me all at once!
*Bigsmile*
September 6, 2006 at 5:40pm
September 6, 2006 at 5:40pm
#453125
Wanted: A good solid brick .

Do you ever have one of these days? You just wanted a brick to smash you head against?

Not for self-mutilation or anything, just kind of want to wake yourself up.

I am having one of these days.

Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, my brick banging, board smashing days are over.

Aww, that was the good old days.

I remember that was when the first movie by Jet Li just came out, properly named, "Shao Lin". The first time the name of that temple introduced to a young generation.

Bald-headed men with nothing to do but to beat the stuff out of innocent bricks and sticks. And at that time, Jet Li was not yet Jet Li, just his real name --- Li Lian Jie.

After the movie was released, a whole generation of teenage boys hummed the theme song and found out the definition of such words as "Fractured hand", "Concussion", "Stupid", and "Swollen Buttocks" (Spanking was legal in that day and age, unfortunately for us).

Then a flock of young idiots ran away from home to go to the remote run-down temple (At the time of course. Nowadays, the abbot of that temple comes touring with an entourage of limousines and cell phones.) to find the true sense of heaven --- A clean and working flushing toilet.

Of course, the topic of the day among boys was that who can beat whom, the choices being Jet Li, Jackie Chen, and Bruce Lee.

The answer after careful investigation, scientific analysis, and with the threaten of violence, was of course Bruce Lee will come on top, with Jet Li follow, and Jackie Chen as the beanbag chair.

Bruce Lee, not only a renowned martial artist, but also the inventor of his own style of fighting. A true master, no less. And because of his unique situation, he had to fend off real challengers in real life. So he was the undisputed top dog.

Jet Li was a champion of tournaments before he was picked to star in the movie. His style is of course "ShaoLin", but because of the civilized nature of the tournaments, he cannot be in the same league as Bruce Lee.

Then of course, Jackie Chen. His style was actually for show only. In a real fight, he'd probably got his living stuff beaten out by the real masters.

Ok, how in the world did I move from the beginning of this entry to Jackie Chen?

I have no idea!
But despite the lack of a solid brick, my headache is pretty real. So ... *Pthb*

See you next time, and keep the brick handy.

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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/1101898-The-Dharma-Force/sort_by/entry_order DESC, entry_creation_time DESC/page/3