The Queen - Diana - Mother Teresa

I love the movie 'The Queen'.

Needless to say, Helen Mirren's performance is unbeatable. She has a talent to make audience think that she is not acting as the Queen, but She IS the Queen.

Apart from that, this film gives me a chance to think the whole 'incident' in another way.

When Diana died, most people were grieving. We love Diana so much. I cannot deny that she is an extremely attractive and adorable woman and contributed a lot. We are fond of her even she is not perfect as a royal family member. However, why do we love her so much?

Is it because she is beautiful?

How would we perceive the whole thing if she is not beautiful?

In Ameile, there is a scene about an old woman talking that Diana's death is a great loss when she read the newspaper. Ameile asked that how about Mother Teresa, she also passed away several days after Diana, won't this a great loss also? The answer from that old woman is no, because Mother Teresa is not pretty and old. Ameile disapproves and challenges that does it mean old and not pretty people are less valuable??

Mother Teresa devotes her whole life to many helpless people and brought that overcome the tragedies, she is always my hero.

Those who loves Mozart will never get old

Last Thursday, Jeff and I attended an 'education concert' - Swire Classic Insights. During the concert, conductor Mr. Henry Shek brought us through Mozart's Jupiter - Symphony No. 41 in C major. Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra performed heavenly.

Mr. Shek led us to find out the patterns through out the Symphony. In that one hour, I experienced how amazing music can be. I am impressed that the world gets such extremely talented people like Mozart to touch our heart by his breath-taking music.

Last year was his 250th birthday. Lucas was so lucky that he could come with us to enjoy a concert which celebrated Mozart's great day in last Christmas Eve. I still remember that my belly was wobbling with the music rhythms.

Mr. Shek said 'Those who loves Mozart will never be older than 35. It is because all his music was composed in those 35 years. His life is like a match, which is very short and sparkling brilliantly and lights up the world.

Sacrifice

Another vivid example showing how great Jeff is.

Last Friday I bought myself a ring, the first silver ring I buy in my life. It is a gift to glorify and demonstrate the economic independence as being a modern woman. (I exaggerate, just kidding)

On Sunday, I sit with my baby on toilet bowl and made him 'poo poo', after done, I wiped his back side and threw the tissue into the toilet bowl. At such 'critical' moment, my ring was too loose and slipped elegantly into the toilet, with a crystal clear 'ting' sound when it reached the ground. Please note that I have not flushed yet.

I was shocked and say 'ah' in quite a high pitch.

Jeff responded in 0.2 second rushed into the toilet. I told him the dramatic scene just then.

He asked me to leave the 'area' and brought baby to the 'safety place', he said 'I will manage it, don't worry'.

Then he used a giant plastic bag to wrap his hands and he stirred the water... after 10 seconds, he took out the ring.

I even dared to ask if he had touch any baby's poo poo, he replied with a pity smile ' of course, what do you think, the ring was under the poo!!'

I really love Jeff, he is a hero!!!!!!!!!!

How do you construct the world in your mind??

Stereotyping is important because it helps us to simplify the world in order manage information in our mind.

I am interested to learn how others construct segments in their brain. Tonight, I am just joking with Jeff that one of our dearests believes that all people in the planet can only fall into 4 big categories:

Chinese
Foreigners (what he calls Gwailos/ westerners)
Men
Female

He tries to explain people have different behaviours or perception because of his/her gender or 'nationality'. For example, If a person is creative, he will say because that man is a westerner, Chinese won't have such big wit.... Another example, ALL women will not care about their career once they become mothers.

Base on his mental map, there are 4 combination formed: Male Chinese/ Female Chinese/ Male Westerners (Gwailos), Female Westerners (Gwaipos).

I am not being sarcastic, I just think this is interesting.

How do you define the world??

Rules in working place

1. Your fault is your fault.
2. Your boss's fault is also your fault.
3. Your boss has a right to ruin your reputation or scapegoat you in front of your clients and colleague, for the sake of retaining his face.

I experience the 2nd and the 3rd rules thoroughly in these two weeks. I thought HE is the exceptional, HE is reasonable... But I discover that all working places have no big difference at all.

The REAL last phase of the Europe project

Don't wanna write any work-related entry but my life recently is either about job or my baby. It will be fantastic if I can split myself into two individual, a stay-home Manki and a career Gloria and each of them has 24 hours a day to spend (that means 48 hours in total as a complete me).

Now we are really reaching the last phase of the 9-country project. I think we conduct this research for almost one year, if we count the initial costing period and the idle time before the actual start. We look forward to finish all local reports by this week and hopefully I can take some annual leaves in the coming two weeks.

The happiest moment for me everyday is to simply stay with my baby and look at him when he falls asleep. His fair light skin and long eye lashes make him looks like an adorable angel.

Annual Dinner 2007

We just had a great fun in the Annual Dinner this year, everyone burst into laugh in every 5 minutes.

The theme this year is 'knowing your colleague'. Many awards had been given to selected staff. Surprising, I got the 1st runner up of best dressed staff and won $1000 cash.

I will spend those lucky money to a gift for Jeff, he wants to have a flash.

We had the party in a small island in Repulse Bay, I understand why our queen highly recommended (that means ordered) the committee to host the function there, the place is just terrific, we had our overwhelming starry starry dinner on the lawn.

When we are waiting for the dining time, several of us video recorded some silly stuff. One of the videos is my yoga class, you can view it below:

This is the best annual dinner I had so far.