Demystifying Zen

"Did Zen ideas create the kamikaze?" I was astonished when I saw the title. It was an article Ven Yushi Shimada, a friend of mine and a Zen monk introduced in his Japanese twitter account.

It argues that (Japanese philosophers' interpretations of) Zen's pursuit for "nothingness" made psychological pathway into dedication to the nation in devoting to the suicide attack.

My master wrote that enlightenment in Zen can be achievable in devotion to one's vocation as well as in practicing Zazen (sitting Zen) meditation. However, it is far more constructive context than above.

You may question reading "My master wrote" as Zen is famous for not relying on written words in conveying teachings.

In my humble opinion, the "no written words" rule should be understood this way. If you and your partner think exactly the same thing in exactly the same way and you both say a word, what would happen? Would you need to write down the word?

Reflections on HINZ 2014

The annual convention of the Health Informatics New Zealand, HINZ 2014 Conference and Exhibition was held on 10-12 November at SKYCITY Auckland.

It was a massive experience for me and honestly I am still in recovering mode. So much people to meet, so much discussions to join and so much information to absorb.

It started with the mobile health and FHIR seminar by HL7 New Zealand in which I was a part of the organising team but it really had heated up the scene. The rest of the conference was also dominated by the mood of something big were just started everywhere.

No one made the question which was heard until the last year: "How can New Zealand Health IT lead the pack again?" Here we are, back in full steam.

Spring has come

At last the spring weather has come to New Zealand and it is the season for cherry blossoms here. The cherry blossoms here have their own paces and they are not so synchronised like their counterparts in Japan.

Actually large majorities of the cherry trees in Japan are cloned sisters. So they bloom at the same time in one region and the "blooming front" sweeps throughout the archipelago like a wave of cheers by a capacity crowd in a football stadium.

The spectators also go wild in the season in Japan. As the climax is short-lived, the battles to "occupy" better places for cherry blossom viewing parties are really fierce. Because even slight changes of the weather may slow or accelerate blooming, the party organisers have to watch out for weather forecasts to determine the timing of the event.

However, I prefer the way cherries bloom in New Zealand. As each tree has its own time to bloom we can enjoy cherry blossoms for a prolonged period even in one region. Also there are not intense competitions to secure a good view of them. I also like the contrast of the blue sky and the green lawn as the background of pink blossoms.

Apart from the contrast of colours, so was in Japan before cloned cherries dominated there, I think.

The moon over the rainbow

Hawaiians said, "No rain, no rainbows."

After another busy day, seeing the moon over a gorgeous rainbow was just awesome.

Through coloured spectacles

The lenses in the photo above have nearly 90% transparency and give you a high contrast view especially in dawn, sunset and rainy conditions. However, you will definitely feel strange when you wear them as you will lose sense of colours. Your view will go monotonous just with shades of yellow.

It is very interesting as they are only cutting 10% of visible lights and actually boosting your sense of contrast but you can no longer distinguish between colours.

Even more interestingly, although similar things happen when you are focusing on a particular aspect on your observation or experience, you won't notice the difference unlike the effect of yellow sunglasses.

A human is so prone to biases, isn't it?

Decision 2014

I have been always keen to vote since back in where I originally came from, but I have found New Zealand elections are much more exciting.

Everyone was talking about politics during the weeks preceding the election day, with many openly arguing which candidate and party should get their votes or should not. Some of them even tried to persuade others to follow the suit.

The result this time was the reflection of New Zealand currently doing well overall compared with other parts of the world. Definitely reemerged fears of wars and violences seem to have made Kiwis prefer stability and continuity.

It is a difficult time for lefties as the world less seems to a place of corporation, but rather of competition. However, by cleverly sharing information and knowledge utilising abundant computing power and ubiquitous network, corporation will eventually beat competition in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, not only in equality and diversity.

I think that finding the way to achieve it is the challenge for the Labour Party for the next three years.

Supermoon

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.

From "Genjō Kōan" by Dōgen - Translated by Robert Baker Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi for the San Francisco Zen Center

After a long hard day

My job at the hospital is mostly made up with "business as usual" things but sometimes it includes a real "go-live" event. Yesterday was such a special occasion.

Fortunately everything goes well except a couple of "Houston, we've had a problem" moments which had eventually been sorted out.

Today was a kind of follow-up and we do had a tricky problem which required some guessing game but had not taken so much time to reach the solution.

After working quite long hours in two days, I found I really love this job. A successful go-live can be that much sweet!

No mater where you originally came from, we fight together for you

This post's title is from the lyrics of a song in Māori language (Te Reo) by Stan Walker, "Aotearoa", celebrating the New Zealand indigenous language week (Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori) 2014 which was last week.

"Ahakoa nō hea mai koe, ka whawhai tonu mātou mōu"

My heart goes to all those who are hoping to contribute to, but struggling to settle in this beautiful country, Aotearoa, New Zealand.

No music, no life

Many people like to listen to music. No TV shows or movies will complete without music. Even sports games which would be great excitement of their own, incorporate recorded and even live musics to add even more fun. "No music, no life" is well said as without it our life will be tasteless.

However, how many people feel urge to play music themselves? I have no ideas. What I know is I am feeling it more than ever in my decades of mingling with musical instruments which has now a confusing name, keyboard.

When I started playing a keyboard, general public have no access to any alphabetical keyboards connected to computers. Even for professionals, punched cards are the normal medium for data entry. Decades later, virtually no musical keyboards are without being connected or equipped with some kinds of computers nowadays.

Even better, now heaps of synthesisers are available as applications and plugins. They would have costed fortunes for each a quarter century ago. There never has been a better time for keyboard players. Make some noises and have fun!

Long Time No See

I always carry a camera with me. Not just a build-in camera of a mobile phone, but one of my classic purpose build cameras. It is often a digital SLR. Sometime it is a film SLR operates completely mechanically.

However, it is rare that I really pull it out and shoot some frames. Today was such a rare opportunity.

While being away from blogging here for months, I had been involved in arguments on social network systems in Japanese language. What intrigued me was why people in Japan are so busy in self-justification rather than recognising problem and sharing experience by inviting impartial discussions including views from outside.

Then the rainbow reminded me of another field I had been missing.

So, long time no see. Let's have some good time together.

Expect the unexpected

Recent two incidents in the world news made me aware of how little we know about the things especially how much we know about them. At least, as far as I am concerned.

I had no doubt about the biological breakthrough featured in the Nature magazine. I had never imagined that a large passenger jet could fly for several hours completely unnoticed.

This universe would not be clockwork, but more like dominos with countless paths are crisscrossing everywhere. Some pieces will miss the next ones and fail to relay but others will fall down themselves and start sequences unpredicted.

Let's put some pieces forward, anyway.

Don't mess with data, get down to earth

When I had started tinkering around personal computers more than three decades ago, those machines were viewed from ordinary people like oracles. Once I created a programme which produced output like this:


SUBJECT NAME 1 (FEMALE): JANE GREEN
SUBJECT NAME 2 (MALE): JONE SMITH

PROCESSING: ............................................................................ DONE

MATCHING INDEX: 89 OUT OF 100


The algorithm was quite shabby - just some kind of hash value calculator on the name strings but it was surprisingly persuasive to some of my friends.


I really amazed by recent news stories, such tricks - although by far sophisticated and I believe many of them have come from honest professional enthusiasms, basically along the same principle in the essence - have huge influences and implications.

However data acquisition and processing technologies might advance, they would not mean a thing without being supported by hard facts, which sometimes might be hard to swallow, too.

Don't mess with data, get down to earth.

(Never) Lost in translations

I have been translating technical documents for more than two decades. I have been living almost seven years in a country where virtually no one speaks my own language outside my house. Also I am learning three new languages and enjoying it very much. I am not a perfect speaker in any of those languages. But what matters? No one is perfect anyway.

Rather I have lots of fun from all of them. It is fascinating that there are always new things to learn when you are dealing with a language even if it is your mother tongue. Actually I think I might be shy the most in my own language as I feel making mistake is less permissible when using it.

However, it looks like my fellow country people would think quite opposite. They are afraid of making grammatical errors, missing meanings of what they hear and pronouncing in a poor manner in speaking other languages. To err is human. No mistakes, no learning. As a result, I see people from countries around the world here but except one, where I came from.

It is a shame that the concept of expatriate itself carries unwelcome connotations there. I would like to urge the fellow people that your personality would never be lost in translations. You are you wherever you are and would be welcome as long as you are human. Being human would not require heaps of words. Especially in a country like here.

Keep Calm and Carry On

The year 2014 already has seen heaps of extraordinary new stories. Many of them challenged our old perceptions of the world and invited new perspectives to the reality. For example, just several years ago, main stream media excitedly reported reduced snow falls and melting ices and they even argued that white Christmas (of course in the northern hemisphere) would soon become things of past because of global warming. Alas, suddenly the weather daemon apparently has changed its mind and extreme ice and show conditions causing havoc in electricity and transport all over the world.

In biomedical science, it was the discovery of the stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells. The idea of the induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells which proved that mature cells can be reprogrammed to gain the ability to turn into any type of cells had been innovative enough to earn the Nobel Prize but  STAP cells went even further. The notion that just dipping cells into an acid bath can transform them into stem cells was too extraordinary to believe or even to take seriously, and actually it was rejected by the science journal Nature multiple times.

Although it does not imply that all "too good to be true" stories should be treated with respect, there should be plenty of fascinating but unexpected discoveries waiting for us. There are still heaps of stones left unturned in the universe. By no means the science was already settled and well-known. I have got a feeling that the year 2014 would be a great year of scientific discoveries and technological innovations.

I am concerned that Japanese media has been relating the discovery of the STAP cells to the personal traits of Dr Haruko Obokata who made it. For me, they are looking for the golden formula of the Nobel Prize Winner as it can be reproduced by parents in growing their own children. Such a delusion is contrary to the fact revealed by the discovery of the STAP cells itself. We still know nothing about the nature.

Just Keep Calm and Carry On.

At your own risk

When I visited Western Springs for the first time, I was surprised to see no fences around the lakes. It is common in Japan that ruthless fences are surrounding the water edge with notice boards saying "Danger: Keep away from the water!" as though killer crocodiles are infesting the water.

I saw some Japanese users of Twitter discussing how to raise the awareness of danger related alcohol consumption while taking acetaminophen, as the caution in the package often go neglected. I wondered whether I had seen such cautions here, so I pulled out a package of Paracetamol tablets I bought at a Pak'n Save supermarket. There was no such caution.

However, the risk that Japanese people would take the least is alienating themselves from fellows. I think that is the reason why the Japanese, despite being so risk-aversive as individuals, sometimes take reckless behaviours as a group or a nation, even potentially damaging their own reputation or security.

I think it should be supported as individual rights to have own judgements on risks and act accordingly, but I wonder if it should be extended to preference for groupthink over individuality. Although the people currently living in Japan have the final say, I am concerned that fearing the risk among their internal relationships might cause much bigger risks internationally.

A Zen way for a non-vegetarian and non-temperance

Japan is a country with a culture heavily influenced by Buddhism, but it is hard to live there as a vegetarian and/or a temperate. Being both of them is associated with the original teachings of the religion. However, in Japan, vegetarian or vegan options are just recently beginning to be introduced for overseas visitors and almost every social occasion involves drinking - so called nomination, a portmanteau of nomi, "drinking" in Japanese, plus communication.

With varying degrees of dualism with the indigenous spiritual belief, Shintoism, the teachings of Buddhism in Japan, especially of Zen schools, are believed as those of living in accordance with the natural consequences of life which are inherently apathetic to human dispositions. Thus the custom of vegetarianism and temperance has only been practised by monks following strict schools of Buddhism, although several rulers have tried to enforce it throughout history and left some influence in Japanese cultures.

Having said that, enjoying great BBQs and nice wines and beers on a beautiful summer day is a natural consequence of living in New Zealand, Aotearoa. In particular, we regard foods as precious gifts of life for us whatever lifeforms they would come from. It is interesting that the ingenious culture of Aotearoa, Māori, gives special respects to foods and has protocols and taboos that have a lot in common with those of Japanese.

So when you do barbies and boozes in a Zen way, you should not forget appreciating all the lifeforms, respecting the ways they exist as they should do and calibrating yourself into harmony with them. Also, you should eat and drink responsibly because their natural consequences would always catch up with you.

Rotorua - a promised friendship between two brave people

Before I visited Rotorua for the HINZ 2013 conference, in the Te Reo Māori (Māori or indegenious language of New Zealand) course at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, I studied and presented about Rotorua and Kahumatamomoe, the ancient Māori explorer after whom the lake was named. In the study, I found an old news article of the New Zealand Herald on 12 July 1916, titled "Japanese and Maoris - Brave Races Fraternise" which reported that Māori people welcomed Japanese sailors.

After the Japanese Navy escorted the ANZAC convoys to the European theatre during the World War I, it had been a tradition of the Japanese Navy to visit Rotorua when Japanese training ships visited New Zealand until the menace of war engulfed the whole world again in the late 1930's.

What made this significant for me was that my grandfather served in the Japanese Navy during the period when the Pacific Ocean meant what its name suggested. Thus there is some chance that my grandfather visited the geothermal city long before me, as he once told me that he had crossed the equator in a voyage.

He did not serve in the fleet during the war. I heard that he worked at shipyards building and repairing warships but he did not talk much about the wartime. He was not a warlike man. Whether he had visited or not, he must have heard about Rotorua and hospitality of the people there. He must have been pleased to know that I could return some gratitude to them in my tauparapara or the opening of my presentation at the conference there.

Mmes “Nuclearotic” Minds or: How Japanese Housewives Learned to Stop Worrying and Leave the Homeland

In the previous post, I mentioned about my presentation at HINZ 2013. The theme of the paper I submitted for the conference was the Twitter's impact on unprecedented scale of the exodus among ordinary people in Japan namely domestic housewives after the Fukushima Nuclear Accident.

Before the accident, Japanese expatriates were rare on Twitter and could easily acquire thousands of followers by tweeting bits and pieces of the daily life in a foreign culture. The shocking videos of the explosions at the nuclear power station changed everything. I have witnessed a number of people seeking information about how to get out the country to a foreign land, maintain daily living in an unfamiliar country and find a way to settle there permanently. I wrote my paper to record their odysseys collectively.

I know through Twitter, considerable people are keep leaving Japan for good. More are planning to do so in near future. However, for a population of more than 120 million, is still only a fraction and even fewer than the recently decreased Kiwi exodus across Tasman. Still this is a big change for a country where vast majority of people are born and die there. I do not think it would have been possible without the prevalence of social network services especially Twitter.

As I listen to those people, they are not acting out of fears. For those who are emigrating, they are just seeking alternatives. Japan has a lot to offer but the options often come as a predetermined set. It may be the result of too much optimisation to an overly cohesive population. I hope that the current diaspora of Japanese bring more diversity to Japanese as an ethnic group.

Health IT is no longer the future, it is the reality as a commodity

The most significant event for me in 2013 was attending and giving a presentation at the Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ) 2013 Conference and Exhibition on 27-29 November in Rotorua. It was second time for me to attend the annual conference and the first time to give a presentation there. Actually it is my first peer-reviewed public presentation on an academic study.

Another first experience for me was that during the whole conference I experienced the power of the information technology in sharing information and connecting people at first hand as well as being explained, actively involved in discussing, and charged for presenting myself.

My presentation was about the role of Twitter in driving Japanese housewives' nuclear exodus from ordinary domestic life after losing faith in the health policies of the nation. Even so, it was a fresh experience of tweeting through the conference with some other active Twitters. I recorded it as retweet in the @HL7NZ Twitter account. Thus we are talking about what we can do hear and now rather than what we will be able to do somewhere or sometime. However, it had some drawbacks as some vendors saw less opportunities of technical developments of their own and were withdrawing from actively backing up pilot projects.

In the HINZ 2014 conference and exhibition, HL7 New Zealand is planning to host a competition of working health IT interoperability solutions according to realistic sample data sets and scenarios. I am thinking of participating myself. Like the MythBusters, I would not only tell the myth but put it into the test. I hope it would be proved as Plausible rather than Busted.

Don't forget your roots

Every year, on 9 to 11 January, Osaka, one of the largest cities in Japan and my home town, becomes lively as it celebrates festivals for the god of fishers and merchants, Ebisu. Ebisu is one of the Seven Lucky Gods which are commonly worshiped in Japan. In some schools of Japanese Buddhism, regarded as the guardians of the teaching of Buddha as they provide peace of mind for pursuing the path to enlightenment.

It was my fond memory that my whole family led by my grandfather and father visited the local Ebisu's shrine to pray for the family business's flourish of the year. At the festival we can have festive foods and toys from stalls. When you pray for the god, you have to beat a huge gong as it is said Ebisu is hard of hearing. No wonder, not every business or merchant becomes flourish. My little brothers and I beat the gong as strong as we could hoping for our family business going well.

From unknown reasons, the festive music for the festival at the shrine of Ebisu featured a characteristic refrain played by an electric bass. So when I first heard Six 60's "Don't forget your roots" I felt like I had heard this before. After pondering a while I realised that the electric base sound of the tune reminded me of the Ebisu's festival.

In New Zealand, there are many people doing their own businesses. I am doing a small one along with my full-time job, too. In this sense, I don't forget my roots. For those of you like me, I with your business prosper this year. May the force of Ebisu be with you!

A maverick's tribute to the late Professor Emeritus Hiroshi Hagiwara

The late Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University, Hiroshi Hagiwara (1926 - 2014) was a Japanese computer pioneer. Between 1970's and 80's, he developed QA-1 and QA-2, which were computers with four arithmetic logic units (ALUs) controlled simultaneously and in parallel by a very long instruction word (VLIW) and used them for various research purposes including computer graphics and language processing.

When I studied at the Computer Architecture Laboratory he had already left the lab. Unlike most of my fellow graduates of the Department of Information Science I started off my career in business earlier rather than pursuing academic one. Thus my acquaintance with Hagiwara-sensei was limited except his monumental (literally) QA-2 computer enshrined in the lab and his book on computer hardware used as the textbook for his undergraduate class.

His books was filled with interesting illustrations of mechanisms for data input and output in 1970's including punch card readers and teleprinters. I had a chance to talk him in person at some alumni function about the book and he told me he really enjoyed the research about such devices for writing it. I felt his passion for connecting computing power to real world applications and I was really impressed.

There are plenty of people who received his tutelage and I just barely qualify, however, he had a great influence on my career especially in having courage to be a pioneer, conceiving innovative architecture and making it real.

R.I.P.

Sun Tzu and Hippocrates

Sun Tzu often referred 'skilful leaders of old' in his famous "The Art of War". Translate it into modern healthcare context, as in my another blog, requires an equivalent of the 'skilful leader of old' in medicine. I suppose that few people would strongly oppose to choosing Hippocrates in this place.

Although it was not likely they both lived at the same time, the birth years of Sun Tzu and Hippocrates supposed to be separated less than 100 years. It is another interesting coincidence.

In fact, Hippocratic Oath, both in the original form and the modern version, agrees well with Sun Tzu's principles: Avoidance of unnecessary invasiveness, judgement based on time-tested methodologies and observance of privacy to name a few.

Either within the body or across the borders, they both argued mastery of strategy to safety and health. Also, they are in common with their holistic approaches and encompassing knowledge. In the age of multidisciplinary care today, we would have a lot to learn from them. 

Going back to film or basics

When I found this camera body at Auckland Camera Centre's website I thought it would be way cheaper than a Nikon FX-format body to fit full-format Nikkor F mount lenses I owned. I had been using a Nikon D80 which has a smaller DX-format image sensor and thus could capture only a part of image my lenses produced. I thought it was good deal and bought it.

Nikon New FM2 is a manual focus, manual exposure 35mm-format film camera. That means quite classic and mechanical. You can take a picture even without a battery if you go without exposure metering. It is the kind of camera I started learning serious photography.

To be honest, I had not been bothered to take photographs actively before I got this camera. It reminded me of excitement of taking pictures. I found a nice photo lab who develops my films and burns into CDs. I pulled out my lenses to attached to it and enjoyed taking pictures with them.

Of course, it would be costly and unrealistic to go back to film totally. Fortunately, it is not a matter of "one or the other" and this camera brought me back my passion for digital photos, too. It is great to go back to basics sometimes to keep your enthusiasm alive.

De-mythifying Japanese food

If you want to taste typical Japanese food, I recommend you to stay at a neat simple hotel in Japan which offers morning buffet. The picture above is an example of dishes they would serve and it is almost the daily intake for a Japanese adult. (Not many people in Japan have such a 'big' meal especially for breakfast, I am a rare exception.)

You notice that there is no sushi, sashimi, tempura or some other 'Japanese food' you would think. This is because by typical, I mean 'daily and ordinary.' We do have sushi, sashimi or tempura for a dinner but not so often as you think we do. For breakfast in busy morning we have coffee (or black tea) and bread, more likely toast, only. Many of cafes in Japan provide 'morning set' service - if you order coffee they serve you toast (and sometimes with an boiled egg) for free or cheap extra.

Now you would have better ideas of why the Japanese diet is so healthy. I don't mean what you can get at your local Japanese restraints is unhealthy but a real Japanese diet is much healthier than you think.

Another aspect of typical daily Japanese food is its variety. Main dishes for dinner may be Chinese, Indian, French, Italian, German or other ethnic as well as Japanese traditional and even combinations of them and all in relatively small potions. Naturally it becomes a more balanced diet compered to having similar dishes everyday.

Now you know why a Japanese looks embarrassed when you ask him or her if having sushi everyday.

Be Know Do: Leadership the Army Way

I have just finished reading "Be, Know, Do: Leadership the Army Way" from the Leader to Leader Institute. As I am translating "The Art of War by Sun Tzu" into a modern and healthcare context at my another blog "Sun Tzu for Health Strategy" I was interested in how the military of the 21st century is coping the changing reality of today's fast-paced entangled world.

It was amusing to find that an 'archetypal command-and-control organisation' is no longer there, instead the US Army now exists as a learning organisation where 'leaders at all levels work to establish an organizational climate that rewards collective learning' treating every soldier not 'a cog in the machine but a person with mental, emotional, and physical dimensions' being a leader his or herself.

This does not mean the Army became soft or lax. Rather, it is the result of stern recognition and deliberate efforts to meet the challenges from the predominant conditions of VUCA - volatility, uncertainty complexity, and ambiguity of the current world. Without mobilising every single person's recognition and analysing skills, a fighting organisation cannot acquire enough information, formulate action plans, or communicate/coordinate the execution for the next moves required to make instantly and simultaneously at multiple places at multiple levels.

Naturally the lessons learned here can be applied not only to military but also business and social organisations. As Sun Tzu said: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.

Taking wings

I wanted to be a pilot when I was a kid. If I was born in New Zealand instead of Japan, I think I would have chosen a career involving flying as a crew in some way or another. In reality, I became a pilot leading implementation of various health information systems and development of standards for them, meanwhile having earned a quite amount of flying miles in passenger seats.

When I started tinkering about computers more than a quarter century ago, flying in a home computer screen was a joke in today's standard. I was in a cockpit of a B-1 Nuclear Bomber penetrating deep into the Soviet territory for a doomsday sortie by controlling the supersonic bomber in CUI, character user interface which was not communicating through your avatar, but only typing text as commands and getting text as information and feedback.

I was really impressed by the beautiful graphics and dynamic actions when I found my children were playing War Thunder by Gaijin Entertainment. My son helped me out installing the game into my Mac and there I went - completing the training sortie and I enjoyed it throughly reliving the excitement of my childhood dream.

See you somewhere in the sky!

There is no Swiss cheese

According to a net friend of mine, there is no Swiss cheese. At least, you wouldn't be able to buy one in Switzerland. It sounds funny for me being in a community intensely talking about the Swiss Cheese Model.

Naming things or concepts can be very tricky. Recently I was involved in a discussion about how we should find a name for an information object that defines what a document should be like but does not constitute the document itself.

All parents may face a similar problem because the name they give to their child becomes a part of the child's identity and presents what they hope for in their child but essentially the child's identity should be established by the child itself. The recent results for such efforts saw many Oliver's and Charlotte's in New Zealand. 

A name may have powerful influence on and interact with how we see it, how we understand it, how we handle it and what we do with it. When we create something we should name it properly and make sure that it means properly what its name represents.

Turbulent time ahead

One thing I do appreciate in New Zealand is its picturesque skies. Māori people are so right about calling our country Aotearoa - the Land of the Long White Cloud.

The transitions of various shapes and forms of clouds are gorgeous but it indicates the complex and changeable weather of this island country in the midst of the South Pacific.

No rains were forecasted today according to the MetService this morning. But now it's windy and cloudy and it seems that there may be downpours.

It was windy but sunny when I hang the laundries outside in the morning. Sunshines are still coming through clouds. I am buying time being ready to jump out at the first hint of rain approaching.

I suppose that this is exactly the situation we all have been placed as the turbulent time is expected ahead. We have to make assumptions, take positions with some risks and keep vigilant to tell the time to take actions.

If you are too cautious to take any positions, you would get nothing. If you are too careless to tell the time to take actions, you would lose everything.

What a stressful time we are living in!