Passionate Living

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you have to learn? Ever desire to be fluent on a subject but don’t know how to start? Accumulated a wealth of information from magazines, websites, blogs, and twitter feeds more than you can digest?

St Margaret's Steps by Neosnaps

The world wide web is the one stop shop for finding anything and everything on any subject that might be your recent fascination. From fashion to food, cars to cooking, music to self-motivation, the web provides us with more information that we can shake a stick at. The problem today then isn’t lack of information – as it maybe was back in the pre-web eras – but management of information.

You’re a sophomore student majoring in biochemical engineering who also has a serious hobby in digital photography; so you subscribe to a physical biochemical journal and also several free photography tutorial blogs from various great resources on the web. But between the time you need for actually attending class, digesting the journal, being involved in social activities in campus, you may end up using more time reading than you do getting things done like photo hunting or making a discovery in your experiments. The old adage – take things one step at a time – then becomes a serious application that holds true today than it did centuries ago when it first came up.

You might think “Yeah sure, I know to take things one step at a time. What’s new huh?”. But are you sure you actually apply what you know? The mistake with most of common knowledge today isn’t the effectiveness, but the efficiency of all the famous sayings that have come into our collective consciousness: we are lacking in the execution of our knowledge (also known as xQ: Execution Quotient).

Taking one step at a time does sound easy, but how can we truly apply it to our daily activities? Here are 3 tips to help you be more efficient in learning things one step at a time:

1. Decide on 1 source. Period

Yep. Not exactly the easiest thing to do, but it sure get’s the job done. Humans have the tendency to collect things, so practicing limitation is going against your natural inclinations. By limiting your source to 1, it doesn’t mean 1 for the rest of your life, it means 1 for a certain limit of time: for example, go over to Digital Photography School and spend maybe 2 to 3 weeks just learning from that site alone.

2. Practice 3 to 4 tips every 2 weeks

When you’ve decided on a source, make sure you practice at least 3 to 4 of the many tips contained in that site. The above site is one of the leading sources for digital photography, so there are abundantly more tutorials than a couple. But in order to not overwhelm yourself, just choose a few and practice them out in the course of 2 weeks. You might think this is getting little done, but in the course of 3 months, you’ll have developed 48 new techniques! If learning piano is your pursuit, you’d have mastered all the basic chords on all the white scales! Huge improvement!

3. Be involved in the community, if there is one

The DPS site is community powered: it’s huge because it has one of the largest web communities around (for any kind of site, not just photography!). Granted, participating in an online community takes more of your time than simply reading, but the rewards and lessons you acquire are worth the time invested . You might even be able to get a quick tip or two, speeding up your learning curve greatly! Humans learn best from each other, so talking to a fellow enthusiast or professional is often the best way to go.

An adage is an adage because everyone needs to re-learn it as a principle for themselves. This is called here Re-Incarnation: or why we need to learn things for ourselves, even if it has become common knowledge. Taking things one step at a time is old advice, yet it is always new in application. So let’s get started!

What’s your take on the old adage? Are there other principles you’ve rediscovered for yourself in life? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments:

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[1] Photograph by Neosnaps

California Sunset by Paul Sapiano

Last weekend I went to Bandung with my friends for the Valentine-Chinese New Year celebration (well, not really, but I like to think so). We stopped at my friend’s place at the mountainside area of Cigadung to rest for a while before continuing the afternoon with our events. It was a breath of fresh air (literally) compared to the daily heat and business of the capital Jakarta.

Taking time off is important for our health and sanity, especially when we have demanding jobs and work in an artificial and highly metropolitan area like the capital. Therefore, this trip to Bandung also served as a mini catharsis to detoxify myself from the poison endured everyday living in the capital.

It’s also important to retreat ourselves from the interconnectedness that’s ubiquitous in today’s technology savvy society. With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media that allow us to be jacked in 24/7, going somewhere with no internet connection – or better yet, no cellphone reception – may be a good idea to try once every while. As I walked on the cool country road on the mountainside, I thought about that for a while, and I also thought about how our previous generations lived their lives, technology wise.

Old fashion romance

You see, with every new technology that later is adopted widely by society, our children come to think how did we ever live without that technology (such as cellphones or the internet, remember the days when they weren’t around yet?). Of course we see and accept, humankind has always lived comfortably with the technology available to us at the time we are alive. Yet we think we couldn’t possibly live without our Blackberrys and iPhones and Wi-Fi connection.

It made me think, how did the old hearts love? You know, the people who were living pre-internet (and by pre-internet, I don’t mean pre-1990’s, I mean pre-1950’s when the computer and internet was still a novel prototype). How did this old generation communicate, share their moments, and make new discoveries like new music or new television shows?

And most important, how did they love each other, when they were apart? In today’s world, we are addicted to instant replies such that if we don’t hear from our loved ones within an hour we start to panic. But the old generation, the old hearts, maybe had to wait weeks even months before they can hear a simple reply, handwritten, sealed, signed, delivered, from their loved ones. Doesn’t that teach you something about being patient?

Old school communication

That’s why I say old hearts love fast. Because they survived on what we would call today minimal technology: landline telephones and snail mail, old school romance style. They needed a great amount of patience and understanding to wait for the communication system of the world to bring their message to their loved ones and back.

Communication may be getting easier, but is it getting better? The argument is, of course, no: it’s not getting better. The tools only raise our frequency in communication, but not our quality in communication.

There’s something charming about old school romance, and how wireless (even electrical-less) it all was back in the day. I think we can take a lesson or two from the love stories of our grandparents and great-grandparents. There’s a lot of untold stories and a wealth of experience there.

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*One week late, but better than never (this one has soothing saxophones):

Something New by Endy Daniyanto

Although, based on the title “Old Hearts Love Fast”, “Love You So” might be a better soundtrack

[1] Photograph by Paul Sapiano. Because it’s simple love.

Runway at Sky Harbor Airport by Kevin Dooley

On Christmas Eve last year, I went to the airport to pick up a friend of ten years. He was coming home after a 2 year stay in Beijing, taking his Master’s degree. In the old days there would’ve been 3 of us who picked him up, but since we’ve grown up and pursued our own career paths this time it was only me who went.

There’s always something about airports, isn’t there? I think it’s because an airport is a place where everybody either leaves or arrives, but no one stays. When I got there, a young couple of an Indonesian girl and a foreign man were hugging each other like they wouldn’t let go. That and the entire night atmosphere of the airport made me think.

Yes, there were a lot of people that night. There were Chinese, Arabian, Indian, and of course Indonesian people filling up the gates of the airport. There were families waiting for their relatives to arrive, friends that haven’t seen each other for a while, and groups of backpackers that are here to start their adventure of the Archipelago.

As beautiful as an airport is for a place of hellos and goodbyes, nobody stays. At least not for long. There are people there 24 hours a day, but it isn’t exactly a home for anyone.

And that got me thinking about how we live life. An Islam proverb says, “Live life like someone who is crossing the street: travel light and walk fast“. And that’s how I saw the people at the airport that night: they were there, but they knew they would be leaving soon so they didn’t attach themselves with the place, no matter how beautiful it was.

The truth is, the days are long but the years are short. We are here for only a short time, and there is much value to be made. The proverb is wise in saying: live life to the amount that is enough, without being wasteful.

Do you know where this argument is going? That’s right: I feel the way most of us live right now is wasteful. We are wasteful with our time (as if we will always have tomorrow), we are wasteful with our health (as if our youth will last forever), and we are wasteful with every other resource we have (as if there is no accountability over the use of them). And yet, we have a life purpose to fulfill and a job to do.

I won’t explain this much, at least not in one blog post. The point is: live life like a traveler. Absorb the experience in life to make you grow as a character and help you understand how to be your happiness.

Too much baggage will only weigh you down. Yes, they are fun, and even the most shoestring backpacker still needs to bring a backpack. But most of the time, we fill our spaces with superficial and unnecessary possessions that only drain our energy and our minds, when we should be thinking about our priorities.

Check in, then check out. Fasten your seat belt. And don’t forget to put the tray in an upright position.

Enjoy the flight.

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*This is the 2nd candidate for picture of the blog: Nice red antique aircraft.

*Why is it not as easy to find good songwriting blogs. I’ve only found 3 so far: this, this, and this.

[1] Photograph by Kevin Dooley. Because sooner or later, we gotta leave the tarmac.