zest-zipper

Pomelo Carving

One morning I met my former family doctor at a stall at our local market. I was very surprised to see her buying twenty-two pomelos. Down in my heart I sympathized with her husband as he had to carry all the pomelos to their car which was parked at 'two stones' throw away' from the stall. According to the doctor, it is cheaper to eat a pomelo than to eat an orange. She told us that both of them consumed two pomelos a day. So the pomelos they bought on that morning would enable them to consume for eleven days. As the vendor had told us that if we didn't buy now, we would have to wait for quite some time before we get a fresh supply of her sweet and tasty pomelos.

To take heed of the advice from the doctor and the vendor we also bought some pomelos.

To eat a pomelo, one has to cut its rind and peel its membrane; and it is fun to do it with full concentration which I consider to be a form of meditation.

From cutting the rind with designs and patterns, it had been evolved to pomelo carving which required even more time and greater concentration of mind.

“When there is nothing to do, do something out of nothing.” So, pomelo carving had incidentally become a pastime whenever pomelos were available to be bought in the market.

· Ego & God
To the word 'GO', one can either add a letter E in front or a letter D at the back to form the words EGO and GOD.
In most existing religions of the Orient ( China & India inclusive), it is believed that ego and god can't coexist. As long as one has an ego with him, he can never has the authentic spiritual experience with God.
Hence, the spiritual pursuit of most Eastern religions is to eliminate ego through meditation or otherwise.

禅(chan) 坐(zuo)

Chinese language is a versatile and marvellous language.

When two words are joined together to form a 'phrase', they can be read from left to right , or from right to left to give different meanings.

For instance, if you read from left to right,禅(chan) 坐(zuo) means meditation whereas if you read from right to left,坐(zuo禅(chan) it would mean to meditate; the former being a noun while the later is a verb.

I'm not sure whether there's any other language that the phrases can be read in either direction. Tell me if there is.

禅坐是名词。

坐禅是动词。

从左到右读是一个意思。

从右到左读又是另一个意思。

你说华文奥妙不奥妙？

旺 and Wang sound alike but having different meanings.

旺 means prosperous in Chinese whereas Wang means money in Malay.

However, both 旺 and Wang are closely related in business.

If a cash register is operating nonstop and receiving Wang throughout the day, it is said that the business is doing fine, and so we say the business is 旺。