Same Love

A new year, a warm smile to welcome me before and after the countdown, an unstable yet firm piggybacking, way back to where we might belong.

Not yet found a quiet moment for myself, just to sit down and digest all that went gone by, with the year 2012, all fading away, like everything else. - Not in a sad way though. A new start, with whole lot of new hopes.

Happy that after working, I'm still able to stay keenly interested in nutrition topics. A simple congratulations to... all who's devoted their energy and time to vitamin research and relevant practices - celebrating "100 years of Vitamins"!

Sight and Life has, once again, updated their activities surrounding this exciting milestone. The Ramala Women Group in Kenya - the one I nearly visited but unfortunately missed out - provided positive feedback to their collaboration with Sight and Life. Sincerely wish those who work diligently in this field can make a joint effort to further combating micronutrient deficiencies in the developing world - not just for the beneficiaries, but for the well-being of us all. A little bit more love, a little bit more patience, a little bit more dedication, a little bit more support.

Lately got addicted to Ryan Lewis (Feat. Mary Lambert)'s "Same Love". Free voice, brave voice, loving voice. 

Same Love

When I was in the third grade I thought that I was gay

‘Cause I could draw, and my uncle was, and I kept my room straight
I told my mom tears rushing down my face
She’s like “Ben you've loved girls since before pre-k shrimp”
Trippin’, yeah, I guess she had a point, didn’t she?
Bunch of stereotypes all in my head.
I remember doing the math like, “yea I’m good at little league”
A preconceived idea of what it all meant
For those that liked the same sex
Had the characteristics
The right wing conservatives think it’s a decision
And you can be cured with some treatment and religion
Man made rewiring of a predisposition
Playing god, aw nah here we go
America the brave still fears what we don’t know
And god loves all his children, is somehow forgotten
But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago
I don’t know

And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
I can't change
Even if I try
Even if I wanted to
My love
My love
My love
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm

If I was gay, I would think hip-hop hates me
Have you read the YouTube comments lately
"Man, that’s gay" gets dropped on the daily
We become so numb to what we’re saying
A culture founded from oppression
Yet we don’t have acceptance for ‘em
Call each other faggots behind the keys of a message board
A word rooted in hate, yet our genre still ignores it
Gay is synonymous with the lesser
It’s the same hate that’s caused wars from religion
Gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment
The same fight that led people to walk outs and sit ins
It’s human rights for everybody, there is no difference!
Live on and be yourself
When I was at church they taught me something else
If you preach hate at the service those words aren’t anointed
That holy water that you soak in is then poisoned
When everyone else is more comfortable remaining voiceless
Rather than fighting for humans that have had their rights stolen
I might not be the same, but that’s not important
No freedom till we’re equal, damn right I support it

And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
My love
My love
My love
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm
She keeps me warm

We press play, don’t press pause
Progress, march on
With the veil over our eyes
We turn our back on the cause
Till the day that my uncles can be united by law
When kids are walking ‘round the hallway plagued by pain in their heart
A world so hateful some would rather die than be who they are
And a certificate on paper isn’t gonna solve it all
But it’s a damn good place to start
No law is gonna change us
We have to change us
Whatever god we believe in
We come from the same one
Strip away the fear
Underneath it’s all the same love
About time that we raised up

This time, the art part is about Moonrise Kingdom. At the time I was watching it, my attention was completely at somewhere else. But now thinking back on this piece, it gives me a sense of relaxation, a touch of sorrow, bundled up with a lot of mysterious nostalgia. Not to say what we have has changed, it's just what we can actually own is extremely difficult to identify. After sitting through mind-blowing movies for the winter, suddenly I came to find this quiet corner to be alone, and silently missed this film. That, my friend, is considered a lasting memory, a piece of art that embraces general acceptance. 

Happy New Year!

Weight Management

Recently started volunteering at a weight management center. The center director is a great professor at our school. The simple act of shadowing a couple of sessions has already greatly inspired me to get to know more about individual counseling, especially nutrition counseling: yes, we all have some basic ideas about what to eat and what not to; yet no, we don't always have the best access to those foods, nor are we constantly motivated to regulate our behaviors to the extent of turning them into healthy eating habits.

Granted, I have friends that hated one-on-one counseling due to the frustration of dealing with similar conditions and clients who were so demotivated to change their lifestyles. I'm never really good at encouraging changes among friends, not to mention trying to influence some strangers with my limited knowledge.

International nutrition has been great, I love it, enjoy the scope of impact and the big pictures. However, it is the skills of actively interacting with clients to assess their health conditions, needs, desires, limitations and setting goals with them that better showcase a nutritionist's qualifications (or, should I say dietitian?)

Looking forward to more assessment sessions! I'd love to hear more personal stories. Wish all the clients a satisfactory weight loss!



Alright, some quotes that help me better crystalizing my mind lately:

"What we resist persists" 

"There's no end to comparison, because there's no end to our expectations" 

"Know that you have everything you need to be whole, happy, and complete, right inside you; Know that if you feel something is missing that you can have it, you can achieve it"

Mentioning photography, my favorite should be underwater photography. Dreamy products, epic arts, combined with the beloved salty taste of blue oceans. I know it's the complete opposite of reality, it's pure art and pure illusion. Yet who are we to deny our dreams?

Among all underwater photographer, the first I knew and my all-time favorite should be Zena Holloway (http://www.zenaholloway.com/indexzena.html). Her series of "Swan Song" deeply touched me when I first caught a view of them.

The Swan

Swan Song

Swimming babies, of course! <3 <3

Mermaids have been haunting me for so long. Always mesmerized by them.

This one was my desktop background for a year in college

Food Allergies T_T

A cup of fresh cherries. Thankfully all he developed after consumption was itching lips, mouth and pharynx, not some more severe symptoms such as vomiting or ingestion. Phew.

Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS), it turned out to be, is a type of food allergy that typically featured by oral allergic reactions. My grandmother used to tell me that her "throat would close" if she consumes honey. Me, slightly differently, would have immediate gastric irritation when eating large scoops of honey.

Despite my rich personal allergy experience, I was still surprised by the richer pool of allergens in our daily life. 

However valuable the nutrition value of some food is, it is always advisable to test out specific allergic items, especially when you have history of major allergies. The test I went through was extremely user-unfriendly --> 30 injections, 15 on each upper arm, with common allergens. Hours later the enlargement (beyond certain diameter) of the injection site would be deemed as a positive result. Painful and ugly.

Stay safe! If you are not allergic to peanut, dairy products (technically not allergy but intolerance), pollen foods....try to explore something else! Oh, and enjoy the Olympics!


Thanks S.Wells for quote below - my favorite quote from sci-fi so far! Let's enjoy the insignificance of mankind ;) "Ignorance is bliss"

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
                                                                               - H.P.Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

One must-mention artist: "The King of Forests"- Shishkin. Have you ever felt mesmerized by some art piece, however common it seemed to other people? When I was 15, I used to stare at Shishkin's paintings and let my mind run to the forests with him, wild and free, with a touch of coldness of Russian air. Unfortunately, I cannot find my favorite piece right now.

Artist: Ivan I. Shishkin（Иван Иванович Шишкин) (1832-1898)

"Dutch Famine" vs "Three Years of Great Chinese Famine"

I was reading about the Dutch Health Diet index (DHD-index), but my mind jumped to a completely irrelevant topic: famine and its short/long-term impacts on health.

The famous Dutch Famine of 1944 (Hongerwinter) provided the scientific world with many valuable data to explore the tragic and involuntary deprivation of food. Short-term impacts including acute malnutrition, micronutrient deficiency, medical complications, and soaring mortality rate, especially among the vulnerable groups (pregnant women, infant and young children, and the elderly). Long-term impact were followed up and analyzed as well, including but not limited to, reprogramming of physiological systems, raised risks of chronic diseases, and even cross-generation impact on the offsprings of women who survived the famine. 

What upsets me, however, is the extremely lacking of information from another similar, if not more severe famine in China, the Three Years of Great Chinese Famine of 1958-1961 (三年自然灾害). My father had very vivid depiction of the horror at that time (he was only a toddler back then), about how people ate frogs alive, how bodies were randomly found on the street, died of hunger. There was a heated discussion at one of the JHSPH nutrition seminars about Dutch Famine and North Korean famine (the world 'famine' is so sensitive and politically wrong for many leaders though, e.g., the East Africa famine of 2011 was not officially recognized till situation got so much worse). I intended to build one of my future projects upon the N.Korean study, adopting similar approaches to interview survivors from the Great Leap Famine (China), and obtain their health information.  --> After all, as a second generation from that famine, I would also like to study more about longer-term impact of it. 

Back to the first point, healthy diet guidelines. The very first one that I came to know was a dietary guideline published in China, which to some extent resembles that of the Food Pyramid in the U.S but with considerable adjustment to suit local diet. I am always for the idea of putting out guidelines, yet skeptical about the acceptance and appreciation from general public - behavioral change in the field of nutrition is an intriguing topic, which hopefully I will come back to in future posts.

"I don't know. Love is like this escape for people who haven't learned to be alone or to make something of themselves. People think love is this unselfish or totally giving thing. But if you think about it, there's probably nothing more selfish." <Before Sunrise>

The song I played too much lately (Dido):

"And if my life is for rent

And I don't learn to buy

Well I deserve nothing more than I get

'Cause nothing I have is truly mine"

Pile some stuff from Artscape @ Baltimore :)

The awesome skeleton (oh, who's the lad in the background?!)

Cute style

The mesmerizing one, remind me of movies by 岩井 俊二 

The floating world

Mr.Sogs (now Saggy Naggy <3)

Car arts

Just a little bit of faith, you can fly as well

yeahhhhh

Artscape @ Baltimore, MD. These pieces put a genuine smile on your face. There was also this one set of 4-piece sunrise at the beach, which I did not obtain permission to take picture of. They all just make life so much more beautiful : )

Had your breakfast?

Raised this way, I could hardly survive the mornings without breakfast.

Never realized its nutritional implications until last year, especially for weight management. The quality, ingestion frequency and total/individual quantity are all of massive importance. Learned that one the worst dietary patterns would be..unhealthy snacks throughout the day, then a huge meal in the evening. So quite on the contrary, I would argue (I do have scientific evidences) that a rich breakfast, followed by nutritionally balanced lunch, combining with a moderate or even plain and small dinner, would be the most adequate for those who care about weight/health yet do not want to try out weird fad diets.

Funny fact is, when I experimented the Baby Food Diet, their rationale kinda reverses the above mechanism - 14 tiny rations (4oz each) of fluidly, mushy baby food (ewww), plus one rich adult dinner. One thing I could argue about this though, is that the requirement for this particular 'adult dinner' is that it must contain enough green leafy veggies, plus sufficient amount of high-quality protein (e.g., fish fillet of the thickness of your palm).

Anyways, I advocate for healthy, adequate amount of breakfast! I normally have milk (preferably 1% fat) / soy milk (prefer the ones sold on streets in China though) / almond milk (hmmm much much higher Ca!), plus multi-grain cereal, bread/bagel with nutella/jam (raspberry/strawberry/lately wanna try the scary looking minty one)/honey+whipped cream cheese, sometimes juice or tea as well.

Would love to change back to the routine of 豆浆油条、馒头榨菜稀饭、包子、醪糟蛋、西昌米粉... But nutritionally speaking, I'll stick to whatever I'm having at the moment : )

"I am afraid.  Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been." 

<Flowers for Algernon>

Hot lil Mo (refused to be called Mamu, lol)

Young girl with eyes like a desert - Shikha

Canton, early morning

How much love and trust can we spare to strangers?

Economic growth =/= civilization?

'Catch a breath'

The rocker (I know I shouldn't put it, yet this one is my favorite hehe)

These photos are all taken by one of my favorite photographer: Ata Mohammad Adnan. Who makes mundane life so full of flavor. His camera view of China is also quite stunning. I have noticed that he has won some awards for several awesome pictures. I did not put them up here. The above ones are all about my dear friends/familiar scenes around SYSU, Canton, China.

Aadnan's Photography: https://www.facebook.com/aadnansphotography

Ah, Quinoa

Having debating in my mind whether to give it a shot or not for ages, the first time eating quinoa was actually at Dim's place not too long ago. He prepared it just like regular white rice, with a rice cooker. Despite all the 'rumors' about how unpalatable quinoa is, I joyfully savored the dish. 

And it tasted amazing. I'm not sure if it was because the bitterness (?) of quinoa was masked by fried mixed veggie and spam, or his preparation method was appropriate. Possibly because the pre-packaged quinoa has already been rinsed for the convenience of customers (saponins removed). Its texture was also quite interesting, a touch of crispiness, slightly more chewable than white rice. 

I cannot live without rice. Now seriously considering replacing 1/7 of my rice consumption with quinoa. Nutrition values? Ah..high protein content! Dietary fiber! P! Mg! Fe! Ca! Also gluten-free to please the new trendies. According to Wiki, it's being considered a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration human occupied spaceflights - don't ask me what it is, I've no idea. But anything that can bring me slightly closer to astronauts & spaceships... Voila! Welcome to my life!

"Our true home is in the present moment. 

      To live in the present moment is a miracle"

                                                                                         - Thich Nhat Hanh (Gift from K.H, thanks)

Two pieces of fine art @ Art Basel 2011. The first one is a painfully floating man approaching a white light; Second one somehow rings many bells, not just because of the familiar language and war-time poster characters. I've no strong opinion, yet appreciate it greatly.

Passionate friends

Is it still easy to maintain your passion these days? For myself, interest shifts so rapidly that I no longer consider myself reliable for any long-term investment. I know I told you I'm learning Arabic - now I'm not; I'm learning drums - now I gave up; I'm learning sign language along with French - might pause until I actually plan my Paris trip; where is the tattoo I've been nagging you about? - still lying in some remote design book, not on my body yet, sorry. Yet I did meet a number of people who remain strongly interested in their original choices.

R.K., the lady that somehow persuaded me to attend EB conference 2 years ago, is still actively working on her nutrition topics. 

C.M.,a friend from Boston, is happy with his own catering business, his Qi-gong practice, and is also quite absorbed in nutrition science. From as far as I know, he is now self-learning antioxidants. He also participates in weekly nutrition seminar in Boston. 

R.F.K.and M.N.,two of the people I admire the most who's of our age. Currently working in Bangladesh on their projects. Positiveness, persistence, and smartness.

D.T, works on interesting nutrition topics. Good luck with her proposal regarding nutrition and school performance involving schools in China.

JH.R. and K.K., my dear bosses, I should've listen to your suggestions. Yet I don't regret my current choice - it's one (unnecessary?) step of struggle. But I do believe every step in life means something. Hope you're well in India/Switzerland.

HL.Z., K.P.W., J.G., Y.W....Hmmm the profs who greatly inspired me. I know Y.W always caution me against my scattered interest - 'have a big picture!' he would say. Sad but true, every inevitable turning event in life is yet another valid support of his theory. I've been resilient, thinking I know what I want. But I do NOT.

Only mentioned the people in my field. Lex bro, is the one I need to always contact and seek opinions from. I've been doing self-introspection this week, following his advises. This post is nothing but rambling. Yet I think I'm good to go from here. Talking to L.C. this Friday will clarify my mind, hopefully. He is working extensively on clinical side of nutrition. Interesting projects. I do not intend to drift too far away. NOOOOOO.

"Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what is appears to be" <Flowers for Algernon>

The Blue Ladies, by Ben Mosley, a sport artist from London. Wish him all the best in his career. These blue cheer leaders definitely caught my heart.

More wonderful pieces of Ben: http://benmosleyart.com/