Why I don’t talk about people a lot

In Western Culture, people consider that talking about others (proxy) is something that shows care and consideration towards people other than yourself.

However in Asian culture, we do talk about others too a little bit out of considerations like in the West, but being interested in other people’s business a lot is something that is considered nosy in Asia. Caring about people by listening to others words and giving emotional support is what people regard as being caring towards other people.

People who are immersed in Western culture do listen very well too, but it is simply that the emphasis that Asians put on the act of being considerate to others is more focused on listening to others lives rather than talking about it. It is simply a cultural difference.

I sometimes feel like I relate to Western culture more than Asian culture, so I like Western culture in general. Same with Asian culture. I have times when I feel like I relate to Asian culture more than Western culture so I like both cultures in a broader sense.

Personally, I don’t like talking about others. Likewise, I wouldn’t like it if others talked about my personal lives to other people every day unless the others are their family. I am not fond of the idea that your personal life is publicized because everybody is talking about it to someone other than themselves.

Personally, I feel like talking about people can be superficial. Just talking about any kind of funny things that happened to others, or some kind of conflict that happened amongst them feels like … I don’t know. It feels superficial. Maybe I am too serious and want to talk about deep things all the time. Not talking about people doesn’t mean that I don’t care about people. I don’t talk about people a whole lot but I do care about people in Asian way, by listening and giving emotional support.

Different cultures have different ways of showing consideration, but caring about people in any culture is an element that I think is worthy of respect.

Thanks for reading,

Love, Rubberplant

How to stay fit without putting much effort

I am not a health guru, but I want to share tips that personally worked for me, and I think it will benefit you greatly as well.

The most important thing I learned in being physically healthy is eating healthy. My dear friend and I were having dinner together in school one day and she told me about what she heard recently at the time on that day, which was “You are what you eat”.

There are exceptions, but there is a stereotype that Asians are skinny. Objectively speaking, one of the reason is because Asian meals are very healthy compared to diets around the world in general. I love food from most of the cultures and I respect the food culture from all regions. But the particular diet in Asia contains a lot of vegetables, unprocessed grains, fish, and usually minus a large amount of sugar, margarine and butter. Sometimes Asian food is criticized because of the amount of salt we use in the diet, but you can simply put less salt in the food and the food can be healthy as heaven.

[Tips for You]

The standard healthy meal needs to contain protein, fat and carbohydrates. I eat a piece of cooked unprocessed meat (usually chicken, pork or beef), rice and lots of fruits and vegitables.

You can be full and lose weight if you eat one of the followings on top of your daily meals whenever you want to fill your hunger. These are what worked for me. I usually eat it around 3 pm when you need to snack. :

Big round Tomatoes, celery, kale, carrots, sweet pea.

For tomatoes one to two tomatoes are good, and for others, two handful is enough. Like grabbing them in your hands without anything sticking out of your hands.

If you don’t like eating tomatoes because it’s boring, drizzle a little bit of honey on top of your tomato, just so it is not too plain but sweet enough for you to enjoy eating it. Eating tomatoes with honey is better than not eating tomatoes at all.

For fruits bananas, oranges, and apples are good for weight loss. Maybe grapefruits can be good too but I am not too sure about grapefruits. You could look it up if you like eating grapefruits.

If it is not one of these fruits, most of them are too sweet and will make you gain weight. I also find that if oranges are too too sweet, it could possibly make you gain weight, but I think oranges are pretty safe and has lots of fiber. But bananas and apples for sure are very good for losing weight. But banana smoothies make you gain weight. I think the fiber in bananas get destroyed and change in to the kind of carbohydrates like rice and flour.

It is effective to make a vegetable juice and drink it every morning. 3-4 hand sized leaves of Kale, one long piece of celery, a small whole gala apple (cut in to pieces when you put it in the blender. Can be any apple though but gala apple is small and juicy), and a little bit of apple juice, and blend it together in a blender. Carrot juice can substitute apple juice. Other fruit juices might be too sugary.

In order to effectively lose weight, it is ideal that you eat 1:1 ratio of meals and vegetables every day.

Drinking barley tea, mate tea, corn silk tea, Jasmin tea during the day instead of water helps you lose weight. Web MD says “Teas have a type of flavonoid called Catechins that may boost metabolism and help your body break down fats more quickly.” It says green tea works too but sometimes green tea might have too much caffeine in it that hinders your sleep. Black tea might have a lot of caffeine as well.

You should avoid drinking any kind of drinks that contain sugar. IF you have habitually drank juice and don’t think you are fit enough, you’re problem’s solved. The change would be even more dramatic if you have been habitually drinking pop/soda. Once you start to drink water and tea instead, your body will drastically change. If you really really want to drink something sweet, I would recommend drinking coconut water instead. Coconut water, not coconut milk. It’s completely different. I think the fattening that sugary juice do to the body is proven on the TV show “Dr.Oz”. I am not too sure but I am quite sure that it was aired in the past.

I personally noticed the difference in my body when I drank tea for two straight days during the day. I used to drink sugary juice every day because I love juice. But one day my teeth ached. I wanted to compensate the desire to drink juice by substituting something that had flavor but wouldn’t hurt my teeth. So I drank tea for couple days. I drank a cup of plain water in the morning, 500 ml of the teas mentioned above during the afternoon, and another 2-3 small cups of mineral water at dinner time. The difference in my body was significant. I thought the tea advertisements selling the idea of being fit were not trustworthy, but it was a factual truth that teas do make you fit. And it is almost effortless. You just drink tea and you lose weight. If you can’t believe it, you should try it for a while. You’ll be amazed. But you should never add milk in your tea if you are expecting to lose weight and going to drink it frequently like water.

If you have a craving for unhealthy food, I think it is okay to eat it once in a while.

There might be more that you can do to lose weight like excising, but if you change your diet and eat healthy, I guarantee that you will definitely lose a lot of weight. Especially if you cut pop/soda off of your life, you will be amazed by how much weight you lose. One of my friend looks half as skinny as she used to be because she cut off all the venti sized sugary drinks that she drank in the afternoons.

People say that eating healthy is boring. But what would you prefer? Eating healthy or gaining weight? I know it’s difficult to be disciplined in eating, but it is worth it and when you eat healthy, you will physically feel relaxed and feel good in many ways.

Love, Rubberplant

https://www.webmd.com/diet/tea-and-weight-loss#1

The Reason why Humans possess Dark side of Human Nature

People say that humans are bad in nature and fear about that dark part of human nature. But there is a benefit to this trait that people have like two sides of a coin.

Everybody has it. The positive side of their character, or the negative side of the character. People have all sorts of emotions and even the people who seem like a perfect saint gets frustrated and have dark emotions at times.

Even though it seems intimidating, the trait is purposefully there for a reason.

The dark side of people are there because the challenge of overcoming the negativity enables people to create their life purposefully. We make an effort to do something good, live the right way, and overcoming temptation makes us grow. The conscious effort to have integrity even when it is difficult trains people to have polished personality that they cultivate purposefully.

Value is generated when something is intentionally created because the act of creating something with intention implies that the creating thing is valuable enough to be cultivated.

Nobody is perfect or can be perfect all the time because of this dark human nature, but what matters is the effort you put in, to overcome the challenges and temptations to become yourself.

Love, Rubberplant

“Television Rules the Nation”

I like the song “Television Rules the Nation” by Daft Punk, and I agree with the title of the song.

Few people are willing to accept or listen to ideas that others talk about when it is too progressive or unconventional. And one of them is TV ruling the nation.

Television shapes how people think. TV is a teacher that educates the audience except the ideas that the government and the private companies gives off can be subtly embedded in the shows. To control the audience. Sometimes controlling the audience can be good because it is a driving force for economy to roll. Customers buy the product and private companies make money. The cash flows in the society and as a result the economy flows as well. The government controls how people think, and rules the people by making them think the same way. This enables the government to control people easier. When people think the same way, specifically the way how the government want people to think, consequentially they are going to act according to the controlled thought, which the government intended in the first place.

Have you ever noticed when the actors and actresses compliment about a certain product in movies? Like in the movie “Definitely, maybe” the girl who was buying cigarettes was talking about the benefits subtly to the guy she was into. Those things are purposefully there for advertisement, and to promote potential customers to consume the product.

Another example of the same idea is when Zoe had was buying a twin stroller in the movie “The back-up plan”. Zoe went in to the store and asked about the kinds of strollers that were laid out on the shelf to the staff, and this was also an act of advertising the strollers.

Another element that makes ruling the nation possible is by triggering fear in people. Fear also triggers the desire of safety, so controlling people with their desire towards safety is one of the elements that rules the nation.

Television makes people fear of being old so they buy more cosmetic products. “Good bye wrinkle” can be one of the quotes that might appear in cosmetic commercials. It implies that being old is worthless by giving a negative connotation to the partial symbol of being old, “wrinkle”. And the word “wrinkle” subconsciously extends to being old in a more general sense, which makes us think being old in general is worthless. Knowing the worthlessness of being old, we fear of becoming one. We buy in to what the commercial says and purchase the product, when there is beauty in all ages and in invisible forms.

Television also makes people fear of being left out in this ever growing economy’s competition so people try to compete as much as they can. Potentially, the government could be encouraging competition for the nation’s growth. People strive to be the best when there is competition. So it is possible that they broadcast competitions and praise the winners and create competitions in the first place. Competition is one of the system to rule the nation.

Television can also control people by people’s desire to be loved.

The “right” words and actions from TV shows and drama, and the values that they give out to the audience by teaching people “this is the way you should act, behave and portray yourself in order to be loved” makes them addicted to the show and be manipulated by the whole show in general. The show has control. People acting like the actors and actresses on the television, buying the products they advertise, the values and ideas that the show puts out in the crowd influences people.

Television can rule the nation in an unexpectedly negative way as well. I think there is no right or wrong, good or bad in anything. If bad things are used for good, it can be good. And if good things are used for bad, it can be bad. Good things can be good and bad things can be bad. It all depends on the situation and the complication that it surrounds at the given time and location, and more.

Unhealthiness can be a side effect of watching television. By being manipulated or just in a one-dimensional sense. It is true that watching TV can be terrible health wise. I am sure anybody can find a credible article about how TV makes people unhealthy. Unless people choose to watch TV shows selectively or know how to judge the information when watching TV, it is likely that people are being manipulated by TV to some degree.

People all know that TV is bad for your self-image, mental or physical health. The problem is that people keep watching it even though they know that it’s bad. It is likely that the unhealthiness is not going to end if people don’t cut off the habit of watching TV habitually and without judgement. It is an obvious saying, but the start of solving the problem is stopping the subject that causes the problem. Sometimes people should be critical about the ruling that the nation do to people in order to be healthy.

Additional Note

To support the other side that differs from my opinion, TV can be healthy. When patients have nothing to do in the hospital, it really helps them kill time and release boredom. And sometimes it helps people learn about new things and know the general flow of social values and rules of the century.

But in my opinion refraining from watching TV recklessly saves you huge deal of time, health, and self.

Thanks for Reading.

Love, RubberPlant.

Personal interpretation of Bible verses from ‘Luke’ Chapter 3.

I get inspired by bible verses because nowadays the bible verses are a bit more understandable for me these days. These are my personal interpretations of Luke Chapter 3. It is just a personal interpretation so you could take it with a grain of salt.

Let’s dive in to the passages.

In Luke chapter 3 the crowds who wanted to be baptized asked questions to the teachers. Asking what they need to do in order to be baptized.

(Luke 3:10-14) John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.

This tells about how you should share when you have surplus amount of goods. I think there is a reason why John said “two” shirts because then you have one for your own and another one to share. He didn’t say anyone who doesn’t have food should do the same. He indicated anyone who “has” food. I am not blaming or pointing out to anybody but like Oprah said in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhqokZF5OFU , we can learn that we need to fill our own cup first. It is vital, and like the lady put amazingly in the video, it is vital for us to take excellent care of ourselves in order to give out lavishly to others without burning ourselves out.

(Luke 3:12-13) Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

This verse tells its meaning on it’s own.

I don’t really remember what happened to John and Herod but Herod, the king was intimidated by John because he accused of wrong doings of Herod.

(Luke 3:19-20) But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, 20 Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

This verse confirms the ultimate truth of Plato, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth”. John spoke truth about Herod, and Herod locked John up. People are usually hated when they speak the truth. Others hate either out of jealousy, fear, or shame of their own behaviors; which are emotions that all human may feel occasionally.

Thanks for reading,

Love, Rubber Plant

Bible verses Quoted from: https://www.biblegateway.com/

Quotes from Coco Chanel

These are some quotes that inspire me about fashion and life.

Looking at her philosophy about life, I think Coco and I could have had good friendship if we met in the past. Here are the quotes:

“A woman with good shoes is never ugly.”

“Fashion changes, but style endures.”

“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.”

“All men are children, and if you understand that, a woman understands everything.”

“Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.”

“I don’t understand how a woman can leave the house without fixing herself up a little—if only out of politeness. […]”

“I don’t do fashion, I am fashion.”

“In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.”

“Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.”

(I think it means that the woman has to have personality and character and the dress shines if she has both. Or Coco might have meant an appearance of a woman.)

“I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all.”

“There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time.”

“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”

“You can be gorgeous at thirty, charming at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.”

“The best color in the whole world is the one that looks good on you.”

“Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”

(Simple designs and colours are classy enough to last for a long time without getting behind or influenced by the trend. Also if the pieces of simple clothings are matched and dressed well, it can look clean, chic and sophisticated)

“Success is most often achieved by those who know that failure is inevitable.”

“Elegance is refusal”

Thanks for reading,

Love, Rubberplant

Quotes Retrieved from: https://stylecaster.com/coco-chanel-quotes/

https://everydaypowerblog.com/coco-chanel-quotes/