HIDDEN TREASURE CHEST

It all started with blue. I love colours, especially those bright shades. I think they speak out “Life” to me. However, all shades of colours have their place in the spectrum of colours.

Before blue, going back several years ago, I wanted to have two or three lines of a sort of an electric green in hair colour, streak across one side of head. Then, I found out that the process to get it done would be a long one. People also advised (said / commented?) that I won’t be portraying a serious enough image for the type of work I was doing (then).

Sam, giving a final check to see if all was ok.

Today, I look at life differently. I look at life through a whole range of lenses, be it normal, wide-angle, telephoto, zoom, macro. It is like as though I found a hidden treasure chest, managed to open it, and was awed with what was inside it. I believe that each and every one of us has a treasure chest, maybe similar to the one I found, but the treasures that each one of these chests hold are different, there are no two treasure chests alike, you cannot peek, look or take someone else’s treasure chest. Likewise, others cannot take your treasure chest away from you. How awesome is that?

There is a caveat. The treasure chest is with each one of us, we may see it, but we may not be curious enough to explore, to see what’s inside of it.

I believe that these treasure chests for each one of us have only great, good, vibrant, happiness, productive – everything needed to add multiple years to our life. So, just in case you may have seen your treasure chest somewhere in the corner of your life and are hesitant to explore it…😁

Blue, light ocean blue, that is; was my first choice of colour. I was gungho to try it out. I Whatsapp-ed (Malaysian for sending text messages via the Whatsapp app) my good friend, Sam; who is from Sam Image Studio (you guessed it – she owns the studio) and told her of my blue – hair plans. I asked how long would this whole process take.

Her reply was, “Haha! You sure you want to do this?”. She said I would have to have my hair bleached first and then add the blue. The whole process would take about 2 and a half hours.

That long? I thought to myself. Never mind, we’ll do “just above ordinary” first. Of course, I stipulated a condition that Sam works on my hair personally, as she had done multiple times in the past.

Happiness

I was at Sam’s studio just after lunch that day. She showed me a colour chart and I chose a fairly light shade of brown. Then, Sam went to work and did her magic. About an hour and a half later, it was accomplished. I liked the finished job.

I told Sam that I was not completely over the blue…yet. Future…? The future which is a moment away.

One of Life’s greatest lessons is that learning is a continuous process. So much fun…

Sam did my hair 12 years ago.

Another picture from 2013.

A MOMENT’S REST

I think I am a bit blurry-eyed, or is it blood-shot (oops! Spelt it wrongly just now. I’m now going to tell, say or re-spell the way I spelt it wrongly. It’s too mischievous!).

We are in between visitor visits. One of the earliest visitors was Keisha. She was attracted to our display of Ferrari cars. As we started talking, I found out that she helps her mum run a booth, selling rare collectors baseball, football and other types of collector cards. They basically are selling off her late father’s collection of cards.

Keisha is a Formula One (F1) fan, and a Ferrari fan at that. Ferrari has been progressively gaining momentum back to its position as a top F1 team, and currently is amongst the top 3 teams. Keisha, predictably chose the F1 Ferrari car that was on display for sale.

The Batik Capes under the “JEANNIE’S OWN” label was doing well. The Batik Influencer did multiple demos throughout the day, which led to several acquisitions by the audiences.

Me, differentiating each moment with a shot of the same scene, different moments. 😁

Moving faster than the speed of stillness 😅🤣

I think it must have been the lack of sleep that kept me actively thinking of what to do next to stay awake. Then, I got this brilliant idea, why don’t I write a new article. And since I quite often break off from writing to recalibrate my thoughts, people stopping by our booth will also help me break off to recalibrate my thoughts. However, here it may be too frequent a break off.

I decided to give it a go, and here I am, working on this article with my Samsung Galaxy Fold 5. Though the “start / stop” of writing or finger tapping on the Fold 5 screen was quite frequent, yet bearable; stopping in the middle of a sentence while creating it was not because I kept losing my train of thought. However, as my late grandmother used to say (when she was alive), “Slow, slow, catch monkey.” Let me know in the comments if you guys know the meaning of this phrase.

Keisha, with her newly acquired Formula 1 (F1) Ferrari model.

As, I sit, momentarily to catch a moment’s rest, I watch people as they walk past. The hat culture seems to be catching on. Here, when I talk about people wearing hats, I am not talking about the usual baseball cap wearers. More and more are wearing fashionable hats, be it flat caps, Panama, Jason Miraz, bucket, etc. There was one who donned a “Sherlock Holmes”, look – interesting. His sidekick, Watson (“elementary, my dear Watson” ), was not with him today .

I  can hear someone in the background, a couple of floors down; strumming a couple of musical notes on his electric guitar. He has been at it for some time. However, no song or even part of it can be made out. It’s o.k. He’s chilling out with a couple of  people.

I spoke… wrote (?) too soon. He’s now singing , ” To Love Somebody” by the Bee Gees, and strumming to the tune of it.

My best and most beautiful Tibetan friend, Rigzin, who is more popularly known by her last name, “Dolma”, and runs a booth next to ours; has been kept busy with many customers visiting her booth. She sells mainly ladies’ costume jewelry and some East Asian items. One of them is a brass sort of bowl. You strike the brass bowl with a small wooden mallet and it will echo, vibrating a melodious sound. At the same time, you rub the wooden mallet round the outer age of the brass bowl and it creates a sweet melodious sound. Very unique. You should drop by and visit her booth. By the way, Rigzin is the only Tibetan friend I have so far. 😁

What do you call a specific time that is shorter than a moment, as my moment’s rest has come to an end. The moment felt shorter than a moment.

There was a guy who dropped by last week and asked me to reserve the Samsung Buds Pro2 for him. This Buds Pro2 set is brand new, with the box still unopened. The guy said he would be coming by today. I am going to give it to him at an amazingly low price with an 80% discount. I think he is a low income wage earner who would like something very nice like this lilac colour Buds to have some enjoyment.

OUR STORIES : UNIQUE

EARTH: Population: 8 billion.

Every single person on planet earth that is here, present; has a story of their own to tell; whether it is in their mother tongue language, English or a different language; whether it is in the form of pictures, dance or any means of communication; with the hope that what is communicated to the audience; will be received by the audience in exactly the way that it was communicated, without losing the essence of the message. What is most important is that each story is different.

This is something that A.I. or Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT can never do as these can only generate information that was pre-installed with data. Whatever information that is churned out from these two software is sort of a “done this, been there” information. Admittedly, “can never do” could be a bit far fetched.

Don’t surrender decision making to computers all in the name of making life easier for us. The truth is: it doesn’t.

While on your own path, wherever that leads.
Run your own race, wherever that goes.
Quit comparing your life with another.
We are all on a journey, but our paths are different.
Our stories are unique.


~ ALAN IAN ATKINSON
Writer, Author, Storyteller