Another Winter Sinks In — Reflections on A Year After Ben

Today is officially the anniversary of my dear best friend Munch2's (Ben Walter) death. Well, perhaps it was yesterday, December 20th since today was yesterday in Shanghai, China where he passed on. The present is already the past elsewhere. I never thought about how the day of a person's death is not a universal day in the universal moment experienced by all on this planet. For example, Martin Luther King's death date varies across the globe although the actual time is a universal moment.

I thought often as the days rolled closer to today or yesterday, what I could have done to prevent this tragic direction. Could I have been nicer to him during our college years? Could that have changed the course of our future? Our fate? Throughout this year, I kept thinking that on that particular day, munch2 would still have been alive. However as of yesterday or today, time has folded into himself... an entire year will emerge soon that starts the years where I cannot reflect on how just a mere year ago, he would have been alive.

I learned during this one year the human capactiy to float above the darkness. As humans, we always seek to find a plateau in our suffering. Like ocean waves, the water falls yet rises again in constant flow. However, I also recognize that there are some losses that define a person and this one touched the most beautiful places of my heart. As humans who have truly loved someone or something, we carry these wounds, these scars that leave us different, indifferent, tougher, softer and more sympathetic to the suffering of other that reveal a heart that can feel for others. Munch2's passing and the death of several others around this time has led me to reflect that what makes us human is universal.

Munch2 could have done so much for the world... I can only do my best to make his legacy and beauty live on elsewhere.
This year, I offered gifts from Oxfam Unwrapped in memory of my dear munch2: 12 textbooks for children and training for teachers in a poor region of the world. Hopefully the love I felt in my most profound friendship can blossom somewhere else and that his life is recycled elsewhere in the hopes of others renewed.

Much love to you, dear Brains... always.

- siming
www.jsiming.com
December 21, 2006

Tips for Giving to Non-Profits and Charities

Apparently many people tend to make charitable donations around the holidays so I thought I’d share my advice in case you're looking into charities to support.

I strongly recommend doing the following:

• Check out Charity Navigator (www.charitynavigator.org), a 501C non-profit organization works to guide intelligent giving. According to their site, they say, “They help charitable givers make intelligent giving decisions by providing information on over five thousand charities and by evaluating the financial health of each of these charities. They ensure our evaluations are widely used by making them easy to understand and available to the public free of charge. By guiding intelligent giving, they aim to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace, in which givers and the charities they support work in tandem to overcome our nation's most persistent challenges.”
  
  
• Read Charity Navigator advice on smart giving: ”Top 10 Best Practices of Savvy Donors:“
  

... The site suggest several tips that I would like to summarize and emphasize in particular that I find to really important points in particular:

1. Identify and Prioritize Your Values. Support non-profits that have targeted outcome goals
   and are not too general with their objectives.
   “Smart givers generally don't give reactively in a knee-jerk reaction. They don't respond to the first organization that appeals for help. They take the time to identify which causes are most important to them and their families. And they are specific about the change they want to affect. For example, they don't just support generic cancer charities, but instead have targeted outcome goals for their giving, such as providing mammograms to at-risk women in their community.”
   
   Basically, really think about what your values are before you feel guilty and just give money to whomever sends us pleas for help. Personally, I get tons and tons of mail from all these non-profits who get my info from similar non-profits to whom I donated money previously. FYI — Non-profits often share your contact info with other non-profts that share similar focus so think about where you’re donating money b/c you’ll soon be hearing from other similar organizations. I have been guilty of repeatedly giving money to organizations that send me info rather than really researching the organizations that interest me. I recommend that you first take time to evaluate what issues matter the most to you and then research through charitynavigator.org for the non-profit that does the best job at what you care about. For example, say you care about environmental-related causes, but you will find that various non-profits take on a different angle or focus. In my experience, there are firms that focus on protecting wildlife or endangered animals affected by global warming, others that focus on preserving natural resources and national parks, and then others that focus on the effects of environmental damage on people. When I thought it through, I realized I cared more about environmental dangers that more directly affect human lives foremost. Also, there are non-profits that focus on short-term emergency care and then there are non-profits that focus on longer-term strategic planning i.e. Do you want to feed someone a fish (or veggie if you’re vegan) today when they are hungry and desperate, or do you want to help teach them to fish so they can eat later everyday?
   
   
2. Concentrate all Your Giving on Only a Few Non-Profits.
   Donate and work on very few organizations rather than give to a bunch of them at a fraction of what you could give to just one or two organizations that really meet your passionate concerns (see above). Personally, I've been overly diversifying my own contributions to a various non-profits since I have felt guilty about not giving money to non-profits who would have "wasted" their money writing to me and sending me all their endless free address labels if I didn't reward their efforts.
   
   
3. Donate to a Charity in Honor of Someone You Care
   Another point (not mentioned to on the Charity Navigator site) — you can always donate in honor or in memory of someone as a gift for people who already have everything material they feel they need. You can also donate in memory of someone to honor their memory so they continue to “live” on in your good deeds done in their name and send a note to someone alive who would feel happy to hear that you care.
   
   ***I noticed this rather fun “gift” idea on Oxfam (they get 3/4 stars on Charity Navigator for excellence):
   www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com
   (Gifts that help others around the world. Their site states, “Need an unusual gift? How about a camel or a water pump? What about a coffee mill or an emergency toilet? This holiday season, give a gift that helps people in need.” They allow you to send a card to someone you care about this donation in their honor.)
   

Happy Holiday and giving! :)

- Janet Si-Ming Lee
Principal Designer, Siming Cybercreative

Holiday Arts & Crafts Shopping, and Grand Opening of the Boston ICA!

Support indigenous international arts and culture or works by local artists. Check out these links to learn more about these great places to buy unique, holiday gifts that support the arts. Visit the new Institute of Contemporary Art at their grand opening on Sunday, December 10, 2006.

1. Cultural Survival Bazaar holiday sale of indigenous art
   Saturday & Sunday, 11 am – 7 pm
   Hynes Convention Center — 900 Boylston Street
   
   - Support hand-crafted, fair-trade work from around the world when you buy your holiday gifts here or purchase art for your own home.
   - I believe that all the vendors pledge 40% of their proceeds toward the cultural survival group’s mission to promote indigenous folks’ rights and fair-trade.
   - For more details: http://www.cs.org/events/bazaar/index.cfm
   
   **** Their collection will be even bigger than the one in Harvard Square. I bought a bunch of stuff last week in the Harvard Square one
   
   
2. South End Holiday Market
   (SOWA) of local New England artists
   Saturday, 10 am – 8 pm, Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm
   Cathedral High School Gym — 74 Union Park Street, Boston
   
   - over 75 artistans’ stuff for some creative inspiration – Their stuff looks pretty hip and funky
   - For more details on the participating artists:
   http://www.sowaholidaymarket.com/participatingartists.htm
   
   
   
3. Mass Art Student & Alumni Artwork For Sale
   Monday – Saturday (Dec. 4 – 9), 10 am – 7pm
   MassArt Tower Lobby — 621 Huntington Ave, Boston (E line)
   
   - Featuring original works of glass, ceramics, painting, jewelry, photography, sculptures, fibers, and more. Sales benefit artists and support student scholarships.
   - For more info: www.MassArt.edu
   
   
   
4. ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) GRAND Opening Reception
   SUNDAY (Dec 10), 9 am - 9pm
   Introducing the brand new ICA on fan pier!
   http://www.icaboston.org/about/news/grand-opening/
   
   - The ICA officially opens with a free, 12-hour community open house. Come tour our new exhibitions, grab a free family guide, and enjoy a variety of events including performances by Snappy Dance Theater, Alloy Orchestra, the Either/Orchestra, a live DJ, and much more, plus face painting, balloon sculptors, and animated films by New England filmmakers. 
   
   

Tips for Holiday Shopping with Ethical Considerations in Mind

As the holiday season descends (or rather POUNCES) on us, I found a few cool sites online to check out that you might find helpful as you think about where to shop for gifts for others that reflect ethical considerations. For example, you could buy green/recycled products made into cool stuff, fair traded goods, organic, vegan, handmade products, etc.

• Ten Thousand Villages (”Fairly Traded Handicrafts from Around the World”)
  http://www.tenthousandvillages.com
  (I’ve seen their stuff in Cambridge area and I support their fairly-traded, BEAUTIFUL handicrafts from around the world theme and I thought I’d add it in. They even have gift registries so if you wanted to have a wedding gift registry, consider this place. Personally, I love beautiful, ethnic stuff. They make for great gifts for those with exotic or artsy tastes.)
  
  
• Greater Good (”Show Where it Matters”) affiliated with Oxfam and found through a link on Oxfam site
  http://www.greatergood.com
  (They have some really FABULOUS, beautiful ethnic stuff priced pretty reasonably as well as mainstream popular vendors. You can also give unusual gifts like $40 to pay a teacher's salary in Afghanistan or $90 for business grants for rural African women. Certain products that you purchased will then translate to a percentage of profit going to a cause of your choice posted on the site.)
  
  
• Oxfam Unwrapped
  http://www.oxfamamericaunwrapped.com
  (Gifts that help others around the world. Need an unusual gift? How about a camel or a water pump? What about a coffee mill or an emergency toilet? This holiday season, give a gift that helps people in need.)
  

These sites below were mentioned on the MSNBC "Today" show and listed on its site:

• Viva Terra (”Eco Living with Style”)
  http://www.vivaterra.com
  (I think they are one of the more tasteful and interesting sites listed here with some really nice products that you guys might want to give to folks. I like their dining and kitchenware particularly as well as their home decor items in particular. This site is geared toward women site visitors or gifts for women.)
  
  
• Hip & Zen (”Modern Lifestyle Products that Nurture the Body and Soul”)
  http://hipandzen.com
  (If you’re seeking some nice clothes and accessories for women and some items for men, babies from many brand collections, this is the place since they have a larger collection for women than most of the other sites on this list. They have limited collection of home decor items though. A great feature of their site is that it indicates whether a particular product is fairly traded, recycled, vegan, handmade, natural, organic, etc. They offer some urban punky cool stuff like laptop bag from recycled movie posters.)
  
  
• Branch (”Sustainable Design for Living”)
  http://www.branchhome.com
  (looks like a pretty nice site with some good options)
  
  
• Our Green House
  http://www.ourgreenhouse.com
  (eco-friendly baby products and stuff for an eco-friendly home if you have a kid or want to give gifts to someone with children or for baby showers)
  
  
• GreenKarat (”Ecologically Responsible Jewelry”)
  http://www.greenkarat.com
  (some nice jewelry designs that you can buy for yourself or for others. They can customize a jewelry design to your specs I think)
  
  
• Earth Friendly Finds
  http://earthfriendlyfinds.com
  
  
• Green Feet (”The Planet’s Homestore”)
  http://www.greenfeet.com
  
  
• 2kh.com
  http://2kh.com
  

(Of course, another cool idea is to also shop from local artists to support grassroots artists which I like to do as well :))
** I don’t get paid for any endorsements above so these are impartial suggestions based on things I thought people might find useful along with my commentary on these sites after reviewing them a little.. :P

- Janet Si-Ming Lee
Principal Designer, Siming Cybercreative

Election 2006 - Deval Patrick: First African-American Elected as Governor of Massachusetts

Yesterday was a spectacular day for Massachusetts — we made history with our election of Deval Patrick, the first African-American Governor of Massachusetts. Woohoo! I'm impressed with his open-minded, bipartisan approach toward reaching to both sides of the political aisles and other minority groups. I'm glad to hear that he advocates working with businesses as well to solve problems and work toward common goals, and is interested in growing new industries particularly biotech and green technologies. I credit Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate (in the primaries) Chris Gabrielli for getting the message about investing in innovation and green businesses through his ads. I think that Grace Ross of the Green-Rainbow Party made excellent points and is a very bright candidate — i think she really helped make the message much clearer on how Republicans advocate lowering income taxes but at the expense of increasing other types of taxes like property taxes and other fees.

Democrats also gained majority control of the House of Reps and took back most of the seats in Senate.

Six Months Past and Counting

I loved to look into your childlike eyes
Large, dark, sympathetic pools
Sinking into their silent caramel brown depths, I felt
An everlasting liquid longing
A heart-churning, desperate, unrequited
love like a misty, jade-green summer pining for its lost spring
With the delicate, pink blossoms long gone, spring seems like a dusty dream
My love, I cannot resist
Your unfathomable, enchanting gaze
my heart sunk
to the bottom of our endless loneliness
I drowned in the ocean of your melancholy
I tasted the salt of unseen, unbled tears
I gazed into my mortality, your mortality
Transfixed, I glimpsed your eternity in my emptiness
Baby, perhaps I knew even then...
Our moments together would be a mere --
instant in my new decades alone.
I long to look into your childlike eyes
again...


by
Janet Si-Ming Lee
June 26, 2006 (Monday)
In loving memory of my dear best friend Munch (ben walter)

Evolving Recollections... Can a contemporary evolving love outlive the temporal context?

I was recently reflecting on love evolving with time as our recollections of our past relationships evolve over the years...
As I contemplated on the sad reality that my dear best friend Munch2 (ben walter) died tragically at the young age of 27 in December, I realized that although I am still his contemporary as of now and think of him as my contemporary, what happens when I'm 60 someday, will I still think of him as my peer, my contemporary?

Can a contemporary love retain its temporal contexts if people step outside their relationship to time? If parents lose a child, I think their relationship to their child is still relatively the same in their evolving memories especially as we consider that parents often think of their grown children as being perpetually much younger even if the parents should be their 80s and the children in their 60s. However, what can we say of a friendship defined by a contemporary generational context? If someone dies as a grown adult defined by a stable concept of self-- if such a thing exists-- perhaps the contemporal relationship can exist between the dead and the living assuming that the other living individual's identity is also at a constant, stable state. However, in my opinion, Munch2 was still at the brink of true adulthood... a peaceful plateau of self-actualization and I can say at this point, I am at a similar stage. We were ephemeral contemporaries in our self-actualization and our generational experiences although I think that in true love, there exists a knowledge and recognition of the eternal core of one another's unalterable personalities, motivational drivers, and potential. If I feel that I can predict the achievements he would have obtained later in life and the evolution of his thinking given his extraordinarily gifted talents, interests, personality and temporal contexts, can my love and memories evolve to contain him in my temporal contexts?

Can I contemporize a temporal, ephemeral relationship where one individual continues to grow but the other is at a static stage? Or would there be a day when I'm in my 80s, that I would think of him as a grandmother fondly looking back at him suspended in time as a young adult forever young and beautiful, a rosebud frozen by a premature winter? Or will I look back and see him as I once did when I was in my 20s because our relationship is a temporal experience? When I'm with my family, I often find myself slipping back into the shell of my former self... my relationship contexts mostly remain the same. Of course, there are major events in life like going away to college and living away from home afterwards that have altered my relationship and some perceptions. Given that we can often slip back to our former relationships within old, non-relevant contexts, perhaps, it's possible that I will never think of him from a grandmother perspective on a much younger individual but rather as my contemporary as we once were in our shared temporal existence. Since munch2 was a couple years younger, I will always think of him as younger and his death doesn't change that. I occasionally wondered after my paternal grandfather passed away how his wife, my grandmother thought of her then older husband? My paternal grandfather was just a few years older than my grandmother but he died ten years ago when he was in his late 70s...now my grandmother is in her mid 80s, does she think of her husband as "older" than she still or younger now?

Poem: Pepperminted winter mist lingers

peppermint oil frosted winters
bottled in purple tinted glass
acid burnt suede after midnight
sculptures of metal sprawled out
rolling mercury across the floor
we fumbled for a mercurial moment
sunday afternoons by a bench
at the charles river watching the sunset
counting hours silently before a
dreaded working monday begins
embracing each other tightly
we were an island together
stranded in a strange universe
your face, a picture of innocence
pale below a stoic cap of copper brilliance
a porcelain child i wanted to protect
eyes wide as a baby stare up into white space
heavy with loneliness and pain
teetering between empty giddy giggles
and silence and eyes shut
your eyes were always blank those days
a wall i could not touch, enter
i was lost in your suffering
tiptoeing on a dorm's rooftop
we watched the 4th of july fireworks
a Chinese-born American, a Brit
sharing an American experience
gulping down little bottles of booze
with two other friends
summers simmered forever
a delicate blend of melancholy beauty
laugher echoed across the years
wish i could go back
and save you
love burns like acid
nothing but fuzzy memories
textures of dreams left
writing to your screen name
a face grey and unlit now
i pretend you'll write back
a knock on IM after midnight
you're halfway across the world
a day away in time
you should be up now
i could almost think
it's you
no--
but you're gone.

by Janet Si-Ming Lee, March 23, 2006

The March of Spring, a winter season has passed...

Yesterday was the first day of spring. An entire winter season has passed since Munch2's passing on the first day of winter December 21st. Time marches quickly... March will soon slip into April. The days are not quite distinctly warmer -- it has been a warmer winter to begin with. The sky is still gray.

The Chinese have memorial days on the two equinoxes of the year where they visit the cemetery to pay their respects to their loved ones and have a picnic above their graves. My family held theirs on Sunday at the Forrest Hill Cemetery where my paternal grandfather Yung Chak Lee is located. It's nice that asians keep the dead in their lives, their ancestors in their minds. Typically we bring lots of Chinese dimsum and pastries, pork with crispy skins and sit and eat there. There are often many Chinese families there in the spring and fall as well visiting the grave sites of their loved ones. It's funny that even in the afterlife, there are still ethnic communities clustered together... a little Chinatown community for the dead.

It would be strange and sad to visit Munch2's grave in England some day... just a name on a stone and know that somewhere below, he sleeps forever under winter snows and all the seasons of the years. I haven't seen him since 2001 when he graduated... five years ago. I had hoped i would see him alive again. I think of a quote that I read somewhere as a child... "If we knew when and where would be the last time we would see a loved one again, our partings would be more dear" or something like that. The last time I remember saying goodbye to Munch2, we were on Main Street near Kendall Square MIT area. We held hands and I cried thinking when would be the last time I would see him again. I held his hands in my hands wet with tears for as long as I could while thinking of that quote. He seemed rather antsy, eager to start the next stage of his life that left this Cambridge behind. I watched him for as long as I could still see him... his bright copper hair fading into a dot around the bend and underneath the aisle of trees. Maybe there was another goodbye afterwards where I last touched him but this goodbye I remember best. I thought then maybe I'll see again in five years? Who knows? I didn't know for sure that moment would be the last time.

The crocuses should be out soon... I'll have to keep my eyes open for the signs of spring...

From Dust to Pixel Dust... our pixelmatter lives on in cyberspace...

I was contemplating today on that old phrase "from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust"... currently, with the growth of websites that house information even from the mid 1990s, it's strange to think that our pixelmatter may live on in cyberspace long after we do physically. From dust to pixel dust... fragments of our old selves live on on other sites and if anyone continues to add information or commentaries to postings, there is a new generation of ideas and sentiments that continue to thrive long after we're gone.


I googled the web for any previous postings by my dear Munch2 and found his previous postings as long ago as 1995 when he was just a 15 year old pioneer of the web and a photo of him (see photo on the left) in a Kidlink class. It's so precious and bittersweet to see his photo then and hear his youthful idealistic voice again in these postings on kidlink:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Subject: File: "KIDART PXBENWAL"

|=|----------------|=|
|=| THE KIDLINK |=|
|=| PHOTO EXCHANGE |=|
|=| PROJECT |=|
|=|----------------|=|
|=| Coordinated by |=|
|=| Ben Walter |=|
||
|=|----------------|=|


1) Who am I?
My name is Ben Walter, and i'm 15. I live in the outer reaches
of civilization in Cambridge, England ;-> I love music,
reading, computers and going to see movies. I'm a DeadHead
(or as close as you can get to one stuck over here :->); that
is I love the Grateful Dead. I'm about 6ft tall, and I love
wearing brightly-coloured tye-dye shirts. I guess typical
clothes for me are jeans and a t-shirt (tye-dyed of course!)
with the odd silk head-band thrown in for effect :-> No
60s retrospectives here folks! *grin*



2) What do I want to be when I grow up?
I'm not entirely sure what I want to be. I certainly want to
carry on working on the Net; I love the Net and all those on it.
I'd think to carry on working the KidLink community and help
it to expand. I'm really entranced with the whole idea of
a global community of kids. It's the sort of thing most
people are only dreaming of, but it's happening now and
we're a part of it!


3) How do I want the world to be better when I grow up?
I would like to see people learn to understand each other
more. I would like to see people treat each other as they
would treat themselves, and realise that they aren't alone.
I'd love for people to understand different ways of thinking,
and learn to respect them rather than ridicule or criticize
them.


4) What can I do now to make this happen?
I think that the KIDS project is working on this right now. It's
getting Kids all around the world working together and learning
about each other. There is a big difference between learning
that there are however-many-million people living in, for
example, Russia, and talking to a russian child, learning about
how they see the situation. It makes people see how events around
the world affect real people. For example in the recent uprising
in Moscow I knew people who actually were in the city at the time.
It wasn't just a crowd of blank faces, hell, my friend could have
got hurt..


//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\ > ben@tsunami.demon.co.uk <
\ bjw@gnu.ai.mit.edu
In the land of the night \ ben.walter@lambada.oit.unc.edu
the ship of the sun is drawn by The Grateful Dead. \//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//\//
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As I am copying this message and including his old photo... I have dispersed his pixeldust into the web world for the duration of this site and his kidlink site. One never knows how long one's words will last online. Online sites converge into one in mergers and acquisitions... sites go out of business... new website redesigns replace old pages. I discovered that munch2's website "bwalter.org" is probably going to be down someday. I thought of buying his domain and so that I never see it replaced by someone else's information. instead, I could pay a tribute to him on that site. If more people comment on these messages and his words proliferate, he lives on in the pixeldust, his words echo forever in cyberspace.

There's so much beauty in him that I see again when I read this message -- all that idealism I saw when he was passionately engaged in mudding in the first day of the MIT class we took together so long ago. Hmmm... 6 feet tall-- I never knew he was that tall and never knew he loved tie-dyed shirts although I can imagine that he did as a hippie visionary of the X generation. Or is that the Y generation? I believe the Y generation starts in 1978.

2006 Olympic flames extinguished, another era sets, the dusk of dreams

Tonight I watched the 2006 Winter Olympics flames extinguished in Torino, Italy led by brides clad in white carrying electric candles in their conical bouquets. Another era setting. I experienced a moment of sadness. I never did like goodbyes, nor the dusk of dreams. Although I barely watched the ceremonies or activities these last two weeks, I recalled at its conclusion, the magic that I felt in my youth -- a magic of a faith that believed that everything would be alright if people in all nations could come together for two weeks in peaceful competition and team spirit. Five continents interlocked by common dreams even as we are torn by war in the middle east and terrorist activities. Sometimes it seems it's possible again to overlook our strifes for a universal good.

In these two weeks, we see beautiful moments such as American speed skater Joey Cheek donating his entire Olympic award money to a charity for children. He carries the American flag onto the stage on the final night of the Olympics. Women in beautiful sculptural white gowns with a miniaturized replica of the Italian winter countryside and mountains parade in long lines of white. Fellini-inspired clowns file in...tenor Andrea Bocelli croons in the finale, eyes closed... Pagini's dragon exhales fire. Here tonight men adorned in a fabric flesh of flame red--live sparks flying behind them-- race around the Olympic lit torch, symbolizing that "the passion lives here" in Italy's Olympic moment. Children sing in hauntingly innocent sweet voices- the voices of idealistic faith-- as an Italian 50 km long distance skiier Giorgio Di Centa is crowned as a gold medalist by his sister, also a gold medalist. He stands in his ultimate moment of glory among his countrymen at his award ceremony and you wonder what he's thinking about as he stands tallest on the platform at the pinnacle of atlethic world success, only 8 seconds from second place. As I watched the Italian acrobats with skis and skateboards dressed in futuristic white suits, arms spread wide dance like doves above a 25 mph wind lifting them, defying gravity... magic seemed possible again here where all is quiet but an ethereal melody. White sashes spiral up, confetti whirls down as these floating beings are suspended in time. Yet I'm reminded of the bittersweet truth that this suspension of life's gravity was only temporary.

Regretfully, I noticed that Olympics seem less central these days... only on one channel. I thought that when I was a child, it used to be on every channel and in fact, I felt as if the world held its breath for two weeks, all eyes focused on one part of the world that contained the heart of the world's every nation. I barely recognized any of the new figure skaters-- the last one I followed was Michelle Kwan vaguely... the last time I remembered watching her, she was considered very young for her sport and now when I watched it this year, she is considered nearing the last season of her possibilities for this sport... too old.

I wondered if Americans don't seem to follow Olympics as much these days because we have lost touch with the personalities who were competing much the way that I have whereas in the past, I felt I was able to live their dreams with them on the world stage. Even as I complained that we should care more about Olympics and what it represents, I found myself flipping through tv channels all competing for the Sunday night viewers... the final night for "Dancing with the Stars" (Drew Lachey won the ballroom dancing competition!) on ABC, Olympics on NBC and on occasion, checking channel CBS for a glimpse of "Cold Case." My recent favorite show "Supernatural" on WB wasn't on tonight so one less competition for my attention tonight. I heard that American Idol won more viewers in the USA compared to the Olympics on the night of the female singles figure skating recently which is astonishing. What does it say about Americans when our commercialism trumps our respect and attention to these rare international moments of beauty as represented by Olympics? I must add though in my defense, I am not much into sports and prefer the arts although I used to watch Olympic figure skating quite religiously (but what alternative did I have as a kid with restricted tv viewing?) given its more artistic nature. I am proud of the fact that I managed to watch one full night of the single woman figure skating event -- witnessed a Japanese woman Shizuka Arakawa win her first Olympic gold, American Sasha Cohen winning the silver, and Russian Irina Slutskaya winning the bronze. Phew! Anyway, I believe that children should all be taught the value and beauty of the Olympic spirit and what it represents about international peace and collaboration even in competition.

I think there should be an Olympic Arts event as well -- I guess the problem is that it's hard to evaluate the arts when beauty is subjective. Already I would argue that figure skating is also highly aesthetic and thus, not an easy sport to evaluate. Well then, I wish to see an international week or two to showcase world arts from music, performance arts to visual arts -- maybe not a real competition but there should be some criteria to even get a viewing.

Okay, back to tv... maybe catch the reruns of the Olympics since I missed it earlier... thank goodness for reruns and second chances.

Boba Tea Island at Lake Waban: Wellesley College's New "Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center"

I recently visited my alma mater Wellesley College last week and checked out our new student center called the Lulu Chow Wang Campus Center. The architecture is beautiful -- it kinda reminds me of MIT's impressive stata center in that the floors spiral upstairs with views of Lake Waban--although it has a more intimate casual feel. Our student center now features three floors with lovely modern, brightly-colored Scandinavian furniture (?) that have somewhat organic shapes. Colored boba islands amidst corners and niche areas perfect for maze aficionados. They even have a hip looking boba tea coffeeshop area and cafeterias, pool tables, huge tv screens, etc. The Wellesley bookstore is also in this building. Free wi-fi connection. Man, I wish we had this student center when we were in college!

2nd month anniversary

I looked at the date today... February 21, 2006... the second month anniversary of my dear munch2's death date. Strange to think that just two months ago and a day or two, he wrote me his last email the day before he passed away. A farewell email -- only that he didn't know it was a farewell email. If he did, what would he have said? Fortunately it was an email that was so sweet and summarized our best friendship and affections. He thanked me for the "best present he had ever received" -- a collage of photos arranged artfully with poetic memories of our college years named "metamorphosis" after our college project. it was my graduation present to him when he finished his studies at MIT, top of his class. I wrote back to him two days too late. I guess my collage of poetry for "metamorphosis" would be my last farewell words to him as well.

He wrote:
+++++++++++++++
Nuts,

Just to let you know that I arrived back in Shanghai this morning. Before I left, I was admiring the beautiful present of the collage of images and words of our time together at Wellesley and MIT. It's such a beautiful thing - easily the best present I have ever received in my life, and I really cannot imagine anybody being able to do anything more caring, so thank you again for those exquisitive memories - that I would love to have a copy of the content it was authored with to burn to a CD and save with my most valuable documents. Do you still have the .PSD file (or equivalent, if it was not Photoshop), so I can have everything kept with me?

On the flight here I watched a Japanese film called "Trainman". It is supposed to be a true story of how a terribly geeky Japanese nerd picks up the courage to stop a drunk harassing a beautifug lady and the emerging story of how a painfully shy nerd transforms himself with help and encouragement from a diverse group of Internet addicts who also are transformed from teachers to students themselves. It's a very open film, focused really on exploring the hero's transformation. I'm sure you would love it too.

Love,

Brains

+++++++++++++++

Days become a month leading to yet another month that we parted ways. I think often of his sweet parents and how hard it must be for them. His photos still adorn my desk including his Christmas 1997 mousemat that his parents gave him that features a photo of him when he was 5 or so playing with his new toys... such a beautiful young face with his whole life before him. Who knew that it would only be 27 years? His photos that I took of him during our college years arranged in a collage also adorn my desk, smiling with all the innocence of a shy teen. He's looking at me in these photos when I took them. Are photos of loved ones silent, eternal dialogues with the ones who took them and if so, do these photos and moments then truly belong to us? I think of the 1980 movie "Somewhere in Time", a story of soulmates stuck in different times -- lovestruck Chicago playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeves) falls in love with a vintage photo of a beautiful young Elise McKenna (played by Jane Seymour). He later undergoes self-hypnosis to go back in time to meet this young actress. You find out later that the photo he fell in love with was taken when he went back in time and she smiled at him. Do these dialogues remain even when we are nothing but the textures of dusty dreams and faded memories?

Life: The balance of happiness and sorrows

I wonder how does one ever balance future hopes for happiness with the realities of past sorrows? Ever since I learned of my dear best friend munch2's (Ben Walter) death, I've been thinking of parents that have lost their children. Suddenly I feel I understand the gravity of their heartbreak. Normally death pursues life in chronological order... The older pass away sooner and we gain new loved ones as we grow older usually... First, children followed by grandchildren, and if we're extremely lucky, we'll see great-grandchildren. There is a balance of loss with new additions. What then happens when death cruelly takes away our children which people normally value as the most precious new life additions? Can they ever make a new close friend or gain a new loved one that balance the depth of their sorrows? How can we find a balance of new precious additions in the midst of significant losses that contribute to making life meaningful and happy?

For example, let us ponder the following:
What period in your life would you describe as being happy and if you consider having as many loved ones still with you as a factor in determining life happiness, how would you choose a moment that would include some but exclude others who died earlier? In my case, if I pick a moment in early December before munch2's death, I had most everyone I ever loved or cared about alive and doing fairly well; I had three best friends (Munch2, Grace, Alex) and several close friends; my career seemed to be going pretty well; I was taking art classes at MassArt's continuing ed program. However, my paternal grandfather who died when I was 18 would be a loss in the midst of these wonderful significant additions. If I ever have children, would I choose a moment as being most happy overall that included them but if I did, then it wouldn't include munch2 in my life sadly. His loss would always be at the center of my new significant relationship additions. At the moment, I can't imagine loving children as much as loved munch2 because I do not have children yet. To choose a moment in the past, we may shortchange ourselves to the potential to love others in our lives that we could not imagine living without. For example, before my grandfather died, I couldn't imagine the exact depth of love I could feel for my three best friends who I met while in college or soon afterwards... New additions that I would have shortchanged myself I chose the past.

Another interesting example would be Democrat Vice President hopeful John Edwards... He lost his son to a tragic accident when he was very young. He and his wife were so devastated that they decided to have more children to bring new additions to their life to offset their terrible loss. Now ponder which period in their lives they would choose--the current moment where they now know the love of two young children who would never have come to be if it were not for the tragic loss of their first born in their memory? Or would they choose the past when they had their first born still alive and they were still innocent from the knowledge of that heartbreaking type of loss, but they will never know the love of two new young children? Tough choice I would think.

Essentially, I realized recently that there can never be a period in our life that we will have everything... Happiness cannot be merely dependent on having everything because we will never have everyone significant to us at the same time. There will always be people exiting our lives and new people who will enter our lives and if we're lucky or ready, we will be able to create new meaningful significant deep relationships, offsetting some of our losses. The younger we are, the greater the chance we will meet more people in our lives who will be of sizeable significance to us. We may gain grandchildren someday when we lose parents... Can the love of these grandchildren be so deeply significant that our current moment can almost balance the loss of such significant relationships as our parents, keeping the balance of happiness almost constant?

How can we be happy when we know more significant losses than we know happinesses especially when old people lose their long time spouses? What is the solution to this plight? One, I guess if one deeply believed in God or a heaven after death, that would be comforting because then we would have all the ones we ever loved with us at all times although not always visible to us. Another way to find value in the future is to bring all past knowledge to the foreground of current and future experiences. I would imagine that old people who manage to remain mostly happy overall are people who are able to love new people deeply... Find value in their losses, find room to love others whether it be their own grandchildren or people of the world who need their help, or important causes. If we can fully integrate all the knowledge we have learned from our losses and love that we have discovered from loving as deeply as we did for our dearly departed ones, perhaps, we just might be able to make the future worth living.

In loving memory of munch2, my best friend: Benjamin John Walter (1978-2005)

I lost my dear best friend of over eight years -- Benjamin J. Walter-- December 21, 2005 very suddenly. I think of him everyday. If one's love can be quantified and correlated to the number of pet names one has for another... he had at least 25. My favorite being "munch2" -- short for munchkin, a pet name that he gained when he did this cute imitation of the munchkins from the Wizard of Oz -- "we're from the munchkin land, munchkin land, munchkin land..."

I remember the first time I met the Munch2 in '97 during my fall semester as a senior at Wellesley College (see Ben with the copper hair in the photo here at my graduation with my best gal pal Grace on the left). I tiptoed into my first MIT class "Communicating in Cyberspace" (a web design and communications class), sitting down at a computer to his right. I stared at the black computer screen, unsure how to log in. I looked over to my left and saw Munch2's radiant young, sweet, baby face with a brilliant copper crop of hair typing rapidly at the keyboard and grinning transfixed enthusiastically at his screen. I asked him what he was doing and he quickly replied "mudding"-- without looking away from his computer. I had no idea what that meant. I then timidly asked him if he could get me set up on my machine. He helped me and then returned to his computer. The following week after insisting that my best gal pal Grace Song join me in cross-registering at MIT for that class, I met up with Munch2 again. Both Grace and I picked him to be our project partner without knowing that the other did so as well. Munch2 became our project partner for a MBTI-based personality test web edutainment site called "Electronic Age Metamorphosis." It remains one of our favorite projects that stood the test of time, a project that I know that Munch2 was very proud of as well. Munch2 was a precocious sophomore, a student that even older MIT students in our class would turn to for solutions. He had a delightful British accent and his raw genius abilities deceived me into thinking he was a senior as well. I was always touched by the way Munch2 used to be turn to listen to us and his whole face and ears seemed to turn out in such an open and accepting way. He had a 5000 watt smile that was so genuine and charmingly innocent and the most radiant copper hair. Once when Grace and I fought on the project, Munch2 was the peacemaker, teaching us forgiveness.

I heard the devastating news on Xmas and have been heartbroken and stunned. Feels very unreal. He was one of my best friends ever since '97, inspiring and supportive especially after our years in college. We dated for 2.5 years, a true first love found only when the heart is open and idealistic still.

Munch2 had such a beautiful heart, a rare multi-talented brilliance that was clear even among the most intellectually gifted (e.g. 5.0/5.0 at MIT!), a passionate curiosity, ingenious nature, a child-like idealistic quality, and he always believed in people's potential for greatness. His gentle and witty sense of humor was charmingly delightful and creatively expressed in conversations and in his thoughtful emails. He inspired me to think entrepreneurially and supported me in my efforts for greater artistic achievements. He was my creative North Star who I turned to when I felt lost creatively or worthless and seeking the light of his kind encouragement and unconditional faith in my creative, intellectual and artistic potential. A mellow hippie with a poetic spirit, he introduced me to zen buddhism ideas, oranges, browns and neutral colors, peppermint oils, henna tattos, hemp beaded necklaces, baggy cargo pants with over six pockets, Moby's porcelain song and the Grateful dead, Christmas lights for room decorations year-round, and Pablo Neruda's poetry. He made terms like "psyched" seem cool. He was also a visionary genius imagining the future, someone who could challenge others to think bigger ideas, connect cyberspaces in novel ways. I admired him more than probably anyone else among my peers. He was the brightest constellation among my galaxy of friends... he had so much potential. He could make me cry and laugh at the same time.


(James Blunt song "One of the Brightest Stars" I like to dedicate to dear Ben here)

Munch2 lived an exciting life of adventures and travel... A lifetime of achievements in a short time especially in the last years although I always dreamed of watching him grow and reach his potential. I wanted to see his metamorphosis. I imagine that he would have written a couple novels of his adventures as an expat; taught at universities like his parents who are brilliant professors, consulted at top firms as a world-renown entrepreneur and thought leader; married later in life; had two children; fallen in love with more countries (munch2 was most recently enfatuated with China, previously with the US although originally from the UK); and contributed more to non-profits. We would have continued to collaborate on personal web-based art projects and professional consulting projects. We were sure to have resurrected our project "Metamorphosis" in flash with more complex animations and ideas, perhaps winning an industry design and technology award. Maybe we would have lived in Cambridge area again... we would have shared a lifetime of conversations and found ourselves at last. He was a pioneer and a beautiful, poetic artist of life... A timeless person for all the ages. As his parents or his friends said of him very poetically, "There is something meteoric about his life-dazzling, but fleeting" -- I agree... he lit the universe of my life like a streak of vivid orange light, a flash across the the dark and silent heavens. Alas, how swiftly the light passed yet how long we will marvel at his legacy, the inspiration of legends, a snapshot of our imaginations. I will miss him dearly.

Much love to you and happy cyberspacing, dear munch2.


- Janet Si-Ming Lee
Siming Cybercreative