Small Happiness in Life (人生小小幸福）

I always remind myself that I must appreciate life (and the people around me), but what aspect of life are we supposed to appreciate? I order to understand how I am supposed to enjoy and appreciate life, I have decided to list down all the small happiness I found in life to date, and keep an accumulative permanent list of it.

This small happiness (Size S) is listed not in any preferential order.

• Blog. I read about Blog addiction quite sometimes ago, and I have to admit, I am a blog addict. My mind in constantly working on coming out with a new interesting topic for my blog. I check my blog status at least once whenever I am online, those numbers and charts have infinite attraction in them. Sometimes I read my on blog and still feel fascinated by them. I read between 3-5 blogs daily and still hunger for more. Blog gave me happiness in writing, and I am glad there are people actually reading it. Though it did cross my mind that my blog will be used against me one day, but there is so much fun in being as open as I possibly could and immortalizing all my thoughts and memories.
• Italian Food and Sushi. I like pasta with creams (not tomato please, no matter how healthy they are). If I found a girl who knows how to cook pasta, I think I would instantly wanna marry her (just kidding). I like all kind of pasta (but I like spaghetti the least), cream, cabonara or olive oil should be just nice. Somehow, by sitting in an Italian restaurant would just make me happy. Thin crust wood oven pizza is perfect as well, especially with ham, bacon, cheese and pineapple. Even plain Italian bread with olive oil taste superb. Sushi brings me happiness as well, probably because I like sushi rice and seafood (soft shell crab, yeah!). I would marry a girl who knows how to make nice sushi as well :)
• Sleep late at night and Wake up late. I am a night owl, and I always fail to fall asleep before 12 midnight. Probably I just enjoy the serenity of night, whether for work or just reading something light or watch movies. My sister is a night owl as well, sometimes we watch old VCDs of movies or series together. Staying awake at night just makes me feel at ease and comfort. Night time can be so peaceful, but sometimes it brings out the true emotion in me due to its serenity. I seem to enjoy waking up late as well, maybe because I had been waking up early 5 days a week during my entire working life. When I say late, I mean at minimum 12 in the afternoon, and my personal best is 3 in the afternoon. Though sometimes I enjoy waking up early for breakfast, but not too often.
• Dance. Dancing is my new hobby, introduced by Tang more than 6 months ago. Perhaps I like not only the dance, but the people I dance with as well. I have to admit my companies for dance do bring a lot of happiness to me, and enjoy hanging out with them. Mei Ru and Michelle had just started to join the crowd, I got all the people I liked under one roof. Too much happiness to handle in one small space. Following those simple steps is tiny happiness, making them into a dance is smaller happiness and doing it nicely with another person brings even more happiness. Actually it is a pity for the boyfriends of these girls not making it to the dance class together, as there is so much happiness to be shared together.
• Play Video Games. I enjoyed my video games time when I was young, especially playing console with neighbours follows by playing online computer games with schoolmates. I used to brag about my children game plays with fellow gamer friends, about those classic games, best record and 24 hours endeavour. I felt more bonding playing console games as there are more emotion and verbal communication, where computer games are more individualistic (though there are network games, but you don't share the same proximity) and less real-life interaction. By the time I got myself a PS2, I could not find myself any gaming buddies. The neighbour's kids are too young, and my brother is such a picky gamer and just can't seems to find many people who enjoy games in my work environment (except Kenny, but he is not a console person). I used to have this dream of finding a girl who like to play console games with me, that would be the ultimate man (but it doesn't seems like going to come true).
• Ice Skating/Roller Blade. When I was young, I found my brother' quad-skate in the storeroom and decide to learn skating by my own. My father is not very encouraging of it (as he afraid I might get hurt), but he didn't stop me either. I really enjoy skating until the roller gone totally bold and I end up skating on metal roller. I pick up roller blade about 1 year ago with Tang and Lorena, and it was pretty fun as well. Too bad it didn't last long due to inconvenient venue and lack of time. We did try ice skating after that, and it is indeed great enjoyment, if only I learned how to skate smoothly with more elegance. Perhaps it is the speed (comes with nice breeze) and agility which captured my heart.
• Free and Easy weekends. Due to the every increasing hectic weekend with work or personal activities, I no longer have much opportunity to sleep through the weekend and watch TVs. I like to wake-up late in the weekends, laze around further, and watch some TVs. Purely doing nothing at all for one day just feel great. Too bad I have too many things on my mind nowadays, can't really afford to be free and easy. Perhaps I am the one who chooses such hectic lifestyles, and it isn't very healthy for the long run. Hopefully things we get better and more focus once I executed my 2006 plans.
• No work on one weekday. Taking a day off on weekday just feel great. Absolutely no one to cram with in shopping complex, restaurant, cinema, skating ring, on the road and street (as long as you avoid the rush hour). Even staying at home lazing around with some mundane task feel great.
• To hang out with pretty people. There is something about being together with nice and pretty people, it just feel good. Don't actually have to do much, some company with pleasant and pleasant looking people already is good enough to make me happy (as long as I don't hate them).
• A productive day. Some unofficial research had shown we are only productive from 11 A.M to 3 P.M during our 9-5 working hours. Somehow if I have done a lot on concentrated solid work for the day, it would make me feel happy (as long it is not some monotonous boring job). It is sort like a minor adrenalin rush.
• Online chat. This is quite contradicting with productive day, as online chatting is counter productive, but it brings me happiness as well. When ICQ first come out quite a long while ago, I was hooked on it instantly, finding everyone I can to chat with from sun set until sun rise. That was in college time. Somehow, I felt tired and bored with such activity (cause found it pointless, meaningless and a waste of time, probably due to the lack of quality chat buddies), thus gone cold turkey on chatting for many years. Recently, I am blessed with some really nice chat buddies who make online chatting more enjoyable. It kinda makes life more enjoyable in many small ways, and I sincerely thank all of you from the bottom of my heart. Besides, IM does reduce a lot of communication barriers and make us much at ease.
  

Additions on 09 October 2005:

• Seafood. Seafood is like the king of meat, though white meat. Sri Lankan Crab, Soft Shell Crab, Mantis Prawn, Tiger Prawn, Clams (some big clams), Snail (Big BBQ Snail, though Escargot is nice as well, but I don't meant them here) and etc. Butter Milk (奶油) Crab is the best! If not because of the high price and high cholesterol, I would probably include them in my daily diet (nah! too frequent of a good dish spoilt my favourite).

Additions on 29 October 2005:

• HK Movies. I kinda have a soft spot for Hong Kong movies, from the very best to the very worst. Kinda have more "feel" watching them compared to English movies, though their quality might be deteorating for the past years. Once in a while, there are quite some good catches, which makes me happy. Sometimes is kinda difficult to find people to watch HK movies with me, as most people no longer like them due to her recent slump.
  

Additions on 15 March 2006

• Simplicity in life, like chit chatting together, play Ps2 together, cook together, watch DVD together, jogging or swimming together, play together, do nothing together, anything else which allow us to spent the whole day together without disruption. Take leave together just to spent some time with each other just sounds like the best reasons to take leave, haha.
  

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PS: Since I can't list all of them down in one shot, I shall keep on replenishing this page (whenever I thought of something) and tag it in my blog. BTW, I suddenly though of this brilliant idea of creating a website to allow people to write down all the small happiness in their life. By doing so, we can know how many people share the same happiness with us, or to find out what small things does people around us really like. In life, sometimes we focus too much on the big happiness that we neglected all the small happiness who accompanies us throughout our life.