Can I kick it?

So originally this should have started way back in September 2005, when I first started medical school in Hong Kong. The idea to start a blog was that “man, there are so many things that I think about everyday and they are just overflowing in my brain. I gotta write them down.” This is still true, except that from September to now I have been spending even more time thinking about what’s there to blog and why to blog. I mean, why do I want to even write my thoughts down like this, really?

For my younger sister and her friends – who happen to be in the generation immediately younger than me if I count 5 years as one generation – blogging is like a part of life. It’s so normal for them to be writing this online diary and read up others online – a “space” where information is so open and accessible to everyone that you might think if a new and true-to-core democracy is going to start anywhere on this planet, it’d be the Internet. Indeed, something about this blogging that is so powerful that it doesn’t just change the ways of communicating, but it changes the ideas of communication itself. Like 8 to 10 years ago when I first started using ICQ with a 56K modem, that was at least still talking to people in a real-time dialogue. But when you realize blogging could be a way that people communicate with each other – or rather, one person communicating with a lot of others – the idea of communication has changed from real-time dialogue to monologues free of time constraints (or not?) just because people have already changed their way to collect information of other people, and “talking” is no longer associated with time.

So what am I going to write on here? – Anything of interests, I say. My thoughts through the day, thoughts on my life, other people’s life, society, medicine, politics, movies, music, culture, transcultural problem (which was actually what first got me thinking about blogging – transcultural issues I have been seeing/thinking, in and out of Hong Kong, after my 5 years in Canada). I mean, does it even matter, for I don’t even have a specific audience but myself? And isn’t that what blogging is all about, writing to oneself as if one is writing to others – a bunch of multi-directional, linked-in-space monologues?

What I really want to do is to draw the lines between the dots, aiming to make connections that seem to exist - at least to me. It’s just fun to do things like this. And it will also be a fun way to see how my interests will change over the years, if this blog continues. But what I don’t want to do is to turn this blog into my diary, because I just simply think that’s undermining the power of blogging: the network behind blogging is so infinite that if you just write about your daily events, the true potential of blogging will never be discovered. For I believe that blogging has the potential to connect people and to achieve the idea of “power in numbers” if we could really influence one another through our thoughts in such an open space, and blogging about one’s own life and daily events is certainly not going to influence and stimulate others’ thinking as much as simply expressing one’s opinions here. I mean, say what you want to say, that’s the deal. In fact, sometimes I have such a strong urge to just say/put down what I have to say, or else I get choked up or something.

Of course, I don’t have the time to do blog daily, so at the moment I hope I can do a minimum of one blog a week. (Maybe until I get a new laptop and can access Internet everywhere then I will blog more often.) But the bottom line: one week. This forces me to write every so often, to think, and “feel” like I actually exist. I certainly don’t want to sound like Descartes’ “I think therefore I am” – I don’t mean that at all. But just wandering about things and occasionally get excited over my own thoughts (‘cause I thought they were cool) is just part of who I am. And expression is part of who I am as well. I have come to realize that without these two big elements in my life, I am pretty much nothing but a walking body.

Why starting on my 23^rd birthday? Well…It’s just easy to keep track of the time. I’m not a very birthday person (tho’ I gotta admit I had a really good birthday this year), because I never really believe in this “milestone” idea of just your, well, birthday. I mean, it doesn’t feel like I have achieved something really important in my life just because I have lived till this April 2^nd of 2006. But 23 is a good number. Mid-way between 20 and 25, 23 is stuck in the middle of the first 5 years of what could be the most important ten years of my life – and that just sounds so boring. I need something to spice it up. And that’s this blog. Keep track of myself. Of course there are other meanings to 23: the evil 23^rd ordinance on security in basic law (shout out to the fighters against this), Michael Jordan (hey don’t be a hater…), luck meaning in Cantonese (ok, I’m starting to make things up now…), etc.

But why I start it is not so important. Rather, what I put here and where I take it are important. I don’t know the answer to that right now. But we’ll see.

Peace, phil