Why Keen?

I guess you would have heard by now about my new gadget, the Canon EOS 7D. The main thing is, it is now hopefully much easier to come up with content, because time taken to render and compress aside, it is actually easier to do bite sized video clips than with my usual equipment.

Anyway, looking at these moments make me reflect on how fast Harkman’s growing up. He’s ability to pick up new skills is amazing. He’s just started taking cereal for two weeks and he wants to have a go at holding his own spoon already!

new eyes from Why Keen Tham on Vimeo.

About the origin of Harkman’s name, and the speculation of whether it is related to Ip Man, let me explain. Our criteria for his name is for it to be meaningful for a boy, be a unique name that sounds good in Chinese, Cantonese, and English!

I really liked how my name, when read as “Why Keen” is easy to read, and has meaning in it’s English form too, but find it a pain when people read it as “Wei Keen”. So it was a tough job in the first place.

A lot of words in Cantonese sound funny in English, for example Gay. Imagine if Harkman was Gayman, you get the point. So I was already compiling a list of words that sounded ok, when the movie was released, the word Man was shortlisted.

Hark is a nice, masculine sounding word, and the English word Hark is quite meaningful too, to listen; to hearken. So Harkman, means a guy who listens. Hopefully that implies that he has the wisdom to listen, to see, and to think before acting.

Now down to the Chinese characters. Hark Man in chinese is Ke Wen. Ke for Ke Fu, solve, or overcome. Wen for Wen Ti, problems. So Ke Wen is a solver of problems.

So despite the very obvious inspiration from Ip Man, a lot of thought had gone into thinking about the meaning and vocalization of Harkman’s name. Of course, if he can be half of the man Ip Man was, it would have been pretty cool too. I am also a huge fan of comics, and Harkman sounds like some superhero, that contributes to his name too, I guess.

Born without sight
but I can see reason,
I reason that people and animals hurt like me, because I feel hurt.

Born without sound
but I can listen,
to the silent care that others give, even when I do not know them.

Born without words
but I can show, in ways that you can reason or listen too.

I cannot see, hear, nor speak your words,
but I think I understand your love, don’t I belong with you too?

Imperfect Creation by Why Keen

It is that time of year again, when we re-assess our lives and ask ourselves where we’ve been and where we are going. In , Robert Kiyosaki described his life changing skiing trip in December 1984 with his wife Kim and his best friend Larry. Robert and Kim were down to their last few dollars, and Larry was on his way to building another business.

Highly inspired by this story, Hwei Min and I decided to have our own annual retreat, where we set goals and set to achieving them. Looking back, it had been four years now.

I still remember our first retreat in 2005. It was a huge paradigm shift for both of us, as we actually planned a long holiday trip that wasn’t a holiday trip. We planned to go to Genting because that was one of the cheapest option then. We needed a place that was different enough from home, yet cheap enough that it wouldn’t burn a hole in our pockets. Of our four day three night itinerary, three and a half days were jammed packed with discussions and visioning exercises, and only half a day for shopping. (By the way, the fact that Hwei Min was totally aligned to this plan was a hundred per cent why I am so blessed that she is my partner in business and life. How many ladies would be open to such an idea?!)

It was a huge leap of faith because no one seemed to understand the importance of what we planned to do. Everyone asked us, “Genting, for four days? What are you going to do up there??” I remember everyone’s reaction when I told them we were going up the mountains to talk.

Anyway, this year had to be different because of our little boy, we can’t travel too far. Here we are now, at Orchid Country Club for two nights, he’s here, by the way, oblivious to the fact that we would be dreaming, and planning for all our future, and making it a reality. And in fact, that HE was a a dream turned reality, our little bundle of joy.

For more than two years now, I’ve been in a creative line, and I must say, the stress level has never gone down. I always feel this fear that my “creative juice” would run dry, so to speak.

So, while idling surfing for some TV to watch (I don’t watch anything on the real TV nowadays), I found this interesting video by Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity, and it struck a chord.

She mentioned about the origins of the word Genius, very interesting. Genius is like a spirit guide, or a deity, and it is believed that there every human being has a Genius attached to him/her. Here’s what I found about the word Genius on Wikipedia :-

—
Genius in Roman mythology is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing
…
Every nameable mythological figure was a genius of some sort; but further, the rational powers and abilitiies of each and every human being were attributed to his soul, which was a genius. (Source : Wikipedia)
—

So Elizabeth Gilbert proposes that all artists try to put their burdens as well as their ego on this disembodied entity, their genius, and let it take claim or credit for the magnificence or failure of their work. Aha…

By the way, I’ve tried. Though it was a little silly, I actually spoke out loud and said, “It’s now up to you”, especially since I was under a very tight editing schedule for my last wedding shoot, and you know what? It was one of my better works. So maybe it works, huh?

Here are some of my shots from a wedding my genius helped at:-