Magic ~ 魔术

不要相信你所聽到的東西﹐ 只能相信一半你所看到的東西。

Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.

~ Benjamin Franklin

Famous Taiwanese Magician Master Liu Qian showing off a magic trick with Goldfish

In the process of acquiring knowledge - we observe, listen and decipher news and information. Information exchange has become very easy and almost instant in the Internet age. At the same time, it has also become very challenging to decipher what is accurate and useful. 

Besides Goldfish websites, blogs and YouTube videos. Email exchanges, SMS and forums are also very popular media for information exchange. How then can we siphon the useful and accurate information from these sources? I think we can only rely on opening up our eyes, our ears and our minds.

It is rather sad that we can't always believe what we hear but nowadays, sometimes we also cannot believe what we see!! I hope we can still rely on our heads to rationalise and see through all the fog ;)

Enjoy the magic video presented in this blog post. May I wish all a very Happy and Prosperous Lunar New Year!

Winners and Losers ~ 輸家贏家

有贏家，有輸家，還有還沒學會如何面對輸贏的人。

There are winners, there are losers and there are people who have not yet learned how to win or lose.

~ Les Brown

This year, I did not manage to win any prizes in OARS but I was very happy because the members of the Oozeki Ranchu Club have made big progress in the grooming of the TVR. Overall, the skills of grooming the Tosais are much improved compared to previous years. It was quite an achievement as most of the fishes were acquired and groomed from black baby (BBR) stage.

Though the Oozeki Ranchu Club is a small club, we are fortunate to have very passionate people in the club consistently organising the show for the pass 10 consecutive years. Besides the thrill of improving our skills through competitions, the joy of this Ranchu hobby is also about forging truthful friendships with people from all walks of life, sharing the hobby with friends whom we learn about the hobby together and working as a cohesive team to realise our dreams. In this aspect, I reckon that the one similarity of Ranchu and friendship is not about the quantity but of quality.

Due to heavy work commitment, I have only managed to set up the breeder tanks last week and mix the breeder Ranchus together. This year's breeding is going to be a bit later than the previous year as I have just missed the window of opportunity for a few good spawns. 

 
Year 2010 had also been an exciting Ranchu year in Singapore with many new faces coming into the TVR hobby, triggered by the shows organised by the hobbyists and commercials here. In time to come, the local hobbyists would be spoiled of choices when it comes to selection of Ranchus. 

As we learn to appreciate the TVR, let's not forget our families who have made sacrifices of their time and space for our Ranchus, and also be appreciative to our fellow hobbyist friends whom we have shared and learned about the hobby together. Good fishes will come and go, but good friends stay in our lives. In years yonder,  the conscientious would eventually lament the tragic of not having a couple of bosom friends in our life journey.

Pictures:

1. Some male seed fishes for year 2011.

2. Some female seed fishes.