Excerpts from Emails to Friends

Everyday is a day that has one less day in front and one more day behind. If one is twenty, there are 10,957 days for him to hope for a coming better one. If one is thirty, there are only 7,305 days. If one is forty, there are
still 3,652 days. If one is fifty, there aren't any! All kinds of medical and surgical people, caretakers and even undertakers are waiting out there, even eagerly. Of course there could be exceptions. But one just can't take it for granted, especially in such an unbalanced civilized jungle.

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Clothes you just find them in your closet. Food you just buy it in the market. Water you just get it in the streams on the way. But fitness is something you can't fetch casually, you have to work very hard for a very long time to keep it at hand.


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Don't set your time for something you call venture. Whenever you are able, comfortable, prepared, and confident to go, simply load your backpack and hit the trail without saying any big words. Or Satan will make it really hard for you to test your shaky faith in God.
Even if it's a real venture it's only a joint-venture. No big deal after all, itsn't it?


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When you do walk like a horse, you should walk like a pack horse bearing panniers with considerable loading. This may help build your physical stamina, retain calcium and phosphorus in your bones, regulate your heart rate and lower your blood pressure. What advantages! Worth walking for?
When you are thinking about walking like a horse, do at the same time consider feeding also like a horse. That means more fibre and less carbs, and no crabs of course.


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I can't imagine staying downtown during the weekend loitering among well-fed, well-groomed, and well-clad people, and then finding myself being seated in a cafe, or a chah-chahn-teng stuffing greasy things down the gut.


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Some people simply appear in the wilderness strange enough to them once or twice a year, and they are not at all prepared or trained for the trails and even their own steps. They simply join a couple of friends and hit the wild in order not to be left home being fed with boredom.


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I paid weekly visit to my old sick uncle in the home for the elderly. There I saw a gentleman only at the age of around 50, with every single hair on his head still in shiny black. He can walk around freely, yet he is always sitting in his comfortable chair doing nothing but watching TV.
Yet a friend of mine told me that he knew a Marathon runner who is already in his 80's. This old pack of mere skin and bone is still running!


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I've just heard it from the news that a highly developed, very peaceful paradise known as Norway has just lost many innocent lives to a terrorist who seemed to have killed for certain 'religious cause' that he thought justified his massacre. This is a very wealthy country the size of China's Yunnan Provicnce with a small population of only 5 million, of which 80% are Christians. Even this well educated killer described himself as a "cultural Christian", and he claimed that he and his brethren would "be the plum tree for Europe and for Christianity".
So you see, Christianity isn't necessarily always successful in nurturing good brethren. Quite so often Satan has the upper hand. Where there might be God's omnipresence, it is certain that Satan has come first.
And I also remember the tragic stories of Northern Ireland. Brethen of both sides had Christ in their mind when they killed each other.
And I also know that the Sicilian Mafia coexists with the Catholic Church perfectly well, and they do bad things and kill people all year round, but during the same time they go to the church to confess in front of a Father as well, only when they are not busy, of course.