Rob Cheng's Blog

Rio de Janeiro Jardim Botânico

July is a wonderful month in Rio de Janeiro. It was great to have the whole family in Rio and we chose the wonderful and magical Jardim Botânico for a photo shoot. The weather was great. This is where I will to retire. I am just so happy.

Technology is robbing my children of their childhood

I am a work at home dad, and I love my kids. Sometimes, like now, my heart is broken because my kids are addicted to technology and video games.

Relative to the other kids, Teddy and Jesse are great, but relative to their potential, technology is robbing them of the best times of their life. Both of them have their talents (Teddy golf and Jesse piano), but they are unable to explore these talents because rather than practicing, challenging themselves, and growing, their free time is wasted mindlessly watching videos or video games. They lose hours. Sure, as a parent, I try to be vigilant and stern, but it is exhausting and a losing battle.

My children now 15 and 13 years old lack many social skills of children of prior generations. Rather than interact with other kids, and learning to “get along”, they run home and myopically staring at a seven inch screen.

Perhaps the most worrisome is the skill of observation. They believe that the world is to be experienced through a 2 dimensional screen that tickles two senses (see and hear) and ignores the other three senses (touch, taste and smell). Real world is a beautifully complex ecosystem, and yet their experience is limited to what their devices can deliver.

At times, it is overwhelming, but then I realize it is not the children that are lost in this artficial fake technology bubble, it is the adults. God help us.

Xcaret Adventure

Our last adventure for our Cancún vacation was to a wonderful place called Xcaret which is one of the coolest tourist destinations in the area. The highlight is a man made salt water that runs through the park. Each person puts on a life vest, and swims throughout the river. There are numerous spots to take selfies built into the trip. There are numerous restaurants, and we saw two shows. The first one was a Mayan dance show and the second they call the Spectacle. Dinner was included, and it was as spectacular as the name suggests. The show lasted about an hour and a half and reviewed the history of Mexico through song and dance. The park includes an aquarium and a small zoo, plus places to swim and a boat ride. If you are going to do one thing while in Cancún, it should be Xcaret.

They have a technology, where each person gets a wrist band, and it takes a Xelfie in hundreds of different places. These photos are an assortment of our Xelfies.

Mayan Cenote

We went on an excursion to Chichén Itzá and then our group visited a Mayan Cenote which was the highlight of the trip. Cenote is the Mayan word for a sink hole or underground cave. The height of Mayan accomplishment is the monuments built in Chichén Itzá which took hundreds of years to construct. It was fascinating to see how the Mayan people live today in the Yucutan. We had a typical Mayan meal primarily consisting of chicken and tortillas. Later, a Mayan priest blessed our trip into the cenote. We rapelled down 60 feet into the cave into the super cold and refreshing water. The Mayan people took these photos and then sell them to tourists as a new form of income. It was great.