Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Added Blog Roll

Okay. I am a malas person.
That's why before this. I only put a 'i'm linked from' widget.
That's why some of you probably didn't realize I had a blog. I didn't publicize it much. Lazy lah. :p

But I felt like linking up ppl.
So I just selected some blogs from the blogs I follow, and put them in my blog roll.

If u want me to remove ur blog, pls message/email/whatever me.
If I haven't already added yours, tell me.

Shalala lala...

Saturday, July 11, 2009

The Great Debaters

is worth watching.



This movie was directed by Denzel Washington and produced by Oprah Winfrey. It is based on a true story. It was during a time when blacks and whites don't go to the same school. A black college, Wiley College set up a debate team. They trained and won many debates, and eventually debated against Harvard. (In the true story, it's not Harvard, but University of Southern California, who were the then reigning debate champions. )

I liked this movie's many memorable quotes.

"We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do. "

"I am here to help you to find, take back, and keep your righteous mind. "

"Who is the judge?
The judge is God.
Why is he God?
Because he decides who wins or loses. Not my opponent.
Who is your opponent?
He does not exist.
Why does he not exist?
Because he is a mere dissenting voice to the truth I speak!"

"In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, "Why?" My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law in no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter."

Yup. What's nice about the story is that it is based on a true story, and it makes history more believable and feel-able. Besides the scenes of the quotes above, the lynching scene is nice too.

Now, America's colleges admit both black and white. Now, Africa doesn't have its Aparthied. Malaysia finally removes the 30% requirement of bumiputera ownership for public listing. (If I'm not wrong, there's another new requirement such that the bumiputera ownership requirement is indirectly still 10-20% like that but heck it's still lower la.)

Although the world is less racist today, it still is.

Perhaps one day, it won't be at all.

Perhaps one day, there might be another movie, that shows how Malaysia changed into a place where all races are treated equally, from the way it is today.

It'll be so cool.

**

If you want to watch it...

You can stream it for free here. It's a 2-hour movie. Please note that after 74 minutes, you have to pause for about 50 minutes. So I suggest that you just mute it while it slowly loads for about 1 hr. Don't leave it for too long otherwise it'll go to the 'please wait for 54 minutes'. In my case it was infinity minutes. Remember that once the internet connection gets cut off (which happens very frequently with stupided streamyx), it will stop loading. So you'll have to refresh the page, or open another of the same page to continue loading the video. The seek can be adjusted to whichever part from which you want to load. Then on another day/after a meal or something, continue watching the rest of the movie. (BTW, if you have the movie, gimme a copy!)

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Seperti cendawan tumbuh selepas hujan

One day, during the rainy season, I noticed that my garden had a lot of mushrooms.


Okay lah. That day only got three.

This is the one that's gonna die already.


See the rough surface? Its spores were already released. Hmm.. I shouldn't have taken the picture in this angle. But whatever lah. Its shape was like an umbrella that terbalik edi.

The next picture is like how it was before it 'meletup'. The surface was a little smoother.


And this one is like how it was before it kembang.


Okay. This specific mushroom didn't kembang lah. Because somebody ate the top.

And the guilty somebody is...


Tom Tom's curiosity deprived that specific mushroom's growth.

So it died. Then again... This dog...


This dog is also the one who fertilized all these mushrooms with his excreta.

He compensated by helping many many more mushrooms grow in my garden.



But after that, the mushrooms were plyers-plucked out. This garden does not want too many mushrooms.

So no more mushrooms. Maybe after another rain.

And the grass in my garden lived happily ever after.

(Note: The grass was still threatened by Tom Tom's excrement. But I want to end with a "happily ever after" so whatever lah.)

Dead Walker

This was how the sky and sea looked. Clear blue water. Bright yellowish sky.

I was on an expedition with some friends. It was a mixed bunch of girls and guys, Singapore and Malaysia friends. None of my family/sisters were there.

We had to keep on going and going and going in this expedition. I don't remember why we couldn't take a break. We were exhausted but there was nobody wanted to take a break. It's as though we'll lose/die once we stop. We didn't think about it. We just had to go on and on.

Due to exhaustion and injury, some of us half-died/HP=0 but were somehow able to keep on moving. We weren't too bothered about it either. We just kept walking.

There was this last task of swimming about 50 m to a cave, which was like a clothes shop. The clothes inside were arranged like in Padini. But it wasn't a shop. There were no signboards. We had to find and take some things amongst the clothes. I remember searching and searching. And finding some of the things. We were searching as a group. I forgot what were the things. Some 'half-died' here in this clothes cave. I was still alive, but my HP was close to zero.

Then we finally found all that we wanted and left the cave.

We swam back to the shore, where we finished the race (or was it expedition?). Then, a guy who resembles Ryan Seacrest said, "Ok. Done. You have finished. Those whose HP=0 can go/die." I ngam ngam die when I reached. Funnily, no one was upset about dying. We were kind of relieved actually. More at peace.

The shore was not a beach. It was like a swimming pool where you have to climb and pull yourself up to get out. Those who were still alive got out of it. Some of the 'half-dead' decided to not climb over the shore, and instead just float on their backs, face the bright yellowish sky, and die. I decided that I didn't want my body to rot in the seawater. (Okay, I wasn't very good just floating like that either.) So I climbed over the shore and lied on my back and relaxed/slept/died.




Then I woke up.
But an uneasy feeling remained until I typed this dream here.

**
This is the first time I'm typing out one of the weirdest, nonsensicalest dreams I have ever had.
I usually don't die in my dreams.
Then again, I usually don't remember my dreams.

Maybe this is because, while reading a book, I was encouraged to imagine my funeral, and imagine how I would like my eulogy to be - by family/friends/colleagues/strangers. I tried to. This was supposed to help me reveal what I truly valued and wanted in the end. At first, I imagined the nicest things. Then, when I retried, I didn't care what people said of me, it was just blank.

What difference would it make if anyone was dead/alive. Maybe, once we die, we just disappear? What happens to the soul? Maybe it just becomes nothingness, like the way the world (maybe) formed from nothingness. So why bother? How did the idea of heaven and hell come about? How did all the religions form? Why are people so passionate about their beliefs? Why care? Why is there an earth? Why is there existence? How? Why? What made it? What made the answer to the previous question? Oops, it's a recursive question that knows no end.

**

Maybe I shouldn't have read the book. As I was bogged by this, this existential crisis, it made me unable to give any sort of evidence of 'intellectual curiosity' during the interview two days ago.

**
In the end, all those existential questions don't matter while we are alive, because it's not something that we can act on. It's not something that will necessarily make a huge change the way we look at things. So let's not care about how the world came about. We all know we live and we die. We can work with just that.

Among all religions, the Christian one appeals to me with the way life came about, and the way God is the beginning and the end of everything. It's like an answer to this 'infinity'ness. Some people can live without that answer. I just think that since this answer fits the puzzle, even though I cannot prove it is the correct piece, I believe it is the answer. So I'll work with this too. It's even better by a lot.

**

And BTW, I just thought about this -- there's no such thing as 'meaning in life'. Life is a noun, like the way a chair is a noun. There is things the chair can do, like be a place you can put your butt on, or put the computer on, or rock with, or dump all the books at. There is no 'meaning in a chair'. There is no meaning in a tree or a flower or whatever. There is no meaning in people or animals or pets. There is no meaning in life. It's just a wrong construct of words. Life is but something through which we sense, we think, we act, we feel. There is importance of life to each life. There is happiness when we see a life made better. Yup. So it's happiness, or importance of life, not meaning in life.

Okay okay. I just dictionary-ed 'meaning', it also means 'significance' (i.e. importance), it doesn't only mean 'maksud' (I can't find another English word for it, so have to use Bahasa Melayu.). So the 'meaning in life' means 'significance in life'. Okay. Maybe that's like super obvious to some people. But it wasn't for me. It made my mind focus on the wrong angle. So I'll just post it up and remember my stupidity at this point in time.

**

This is just one queer yet amusing post.

Okay. I actually can type sommo wan, I feel like this is an incomplete post. I wanna write sommo wan. But I think can continue later. Because now I wanna go exercise liao. Because now I feel very unfit liao. Hahaha. Okok. Bbye.