Energy Nerd | Circular Economist
Hi. This is Christopher Yang. Well, this post is in acknowlegement of Vib for allowing me an archive for some commentaries I produce for leisure.
Before I commence my debut post, I would first like accentuate the importance of taking into cognizance the fact that these are commentaries based solely on pesonal perspective, and statistics, data etc provided will be researched throughly to prevent any deviation from the factual truth.
Thank you.
Walk down Peninsular Plaza months ago and you did notice a shoe store with their signboard covered by a ‘Closing Down Sale’ Banner. If you hadn’t been there before (over the past decade), you shouldn’t be surprise. After all, the store look just like any other store, except that it probably is closing down.
More than five years ago, when I was walking down that path, I thought the same. I never got to know the real name of the shop since the signboard is always covered by the banner. Then a year or two past and the shop remained, never closing down. For once, I thought the name of the shoe shop was ‘Closing Down Sale’ but I abandon that idea after figuring out that there’s a few letters protruding from the real signboard behind the banner.
A few more years past, and the shop remained standing, with the same old banner, selling different shoes, but nonetheless, still shoes and the shop looked exactly the same as the first time when I saw it – orange walls, filament bulb lighting. It is interesting to note that they seem to have more customers nowadays. Last month, I went there and told my Dad about the store. He replied that he noticed that store too; over the years, it seem that the ‘Closing Down Sale’ banner has become a permanent feature and they are using it as a business tactic to attract more people. I thought so, since I realised that the store never did close down.
I set foot on the path again today, everything was the same, the Old Chang Kee, the 7-eleven store. Then I realised something was missing from the picture – the familiar orange-colored store, the ‘Closing Down Sale’ banner is gone. The shop really closed down. It simply feels odd. We all never thought it did close down. After all, it’s been years.
We take too many things for granted, things that seem to exist permanently will not, but we tend to think otherwise. There are things you really hate, like school, some people, and I really did hate that particular store that put up the ‘Closing Down Sale’ banner for years. But the moment you realised it is gone, you find it odd. It is not as if the banner or the store played a part in my life before its absence, it is not as though I really think the schools needs some forgiving on my part, but when these things are gone, you know you can’t hate them anymore. Our stand, our assertion are all too distinct, too comfortable for us, so much so that when the opposition force cease to exist, we feel emptiness. We hate, for the sake of hating, too often, we lose our rationality in our hatred.
For a moment, we should cease to hate and think about the reasons behind all our hatred.
There were a few great articles I managed to savage from my old blog, which was unfortunately lost after the transfer of host. I probably be putting them up as ‘montage’ of my 2005 for my blog. Today, we will be looking at one of the longest posts I ever done on my blogs and I believe it still is the longest.
I haven’t been blogging in English for quite some time; and like any other post, this will be extremely long. I realised that I am starting to be very forgetful, or maybe it is just the power of time. I have nearly forgotten how to sing the school song if not for my old dusty planner, which I have dung out from some dirty cardboard box used to store my memories in secondary education.
Life no longer is the same as the past in this school. Everything has changed in this school since the time I came; all except the school song. The name has change, the uniform ‘amended’, the principal replaced, the schools merged, the teachers have moved from low postitions to high postitions (some do move in the opposite direction), others left the school, hopefully getting a better job; of course, there are the great stayers who have remain in the same position and school for more than 30 years, but they have changed their style, their ideas, they have been brainwashed.
Some students remain, some don’t, some left, some enter, others changed. I remained, Mib left, new PRC scholars enter and many friends changed. They become apathetic, restless, tired, lame, less jovial, indifferent to everything and abnormal. I could pin-point a exact reason or cause for such conditions faced by every single of our students; all I can say is that they are no longer the same due to a combination of factors, many in which, involves the school, our teachers, principal, and staff. I suddenly find myself singing the school song, at least I felt the urge to sing it. I felt like I want to sing it to the world and everyone whom I ever knew. But why? Why the school song?
The reason I can find is that I am sufferring from a condition that makes me feel like reverting back to the old days; we had fun, and were much livier. Yet when I sing the song, I start forgetting lines. Something rather odd because I manage to remember every line in the song whenever I sang in school, for all 4 years. I discovered that the song lost its meaning, it no longer applies, it doesn’t speak any word of truth that can ever be fitted into the current situation. I forgot the lines because I no longer believe in them and that they are no longer conveying any sensible message to me. Soon, the song in my memory will diminish. I can try learning it again, and this probably makes me feel even more true that the song no longer works.
I remembered the time when I first hear the councillors sang during my Secondary One Orientation. It was full of vigour, the type that makes us ‘[name censored due to sensitivity]’, the kind that brings out the sense of belonging in us, the class that draws the spirit out of us. I remember the time, my first day of school, which was a Wednesday, when I first sang it properly in school. Though I stumbled on a few words, the idea was generally inside me. But now…
I feel intense fear, and sorrow for such a demise of such a great organisation, with such great students, forefathers, and staffs. I don’t want, and do not know the causes of our being at such a state of existence, revealling them will only uncover more saddness. Yet I see an influx of fools into this great hole that lies right in front of us. I wonder if I should pity or hate them. It is like seeing a great army of humans rushing through the Gates of Hell into the state of extreme helplessness.
I saw the candidates of the general election. I thought they were absolutely nothing but fools, despite having been in this dreadful place for 4 years. They thought they could put out the fires of Hell; they are extremely wrong. Their efforts only fuel the fire, strengthening its power over all of us. They come from almost every single aspect, have a wide variety of talents, it was a display of great diversity of culture. Their speeches, all of different style, brings out their skills and also how naive they are. The most widely used techniques in their speeches were known as ‘crapping’, ‘false appeal’ and ‘manipulation’. Ironically, they are actually manipulated by the school, by a series of crapping of how democractic they are and falsely appealing to their greed for power. Good move, I say, Fat Brother, but it didn’t manage to escape my eyes.
Every single party deserve suppport but unfortunately, we must also see what they can actually do when they are voted. Hence, we can say that it is as good as not supporting them; for they do not have the authority of power to make any changes. Everyone comes out and insult the old system, saying they are ready to built a new one that will remove all the problems and create a utopia. How naive! The past years have also seen candidates doing this and using these tactics, but it appears that within the very short time when they are in power, they still have to struggle with their school work and the authority up there, Fat Brother; I can assure you that they have no time to do anything they sincerely intended to.
Look at the famous Master Rasputin. He convinced all of us to vote for him; but what now, he admits that he did almost nothing within his regime to improve the situation of lack of power in students. Worse of all, he is now still pushing for some Rights Movement. I say, “You have a movement, you gotta move it. Don’t just say move, you gotta really move, even if it is just a step.” Readers, you must think I am crapping, but it is extremely true that Rasputin have been decorating his ideas and speeches so much that they are so impractical to be carried out. Some say transparency, some say have informal feedback collecting. How about you go get out there and give Fat Brother a punch, see if you observe some adipose tissues oozing out or lipids spilling on your hands. Come on, get real, I know Rasputin can run fast, but he just can’t move.
Hey Jack, the beanstalk outside your hut is growing fast, go climb it and destroy Fat Brother before the he attempts to climb down from his high up position and hurt us all by throwing his weight around. You must protect us, help us, use your vision, your beliefs, to make our day a better one. I tell you, I don’t believe you can do it. He has a goose that lays golden eggs and these eggs from crashing down, killing almost everyone that is in the way. Oh, and that golden harp that plays devious music that will brainwash everyone and attempt to blind us from his evil deeds. How about getting an axe to chop down that beanstalk? We are ourselves and he is him; we go separate ways. Oh yah, growing taller helps you run faster when the beanstalk falls, don’t forget to remind one of your member.
And the NCC! You guys are a bunch of disciplinarians who thinks that this school is full of chickens clucking around, waiting for someone to get them to do some push-ups or what. Fat hope! Militants are not welcome in this state of authoritarian. While you might become good friends with Fat Brother due to ‘Ideological Similarities’, he will eventually become suspicious of you, then this suspicion will evolve in to paranoia and and finally the end of you guys. You think this is the “Chun Qiu Zhan Guo” or what? Go home and make kites to fly so that you can invade the enemy’s territory.
So much for Pupils Action. No need to say much, go look at Singapore, the beautiful island that lies in the south of the Malaysia Peninsular. Come on, with a leader who looks like a republican dumbass and members who do not look as though they are satisfied with the current system. Everything in the school is ready for you. The Parliment Model; all seats occupied by one party (our school call it the council), with 3 seats for Nominated people. For your information, nominations are by the school authority. So what can I say? Wear white?
And you think you really are ‘The Party’? I think you guys are the party. The ones that goes partying around. This is not the 1970s, nor the Matrix age. That movie was long outdated. You will end in the same as ‘THE CHS’ – gone for good. Go back home and brush up your programming and fighting skills before you come back. You might like to put some virus in the school network so that some Agent Smiths appear to fight with you all, making you guys ‘The Ones’. Remember, get Agent Smith to convert Fat Brother first, or else there will be lots of fatty data left in the harddisk. They will form the Bad Clusters which will cause your harddisk to stop functioning.
I think this is long enough, I shall stop here. Everyone who has read, sit down and reflect upon what has happened and past. Overcome the brainwashing of the golden harp, escape the golden eggs that are falling, flush the Gates of Hell into the earth by dropping a nuke or two, fill up the hole with these earth, go ahead and punch Fat Brother. Stand up. Remove the lipids, destroy the calories and smash the carbos.
This article covered lots of supposedly censored stuff. It was written on the 18 February this year when I was extremely mad at all the changes I see taking place around me. I probably won’t be able to write such long posts any time soon. But I probably be writting a ‘follow-up’ to report on the current status of my surroundings – pertaining to the same topic.
Mib is becoming more ethocentric now that he begin his bombardment on Japanese Culture. Before reading further, please go to his blog and read this, so that you understand what I am rabbling about. Now, here’s my comment on his arguement that sushi is from China.
For a start, we can say everything from Japan originates from China. Strictly speaking, if we consider whatever Japan does after their clear breakage (when they start their own language) with China as their own, we must consider that Sushi originates from Japan.
Firstly, Chinese DO NOT mix vinegar with rice for consumption – those are usually animal feed or something like that. Sushi is discovered after vinegar is applied to the rice, supposedly for preservation purposes. More importantly, the great variety of sushi available has rendered its origins unimportant. The ones with raw fish (usually salmon or tuna) on them are definitely from Japan because the Chinese never ate salmon raw.
Next, from a more pragmatic point of view, Chinese (from the background and cultural – not racial perspective) wouldn’t be so ‘dumb’ as to squeeze their staple into balls one by one, eventually eating them all together. More importantly, the kind of rice used for sushi is unlike the Chinese staple type.
Finally, no one really gives a damn about where sushi comes from because you just pop food into your mouth without bothering about their origins. After all, you don’t munch on your pizza thinking about Italy, or chew on some cheese and fantasize French stuff.
And the reason why I am posting this comment here is that I fear he will delete my comments in an attempt to save his ‘face’ – when of course, he could have deleted this particular post as well; but he wouldn’t usually read my blog – so never mind.
There is Bingyuan, talking about missing people, the school and stuff. I am here to say how life will still be the same. Haven’t we been through enough transitions, troubles – always brought upon by ourselves? Even in Bingyuan’s posts, he made special reference to the troubles his class has created in his journey in the school. The problem that we are facing now is that we are not going to have our lives changed by just ‘leaving’ the school this time. It is different now, troubles, nonsense are carried forward together with all the troublemakers.
While there are new teachers, new classroom, new rules, new environment, the fact that people remains a relative contant (relative to the past years) still means the same life. We do get to the end of the travelator but there’s still another one ahead. Worst, there’s a custom guard making sure that those with boarding pass labelled ‘IP’ would proceed to this next travelator. We will see different potted plants, new duty free stores and different gate numbers but those on the travelator are still the same. It is not that I mind – I will still meet Bingyuan on the travelator together with other familiar faces (except Mib, who has long landed somewhere else). The ultimate problem lies with the bunch of troublemakers on the travelator. They probably try to pull out the thick strip of rubber used as the hand rest of the travelator or do a hand-stand on the travelator.
The bottom line is that, other than those who have left for their gates, and those especially great educators, we would miss no one. In fact, we probably become irritated by the presence of some people. To be honest, I am pretty annoyed with Bok for slacking Physical Education and talking nonsense with Trix and gang – such attitudes towards learning is despicable (this sentence is sponsored by the politically correct side of my brain, situated on the left cerebrum). I suspect, I will be together with a group of people who have flunked next year, because it happened to me also. I have no real hopes for the future because there seems nothing socially accepted as great that I did like to take up as future career.
We’ll all try to let nature takes its course.
I can’t help feeling that my previous layout look damn stupid and I eventually activated the layout I prepared long ago to freshen up the site. It does look much better now. It is not a major makeover but at least the crocodile looks more decent. Anyway, I haven’t been, and won’t be updating my blog that frequently because of exams, just like everyone else here. The reason why I am doing it now is that today is a Friday and tomorrow is a rest day.
In fact, I would have been able to slack off for the next 5 days but I chose not to (I realised 14 students did manage to slack off). I thought I wouldn’t bother to study if I was left on my own, so I might as well attend school. This time, the exam extends itself all the way to the beginning of November so I wouldn’t be very free till then. Seriously, having been through that few years of crap, then landing in the current situation have not been easy but now that you are just a few steps away from ending it, you start to have some reservations because you have no idea how your life is going to proceed later.
At the very least, you know who is manipulating you at the current juncture of time and you might not actually mind that at all. However, once you enter that ‘somewhere else’, you got to ‘re-adapt’, a very complex and troublesome process that drains away quite some portion of your energy that could have been spent repairing that few cornea cells that you have on your left eye, or save enough glucose so that you don’t have to take in that extra bar of chocolate. Very energy consuming indeed.
At the very end of everything, you asked yourself about the significance of your presence and you find lots of them – but they are all words of the others. You are allowing others to define you. Cut the philosophy part and what I am trying to say is that we realised that we have not been ourselves. We have been living for others and perhaps even living somebody else’s life. Too bad, I shall say. We are limited by the system, the nation, everyone around us.
It is irritating to have such feeling. There’s always junctions when you have to stop, find out more about what others think and all the conventions you are to follow before treading on ned grounds. It is scary. I am afraid, it is now impossible to truly be yourself. You probably can do it in the sub-urb; no one would give a damn about you, or you can do it in the rural areas; others probably support you to do that. But eventually, when there’s a system in place, you have no choice but to conform. You can try changing the system, or challenging the authority and end up like the protagonist of George Orwell’s novels. Very Sad.
Lots of funny stuff out there other than the one peanut on Mib’s blog. You all have to go check out the “iPod Flea” advertisements that really rocks. This parody is done so professionally that I think they should be employed by Apple somehow to liven the Apple’s advertisements themselves.
And talking about advertisements, Opera Browser have finally decided to tap on their popularity and go freeware. Now I would say it is on par with Firefox in its attractiveness but user volume is another thing.
Then Bingyuan is once again stirring up a discussion with his “36 Methods of Mathematical Proof” article, which he probably koped from somewhere else. I told it was pretty funny but the length causes people to lose interest in the whole thing and eventually forgot that they set out to read a joke.
I rarely read Leonard’s blog – he don’t really updates it anyway – but when I do, I always find something pretty interesting. Here it is. I thought it is quite an interesting parallel. But I don’t think Charles have to age to remarry again.
More funny stuff. There is actually a bill coming in that allows prosecution of commuters who cheat the ez-link bus fare by ez-ily tapping the machine before their destination and ez-ily get off the bus without being caught ez-ily because they are not so ez-ily tracked. See Mr Brown’s article on this.
Studying have been taxing – I would consider blogging as a break. So many stuff happened as I was somehow away. I was watching stuff happening one by one: Dengue Madness, Bloggers charged for racism, More people contracting Dengue, iPod Nano came out, Mib using Canon camera and so on. Big happenings. But I refused to comment. I am enlightened.
That doesn’t mean I have evolved into a God or something. I am simply enlightened for a brief period of time – a little longer than average persons, but nonetheless, not anymore. I shall explain the mechanism of enlightenment. Enlightenment is actually the sudden realisation of some kind of truth – usually interpreted to be the ultimate truth – and this realisation didn’t struck you; it is a collection of your experience and your deductions made throughout your life. We all become enlightened, for a brief moment, frequently, throughout our lives. And each time, the realisation is different, more sophisticated with age as experience forms theories and established theories about the society becomes laws.
When we ponder hard enough over something, and finally decide to give up on it, we sometimes receive the Truth at the particular juncture of giving up or breaking off. That is when you are enlightened. I can’t quite remember the Truth that I realised but I simply knew it came, and it lingered around for a while. And when it does linger around, we will start thinking – what should we do with this Truth – for we all know we are powerless to change anything at that point. Eventually, we find that being enlightened is simply too hard and we lapse back into reality, where we are much more comfortable: interacting with familiar faces, dealing with life problems. We live life normal again. As soon as we ‘regain’ position in our lives, we forget about this time when we are enlightened.
So why do people give up being enlightened? What so hard about it? It is hard, because the Truth is not expected, totally surprising and doesn’t fit into our mindset. We simply cannot agree that whatever came to us is the Truth. During the lingering period (length varies with persons), we think about verifying the Truth, or try to ignore it but failed (those who were successful lapse back into reality). Then we (at least for me) can’t manage to find fault with this information presented to us. We finally accept it. But after a period of living with it, we are still uncomfortable. So I finally gave up, along with another few millions of people around the universe. Some probably got it then shrug it off immediately. Others find it too absurd for their understanding.
We, everyone of us, are nothing great. We are always presented with opportunities to do whatever sort of thing. Even to be enlightened, but we don’t have such capacity for greatness. Hence, we continue with such life. So do I, just like Mib, we continue to conform to the laws of the nation the societal conventions, the tradition limitations, the customary restrictions, and the other ridiculous threats.
Now, it is back to work. By the way, a new layout is coming up for Propagator. Do look out for it soon. I still have some issues with the shoutbox. Probably won’t include it in the new design.
Haven’t been blogging because we, students are now preparing for the final rush. I probably wouldn’t be blogging at all for the next 2 month so don’t expect any updates soon. I’ll be coming up with a new design here to incorporate my design for a few new and pretty nice sites I have designed for my projects.
This final rush that we are all in for would take roughly another month, ending sometime early November. Hence, this blog can be considered ‘shut’ for the next 2 months. We still have no ideas for erpz.net. So I guess the frontpage would linger for a long time – it looks nice anyway. Bye, for now!
You know talking on MSN can pose quite a lot of problem. When you are not looking at the person, you’d feel strange when you are telling a joke and you can’t see the response. Then you probably go, “LOL”, or “Bleah”. Or maybe you decide to invent your own ‘random’ expressions – like “Vookibookk”, “Voogunihsabunda”.
Or perhaps others that do not start with ‘V’, like “Juulorubo” or most importantly, terms that cannot be pronounced, “Xusnaiur”. Then, you can give it a pronunciation yourself and no matter how well others may think they can read it, you say it’s wrong. And if you are really happy, you can fiddle with some punctuation and then you get stuff like “!Xusyllaernaiur”.
I was really inspired by this guy I was talking to, on MSN. He goes by a strange name, and a rather interesting appearance and [almost] commented that: “This dumb looking blog wif (sic) some green creature on the right muz (sic) be owned and authored by some dumb good-for-nothing guy who has nothing better to do in his damned boring life”. I must say…I agree with him absolutely!
Youngsters these days are really funny on MSN. They go “bleah” or “LOL” for almost everything that you tell them before giving their actual reply. It is as though they are having hiccups on MSN (except they don’t go ‘hic’)! And they substitute some of the most important key words used for communications with these ‘random expressions’. Here’s an example:
Vib: Hi, long time no chat
*Insanity: bleah -> ‘Bleah’ here meant: “Oh, hi!”
Insanity: Who are you?
Vib: Oh, it’s me. Vib.
Insanity: bleah. is that so? -> ‘Bleah’ here meant: “Vib. I haven’t talked to you?”
********
I don’t think you want to know the contents here.
********Vib: Bye then!
Insanity: bleah -> ‘Bleah’ here meant: “Bye then. See ya!”
*Insanity happens to be the nick of the guy I earlier mentioned. Interesting.
You see, these teens are really good at saving time (and words). Just one word to replace so many. We don’t really need languages anymore. *LOL* (Followed by a series of ‘bleah-ccups’) MSN is really a interesting place to hang out if you have sufficient contacts like these – and I really mean ‘Insanity’. I owe you one for giving me the inspiration to type all these crap. I think you should also go and start a blog so that you have a chance to open fire at this post of mine.