Kevin Low

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.

After more than a year of waiting, my hotmail account finally grew in capacity. As you can see, it grew from a pathetic 2MB (that has been lurking around for the past 5 years), to the current 25MB. This is good enough for me since I don’t usually store large mails in my account, given the original low capacity.

Hotmail have been trying to increase the capacity of their users following Yahoo’s explosive increase from the original 6MB to the good-enough 200MB (for a brief period, it was 100MB) and then to the unbelieveable 1GB (which could be considered a response to Gmail). The emergence of Gmail really changed the free email provider landscape on the Internet. Hotmail have been a little biased. I know of users with 250MB capacity – free. So my 25MB is considered nothing.

Something tells you that the image of your school is seriously distorted and miscomprehended by the public when you step into a the lift with an old lady and an old man, in your school uniform and hear the following:

Old Lady: ‘Ah Lao ah, eh tuk ji eh ou deng eh huk sei tia tio xi ho kia.’ (Literally means: ‘Husband, can study in this school, this student must be very good child.’)

There was no one else in the lift and the lady was pointing to the wall near me so I assumed she was talking about me.

Old Man: ‘Orrr!’

The lift stopped at their destinated storey.

Old Lady: ‘Ho kia.’ (Literally means: ‘Good child’)

She seems to be pointing at me to her old man again. Then they left the lift.

I am bewildered. Was I flattered? Am I supposed to be happy or sad? For my school or myself? Or should I first applaud the efforts of our publicity department? As mentioned earlier, there are lots of contradiction between reality and perception of the public. I am not really surprised in the first place – it is just the kind of credit that is ‘credited’ wrongly. I admit the world is confusing and basically absurd, but this seem out of societal norm. Perhaps I am wrong – the society is like this: facade, fakes, nonsense, lies. I certainly hope we don’t have to be like that to continue to survive in this world.

By the way, to all teachers in the world – Happy Teachers’ Day. I would like all teachers to take note that they should correctly reflect the society to the students while in the classroom. Some may say it is too cruel or that the students aren’t mature enough to understand the world – but that simply drive students into confusion and even maddness when they see the real world. In any case, thanks all who have taught me and misleaded me into thinking that the world is kind and nice.