My birthday’s this month!

“Yay.”


Well, in truth, I’m not usually that miserable about the idea of celebrating my birthday; in fact, it’s quite the polar opposite. It’s just that I have been thinking a lot about death more so than usual recently. No, I’m not thinking about dying; that’s a completely different thing altogether! Just the idea of death and my general feeling towards it.

The tone of this whole post may make it sound like I am in depression but it’s nothing like that all; I’m just trying to unload all my collected thoughts from the past couple of months somewhere.


You see, it hasn’t been a good year in terms of the loss of loved ones. I’ve talked about my cousin’s passing a few posts back and now barely a few months later and before the scars have fully healed, I found out that a close aunt has been diagnosed with almost-certainly terminal Stage IV lung cancer. It’s actually a metastasis from her previous battle with breast cancer and it came out of the blue. We thought it was just a bad cough so we brought her to the hospital for some scans and BOOM! the c-bomb dropped.


Of course, I can’t really be complaining about the grief I will be feeling when it’s my aunt who will actually have to go through the actual pain but it’s a really unpleasant situation to be in right now. Although a bit weakened, she still seems fine and is in fairly decent spirits but it’s hard because you know and she knows that the end is coming and there will come a time when we’ll have to watch her go through the suffering, watch her deteriorate before our very eyes and pass on.


My aunt has more or less accepted her fate and decided not to undergo chemotherapy. She saw what chemo has done to my cousin where two sets of chemotherapy sessions were done and yet there weren’t any positive effects. The result was my cousin being bed-ridden for the final few months of her life while having to suffer the draining side-effects of chemotherapy. So my aunt decided fuck it, I’m going to enjoy the last few months of my life.


Cancer, it really bears repeating, is a fucking bitch. It’s relentless; you beat it one time but chances are it will be back and when it does, it will do so with a vengeance. Seriously Cancer, I hope you get cancer and die.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The whole “dealing with the grief of losing a loved one” thing has really got me thinking about what my own death will be like, though. I accept that at some point, death may not seem like a bad thing especially when you’ve lived a good life and you’re ready to go.

However, I still think that no matter when I do eventually bite the dust, the following will still genuinely annoy me:

1) The possibility of dying without having a chance to say goodbye.

Like passing away in your sleep or dying on your deathbed before all of your loved ones can gather to say their final farewell. The one redeeming quality of cancer is that you get to prepare yourself and really convey all your thoughts and properly say your goodbyes before leaving.

Death from stroke or a heart attack on other hand, that’s just not cool.

 

2) Not being able to witness the technological and social progress of mankind.

This honestly pisses me off more than anything. I was thinking about how I sympathize with those who passed away around the 70’s because they never got to see how technology and the internet in particular revolutionized the world around us. Things like our smartphones that allow us to access information anywhere on a whim, the portable computers, the sending of the Hubble telescope to space that allows the capture of stunning images of galaxies light years away, the frankly amazing air, sea and land vehicles we have today, all the stunning architecture and many other amazing technological feats.

Or even significant historic events like the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the handover of Hong Kong back to China, the election of the first black US president among many others. They would have no idea how far mankind as a whole has progressed (or fallen) from their time and that is frankly, a damn shame and I truly feel sorry for them.

Until I realize, of course, that the same would eventually happen to me too. I will never get to see man embark on the first intergalactic space travel, ride hover boards or even, this really pains me to say, come up with the elusive cure for cancer.

Honestly, the thought of not being able to see the first alien contact with man if it does happen depresses me a lot sometimes.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


There are many things about death that are out of my control like having to eventually see my parents and other loved ones die and the time of my own passing. What is definitely in my hands, however, is how I choose to live my life and amidst all the thinking about death recently, I have also been spending a lot of time thinking about life.

I won’t go into too much detail here about the inner deliberations but after reflecting on how things have turned out so far, I realize there really is a lot to be thankful for. Watching my cousin and now my aunt come to terms with their own mortality has reminded me to not take the life that I have now for granted and really think about what I should do with the limited time that I have here.

I just hope that I’ll be able to lead a life such that when I go, I can truly say that I am content and that I am leaving with no regrets. That takes some thinking about what is it that truly brings happiness and it’s a work in progress but it’s all good; no point forcing myself to be rigid about these things.

Life though, fucking amazing, eh?

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious Ambiguity.”

-Gilda Radner-

OHHHHHHHHHHH….

An excerpt from “Macrowikinomics”, one of the books I am currently reading:

” Imagine that you’ve landed on a planet a lot like Earth a century ago and you’ve been given an assignment to design the dominant mode of transportation to move people around. Your design criteria are as follows: The system must maximize the consumption of fuels and the surface area of the planet – using as much farmland and other space as possible.

Your system should produce the most toxins and use more physical materials (steel, glass, rubber, leather, synthetics) than available alternatives. It must be the system that will result in the largest possible number of deaths and injuries (hint: have free movement vehicles and make every pilot an amateur). It should also be the least predictable system, giving passengers little idea how long a trip home might take, and it should slow down to a crawl, not speed up, the more people use it. Plus you get bonus points for pitting inhabitants against one another and, in extreme cases, causing travellers to fly into an uncontrollable rage.

It’s hard to imagine a better solution to these design criteria than an automobile powered by an internal combustion engine.”

… followed by some suggestions about how we can make it better yadda yadda. However, if I may, I’d like to pick up where my title left off….

“.. HHHHHHH!!!!!!”

Over to you

I finally submitted the thesis yesterday after some delays with the hardcover binding. You would think this would call for a celebration of epic proportions. After all, I have worked 3 years to build up to this day, right?


And you would be right.

“Fuck yeah!!!!”



Alas, no. There is still the small matter of a viva voce to deal with. It’s just a formality apparently but I am not taking my chances. That means doing some proper prep work with the slides and the questioning and most importantly, not prematurely celebrating!


So for now, I’m just allowing myself some cautious optimism and a quiet fist pump. Really, a combination of this

and this

Of course, this also means I have a lot of free time on my hands now. Which means being able to do some proper job research, go for morning jogs, clear the massive backlog of books I have to read, enjoy some quality TV shows and hang out with family and friends….



… or wake up past noon every day, laze around browsing the internet and piss away the days. Either one’s fine, I suppose.

The Dark Knight Rises

I was still staring at the screen about two minutes after the credits rolled, trying to soak in what I watched. Quite simply, it was one of the best films, superhero or not, I have ever watched and it ended the trilogy perfectly. It definitely warrants a second viewing just so I can pick up on the finer details.

It’s the kind of movie where you leave the cinema thinking it was good but when you dwell on it a bit more and replay the scenes in your head again, you realize you have just witnessed something special. That has to do with the pacing though; the pacing of the last hour was really intense and Hans Zimmer score really helped up the tension. There were some plot holes if you want to get nitpicky but that would be missing the forest for the trees.

(Spoiler alert)

Can’t say I was that surprised but the returning cast really brought their A game. I’m glad they gave Alfred a bigger role beyond the wise-cracker and the plot-narrator (eg “some men just wanna watch the world burn”, “you crossed the line first” etc). The scene where he leaves Bruce and the grave scene, in particular, was heart-wrenching. I thought it was great that Caine showed some restraint and not overact, the subtlety in his facial expressions made the emotion feel a lot more genuine.

Other than that, Bale was fantastic too although the “WHERE IS HE?!” line raised a chuckle from me, no thanks to the countless parody videos since The Dark Knight. Personally, I was pleasantly surprised by Hathaway’s performance as Catwoman/Selina Kyle. Some female heroine characters are often played badly because the fight scenes just don’t come across as convincing especially when they try too hard to look manly/gritty. I didn’t get that feel here; thought it was great. She was very smooth as well during the conversations, almost Clooney-esque.

The story though, bloody hell. It was great that they took their time with the build up to Batman returning and not rush it. There were some elements of The Dark Knight Returns in there which I loved. And the scene where Bane breaks the Batman was actually painful to watch. It was probably the first time in the trilogy that anybody could match the Batman physically and more. Bane was all brute force but also seemed to have a level of intelligence about him. If the Joker was an anarchist, Bane is an all-out schemer.

Which was why I think they kind of copped out with Bane at the end with the Talia turn. It cheapened his character and reduced him to a mere henchman. Also, this is the same guy who broke the Bat early on with ease and now, a few punches to his mask and he’s out? If the mask was so important, shouldn’t he be defending it better? Another thing that peeved me a little was how there was a character shift once Talia was revealed and he turned into henchmen mode. What happened to the “you have my permission to die” bit? Suddenly, he wants to kill the Batman before he got to watch his city burn?


It would be nice if we didn’t have yet another ticking time-bomb plot (I was thinking ,“really? another disarm the bomb with 1 second to go story?”) but hey, trust Nolan to make a ticking time-bomb plot seem fresh and not resort to cliche. I was ready to go ape-shit at what would have been a pretty annoying plot hole (ie. why didn’t they guard the reactor so nobody can reconnect it?) but it was addressed later on and actually used to pretty dramatic effect, thus proving that you should always trust Nolan.

All of the faith was more than sufficiently repaid with the ending. I actually kind of bought into Cracked's theory that Blake would be the next Batman and some early scenes helped reinforce that theory, so it wasn’t THAT big a surprise (it still was though, thank fuck I managed to avoid the spoilers) when it was revealed but I would argue that another less-worthy director would have botched the execution.


As it was, it was beautifully done with all of the characters finding redemption and peace in their own way and coming full circle. Fox the poor guy beating himself up over what he could have done better before realizing Wayne’s master plan. Gordon, well, I’m actually not sure if Gordon actually found peace. He still seemed pretty damn beat up about the whole thing.

The scene with Alfred at the end in Florence (?) nearly brought a tear to my eye (again, Caine’s performance was great) and really, some directors might have taken the condescending route and shown Blake putting on the mask and flying off into Gotham but nope, the ending was subtle and nicely pulled off, thus drawing a very satisfying conclusion to one of the best trilogies I have ever had the privilege of watching.


I shall thus end this with the first words I uttered after the lights came on in the theatre.

 

Fucking hell. What a film!

Every passing day,

 

.. every paragraph, every keystroke brings me closer towards the submission of my thesis. After that, it will be out of my hands. The identity of the external examiner has been decided. I managed to scope her out and I am undecided if her frankly impressive academic history and list of achievements should scare or encourage me.

She’s a professor of pharmacology as well, so I am pretty sure that one of my chapters that deals with the conjugation of insulin to nanotubes will receive heavy scrutiny. Since I’m not a pharmacist by trade, I reckon I’ll have to get my colleagues from the School of Pharmacy to give that chapter a once-over. Yikes!

Almost there, almost there. Two more weeks until submission. It’s all bloody exciting, if I’m being honest.

A death in the family

My cousin, Sin Yee, passed away this morning. She finally succumbed to cancer after months of hard battle.

I loved her. She was very close to my family and played a pretty big role in my life growing up. In a lot of ways, she was the older sister I never had.

Growing up, she would sometimes be the babysitter when my parents are away. I remember how she’d pick me up from school and we’d talk and laugh about everything. Gosh, the laugh, it never changed over the years. She was the happiest and most positive person I’ve ever known and I am not saying that as some sort of obituary courtesy. If there was ever a time anyone in the family was feeling down or facing hardship, she would be the one providing encouragement and support.

A pleasant memory of her during my childhood was writing letters to her when she was studying in Melbourne. I was in Standard 3 then and we would exchange letters about how our lives were going. It was beautiful looking back; that was probably the only time I’ve ever had an ongoing conversation with someone using snail mail.

Even though, in recent years, we haven’t really been in touch constantly, whenever we do see each other, the conversation would remain as warm and lively as always. That’s just her, though. Very pleasant and always full of jokes. It would probably be no exaggeration to say that she was everybody’s friend. Everyone in the extended family loved her.

Which was why it’s just such a damn shame that cancer had to take her away from us. It frustrates me; it genuinely pisses me off. It just sucks that it has to be this unfair. I saw her in so much pain and suffering and I thought that she was probably the least deserving person of this fate.

I’m gonna miss her company. It depresses me to think that I’ll never hear her laughter again.

When I got news that she wasn’t going to make it past this week, I went over to see her twice. But I never got to speak to her. Never got to tell her one last time that I love her. She was resting then and I didn’t want to disturb her. She was in a lot of pain, so sleep was precious whenever it came by. I couldn’t bring myself to be selfish and wake her just so I can have some form of self-fulfilment.

So if you can somehow read this, Sin Yee jie jie, I love you. I’m going to miss you so so much. I’m going to remember all the good times we had together and I’m going to try to live life the way you did: full of happiness and positivity.

If there is an afterlife, we’ll talk again and hopefully, I’ll be able to share my life story with you again, just like how we did in those letters all those years ago.

Goodnight, sis, and travel well.

 

That Taiwan Feeling

“When a horse smells its stable, it’s difficult to stop him.”


It’s a nice quote from Arsene Wenger in reference to the title race that sadly turned out to be untrue as Manchester United went on to bottle the league, but that’s exactly the way I’m feeling right now.


You see, my work output for the past few months, from January to April, has been relatively lethargic, what with me only hitting the labs every other day, sometimes only two to three days a week. The rest of the time was spent staring at literature and knocking my head against the table repeatedly in the hopes that a solution would magically present itself to me. The prime reason for this was this huge experimental obstacle that I have been failing to overcome.


In a nutshell, my samples kept aggregating every time I put it through a dialysis procedure to purify it. An aggregated sample is of no use to me because all the downstream analyses require the sample to be water-soluble and also, it would suggest that my synthesis process wasn’t working.


In this period, I threw everything at the wall but nothing stuck. Nobody had run a dialysis process with nanotubes before, so I couldn’t get any tangible advice off the bioscience or pharmacy people. The process description in the journal articles that I found was also incredibly vague. My adviser understandably had no idea how to solve it because he had no experience in the bioscience field. So basically, like Taiwan, I was pretty much on my own.


And so, I became incredibly demotivated due to my lack of progress and my pace slowed down. The latter was also because my sample (insulin) wasn’t cheap at all. 50 mg costs RM670, and I went through them like water in an attempt to solve the damned problem. What was also not helping was looking at the calendar and wondering where all the time went. I went from telling people (when I was asked, of course) I would be finishing in December 2011 to January 2012 to March to July. Well, it won’t go further than July now because that’s the deadline I’ve set in stone (explained one or two posts back) in an attempt to pressurize myself into finding the solution.


And then, just like that, it happened. Last Sunday, out of nowhere, something just clicked in my head. The following morning, I rushed to the lab and immediately carried out the tweaked procedure and bam, it worked! It’s incredibly hard to explain to people what it feels like to finally get something to work: this sequence of epiphany followed by execution and sweet, glorious success. That’s exactly what I felt though, and a huge weight was off my shoulder.


As it turned out, the dialysis procedure was actually equilibrating the pH in my sample, bringing it down from 7.6 to 5.5. So, by discarding the supernatant from the aggregation and topping it back with a pH 7.6 buffer, I got the purified sample to solubilize again. It’s quite funny sometimes how simple the answer to a complex problem can be. It was the same in Taiwan last year as well, when I realized a simple application of heat to 85 C would disperse my starch solution after spending two months cracking my head over it.


So with that out of the way, I can immediately carry on with all the downstream analyses and wrap the project and, by extension, my thesis up. If all the analyses return favourable results, fingers crossed, I will be done by the end of June. There is still quite a bit more to go but the great thing is that the motivation is back again. That same feeling in Taiwan where I was eager for the next day to come so I could complete another run.


It’s that Taiwan feeling: the mad sprint towards my stable. I love it.

What a strange season..

 

.. for football.


The season started with so much promise.

Manchester United were steamrollering opponents playing sexy, one-touch football. Nottingham Forest had Steve McClaren in along with some decent signings like Matt Derbyshire. Selangor appointed former Terengganu coach Irfan Bakti off his FA Cup winning season.


And then just like that, without warning, it all went to shit. Cleverley got injured, the centre of midfield was decimated injury-wise, United fell back to playing dour. pass-it-around-midfield, football. Forest dropped like a stone. McClaren got sacked, which was fine except they got Cotterill in who was equally inept. Nigel Doughty passed away in February. Selangor languished in mid-table (signed Bosko Balaban though, which was pretty cool).


And then in the end, United lose the title in the worst way possible, emotionally. City got to lift the cup which means having to watch Tevez and Balotelli lift it. Chelsea won the European Cup meaning Terry gets to lift it. Forest narrowly avoided relegation and Selangor, well, Selangor’s still at mid-table.


Of course, a bit of perspective is needed. United still finished second and lost out only on GD. Forest isn’t in League One and Selangor, well, 32 times Malaysian Cup winners, bitches! /liverpool


Still though, what an anti-climax. Pfft, can’t even get excited about the potential summer dealings with all that lingering bitterness.

Fuck ‘em.

Note to Self:

 

“Devout religious people cannot be reasoned with. Just don’t bother trying.”


I guess it’s just so puzzling to me how religious people can be so myopic in their views and unaccepting of different viewpoints. I won’t go into details but there was a, uhm, “discussion” about same-sex marriage today which wound me up no end. The winding up was because even after I have presented my counter-argument in what I feel was a convincing manner, it still wasn’t getting through.

No point being vague, so here’s an excerpt from the exchange:


Me: "(…) Sure but just so we're clear, you agree that religious beliefs and written law should not be independent of each other? Because, having read your article, it provides no rational reason against same sex marriage beyond "the bible says it's wrong" and some vague statements about "not right to build society on it", whatever that means.”


Friend: “ my idea is simple, give Caeser (sic) to Caeser, and give God to God...
coz the kingodm that im longing for is not in the land,everytyhing (law/teaching), if it is within the Scripture contexts,then it will be good for me...”

Me:

All I was thinking after that was, “That passage implies the separation of church and state, you imbecile! Why then are you against the legalization of same-sex marriage if “the kingdom you’re longing for is not in the land”?!”


I didn’t say that, though, not because I was afraid to but more that I was actually stunned into silence. There is a Latin phrase which I can’t recall about a person being so dumbfounded by the utter stupidity of the response that he’s rendered speechless. Yeah, that’s kinda what I felt.


I mean, I can at least see the rationale behind arguments against same-sex marriage if for example, you argue that same sex parents are not ideal for raising a child. Using “the bible says it’s wrong” to restrict the rights of others, however, is just inappropriate, to put it mildly. Religious views should count for fuck all when it comes to passing or amending laws. I forgot to ask him point blank if he would be fine with hudud law being enforced on every Malaysian, irrespective of religion. Damn you, spirit of the stairs!


Their responses aren’t even logically consistent, for fuck’s sake! I mentioned an example up there. Another one is one of them saying: “Hail Jesus, because of Him we are saved by God's grace, not by any Laws” So why do you give a damn about any of our puny human laws? Besides, marriage is a state, not a Christian, institution; who cares how the Christians define marriage?


I realize this is my second religion related post in the last three or four, but I think this will be my last for a while. It’s mentally taxing, not to mention pointless to try to reason with people with such extremist views. The following quote by Sam Harris is still one of my all-time favourites:

Sometimes you just have to accept that “ignorance is bliss”. So the next time this happens, my response will be:




Christian Extremist: But, but, the Bible said, and I quote, “Thou shall…..








So there!

Entering the home stretch

I’ve submitted my “intention to submit” form today which pretty much symbolizes the beginning to the end of my doctorate journey. I’ve been writing my thesis for about a month now in between the lab sessions and it’s quite surreal to think that it’s already been a little over three years since I started this.

I still have some experimental milestones to hit before I can officially go into “thesis writing” mode but hopefully, I can get it resolved over the next one or two months. I haven’t had much luck with lab results lately despite a lot of hard graft over the past two to three months. Curse the uncertainty of semi-novel research!

However, the good news is because I write my journal articles as I go about doing my lab work instead of leaving it until the end, all I have to do once I finish this batch of experiments is to collate all the papers together to form a coherent piece of work. It’s a two to three week job at most, fingers crossed.

Also, I have had one eye on my post-graduation career for the past one year now, and after a lot of uhm, “extra-curricular” reading, I feel like (or at least, I hope!) I’m sufficiently equipped now to handle any rigorous interview processes that might come my way. I should be starting to apply for jobs by mid to late April depending on the progress of my doctorate work.


I’m feeling a whole whirlwind of emotions right now, to be honest. There’s a bit of fear because at the back of my mind, there are still some lingering doubts as to whether I can actually make that final step and complete the doctorate. Just the thought of the humiliation of ending up with an MPhil instead of a PhD makes me feel nauseous. There’s relief because either ways, no matter what happens, this mentally and physically draining journey will end by the middle of 2012.


There’s contentment, because again, no matter what happens, I have come on leaps and bounds as a person and I can feel the improvement in maturity of thought compared to where I was three years ago, and really, isn’t that just what everyone wants? The feeling that you’ve made progress and not just stagnated as the days went by?


The dominating feeling right now, however, has to be excitement. There’s just so much to look forward to over the coming months and the uncertainty adds so much to it. So first, I have to get the final project out of the way, and then comes the job applications while finishing up the thesis, and if all goes well, I’ll successfully defend my thesis, become Dr. Ng and land the job that I want. Onwards and upwards!

……. or crash and burn, end up with an MPhil and wallow in misery for the rest of my life. That’s pretty exciting too, I suppose.


Whatever. Sit tight!

The Kerinchi Link Conundrum

So it was announced last week that the government had decided to abolish two of the Cheras-Kajang tolls; one on each side of the road. This should be great news for me because I travel along that stretch every day and hey, we all love money, right? Well unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as simple for me.

“ASALKAN BUKAN BARISAN NASIO… say what? toll abolished?! FUCK YEAH!!!!”

That’s because the government has a rebate program going where if you pass more than 80 toll booths a month, you get a 20% rebate on your toll charges. Since you also get a further 20% on the rebate that is credited provided you pass 80 tolls again the next month, it is effectively a 24.8% rebate.

What this means is that if the government abolishes 2 tolls, it brings down my monthly toll count. So if (1) the abolishment of the tolls brings my toll count below 80, and (2) the savings from the rebate prior to the abolishment is more than the direct savings from the abolishment, I actually stand to lose more money.


Thankfully, it doesn’t in this scenario. I was crossing 7 tolls daily prior to the abolishment, so assuming I travelled to the campus every weekday, which equated to 20 days of travelling, I was crossing 140 tolls monthly. The abolishment of the 2 tolls brought the total down to 100, which was fine by me.

However, this turn of events did bring a new dilemma which I dubbed during my drive home “The Kerinchi Link Conundrum”.

(www.dramabutton.com)

 

You see, on the way back from Semenyih, I am usually faced with two route options, with significantly different costs each. I can either go up the Kerinchi Link and pay a total of RM 2.50 or I can wait a little longer in traffic (generally about 15 minutes) and go home via the toll-free Jalan Universiti.


Of course, for a typical driver, the cost analysis is pretty straightforward. If you can stand to wait, do so; otherwise, cough up RM2.50. With the rebate program however, it gets slightly more complicated because of the monthly toll count.

(For the sake of discussion, assume 1 month = 20 weekdays)

Each time I choose not to go up the Kerinchi Link, I lose 2 toll booth “passes” off my monthly toll count. If my monthly toll count drops below 80 passes, I don’t qualify for a rebate. Before, it didn’t matter: my monthly count was 140 passes so even if I chose not to go up the Kerinchi Link every time, my final count still stood at 100 passes. No problems there.


With the abolishment of the two Cheras-Kajang tolls, however, should I choose not to go up the Kerinchi Link at all, my monthly toll count drops from 100 to 60. So now, I do have a fairly interesting situation on my hands. Since I had time during my drive home (I always do; it’s a fucking 45 minute drive each way), I decided to do a quick cost-benefit analysis.


It turns out that to achieve the perfect balance between cost and time spent waiting in traffic, I have to go up the Kerinchi Link at least ten times. Interestingly, the difference between going up the Link ten times and not going up at all is a mere RM 1. That means it only costs me RM0.10 each time I go up the link. The explanation is simple enough: not going up the Link at all means failing to meet the 80 toll requirement and consequently, losing out on the rebate for the other 3 tolls that I do have to pass daily.


The worst case scenario would be if I only go up the Link nine times because then, not only do I lose out on the monthly rebate, but I also have to pay the full RM2.50 toll charge. It would actually cost me money to NOT go up the tenth time. I was actually amused by how counter-intuitive this whole thing was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


In the grand scheme of things, however, I’m not sure I should be pleased about this whole toll abolishment thing. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the traffic along the Taman Connaught stretch has gradually worsen since the RM0.50 toll was abolished last year. Since it doesn’t cost a cent to go along the East-West link now, more motorists would understandably prefer to take that route home.


Which sucks for me, because, well, I’ve always been okay with paying the measly RM0.50. So screw you, BN, yet another reason to vote for the opposition….


…. except those guys are proposing to abolish ALL tolls in the country.


Hmmm…



P/S: The opposition has been saying that should they take over Putrajaya, they’ll slash tax rates, abolish all tolls, provide financial aid for the needy, maintain/ increase fuel subsidies and keep essential goods prices steady, among other populist measures.

Which begs the fucking question: How do they plan on financing all this? Just by eliminating corruption and cronyism? Even if it’s possible, I’m not entirely sure it’s the most beneficial way to spend the purported savings.

The Black Swan

I had a relatively casual chat with a friend today about Christianity's view on homosexuality. As I was more keen on trying to understand their mindset on the issue and stimulate a discussion, I refrained from winding him up just for the sake of a wind-up. Okay, maybe I did just a little. And only because some of the statements made were begging for it.

The central premise for Christianity's negative stance towards homosexuality, besides the Bible saying it's wrong, is basically this:


"Homosexuality is strictly a choice and not a congenital condition"


That is the crucial argument because from a Christianity standpoint, if (1) all living beings are created by God, and, (2) some people are born homosexuals, we can reasonably argue that God condones homosexuality. Assuming he’s a benevolent God of course; it’s equally likely that he just likes to take the piss. There's of course a slight problem in that the Bible explicitly says that homosexuality is wrong. You can then see why Christians, instead of possibly having to deal with this perplexing contradiction, would rather stick their fingers into their ears and scream "lalalalala" in the face of any potential evidence that is contrary to their viewpoint.


Based on this then, I asked him whether he thought a person can actively choose to be gay, and whether homosexuals can be "rehabilitated", to which he said yes. It still sounded fairly reasonable until he brought up how he thought homosexuals become what they are. Most homosexuals were victims of child sexual abuse, apparently.





*Struggles badly at holding back a priest/small boy joke*


I pressed him for the exact statistic. Is “most” 75%, 50%, 35%? About 40% was his estimate (A quick Google search later revealed it to be 38%). Well, what about the other 60% then, I asked him. No coherent reply was forthcoming. In any case, it was irrelevant. Correlation does not equate to causation. If they really wanted to prove that child sexual abuse is a factor in sexual orientation, they should flip the parameters. The number of child sexual abuse victims who go on to become homosexuals should be the supporting statistic.


My personal opinion is that since there isn’t conclusive proof (I may be wrong) on whether homosexuality is or isn’t a choice, an open mind should be kept regarding the matter. Adopting a homophobic stance because a book told you to is not just ignorant; it’s lazy. I then tried a different approach: “What if there is conclusive scientific evidence that homosexuality can be a congenital condition? Would that help change your mind?” There was a sudden pause followed by an emphatic no.


The reason given was hilariously flimsy, though. He would have been better off just falling back on the Bible excuse. ”Unless you surveyed all 7 billion of the world’s population and found that all homosexuals are born that way, the study is unreliable.” Hearing that actually made me go:






I don’t need to gather all the black swans in the world to disprove “all swans are white”; I need just one! Similarly, a study just needs to reliably prove that one (or several, just for the sake of repeatability) homosexual is born with a particular sexual orientation to disprove “homosexuality is a choice”. That he can’t see the logic despite being a scientist dumbfounded me a little. You know, I would have thought that being a student of science, you would be more accepting of new theories.


This anecdote kind of sums up my beef with religion besides the money-making part (have you seen their accounts?). As a device to draw strength, comfort and inspiration from, it’s great. Even the back and forth arguments about the origins of the universe are largely inconsequential. The problem arises when it’s used to spread backward and potentially poisonous ideas such as the forbiddance of contraceptives like condoms and birth control pills (a whole other post which I won’t go into detail).


Most religions preach faith so strongly that followers just surrender all their opinions and trust the teachings of a book to the letter; a book that has been doctored by men heavily over the years to suit their own personal agenda no less. I might empathise with the average person but I would expect more from a man of science than to relinquish all thoughts of inquisition. Is religion to blame for my friend’s poor reasoning skills? No, but since his opinion on the matter was already cemented from the brainwashing of religion, he’ll fight tooth and nail to defend his opinion and stoop to brittle logic in desperation.


“What if the Bible is wrong?” I asked my friend midway through our small debate. “It’s never wrong,” came the confident reply.


Galileo wept.

How to successfully stop hiccups immediately

 
New year, new blog layout! I grew incredibly bored of the plain orange/yellow design of the previous theme and so, decided to switch to another generic Google template. Yeah, I know, 10 points for originality. I also picked a pretentious bookshelf background that will hopefully scream ,”Oooh, look at me, I read a lot.” (hint: I don’t. Not a lot, anyway)

So a new blog layout deserves a cracking 5 star post to kick things off and you should probably be able to tell from the title that, yes, I will be divulging my personal secret to successfully and consistently beat the hiccups! That’s right, no more dicking around with ineffective ways to stop your chest from painfully jerking every five seconds!  I know, I know what you’re thinking: “Everybody claims to have a sure-fire hiccup-slaying method but it never works, asshole.”

You: “Really? Tell me more.”


Hear me out, though. This isn’t a lame “hold your breath for 10 seconds while trying to burp” or “drink lots and lots of water” rubbish. My method of dealing with hiccups has a more elegant touch and a steeper learning curve, yet is obvious once you master it. Being a scientist, I realize the need for validation and so, I’ve tried this every time the hiccups come about. From roughly 7-10 tries, I’ve had a 100% success rate, which is something I haven’t had from previous housewife remedies. So what is this miracle cure? Put simply, you trick your brain into stopping the hiccups. You will your body into stopping the spasms. Kinda like a Jedi mind trick.

Again, I know it sounds crazy, but there is a method to this madness.




”Okay,whatever you say, bro.”


Before I tell you the exact steps, there is a need to understand how this works. I don’t have a reliable scientific source and apparently from Wikipedia, the exact hiccup mechanism hasn’t been fully elucidated. From what I gather and understand though, the hiccup is a sort of reflex action triggered by the subconscious. There’s nothing that will specifically trigger a hiccup; it just happens, well, because. So I hypothesized that if it’s a reflex action triggered solely by the brain and has no underlying cause like, say, a viral infection, then technically, you should be able to stop it just by using your mind.


As many already know, all the housewife remedies like holding your breath while standing on one foot or getting someone to scare you are just ways to draw attention away from the actual action of “hiccup-ing”. The reason why it doesn’t work all the time for everyone would be because, one might assume, the subject is still subconsciously focused on the hiccups, or rather, not focused enough on the “remedy” to “forget” about the hiccups. This is


My remedy builds on this principle but does away with all the needless (frankly though, they’re amusing to watch) physical actions. Instead, all you need to do is convince your subconscious that you are not, in fact, suffering from hiccups. The following are the recommended steps towards accomplishing this:

1) I find that this works best if you’re in a low-noise environment, so get away from a crowd or tune out if you can. Sit down if possible and try to relax.

2) Now it’s time to close your eyes and let your imaginations run; this is a mind trick after all.

There is probably something you’ve been doing right before the hiccups started, like say, driving, talking to a friend, making coffee, or reading. Of course, while you were performing that task, the hiccups weren’t there. You were naturally feeling very comfortable then.

Now you need to picture yourself doing that task; in fact, not just picture but believe you are actually doing it at the present moment and totally immerse yourself into the scenario, complete with the hiccup-free state. While you’re doing this, an occasional hiccup might still come up, but you need to completely ignore it and not let it distract you from your mental task.

3) If you have done step (2) correctly and long enough, you should be noticing that your hiccups have either slowed down or stopped completely. Step (3) is what I call, the sealing stage; it’s the part where you cap off your mind trick with a little reverse psychology. The icing on the cake, if you will.

Before I tell you what step (3) is, I would assume you’re reading this while not suffering from any form of hiccups. Alright, now I want you to will yourself into doing a hiccup using your mind alone. It’s pretty impossible, right? That’s precisely what step (3) is: daring your mind into doing a hiccup. You need to remember how impossible it is to do this if you don’t actually have hiccups. This will work beautifully if you’ve done step (2) right and utterly believe that you’re hiccup-free.

And that’s it! You’re officially hiccup-free! The description of my remedy is obviously a bit convoluted compared to “hold your breath while drinking” because it’s an explanation for first-timers and also because the understanding of how this works is crucial towards the probability of success. Once you’ve mastered it (usually only takes one or two tries), you won’t even have to make an effort the next time there is a hiccup attack. You’ll just completely suppress it within 5 seconds.




You; when you try this and realize how well it works.


P/S: If this doesn’t work for you no matter how hard you try, it means you have the imagination of a doorknob.


P/P/S: Man, I love this new blog layout.