Who would want to be a grown up if they could remain kids?

When we refer to runaways, the first thought that comes to mind is that they are teenagers with massive problems at home.

Why can't adults be runaways too? Sometimes, I wish I could runaway from all the responsibilities of being an adult.

I want to be a kid again. I want to be free of responsibilities. I want to runaway from my neverending dissertation. I want to runaway from the endless cycle of planning, setting targets and chasing for sales. I want to not worry if my staff is coming up to scratch. I want to speak freely without having to face repercussions or to hurt someone I love with my candid speech. I want to be able to resign at will without worrying who will pay my bills. I want to go home without worrying if the car park is going to be flooded or the walls are going to fall apart.

I want to just run in a field of daffodils without a care in the world. I want to sink my feet in fine, soft, warm sand. I want to walk along an endless stretch of sandy beach and bask in the sun. I want fly in a microlite and let the wind take me where it will. I want to set sail with no destination in mind.

Sigh! It's been a tough week with no light at the end of the tunnel. I know the sun will come up tomorrow and the world will be well again.

But tonight, ... tonight, I just want to wallow. I want to runaway from being an adult. Anyone care to join me???

Goodnight Malaysia whoever you are!

“Trust me with my sms dear …”

Caught over compromising messages via sms and messaging services … Looks like technology is the cause of social ills and relationship break ups these days! It’s probably not that people cheat more these days but perhaps it’s easier to trace the cheat??! :p I wonder what they use in the Stone Age days. Compromising messages via smoke signals? Hmmmm … now THAT would be a sight to behold! Hahahaha …

In any case, the gist of yesterdays’ topic over the Big Bang Breakfast show was how much do you trust your spouse or partner with their sms? One listener claimed that his relationship broke up because he accidentally read his girlfriend’s sms one day and the supposed “god brother” of his girlfriend (with whom she spent a lot of time with) left the following text message, “Good night. I love you.” And, as they say in the theatres, the rest was history.

This reminds me of an incident with an ex-colleague. He was cheating on his wife and was caught with his “pants” down (figuratively speaking) when his love interest decided to text message him at all hours of the day and NIGHT! Now, can you imagine your boyfriend’s or husband’s handphone beeping at 2 in the morning? Not one or two nights but for several nights in a row. Even a stupid wife would be suspicious, wouldn’t she? And his wife was no fool. All hell broke lose and as the Cantonese saying goes, it was “look kor tai fung siong”. She “whacked” his beloved sports car. She caused mayhem at home. She “whacked” his head. She went crying to her family and his family. But who could blame her .... Ahh … hell hath no fury like a woman scorned or cheated upon.

But, but … what if the text message was entirely innocent? One lady listener claimed that her good friend (a guy) got into a huge row with his girlfriend over her online messages to him. And she (the listener) was extremely saddened by that as she claimed that the friendship was entirely innocent! So, does this mean one has to stop sending text messages to one’s friends who are of the opposite sex but are attached?

What happened to trust? What if it was truly an innocent message that was misconstrued? Would you check your partner’s text messages? And would you feel insulted if your partner checks yours?

Hmm … personally, I think that if there is nothing to hide, what harm is there for him/her to read the messages? After awhile, he/ she will get bored with it. But, yeah, one would probably feel as if there is no trust in the relationship. Then again, trust is a rare and precious commodity these days. To trust or not to trust? To check or not to check? It’s a tough call.

You are damned if you do. And you might be damned if you don’t!

Of car park floods and exterminating ants

"The car park is flooded!" I was told by this neighbour whose car was blocking the way to LG2, which obviously housed my parking bay.

Blinking hell! A flooded car park? At a new condo? What the heck! I should have known better! After living through so many freak incidents here in less than a year since moving in, one would have thought I would have become pretty blaze to all these shenanigans! Geee .. but I was overworked, stressed out and darn tired that day. All I wanted was a hot shower, warm coffee and some TLC. Looks like that ain't gonna happen real soon then. Finally, when all the excitement calmed, I found out that there was one hell of a storm and the car park became one heck of a huge shower stall. Water was gushing out from the cracks, I was told. Cracks? Gulp!

In the next couple of days, the car park was almost back to normal although it was pretty wet. Just the night before, there was a sudden heavy downpour. There I was rushing down to LG2 again to drive my car up to G level, just in case the place get flooded again! Grrrrr ... evicted from my own car park although it was a personal choice! I can't believe developers and contractors can get away with such shoddy work. And to think they sold this place as a 5-star resort styled condo. They got me good ~ hook, line and sinker. It's such a stinker. Grrrrr ... I must think of Plan B soon.

But that's not the end of the story! Not by a far shot. Recently, I noticed an increase in ant population at my condo. I couldn't understand why as I hardly cook here and do not really keep food around. But the little red ants are always around on my kitchen counter top ~ no matter how many times I wipe and clean that.

But today topped that once again! When I got home after another taxing day, I found a long trail of industrious little red ants crawling away from the kitchen counter top, down to the floor, across my dining hall, then onward to the sitting room and out to the balcony! Eeeks! That's it! I am on a vendetta. No more Miss Nice to these antsy. No siree! Call in the exterminators! Bring in the troops! But alas! I realised I didnt have any insect repellent.

BUT I spy with my little eye a bottle of "clean glass" spray. It's some sort of detergent to clean glass surfaces. I took that bottle and started spraying on the trail of ants. And guess what?!! Wonders of wonders! It worked!!! That's a handy household tip. They are all now quite dead. I usually am not so violent and gleeful over these sort of things. But dang! It felt good. Got rid of the ant problem for now. Will have to check again tomorrow. Dang! Alrighty then. Enough of whining.

Good night Malaysia, wherever you are.

Anonymity on the Net? It's a freaking lie!

Dang! The next time your fingers get lazy, but you decide to recycle something you wrote from your blog to sound witty, DO NOT DO IT! There is no such thing as anonymity on the net. Some smart aleck will surely know how to "google" and drive you up the wall with his uncanny insights of your life! Sigh!

Dang! I suddenly feel like a dumb blonde. But since I am neither a blond nor dumb (not that this episode can tell), I am feeling like a super duper dumb blonde! Talk about double whammy! Time to colour my hair again to fit the bill! :p

No excuse for moi this time since the said cybernaut have given me enough clues. Sigh! Talk about having a peabrain. I will try to blame this on the sleepless nights slogging away on the yet to be submitted dissertation and the stressful days redoing the blardy 2006 plan and trying to bring in sales. Yeegads!

To HE who pulled the wool over my eyes soooo easily, TOUCHE MATE! Three cheers! (Hip Hip Hooray! X3) Technically, I am only blogging, not answering. So there! Hehehehe ... Just can't resist announcing my final realisation when I tested google today with some of my words. It's blardy late in coming though. Dang! Larry Page and Sergey Brin have a lot to answer for.

Anonymity on the Net? My blardy foot there is! :P

The Siau Gang

The whole siau gang is in this picture. Before I met these folks, I never thought that a group of people can get together and connect so quickly due to one single passion - SWEAT! And it's not an every month thingy. If you speak to the real hardcore in this group, their passion for sweat is almost everyday. And one or two mad ones sweat it out 2-3 hours a day. Talk about "weird". Hahahaha ...

From taichi to yoga, balance to pump, combat to rpm, and a few more, they are equally eager. Once I introduced a few of them to trekking and it was like Gasing Hill madness for a couple of intense weeks. The latest craze I heard are tower runs although I have been missing in action for a while now. Read in Little Monster's blog that they are now into the marathon craze.

Kinda miss you folks. But, as you all know, life starts after dissertation submission for me. Hope to join you soon. Really miss trekking, white coffee, Body Combat, Body Balance and mamak with you folks.

Also, highly unfit these days. Gotta train for the mountain! Otherwise you guys have to drag me up! :p

Chap Goh Mei Celebration

It's been a long time coming, this gathering. I have lost touch with a few of them for awhile.

I used to go trekking with a few of these folks. We spent many a wonderful weekend scoring the jungles and national parks of Malaysia. These days, many of them have hung up their trekking boots and settled down to family life. (Thus, the many cute kiddos in the pix.)

To friendship!

Love is in the Air

Ahhh …. Did you notice that the air is extra thick with romance these days? Especially with the passing of Chap Goh Mei (or what we refer to as Chinese Valentine’s Day) yesterday, and the coming of Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Did you not feel the extra pollen of love floating in the warm February air? Are you not touched by Cupid’s arrow? Did you not feel like howling at a full February moon? (Oops! Wrong script.)

The TV channels are full of love, the radio deejays talk about love, the newspapers are littered with love, and the malls are dressed in love … can it get any more cheesy than that? Makes one feel like hibernating for the entire month of February and living the life of a recluse with no outside communication. Have a heart for those who are single and not in love. I am beginning to think that February is a month that is conceptualised solely to torment us poor sots who are not hit by Cupid’s arrow. Just fresh from licking the wounds of Chinese New Year with refrains like “this is your last ang pow” and “when are you getting married?” February decides to sic Valentine’s Day on us too. It’s probably some divine intervention to give the “single and fancy free” an almighty push. “What are you waiting for? Choose, choose, choose! Stop procrastinating.” Yadda, yadda, yadda … Ahh! The injustice of it all! Why can’t February be as perfect as the other months of the year?

This is the one time in the year you wish you are in love just to get people off your back. It’s not even required that the supposed object of your affection do not return your so-called love. So long as there is an object, at least you get to talk about your “love”. That nerd in school is beginning to look mighty good looking these days. OMG! Did I say that? I think we need to take Cupid to task for his/ her lack of fair play; or else we have to negotiate with those folks who created the calendar and request the month of February to be taken out of the line-up entirely. What do you think? Would that work? … Nah! Oh well, at least I gave it a good thought. If we can’t beat them, let’s join them.

Maybe we can start by whipping out that little black book.

Simon?
I think he got married last year.

Cheah?
Err … did he not just come out of the closet about being gay?

Charlie?
THAT’s Charlene!

Daniel?
Wouldn’t that be cradle snatching?

Joe?
Ugh! That old thang?

Picky! Picky! Picky! Oh well … better luck next year.


Meanwhile, here’s a collection of quotes as a tribute to love, sweet love!

“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” -- Anonymous

“The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.” -- Pascal

“‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850

“He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.” -- Benjamin Franklin

“Where there is love there is life.” -- Gandhi

“We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.” -- William Gladstone

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” -- Rabbi Julius Gordon

“Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.” -- H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

"Cogito ergo sum"

Unbeknownst to me, my friend Siew recently went into coma just before the Chinese New Year celebrations (that's another tale altogether) and woke up a few days later with total memory loss. She has since then, thank god, fully recovered. Interestingly enough, during her amnesia, she remembered enough to write on a piece of paper the words, "Who am I?"

One friend, Connie, commented that despite having no memory of her life, by those words, Siew proved that she knows she exists. And thus, Connie concluded that this episode has perhaps bring us a step closer to understanding and believing in the long and endless debate of the existence of a soul.

A "soul", as defined in www.dictionary.com, can be described in the following ways:
1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.

This brings to mind Rene Descartes, also known as the father of modern philosophy. Descartes suggests that there is no knowledge that can be guaranteed. He couldn't even be certain that his body was real but he could be certain that his thoughts existed!

How could he be certain? Descartes postulates that doubt is a kind of thinking. And trying to doubt that one is thinking disproves that doubt! Follow me so far? Essentially what he means is that the awareness of thought comes first. And that thought proves that he exists. But it does not work the other way round i.e. the awareness of his existence first allows him the faculty of thought because when you become aware of your existence, you have already started thinking!

Hence,
"Cogito, ergo sum" ~ or in Latin "I am thinking, therefore I exist", or traditionally "I think, therefore I am".
~ Rene Descartes

Descartes went on to suggest that humans are dualist beings ~ of spiritual minds or souls inhabiting material bodies. And these bodies are like machines and will eventually perish. But our minds live on. Our minds are immortal.

But Buddhism denies the existence of an unchanging and eternal soul created by God.

According to Buddhism mind is nothing but a complex compound of fleeting mental states. One unit of consciousness consists of three phases -- arising or genesis (uppada) static or development (thiti), and cessation or dissolution (bhanga).

Immediately after the cessation stage of a thought moment there occurs the genesis stage of the subsequent thought-moment. Each momentary consciousness of this ever-changing life-process, on passing away, transmits its whole energy, all the indelibly recorded impressions to its successor.

Every fresh consciousness consists of the potentialities of its predecessors together with something more. There is therefore, a continuous flow of consciousness like a stream without any interruption. The subsequent thought moment is neither absolutely the same as its predecessor -- since that which goes to make it up is not identical -- nor entirely another -- being the same continuity of kamma energy. Here there is no identical being but there is an identity in process.

~ Buddhism in a Nutshell by Narada Thera

Confused? Me too. Essentially, my understanding of this concept is that the mind is a series of continuous thought-moment that lives and dies and transmits its whole energy with all the previous memory to the next thought moment.

But if a soul does not exist, what is reborn then?

According to Buddhism, when life ceases the kammic energy re-materializes itself in another form. As Bhikkhu Silacara says: "Unseen it passes whithersoever the conditions appropriate to its visible manifestation are present. Here showing itself as a tiny gnat or worm, there making its presence known in the dazzling magnificence of a Deva or an Archangel's existence. When one mode of its manifestation ceases it merely passes on, and where suitable circumstances offer, reveals itself afresh in another name or form."

It's an interesting concept. But in applying this concept to the episode that Siew had experienced, does this mean that what she wrote was just kammic energy that continuously and actively lives, dies and transmits itself to the next thought process? And while she was in a coma, can we assume that the kammic energy continues to work. How then does one explain the temporary amnesia? The mind boggles with this concept. But such concept has its support in today's science, which has discovered that atoms are divisible and destructable and in the course of those processes, energy is created and passed on. How that works beats me. It is interesting food for thought though ... isn't it?

Have a good weekend while we ponder the existence of our souls and minds.

A family of bloggers

Starlight, starbright,
What is that within my sight?
My cousins' blogs alright.

Starlight, starbright,
Read 'em blogs alright,
With surprise and much delight!

Starlight, starbright,
Read 'em blogs with such pride,
Cousins dears, they are such delight!


Goodness! Blow me away! I just discovered that another two cousins blog. Sorry Chris, gotta move your blog link two levels down to make way for Colin's and Clarence's. I wonder when Cheryl will get onto the blogwagon. Or has she already?

Welcome on board all. We are now officially a family of bloggers! Hooray!

How much longer can we keep our Chinese New Year traditions alive?

When I was a kid, Chinese New Year had felt so magical. It wasn’t just the “ang pows” that made it so memorable. It was the whole atmosphere of joy, cheer and family togetherness!

It was a time of getting together with my maternal grandpa and grandma, my paternal grandma, uncles and aunties, assortment of cousins and second cousins. Uncles, aunts and cousins whom we had not seen for ages would return from far away to celebrate the Chinese New Year with us. We would spend countless of hours at grandpa’s place with many relatives coming and going.

Grandpa’s place was huge ~ a three story house with split levels for the kitchen and the dining area; it was a wonderful place to play “pang pang” (hide and seek) and “ah chi chook”. And who could forget uncles and aunties at the mahjong table playing till the wee hours of the morning?

And what would Chinese New Year be without the adults adhering to the superstitions or “pantang larang”. (Nowadays, I see it more as keeping the tradition alive rather than adhering to superstitions.) Mom was not much of a traditionalist but she adhered to certain rules i.e. hiding the broom and no sweeping on the first day. She used to nag us for wearing black, grey or blue on the first day of the Lunar New Year. She believes that we should usher in the New Year wearing bright colours.

What would Chinese New Year be without “pau cheong” (firecrackers)? As kids, we used to light up fireworks a week before the New Year. The din of fireworks would be all around the neighbourhood. We have a Hokkien neighbour who would light up a huge “pau cheong” on New Year’s Eve to “chip chow san” (usher in the God of Wealth). When we got together with our assortment of cousins, we used to run around the neighbourhood, play “ko kuan” (gala panjang) and all sorts of games that we could think of or create. They were such perfect and carefree times.

Then grandpa died, followed a decade later by grandma and subsequently the other grandma passed on too. Grandpa’s house was sold and we started visiting uncles and aunties homes instead of gathering at one common place. The get together got smaller and smaller as years passed. A few uncles, aunties and their families from far away started returning fewer and fewer times, until a few do not return at all. We (my cousins, sisters and I) grew up and we moved on to larger cities and other countries to study and work. As time goes by, due to work commitments and other things, there are fewer people returning home or if we do, our schedules might not match.

I looked at our family get together recently and realised that it has gotten so much smaller. A few uncles, aunts and their families did not return. A few cousins were working overseas and could not return. I rushed through the New Year back home and returned to KL earlier due to work and dissertation deadlines. Although our get together was fun, the joy and cheer seemed more muted these days. The din of firecrackers and mahjong games has almost faded away. I looked at the faces of my cousins during the New Year and wondered if we would still have this get together in say 10-20 years time. Would we still gather together long after our elders passed on?

We are not kids anymore and perhaps, we do not view festivals in the same light. To some, it might be a chore to go home. To others, they might rather spend the long stretch of public holiday going for holidays. I can’t help but feel that we are losing an essential part of our tradition and culture. Would this festival become nothing more than a date on a calendar one day? Would it be another commercialised celebration; all money, no heart? Would the celebration become a mere memory to be told and retold in history for generations to come? I certainly hope not.

Happy Chinese New Year and an early Happy Chap Goh Mei to all! May the year of the dog bring you good health, fabulous luck, much cheer and plenty of wealth. And may it also bring the family together and build stronger family ties.

Gong Xi Gong Xi!