New year

Well, there were fireworks in Melbourne, albeit of the natural kind. Sydney harbour bridge fireworks were awesome though, caught that on telly.

I wonder what the coming year will bring forth. Hopefully less challenges, even though overcoming harsh challenges means more interesting topics to share with friends and family.

New Year's Eve

It's that time of the year again, when people sing old Scottish songs and resolve to do something to change themselves to be a better person. Being the skeptic I am, I doubt it would work, but.. each to their own.

So.. it's been an eventful year, 2009. Besides Tiger Woods' sex scandals, and the Malaysian political arena being a letdown, there have been other noteworthy events. The LHC for one, it began operations, then crashed twice if I'm not mistaken. Then came the doomsday predictions that the LHC would unleash black holes on the world, or the other Mayan prediction of the world ending in 2012.

It would seem that this year would be best remembered for doomsday predictions then. Hopefully next year will be more memorable - 2010 features the Vancouver Winter Olympics, World Cup in South Africa and the Commonwealth Games in India [Delhi I think].

Enjoy the celebrations, and have a Happy 2010!

2010

The beginning of a new decade, the end of an old era.
It's just 2, 3 days away.

I wonder what it will herald.

What some Malaysian academicians do during their free time

>>Link<<

My take: The person writing this so happens to be a Chinese-Muslim, and appears to be a convert by marriage. I do not have any preconceptions about his political leanings, or his religion leaning either. Hence I do not know anything about why he decides to write such an article - an article which may, and probably has, inflamed a number of people.

But I still do have a couple of questions regarding his article.
1. Why does Dr Tee choose to use a census that is almost a decade old? Should he not have used an updated version of our national census?

2. Related to question 1, why does Dr Tee think that the non-Muslims have "taken over"? Are there relevant statistics to show for the claims he makes in the post/article?

It is a baffling article. And I feel that it has the potential to incite the very things that he may have sought to quell in the first place.

Christmas morning

It's 5 in the morning over here. I wonder what I'm doing, still up and about. There's no Christmas tree in the corner with presents under it.

Summer nights

They're getting shorter by the day. As I sit here typing this out, it's 9 pm and the sky's still bright, bright as the 6 am dawn sky.

As the days grow ever longer, and the nights shrink, it's sort of playing around with my mood too. There's this sense that the night, however young, will be too short to savour fully.

Ahh nostalgia is sometimes a wrecking ball for the soul.

Teach Radical Malaysian History in our Schools

>>Link<<

My take: About time. It's been talked about to death already. Especially on History. Why are we fed one side of the story and not allowed to ask or comment on the other side? And the current system does not encourage thinking. Questions asked are quashed by using the rhetoric "non-examinable questions".

Time for change. Change, which will not come unless we have a revolution [and we lack leaders for that].

My favourite question returns to haunt readers:
Q: Should he have rebelled against the Sultan?

And my answer will still be:
A: Yes he should.

Fluctuations

The mercury shot up yesterday, and now the sky's clouded over. What beautiful weather we get here in Melbourne.

I wish I had the adventurous friends here in Melbourne still. I wouldn't mind a bit of sightseeing, especially with summer looming.

Gotta get out in the sun more..

Bzzt

Lying in bed,
dreaming of what could be,
what could have been,
what should be.

The first one is the worst one
when it comes to a broken heart

-Boys Like Girls, The First One-

Results

By sheer luck I was up at 5.30 am to get my results. [And yes, I'm still in Melbourne.]

So.. Triple H1s for the core subjects means I'm rather happy today :)
Weirdly enough, even with all my complaints about Linear, it netted me the highest score. Pleasantly surprising.

Anyway that's first year done. I can't believe I'm actually waiting for next February to come along.

快到我向你们追债了。。

Repeat

It's the same old story all over again during the holidays. Looks like I'll go ahead and find something worth doing over summer. Besides playing computer games of course. Perhaps a good round of paintball might do me some good. Relieves some of the stress piling on my back now.

Racial politics and Brain Drain

>>Link<<

My take:
There are two things worth reading here, the first being the blog post itself, and the second is the long comment beneath.
Brain drain is an ongoing process, amplified by the sheer amount of racist talk some of the leaders have been spouting in the last few years. The article highlights the main reasons why we'd want to get out of Malaysia, which all hint at racism practised within the government forces. [Which is all rather true, and most Malaysians will admit this happens.]

Literate Goons and Well-trained Zombies

>>Link<<

My take: Some measure of rote learning helps us ace exams, but to gauge the true depth of our students you need to get them thinking in detail. As the article points out, one of the ways would be to make students "change" the past through visualising concepts. This has been done in the Singaporean schooling system, and it should be done in our system as well. In many ways it will help us along, although if the implementation is done in the same way as our present method of teaching Literature, the system will fail horribly.

Q: Should he rebel against the Sultan?
A: Why of course he should.

Cheer up emo kid

Can't help but smile whenever I type/see this. Dunno why I'm a bit depressed now. Maybe it's the lack of friends around Melbourne. Maybe it's something else. Doubt it would help much if I knew what was the problem though.

Owl City

Syrupy sweet lyrics, the perfect balm to soothe souls and hearts. I personally like these two songs of theirs:

From New Scientist

Found a couple of interesting articles on New Scientist.

Dear God, please confirm what I already believe
>>Link<<

My take: This might explain so much about why modern society follows certain rules that seem to have been handed down by religious beings. And it would certainly explain why the three Abrahamic religions talk about the same God, but Islam has a different set of rules compared to the Christians. In that case, I'd like to found a completely different religion, with gods like the Chaos gods found in Warhammer 40k.

The world looks different if you're depressed
>>Link<<

My take: Interesting revelation here. At least now I know why things don't seem normal..

Restarting writing

Writing random short stories should restart soon. Got inspired during lunch yesterday, so just check here if I do post anything interesting :)