Freedom

Well this is it. This is what it finally came down to. The culmination of everything we've been waiting for. Looking back now, University seemed distant. It seemed to be one of those things that happened to other people and not to you. It was one of those things that was always just on the horizon, but vaguely unreachable.

Despite all that, here it is, staring right down at us. Now we're all going to go and chase our dreams, or maybe something we find is less than our dream, maybe we're stuck somewhere we don't want to be or doing something we don't want to. I got what I wanted, but now the victory itself seems somewhat hollow. No matter how we knew that not all of us would make it, there was always a hope, an image that we'd all be together standing victorious running into whatever future awaited us together. But here I stand in the today and it's nothing like that.

Perhaps it's not important however that everyone didn't get exactly what they wanted in some way or another, weather for themselves or for the people around them. Perhaps all that's really important is that we're free. Every single one of us is free. Daunting as it will be, the idea and the taste of it is glorious. It's fed the spirits of armies and given hope to the hopeless.

Maybe freedom is all that matters at the end, and that's the dream we all seek.

Camping

Now after my brief little vacation at the isolation ward, I'd like to very much relate my experiences on hospital quarantine, in all it's splendor and glory.

What is hospital quarantine you may ask? Well it's a place they send you when you're already better to be isolated in case you infect more people with your healthiness. With that pattented malaysian spirit, why the hospital can GUARANTEE that you're healthy by the time they lock you in the ward with other possibly sick people so you can catch a new disease.

I had decided while in the ward that the malaysian hospitals are scared of one thing: efficiency. Why does it take so long to get the results for the swine flu test? Why because if it took just a day, they might actually have to TREAT you for a real disease while you're there.

Now, back to the topic at hand, the ward was like camping. You know, the activity where a group of you and your friends go to the great outdoors to eat delicious smores, and indulge in activities like hiking. The isolation ward is exactly like camping, if instead of friends, you were with absolute strangers, and instead of being in the great outdoors, you get to sit in a small room with a bed. And instead of delicious smores, you get to eat stale hospital food, and instead of fun hiking, we get to have fun-filled blood pressure and lung checks! Well alright fine, it's not very much like camping, but they got one aspect right: the mosquitoes, which have been well substituted by doctors that wake you up in the wee hours of the morning and take your blood.

This is what hospital stay is like, so exciting and dramatic as everyone sets it out to be no?

(and for the late posting, I'm sorry! It's just that....I kind of forgot to put it up if you'll belive me, which obviously, no one will)

What makes your rising sun so new?

Why do we proceed with things? Why do we go on, really whats the point?

Some people will tell you the goal is progress. To become better than what you should be, to become more than what you are now, and in a nutshell to find hapiness in achievement. Or at least the tools to be happy. But then, when you think about it, the only thing you see on the horizon when you climb a hill is a thousand more hills you haven't climbed yet. And when you climb those thousand, you'll become aware of a thousand more to climb.

It's never-ending. The process of trying to go further and further, of trying to climb. It's ineveitable that we do it, so really...sometimes I think it better that we don't think on it, that way we never question the futility of it all, of everything that we do and everything we've done to achieve the knowledge that there's more to do. It can be concluded then, that hard work amounts to more hard work, and this is the way of things. There is no way to reach whatever objectives you set. Before you reach it, you always push up your standards, you always look for a new challenge, a new way to motivate ourselves to find more challenge.

So then it's reasonable to assume life is a collection of meagre satisfaction, and an endless cascade of challenges which lead only to less satisfaction unless you work harder. After 100 years, do you really think you'll be satisfied? There'll be no time to make you happy, only time to climb more hills looking for that elusive thing that we all pretend to have innanely: Hapiness.

Even if you could live forever, your mortal perspective will not be lost. You will strive for more and more progress, and by the time it comes to the point there is none left to be had, then there is no purpose to life anymore, there are no more goals and more importantly, you have no connection to what happens around you by the time you finish. Time would have left you behind, and you will be connected to nothing. Then, when you throw yourself into the fire, or go mad because you have lost touch with everything around you.....no one will know you even exsisted.

No one will even remember whatever horizons you saw while you were climbing. Not even you will remember what you saw. You were too busy counting how many hills you saw and which one to surrmount first.

Gravity release me

It's really quite strange how fragile everything is. Sometimes it almost seems like the things you want most are always the most fragile of all. On some level, thats what I see God as, the only thing you can really care about that won't break or bend with whatever you do. Perhaps that's the draw to it. The fact that you can do anything, and it's the one thing that stays the same. When everything shifts and everything falls, it's what won't fall with the rest.

Where does the fragility of everything result from? It is simply a result of the nature of things we need or want. It always hinges on the smallest, most imperceptible things. It always hinges on these things. Sometimes we know it does, and we obsess over it so much that we break it. Sometimes we don't even know that what we need or care about hinges on what we're about to do. So we crush it unwittingly. Is there even a way out? Is it really possible to save these fragile pieces?

No. We can't save it. In hindsight, it always certainly looks like we could. But truely, everything looks great in hindsight. But here's the thing.....it doesn't matter if a decision is right or wrong. The important part is that it seemed like the right decision at the time, then what else could you do right? But then we always think that because we made the wrong choice in hindsight, we didn't do the best we could, or make the best decision we could. But truely, if you didn't think about the "best decision" that you thought of later, then obviously....at the time whatever you did was the best decision. When I say the best decision, I don't mean to say it's the correct choice. The concept of right choices and best decisions are not the same thing. Best does not nececarily mean right.

Remember that always,

You'll never touch the ground.

Mothers

Mothers, what are they made of? To many of the uninformed (i.e. People who have mothers. Which is everyone. Except orphans.), They are an unsortable mess of qualities, seeming contradictions and juxtapositions of one another.

Mothers can't wait for their kids to leave, yet can't seem to let them go.
Well, no matter what your mother says, in some ways she just can't wait for you to be out the door. Less work, most definitely. Yet, she can't really seem to bear the idea of this freedom from you, much like a person incarcerated from birth who wouldn't know what to do if they suddenly were given the freedom to do anything. I mean they always seem to be asking for 5 minutes peace, yet they want you to stay home so they can never have that 5 minutes peace.

Mothers want to tell their kids how things are done, but they want them to learn by themselves
Mothers always prefer to let their children discover the world by themselves, yet they have an urge to make them understand their point of view or their way of doing things, aka: "The Right Way Which Is Definitely Superior To Anything You Can Come Up With". They seem to relish in the joy of "I Told You So", yet they genuinely feel bad when they allow themselves to bask in the glory of this achievement

Mothers want you to grow up, but want you to be theirs forever
There seems to be a constant battle of tug of war between letting you grow up and be free to drive, etc. but are also held back by an undying dream of having you being that small child that they raised and changed diapers for, though I don't really understand completely why they'd want to go back to that, they just do. I guess this is the same kind of masochism that leads many women to believe that the "miracle of birth" is worth as much agony as....well apparently us men can't aptly describe it, so I wouldn't know how to compare the pain.

Mothers grow their children to act like slaves
Oh well maybe this one is just me....I'm pretty sure it's just me I think. Though if child services sees this and asks....I didn't say this.

Mothers believe that the best part of having your own small children is you can tell them anything you want, and they'll believe it
I have the feeling that I'm alone on this one too, but what can I say? The way I imagine it, it'd pretty hilarious if I can make someone believe everything I said. Gullible people are fun, so I assume having one SO gullible can only be even better.'

Mothers can be pretty young at heart
Some mothers, (okay just mine) seem to like playing practical jokes on their children and families, yet seem to be completely mature when she feels like it. Or is this just my own mother again?

Mothers have lots of best friends
Well, my mother at least has a couple of best friends, like Mel Gibson, and Jackie Chan among others. But she can't announce it in fear for their cover in Malaysia being blown. I'm not actually kidding about this though, there's photographic proof!

Actually, I think my mother's pretty special in her own way, and she seems to carve her own unique pattern to raising children, which if I may say so myself, helped me turn out rather well(hm, I think that's hubris right there). I'm glad that she's still young at heart, (though possibly younger than me sometimes) and that she's always there to inspire me with her 5 A levels subjects. To the most contradictory, but still much loved person in my life,

Happy birthday mum

Time for a comic interlude!

Now, I realize its been a while since I've posted here, and I've been very busy with life, reading, and um.....walking I've been very very busy, and if you're here reading this I don't see why you just won't take my bloody word for it! I mean it seems ridiculous to me that I have to qualify myself on my own blog, it's like explaining to yourself why you had to kill your neighbor to yourself in a book and.....I'm saying too much. Well anyway, I've also been watching quite a few movies I suppose, though I'm ashamed to admit that I have been in fact, watching movies.

There's something to be said about the current quality of movies, which I would describe as shameless. Movies directors these days are all the same thing reused over and over. Kind of like pimps. Only that you have 50 pimps and 4 girls and one really ugly guy pretending to be a girl that they'll all whore out. The saddest part of all is these movie directors(pimps) find it completely okay to whore out the same 4 or 5 films to us over and over and over...and over again. Well actually I just thought of something even sadder, which is that we continue to watch said movies though we're aware that the new movie we're just about to watch is the dismembered bits of the 4 girls ripped to pieces, stomped on, and then sewn together into a new multi-legged monstrosity of a movie which is in roiling agony with every breath, but we watch it because it seems new at first until on closer inspection you see all the stiches and feel the agony the director when through while making this shameless film.

Take underworld for example. I mean sure the first one was good, but then now we have 3. It's almost as if the people who made underworld have a running bet with the rest of the movie industry onto how much they can milk their movie. The procedure for finishing a franchise in this day and age goes something like this:-
Where (cow=movie, and people=producers/directors)
You have two cows.
You get the two cows milked by 300 people.
Later, you hire consultants to tell you why the cow died.
Yes, they literally milk their films to the very point of death, trying to desperately to get every single little cent out of it. Who cares about leaving a good impression? As long as you got as much money as you could, it's all good.

Now, time for the evidence of this behavior. Let's go deconstruct Underworld 3. In case any of you have the blessed mercy of not watching it, this movie basically features a race of vampires, who seemingly have all the powers of an Olympic high jump champion with a thirst for blood crammed into the frame of a person woefully allergic to sunlight. One even begins to wonder how they became the Ultimate Master Race Of The World with their jumping skills. Did they just jump over all the walls and kill the humans while they were sleeping or something? Because the way I look at it, an allergy to sunlight really sucks when you have to rule a race of day-walking people who hate you because you treat them like cattle. But on the other hand, the movie does give a reasonable explanation for the humans not rebelling: They are the stupidest bunch of people who ever lived. It makes me wonder if the vampires marginally better common sense is actually the crux of their super power when people become vampires. I mean there is a large African man who is very strong(stereotype!) who seems content to walk around with leg irons and handcuffs which he broke without even the slightest effort when in danger. One begins to wonder why he even allowed himself to be put in those stupid chains in the first place and walk hundreds of miles in them if he could just break them. Later, it is seen that he is locked in prison with bars that are assumed to be too strong for him to break. Okay, that would explain why he sits in prison. Yet later, he just rips the doors right out of the socket without a second thought. I have come to the conclusion that this large muscular man let himself be captured for fun, because I find no other explanation for how the hell they even keep him jailed for more than 10 minutes.


Next on my list is the vampire mega fortress defenses. Who in the name of god spends their lives being attacked by an enemy that scales the walls in 2 leaps, but decides to do nothing to rectify that fact? I mean if everyday people would come in through your window and rob you, you'd think you would want to board up the window or something. I mean, why bother with walls in the first place? I think the defenses of their home would've been much the same if they were just lying around in an open fields with a canopy over their heads to shield them from the sun.

I rescind my statement that the vampires have an ounce of common sense. What kind of people create guardians and sentinels that can think and feel, that are also stronger than them. I mean werewolves can prance out in the day, transform only when they feel like it, and when they transform they can kill vampires by the dozens. To be completely honest, it's fairly surprising that anyone with even the basest intelligence would make a servant race that would outstrip the master race by miles and expect them to be servile for all of eternity. That would be like creating a person who is more awesome than you in every way, and then asking him to be your butler. Not very smart to say the least.

And honestly, this is all just scratching the surface of how awful this movie is. I mean they've mangled the franchise, and from how awful this move is, I think it's entirely possible to assume that the writers were out of ideas. Well actually their best idea left the filming,(Kate beckinsale in tight leather) and thus were forced to actually try to write a good story for once in their lives. I really think they should just stick to the tight leather outfits. At least that way there's actually something to watch.

Through the tangled mire

A good friend brought this to my attention the other day. We talked about philosophy, we talked about beliefs, and at some point, we even talked about ninja's. Yeah I think that pretty much covers enough to use the term we talked about everything under the sun.

We talked about the potential of failure and the expectations of success.

It's strange that we expect so much of other people. In fact most of the time, others expect more of a person than they would ever believe themselves capable of. Does this mean we are our harshest critics? Or does this mean that people frequently misjudge our capabilities? Personally, I feel it's a combination of both. We will always look upon ourselves in a less than favorable light, and though people's expectations might be correct more often than not, the simple act of trying to convince one of the surety of success, or of their place in the world, or even their place in a university, we slowly crush people with the weight of our expectations and thus negate the very things we believe those around us were capable of. The disparity of what we believe ourselves capable of and the height of what we supposedly are able to reach is what makes the soul weary, it makes us aware of the stars that we now think we can reach, but then think to ourselves that perhaps we simply are not trying enough even when we are simply being over judged by those around us.

Dealing with the disappointment of falling short of what we believe ourselves capable of, is even worse. It is much like walking a difficult path and then stumbling into quicksand....while surrounded by a tiger. It pulls you in, slowly but surely and any hope of escape is of course ruled out by the large animal that has a glean in it's eyes that speak of hunger and an impatience that is most certainly inhuman. It would be so easy to just sink in, it'll require no effort at all, and that sand feels awfully comfortable right now........

But then, what would be the point of walking all that way then? What would be the point of that hard trek all the way here. Perhaps if we hadn't been so careless, we might've saved ourselves the trouble of falling into that trap at the same time. Perhaps if I tried harder I might've avoided all of this. But then, the most important thing in the world wasn't noticing the trap, or taking a harder path to avoid it. The important thing is not to give up. The important thing is to realize that if you fall into a hundred pits, you'll climb out a hundred times. It is important to realize that every single time you climb out, you learn something new. it is more important to be able to dig myself out of despair than it is to be smart enough to avoid it. It is of the utmost importance to realize that anything is better than drowning in the sand. It is important to realize that despair is not an ignoble state. Always remember, that the longer you wallow in the sand, the harder it is to escape.

Just get up and walk away.

But never forget, that no matter how many people you bring on the path with you,
When you fall, no one will help you up. That's something they will judge you for, and something that you cannot be helped with, because you are meant to learn from it.

Some things are meant to be done alone.