Rational Thinking

MOVED! PLEASE VISIT OBSCURE THOUGHTS OF TOMATO

2006-01-11T14:25:00.000-08:00

Hi there..i have decided to revive my old site..at www.obscure-thoughts.blogspot.com ..so feel free to dorp by. thanks

Welcome to the world Christian

2005-11-17T20:33:00.000-08:00

...my nephew is finally born ...2am malaysian time 18/11/05...(2pm 17/11/05 local time). :D I am suddenly the happiest uncle in the world!

The May 13th Incident

2005-11-08T07:31:00.000-08:00

To many of us of this generation, The May 13th Incident seems to be a long lost distant memory. Well, most of us under the age of 30 were not born when the supposedly riot occured. Nor the event was well-publicized in an objective and accountable manner. Most of the description of the May 13th incident came in the form of narration from politicians of that era who they themselves have vested interest in the perceived history. In fact, our naviety would extend to the point that one particular Member of the Parliament (Jerai MP) decided to wave a copy of a memoir regarding the May 13th Incident when he tried to make a point regarding Malay power.

May 13th 1969. It will always intrigued me, and living nearly 35 yrs later means i won't be able to gauge the actual story behind that event. My recent personal experience with government propoganda has led me to believe that the majority of our politicians still use the May 13th as a scare tool in the name of political stability. Most of our affirmative action policies seems from the early years after the May 13th Incident, including the much-hated NEP (DEB) and other social engineering policies.

There were many controversies related to the May 13th Incident. The official story proclaimed that non-Malays opposition parties and PAS, have moved to incite the Malay and taunted its new-found power. There were claims that Chinese have slaughtered Malays and vice versa. One of the more 'interesting' claim i heard was that a soldier and his pregnant wife were brutally murdered in a cinema in Kuala Lumpur. Well, I have no idea how true or untrue such claims are, but that's certainly the storyline we all are familiar with.

The untold story was however the fact that there have been growing dissents and disintegration within the Malaysian's society then. The exit of Singapore from the federation of Malaysia in 1965 had angered many Chinese, who saw their political voting power went from 46% of the population, to merely 33%. Many Malays were also disillustioned with the hardship of their life. We were also not told that in the 1969 election, the Alliance has lost control (or very nearly) of several states including Penang, Perak, Kelantan, Terrenganu, Sarawak and Selangor (including KL). That's nearly half the country. Many new political parties such as DAP & Gerakan gained huge support and were seen as the alternative government option. DAP did really well to win 13 parlimentary and 31 states seats.

There's certainly a lot of untold stories behind this incident. We may have been told the whole lot, or we may have been told what someone think we need to know. Or in fact, we may be told a whole lot of distorted truth (note: distorted truth means the facts are presented in a misleading way).

We as Malaysian may seem to have learn from it,or have we?

PS: i feel like writing this entry after reading several books from 1970s regarding the Incident. I think books written beyond 1970s no longer have the accuracy or credibility to describe what actually happened.

Rational thoughts

2005-09-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's Sept 26 today (or yesterday)...Little i realized, about 3 yrs ago and 4 days ago..22nd Septh 2002 to be exact, I arrived here in Christchurch, with nothing but a large bright green suitcase. I still vividly remember the experience of running across Auckland international and domestic terminal. Not to mention those few first moments of being in a totally foreign country. I remember clearly when Mike the RA (he is still a RA here!) brought us to the local hypermarket (countdown) 9pm at night. Most of us arrived without much supplies. I remember calling my parents that very day, ate my first dining hall dinner, and happily settled down into my quiet spacious room in Alpers (a residential block).

Hmm, fast forward today. 26th Septh 2005...life hasn't changed much. I have of course gained couple of kilogrammes, claimed to learn a few more things regarding civil engineering and economics, and knew a whole bunch of friends here. Life is great..life is going on..but has anything changed since I got here? Am I a different person? I still speak that horrible Malaysian-slang english. My malay & cantonese are just as the same. My mandarin failed to improve despite my efforts to talk to mainland Chinese. I am still poor, and hopefully humble. I still got nothing to show for.

I remember that sometime back in my life, when i am still young and naive, i always tell myself that i want to be a self made millionaire when i am 23. Well, i am 22 approaching 23, and my bank account has less than 10k. With my immediate plans, i don't see myself earning anything for the next 1-3 years. So, does that mean my perspective and aspiration in life change? Do i not yearn for money and materialistic achievement? Have i been nulified by the slow pace of Christchurch, that i actually enjoy Norah Jones's blues and a walk in the park? As my time here in NZ increases, I got a feeling that a part of my original me is gone.

Is it gone? Or have i changed? I still remember some of my life goals and aspiration. But do they apply to me today as they were many years back? Can people change what they want in life? I think I am approaching this state, where multiple personalities and mindsets come into my mind and play with it. I am confused in a moment, and crystal clear in another moment. Occasionaly i know what i am doing and i am really absorbed into it. Sometimes i would just sit around doing nothing, trying to figure what i am doing. AM i lost?

Perhaps...obviously there are no answers to my questions. Writing it out here, just another avenue for me to say out things in my mind that ...i don't have time to discuss with my close ones.

Plus, I am a little depressed of my particular situation at the moment. With projects and exams deadline piling up, i can fall into the pitfall of emotional breakdown. But then i remember once telling someone this: "Life achievement is not about what you achieve in the end. One's greatest achievement is always what he or she can do to lift themselves out of a hole, and achieve what is unexpected of them." Without falling down...what's the meaning of standing up? Without failing, where's the sweetness in victory?

I think I am rambling a little too much. It's getting a little irrational too, which is a paradox, considering my blog is entitled Rational Thinking.

Well..this is my rational world. Thanks for reading.

Mooncake Festival

2005-09-19T01:29:00.000-07:00

Hi,

It's me again. I hope you are diong well. How did your mooncake festival goes? Did you have fun? It is one of those time of the year where you wish you are at home, and with your family or friends right? Guess it's all the same for all of us.

For those of us who are living overseas, mooncake festival, or chinese new year will tend to remind us of home. Remind us of the good ol' days with brother and sisters all still around. If I am not mistaken, one of my fondest memory was of a mooncake festival. This is partially got to do with the fact that my late grandmother and my dad 's birthday are all around this time of the year. How coincidental. In the past, family members would gather and celebrate in a big big way...very colourful, very noisy..and certainly very merry.

Well, I am not sure whether I had a great 'mooncake festival'. I didn't have any mooncakes to shout with. I didn't play lanterns (well, Malaysians got this funny tradition of playing lanterns both in chinese new year n mooncake festival). But what hurts the most is probably when I didn't get to be part of a larger festival. Guess, that's what it means in the first place right? To be in a joyful merry celebration. Festival - according to Webster dictionary - a time or day of feasting or celebration, merrymaking, joyful celebration. Nevertheless, i am glad everyone did had a great time in their own spaces.

Oh well, in that sense, i did had a great time actually, with some close friends. I was working that night. Plus, someone cooked dinner....and that was some feast. As a matter of fact, I was happy most of the time (i think i gave the impression that i wasn't happy in the previous paragraph). So, whether it's a great mooncake festival or not, i guess it doesn't really matter. Retrospectively speaking, I would still do the same thing given other option. Human, unlike other persistent creatures, needs options and choices to keep us happy. Not that we are goign to make those choices, but to have the choice..and the chance. So, boys and girls, cows and elephants, monkeys and zebras...let's us all slow down our busy spin in the superhighway of life, and enjoy some moments in life that doesn't always come by.

Good bye for now. Have a great week ahead. I have another busy week ahead (as usual).

Regards,

ME

What's in a name?

2005-09-14T02:20:00.000-07:00

What's in a name? For roses in any other name would have smelled as sweet.

Ancient people used to be really proud of their names. Warlords have their names craved on the large wooden (or stone) blocks, and placed up high at their forts. People paid good money to have their names listed in the classified, so that some strangers might call them up for sex. Anyway...what's with 21st centuries human being, that we shy away from using our real names?

Yeah, I am referring to blog. and Yup, me too..i don't put my names here...anymore. My opinion is, human is getting too skeptical, too frightened, too cynical. Everything must be treated with some level of fear. Good-natured people who expect everyone else to be as nice as them will only get shit.

GUEST BLOGGER: What's TIME?

2005-08-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

Yup..my first 'guest blogger'. However, i do admit that multidimid only posted this as a comment to my previous entry...however the depth of his/her comments is so profound, i find it imperative to post it here. I hope he/she doesn't mind!

multidimid said...

"For those of us who believe in physics this separation between past, present and future is only an illusion, however,tenacious."--- Albert Einstein

There is a gross misconception & understanding of Past, Present & Future.Your idea of space and time is determined by your neurological structure. The camouflage is so craftily executed and created by the inner self that you must, by necessity, focus your attention on your present physical reality.Time as you experience it is an illusion caused by your own physical senses and so it seems to you that one moment exists and is gone forever.

Understand, everything in the universe exists at ONE TIME simultaneously. The past is seldom what you remember it to be, for you have already rearranged it from the instant of any given event. The past is being constantly recreated by each individual as attitudes and associations change. This is an actual recreation, not a symbolic one. The child is indeed still within the man, but he is not the child that 'was', for even the child within the man constantly changes. Therefore every action in your present affects actions you call past. It is possible to react in the past to an event that has not occurred, and to be influenced by your own future.It is also possible for an individual to react in the past to an event in the future, which in your terms, may never occur.

No event is predestined. Any given event can be changed not only before and during but after its occurrence. The individual is hardly at the mercy of past events, for he changes them constantly. He is hardly at the mercy of future events, for he changes these not only before but after their happening. An individuals future actions are not dependent upon a concrete finished past, for such a past never existed. The past is as real as the future, no more or less. There is a part of you that is NOT locked within physical reality, and that part of you knows that there is only an Eternal Now. The part of you that knows is the whole self, your inner and outer ego (all that you are).

Time

2005-08-10T05:10:00.000-07:00

Time...a funny concept that human civilization still trying to grasp.

Well, i can't understand time myself. I see it more like a man-invented concept to help us to live. Who says that when the sun rises, the day begin or when the sun sets, the day ends? I like to live my live with 2 days cycle. That is, to have one long sleep every two days, and just re-align everything else to that.

Why you might ask? It's because I am running out of time!!!! My time management sucks. My assignments pile up and my deadlines are chasing me. THat's why. On a lighter note, by having a 2 days cycle allows me much more freedom to do whatever, whenever. :P The downside of having 2 days cycle is that you will lose touch with others...your active time will be totally different from your loved ones, from your friends..and from the society.

Scary? well..for the social reason (and also because i am getting old)...i am considering to drop the 2 days cycle..and live a normal human life....aih...my body is aging...

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2005-07-29T00:52:00.000-07:00

Stanford Report, June 14, 2005'
You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle. My third story is about death.When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades.Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you all very much.

Epic Musical Play - The Fiend

2005-07-27T06:36:00.000-07:00

Do you like live performing arts?

Well, last night i went to the local university original musical production, The Fiend , and absolutely fell in love with it. The Fiend is directed and written by my classmate, Rob Tilby (a real funny and friendly guy in reality), and is produced by a whole bunch of dedicated artists, including my colleague, Dave.

I won't go over the storyline, which was an epic by itself. You get your monsters, heroes, tyrant kings, pretty maids, adventures, loser become winner, and everything you can ask for from a musical play. It was a 3 hrs show, and it's amazing how the actors can keep singing so beautifully after 3 hrs, every single night. The storyline also contains some twists along the way to make it interesting and it has not-your-typical-fairy-tale ending too.

There could be some improvements here and there..but hell, this is not a review entry. I just wanted to share the sheer joy of watching something so beautifully produced by such a wonderful bunch of people. Congrats guys. Some might wonder, why bother paying $8 (=$25 ringgit) for an amateur live show when i can watch a good movie for the same price?

Well..that's the thing....live performance art is really special by itself. Being 10 feet away from the actors...i can almost feel the emotions in their actors. Some brilliant ones such as Cassidy Tilby was so convincing ....that it makes nicole kidman amateur. hahahaha. You gotta watch one to feel how it feels.

the demise of Obscure Thoughts of TOmato

2005-07-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Life is too short to spend on purely retrospecting. I have been shying away from bloggin ever since my 'incident' with a particular organization. Well, that incident forced me to move over to this address.

Anyway, my entry today is simply to celebrate the final demise of my previous blog. Blogger finally decides to delete my old blog and assigns that address to another user. Hopefully the new owner would maintain the integrity of www.tomatoinc.blogspot.com . Good bye my beloved blog.

This is Me.

2005-06-12T20:31:00.000-07:00

i recently have some life-changing events happening around me. Some of my own making, some of those beyond me. Nevertheless, as Alfred Tennyson once wrote,

"I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough"

Just to be a pain, and to quote a 'key' writing to my life: The road not taken by Robert Frost :

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

the Birth of Rational Thinking

2005-05-07T18:55:00.000-07:00

It may seems far fetched to suggest this entry as the beginning of Rational Thinking. Nonetheless, observing the recent events around the world would suggest rational thinking is far from over-rated. In many cases, irrationality rules over rationality. Based on the premise of rationality, this blog will be my PRIVATE OPINION outpost.

Many may ask, why bother writing a blog about issues that ain't my problem, especially no one really read the blog. A recent event however shocked me and reminded me why such tiny personal freedom of speech is important to me. Before any of us lose our freedom, we won't realize the importance of it, and we always take freedom of speech for granted. There were quarters who felt uncomfortable with my writings and opinions, and had used legal means to force the closure of my previous blog (which hereby remained UNMENTIONED and UNKNOWN).

I don't hope for recognition nor huge traffic flows like Screenshots or Hustlers' diaries My aspiration for this blog is that it will be a channel of expression for me on issues that i felt passionately about. However, for the reason for protecting myself from being 'legally presecuted again', i hope none of you mention my name (if you know me) in the comments. Let this be a fair and rational forum of healthy discussion.

First stop. To hell with censorship. I will live to tell my stories. :D