Odyssey No.26: Eco-Warriors Forest Rehab Project

Life sucks, period. On second thought, maybe it's just one of those depressions on my mood graph.

Here am I writing away, two and a half months after my last (serious) post. What have I been doing?

*Thinks*

Nothing, really.

It was school I guess, that silly aspiring me, taking up things that shouldn't be mine to concern with in the first place. Big roles, heavy responsibilities, little recognition. But it was good while it lasted, the things I've done in LEO Club.

More of that later, as for now, one big thing that is on my to-blog list is this. SEEDLING COLLECTION AND TREE PLANTING!!!

Boy oh boy this had suffered delays after delays due to procrastination. Hmm... Two months is an awfully bad procrastination that we're talking about. You know, if there's a course called "Fundamentals of Procrastination" I know I'll ace it for sure.

Anyway, I'll be writing about the seedling collection way back in early May, and also a recent tree planting event that happened about a month ago. At least I'm not really procrastinating the latter, in relative terms.



So, now that we're at it, let me show you around what happens in a seedling collection project.


First things first, rally point! This is where the eco-warriors gather every now and then for seedling or tree planting projects - the A&W restaurant in PJ, right under the Taman Jaya LRT station.

Jar... Of course, no seedlings without going deep into a deep secluded area, accessible only by an old "kampung" road. Here we are, around 20 people, in the middle of nowhere in Sabak Bernam, looking for young sprouts of Macaranga species, or locally known as Mahang trees.

These Dutch Lady milks were used to water the trees. Nah just kidding, it's the empty milk cartons that were used to house the seedlings.

With the soil inside of course. These soils are swamp soils, extremely wet but surprisingly clean though.

Teh seedlings! These were the ideal-sized seedlings that we were looking for, about 8-10 centimetres high. Anything higher than that we won't be digging it because it's quite difficult to dig deep enough to extract the seedling without causing shock to the long roots.

That's how you handle a seedling. Dig up a ball shaped soil around the roots, big enough not to expose the roots.

And ye plant them all in the temporary soil, which will be transferred to Eco-Warriors nursery for a certain period to stabilize the growth.

Of course, doesn't seem like a tough job, except for the fact that it's not easy to find a sprout, under the hot sun grazing on your skin, walking in muddy pothole-filled grounds camouflaged by long lalang grasses, with the risk of stepping on snakes. Yeah, other than that, it's not really a tough job. :)

On the big picture, it does look like a very dull place with not much animal activity, and with all the mud swamp all around you would have expected so. But surprisingly, when you do get down and tune yourself to a smaller scale, it's actually quite a vibrant place. Well sadly I didn't have much time to take many photos but here are some microactivities that are going around at the place.

Dead birds, and you have ants scavenging for a furry meal.

Of course, some fungus species.

And the spiders there spin very beautiful webs, and forms huge clusters of them with neighboring spiders. A typical cluster would span about one or two square feet.



The tree planting was a whole lot of new experience.

New faces, new places, common cause. It never gets tiring to meet new people who share the same passion as you do.

Met a woman (I believe her name was Loo Yuen or something) who drove me and Jin Rui to the site. Really had a good time talking to her, with her sharing her life experience, amazing one at that.

And Walter! A dutch computer programmer who came to Malaysia to start his own business, despite being offered a blank cheque by his previous company to keep him in Netherlands. Again, it's amazing, how people make decisions. Imagine being offered a blank cheque by your boss, literally begging you to stay. What would you do?

And Indian with heavy Australian accent, who tried hitting on Jin Rui to get access to college girls LOL.

And the little girl who called me an uncle, who came with her own uncle, whose uncle is so much more older than me whom she called uncle.

And Matthias Gelber, a German environmentalist, 3rdwhale's Greenest Person on Earth 2008, who decided somehow to live in Malaysia, to help this ill-stricken country when almost all hope were lost.

And everyone else whom I forgot. I want to thank you all for coming into my life.

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Didn't capture any pictures in the process of planting trees, hands too messy, you know, of digging. Anyway you'll find this article in interesting read, written by Jin Rui.



So, I guess I'll stop here.

I still have lots of things to share. Lots to write.

Tik-Tok Earth.

Youth '10

LEO club events

MYS events


Sometimes I wonder if I'm procrastinating just because I'm not feeling alive anymore. This. Is. Not. My. Life.

Is it still mine?



Don't know.

Don't care.



Till next time, cheers~

It's been a while now...

Hey guys, I know it's been a while. My apologies to my loyal readers(if any at all) for the prolonged pause of postings.

I was engulfed in a sudden relentless torrent of work that I found myself losing touch with everything else that once defined my life. Guitar? Been a while since I last did finger drills. Piano? I've been playing the same old songs for over a year now. Golf? One practice session a month is my new regular schedule. Badminton? Wait, I don't even know where's my badminton shoes. Same thing applies to reading, it's been almost half a year since I bought a new book to read, how I miss the times when I use to buy at least one book every other weekend! Last but not least, I found myself writing blog posts relatively less this year.

"Nothing lasts forever", I used to think that it sounded cliche, an overused quote. But guess what, it is real, and I'm feeling it now. What a revelation eh?

Well, besides all the nostalgic feelings that I'm having right now, I'm feeling happy too! Why? Because - It's study break week! Of course, that explains why I got the time to write this post right now, without having the guilty feeling of not spending my time on my studies instead. Jolly good it felt if you wanna know how it feels. It's like some sort of spiritual liberation, okay, maybe not, but still... You get the idea.



Now, what do I want to talk about here today? Hmm... I don't know, maybe I'll bring up some random stuffs. 

Ah! Of course, I still have some updates to be posted later on when I finish this post. It starts with Odyssey No.26, about my trip to collect seedlings with Eco Warriors.

Speaking of the Odyssey series, I got some time to read through some of my past posts. And I found out that, my life has changed a lot, 180 degrees in fact, ever since that turning point.

What turning point you asked?

Well, I cannot pinpoint exactly when, but I know it started when my and a few schoolmates of mine decided to organize a prom.

That itself wasn't really how everything started. It started when we decided to organize it together with another group of students from SMK BB Sg.Long. A I met a group of very gung-ho people, doing stuffs that any other teenagers would consider boring, dirty, pointless, and any other un-cool adjectives you could think of. But truth to be told, I found them inspiring, sort of got the feeling of seeing "Gandhi-in-the-making". Then I jumped on the bandwagon, and never looked back.

I owed them a lot, for opening my eyes to the world. But for the sake of not boring the hell out of the readers out there, I'll leave the thanksgiving notes until the end of this year, in my traditional annual thanksgiving post. But to single out the person who had influenced my life the most during that period of time, it had to be Minyi, the "small" but "powderful" cili padi, the fearless(immunity does not apply for animals) leader of our team. How? You'll have to wait until my year end thanksgiving post then :)

(Woi Minyi if you are reading this, must belanja me makan for advertising your name you know :D )


Okay, I think I've written enough nonsense to give me excuse for procrastinating my next blog post LOL! Anyway, next up, seedling collection, Tik Tok Earth @ The Guitar Store, plus some random updates on what I'm up to lately.



Till next time, stay tuned and cheers~

It's earlier than I thought!

.

Organism Designer for Kids v5.31b :
"Hello, do you want another limb for your Sup3R h4xor imba creature? Or to you want a pair of wings to make fly?"

"Organism design confirmed, generating genome, this will take a few minutes."

"Your Sup3R h4xor imba creature's genome is generated, inserting genome into cell. Please proceed to the collection unit to collect your Sup3R h4xor imba creature's embryo."

"Please read the attached instructions on how to provide a suitable medium to cultivate and raise your Sup3R h4xor imba creature. Thank you for using Organism Designer for Kids v5.31b."


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OMG OMG OMG! This is some serious shit that is happening! I had to write this post first because this really overtook the urgency of any other of the materials in my to-blog list.

If you read one of my recent post "Where to, Generation Y?", you'd see that I made a few predictions on what would happen in the future. Of course, that were meant to be casual predictions, not backed up by facts. But it turns out one of them, the Genetic Revolution, seems to be happening, and happening NOW!



Yesterday, Dr. Craig Venter (picture above), founder of the J. Craig Venter Institute, a genomics research organization, had announced that their team of scientist had successfully created the world's first synthetic life! O_O"

They wrote a whole new genome (the genetic informations within a lifeform) in a computer, synthesized the DNA from scratch in the lab by carefully putting together the nucleotides (the basic "letters" of DNA) according to the genomic blueprint they wrote, got a bacteria species to replace their genome with the newly synthesized genome, "booted up" the new genome, and the bacteria species turned into a totally new species with different metabolic life functions.

Now if that sounds like a whole load of jargons to you, take this analogy as an example. Imagine a team of programmers (the scientists) coming together to design a new operating system for computers (writing the new genome). They started by writing and programming the operating software (putting together the DNA). Then they took an existing Microsoft Windows computer (the bacteria species), removed the Windows operating system (removing the existing genome), installed the new operating system (inserting the new synthetic genome), and then booted it up to see if it works (stimulating the genome so that it starts working).

The synthetic bacteria cell had a genome of approximately 1 million base pairs. Apparently given the complexity of the process, the whole research took Dr. Craig Venter and his team 40 million dollars and 15 years to complete. :O

Now I just realized that he gave a talk at TED talks a couple of years back on this research. You can try checking it out below.



Now that this is proven to be successful, he said that the J. Craig Venter Institution would focus on synthesizing lifeforms with practical applications next, probably available by next year. And he highlighted that they will try to tackle the ongoing carbon emission issue by creating bacterias that can capture sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce octane (a hydrocarbon fuel), thus solving the carbon emission and fuel shortage problem in one go. 

The announcement of this feat even got President Obama to take it seriously. He immediately sought advice from his advisors and called for a meeting to be held next week to discuss the implications of this new technology in science. 




Wow, just a mind-blowing WOW is all I can manage. Can you imagine the whole new world that this team of scientists had created? Can you? I can't. But one thing is for sure, they just changed the course of human history. Think about it.

Damn I'm excited. Excited! I'm just so glad that I'm born in this century. 

But I'm feeling sad too, for the fact that people remain ignorant towards the world of science. Remember when Micheal Jackson died, how fast the news spread? Within a single day, the whole world knew about it, and it's not even their business to know, it doesn't affect their life. 

But for this? Nobody knew about it, nobody cared. Did you? 

"Who cares? It's just a bacteria. I'm more concerned about who Justin Bieber or (enter artiste name here) dates."

Yea sadly, that's what majority of the world youth thinks, even though this breakthrough is going to have a major impact on everyone's life in the near future. Yes, I said everyone.

And could you imagine these are the people, your peers, that will be running the world in a decade or two's time? When they don't know what are they going to face?




Okay okay, I think I should stop here. I think I'm still stunned by the news, and I had too little sleep because I was stunned because I saw this news late last night. Okay, stop, zip. Period. Wee~



Till next time, cheers~

Odyssey No.25: Mega Earth Day (We meant business!)

.



w00ts!

Exam is over! Holiday is here! And I finally had some time to blog!


Was quite busy these few days, busy watching movie, busy writing essays for application, busy playing golf, busy getting scorched under the crazy heat of Malaysian sun. to summarize everything, I was busy being busy la. XD



To get to the point. Two weeks ago we attended Mega Earth Day at Kota Damansara Community Forest. Thanks to C.P. we managed to get two booth for the event to do sales, one for 6SOS and one for Taylor's Environmental Club.

So what did we do there?

We made 9 cakes, 50+ muffins, got some drinks, some finger foods, all to be sold over the course of two days. Oh, and I think i have to thank and apologize to my mom, because she took a day off just to bake the cheese cakes, reluctantly, and we didn't manage to sell all of the cheese cake. :X

To be honest, what we did was quite a bit of failure la. But still, at least we learn from experience.


Anyway, there were a lot of interesting stuffs over there. We had a row of booths selling a variety of things, some random, some themed, some messy, some tidy, some nothing at all.

This was us, preparing the booth.

Us deciding what to do with the cakes.


And Taylor's with their booth.

Some how, I still think that they've stolen our idea of selling chocolate fondue XD. Haha just kidding.

They did great, better than I've expected in fact. They were a sporting bunch, was able to make fun of themselves and get people laughing, so that they'll buy their stuffs. Minyi you have a great team there, must really make full use of their talent!

So I didn't really help with the counter, because I "had to study for Chemistry". Study my foot la, can't even concentrate for 10 minutes =.=". So I walked around, took some photos, and watched some parts of the night concert.

So I'll just show you some pictures while a narrate on them, hope you won't mind : )


This were the booths, in preparation stage.

The banner.

Raleigh was there!!! They were going to have night trekking at night, and camping in the forest, and kayaking. Too bad I missed them all. :(

Country Farm Organics selling (yes you've guessed it) organic products :D

Some Malay hawkers selling colorful drinks.

Plastic Man and his trusty sidekick Sandwich Man.

The warm-up performance, Brazilian martial arts.

Anplas Bag was there, selling bags of course.

The beautiful setting sky.



And here be teh lamp post.

Sin Yin and Wah Lung taking a time off.

And so this was the stage where they performed. Sorry but my old camera cannot work properly at night so you'll just have to bear with it : /

Diplomat of Drums gave us an awesome show to start off the night. They had the crowd shaking their booty, literally.

And then we had the choir. Their songs were angelic, almost heavenly :) 

And we had "Malaysia's John Mayer". Okay sorry but I forgot his name =.= . His songs were also nice though, he even composed a song just for this occasion! :O

The multi-purpose pianist for the night, brilliant player! (I think he studied music in Berkeley!)

And a ragtag combination of other great singers. Dayum the woman on the right really can hit high notes LOL! 

AND FINALLY! We had our own legend, Zainal Abidin, who sang the hit song "Hijau" way back in 1991. Check it out if you haven't already heard the song!

And so Zainal came out with style, and led the whole team of performers to sing the song Hijau. It was truly mesmerizing, but I'm kinda disappointed that there were only one pianist who accompanied the tune, I expected a whole band but oh well : /  . Still, thumbs up for the whole night concert!



As for the second day, I was at home, studying Chemistry. The exam was on the next day so I had no choice. Hopefully I aced the paper :(

But I think the second day was much more fun, THEY WENT KAYAKING! Gaahh... Me and my final exams =.="



Still, we did earn quite a bit of money to fund our next events. Not sure what it's gonna be, but I'm sure it'll be pretty awesome!

Next post, Eco Warriors seedling collection trip. Till then, cheers~

Glad you liked it.

With that being said. I should go to study Calculus now.



Mega Earth Day post coming up this weekend!



Till next time, cheers~

Where To, Generation Y?

And the final exams is here!!!

Was too bored studying Chemistry, so I decided to write something.


Anyway, lately I was listening to Gorillaz's latest environmental themed album, Plastic Beach :O... It is a cool album, tons of techno and electronic element though. Kinda gave me a brain stimulation thinking about what the future holds

Here are the album arts, in case you're trying to find it in a CD store :D

Speaking of the future, it's just so exciting and gloomy at the same time isn't it? With all the budding technologies that is coming up, coupled with the rise of environmental issues and ongoing global conflicts, one would think that at this point, it could go either way.

So, what am i doing today? Well, I'm going give you a glimpse of what Plastic Beach gave me, I'm going to do a little prediction on what to expect in the upcoming years, whether we're gonna live that long or not (we possibly could, read on :D ).


Now let's start with a recap on the major "revolutions" that shaped the course of human history shall we?


First, it was the "Hunting and Gathering" revolution. No a big deal, almost every animal hunt or forage for food. But they don't store/hoard foods for future consumption, and it was this little advantage that gave birth to a human tribal lifestyle, making the first humans "humans".

Then came Horticulture and Pastorialism. Horticulture simply means the raising of crops using hand tools, while pastorialism means the domestication of animal. Instead of finding food when they needed it, our ancestors found a way to create a sustainable food source, bringing the food to them instead of the other way round. This of course, saved tons of energy and allowed our ancestors more time to work on other stuffs, which subsequently developed culture.

Third was one of the most defining moments in human history, the Agricultural Revolution. It started off around six to seven thousand years B.C.. Agriculture allowed humans to produce a large surplus of food supply, allowing a burst of human population growth. The need for water to water the crops prompted our ancestors to settle around river banks, which gave birth to the first ancient civilizations. It was not until the 18th century that the Agricultural Revolution peaked. Then came the invention of steam engine, which sparked off the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution changed the nature of jobs in a society. Steam engines were introduced into almost every sector of the economy, especially agriculture, replacing lots of human labor in the process. The focus of the economy shifted from extracting raw materials, to processing raw materials industrially. Not only were we mass-producing finished products, technologies were also improving rapidly, and the average human lifespan increased significantly!

Since the invention of computers, human growth had increased multiple-fold. Computers brought about the Information Revolution. Ladies and gentlemen, this is where we're in the middle of, the rise of information processing, and many refer the people born when computer technology started flourishing as the "Generation X", implying a new chapter in human history. The nature of jobs too was changed, as in the Industrial Revolution, instead of working with real objects, we're now working with abstract information. Service and creativity jobs replaced a lot of labor jobs. This is where almost aspect of human life improved in leaps due to the rapid growth of new technologies.



So where are we heading to at this point of time?


Green Revolution
The rise of Industrial Revolution slowly resulted in human "Oil Addiction". Simply put, we get most of our energy sources from fossil fuel, and as much as we like to use it, it is finally taking its toll on us. Environmental issues are not news, and it's caused by our addiction to fossil fuel as a source of energy. And today, we're at the tipping point where if the problems are left unsolved, we could go down as the generation that failed the human race.

Now I wouldn't be surprised if that happened, given that we're entangled in this messy web of connections between fossil fuel and the current human lifestyle. It would take bold steps for us to change our lifestyles to allow "oil rehabilitation".

But if we do take the first steps, it could pave way for the "Green Revolution", where we seek to reform our methods of obtaining energy to a more sustainable one. I'm predicting this to happen in a few decades, in fact, it could just happen in the next few years.

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New World Order
The world has 194 nations, each with distinct government style. This is a brave prediction LOL, but I'm predicting that within 200 years, the world's nations will finally be united under a single government to form a New World Order.

Now it might seem impossible for it to happen for now, given the differences in view between the different peoples in the world. But think about it, the development of transportation technology had caused globalization, which kind of spawned a global culture.

There are nations which are poor and where the people there do not get enough exposure to the global culture, but given enough time, its growth would catch up and peak. At that moment, the global culture would be diffused into almost every society, and uniting all nations under one government is a more feasible feat, if not a more efficient, way to manage the world's resources.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The Singularity
Given the rate at which the computational powers are growing, it wouldn't be long before computer gets as intelligent as human. The term for which this event is "The Singularity". Science visionaries predicted that this would happen in around 2030.

As exciting as it might sound, it might yet bring a new problem to humankind. Think for example, what if the computers decided that humans are an inferior race and tries to terminate us? Go watch Terminator : /

Androids, human-like robots, would raise yet many issues. How would you distinguish between an android and a human, given that they have the same intelligence, same outer appearance? Would it be okay to marry an android? What about killing one? Do we need android right laws, just because they are as intelligent as we are?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Genetic Revolution
The human genome was finally cracked and published in 2003, opening new doors to the field of genetics.

As to today, humans are already quite adept at manipulating genetic materials. We cloned animals, we modified the genome of crops, we introduced genes to bacterias to mass produce stuffs. It would just be a matter of time before we start tinkering with human genome, isn't it?

The Genetic Revolution, I predict, would happen within 50 years, when our moral understanding catches up with the development of the technology.

Genetic Revolution would see human lifespan increasing dramatically, possibly extending it by 50-100 years or indefinitely. The prospects are promising, new medical technologies spawned from the understanding of genetics could greatly reduce diseases, inherited or contracted.

By breaking moral barriers, we might also see the birth of the first "superhumans", a generation of newborns genetically modified to optimize physical health, which could lead to a split in the evolutionary timeline of human race, where the rich who could afford the technology would be superior to the other humans who couldn't afford the technology.

Cloning too, might also become widespread, though absolutely immoral by today's standard. But moral judgments change with time, cloning might become morally accepted in the future.

The application of genetic engineering is almost limitless, although not all are practical sometimes. Imagine creating a whole new species of "chimaeras"?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Space Colonization
Earth is limited, soon we could run out of resources, or if we can even get that far, run out of spaces to live. Space colonization is just a matter of time, be it on the moon, or mars. It could happen much earlier than we think it will.

But the process of building a livable place will take a long time. For moon, maybe decades from the start of colonization process before we can really live there. For mars, from at least a few centuries to a millenium, due to the need to terraform the whole planet into a sustainable habitat.

In any case, it would be very uneconomical to colonize other planets at least until we start mastering ways to harness earth's resources efficiently.

My prediction? Within 100 years for the moon, 300 years for Mars.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Death of Abrahamic Religions
Now of all the predictions this one is really the boldest one. I'm predicting that the Abrahamic Religions - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, will drop from the "Religion" status to "Cult" status, or at least a "Minority" status, within 3 generation's time from now.

Given that these religions already have a deep root within the current world societies, they would be hard to fade a way , at least not without a fight. But the increasing understanding of the universe has prompt lots of us to question the validity of many of the religious teachings. Such as the question "Is blind faith alone suffice for our life?"

On the contrary, secular movements are picking up momentum. Ever since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, many people started questioning if the traditional religious teachings are still relevant in the current world anymore.

Of course, some sects of the religions adapt, but it is still stigmatized by secular advocates. Some adaptations are more inclined to the current world situation, some straying away. But in any cases, it results many different world views within ONE religion alone, and this will cause the religion to split into smaller ones.

As for the "Death of Religion"? Probably not gonna happen given that it is part of human nature.

While religion will still play a big part in human society, the definition of religion might change in the near future. Instead of being "a sacred institution that provides spiritual relief", it might change into "a socializing institution that provides moral guidance", or something like that.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


Phew. That's all for my post today. Hopefully you understood it LOL!


Till next time, I'll be studying, cheers~

A Conversation with Some Kids

"Come, join us. We can cleanse you off your sins. Oh what? You've never sinned in your life? It's okay, God made sure everyone of you are born a sinner, just so that He can clear your sins and show how great and kind He is."


There I was, sitting there idling. It was break time at the House of Joy, the kids, orphanages, were running around with biscuits in their hand, behaving just like any kid would.

They ran in circles, crawled under the tables, jumped, screamed, with their respective tutors and other kids. I'm sure they don't get to have that much fun usually, when everyone around is just as much depressed as the next kid they see in their small, closed, community.

"They are all Christians here in this house," I heard one of the caretakers said on the other day. I wanted to say something in response, but I just sat where I was, and gave in to a mild smile.

As my mind wandered, one of the kids in the living room beckoned for the other kids to join him at the window. The windows were big transparent planes, so there's little difficulty fitting everyone. Every kid in the room lined up across the windows, watching an unfolding incident somewhere across the highway just outside.

Smoke rose from a block of shops, or possibly some residential area, I wasn't sure as it was blocked by a row moderately high buildings. In any case, the smoke rose rapidly, forming a column in the air, a black column of dusts and soots.

Our initial reaction was that a fire had happened, some building must be burning up right now across the road. You don't get to see black smokes coming out from factories, so i presumed it must be a fire.

A kid asked me what was happening. I told him that the buildings over there are under fire. He saddened, turning over to the windows again. Then he asked again," What about the peoples in the building? Will they die?"

Well, being frank and to the point, I said," They'll die if they cannot manage to escape the building in time."

"Then that means they are dead lo, the smoke getting so large already."

I kept quiet after hearing that, not that there's anything I can say. I watched on, when another kid, a girl, turned and gave respond to the previous kid's comment.

"Don't say stupid things! The Lord Jesus Christ will save them. They will not die!"

I was kind of shocked, not of the sudden response, but I was surprised at how a 7 year-old girl can say such a thing.

Then, casually, I asked the girl," Do you really believe Jesus will save them from the fire?"

"Yes, of course. Why not? He is capable of everything, he'll make sure the peoples come out alive."

I was silenced of course. She was just a kid, what can I say?



Then the previous boy asked me all the sudden," Kor kor, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?"

I said," No, I was not brought up as a Christian."

"Then what religion are you?"

"Well, I don't really have a religion. Why?"

"Then if you don't have religion, why not believe in Jesus?"

Tough question, I thought. For a moment, I was conflicting within myself, because I'm afraid he wouldn't understand my reasoning, as complicated a matter as it is.

I took a deep breath, and said," Because I don't see a reason to. Why do you believe in Jesus then?"

He thought for a moment, clueless, then he gave me a shrug," Because they told me to."

Being just a lower primary school kid, that question was too hard for him to answer, of course. He wouldn't know why believe in Jesus, apart from the fact that he was taught that he MUST! Or bad things would happen to him.

I then asked, prodding further," If you don't know why you believe in something, then why believe it?"

Again, he look stunned, as if giving it a thought for the first time in his life. Then he just shook his head, and gave no answer.

I knew that question was beyond him ability to answer. So I laughed it off and gave him a pat on his head, folded my arms and sat back into the chair, wondering if this is how everyone got into it.



Ignorance in the face of reality?



Till next time, cheers~

I'm just SO proud of Malaysia

I'm feeling a bit of hyped up today. Most probably got that feeling after browsing through the "crap"papers for a while.


Anyway, as you can see, the title suggested it all. I'm feeling particularly proud of Malaysia today.


A big "WHY?", you asked?


Well, because Malaysia LIKES TO DO CHARITY A LOT! 


"Even if it costs the country economical improvements?"


YES!


Aww... You don't believe me?


Take a look at what I saw in the newspaper today then.





Hmm... Wait how did that happen again? 


Oh, ya, silly me, sorry for short-term memory lost. Our Malaysia is VERY GENEROUS, of course that explains it!


Oh by the way Singapore, please thank Malaysia for all the Malaysian talents you got working in your country. If it wasn't for AWESOME Malaysian charity policies, you wouldn't be where you are now.


That's all for this post.


Peace, and...


Till next time, cheers~






p.s.: If you know me well enough, you'll know pretty well this is satirical in nature. Have a nice day! :)

Odyssey Special: 100th!!!

WOO!!! The 100th POST!

To celebrate this in conjunction with my awesome '10 March, I'm going to blog about everything that happened in this 3rd month of the year, all in one post! This shall be a long marathon post :D

Ready?

Here...

We...

Gooooo~!

6th of March, 2010 - COP15 Talk at Annexe Gallery



Now this one was one special experience, because it is the first time I went to Central Market! :O

Went there by our very "reliable" train system, luckily reached the place at 11:30am, where the talk starts at 12:00pm. And so I explored what they so called the "heart" of KL city lor.

The place around there was jam packed, peoples and cars alike. And there are lots of foreigners too, but the hawkers there ah, memper"siasui"kan our image la =.=", kept shouting and bargain the price lol.

After a while of walking around I went on to search for this elusive "Annexe Gallery". I know it's somewhere in(or near) the Central Market, so I went in there, hoping to find a massive hall with chairs laid for the talk.

The art displays in the Market was just so-so only la, dunno why peoples from other countries like to buy those stuffs =.=". Anyway, as I was walking, I realized there is no way there would be a hall in this place, then I walked out, scanning the adjacent buildings for a sign of a possible seminar hall.

As I was walking, I saw another art gallery building just beside the Central Market, named "Annexe" something. Then I had my "eureka" moment :D

All the way in, there are tons of drawing arts being displayed by the street, and I must say they are brilliant stuff, though it's quite dumb the fact that there are at least 10 artists concentrated at that spot, how do you expect them to earn money? : /

Some of the drawings.
And so, I went in and went up the building, by stairs. And I went "huh?!" when I saw a small room with a "Annexe Gallery" label outside. @_@?Well nothing is wrong I suppose, when they named it Annexe Gallery, I guess they meant "gallery" literally lol.

The place was teeming with activities though, as there were an ongoing art exhibition over there. They were selling all sorts of stuff. Shirts, accessories, windchimes, miniature models, dolls, posters, paintings, books, CDs, you-name-its, EVEN RUBBISHES LOL! Yes I'm not lying but I forgot to take photo XD.

I don't know but I think they were selling bells here
Some of the cute paintings.

These miniature houses all looked very real :O

"Me don't know who's Charlie either : / "

The Chinese words read "Chiwawa"

One of the shop displays at the Central Annexe.


Then came the boring part - the talk itself, haha. The speaker was Dr.Myron Shekelle, a field biologist :O



Well, one would wonder why did a biologist speak to us, especially about US policies. Well, turns out he didn't, even though the title suggested so : /

To say that I was disappointed will then be an overstatement, instead he gave us some new insight in what's really happening, from the point of view of a biologist.

Dr. Shekelle was(is still) a tarsier biologist spending most of his time doing research in Borneo, some parts of Indonesia and the Philipines, observing tarsier behaviors. And to be honest, it's nice to hear what a scientist have to say for climate change once in a while, after loads of political bullshit we heard from world leaders. Their opinions mattered more, simply because they knew more about how the nature really works.

In the end it felt more like a biology class haha, but it kinda gave me some ideas on how can a biologist contribute to the environment, which is what I hope to do : /

After the talk, I met up with some of the peoples from Taylor's Environmental Club, or rather known as Minyi's Club lol. They were having a "field trip", kinda funny that it's not what they expected really lol. Ah well...The train back home, much worse than sardin can. Try boarding a Saturday afternoon train, if you haven't tried it, you've not been to Malaysia haha...




15th of March, 2010 - LEO Club Charity Night



This one came a long way, but describing every single detail will take a whole day lol.

For weeks we set up ticket booth to attract students to buy the ticket, well, the response was generally bad, at least most of the time. But we did not got discouraged, instead, we managed to get some local celebrities to help us raise fund with their "starpower".

And we're not even collecting RM10 like my high school used to do, for crummy concerts :(

One of our selling points, Shawn Lee, World's Top Beatboxer here in INTI-UC! *FACEPALM* :O


Anyway, let's take a look at the day by day picture of the "Heart" that we made.

4th of March

5th of March

9th of March (Don't ask why is it sideways)

10th of March

11th of March

12th of March

Morning, 15th of March

Night, 15th of March... TADAA~!


It's almost touching to see the heart shape grow day by day, where people would paste a jigsaw puzzle there everytime they donated money for the charity event. :')

Not to mention S6OS made a name there too!


:D

And without further delay here are some photos for the event.

Publicity Department preparing the stage backdrop.
The window at the backstage during rehearsal night.
The chaotic moments during rehearsal.
And on that day itself I was tasked to lead a bus to Loke Yew Road, to pick up some kids from an orphanage, more of a refugee home for some Myanmar kids. And this is all because I stay (relatively) nearer to KL than most of other students =.=". Went there with Khai, a Myanmar girl who was supposed to be the translator, and it was a total mess when I don't even know the roads in KL LOL! In the end she took charge and led us there. Haha, gotta be one of the stupidest moment in life.

Where we stopped while waiting for the kids. I remember having lunch with Wilson and "Sifu" here hmm...

And so I went back to work as soon as the bus came back to INTI-UC. I was in the backstage preparations department. Hall Masters, they called it.

My name tag, don't play play lol

They got the chairs laid out ready for the audience.

Then still got some impressive light shows some more!

The spotlights

Mic tests before the show.

And then the 8TV crew came and gave the programs department a lil' bit of headache. They were messing around a bit with the program flow and protocol =/ ... Managed to solve it peacefully in the end :D

The backstage getting ready for opening ceremony!

The kids from "I-forgot-which-orphanage" getting ready to perform.

I managed to slip into the second floor for a peek at the view, thanks to Sher Miin :D

Prior to the end, a group of helpers went to the third floor of the back stage to get ready to throw some balloons for the grand finale. It was... not that spectacular as we didn't really have enough balloons haha... But still we had fun throwing the balloons down to the stage

Phew, the whole process of managing the backstage was a tiresome job indeed. But in the end the event was a success! We managed to raise (I think) up to RM9,000 for the orphanages, divided to 4 houses of course.

And there was pandemonium, the organizing committees running around taking photos and celebrating :D

But I can understand la, they spent a large chunk of their time thinking and pondering and wondering what to do with this concert night, in the end it turned out perfect, well, at least we reacted to the problems spontaneously enough to make it perfect :)

I do wish I can be a part of this event again in the near future, hmm...




20th of March - Operation World Water Day!



Quoting Jin," World Water Day shall be 6SOS's debut event!"


Yea, this was 6SOS's first self-organized event, done mainly by Minyi and Jin Rui. This event was decided all too suddenly, and we only had about one week or so to prepare. And so we made the event page on Facebook, sent invitation by the thousands, collected cardboard boxes, used up litres of poster colors, asked almost everyone we know to help out with painting the cardboards, got rejected by KTM and LRT for proposing to have our event there, all within one week. :D

And so I went to Asas Cemerlang Tuition Center (Operation Headquarters XD) to help out with the preparation works for two days before the event.

Here we were painting the boards, creatively, sort of... Do this so rajin, study also not so rajin LOL!

Qin Xian working on the "Toilet Booth" for the planned "World's Longest Toilet Queue" event!

The place was littered with paints and cardboard boxes, messy dou...


On that day itself, which was a Saturday, I met up with Thomas Ng at Kajang KTM station and went on to Serdang station to wait for the others.

I was feeling the "kick" so much I decided to give the "person" a high-five lol.

Then we went on to KL Sentral before switching trains to Bangsar station.

That's where we began our operation.

Look at all the boards we made :D

A news reporter from Sin Chew was there to cover the event, which made the front page!!!

The news reporter interviewing the girls.

And so we had some photo session and meeting before departing officially, to God-knows-where, we did not really have a plan LOL!

Sin Chew getting some photo shots


A group photo of the "Aquarists" of the day.

We boarded the train, wanting to take a stop at every station. But the security guards stopped us from doing that, and so we had a change of plan.

We went down from Pasar Seni station and walked the city by foot!

We got lots of attention, and a mixed reaction LOL. Some people were smiling when they saw us, must've reminded them of their past rebelious childhood haha! Some approached us and praised us for our action. Some took photos of us. Some said some nasty stuffs, like "You go home and save water instead of walking around LAH!"

Well, what did we expect, this IS Malaysia afterall : /

But perhaps the funniest, lamest, oddest, whateverest reaction we've got was from the Petaling Street.

The people there were generally nasty and unpleasant LOL. But there were foreigners there too and they liked what they saw. Well at least we're doing our "Bolehland" a favor by being nature-loving freaks :D

Adrian joined us while we were there and we went on to huddle in the middle of the road there! We shouted and sang LOL! The passerby were having "wtf?!" moments haha... But really have to thank him for lifting the enthusiasm of the group.

Then we went to Central Market, before getting shooed out by the security guards again. It was somehow satisfying to bend(not break! :D ) the law once in a while.

We continued on to Klang River, where Adrian did some cheerleading magic ><"
Of course, I did a propaganda picture of my own.

Well, the event ended there and then.

We regrouped and went to KLCC, wanting to use our "homemade" toilet booth to do the "World's Longest Toilet Queue" event. But ended up a failure when we only have like 8 participants lol, well most of the people went back after a whole morning of walk in KL city, we don't blame them : /

Anyway, our debut event made quite an impact, even though there were critics that said it was not practical. I must said I did agree that it wasn't that practical haha, but in the end it turned out alright. We had publicity, we had peoples who liked what we did, what more can we ask?




22nd of March - LEO Club Health Awareness Week



Health Awareness Week a.k.a. Suck-Your-Blood-Dry Week :P

LEO Club organized a whole week of events related to health care. We had blood donation, medical check-up, seminars and talks, vaccination(I think it was cervical cancer one), and distribution of condoms :O

Well actually there's not much to say about this event haha, as it was sort of normal.

On the first day I went to the counter for my duty and I was just in time for a Sexuality talk by Pink Triangle Foundation, which is an NGO that specializes in sexuality counseling.

It was, all those usual stuffs la LOL. They talked about HIV and AIDS and etc(you know what la...)

And there were quite a lot of people who signed up for blood donation too, too bad I didn't, I was too busy the whole week and had too little sleep. I didn't think I would qualify to donate (NOT AN EXCUSE OK! XD ).




24th of March - Last CHM151 Lab Experiment & Power of 10 Sen Piggybank Collection.

We had our last lab session for chemistry. It was on electrochemistry, and we did electrolysis, almost similar like what we did in high school.

Anyway, it was another fun session at the lab. And especially carefree since there was one set of experiment where we had to wait 15minutes for the result to show, it was on electroplating.

Xi Zhe even went on to electroplate a 20cents coin with copper LOL!

And we took a group photo just before the end of the class! :)

Yay! No more lab reports until the start of the next semester, which is at around the end of May :D

AND! Stact Club started collecting the piggybanks. They got quite a large sum from the donations :O . Take a look at this!

A jaw dropping RM4889.50, all made up of coins, and most of them 10cents. Ain't 10cents just powerful? :)




27th of March - Earth Hour at Sunway Pyramid


Phew! Managed to go to Sunway Pyramid to get a glimpse of the Earth Hour event there.

It was my first time driving there alone and I kinda took the long way there LOL. Anyhow, I reached there in the end, and after 20 minutes of grueling twists and turns in the parking lot, I went to the main entrance where the Earth Hour stage was set up.

The crowd there was quite big, and a lot of them held candles in preparation for the lights to turn off.

And they were throwing out free shirts, too bad I didn't manage to get one :(

Anyway, I made there just in time before they turn off the lights. Five minutes into my arrival, they did a countdown till the lights are off.

And the place turned from this...

To this... (Not much of a difference eh?)

And then a group of percussionists started a performance, which I didn't take photos of and didn't get their name. Ah well...

The little globe spinning there on the stage while the hostess narrates at the event.

And there were some games. The first one being "Dress me up" .

The game was about dressing up one member of the team with some recyclable items such as newspapers, plastic bags, etc...

And the little kid just charmed the crowd and blew the competition away LOL! Damn berpotensi menjadi model wei! XD

The other team, which got pwned by a kid. But they were a sporting bunch also la haha...

Then it was followed by a performance, by I-forgot-her-name from Sunway University College.

So-so la LOL! I've heard better performers : / .

But the audience were mesmerized though, hmm....

And then there was another game session, where Minyi just went up to the stage uninvited XD. Okay la to be fair they did ask for volunteers, that is a way of volunteering also LOL!

It was a game of stacking up Tupperware boxes, see who gets the highest.

There were three groups and they had 3 minutes to assemble the "inflatable" Tupperwares and stack them up.

Minyi's group started slow and ended up being the slowest stacker, but the other groups went so high and it became imbalanced and crumbled. And then they won even though they had only 3-4 stacks LOL!

And we took a photo with the lovely backdrop set up beside the stage.

Like so photogenic only haha!

Whoops, saving my one because I looked terrible with the camera flash on :X

Too bad I had to go back early and miss the Battle of the Bands performances : / . No big deal I guess, maybe they're not worth my time seeing haha.




21st and 28th of March - LEO Mission to House of Joy


This was one of the most tiresome job I had done =.="

LEO Club organized a tutoring mission to two orphanages in March, and I was tasked to go to House of Joy which is located in Puchong.

The first time I went there, it was total chaos. The kids were running everywhere, shouting, screaming, yelling at the top of their lungs. They were pretty much uncontrollable LOL!

And so we were each assigned a kid to teach. And my kid's name was Hew Yeen Chong, an eight-year-old.

To be honest I was glad I'm the luckiest one, because he's the most quiet boy in the whole house! XD

I taught him some peanut maths, I totally forgot what did I learned when I was standard two, so I kinda came up with spontaneous questions for him to solve. He used fingers to count for every question lol, I dunno la but I don't remember using fingers when I was in Standard One... Hmm...

The first session there was total mess, the program flow didn't work at all. I guess we did not expect them to be that "mature" because they kept complaining that the activities were boring/childish LOL!

While we were teaching there was a fire happening across the street. This was just the beginning the smoke went much thicker later on :O


Haha after losing the battle on the first session, we devised another plan to get a hold of them on the next session.

The second time around, we went there with some IQ questions, Mr.Bean videos, and voila~ Charmed and tamed like little babies they were :D

This was me giving them some IQ questions, and giving them candies for correct answers. It works miracles!

This kid was shooting up his arms for every question, and gave the most creative answers EVER!

Here they were, watching Mr.Bean. I planned to let them watch Spongebob initially but I figured out English without subtitles was a bit too hard for them :(

We had tons of fun, of course. (Photo: Jackson Ng)

And read Ultraman stories to kids :D (Photo: Mern Jie)

And drew some childish pictures. (Photo: Dodo Chow)

And some time to camwhore! (Photo: Shi Ning)

I have to admit they did enjoy our company, even though it's more like a babysitting session than tutoring session.

See? It's not everyday they get punching bags like us LOL!

And some more drawings

Well the second session there was much more carefree, as they spent most of the time drawing and watching videos and guessing IQ questions. But at least they were much more cooperative and... Obedient, I would put it :D

Then it was time to go :(

We took lots of group photos which I'm going to share a few.

Teng Heong and Wendy

Michelle

A whole bunch of people

Wendy

And of course a photo of my own with my kid :)

And we left... Aww... I do miss them a little, even though there were a naughty bunch. BUT, another LEO Mission is coming up and also there will be a Children Camp 6 where they will be invited to come. I'm sure I'll see them again very soon!




PHEW! DONE! Just one more day and March shall end. I must admit, I've never lived life this full before. I sure hope it continues to be that way, because it feels AWESOME!

Well, the downside is that I have less time for myself now, but who cares? I don't have much things to do personally anyway, besides playing my guitar of course. :P



That's it for today, looking forward for another great month ahead, just nine more months of awesome-ness to go and this shall be the most fulfilling year of my life :D .

Till next time, cheers~