My beautiful mind

let's do a bit of maths for MR Harold Egbert Camping

2011-05-22T00:05:00.002+01:00

when it comes to making donations to charities, I must admit that I only do it when there is a big disaster like the Japan one, big earthquakes, etc etc. I normally do somewhere between 10 to 20 pounds, which is about 16 to 32 US dollars. I would guess that the amount I donate isn't very much, but it shouldn't be toooo much below average.

so this Camping has received over $120,000,000 worth of donation, a team of people quitting their job, radio station in 46 languages, based on three numbers which he found in the bible after "studying" it for some 17 years. honestly, if you have studied something numerically for 17 years, at least throw a differential equation in there, not just three numbers multiplied together twice...

let's say average donation is 100 dollars (because there's always religious nutters who go big on these things). there are some 1,200,000 (give or take a couple of hundred thousands) people who made a donation for this cause. ONE MILLION OF UNEDUCATED STUPID FOOLS, together can make a real difference to the lives of many who really are in need, decided that the money should be given to an 86-year-old guy to play with.

if I were God, I'd sue him for liable. I love hearing all sorts of rumours, I love to hear how stupid they sound and how unfounded they are, and how people don't think about what they believe to be true. but this is different. this is absolutely morally perverse. the Catholic religious organisation as a whole is the richest organisation in the world, but one can at least argue that regardless of whether what they believe in is true or not, they have done a lot of charitable work around the world (and of course a lot of things they shouldn't do as well). and what has this old guy achieved? absolutely nothing, the only thing I have learnt from it is that there is a vast number of people who satan should be summoned to stop them from spreading their good words. actually I am getting confused whether it should be God or Satan's job to stop these people...

thank god Camping is 86, the sad thing is, we are taught that as long as one believes, one is saved, he is a hell of a believer, and one that I hope isn't saved.

expanded short story part 2

2011-05-04T21:55:00.002+01:00

After I left my planet, I drifted in the universe for years and years, when I discovered Earth through my telescope, it was excitement that I had not felt since I was told that I was accepted in the excitus program! I examined Earth in great details, it's amazing to see that our scientists were correct in predicting that if any living creature we find, they'll be rather like us since it's the only logical way. and it is indescribable how it felt like to see a planet of creatures in action that I only learnt in history books.

I read in books that before the freedom program was fully developed, people had to eat, they did not eat for pleasure, people had to work, they did not work for pleasure, they had to die, they did not die because of the planet management. on Earth, it seems that they did not even have a planet management system! from distance, I can only make out that Earth people are not controlled, there is a great number of Earth people who constantly talk about what is right and what is wrong, what are the laws that people should follow, what freedom is. but the law is one thing, what people do is another. they seem to have a law that killing someone is punishable, but if one wants to kill someone one can just do it! that seems to be what they mean by freedom. how can everyone be free without being controlled? I speed up my vehicle, I imagine myself landing there and really find out what live is like...

the expanded short story part 1

2011-03-30T21:19:00.003+01:00

I considered myself to be one of the lucky ones, when I was told that I had a place in the mass excitus program sponsored by the planet government, even it meant that I had to leave my father and mother, and grand father and grand mother, and many generations before that behind. if I am to be honest, like most of us, they don't mean much any more. but when I discovered Earth, part of me really wants to go back, part of me seems to have instantly destroyed itself...

it was at least 45 generations ago plus the time it took me to get here when the great scientist 2013989 successfully completed his development of what he called the "freedom program." he solved virtually all of the technical difficulties which limit our freedom; no one gets ill naturally any more, no one grows up naturally any more, no one dies naturally any more... I still remember, in my own head, not on my external memory, that almost everyone at the time was happy beyond description, many called our planet the eternal heaven, no one believed that there was any more reason to procreate, sex became purely for love's sake, everyone wanted to simply live there happily forever. but very soon, the mood changed.

no one died naturally, the whole society soon became static, there was simply no change! giving birth was rediscovered, in a society such as ours where freedom was synonymous as life, ironically, giving birth suddenly became irresistable.

the names of people became meaningless, I was given the name Tifaci; but there were in the end too many people who had the same name, and as a result, we were all asigned a number.

what followed, in hinesight, was very predictable. we went through a period of dark age, where people were forced to die after they had their fair share of time on the planet, and I am one of the few who managed to join the excitus program instead and left the planet behind.

achievements

2011-02-20T17:54:00.002Z

I have been following the BBC Human Planet series: http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/humanplanetexplorer/
In short, it is about how creatures of the same species as you and me, survive and find their way of living in what we often call extreme conditions.

It is certainly amazing how those people live - stealing food from lions by pure bluffing, diving 10 meters deept in the ocean hunting for fish without any aid for as long as five minutes with one breath, climbing a 40-meter tall tree to steal much-needed high-nutrition honey from bee hives, etc etc. but equally, if the people from the tree house create an episode of Human planet from their perspective, they will find it equally amazing, and it is indeed amazing, that I, like many others adopting a western way of living, can somehow sit in front of a computer all day and then get bread and milk and chickens and fish and oranges in the evening.

the thing that strikes me most in terms of our different way of live is, as one of the filming crew said, how fullfilling their lives are, despite that they probably live much shorter lives than we do. and I think this has a lot to do with achievements.

Most ordinary people in the west nowadays invest 20 or so years in studying, then they start working, most achieving absolutely nothing and if one of them disappears, it would make absolutely no difference to anything in the world whatsoever. this is why we have to have books, various courses, which tell us how to manage our lives by creating goals and milestones for ourselves in order that we feel we are doing something and achieving something. "in five years time, where do you see yourself?", most managers might say, "to become a director"; most receptionists might say, "to become a shift leader"; and when you become a director, you want to go higher, and most of the timefor most people, what they really mean is to get more money. is there an end to this? not really, there's always more money to be had. so by "achieving" what you have set yourself in five years time, is just to repeat the cycle, it is rather meaningless. let's face it, to really achieve in our world, you have to be saying something like "to solve the energy problem", or "to solve the overfishing problem."

what about the people in the treehouses, or those who live on boats subsistently? they never have to ask themselves where they want to be in five years time, they are happy where they are, they are achieving every single day by hunting and fishing what they need for the next few days, and that's why their lives are fullfilling. there is no such a thing as "in five years time, I want to be catching 200% more fish than I do now every day", since they don't need that much fish, they only need to get what they need for the next few days if not just today.

swine flu vaccine

2011-01-12T18:13:00.002Z

It's heartbreaking to see the mother talking about her three year old daughter who died because of swine flu, and she was not vaccinated because (despite being a young child) she was healthy before. the vaccine is worth a few pounds, and to the mother what it means is that her child isn't worth the government a few pounds to save her.

it is such a dilemma that it really isn't a few pounds, it could be a few million pounds the government has to spend to save the child. if the policy is such that all under five's should be vaccinated regardless they have underlying health problems or not, most of the few-pounds would have been spent on children who wouldn't have got the flu, and those who would get the flu would survive just like any other flu anyway.

a government just has to do what it thinks is best for most people, but who is there to explain to the sad mother all these, who can tell her that her child just isn't worth the money? is this another argument that when things grow too big, it's not good?

The hardest words to say

2011-01-08T20:44:00.002Z

Jack Straw (former home secretary of Britain) was very brave today to publically say that one of the factors that contribute to the recent cases of young Pakastani men hunting for young white girls as easy target for sex is a cultural one. apparently it angered a lot of the Pakastani comunities, and BBC interviewed one of leaders, one of the very first things he said was "it's got nothing to do with Islam, nothing to do with culture." and the rest of what he said is just mumblings that it is not possible to remember.

No one said that it's got anything to do with Islam, but if you insist on drawing attention to Islam whenever an observation is made about anything you somehow feel obliged to reply to, you're going to make matter worse.

jack straw was brave because he said something that he knew is going to make the illogical react, someple say that he has his own political agenda which is why he said what he said, I have no comment on that and I am going to take what he said in its face value, it serves to illustrate a problem.

when any issue becomes sensitive - most of the time either because people just feel very strongly about it in the case of religion, or for historical reasons where huge number of victims are involved such as eugenics - it is impossible to have a sensible and logical debate about it. people hear the word eugenics, before their brain even registers what it is, they shut down, reject it, and incapable of saying why apart from pointing out that Hitler tried and millions were killed. when people are told that religions fundamentally cause conflicts, especially if you're the evangelical kind, they shut down, reject the accusation, this time avoiding any mention of the billions and trillions killed, and again fail to give reasons for why they believe in what they believe.

as a side note, I do think that if genes (the dna that define us physically) and memes (the same thing but mentally) can be talked of in the same way - both work on fittest survive - religions are just a form of eugenics, but they work on a memetic level rather than a genetic level. instead of getting rid of those do not have a certain physical characteristics in the case of eugenics, religions get rid of, those believes that don't have certain characteristics. seeing it this way makes it clear that religions are thousand times worse than eugenics in terms of number of people killed (if that's the way some people like to measure things).

be brave

what makes it sad

2010-08-25T03:33:00.002+01:00

I was in a shopping mall in hong kong with my sister the day before yesterday, there was a big screen showing live a bus in the middle of a road in minilla seeged by a gunman. the gunman let a few people off, mainly elderly, people who were ill and a couple of children... he demanded that he is to have his job with the police back, he was recently made redundant (or fired I'm not sure).

8 hours later, 8 were dead, 7 injured, some critically. the gunman was dead also.

the scale of the tragedy is big, Hong kong just does not experience this kind of things so close to home.

someone said that every single day there are much bigger tragdies happened all around the world, there is just nothing special about this one. indeed when I turned on the uk radio this morning, this incidence was not even mentioned at all, but there was a report on the conflict in congo, where rape tactics are being used again, soldiers/militants are going into villages to rape women in a systematic way, there was a plane crash (or two plane crashes), and a small piece on the flood in pakastan.

there are two things that mmake the bus seege particularly upsetting, one is obviously the connection to Hong Kong and hong kong people, more so I think is the fact that in that 8 hours, so much could have been done to save the HK tourists, but the Philipino special police was incompatent, and also what the philipino government said immediately afterwards was infuriating.

those who survive are always the ones who suffer most, my best wishes to them and hope they will recover soon.

part 10: the language

2010-06-06T22:57:00.002+01:00

a month after the funeral, she feels more settled into her new way of life. she is unhappy as much as she is bored, she has no motivation to do anything. she passes her time walking - sometimes amongest trees, sometimes amongest people - they all seem the same to her.

she walked so far one day that she had to look at a map at the train station to find her way back. on the map, it says "you are here" as if the map was with her talking to her. she looked up and discovered that the name of the train station was not the same as where she was on the map. a woman came over and pointed at the map, smiling, "you are here, not there." Jane could see that the woman was about to start chatting, so she said thanks, and slowly walked off. Only a second later that she realised that she hadn't got her direction yet...

when she walked out of the station she could see puddles on the ground, fortunately no one was carrying umbrella so that it did not look like it was raining. she tried to picture the map in her head and tried to find where the woman was pointing at. "I'm here" she found it amusing, "I'm always here, not there, how can I be."
there was a rainbow hanging from the sky, she looked to the end of the rainbow, further, and further still, "he's there", her long hair flying in the wind, trying to escape her head, "will I ever be?"

can I be honest?

2010-06-06T04:01:00.002+01:00

A very good friend asked me, can I be honest about everything she asked me?

I have to "be honest" here, no, I actually can't! not so much that I will lie about things, but there will inevitably be things that I just don't want to tell her about how I think of her. in fact, this very question is a good enough example.

"why not? if we are good friends why can't you be honest about everything?"

"because there are questions where if I'm totally honest it's bound to make things uneasy."

"like what?"

"like "can you be honest about everything I ask you?""

"well I thought our relationship can be as honest and open as possible..."

"but this "no" to the question already changes perception. if I had said "yes", it will certainly be the real questions that change other perception that I may not necessarily want to change..."

is this a attitude of me towards friends in general or I do wonder, are other people really more honest and open than I am?

learning

2010-05-30T23:11:00.002+01:00

I have recently started playing Go the board game in a Go club in london, I travel there by train, then tube, then it's a short walk to the venue. just about every single time I make the journey there will be people making remarks such as "it's absolutely amazing you can do this when you cannot see...", "how can you memorise the steps you have to take..." etc etc - they are of course referring to walking up and down stairs, going through the tube station.

I think these people, or indeed most people, are misunderstanding what disability as far as being blind is concernned actually means. let me explain by my experience in playing Go.

Go is a highly complicated board game, the playing area is more than 4 times that of Chess (19x19 compared with an 8x8 board), the degree of freedom is quite possibly many thousands times more than Chess. I can certainly see that I have a lot of difficulties in actually playing the game well because it is very hard to keep track of what is going on all over the board. however, many people especially at the beginning experience the same. the most difficult thing for me in playing Go is actually finding the oppotunity to play it, and also the oppotunity to watch other people play in order to improve, let alone all the books, magazines etc that are never available in any accessible format understandably. this is by far the biggest disadvantage to me, because I can only really learn by playing a game myself, I cannot learn from watching other people's games. this is real disability.

every single blind person can walk up and down stairs, and should be able to travel on their own to wherever they need to, or do shopping, or whatever, if they can't they are not just blind they have other problems. but the real disability is really not being able to observe, learning is heavily restricted - that's what people need to understand and if they are kind enough, try to help out with. don't amaze at those who can travel, amaze at those who somehow manage to learn things that are highly restricted to observations.

the potential millionaire story part 2

2010-02-20T17:03:00.002Z

at work, james told everyone that he won the lottery but he said that it'll take time for him to claim the prize. his coleagues were initially of course amazed, but after hearing what the story was about they all laughed.
James was visibly angry. he decided to buy everyone's lunch to prove that he was not joking, he really did win the prize and he will claim it. with that, there were indeed a few silent converts. later on in the afternoon, james was found alone in the kitchen making a cup of coffee, rob took the oppotunity and went in for a chat. James showed him all the evidence he had taken, and told rob again the whole sequence of events that led
him to believe that he had won the prize, and Rob thought to himself "there's nothing to lose!" the two, have instantly become good friends. it was a gamble for rob, a gamble that didn't require any contribution, and it was a great comfort for james, for he had finally, at least so he thought, found someone who believed what he said.

the potential millionaire: part 0 + 1

2010-02-10T17:18:00.002Z

that night, james just couldn't sleep. he laid in bed with his eyes wide open, angry, furious, disappointed. he was angry that no one picked up the phone when he tried to buy the ticket over the phone, he was furious that there was no way for him to purchse a ticket right on the tv screen. he was disappointed, that he knew there was nothing he could do. he closed his eyes, and gave up thinking about it, but he could not. he imagined all sorts of things he'd buy, the circle of friends he would be in, the women, the center of attention, the admiration, the speeches he would make at various occasions, the workless life he would have. he sat up, imagined himself in court fighting for his 11 million pounds jackpot, he would say to the judge he wrote the numbers down before he picked up the phone and he could show the piece of scrap paper, he shouted so loudly that his neighbours must have heard him, he has always been a good law-abiding citizen that anyone knows him will know that he wouldn't lie about this, and he has always been a perfectly normal person he wouldn't invent such a stupid story to get 11 million pounds. "only...only if I had money then I can employ the best lawyer to fight in court for me!"

he got out of bed, it was half past two, everything was very quiet. he took his camera out and like a detective, he fully examined the crime scene and took pictures of all the evidence - the piece of scrap paper, the telephone, the open window, the neighbour's house that can be seen out of the window etc etc.

the story of the potential millionaire. part 0

2010-02-08T20:30:00.002Z

Every saturday, James goes through a routine. he gets up at 8, for no reason other than that the alarm clock has been set that way, he cooks his own breakfast, he sits in his little lounge if the weather is bad to read a newspaper, or he sits in his garden to enjoy it. his house is small but it is situated in such a peaceful area of town that he often leaves the door unlocked unless he is going out for a whole day.

in the afternoon, he spends his time working in a charity shop which he enjoys a lot - the people to talk to, the feeling of practically helping those who are in need and above all, a way of passing time. today is a little different. he has to stay at home because he is expecting an important delivery of his purchase of a top-of-the-range home cinema system yesterday. he waited excitedly, but it never came. the clock strikes 8 and he gave up hope.

he turns on the tele and he saw that the lottery is going to be drawn in 20 minutes. he day-dreams about winning the jackpot, he'll quit his job, he'll buy a new house, he can forget about the home cinema he bought, his life will change, in fact he will literally buy a new life. then he woke up. he picks up the phone and frantically try to buy a ticket but of course, it is too late. when he puts the receiver down, the balls have started rolling. "2" he shouted, number 2 comes up! "38!", ball number 38 comes up! "10, 13 20 49!!" and sure enough, they all have been rolled out.

he jumped up in joy, he just cannot believe his luck. until, he heard the woman saying in the tele that no one has won the jack pot.

the lottery, rather than giving James a chance to become a multi millionaire, has instead set him on a long and rough struggle.

please...journalists....I beg you to stop

2010-01-17T12:44:00.002Z

I know that sometimes you have not much to ask or no one to interview on a sunday, but I beg you to stop asking the christians why God allows a disaster such as that to strike a poor country like Haiti killing so far 50,000 people and many more to come.
I do not know which bishop it was that was interviewed, I can almost hear in his head saying that "well, it's good for them cos now they are all going to heaven.", but of course he can't say that in public. so he instead elaborated on how people have freedom (totally irelevant), and it's up to us how we respond to such disaster (totally irelevant as well) - the question is, bishop, why did god allow such a disaster.

mr journalist, I beg you to just stop questioning them on this, they have a terminal (or shall I say eternal) mental illness called faith, (which most people do have but not as badly affected if they are not religious), one of the symptoms is that they reach conclusions before they have evidence or arguments, they are willing to go to whatever length to stick to their conclusions, sacrificing all other believes, common senses if necessary in order to preserve their eternal conclusions.

disaster and disaster

2010-01-14T19:15:00.002Z

Before I start writing about disasters, I want to say that because of the snow, I have been working from home quite a bit, and yesterday I thoroughly enjoyed watching prime minister questions. it has to be one of my favourite "show." By the way, it was the session where Gorden Brown kept going on about David Cameron's poster.

Haiti is the second poorest country in the west I was told by the news reporter, I'm sure it's THE poorest now. presumably people know this all along - that Haiti is poor and has 200 years of misery, it's not as if there's an earthquake, and all the statisticians and historians work overnight to produce the facts that Haiti is in a bad state. you get my point, people know this all the time. and surely, people know that Haiti is on the Carabian fault line, it's not as if the geologists work over night again to find this out. what I do not get then is this: why wasn't the standard of living improved before disaster strikes? easier said than done. if there's no earthquake, people will say "well there are poor everywhere, even in the USA there are people who are forced out of their home to live on the streets" etc. after an earthquake, a spike of emotions comes, so everyone rushes to donate, and a huge amount of money can be collected. financially speaking, if this huge sum of money and effort was used before the earthquake, to build the structures, I think rescue operation can be much less painful and financially more worthwhile too.

part 8: the envelope

2009-09-16T22:02:00.000+01:00

the postman has been at his job for over a decade, he knows all the little sidestreets of every main road, he knows all the names in all the families in the small town, he knows the Harold who has just passed away, he found the address that looked to match that on the envelope. he held the letter in both his hands and said a prayer. he was very curious as to what the whole letter was, he stared at the window on the envelope, he ran his finger across the seal...to his surprise, it was not sealed.
the postman looked around and saw no one, he hesitated, then he understood. the semetry is not guarded even though what is held here is the most precious to the deceased's families. he could not open the envelope just as he couldn't so disrespectfully disturb the dead by looking into the coffin. little did he know, that this particular coffin not far from where he stood was a little different.

part 7: the first letter

2009-08-31T11:02:00.002+01:00

When the postman saw the address on the back of the envelope, he instinctively thought that it was a prank mail and put it aside. when the letter was laying with the window facing up however, something caught the postman's eyes.
On one side of the envelope it was written:

My dearest Harold
the semetry

which made it look like someone is messing about, but in the window of the envelope, someone seemed to have carelessly put the letter in in such a way that the following writing can be seen:

...ings only come to being when I lookat them, time...

...you only die when I look at you. perhaps you...

the postman was tempted to open the envelope, but in the end, he kept the letter in his pocket, and delivered it later on that day.

part 6: the clock

2009-08-24T21:32:00.004+01:00

In the town where she lives, a river cuts the town into two halves. one of the tourist attractions on the river bank is a dome like structure which has four rings on the edge of the dome. the outermost ring has a male figure placed on it who faces inwards, the second outermost ring has a female figure facing outwards, the two inner most rings have one child each facing towards where they are travelling.
the two children mark the 0 minute of an hour and 0 hour of a day position, where the woman is the mark of the first day of a week, while the male figure marks the first week of the four weeks in a lunar month. the rings are constantly spinning such that the position of the family can be used to indicate the current time and day of week and the phase of the lunar month. the children hold hands once every one hour and 5 minutes, while the couple kisses roughly once every 9 days. the dome is entirely powered by the river. next to the dome there is a table on which instruction is given as to how to convert what is on the dome to the familiar western calendar.
many come in summer to watch the moment when the couple kisses and the children hold hands at the same time against the background of the gently flowing river, and they, were no exception. many summer evenings they spent sitting in the middle of the dome, watching the hour child run pass in front of them time and time again, chatting, laughing, cuddling, kissing...

it was a cool evening, a full moon was hanging from the sky. since it was Wednesday, she knew before she got to the clock that the couple will be kissing. when she reached the dome, the female figure was slowly moving towards the man, they showed no hurry at all as if they knew that they will have their brief but regular romance as long as the river flows.
she walked to the river, and she imagined herself standing in it, her giant hands blocking the water flowing into the dome so that there is a power cut. will the couple then regret not to have hurried? will they charish their moments, however regular they are, a little more?
she looked at the dome again, and by now the couple were kissing, she watched until they moved apart, and she went home.
she remembered someone said to her once that when a tree falls in a forest where no one hears, no sound is made. she said to herself, "this, is the last time they kiss..." it suddenly dawned on her that he has not died! he is only dead when she looks into the web cam, he may still be alive when she is not looking!
with that, she picked up a pen and began to write.

part 5: the poster

2009-08-17T21:12:00.002+01:00

there is a small church right next to the park, a small crowd came out after the sunday service. they all looked generally happy despite the fact that they had to change their plan for barbecue because of the rain.
when they reached the side of the church, someone spotted a poster on the wall. from distance, they could make out two figures, one looked like Jesus, and the other looked like a Greek God of a kind. when the crowd gathered in front of it, they saw jesus setting up a barbecue, and the Greek God pouring down rain for a bunch of kids to enjoy splashing water in a puddle. the congregation stood there wondering, while some took their umbrella out. suddenly, someone from the back shouted, "what a horrible poster!"
he came forward and tare the poster down. to everyone surprise, there was another one underneath it. the second poster looked almost the same as the first, except that the children are now crying, and the charcoal is beginning to burn. one of the children said "you got what you prayed for now have you?"
the man who tore the first poster down was visibly angry. he tore the second one down, and there was a third. he tore it down without looking at it, and finally, there was the bare wall they never paid attention to but familiar with. on the bit where the posters were, it read "tare me down too."
at this, the man punch the wall, and someone next to him shaked his head "that's the church you're punching my friend."
she stood by and saw the whole scene unfolded, she was struck by what has changed in all of those people in just a few minutes. she realised, that what left behind, was not the posters, but the idea, the trick.
she wondered, what was left in her, that was left by him?

part 4: the rain

2009-08-08T22:58:00.002+01:00

she finally turned on the computer to look at the video the next day. she felt surprisingly calm, the pale face, to her eyes, looked like ... the chicken piece. perhaps because of the lack of emotion she felt, she was disappointed.
it was raining outside, she took her umbrella and left the house. it was a quiet sunday afternoon, the kind of days they'd enjoy the tranquility together in the park because no one likes going out in the rain, like the way that peace only comes when the chaos brought about by war is fully realised and everyone is exhausted.
she felt cold, and realised that half of her body was soaked because half of the umbrella is covering an empty space. there was water dripping from her hair: "Water?" she exclaimed. "when did the rain die to become droplets of water?" at that point it was more like a storm. she pictured herself watching a scene in a movie where millions of rain parachuting down, falling to the ground, dying, screaming, trying to hover in the wind, but in the end, all swept down to the river. and the river...as one body, it runs to the sea, the river dies, and all become part of the ocean. and the ocean...always evaporating, ceasing to be part of the ocean, rise up to form clouds. a strange thought appeared in her mind: "if people know that their bodies do nothing but recycle, will they still commit suicide? won't they need to do more, like totally destroying themselves, or ejecting themselves into space, in order to escape the horrible cycle?"

part 3 (e): The Camera

2009-07-19T19:23:00.002+01:00

when she was back in her flat, she was exhausted, she was not in the mood for food but she went to the fridge. the images of the dead came to live when she saw the piece of chicken breast in the box. at this point, she began to consciously realise that she really was a little tromitised after the visit. she was absolutel overwhelmed emotionally, as if she was the midwife who had also given birth. she fell asleep on the sofa...
she felt hot,, dry heat, there was a burning smell and she could see smoke coming out of the kitchen. she struggled to get up because her hands were tied, she screamed for help...
when she finally woke up, she ran to the kitchen and saw that the fridge door was left opened, no smoke, nothing was on fire, she was relieved. the chicken breast caught her eyes, she touched it with her hand but she didn't feel anything. her hand was numb from how she slept. she thought to herself, "my hand is...dead?"
she took the chicken out of the fridge and closed the door. the box stated that the chicken breast was produced 4 days ago, she took it out of the box. the smooth, pale, moist surface of the chicken horrified her. she imagined herself to be a maggot, eatting away the chicken breast. it was revolting to think of maggots rotting away flesh, so much so that she almost sick with an empty stomach. but the more she thought about herself and the chicken, maggots and the body, the blurer the difference becomes - she really is just like a maggot feeding off some food. she put the piece of chicken in a box and had some pieces of bread instead. she wanted to turn on the computer, but she had seen enough that night.

part 2: the box

2009-07-10T04:42:00.001+01:00

she dreamt about him last night, his smooth, clean-shaven face touching hers, she put her fingers through his hair and to her horror, his hair just came off.
on the same day after work, she went to the semetry. she sat in front of the tomb stone, and turned on her computer.
a few weeks ago, her aunt gave birth to her first child, she remembered watching her aunt when she was about to go to labour. she asked herself "perhaps this's how she felt?"
she turned on the camera remotely from her computer, she stared at the screen, she imagined herself to be a midwife...... finally, the head came into view. "push!" she exclaimed, wanting the whole body to come out. soon, she came back to the reality that the camera was placed on his chest.

part one, the coffin

2009-07-05T03:22:00.002+01:00

finally, the time has come when the coffin has to be closed. He lays motionlessly, expressionlessly inside, while everyone in the room gathers to see him for the last time.
Jane recalled her 17 years old birthday party which happened just a week ago, the roses are replaced with lilleys, the candles are turned into incense. She looked at him intensely trying to comprehend what it means to be seeing him the last time. a rotten corpse which she saw on tv some time ago appeared in her mind, it made her hair stand on end. Then she remembered the cryogenic program she watched, cant that preserve his body so that she can see him again and again? Someone murmured a prayer and asked everyone to look away, and proceeded to close the coffin. She screamed, '
'no!' she dashed forward and placed the little box she prepared in the coffin, and she could no longer hold her tears.

friday joke

2009-07-03T21:44:00.000+01:00

Last month a world-wide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was:-
"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a huge failure because of the following:

In Eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant. In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant. In Africa they didn't know what "food" meant. In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant. In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant. In South America they didn't know what "please" meant. In the US they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant.

And Finally...........................

In Australia they hung up because they can't understand an Indian accent.

Yan's speaking from top of his head, bottom of his heart

2009-06-30T14:34:00.002+01:00

this is my theory of human nature, businesses which are successful are the ones capable of capitalising on various aspects of the theory regardless of the nature of the business.
in fact, there are only two aspects of human nature that can be capitalised on:

Competitiveness
Nosiness

the more competitive you are, the more nosy you are too, since you need to find out how much more other people are making, how much faster the others can run, how much sexier others' partners are etc in order to be able to compare.

however, nosy people are not necessarily competitive, therefore it is possible to capture just nosiness and be successful.

the way to tell whether a nosy person is competitive or not is by examining the things they are nosy about, competitive people are nosy about things that are measurable such as wages, speed, and more complicated properties which do not have absolute values but have certain established norms among a culture such as beauty.

those who are nosy but not competitive tend to be more interested in, or are not picky on what they are nosy about, they will be satisfied to know whether you like orange juice or apple juice, orange juice with bits or without, a cat-person or a dog-person etc.

facebook can satisfy all of the nosy people, but it is not capable of capitalising on people's competitiveness.

to create a site that will both capture people's nosiness and competitiveness is therefore my goal:)

If I do leave the UK, these are the things I will miss...

2009-05-06T20:44:00.002+01:00

I've just finished dinner, sitting down and about to continue building my web site. but then all of a suddden I feel like writing this.
I will be at risk of losing my job next monday officially, I will have to reapply (to a different post). of course there's a chance that I won't get a job at all at the end of all this, and that will mean not only losing my job, but losing my right to stay in the UK as well after ten years of studying and working here.
without ordering these in any way, I think I'll miss a lot of these if I have to go back to Hong Kong:
1. BLT, or just the expectation of having BLT in any sandwich shop, anywhere that sells sandwiches at all. also smook salmon and cream cheese.
2. travelling on trains, not the delay, not the price, but I actually quite like travelling on trains sometimes, chatting to random nice people and all that.
3. having my own place, no matter how small my room is, having to share the bathroom, kitchen etc, I have my own place and I can shut the door and talk to no one if I feel like it.
4. the occasional sunshine, which makes it precious. the summer chirping birds (which we don't really have in hong kong unless you go to the mountains to look for them). the rain, which is fun to get annoyed with.
5. the minority of people who have studied and are actually civilised and educated, their endless stimulating conversations, their dreams, their ideals, their political thinking.
6. the bbc, watching news 24 online, iplayer. listening to radio 4, the today program every single morning, john humphrey's questioning of politicians. the comedies at 6:30 in the evening. the satire, endless documentaries, countless stories.
7. the various accent from various part of the UK.
8. this may sound strange, but some of the food:) the occasional dose of fish and chips, and nice rare piece of steak, lamb, the big portabello mushroom, all kinds of starter, dessert, all these just taste and feel different to have in hong kong. and curry, the weird chinese food, eatting it while thinking about how they should taste like. dim sum, which I don't tend to have with friends in hong kong.
9. shopping online. it's not big in hong kong because hong kong is too small.
10. being close to europe, the holidays, the european languages. absolutely endless fun. the history, the complexity of it, the development of ideas. travelling to places knowing that great events or people have happened there which affected the whole world.
11. random cats on the streets, love cats. girlfriend and I always play with them whenever we see them.
12. girlfriend. and a lot of people, I am not going to name any of them.
*sigh*

punishing a machine gun

2009-03-15T08:52:00.004Z

Thursday frontpages had a lot of coverage on the Luton protest to the regiment that just came back from Iraq. if you look carefully at the protest, there is only one thing that essentially differentiate that protest from a lot of the others that had gone on - the fact that these are muslims protesting. forget about the placards and shouting of "butchers, war criminals, murderers" etc, I do not believe that these guys invented the usage of these words to describe the people - whether they be politicians or soldiers - who are involved in this war.
what made this protest to the head line, apparently, is that it generated divide between the british and the muslim comunity, because the way the protest was conducted was "offensive."
what was the war for? why did the soldiers go to iraq? in the past, the public sees the soldiers as brave and glorious after a war because they have defended their country, they sacrifice their life for their country, or sometimes the soldiers had conquered other parts of the world and the public sees it as ligitimate. in the current case, none of these applies. the war on iraq is not a glory, it's a shame on the countries involved, it is illigitimate. above all, the war has been offensive to the muslims everywere.
offensive, firstly because the british (I dare not to say aout the general public but at least the government) is in effect discriminating muslims, my previous housemate was in fact a subject of that discrimination - he was arrested because he downloaded materials from the american government web site on al qaida for research in university, he was detained for over 20 days, interogated about the cartoons he drew, books he read etc and of course nothing came out of it. who has generated the divide between the british and the muslim comunity?
secondly, people fail to understand that (correct me if I'm wrong), muslims really do see their remote people as brothers. if your brothers are killed, will you go call the guys who killed them murderers? I'm sure that the british soldiers tried their best to avoid killing civilians but the fact is that they did. and since the war is illigitimate in the first place, accidental killing of civilians is just unjustifiable.

there is one aspect that the protest should have been done better however, which is that the protest should really be directed more tot eh politicians, not to the soldiers. after all, you do not punnish a machine gun after it has been used to kill someone. you punish the person who used the machine gun. soldiers are like machines n a way, but they are of course also individuals with feelings.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-03-09T18:55:00.003Z

I watched the film on saturday, it's quite a nice movie but I find the film a bit strange - I mean the setting and the plot.
people watch the show "Who wants to be a millionaire" presumably because they find it exciting even though it is the contenstent not themselves on the show, there's a great deal of suspense, there is a fair amount of twist because one can potentially lose so much after winning so much. it's fun to watch people being too greedy, it's great to sit at home and laugh at other's misery or to utter in a jealous tone "I know all of those answers too but I wouldn't be picked to be on the show because they know that I will get all the money."
In slumdog millionaire however, the very title tells you that he is going to get every single question right! even when Latika cannot tell him the answer right at the end, he will for sure get it right anyway. you know also that the police is going to release him so that he can get on to the last question, you know that he is going to meet up with latika in the train station as well (whenever there's the line "I'll wait for you at a certain time at the train station until you come", you know for sure that the guy and the girl will meet...
all in all there's just no twist in the film...which is just strange for an oscar film.

capital punishment

2009-03-05T08:38:00.003Z

On the BBC Today program this morning, it said that last year there were some 65 cases of people after being released from prison reoffended murder or rape. I don't know what the total number of murder and rape convicts there are each year roughly, but I imagine this 65 is a small percentage. some people then talked of having capital punishment back in place because these reoffenders just need to be stopped and the system is not working (as in rehabilitation is not working).
After learning much about the argument for abolishing capital punishment, and some of the injustices carried out in the USA because a dead person can never really get his life back even though he is subsequently proved to be not guilty, I think it is right to give even the convicted a chance just in case the jury, the judges, the experts who provide the evidence, made mistakes (and of course they do because they are just like us).
however, I wonder whether any research has been done on a system in which capital punishment cannot be applied on first conviction, but it can be on re-offenders?

sleepless night reading

2009-02-07T17:01:00.002Z

I couldn't sleep last night, so I naturally went online to kill time. I went on facebook and almost for the time time I found myself reading my friends' notes...over three pages of them. it was very interesting I have to say.
there was the usual comments on current affairs, political stuff, there were a couple of poems, there was actually no boring pieces like "I had two eggs and a sausage for breakfast, the tomato squirted into my friend's face when I stabbed it with my fork......". the most recurring theme, at least at the time of reading, is around telling the world about yourself. I found two categories, one is "answer these questions TRUTHFULLY", and the other is "25 random things about you that others might not know". I suppose what makes these nice to read is that they help make the connection between friends, you begin to realise that there is more in common between yourself and the friend. or, you learn more about your friend so that you have a much better profile of what he/she is like, which boils down to gaining a greater understanding of the friendship.
well I like reading philosophy or theoretical stuff, I very rarely read a fiction. I love knowing about development of ideas etc. but still, 3 o'clock in the morning there's just nothing better than reading what my friends are like! on top of that, surely profiling someone isn't really easy, deducing what their character is like from a few facts is just not simple yet I guess we all enjoy doing it, unlike deducing say facts from philosophical or mathematical theories which only a few of us like to do. I reccon that we are simply soooo good at profiling and understanding people that we manage to find so much satisfaction in processing it so that we don't mind doing that kind of tasks even 3 o'clock AM.

fairy tales original

2009-02-05T15:00:00.003Z

I just want to share this. "in our time" on radio 4 this morning was talking about the origin of the popular fairy tales, they were collected by the Grimm brothers. I have found an archive online which has quite a few of the stories.

they are not lovely happy stories as we know them today, most are quite horrible and cruel though with a somewhat happy ending.
"enjoy"!

conclusion

2009-01-18T18:46:00.003Z

more than 1300 dead, more have not actually been identified because they were simply burried in rubble. buildings destroyed, infrastructure destroyed, Gaza is simply not functioning. these 1300 and more people are not individuals, they have fathers, they have mothers, they have sons, daughters, cousins, wives, husbands and so on. the buildings are not just rooms, they are people's houses, their home. all these are gone, and what the european leaders are saying to the people left behind is basically this:

there is anguish, there are tears, but just don't take revenge, and there will be peace. however, if there are signs of revenge, we will, just like what we have been doing, keep a blind eye on the dogs. the solution for lasting peace is simple, israel will have all the arms they want, you palestinians will have none so that it's just not possible to have a war, just invasions, blockade etc that's all.

isn't this amazing? presumably all these leaders are clever people and they believe in these? or rather, they blatantly don't believe in these, they are just so good at lieing. forget about all these for now, what has israel actually achieved?

in israel's words, they have achieved all their goals, which were never defined. Hamas still has the capability to fire rockets, more are probably going to join hamas, it's going to take another 100/200/400 years before history makes this event fade away if ever, which means that the anger is going to linger for as long as this event is still in people's memory. charities are going to go in, lots of money willl be spent to rebuild the infrastructure that the bombs destroyed, the homes that were destroyed. lots of people will also have to go in, to help look after the children who have become orphens. the biggest thing israel has achieved, though, has to be the destruction of any sign of peace.

can I find a CHARATY that accepts donation for the destruction of a large part of israel? that might actually be more effective than sending money and people in to rebuild again and again. after all, curing the disease is better than the symtoms.

the lesson is this. if you want to kill, occupy or to do any such things, provoke your enemy for the slightest attack, then kill, not just one or two, but in thousands, and their families as well.

funny music

2009-01-13T19:27:00.003Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPMKH95M1M
Remember that some time ago I wrote a little post about what makes it the case that one can make humour from speech, from visual elements, but hardly anything else such as taste or sound. well thanks to Caz this piece is very close.
these two guys cleverly mix pieces of music that you wouldn't normally associate with one another, which creates a kind of irony. the ending is particularly humourous because they takes just about all the different kinds of endings from classical music and make you think that the music is going to end but it never does.

THAT prison

2009-01-11T22:20:00.002Z

If everything works out, after a person commited a crime, he goes to court, he is convicted, he goes to jail regretting what he has done, and he comes out of jail. at that point it's up to the society and the system to keep him away from reoffending, from perhaps his old friends etc.

Obama is going to be the president very soon, in nine days I believe. one of his first priorities is to shut down Guantanamo bay. he mentioned that there might be very dangerous people in there that haven't been tried, and that needs to be taken care of and the process isn't that easy.

the process could actually be very easy, only if the people in there are really very dangerous and all of them have commited evil crime that made them deserve what they have endured. because, since they have all commited serious crime they will be tried publically, then there will simply be a transfer for all those prisoners from Guantanamo to somewhere else. if this is the logic, there actually isn't much point in shutting the place down.
what is going to take a long time, and what makes the process long and difficult, is that some of the people in Guantanamo are simply not dangerous at all, and they are perfectly normal citizens of another countries who have been caught by the police for exchange of money etc. firstly, if these people were not very dangerous before, after being subjected to such crime as torture in guantanamo, they become very dangerous both perhaps militarily and public-relationally. militarily because if they are ever sent back to their own countries, they are full of resentment, they spread their stories, they have to start looking for jobs, money or something to support them where the world has changed a lot compared with what they knew; they become the most eager to take revenge on what they have suffered.
pr wise, the ones who are proved to have done nothing wrong but have subjected to torture are going to tell their stories, I believe that many many stories will be revealed if these people really are going to be released, and this of course is an even bigger problem for the US than the military one.
given what we know about American policies, I am highly skeptical that they will be happy to deliver this what is to them a painful justice.
if Obama is going to prove me wrong, I will be delighted.

Fuck Israel, fuck the us government

2009-01-09T20:30:00.003Z

people who know me know that I don't really swear, but when I was watching the news I just couldn't help it. I did something I probably shouldn't do: I googled "fuck israel".

14 voted yes, the US vetoed the resolution to call Israel to stop the offensive otherwise known as massacre. there are still Israel spokenspeople who try to turn the whole thing around, and claim that they are the victims. "1 million people are in shelters, 10,000 rockets are landing on israel" said one, this is not even true. he continued, "this is why we have to fight back". that was the prompt for googling "fuck israel".
the result?
nothing official needless to say, lots of blogs though. top few have comments expressing their anger and frustration as well, some call for the arab leaders to get up and fight and call the massacre the hummiliation that cannot be ignored. there are actually a couple of americans too, wishing that Obama will be in office sooner and hope that there will be a change in US foreign policy. one said "the US government is sadly controlled by ziaenist pigs, which is why the US is not doing anything to Israel".
some reccon that this conflict will damage Israel quite a bit in the long term, I have no doubt that this will apply in a reputational sense and moral sense, but I also hope that it'll be the same in a physical way too. there has to be a physical power balance in the middle east, there has to be a hard lesson for Israel physically.

I will keep this short

2009-01-06T20:45:00.002Z

it really does make me sick with anger when I watch the news nowadays, how can people tell such outragous lies, to themselves and to others, kill without fear of regret, order to kill without feeling shameful, how can we let people live just so that they live a little bit longer before they die...
I have heard people who are totally ignorant of the history of middle-east (not that I'm an expert but I have tried to understand the key events) saying how much sympathy they have for israel, that israel is surounded by so many "extremist" organisation and it has to "defend" itself. I don't blame them for having such a sympathy, I only blame them for not trying to understand the situation before making such a judgement. I think I have written why there has to be quotation marks around extremist before, and possibly why there has to be quotes around defend as well so I'm not going to write about that again.
but please just think about what people say before judging whether it's propaganda
or real. "we have to fight BECAUSE rockets are being fired into our country." israel is not stupid, she knows that by destroying gaza, by killing 23 out of a 25-people family, by occupying territories that do not belong to yourself will only initiate hatred, making the 2 survivors having no goal in life but revenge (totally understanble, even in the form of suicide bombing). if israel really is trying to stop the rockets, it has to fight a bundle of ideologies, not an army. the gazans are poor, homeless, suffering because of the israeli blockade, which is just some of the fuel to the extremist ideologies. it is very telling when an so called "extremist" organisation managed to win a one person one vote democratic election. it says a lot about the mood of the people who vote, how they feel etc.
"we have to fight UNTIL the rockets stop." what do you actually expect? when I get stabbed, tortured shot at, starved, my family being murdered, I am suuposed to be godly and turn round to let you hit the other side of me as well? this is one of the worst justification for war I have heard. besides, the earlier ceasefire which lasted for almost six months was broken by israel, not Hamas, and israel was the sole benefitor from the ceasefire, while gaza was kept blockaded, gazans kept suffering.
last one: this has been stuck in my head every time I hear that woman speak (defense minister of israel). "food is filled in wearhouses in gaza right to the top, there's no humanitarian crisis". what can I say. perhaps israelis really are stupid. it just expects people to just nod.
history has been full of wars, ownership of territories shift, if everyone tries to claim the land as far as they remember the world will be in a big disaster. people who advocate that israel sould be wiped off the map are quite wrong, but israel does have to respect the people who used to live on the territories it has occupied if it wants a lasting country. it can't just bully with a dog behind it, and of course bullying has to be stopped.

feeling a bit sad

2008-12-23T22:14:00.002Z

It's almost Christmas and I probably should write about something a bit happier, but I suddenly feel a bit sad about business and work. I'll use my favourite analogy again: the body
the body works amazingly well with so many different parts and organs because there is a high level of division of labour, each organ is only good at doing one thing and nothing else. in fact this is not amazing, sometimes it is even detrimental since if the kidneys fail, or the heart fails, or the brain fails, or the stomach fails, then the whole body collapses since no other organ is able to replace them. big companies are better at this in this sense, people in a department can be replaced - they might not do a good job but the company will still function. however, the amazing thing is how all the organs work together.
there is absolutely no selfish interest for each organ, the kidney wouldn't boast its performance by pretending that it cleans the blood more than it did and thereby gaining more oxygen or whatever currency the body works in; the eyes wouldn't claim to be able to see further and clearer than they can so that the brain interprets signals from the eyes more than it deserves, likewise the ears wouldn't compete with the eyes and try to get a bigger share of sensory input to the brain. what the sensory organs do is that they give the best and accurate information they have to the brain so that the most well-informed decision can be made about what to do in any situation.
big companies are different: there is a single currency which is pure money, departments often compete with each other so that each makes sure that their department has the biggest share of fund possible. this problem occurs most acutely when two or more departments are having similar functions, or have similar goals. of course, the goal, or the justification of each department's existence, is generating money for the company. therefore, each department, to some degree, compete, and sometimes they do what the eyes and ears in our body do not do, namely they have to present information that are not entirely true, or they give part of the full picture, in order that they do not lose out in the competition. this necessarily leads to misjudgement and misinformation when the company as a whole needs to make any decision.
what I feel people do not understand thorughly is that giving out wrong information does not just hurt a company, but what it tends to do is that it makes a department look very good short term, but in the end, there wijll be no substance to support the expansion, and therefore the department suffers more than it deserves at a later date. and this is sad.

an imprisonned man

2008-12-20T00:23:00.003Z

Hannah stared at the brick wall, as if it was a mirror on which she could find out how she looked before leaving. she turned, there was another wall, she turned again, and yet there was another, and she turned once more, and there was yet another... gradually, she began to realise that there was no mirror in front of her, she could not see the present reflection, but a film was unfolding about her past.
There was James, sat beside him was a beautiful young woman. they looked at each other lovingly, they whispered even though no one else was in the room, he hugged her tightly as if they have not met for centuries, they took off each other's clothes as if the young woman was Hannah. the next thing that Hannah saw, she was standing on the edge of a boat, there was a hand reaching out from the murky water to desperately trying to hold on to anything. she let out a cry and hit it with so much force that the boat shook, and the bucket of miserable fish they caught earlier toppled into the sea. some of the fish sank, the rest danced away with so much joy that made Hannah smile.
the guard came and found her staring at the blank wall, he led her to the gate, and all of a sudden found the quiet and always-thinking prisoner intensely intriguing. he did not know what she had done to land in prison, nor could he have guessed at all given such a quiet, seemingly well-mannered woman.
"Do you ... regret?" he asked hesitantly as if some evil might come out of her to strike on his question. she spotted a rather pretty beatle in front of her foot, almost out of instinct, she held her leg high and hammered the beatle. that, was the biggest negative answer the guard has ever seen.

sheep and lemonade

2008-12-03T21:59:00.002Z

In the middle of the desert, in the middle of the day
there was a wealthy shepherd, with his sheep and his lemonade
the lemonade was too hot, but the sheep thought not
the sheep were busy, and the shepherd was dizzy
a gust of wind came, and everything was lost.

hungry

2008-11-05T22:15:00.003Z

There are so many things that are worth writing about these days, and they are all pretty hard core stuff. so I have chosen a quick and silly one instead while doing my ... pasta:)

tomato, tomato! I think you're a hero!
you save my pasta from being dull and horrible.
rumble, rumble! my tummy bellows,
I cannot wait to put some pasta on the stove.
- yan

software cracks

2008-11-02T12:53:00.003Z

recently, I've noticed that a few cracks for assistive software for the blind have appreared. these include screenreaders for computer, as well as screenreaders for the phone.
a lot of comments are posted with the cracks, they all roughly amount to saying thanks to the author who makes it possible for their blind friends to gain access to a normal computer or phone. to put it in context, the most popular screenreader Jaws by freedom scientific, is about 3 times more expensive than the pc I'm using, the screenreader for phone, is generally the same price as the phone (or, since most phones come free nowadays with a contract, the screenreader is 250 gbp roughly for reference).
this means that a normal person just wouldn't be able to afford these things unless the government, or some charities, or the company he works for is willing to pay for the software (and of course, one needs a "good reason" to apply for these funding.
I join those who prais the people who provide the cracks, because it's grossly wrong that the software providers deliberately cash on government and charity funding.
the opensource comunity has started doing something about it which deserve a big applaude as well, noticeably NVDA which is now very usable and can decently replace something that costs three times the price of a computer.

toasty (my inspiration at lunch)

2008-10-08T22:03:00.003+01:00

"would you like your usual cheese and ham toasty today?"

"I hate that toasty..."

"hmm? what would you like instead?"

"I'll have a ham and cheese toasty."

"aren't they the same?"

"one is cheese and ham, one is ham and cheese."

"I'll do you one of each, and if you can tell the difference you don't have to pay."

"if I can't?"

"you pay for both."

...

"which is which?"

"both are cheese and ham, I don't want either of them."

Where's justice?

2008-09-25T20:01:00.003+01:00

If I hate someone, I would make them suffer, I won't kill them. I didn't come up with that, Jesus has a much more elaborate account of how to go about doing it with eternal suffering as opposed to killing the soul.
a clergyman today has been sentenced to 3.5 years in jail, because he keeps photos of children being raped, tortured, being naked etc. 57,000 of them, over the course of 30 years. he buys them, he downloads them, he looks for them, he creates them. if it was not the case that there are people of this kind, those thousands of children probably wouldnt have suffered.
yesterday, a woman was sentenced for 15 years in jail because she drowned her daughter, because she could not accept her disability. I don't know why she cannot accept the daughter's disability, but clearly the mum is not getting the right support, she has some huge psychological bariers.
where's justice then? we know that suffering is much worse than death, the ClergyMonkey directly inflicts an inmeasurable amount of suffering, whereas the mother killed a life. furthermore, both of them have huge psychological problems, the mother's problem with the child helps us understand why she committed such a crime in such a way that we can make sense of the crime. the monkey on the other hand, is just an evil.
our society, while perfectly understands that suffering is much worse than death, is not sending out the right signal to the criminals.

going to toilet, and a couple of other things

2008-09-18T09:07:00.003+01:00

I can't help I have to share this with you. I have started reading an audio book, which is called "predictably irational." the topic is a mix of psychology and economy. well I will write about the book at another time.
I was listening to the book on my phone through my headphones, so that I was quite free to get on with whatever I needed to do after work. when I went to the toilet, I came across one of the most peculiar experiences... the book was telling me about some scientific experiment, I was concentrating solely on the theory and outcome of the experiment and all of a sudden I heard my pee went into the toilet bowl. there was an irony to what my ears were hearing, almost to the point of being funny. it was, as it were, the sounds just did not make sense.
now I know, we can tell jokes not just by language, it can be by pictures, by video, and also by sound!

the other things:
I want to write about atheism, my reply to the claim that atheism is just another faith.

also, my views on right and wrong in the context of social norms.
until then

religious art

2008-08-29T17:39:00.004+01:00

there is a woden sculpture of a green frong being cruicified, with its green tongue sticking out and one of his hands holding an egg and the other holding a cup, which is currently being hated by the pope. a lot of people are trying to remove it from the art gallary as well because they say it's offensive to christianity which sees the cross as symbol of love etc.
indeed, most if not all artworks on religion that we come across are to do with beauty, mercy, greatness, love...... of god, these artists create such art possibly because they do not have words to describe their strong feelings about what they believe. if this is true, the lack of artworks such as those that depict nastiness of religion, or those that mock religion, suggests that people who criticise religion do not have as strong feelings towards religion (in an opposite way) as those who love their god.
interestingly, it is far from the truth that people do not have strong feelings towards religion in a negative way. so what do these people do when they want to express their repultion to religion? they certainly don't tend to do it through artworks such as painting, but they write, they argue.
so on one hand, people who say possitive things about god/religion do it through traditional artworks (including singing, painting etc); on the other, people who say negative things about god/religion tend to do it through text. I believe that this is not an accidental difference of expression, but rather it tells us what religions actually are.
in a blunt sentence, I would say that religions are pretty, nice, beautiful illogical bullshit that a lot of people have to depend on.

blind

2008-08-17T20:49:00.003+01:00

I promised to write about my views and experiences of how blind people go into the "normal" society after being sheltered in institutions such as special schools, so here it is. forgive my possibly politically incorrect use of "normal", but I do think that special schools are pretty abnormal.
a special school is typically a tiny school (the two I went to had about 100 students). Everything one needs to do and one wants to do is heavily supported, for example, all the books are translated into Braille for us, every single teaching activity has been understandably adapted to blind people's needs, the microwaves talk (at least the majority), tesco trips are organised and there is almost always a one to one "shopping support" from the members of school staff, staff are on site to give lessons on how to get from school to town, or where ever one needs to go, the list goes on and on.
so the first chalenge for someone going into university, or going into the society to find a job, is that all of a sudden, the person is unable to find the kind of support he is so used to, or it takes an awful long time for that kind of support to come and the person just sits there and wait. another chalenge, perhaps is even bigger, is that all of a sudden, the person finds himself in a strange society in which people have eyes that can see(!) and "shockingly", those people who can see probably have never interacted with a blind person before.
the blind person goes from having absolutely all the confidence he has with his surrounding, friends, ways of doing things to have totally lost his confidence on just about everything, because he doesn't know how a normal person sees him, he finds himself unable to join a lot of the activities or even basic discussions that people around him do and talk about. on top of that, the normal people do tell the blind person directly or indirectly that they are seeing him differently to the rest, by having a tendency to approach the blind person extremely carefully (always appologising even no fault was commited, unsure about whether to help or not ending up watching the blind person embarasing himself (of course the blind person knows that), always feel uneasy about using the words that have something to do with sight/watch/see ending up having lots of interuptions to an otherwise normal conversation etc ).
I think it's fair to say that I coped with the change very well, I actually loved my university years much more than being in the special college. one of my advantages is that I am never a big fan of going out/clubbing etc, so I don't feel left out at all when everyone is doing just that. in fact when people did occasionally asked me to go I have to find the most stupid excuse not to go...
what the blind has to realise is that it's up to themselves to turn things round, to build up confidence. one has to realise that being blind is a disability, is not normal, and being blind does need help, and it's okay to ask for help and it's okay to accept help. people offer help not because they think that you can't do something, but most of the time it's because they want to make it easier and quicker for you to do something. there are times when you need to refuse help so that you can learn to be independent, and that will be when you have lots of time and when you are not slowing everyone else down.
when I have lots of time, even when I'm totally lost in the street, I don't tend to ask anyone for help. I tend to just try to find my way back to where I came from, and figure out what I did wrong. it can be scary sometimes, but you will never end up not being able to go home and starved to death! I have been lost numourous times, sometimes I find my way back, and sometimes I really needed help in the end.
a word on waiting for support: never rely on official support, they are absolutely useless. my friends, girlfriend, sister etc are my best mobility teachers. you have to make a big effort remembering where you have been, ask questions as well.
I will write a bit more about socialising next time, but I'm probably not the best person to talk about it because I am not very keen on socialising.

nonsense

2008-08-16T20:50:00.000+01:00

There was an Old Man with a flute,--
A "sarpint" ran into his boot!
But he played day and night, till the "sarpint" took flight,
And avoided that Man with a flute.

a couple of funny things in the news today

2008-08-14T22:46:00.003+01:00

1. while everyone is worrying so much about eatting junk food, calories etc, the greatest olympian of all time has 12,000 colories a day with:
eggs, bakon, sausage, omlet, pancake with sugar for breakfast.
1/2 kg pasta, lots of ham and egg sanwiches for lunch
a big pizza, more pasta, and a high colory drink for dinner..

2. I love this one. Napal is choosing their living Goddess, she has to be calm, serious, patient, can't walk on the floor - always be carried and has carers and lots of things.
some human right lawyers are trying to stop this from happening, because it infringes her human right! well isn't it obvious? she's seen as a Goddess, not a bloody human! come on and wake up, there are many many more urgent human right cases/issues to take care of.

lastly, this isn't funny really. a-level results in UK have been released. 97% passed, 25% got aS. researchers have shown that the A's this year is equvalent to about a C a couple of years back, while students are claiming that they are working sooooo hard. I leave you to work out what it means (that is, you probably can't work it out if you only have A's for this year a-level)

I am an average student, getting the results that most students get throughout my school life including university. I took the a-level 6 years ago, and ever since I have been criticising how the exam papaers are set up, how wrong it is that the questions are repeated, coursework can simply be plagerised, the marking system makes it extremely easy to score A's. I admitedly didn't do much revising, apart from for chemistry. all I was caring about was whether I could perform well in the school concert at the end of the school year. what I'd say probably is: drink a bit less, drug a bit less and shag a bit less and at least, do not damage your memory and concentration skills so that you can memorise answers from past papers!

when did I

2008-08-08T23:32:00.003+01:00

I was thinking about what it means to like something, or what makes me like something. so the simplest model i have is this: if in my past, every time I do a certain action, or come across a certain object, I get some pleasure out of it, I become liking that thing or liking to do that action.
At home when I was very young, I was always the one who would volunteer to pick up dead cockroaches that sister killed. I would put a piece of toilet paper on it, and pick it up and throw it in to the toilet. I cannot remember when I stopped doing this, but all I know is that now, I am actually very afraid of touching insects - dead or alive. I don't even like touching plants, just in case something is crawling on it.
so surely there must have been a time when touching insects or similar things gave me constant horror, which makes me so afraid of them now. but I cannot find anywhere in my memory what that was...
I don't know whether I need to refine my model or I really am missing something in my history...

Optional barter

2008-08-02T19:38:00.002+01:00

I'll start from the beginning of the train of thoughts. when one visits a restaurant or hotel, one sits down, eats (or whatever one does in a hotel), then one pays, and then he leaves. with the "green programs" nowadays, guests can choose not to have full service. e.g., they can choose not to have their towel washed everyday, and a percentage of their bill will be donated to a charity that funds something green.
if the intention of the hotel's manager really is to be green, I think he hasn't gone far enough with the scheme. what he should do is to reduce the bill of the guest by a certain percentage, then behind the scene he donates the money to the charity. guests are always happier when they see their bill decreased, and therefore more money can be collected, and more water can be saved.
if this way of reducing guest's bill really works, why not go a step further for something like an optional barter system? so a guest can not only offer to have his towel unwashed, he can offer to bring his towels to the laundry in order that 1% of his bill is deducted, if he offers to fetch his food from room service himself, he can have the tray charge deducted, if he offers to change his bed, he can have 2% of his bill deducted, if he hoovers, well that's hard so an even bigger percentage.
now to have a proper barter system, guests can offer to help other guests' luggaeg, so that he can share the tips and have something off his bill, he can offer to be a waiter in his free time, he can offer to be the doorman etc.

:)

danger

2008-07-23T20:24:00.001+01:00

If one reads too much of religious text, one runs into the danger of
thinking that the stories are true. this headline shows it, and it's
sad to know that it's the origin of big problems.
"Obama calls Israel a "miracle", vows staunch support"

music

2008-06-12T17:31:00.000+01:00

Music really touches me sometimes, and I really don't like it. it's too heavy.

Hong Kong/china patriotism

2008-06-05T05:16:00.002+01:00

in the last ten years, Hong Kong has been subject to a huge "patriotic campaign" orchestrated by presumably the Chinese governemnt in order that Hong Kong's people hearts and minds are won. I do not know how successful the campaign has been on the whole, I can only say that from what I can see, the campaign has backfired.
the recent earthquake has generated huge response in Hong Kong, the patriots claim victory because in their eyes, if one loves one's country one would naturally donate, if one doesn't donate one does not love one's country. as a side note, obviously these patriots have forgotten how Hong Kong people reacted to the south east asia tsunami - there was only a handful of fundraising tv programs, no company offered "purchase and we will donate on your behalf" kind of programs, yet queues were constantly seen in banks where people donate.
going back to the patriotics, let me tell you how rediculous, extreme and wrong they are with an example, and perhaps you can understand why the patriotism campaign backfires.
a school girl of about 13 wrote in her blog that roughly says that people should donate some money to help the pandas in si cheuen as well because much of the rescue has been concentrated on people, and the pandas have been neglected. this is inocent enough. however, the patriotics decided that this is against the rescue effort, someone found out where the girl lives, which school she goes to, and "have a chat" with the headmaster. in the end, the headmaster gave the girl the most serious warning (which is a written warning which stays in her profile for the rest of her school life).
firstly, I cannot believe that such an incompatent, puppet headmaster is allowed to run a school. secondly, does this not say something about why all the big companies are offering purchase and we will donate on your behalf programs? perhaps they have received similar "chats" or pressure?

loving a country, or a person for that matter, does not mean that one has to agree stupidly with everything she says and wants to do. unless the so-called patriotics in Hong Kong realise that criticisms and alternative views can be both useful and helpful, they will not be welcome.

a cartoon I want to draw

2008-06-02T05:06:00.003+01:00

if I could, I would draw a cartoon of the following scene, which has been living in my head for a while.

two people are having a big piece of nam bread in front of them enjoying their dinner. they are both very polite and have been tearing small pieces of the nam bread for themselves. the moment comes when there is only a small bit left. neither of them wants to take the last piece because it's considered to be a little rude. so they kept spliting the small piece - first the size of a cd, then a coaster, then a 2 pound coin, then a penny, then almost like a grain of rice......
all the while the two people are chatting away as if nothing has happened, but both are very uneasy.

charity donations choices

2008-05-14T22:50:00.003+01:00

I have a fix amount of money that I can donate to charity for a good cause, and several oppotunities have presented themselves:
the earthquake in china. I am a chinese, I feel that helping the chinese people affeced by the earthquake is more than just donating to charity. I have some sort of duty to help as much as I can.
Burma cyclone. the devestation is worse than that in china, or so it seems. they certainly need more help.
the third one is kind of a coleague. if he doesn't raise enough money, his daughter, who is 7 years old, will die of brain tumer. he needs quite an enormous sum of money because the operation has to be done in America. we are talking about tens of thousands of pounds I believe.

so I have 50 pounds I am happy to donate, but to which one? the first thing that comes to mind, cruel as it sounds, is that I dont want to donate to the poor girl who has a brain tumour. because 50 pounds presumably can help many more than one life in either Burma or China. but then the coleague is much more closely related to myself than anyone in burma and china that my 50 pounds will help. but then again, as I said, I have kind of a bond with the chinese people too, I really ought to help them. but then, my 50 pounds might mean the most in burma, where much more help relative to the other two is needed. I cannot decide how and what I can base my judgement on.