Odyssey No.23: Ce-luh-bre-tion!

Hey guys! It's been long since my last post. It has been an insane year so far! Phew, where to start?



First of all, let's talk a bit about my Chinese New Year shall we?

It was great, I get to meet all my relatives(as usual =.="). But this year it's a lil' different because my brother is more one and a half years old.He really brightened up the celebration, in fact all the pictures I had took were of him lol.
This was my brother getting his first official angpau :P

This was my brother watching TV. Reminds me of myself hmm... : )

My brother playing football at my grandma's place.

He then went to kacau this Tigger doll.

Then he tried to climb the stairs without support, got caught by my sister ><"

Walau a, needless to say, he was damn hyperactive la. Kept running around in the house, busy foraging for food(I guess that's what kids do huh...). 



So for the whole week I stayed in Kajang area, that's kinda boring la =.=".

Then on Thursday(18th of February) the ex-students of 5D 2009 went to Pn.Ean's house to lepak.

It was nice that we get to gather with old friends and have interesting conversations, well, maybe not that interesting, but it still felt nice lar XD.

This was us taking group photos.


Hmm... There was one interesting thing that I found out, I've got testimonies from friends actually saying that National Service is AWESOME! Yeah, all capital letters. They said it's very fun and interesting, it's not what we think it is :O

We were wondering if they were brainwashed in the camp or not lol. Still, it's the government who were running these NS camps, anything could happen :X



And on the 20th, we had a BBQ and Steamboat fest in our primary school classmate Yen Hui's house. It was 6B '04 gathering la. 

Well, here are some photos from the night courtesy of Douglas : )


Adery perasan gila :D

"So you were saying we'll barbeque the veges and steamboil the chicken wings?"

Students forum lol

And everyone was idling because I was too quiet XD

Let's do the cha-cha lol


Ah... Really got the nostalgic feeling, how I wish I was in primary school now : (



The school started on Monday the 22nd of February. Had tons of preparation meetings with LEO Club for upcoming CNY Marathon Visitation, which I shall blog about in the next post : ), and LEO Mission.

And Jin came back on Wednesday! So we hanged out on the next day, went to visit Adrian from MyCJN for (kononnya) a Chinese New Year party. Minyi drove ourselves there and after 1.5 hours of wrong turns and epic maneuvering in Serdang, we managed to reach his house at 9pm. And we were the first to arrive LOL! =.="

So much for a CNY party haha...And I've got one funny picture to share thanks to Jin for capturing it XD

Haha... Got pwned by a schnauzer LOL!



So, CNY is finally coming to an end on tomorrow. I hope everyone have had a good time during the course of two weeks : )

CNY Marathon Visitation post will be coming up next! Stay tuned and till next time, cheers~

Why Do You Believe?

Hey guys, it’s the first day of Chinese New Year!

Hope you are having a good time so far. Well, as for me, the morning was as usual, a visit to my grandma’s place and take Angpau la, nothing too fancy :)

But I’m having tons of free time in the afternoon so I reckon I should spend some time writing a blog article.



So, what’s up for this post? As you can see from the title, today I’m going to attempt to tackle one of the most philosophical questions of all time – “Does God exists?”

Now before proceeding to the main text, I should warn you that if you are a religious person and you have total belief in everything your religion teaches you, and you do not like your faith to be challenged or questioned, you ought to turn back and leave now, do this and thus your faith towards your religion shall be kept intact. Otherwise, proceed, read with an unbiased view, think, and you shall see the world differently, maybe not wholly, but you’ll be asking questions that you had not thought of after this.



Ready?
Here we go~



Does God exist?

A simple question with three words, and none of us were able to answer it correctly with the support of provable evidence.

Before trying to answer that question, let us try to define what is “God” in meaningful words.


So what is God to you? What do you know about God?

Well, I’m not going to go too far, again, the usual practice, I’m only going to take examples from the mainstream religions.

To the members of the Abrahamic faith, God is the “One”, the “Perfect”, the “Almighty”, the “(Put a title here)”, etc…

They describe God as an all-loving, kind, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite and perfect being.

And according to Christianity, God looks like human too (well, He looks like man to be precise because He was always depicted as a human with bushy white beards in paintings), that because God created humans based on his own image.

While according to Islam, God takes no form, He is too great to be put in paintings (and peoples say that a picture is worth more than a thousand words, how ironic is the fact that we are describing His being with our lowly languages.)

And the Gods they described is a God that had created the whole known universe, made the Earth, made every living organisms on this planet, and even interacted and interfered with human activities.

Okay, now that we had set the parameters, let’s move on by examining if this God exists.



First of all, I’m going to start with the God that created the known universe. It was said that in the beginning there was nothing, and the God created everything! How cool is that huh?!

This God created everything! Wow, awesome! Hmm… But the question is, does the universe need a creator?

A person with theological perspective would simply say, “If there’s no God, then how can EVERYTHING come from NOTHING?”

Common sense tells us that the second part of this argument is a strong argument, of course, it is beyond the physical laws to create something out of nothing, that’s just impossible, in our universe at least. But do you have to bring a creator into the argument?

Well one thing to consider is that there are many other existing theories on the origin of the universe and all of them were yet to be proven. But let’s say that God created the universe, then who created God? Do you mean to say, God as a being, came from nothing?

That just doesn’t make sense right? The universe must have a cause, and so do God if you were to put Him as part of the explanation. What is it then, that caused the God to exist? Surely it must be something else isn’t it?

Then again, for God to create the universe, He must not be governed by our universe’s law of physics, or else He wouldn’t have had the ability to do so. So there might be a possibility that God came from nothing, because even though it’s not physically possible in OUR universe, it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible outside our universe, as it might have been governed by a whole different set of physical laws.

So yes, I’m saying that there’s a possibility that our universe was created by a creator, which in human context is called “God”.

You might think that I am self-contradicting in my arguments, it doesn’t seem like I’m standing on either side of the argument. Yes, I am taking a neutral stance. The thing is, both the creator theories and the non-creator theories are equally viable, and none of them have more evidence than the other, why should I act like I know everything and decide that one of the MUST be correct and the other MUST be wrong?



Now, that aside, I’m going to talk about the God that seeded Earth with life.

This is a very interesting question, “Did God created Life?”

According to the Abrahamic religions, yes, God did.

In Christianity, God created all lives on Earth and even the first humans, Adam and Eve, in His 7 days of creation. Well I had addressed this topic on my other post Adam, Eve, Noah.

No, I don’t think God created all living creature as described in the Bible or any other religious scriptures, literally or not.

Why?

I’ll say it’s very arrogant of us to think that a God that created this vast universe would want to put some sort of life-forms on this tiny little blue dot in the backdrop of majestic stars and galaxies. Why would He?

You? A tiny little human? Created by God? Do you really think a being that had created this massive universe would even care to waste His time on decorating this small planet that can hardly be seen from the nearest star?

Why?

Because He just wanted peoples to worship Him? Doesn’t that make you a slave? Then don’t you think it’s unfair? To be born in this world, just to be a slave of worship?

Why would God need people to worship Him anyway? Does He have some self-esteem issues?  Has He been bullied by other Gods lately and needs assurance from us that He is Awesome?

Humans outlawed slavery a few centuries ago but yet they do not find this religious binding with God offensive against human rights?

I don’t know, you think for yourself.

But I can tell you, no matter how you would like to defend the theory that God created life as described in the religious scriptures, you’ll find that the burden of prove is on you.

How did you know God did it? Because that’s what the book said? How did you know what the book said was real? Because peoples that wrote the book said God told them? How did you know God told them at all? Because they insist God really told them even though they cannot prove it? WTF? Come on, children can tell better lies.

Anyway, back to the topic, did God really gave life universe, but not literally as the religious scriptures claimed?

Is it even possible for God to enter our universe, given that He cannot be expressed physically since He is infinite and timeless, and therefore incompatible with our universe?

It’s quite tempting to say God gave life, since scientists weren’t able to explain the origin of life, yet! But does that mean science cannot explain at all and that you really had no choice but to put God into the equation? Science is making progress, and there are new findings towards the ultimate explanation of the origin of life daily. The Earth was once “flat” too until someone proved it to be round and globular, what makes you think science will not find the explanation to origin of life?

I hope I had stimulated enough thoughts here so far…



Now, let’s move on to the “All-powerful, all-loving, just, perfect, omnipotent, omniscient” God that the Abrahamic religions have been talking about.

Take a look around the world, what do you see?

Billions of peoples suffering from famine and poverty.

What do you see?

Natural disasters creating more and more refugees.

What do you see?

Diseases, inherited, contracted, deadly, millions dead.

What do you see?

Wars, conflicts, religious crusades, threatening world peace.

What do you see?

Climate changes, humans on the brink of extinction.

What do you see?

Just tell me…

Do you see an all-loving God? Do you see a just God? Do you see an omnipotent, all-powerful God?

If God is all-loving, why are there still billions of kids of Africa suffering hunger? Does God love them not?

If God is just and treat all man equally, why are there billions of people who died undeservingly while we have mass murderers roaming around killing in the name of their religions? Why do peoples suffer diseases at all while most don’t? Is that fair at all? There were devoted Christians and Muslims that had cancers and died, is it fair for them that they had worship God for all their lives and suffer immense pain in return?

If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t He use His powers to help those in need? Why doesn’t He give enough food to everyone on Earth so that the word “famine” may be removed from the dictionary? Why doesn’t He stop earthquakes and volcanic eruptions from hurting peoples? Why?

What is really happening? Is God on vacation?

There are only two possible explanations:

One, God is evil, unjust, maybe still all-powerful, but He doesn’t care, likes to incur natural disasters for fun, zaps you with lightning occasionally, puncture your car tires while you are in a rush, sends robbers to rob you even though you need the money more than the robbers do, makes your girlfriend breakup with you because she wanna date a hot guy she just met.

Two, there is no God.


Which one is more comfortable? The belief that there is a God that is looking at us laughing at our sufferings? Or the belief that there is no God and everything happens because it needed to?

I don’t know what you’d think, but let me ask you this…

If you had a religious family, and your family goes to church every weekend, make donations to the church, do services, and all the sudden one day your parents died in a car accident. What would you do?

Do you blame God? They were the nicest people around, and yet they had to die in this manner, was God out of His mind? Maybe you’d say God had a plan for them, but what about that little brother that is still lying in that cradle? Who’s gonna look after him? Did God planned him to be an orphan so that he may live His whole live not experiencing the love of a family? Is this fair for him? Why the special treatment? Why not make all of us orphans so that it is fair for that baby?

More questions than answer it seems…

So tell me, why do I have to believe that there is a God willing to offer us a hand when in need, when He can’t even help the other few billions people that deserves better out there?





So, there you go, that’s all I have to say for today. I apologize if you can’t agree with me, maybe you need to talk to me more, then you’ll understand. What I hope to achieve in this thing I’m doing is that, I want you to think.

What does that mean? Does that mean I think you’re not using your brain? No, of course not. But I want you to do is that I want you to think of what you believed in, and why do you believe it? Do you believe it just because you were brought up to believe it? Or do you believe it because there are sufficient reasons to believe in it?

Do you eat vege because your mom told you to eat it? Or do you eat vege because it’s good for you? That’s the question.



Till next time, cheers~

Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day!

.

Hey guys, Happy Chinese New Year and for all the couples out there, Happy Valentine's Day!



So, it's a new year again, and I'm not feeling particularly in the mood. Hmm... Maybe it's because it doesn't feel festive enough, I do wonder why.

Anyway in INTI-UC for the past week, there were quite some interesting events.

Such as...

This!

Valentine's Sales by LEO Club.

I volunteered to help the counter for a few hours a day, just to get an overview on the number of lovebirds in the campus. Well, turns out the number is quite little : /

We had a lot of keychains for sale, some teddies, cosmetics, candies, roses! And we also had this big teddy bear that costs RM500 o_o"... They are crazy enough to even put this for sale lol.

Of course, the teddy is just too adorable not to take a photo with :)



And they had a Chinese Cultural Night too, which I did not attend due to Chemistry test and because it's too late at night, aww... :( 



So... I'm having a week's off for Chinese New Year, in fact I had an extra day of holiday because my lecturers, coincidentally, postponed their Friday classes. Awesome~ :)

What am I doing for the week? Well, nothing much I guess. Sunday to Wednesday, it's all about visiting places and getting Angpaus XD

Maybe gonna spend some time going through these books too.


And eat some OMG candies : /


And spend some time watching the red skies daydreaming.


And oh! Gonna practice music, for an upcoming small performance. And I'm going to spend quite some time in Zhi Lin's house to prepare for some song recordings. Hopefully it will go on smoothly and everything will be done on time before that day comes. :)



So that's about it I guess. Gonna write more soon.

Till next time, cheers~

p.s.: Are you sincere?

Let me start by asking you this one simple question - Are you a sincere person?

Don't have to think too long. It's just a simple question... Or is it?

So most of you would say "yes", well that is no surprise and no doubt, in my mind, that you are being true to yourself in answering that question.

But what do you really know about sincerity? Do you really think what you do is really sincere?

What does sincere means anyway?

Quote the definition of sincere:
sin·cere (sn-sîr)
adj. sin·cer·er, sin·cer·est
1. Not feigned or affected; genuine: sincere indignation.
2. Being without hypocrisy or pretense; true: a sincere friend.
3. Archaic Pure; unadulterated.

To me, it means doing something with the right intention from the heart, not driven by extrinsic motivations, not driven by benefits it gives.

So imagine this, a person is a philanthropist, he does charity all the time, he donates money to organizations, he never hesitates to help those in need.

But there's one question you may ask, what is/are his motive(s)? 



One might say, if that person is a politician, his real motive is to gain popularity, to get public support, to buy the peoples' heart so that he can further strengthen his position and staying power in the world of politics.

So tell me, is that sincere? Well the answer is an obvious No! No explanation needed.



Well then what if the person is just a wealthy businessman who happens to have a lot of spare money?

His motive, like the politician, might also be to gain popularity. If he's really a business-minded person, he'll surely be taking advantages of the publicity he gets while he does charity to further promote the name of his company. I'm not saying that the person does charity just to get more publicity, he might really be a kind-hearted person who really wanted to help other peoples, but deep down inside him he knows that doing charity will bring himself collateral benefits, and that's what motivates him.

Now then, can you label this business man as a sincere person? It's debatable, but surely more people would agree that "No" should be the answer. 



What if this person is just a typical person you will find? A normal middle-class person, let's say, with Buddhism as his/her religion. Tell me then do you think that person is sincere in doing those charities?

Most of you might say:

"Yes of course he's a sincere person! How could you question that? He doesn't have any hidden agendas."

True, to an extend. Let me ask you, "what drives him to be a philanthropist?"

Your answer: "Religion?"

"There! Gotcha!"

"Huh?!"

You see, that is what motivates him. As a Buddhist, he believes in Karma. What he does is, while in his charity act, he gives benefits to others, and in this process he hopes to collect enough merits in his life, so that HE himself can reap the benefits later.

"What benefits?" You asked.

Well as a Buddhist he would have believed that when a person do good things, more good things will happen to that person; when a person had collected enough merits, that person will be promoted to a higher dimension and possibly achieving "Moksha" (The highest happiness, free from suffering).

So in the end, what he or she really hopes for is to get the benefits for himself/herself. So that means that person has a motive, or rather, hidden agenda. Now tell me, can you consider this as a sincere act then? Well my answer is... No!

I don't see any difference that sets this person apart from the previous two mentioned above, the only difference is that this person will only receive the benefits when he/she is dead(which is not much of a use anyway).



Well let's move on to another classic example. 

A Christian doing charity? This is so much easier. 

The answer is... an obvious... No!

What might be that person's motivation? He/She might be doing charity just to please the God, which is a motive anyway. He/She might be buying himself/herself a ticket to Heaven and eternal joy, which itself is also a motive.

You see, whatever philanthropy that person does it all goes down to getting benefits for himself. Try asking a Christian this question,"Why do you do good things and help other peoples?".

I'm VERY sure the answer will be something like this,"Because I want to go to Heaven."

That's the typical answer you'll get. If not eitherway, it will be the "Propagating religion" answer, which itself is much worse in terms of sincerity.

So tell me, am I wrong at labeling this person as insincere? 


So...
Extrinsic sincerity? Intrinsic sincerity?



What do you really believe in?

Do you believe in doing good things so that good things will happen to you? Or do you believe in doing good things because it is good?

My philosophy is - If you want to do something, let that something be the reason, and not something else.

I study because studying gives you knowledge, not because I want to show to other peoples that I'm smart. I play music because I like playing music, not because I want to show off my skills to the world. I do charity because I like to help other peoples, not because I want to gain popularity or fame.

And let me end by quoting something from a Boyzone's song :) - "Don't love me for fun, girl ... ... Love me for a reason, and let the reason be love"


So ask yourself, what do you really want?



Ask yourself...






That's all for tonight. Till next time, cheers~

10 cents for Calculus

'Sup guys? Sorry I have been very busy for the pass weeks. I've had tests and quizzes breathing down my neck lately. 



Anyway there were of course some interesting stuffs that happened.

First of all, Stact Club started the Power of 10 Sen campaign! This campaign's aim is to raise money for Cambodia and Haiti punya.


There were distributing personal piggy banks to raise money. I myself took three LOL! Well two of them are for Minyi and Sin Yin. Pity the guys at the counter a bit la, the piggy banks are not too "hot", nobody wants them :(

Anyway, they made this large 10 cents sandwich haha. Just had to take a picture with it. ><" Oh ya the girl of the left was the organizer for this event.



Then last week on the 27th of January we had a students' forum at SAO concourse, where students get to vent their complaints and suggest ideas for improvements.


Ah... Not really that interesting as the problems pointed out by the students were pretty much common sense, but the management also tried to dodge most of the questions la(from my POV). They are much skilled at that than the guys in Matrix!

It doesn't really help much so to speak, but I don't know la since I do not stay there, yet : /



Ah, then on last Monday, my Calculus lecturer gave us a bloody question for bonus marks. It was differentiation and we were given a week to finish it. A WEEK?!

Well I was skeptical at first, because it looked easy. It really is though, the only problem is that I start running out of paper spaces because the equation became too long when I tried to differentiate the numbers. 

Take a look at the paper, and this was the second paper I used. =_="

It looks so artistic LOL! Probably one of my most beautiful Mathematics work that I had done.



Then on Thursday I had Sociology and Calculus tests. Screw them la, spent so much time studying also dunno how to answer the questions... Zzz...

Well Sociology wasn't that hard, but I did not study in detail because I was riding on bullet train to finish everything in time.

As for Calculus, it sucked big time! Not to mention that it has a 20% in the whole course marks =_=". I wasn't sure what was I doing during that paper lol, brain lag, cannot think properly. Maybe it was because I drank 3 cups of coffee just to keep me awake before the tests. Damn, I still messed up everything in the end.

Ah nevermind, I still have Chemistry and English tests on next week. Just make sure I don't screw those up and I'll be fine I guess.

Targetting 4.00 GPA for this semester LOL, if not at least 3.50 GPA, seriously cannot mess up any of those papers.



Grrr...! Need more motivation!

Till next time, cheers~

Odyssey No.22: COP15 Sharing

.


Haha this is a ridiculously long delay, this event happened two weeks ago :P. Went to Sunway University College to attend COP15 sharing held be MyCJN(Malaysian Youth Climate Justice Network) on the last last Sunday, the 23rd of January. 

This was one funny experience haha, Jin Rui asked me to call up the Chinese press on the day before to see if they can send reporter to attend the event. I spent half an hour preparing the details that I need when I speak to the press, then called SinChew first, they pass the line around like playing monkey only, in the end putus tali. Geram gila~ =_="
Then called Oriental Daily, nobody answered the phone. Nevermind then =/

Then the last one really lame lol, called China Press, got myself transfered to the reporter's department. I explained our event and asked if they can send a reporter, the fella asked me back," What is COP15?"...

WTF?!

That was an unexpected twist to the plot haha, I didn't prepare for that question. Ended up speaking like a retard while explaining the COP15 thing to that person. But they weren't interested in it anyway so they told me "Send us an email and we will consider it" which is a polite way to say "GTFO!" :(



So, early in that morning I departed for Sg.Long to rendezvous with the other "gang members". Met up with them before going to Sunway UC in two cars.

We arrived at Sunway UC half an hour later.

Quite a neat place, but still to small la ><" Anyway to cut the story short, there were 4 sharing sessions by the guys that went to Copenhagen in December to participate in the COP15 Climate Conference la. Of course, not forgetting to camwhore a bit before the session starts.
I have to say, even though it's not too fancy, it was a pretty inspiring experience. All those stuffs they showed in the sharing, it really showed that youths are making a bigger impact in politics compared to the pass. 

And we got an insight to the real happening at COP15, it's really like a festival over there! There were exhibitions, rallies, it's almost as if they were celebrating Christmas there lol!

Then there was a session to decide the future of MyCJN. "To remain a network or become an organization" was the topic of debate. Well, there was a sense of uncertainty as each of the members debated the pros and cons. At that time I got this feeling that this might be just one of those life changing moments that happen once in a while.

Yea, basically they(we) were determining the fate of MyCJN. And the conclusion was, MyCJN will remain a network, with three driving committee members at the top running the network. Well, to be honest, that is a little bit off my area of specialty and ability. I really wanted to help them out, but being just 18 years old and still studying in college, I did not think that I can juggle the tasks and handle the pressure of governing a network. It's just too much for me : /

Well I do hope whoever that take up the role will steer MyCJN to a higher level though. 

Before we went home (of course the usual practice) we took a group photo with (almost) everyone :D


Yea, overall. It was a fun experience! Got to meet more peoples, some interesting some dull but that's life haha. 

After that event, we had decided that we shall form a team to do all these environmental movements and community service! 

Well, it's not official yet(at least it doesn't feel like that) but we will be known as the 6SOS :) . As to what does it stand for, don't ask me! (even though I was the one who suggested that name lol). Well we were just having a hard time finding time to discuss this together, hopefully it gets sorted out soon.



Anyway, more college updates soon. Till next time, cheers~