24 April - Interview in Kelantan
25 April - Interview in Kedah
28 April - Interview in Penang
25 - 29 April - Camp in KL
WTF??
How how how?!?!?!?!?
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Edit:
Current Plan:
Skip the Kelantan interview. Go for morning interview in Kedah, fly to KL for camp, take night bus back to Kedah on 27th. Father bring me to Penang on 28th morning for interview, take taxi to airport after interview, fly back to KL on same day. Take bus back Kedah on 29th.
Two airtickets = RM199 (including those "service charges")
Taxi = RM 40?
Two bus tickets = RM 80
credit: Potential Travel Subsidy for Camp = RM40 (bus)
Total personal expenditure for transportation = RM 280
WTF.
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edit2:
Or should I just forgo the camp instead?
Friday, April 22, 2011
Posted Here Because Dare Not Post on Facebook
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Personal Theology
STRONG Disclaimer: I do not identify as a Buddhist.
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On our trip back from Subang Jaya, my parents and I, together with a number of cousins went to a Buddhist temple to BUY a buddha statue. I think people would like to avoid the word "buy", because referring to what my parents called "inviting the buddha to our house" with the parlance of trade would be akin to loading the holiness of buddha with earthly mundaneness. (oh my english.) But as the saying goes, form is emptiness, emptiness is form; so let's not get trapped in semantics.
Ok where was I? So in the temple, I saw a book called "The Heart Sutra for Children". I was pretty fond of it, because it explains the Sutra in simple words. From what I can remember and in my own words:
"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form does not mean nothing exists. What it means is emptiness and existence are inseparable, like space and time, electricity and magnetism, mass and energy. This is a bit difficult to explain, but let me give you an example. Imagine a lake with quiet water, and a sea with waves. Both lake and sea are made of water, so we say they are the same thing. When the wind blows, we can ripples on the lake surface like waves, but without water there is no waves. Or imagine a wood. A wood can burn when heated, but when we cut the wood, we cannot see fire inside the wood."
Haiya I dunno how to explain la. Just like we think we are concrete solid matter, but in fact (how you know is fact?) we are made of atoms with vast empty space within, all mass concentrated in a tiny nucleus. Life is not a discrete entity (closed system) but an open system which exchanges matter and energy with its surroundings. Life is but a concentration of many many chemical reactions. Dying is the diffusion of that collection of chemicals in the universe. When the chemicals meet, there is life. This is 缘起缘聚。(But I believe once you die you die, no such thing as karma.)
Hmm, like that la. Anyway, when the pihak bertanggungjawab knows that we came from a faraway land, he offered to bring us to see the big big Buddha statute on the upper floor. (爬楼梯爬到半死。)So you know, when you see the patung, you have to sembah. So most my family members sembah lo. So I quick quick walk away, cuz I don't want to sembah as a matter of trivial principle. Because I don't want to let people think I'm a Buddhist.
Why? Many many years ago, there's one 死尼姑 (sorry, I meant "nun", oh my english.), when she was interviewed on the "Buddhist view of homosexuality“, she said along the lines of "According to the buddhist view, all sexual relationships are not good. So just because two men like each other, why must they have sex. No, better just like each other. No need sex." Me being a narrow-minded person, I just can't stand her. Cuz she appeared quite a few times on the newspapers. So I decided to reject Buddhism. This is not a matter of whether the nun misintepreted the teachings of Buddha or not, but I just don't like religious institutions. It's just like when people talk about Islam and terrorism, some like to say "ohh...Islam is a religion of peace." Like who cares la. Who cares it is "actually" a peaceful religion if its followers appear so violent.
So that night, when I taking a bath, I tell myself, wah....all those religions better be wrong, if not I'm so going to hell, hahaha. I WISH all those things are not true.
Talking about the abrahamic religions here:
Then it hit me, what could be more devillish than wishing for the inexistence of God, in the eyes of its followers? To wish for the absence of God's grace, actively hope for the impossibility of salvation, is "worse" than the strongest form of atheism, which is the rejection of the belief that god exists. That is because strong atheists KNOW that god doesn't exist, while me, I WANT god not to exist while unsure of its existence.
Sin beyond salvation, hahahaha.
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Haiz my English. Irrelevant song:
Monday, April 18, 2011
67geir;h
I'm going crazy.
It's been 10 days...actually longer...since I've done ANYTHING productive.
I just can't bring myself to do it. There's a simple letter which I need to write, but I just can't bring myself to write it.
I'm FUCKING GOING CRAZY.
I CAN GO OUT DRIVING ON A CAR AND JUST CRY!
JUST DROVE TO GUNUNG JERAI WHEN I WAS ON MY WAY TO THE STATE LIBRARY.
I WANTED TO STOP AT THE TRAFFIC LIGHT AND GET DOWN FROM THE CAR AND SHOUT!
WANT TO CLIMB ONTO THE CAR AND SHOUT!!!SHOUT!!!!SHOUT!!!!
AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
YOU CAN'T IMAGINE HOW I LOOK LIKE WHEN I TYPE THIS!!
JUST...
AHHHHH!!!!!!!
Friday, April 15, 2011
One of My College Application Essays, haha
Just thought of posting it up. Felt that it'd be a waste if I did not, considering the amount of time spent on it (4 days only actually). It's not necessarily thoughtful or anything, but...well.....haiya, post just post la, need explain so much for what.
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Brandeis University
Please include a short response to one of the following prompts. (250 words or fewer)
1. Why would you like to attend Brandeis?
2. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said, "If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable." Tell us about an unjust law(written or unwritten) that you believe should be broken.
3. If you could choose to be raised by robots, dinosaurs, or aliens, who would you pick? Why?
Who would I choose among robots, dinosaurs, and aliens to spend my growing years with? This is not a decision I would love to make. We know too little about aliens. Could it be that the fundamental construction of alien life forms are so different from ours that communication is impossible? As for dinosaurs, I doubt I would want to spend all my childhood looking for food and running from predators; that would be a waste of my human intellectual capacity.
All in all, what I fear losing the most in this childhood-exchange game is my human qualities. Because of that, I choose to be raised by robots, in the case of
which I would probably acquire a distinct world view while still retaining my human identity. I can imagine a parallel world of robots in which different robots are programmed to carry out some specific tasks, such as repair, oil drilling, and other engineering works. Of course, there would be a robot who could prepare organic food for me instead of feeding me new batteries. I would learn from the robots, and with the breakthrough of artificial intelligence, these robots are able to communicate in a human language. Albeit being raised by robots, I don't think I would grow into an emotionless adult. The lives of robots are similar to ours. We humans have our limits inherent in our biological existence, while robots are programmed with different capabilities and limitations. We exist with limits, but to live is to function in a way that makes that existence meaningful, whatever that means to a robot. Growing together with robots, I will have a different attitude towards machine and a different notion of what life is. The experience of growing up with robots would make me unique among my human peers, but not to the extent of preventing exchange of ideas among us. I could learn the human perspective after returning to our world and offer my "robotic" perspective in return. This would make growing with robots much more exciting than the remaining two options.
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*Essay (barely) finished 5 minutes AFTER the deadline. Oh...the horror...the thrill.
*I got admitted by the way, probably not because of this essay, haha.