Amused by the News

Browsed through the news this morning and a few articles gave me some form of amusement before I begin my preparations for tomorrow's paper.

"Malaysians can look forward to another 15 sen cut in fuel price by the end of the month, bringing pump prices to a two-year low of RM1.85 per litre.

The lowest price the people paid for fuel prior to the recent escalating global oil prices was RM1.92 per litre in March 2006 before it was increased to RM2.70 per litre on June 5, this year."

Wow, really? They just dropped the price by 15 cents a week ago. 85 cents drop in less than 6 months, impressive. Oil price is so unstable now.


"Nicol David is just a match away from clinching her 10th consecutive title of the year.
The Penangite stormed into the final of the Hong Kong Open with a hard-fought 11-8, 11-9, 11-5 win over fourth seed Natalie Grainger of the US in 39 minutes at the Hong Kong Squash Centre yesterday.

Nicol, who has been unbeaten in 52 matches since last November, will face third seed Rachael Grinham of Australia in the final."

Going for a 10th consecutive title? Talk about consistency. I dare say her achievements are unrivalled in M'sia. World No. 1 for 2 years, only 25, 10 finals in a year. Well done, Nicol or shall I say Datuk Nicol. (She was recently conferred a Datukship, making her the youngest ever Datuk in Penang). It's just a shame that Squash is not receiving as much world recognition as other sports like Tennis.

"Arsenal’s woes worsened yesterday as they blew their chance to close the gap on English Premier League leaders Chelsea and Liverpool, who were held to goalless draws at home.

The imploding Gunners slumped to their worst result of the season, losing 3-0 at Manchester City as top club Chelsea were pinned back by Newcastle and Liverpool were held by Fulham."

Liverpool and Chelsea, both drew blanks and the score 0-0 for both matches. Arsenal lost 3-0 and in a later match Man U drew 0-0 as well. What a day. You'll rarely find this combination in the EPL.

"The National Fatwa Council has declared that yoga isharam (prohibited) in Islam and Muslims are banned from practising it.

Its chairman Datuk Dr Abdul Shukor Husin said yoga had been practised by the Hindu community for thousands of years and incorporated physical movements, religious elements together with chants and worshipping, with the aim of “being one with God”.

“Because of this, we believe that it is inappropriate for Muslims to do yoga. The council is declaring that practising yoga, when it comes together with the three elements, is haram,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

He noted that while merely doing the physical movements of yoga without the worshipping and chanting might not be against religious beliefs, Muslims should avoid practising it altogether as “doing one part of yoga would lead to another”.

Muslims, he said, were discouraged from practising yoga even as a form of exercise as it would ultimately lead to worshipping and chanting, which is against Islam.

“Malaysia is not the only country which prohibits Muslims from doing yoga. Singapore and Egypt have come out with the same edict,” he pointed out."

This is news of the day for me. Yoga is out for Muslims. But they can still perform the physical movements without the chanting, though that as well is not encouraged. This certainly raised my brows but I've gotta talk to my Muslim friends to ask what they think. And Singapore has come out with this edict too? Further investigation necessary.

School's Out

Final lecture of the semester done...

Now left with 4 final papers and 3 presentations...

School's OUT... well, kinda...

seiromeM & sthguohT modnaR

Received news that Pn. Shareezah, my class teacher in Form 2, has passed away... I was the Class Monitor back then and I remember her fondly... Sad I couldn't meet her before this, think the last time I met her was in 2005... Though I would skip her classes every once in a while (I skipped a whole lot of classes in F2 due to activities), I enjoyed her sessions... My condolences to her family...
----------
Have a new reason for visiting Facebook often... Chun Heng recently posted up pictures from F4 and F5 which brings back great memories... prompted me to set up a group for my class... those were indeed the golden years of my past... when I enjoyed EVERY single day in school... fun classmates, caring & understanding teachers, crazy PJ sessions, 'table hockey' etc... Good times, good times...
----------
Randomly googled my name and it brought me to the old SMI website... 2002 article where they interviewed the SPM top scorers... My response included this line "His plan is to enter Form 6 and to do Electrical Engineering in the future"... Did I decide that early? Kind of hoped I kept my options open back then... ah well, I followed the path and I can't turn back...
----------
Heavy rain these few days... lots of thunder and lightning... rainy season is here... somehow reminds me of ONE day in Year 1 when I was working on a project due the next day... 10000 word essay in one day if I remember correctly... Weather's like that day, when no fans were needed and I had to put weights on every single piece of paper...
----------
Week 13 of my second last semester in NUS... Gonna be one hell of a week... Meeting today to finish up IE report, meeting tomorrow to prepare for HR presentation on Wednesday, meeting Wednesday to prepare for IE presentation on Thursday, and FYP lab session on Thursday... I'll sure be glad when the week is over...

"A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to rouse the interest, but long enough to cover the essentials" - Ronald Knox

Are We Fools to Believe?

"Change has come to America" - Barack Obama, USA's 44th President

The power of change will be demonstrated to its full extent in the US with Obama's victory.

An excerpt from MSNBC:

Ellora Lyons, 81, of Peoria, Ill., recalled boarding a train to
Oklahoma with her two oldest boys in 1948. Her brother had been killed in an
accident, and they were going to his funeral.“There was a sign on this train
that said, 'n-----s to the back,’” she said. “And we couldn’t drink out of the
same water fountain.”

“I remember my mom and my dad talking about black folks
being not able to vote,” Lyons said. “I never thought that I would see a black
man [in the White House], but I was hoping that one day that a black man would
run for president."

Some people have waited a lifetime to witness this moment. I'm willing to wait my lifetime to see a similar change in Malaysia. For that to happen, we must collectively believe in this possibility and gain the maturity and courage demonstrated by the people of the US.

I still BELIEVE that it is POSSIBLE, that the impossible dream will be a dream for all, that change will come to Malaysia, that the Malaysian race will be the one race for all Malaysians.

After all, the only constant in life is change.

I Think I Do

If you can think it, then you can do it. ACTION TIME coming up.

Restless Mind At Work

Have you ever wondered why there are 24 hours in a day? We can say that a day is the time taken for one full rotation of the Earth, one year is the time taken for the Earth to orbit the Sun once, and one month is the time taken for the Moon to orbit the Earth once. All these are definite durations set by nature.

So I figure a year in the calendar was determined by how long it took the Earth to get back to the same position while a month was determined by how long it took the Moon to orbit the Earth. From this, the number of days in a year and number of days in a month can be calculated.

What about 24 hours? Where did that come from? How do you determine that a second is actually a second, a minute is a minute and an hour is an hour? We may have grown accustomed to the duration of 1 second, but what if the actual 1 second was set to be 0.5 seconds? If there was 24 hours in a day and 60 minutes in an hour, then there would be 120 seconds in a minute. These measurements are actually meaningless in nature.

Nevertheless, we use them because time has become so important to us, that we need to measure every single moment/instant that passes, hence the current system.

Point to ponder: There are phrases like "Count your days", "Your days are numbered", "Tomorrow will be another day"... why not "count your seconds", "your seconds are numbered" etc.?

Fine, the restless mind shall rest for now.

Perceptions - How far is 300 km?

38/45 for one of my mid-terms, not bad at all. That's half the module done and accounted for.

Unfortunately, I can't say that for the other subjects. It's NOVEMBER - deadlines + exams period. Thankfully there are not mega projects to be worried about but there's some serious writing to be done.

Had a 7 hour project meeting today. Booked the discussion rooms in the Central Library and I have to say, it wasn't a bad idea. At least we could control the air-con temperature inside the room.

During lunch, we asked a project mate about his hometown in China. He told us that it was very close to North Korea. Asked what he meant by very close, he said about 300 km. It is interesting to note that in China terms, 300 km is peanuts. If I were to say the same thing about M'sia, 300 km is more than half the North-South highway. So practically, I would've travelled half of M'sia with this 'short' distance. Talk about PERCEPTION. This goes on to show how big the world is and how much there is to explore. I doubt I'll be able to cover the whole world in my lifetime, but travel to all the continents I will.

We moved on to compare KL and Ipoh; it just came about, don't ask me how. My groupmates from China just laughed uncontrollably when I told them about how you need about 1 hour to get back to the same place if you miss a turning in KL, and how good your driving will be after experiencing the KL roads. Things there are really different from Ipoh. Same country, different city. Easy going is what Ipoh is about. There is no such thing as bumper to bumper there (except for the occassional accidents) or a U-turn being 1 hour away. On the downside, there's no Burger King or LRTs but hey, I'm contented with the way it is. Life doesn't have to be complicated.

Something to remind me of my beloved city, St. Michael's Institution, my Alma Mater.

It's project time. Cheers.