Meaning of Life? Examplified 人生意义

This was seen in an email.... Didn't expect the moral of the story to be in such a different direction! ;-)

有一對兄弟，他們的家住在80層樓。
>
> 有一天他們出去爬山，回家的時候，卻發現大樓停電了！雖然他們揹著一大 包的行李，但看來沒什麼選擇，於是哥哥對弟弟說：「我們爬樓梯上去吧！」
>
> 於是，他們就揹著一大包行李開始往上爬。
>
> 到了20樓的時候，他們開始累了！
> 哥哥告訴弟弟說：「包包太重了，這樣吧！我們把它放在20樓，先爬上去，等電來了再坐電梯下來拿。」，
> 弟弟說：「好！你真聰明！」，於是他們就把包包放在20樓，繼續往上爬。
>
> 卸下了沈重的包袱，輕鬆多了！他們一路有說有笑地往上爬。
>
> 但好景不常，到了40樓，兩人實在累了，想到只爬了一半，往前看，竟還有40樓要爬，兩人開始互相抱怨，指責對方不注意停電公告，才會落得如此下場。他們邊吵邊爬，就這樣一路到了60樓。
>
> 到了60樓，也許是累得連吵架的力氣都沒有了，哥哥對弟弟說：「只剩20層樓了，我們就不要吵了，默默地爬著 樓梯 ！」。
>
> 於是他們安靜地繼續走，終於，80樓到了！到了家門口，哥哥擺出了一個很帥的姿勢：「弟弟，開門！」，弟弟說 「別鬧了！鑰匙不是在你那兒嗎？」......，
>
> 結果，如你所想的，他們把鑰匙放在20樓的包包裡了！......
>
> ********************************************
>
> 有人說，這個故事其實在反映我們的人生。
>
> 20歲之前，我們活在家人、老師的期望和期許之下，背負著很多的壓力、包袱在走，自己也不夠成熟有能力，因此步履難免不穩。
>
> 20歲之後，離開了眾人的壓力，卸下包袱，開始全力追求自己的夢想，就這樣過了愉快的二十年。
>
> 可是到了40歲，發現青春早已過去，不免有許多的遺憾追悔，於是開始遺憾這個、惋惜那個、抱怨公司、抱怨社會、抱怨政府。。。。，就這樣在抱怨遺憾中度過了二十年。
>
> 到了60歲，發現人生已所剩不多，於是告訴自己，不要再抱怨了，就珍惜剩下的日子吧！於是默默地走完自己的餘年。
>
> 到了生命的盡頭，才想起自己好像有什麼事還沒完成。。。。，
> 原來，我的夢想還留在20歲，沒有完成。你也是如此嗎？
>
> 想想: 您的夢想是什麼？最在意的是什麼？不要到了40年後才來追悔。
>
> 想一想希望將來的自己和現在有何不同，就去做吧！。。。把握現在，記得，今天就是禮物。

Let's lend a....errr.. flipper to our country's Chelonians!

We will be running a 24 hour turtle blogathon starting 25th October 2009 (9pm Malaysian time) to raise funds for the newly-established Turtle Conservation Centre based in Terengganu, Malaysia www.turtleconservationcentre.org

In the event, we will be writing and publishing a blog post every hour for 24-hours non-stop. The blog posts will be answers to questions on freshwater and marine turtles submitted to cp@turtleconservationcentre.org or this email. Everyone is invited to submit questions from now till 25th October 2009.. So if there are things that you'd like to know about marine and freshwater turtles but never knew who to ask, THIS is your chance :)

Please join us anytime from 9am, 25 October to 9 pm, 26 October 2009 and send us messages to egg us on, or to pledge a donation. No amount is too little or too much. The funds raised will be channeled to the turtle research and conservation projects that we carry out.

For more information about the Turtle Blogathon and how you can participate, please visit: Here

Thank you for your support and we really hope you will join us in our event.

Sincerely,

E.H. Chan
CEO
Turtle Conservation Centre
www.turtleconservationcentre.org

This is just so beautiful .. Saya Anak Bangsa Malaysia :-)

After what transpired some time ago at Section 23 left a sour taste in our mouths...

I feel so glad to see damage control is actually underway... in the form of visiting the hindu temple in question by Haris Ibrahim and gang...

http://harismibrahim.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/the-beautiful-malay/

It just touches me that such a simple move in such a time can mean so much...

remember that the UMNO goons who orchestrated the protest that day... they never apologized. Not one bit. And no remedial action were done by them to ease the tension.. if fact they brought the tension up a notch by the uncivilised behaviour shown at the problem solving session held by the Selangor government to find a solution...

Let's leave that episode behind, and move on...

There are many beautiful Malays in our Midst... Haris Foremost, Zaid Ibrahim, hat's off to him...Marina Mahathir; a bow to her.....

and the many well mannered muslim folk who themselves divulged that...

"who are we to complain about the relocation of the temple?
We have our Azan five times a day and our neighbours take it in their stride while we protest over the chiming of the bells of the temple?
Do they not have rights too?"

This is the kind of attitude we need.. understanding, empathy and sharing... only then can there be hope for our beloved country... And that is the spirit behind the Saya Anak bangsa Initiative by Haris...

I can't say the same for the 1Malaysia thingy by Najib... its too frought with contradiction and irony...

Either way.. let us feel grateful that there will always be clear minded people in the midst of the confused crowd... let us follow their lead and make Malaysia a better place!

Happy Hari Malaysia come 16th of September!

Musings... Let's waste time...

Ah... today I really feel no oomph at all for studying... probably due to the triad paper this morning that is really quite taxing... Oh maybe as Oncogene puts it... "I'm too old to study liao... why can't medicine be a three year course"?
LOL

Wanted to hear this song again... very much.. dunno why...

I rediscovered this song while in UK... listening to Fleur's and Caryn's handphones... Was hooked on it for days...

I say Rediscover because I liked it before but didn't try to find the song after hearing it on the waves....

Glad to have found it again... It's called Chasing cars... by a group called...Snow Patrol...
What connection has it got to do with Taylor Hicks (the american Idol runner up) you ask?

I wondered about that too... Go find out yourself... as most lecs would say... "I'm not gonna spoon feed you" haha.. in a weird mood today...


Why do I love it? Coz its lyrics resonate with me... my outlook on life,... my thoughts and feelings... the rebel-with-a-cause feel to it...

The simple lyrics that are absolutely open to interpretation makes me feel that it can be meaningful in so many ways...je ne sais quoi....

In a way its kind of a sad song but I don't think that's what the songwriter meant for it to be.... I think its more of an expression of a feeling... a gentle wish that you hope could be heard by that special someone... without you telling....

Here are the lyrics... :-)

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes
They're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things
Will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world?

To everyone... Good luck in your respective orthopaedic and psychiatry papers tomorrow! Good luck to RURU!!! =B (rubbit rubbit)

The Greatest Roller Coaster?

The following pictures are taken from an email I received... I can't help but to post them here because of the the following sentence

THE LAST PICTURE SAYS IT ALL













By the way, this ride can be attempted at New Ohio, US.

Real Life Sharingan (Sasuke's) 写轮眼

Which one of these does this look like?










Oh FYI (why spoil the fun by knowing the truth?)

its a type of cataract termed as Sutural Cataract.

The World is just AMAZING. Ain't it? Oh and if you prefer to say that God is amazing, well your god reads Manga!

1 Malaysia, My foot

No I'm not making a mockery of this supposedly (yes, supposedly) Noble Cause.

Not when the people pushing for it are making a mockery of it themselves!

Espousing Racial Unity while encouraging Ethnic Divide..

Is Hypocrisy part and parcel of BN's existence?

this plunging of the knife, deepening the gorge that exist between Malaysians has been the only thing they know ever since the 1990's. Its their only reflex, their only defense mechanism, their only strategy.

So blatant is this that traces of it are everyday in UTUSAN and BERITA HARIAN, lesser in the Star, but also in quite a few chinese dailies.

Everything political event will be given a spin, every white cloth given a dye.

and worst of all... this 1malaysia thingy, is a stolen Idea from Haris Ibrahim's Anak Bangsa Malaysia Initiative... the first movement to push the bangsa Malaysia concept along..

This hypocrisy is getting on my nerves.


This article is by Ktemoc

Malay language mainstream media's racist game - will Najib ever speak up?

Sim Kwang Yang wrote a fine article in Malaysiakini titled The Umno dilemma.

He talked about PM Najib being aware of the new mood of the electorate, and of the Pakatan offering the rakyat the Ketuanan Rakyat as a far more attractive and inclusive alternative to UMNO’s Ketuanan Melayu.

Najib, as Sim observed, attempted to meet the new mood by making and managing the required change to his advantage, in offering a new political ideology to win back the middle ground.

As Sim said: Najib immediately announced plans for Umno's reform. The top party leadership was to be elected directly by the grass-root members in future, to eradicate money politics during party election, a measure that was first mooted by Ku Li.

He then proposed a series of 'liberalisations', and created the new old 1Malaysia slogan. Sloganeering is part and parcel of Malaysian politics, and gullible middle-ground Malaysians with a tendency for wishful-thinking are particularly susceptible to it.

For a while, it looked like the new Najib administration did have a fresh new mask to change the public perception of Umno.

But alas, as Sim noticed: Usually, when the Umno ... boss comes up with a new slogan, you hear it being echoed ad infinitum down the line by leaders at various levels like loyal parrots.
This time though, the various proposals by the new PM were welcome by a deafening silence from his own people.
The only voice was the stinging remark by the former PM Dr Mahathir Mohaham, reiterating Umno's communal ideology, as if to rebuke Najib's 1Malaysia policy.

This is significant. Utusan Malaysia, the bastion of Umno propaganda machinery and official organ of Umno ideology, was seen soon after to make every political issue into racial one, from Teoh Beng Hock's death, to the anti-ISA mass rally on Aug 8.

So, it shouldn’t be surprising to see provocative pieces coming out from the UMNO (perhaps no longer Najib's) controlled media, such as the recent sh*t-stirring invocation to Malays to have a bit of balls and stand up to those arrogant rapacious ‘nons’.

That such seditious incitement of the 'Malays are cowards' article was permitted to be published without a peep from Najib would point to either his complicity in or his helplessness against the insidious untuk bangsa clarion call, the latter case notwithstanding his claim to be a warlord of UMNO.

UMNO die-hards believe that the ethno-centric clarion call could re-marshal the faithful and perhaps more back its keris-ed banner. The by-election results in both Bukit Gantang and Manek Urai seem to support this belief.

Today, another of those seditious incitements published in Berita Harian, was picked up by The Malaysian Insider, titled Kaitan demonstrasi, kempen hentam Melayu — Abdul Rahman Sulaiman

It said: Sesiapa saja yang mengikuti gelagat politik DAP akhir-akhir ini akan dapat mengesan satu pola yang lebih mirip atau menjurus ke arah satu kempen atau gerakan terancang memburukkan kepemimpinan atau institusi Melayu.
Quick tranlation: Observers of DAP would have seen in its politics a pattern of campaigning to belittle Malay leaders and institutions.
Yes, we've heard that one before when the demands for MACC to account for a death in custody.

I need only paste here the article's last three paragraphs for you to see what the article has inflammatorily argued as the DAP's Malay bashing campaign, a swift escalation of the earlier ‘Malays are cowards’ instigation:

Adalah dipercayai bahawa pembabitan dalam demonstrasi menentang ISA pada Sabtu lalu juga sebahagian daripada kempen menghentam Melayu itu dalam erti kata kerajaan yang dijadikan sasaran dianggap sebagai kerajaan Melayu.

Malangnya, strategi berkenaan nyata meleset apabila sebahagian besar pembabitan terdiri daripada orang Melayu sehingga ada di kalangan mereka berasa diperbodohkan penganjur.

Sampai bila kempen menghentam Melayu ini akan diteruskan? Apakah Melayu sanggup membiarkan persepsi bahawa yang malas itu Melayu, yang rasuah itu Melayu dan yang bodoh itu Melayu berterusan tanpa penyudah?

Expect Najib to remain silent on this racist incitement.
Obviously UMNO believes in pursuing its untuk bangsa strategy, which has been why DPM Muhyiddin had described Anwar Ibrahim as a traitor to the Malay race, while the UMNO mouthpieces like Utusan has termed PAS as a tool of the DAP to divide and rule the Malays.

But alas, despite that insult to PAS, people like Dr Hassan Ali and the Kulim Wonder have one way or another convinced UMNO it’s on the right (racist) path.

Sim termed his article The UMNO Dilemma because (as he wrote):

... the racial tirade is also revealing. It shows the inability of Umno to create a new narrative to meet the changing reality of Malaysia. When provoked into action, their reflex reaction is to revert back to the tired, archaic, irrelevant, fossilised and outdated, discourse of their past.

In effect, their racial discourse can only please the believers, but will do nothing to win over converts from the non-believers. It will alienate the Chinese and the Indians even more, thereby negating all BN effort to win back the middle ground.

It all goes to show how hard it is for an old political party that is used to enjoying political hegemony to reform itself when it is on the decline. Simply put, Umno is full of too many warlords with too much political baggage and too much vested interests. It has become like a dinosaur with a small head and a huge body, that finds it simply too sluggish to move anywhere, metaphorically.

Well fine, but where’s the dilemma?

Sim also wrote:

They see the various races as monolithic entities going at one another's throat. Apparently, they are stuck in the time capsule of the 1960s. In reality, there are no such monolithic racial entities. The social economic changes in the country in the past decades have allowed the various ethnic entities to evolve into very complex, diverse, and multi-layered organisms.

I looked at dramatic images of the mostly Malay police force beating down on the mostly Malay anti-ISA protestors, and I see the deep wound inflicted by Umno on the Malay soul. Such a scene was unthinkable mere decades ago!

malaysiakini photo

In short, political propaganda must fit some of the reality of lived experience. The chief worry of the Malay men and women, especially those in the urban centres of Malaysia, is the task of keeping or seeking a good job, rising price hikes in all things necessary for basic daily living, avoiding criminals, and the children's education.

In this struggle for survival, many see the government as the culprit of their sufferings, and not the Chinese or the Indians, who suffer alongside them.

I'll be kind to Najib and give him the benefit of the doubt and say, maybe he sees what Sim has said, that in this struggle for survival, many see the government as the culprit of their sufferings, and not the Chinese or the Indians, who suffer alongside them, but alas, obviously not Muhyiddin Yassin and many other top UMNO leaders.

And what do those mutes stung by hornets, namely MCA, Gerakan, MIC, and PPP, have to say?

end of article

http://ktemoc.blogspot.com/2009/08/malay-language-mainstream-medias-racist.html

A Must Read. Period.

Reading articles like these always make me feel justified for recommending the Sun newspaper to everyone. (www.sun2surf.com)

the articles are neutral, and the comments by the like of Citizen Nades, Nuri Vittachi are all constructive, sensible and pack a punch. And this article, by Yeo Yang Poh published on Monday, 3rd August 09.. is another stellar piece that makes you think and concur.

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WHY march, when the government has said that it will review the Internal Security Act? Why march, when there are other very cosy ways of giving your views and feedback?

One would understand if these were questions posed by nine-year-olds. But they are not. They are questions posed by the prime minister of this nation we call our home. Answer we must. So, why?

Because thousands who died while in detention cannot march or speak any more. That is why others have to do it for them. Because persons in the corridors of power, persons who have amassed tremendous wealth and live in mansions, and persons who are in the position to right wrongs but won’t, continue to rule our nation with suffocating might. And they certainly would not march. They would prevent others from marching.

Because the have-nots, the sidelined, the oppressed, the discriminated and the persecuted have no effective line to the powerful. Because the nice ways have been tried ad nauseam for decades, but have fallen on deaf ears. Because none of the major recommendations of Suhakam (including on peaceful assembly), or of the commissions of inquiry, has been implemented.

Because the proposed Independent Police Complaints and Misconduct Commission (IPCMC) is not in sight, while corruption and insecurity live in every neighbourhood; and (despite reasoned views expressed ever so nicely in opposition) Rela (people’s volunteer corps) is being brought in to make matters even worse. The proponents in “Su Qiu” (remember them?) were not marchers. In fact it is hard to find nicer ways than “su qiu”, because the term means “present and request” or “inform and request”. In terms of putting forward a view or a request, it is the height of politeness.

Yet they were labelled “extremists” – they who did not march. And now you ask, why march? Because you gave non-marchers a false name! You called them the “silent majority”, who by virtue of their silence (so you proudly argued with twisted logic) were supporters of government policies since they were not vocal in raising objections.

You claimed to be protecting the interest of the “silent majority”. Now some of them do not want to be silent anymore, and you are asking why? Yes, because double standards and hypocrisy cannot be covered up or explained away forever; and incompetence cannot be indefinitely propped up by depleting resources.

Because cronyism can only take care of a few people, and the rest will eventually wake up to realise the repeated lies that things were done in certain ways purportedly “for their benefit”. Because the race card, cleverly played for such a long time, is beginning to be seen for what it really is – a despicable tool to divide the rakyat for easier political manipulation.

Because it does not take much to figure out that there is no good reason why Malaysia, a country with abundant human resources and rich natural resources, does not have a standard of living many times higher than that of Singapore, an island state with no natural resources and that has to import human resources from Malaysia and elsewhere. Because, in general, countries that do not persecute marchers are prosperous or are improving from their previous state of affairs, and those that do are declining.

Because Gandhi marched, Mandela marched, Martin Luther King marched, and Tunku Abdul Rahman marched. Because more and more people realise that peaceful assemblies are no threat at all to the security of the nation, although they are a threat to the security of tenure of the ruling elite.

Because politicians do not mean it when they say with a straight face or a smile that they are the servants and that the people are the masters. No servant would treat his master with tear gas, batons and handcuffs. Because if the marchers in history had been stopped in their tracks, places like India, Malaysia and many others would still be colonies today, apartheid would still be thriving in South Africa, Nelson Mandela would still be scribbling on the walls of Cell 5, and Obama would probably be a slave somewhere in Mississippi plotting to make his next midnight dash for the river.

And because liberty, freedom and dignity are not free vouchers posted out to each household. They do not come to those who just sit and wait. They have to be fought for, and gained. And if you still want to ask: why march; I can go on and on until the last tree is felled. But I shall obviously not. I will end with the following lines from one of the songs sung in the 1960s by civil rights marchers in the US, without whom Obama would not be able to even sit with the whites in a bus, let alone reside in the White House:

“It isn’t nice to block the doorway It isn’t nice to go to jail There are nicer ways to do it But the nice ways have all failed It isn’t nice; it isn’t nice You’ve told us once, you’ve told us twice But if that’s freedom’s price We don’t mind ...”

(Yeo Yang Poh is a former Bar Council president.)
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