AsenDURE @ Corner of 11th & 20th

Okay. I’m feeling particularly shallow today. How shallow? Well if you were to empty out a Olympic size swimming pool and fill it with half an inch of water…that would pretty much describe how shallow I’m feeling right now. So, I’ll be talking about nothing else but me, myself and I.

First off

My “Hopefully” future car.
It has finally come a time to get myself a set of wheels and it will most probably end up as a weekend car. I’ve decided that paying RM700++ for a VIOS is not justifiable for a weekend car. So the next alternative would be a second hand vehicle and a survey of second hand cars introduced me to this beauty. Price range around RM13-27K.

The Mazda Astina 323 - hmmm…sounds like a serial cable RS233. Don’t have the specs at the top of my head ‘cept that it’s a 1.3 -1.8cc engine range, 5 door hatchback, no glove compartment. Hopefully can find a reasonably priced one and hope that it ain’t a ‘lemon’ - the danger of getting 2nd hand cars.

Feeling out of shape.
I feel out of shape. Sigh~ The most apparent is that my chest has been reduced from a full C cup to a A cup and my biceps from 16” to a pahetic a 12”.

I attribute it to 3 things:

1. While multiple reps tones you, to bulk up or maintain that condition, you need heavy weight which means a gym. I find the gyms in the Klang Valley charge an unbelievable price for their membership and hidden “administrative-one-time-only” cost. Plus to sign up with one is almost like signing a job contract - 6 months advance and 1 month notice? What the hell?? Now while I’m not expecting them to charge what I normally pay in my regular gym (RM20 a month!! – if you’re curious), as it is: 1. an association 2. in my hometown…yet I cannot see myself parting with RM165 a month to lug around heavy iron paperweights. For one thing, I don’t use machines (they are so noob equipment) and I don’t need to fill myself up with calorie and mineral rich soda water. Secondly, I don’t go for that sauna crap as, if you’re really working out as you should be, you’d be sweating whatever excess water you’ve been trying to lose in those steam toasters anyway…then again unless someone actually believe that burning one’s ass off, like some Kenny Roasters chicken, in one will actually burn off fat then I have nothing to say - you oversize lazy bum. I’ve also noticed that with the amount of working young adults that sign up for these gyms, you need to actually line up to use an equipment. There goes any chances implementing circuit training.

Now while it is highly noted that there is an abundance of the female species in awesomely high display of revealing body or body hugging colorful spandex, that alone does not make me thing twice about this matter.(okay I admit, I’m a lying SOB…It did made me think twice.)

2. Since moving from ad hoc SE to full SA (due to the new company I’m currently assigned to – Axalto or formerly known as SchlumberSEMA), I’ve been spoilt by Dell Tech Support. Since their(Dell) machines are cheap and reasonably crappy and the company’s strict IT Warranty Policy(out of warranty? Throw it out) …I suppose their Tech Support has to be highly effective. While I used to be able to at work hands on machines, nowadays my role has been reduced to calling-Dell-whenever-something-screws-up. Well at least SA role function is a big learning experience, especially since I’m now South Asia SA and remote site SA…muahahahahahaha! Plus they(dell) can’t touch my servers!

3. Beer. The devil’s piss. The truth serum. Well aside from the most beautiful thing God has placed on this earth – girls, this is my only other weakness. Since coming out of retirement, I’ve been clubbing way to regularly to my liking. I’ve also found some new drinking kakis at my new workplace and since it’s along Jalan P. Ramlee, happy hour after work has brought on a whole new meaning. Anyone who drinks regularly knows that if you’re not careful, you develop a beer gut. So word of advise is try not to eat too much if you’re aware that you’re in for a drinking session. Reson: your body will try to burn off the alcohol first before it starts with the food you’ve consumed.

whoopsss..that’s all for now. Need to bath then catch a movie at GSC then hit the clubs again tonite.

Well In regards to the very anti-mission school statments made in the LowYatNet thread of the blog title…

Don’t really know what this hoo-raah is all about. From my understanding, Catholic parents send their children to Catholic mission school, Methodist parents send their kids to Methodist mission schools, and Muslim parents send their Kids to Islamic schools and everyone else goes to government schools – NOT under any form of duress whatsoever.

But then again, most open-minded parents of different faith send their kids to mission schools coz they (the parents themselves) were formerly from there or are confident in their kids unwavering faith…. Some of the strongest bonds of friendship are made in high school. It’s almost like a college sorority. We camped together, played soccer and rugby in the mud and rain together, we fished together, ogled and wolf-whistled at girls together, we played snooker together, played truant together, scamper for cover (when the white robed brother appears in the hallway) together, we get punished together (and watching each other pulling our ears crossed-handed and half-seating with a big smug smirk on our face) together, we go biking together, climbing together, smoking together, lighting fireworks together, burnt the midnite oil together (when school blocks are opened for SPM/SRP revision)…

A mission school boy can beat the living crap outta mission school boy, then help him up, shake hands and walk away…but a kid from another school who picks a fight with a mission school boy will find out he has to deal with the whole school regardless of faith or ethnicity. School mates will still collectively jeer at others schools students during interschool games, debates and any competition. They will raise their hand triumphantly whenever they win or when they announce which school has the best results academically or in sports.

St. Matthew house will still hate St. John, St. Luke and vice versa during sports day…kids proudly wearing their respective jerseys and hooting like wild baboons at each other from the stand regardless what race or faith they are with a generous amout of vularities free flowing….

And at the end of the day, after graduation….Muslims still remain Muslims, free thinkers remain free thinkers, Buddhist still remain Buddhist, Protestant remain Protestant and Catholics remain Catholics. School friends from all over the world would come back, at a predestined time, sit at their regular eatery over teh peng, spicy bbq sting ray, mee goreng and reminisce about old times! Whever you are in the world, a fellow La Salle will shake a fellow La Salle’s hand with a sincere smile on his face and you’ll know you’re with a brother.

semper fi!

Okay peeps, as promised the next installment and finale in the 2 part series about the universe. The morbid human mind has always been fascinated with the end and postulated therefore that even the universe itself is not spared. The current thinking is the either the Universe will exist forever, or it will cease to exist at some point in time. It is unknown which of these possibilities will hold true. It is also not known whether the Universe will continue to support life. Hubble’s discovery of the universal expansion is what gives us the notion of a beginning and possibly an end to the universe that was till fairy recently was thought as eternal due to the Steady State theory.Now on to the exciting part: The End of the universe which can be basically divided into five major groups which is much co-related.

1. Despite observations, the universe is eternal as believed before therefore it will continue to exist without an end.
2. Reincaration of the Universe whereby the Universe dies and then lives again in this sequence. Also known as the Oscillatory Universe the universe undergoes an infinite series of oscillations, each beginning with a big bang and ending with a big crunch. After the big bang, the universe expands for a while before the gravitational attraction of matter causes it to collapse back in and undergo a bounce.
3. There are parallel universes or multiverse. Our universe may end, but it is only one amongst numerous others which are not, as a collection, subject to physical laws that could cause a total end.
4. The Universe will not end, but its contents will reach a uniform equilibrium which renders life impossible. If the universe lasts for an infinite time, then it will asymptotically approach a state where all energy is evenly distributed thus the temperature of the entire universe would be very close to absolute zero despite the term “heat death”. Another scenario is the Big Rip whereby the universe will eventually be pulled apart.
5. The Big Crush states the universe will stop expanding and start to collapse upon itself. All matter and energy would be compressed back into a gravitational singularity.

Nothing much to post…trying to get the ‘juju’ of inspiration to write poems again - but not working out too well. Need to ‘buaya’ more man…no girls no inspiration =(

Anyhow here’s my latest doodle. Elf archer…what elven archers should look like in Warcraft 3.

p.s-guys, watch where u’re looking!

A reply to the above thread in Lowyatdotnet:

They have a closet full of sweaters that matches every bag, shoes or skirt. You tell her it’s gonna be cold where you’re going (cinema or rainy season). She says she’ll be okay….so you put on ur old ruggerd jacket and off you go.

then it really gets cold and she’s snuggling and trying to get inside your jacket like a baby kangaroo trying to get into it’s mothers pouch…so reluctanly, as a gentleman, you hand over your jacket to her, drap it over her shoulders and you end up being cold even though it was you who had the sense to bring one in the first place!!

Whats freaking worst is that wherever you go ppl says she looks cute in that oversize jacket even if it doesn’t match her blouse or skirt or bag! Plus they say “oh’ how lucky she has such a thoughtful boyfren”….I want my jacket and stop being cold!

Format hard disk “kow tim sai”. That is the worst piece of ‘advice’ that I would want to get from tech support but is nevertheless, one of the most generously dispensed ‘advise’ given freely on lowyatdotnet Technical Support Thread. It always pisses me off when I see this ‘recommendation’ given to any sort of question raised as if this kinda solution is the penicillin equivalent for IT. I bet not everyone enjoys sitting through a 2 hour session of formatting, reinstalling and re-customizing one’s pc, plus the possible and painful experience of losing one’s data. Formatting a system every time they have something wrong is just not right. I would only suggest to format hard disk solution as the last resort and not the first choice. Viruses and malware CAN be removed (my personal record for restoring effectively a infected system is at 18K over infected viruses and 2K spywares.) Start-up error messages and registry problems can be easily fixed by the ever-handy “msconfig” and the ability to read absolute paths plus a range of cleanup programs.

Another ‘advice’ I would like to see LESS given is to ask the user to install so-and-so an application when a simple walk-around exist in the OS itself. To me it’s kinda like a “cut-toes-to-fit-shoe” type of situation with every fanboy of such-and-such a software application betting on their mother’s grave that it will solve the problem at hand.

Just finished watching Identity. Pretty interesting psycho-thriller that’s a departure the normal thriller genre. Indeed the resurrection of the long dead formula of great thrillers and mysteries in the footsteps of the classic mystery such as Hitchcock or Agatha Christie.

The thriller stars John Cusack as a reluctant hero, who finds himself faced with a live changing confrontation. Cusack plays Ed, a limo-driver and a ex-cop, pulled into shady rundown motel during a torrential rainstorm when he gets involved in a traffic accident while chauffeuring a movie-star to Florida. At the motel, Ed comes in contact with Paris (a call-girl), Rhodes (a cop), Larry (the motel ‘owner’) and other motel patrons. Slowly as each of the patrons gets picked off one by one, Ed and Rhodes find themselves forced to find out the identity of the murderer among them. Identity starts off brilliantly in the spirit of Hitchcock as the strangers are flung together. The quick cuts and brilliant use of flashback makes Identity sizzle. You get set for an amazing whodunit as each motel patron’s identity is slowly revealed and the plot thicken with the quick changing of the ‘prime suspects’ tag between the characters. With the perfect elements It’s ending went for the “Sixth Sense” style twist and a twist that is both clever and interesting.

Was digging around in the garden and stumbled upon an ant colony last weekend. Big mistake…spend at the next hour observing those little insectiods. One thing that never ceases to amaze me are ants, and they have got to be my favorite insect, being almost human-like in many aspects. Time to dust off that Entomology book I’ve stashed away and talk a little about them.

Ants has got to be the most successful species on earth (then again there’s also Blattodea or roaches.) They appeared on Earth during the Cretaceous period and can be found almost anywhere on the planet. It is estimated that there are about 20,000 different species of ants. Ants have been acclaimed for their wisdom since ancient times. They stand out at, or near, the peak of invertebrate development, displaying memory, learning, and the ability to correct mistakes. However, these intelligences are trapped inside rigid and programmed behavior patterns.

Ants build homes ranging from simple little mounds out of dirt or sand to small sticks mixed with dirt and sand to make a stronger mound that offers protection from rain. These mounds consist of many chambers linked by tunnels and each chamber having a specific usage such as nurseries, food storage, and a “locker room” for the worker ants. Ants live in advance colonies consisting of millions and this seems to be the main attributes that make them very successful. Ants are holometabolous, developing by complete metamorphosis, passing through larval and pupal stages before becoming adults. The larval stage is particularly helpless like a human baby, because it does not need to care for itself. The difference between the different castes, is determined by feeding in the larval stage – talk about becoming what you eat! Food is given to the larvae by a process called trophallaxis, or regurgitation. A new worker spends the first few days of its adult life caring for the queen and young. After that it graduates to digging and other nest work, and then to foraging and defense of the nest. These changes are fairly abrupt and define what are called temporal castes. In a few ants there are also physical castes.

All ants in the colonies are females to begin with, but only the Queen and breeding females have the ability to mate. The male ants or drones, along with the breeding females are born with wings and during breeding season are carried outside Mating occurs in flight with the males dying shortly while surviving females land and find a suitable place to begin a colony. There, the shed their wings and begin to lay eggs, which they care for. The first workers to hatch are weak and smaller than later workers, but they begin to serve the colony immediately. They enlarge the nest, forage for food and care for the other eggs. This is how a new colony starts off. If you watch ants for any length of time you will see that they really do communicate with each other by touching each other with their antennae. Ants also use pheromones to leave scent trails for other ants to follow.

Symbiotic relationships with ants

Ant Shepards
Aphids secrete a sweet liquid called honeydew. Normally this is allowed to fall to the ground, but around ants it is kept for them to collect. The ants in turn keep predators away and will move the aphids around to better feeding locations. Ants have a similar arrangement with Myrmecophilous (a type of caterpillar) which are also herded by the ants, to feeding areas in the daytime and brought inside the ants nest at night. The caterpillars have a gland which secretes honeydew if the ants massage them.

Ant Farmers
There are many different species of fungus-growing ants, but they all belong to the tribe Attini. While this “dinner” was not exactly haut cuisine, these ants were apparently the first animals to deliberately grow their food. The higher attines include the well-known leaf-cutter ants, while the lower attines are a less well studied group which tend to have small colonies and collect a variety of foods for their fungus. They have a mutualistic relationship with a fungus. The ants gain food from the fungus and the fungus gains a place to live protected by the ants from predators and parasites.

Sat on the Star LRT recently and this poem on the Poetry in Motion ad space caught my eye. Since I did not bring a good book to read, I thought I might as well read it. Blew me away and invoked the inspiration in me to venture into poetry once again (Something I haven’t done since college time, when a particular girl started me writing and we started exchanging poems….sappy story so don’t bother!) Anyhow regretably, I haven’t kept any of my previous works, since feeling depressed at the time, I decided to delete it from my hard disk to erase some of the more painful memories.

~ I wandered lonely as a cloud ~
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

Maybe I’ll pick up the pen again, maybe I won’t…sigh~

Feeling bored with my Jazz collection, so decided to listen to Imee Ooi’s rendition of Prajna Paramita Hrdaya. Got tired of guessing what it all means (same as when I strain to decipher the meaning of Mandarin song) so I decided to look it up with it’s english translation.

A short clip from the CD

Here is the Prajna Paramita Hrdaya in Sanskrit and it’s English translation (don’t really know how accurate it is though with my limited understanding of Pali/Sanskrit).

aryavalokitesvaro bodhisattvo
(Avalokateshvara bodhisattva)
gambhiram prajnaparamita caryam caramano vyavalokayati
(deep perfect wisdom action perform luminously)
sma panca skandhas tams ca sva bhava sunyam
(saw five bundles them own nature empty)
pasyati sma iha sariputra
(? saw oh Sariputra)

GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
(gone gone totally gone totally completely gone enlightened so be it)

A little on Prajna Paramita Hrdaya or the Heart Sutra for the uninitiated:

Heart Sutra is one of the Prajnaparamita sutras found in Mahayana Buddhism. It refer to the use of perfect wisdom (prajnaparamita) to cleanse error from the heart (hridaya) and is one of the most universal Buddhist chants in the world (the core teachings and summarizing text of all the prajnaparamita texts). It is a classic chant recited among both the Mahayana, Zen and Vajrayana/Tibetan Buddhists. This is a powerful chants, especially when played/chanted around the full moon, new moon and for uplifting the heart. Wow!…no wonder I feel so calm. In Theravada however, there are also teachings about Prajna Paramita… it’s called Panna Parami. The doctrines of Panna Parami however is lesser in Theravada, so no wonder Myo (one of my best friends whos’ Burmese) didn’t know much about it. Burnt him a copy because he liked it so much and he suprised his dad when playing it in the house! Alas though, his dad feeling estatic about his son’s new found piety, later made him listen to a couple more chants from his own collection! The last time I met up with him, I did detect a very faint hint of sarcasm in his ‘Thank You’. Reminds me, it’s been 3 years now he’s in the US of A…better give him a holler.

Prajna Paramita/Panna Parami is one of the 10 perfections to be achieved by the Bodhisattva before Buddhahood (One paramita is perfected in each of the 10 Bodhisattva Bhumis). The Prajnaparamita sutras is mainly Bodhisattva-yana, practitioners of Bodhisattvas, with bodhisattva ideals. Lastly, any corrections are much appreciated!

Credits:
The Translated English version was prepared by: Dr. Michael E. Moriarty
Big thanks to Ah Chan (my friend and housemate) for burning the CD for me. Sorry for bullying you into it Since we are on the topic of religious music, I guess the next up would be another favorite of mine, The Gregorian chants of The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos! Woot!