Senses

Tomorrow, or, to be more precise, in the next 14 hours i gonna face two exams and i haf one assignment due which i only barely halfway through. I know i shouldn't be here, but i think if i dun type sth out here, i might lose sth more important in my life.

Stretched, that's the only word I can think about being in HKUST. You never get enough sleep because there're always unfinished assignments and quizzes. Well, at start, I was thinking about working till my bones break to maintain the scholarship in a relatively very tough place here [imagine competing with Chinese and local HK chinese], but then, after living here in HK, the so-called metropolitan city for such a long extent of time, I started to realize sth: everyone here works till they die, and they don't even know why they're living. Or, they don't even know they're breathing every moment.

Ask any teenager in HK around me. Ask them: What do you know about suffocation?
Answer: What? Don't waste your time on that.

Question: What is the meaning of life?
Answer: Hahahahahaha...why're you asking that? Are you serious? (repeat the loop till it goes to infinity)

Question: What happened in Lebanon a few months back? Do you know that Israel is signing a peace treaties with Palestine?
Answer: .......(look away, ignore you completely after hearing the word 'Lebanon'.

They just don't care. You talk about what the local HK stars are doing lately, they know it instantly, by heart. They're even better than the paparazzi. Take my word for that. Something is dangerously amiss here. In a city full of pride and serious lack of conscience to care about others and events happening outside HK, I feel helpless. There're thousands other people outside HK, facing different problems, having cultural and religion clashes here and there, and they care NOTHING about it. Then arise the question: what's the point they're studying in a good university for? a better career?

And i ask myself: Do i compete with these ppl until i lose my vision of myself? Is this why i go to university?

You own urself a first class honest and scholarship, a good job, then you work days and nights until u dun haf any strength to continue working. You retire, then you started to stay in front of television, living your life as a legal couch potato. Is that what i want?

If study is about career, wealth, status, then i think i'm not gonna give it a fuck. I said, c'mon man, what's the point? What do I really learn? The purpose in life is what we're really looking for. You see, in HK there's sth really stupid going on every day. There're christians trying to get ur contacts, and then they will call u furiously, asking u to go their churches by all means possible. God gives u the light, God gives you the comfort, God gives you the answer to your question of being a typical 'zombie' in a metropolitan city. What's the fucking lie? you baptize, then they go away. You're all by yourself, discovering God on your own. Well, I don't give a shit. To hell with these God stuff. Religion is only a false light. You thought you are saved, but then when you are alone, you did not dive into your own heart seeking for solutions and answers. Instead, everything is referred to as God's doings. Bullshit. In big city like HK, where pressure and sleeplessness squeezes everyone into emptiness, more ppl fall into these kinda false light. They fall, and then they forget who they are. They don't even know how to find their own solutions. Everything is a 'blessing'. An infinite loop, which recursively repeated until every generation in the coming future completely loses the ability to think. Chinese are pathetic. Hong Kongers are pathetic. One thing about Chinese from China and Hong Kong is, they always look for a model answer, an absolute solution, a definite answer. This drives me crazy. A race lacks of the ability to rethink ideologies and challenge the thinkings around them. I wonder, if Hitler were to command China's army, I'm sure in 10 years time back in 1941, Hitler would have grasped the whole Europe and Asia under his tyranny. (if America were not to interfere, that is)

I'm totally ashamed of being a chinese. I really am. Back in Malaysia, things aren't that different either. The generation after mine are getting more and more ignorant of the world they live in and they stop asking the big questions about life. I am growing tired of being able to find someone younger who could tell me objectively what he thought about life without any arrogance implied. Discussion about life and thinkings have been deemed as extreme stupidity and waste of time. Standing in the middle of Mongkok a month ago where thousands of thousands of people walk aimlessly, shoulders touching shoulders, I once thought: what has the people in big cities become? Is this supposed to be 'normal'?

But then, this makes it all clear. In the next century machines will definitely take over human race, because a lot of people among us are losing the ability to think. One day, when machines start to tell every newly born human that machines are the God in bible, or in Quran, i guess, nobody will object it. Jesus will turn into an icon of super AI created by machines to walk through time tunnel to go the past to save human race. The staff Moses used to part the sea is nothing but a strong magnetic divider. Judgment day is already over. 'God' decided to take over the human race once in for all, sending his 'angels' (machines) down to earth to teach us about how to live a peaceful and happy life.

Sitting in front of one of the desk in HKUST's dorm, I look out of the window beside me. Tomorrow I gonna have two quizzes, one assignment, and one lab. So? So what? I look out of the window, I see thousands of still-awake chinese [from China and local HK] flipping their books furiously at 3 am in the morning, slowly march themselves towards the realm of machines. Once, religions dominize our thinkings. Finally when we're able to question and overcome it, the coming generations are slowly being taken over by the domination of machines.

I pray for my own senses to spring alive every moment I live. I feel alive when I know I am still able to think, to reflect and to judge objectively. Tonight, I know, finally, what it means to be a human.

Amen.