Masked Riders, in Thailand!

Aha! Time to incorporate some fun into my blog after so many serious posts. I found a video clip which nearly killed me (yes, trust me). It nearly took my breath out laughing.

Well, it's in simple cantonese. But I can't help noticing the part where "damn交含kam lan" with the kam lan in hokkien. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. OMFG. REALLY LAUGH DIE ME.

ENJOY AND LAUGH KAO LAT KAO LAT!



1) Note the lyrics;
2) Note the background;
3) Note how the cars siam the riders;

Kan this is really damn funny. I can't stop repeating.

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The Secret of God

When Christian fanatics talk to me about God and etc, I always find it irritating and try to escape from them all the while. The way these fanatics interpret God and life is not the way I agree with. Being a scientific person, I would always like to see things around myself as a form of interpretable and logical appearance, not as something which seems 'out-of-nowhere'.

Realm of Energy

I myself believe in the balance and everything is energy. Like what Buddha said, what we think is what we create, and each universe from each individual that crosses path builds up to the ultimate universe and experience. I would like to think of it this way: The whole universe exists as a balance of energy, every single part of it. You can neither destroy energy nor create it, you can only transform an energy form from one form to another, and vice versa. That's what science is about, and that's what life and spiritual thinking is about.

So tell me, my fellow Christians, how do you define God? God is the one who creates the whole universe, He is indestructible, He is always here and there, in every single form and another. And what is energy? Energy creates the universe, energy is indestructible, energy always exist here and there, every single part of our surrounding objects and even ourselves. In the end, it boils down to how you look at things, really. If you look at things from a religious point of view, it turns out that you can hardly change a shit. For example, to destroy what God has created is a blasphemy. But for scientists, to manipulate the way energy works is never a blasphemy in any sort of logical reasons. The reasons behind work differently all together.

To be exact, I think Christianity should be practiced as a philosophy rather than a religion. There are major differences to it. When you practice the philosophy, you are balancing up your life by projecting the positive energy from your mind. (This statement is not un-scientific. Think of it this way, when your brain thinks of something, the neurotic cells are generating bio-electricity that thus generates thoughts. This bio-electricity, when generated, always generate waves. These waves thus interact with the environment around you, and therefore at another time later you will surely reap the feedbacks from the environment). When you are practicing it in a religious way, there're a thousand ways you will go wrong. Look at the crusaders. Look at the jihad movement created by the Muslims. What in the world is going on? Simply with the fact that the overwhelming, indestructible reasons from the interpretation of the holy book or some holy persons simply blind the devotees. Buddha never intends Buddhism to be a religion, and so does Jesus. Tell me, when Jesus had said that he wanna create a new religion called Christianity? He never did. All he wanna do from the start is to introduce changes to Jewism.

So pretty much we are dealing with the inner strength as we speak. When there is a divine being that gonna protect us and give us comfort, that's religion. When there is a reason and thoughts that we can reflect on ourselves and thus change the way we output to the world and the way we filter the inputs, that's called philosophy. And in the end, philosophy couldn't reach out so easily because it requires people who actually can think objectively. So, eventually, wise people blend philosophy into religions, and hope that in the end the general public will walk towards good deeds and positive thinking.

So, why trouble yourself with religion? You are yourself and you are part of God's realm. Yes you are, aren't you a bundle of energy that lives and interacts with the surrounding? The same works with constellation, stars, sun and gravity. We can even define ourselves as God if you want to, if that's what you want. I knew it when I said that I gonna get cornered-looks from the Christians. But hey, I am talking about Energy here. Energy is the God in my belief. I do think that God is inside me, and I am indeed part of what God wills me to do. To open people's eyes about what really is and what really is not. What really is, is the very essence of life, the energy. What really is not, is the interpretations and the rules and the laws of a religion that bind us while we don't even understand why the laws are there. That, is what not is.

The Secret

'The Secret' is a book that I would ultimately recommend everyone to read or to watch. (the DVD I mean). It has a bizzarre reasoning to start with, but in the end it still is about what I said just now, energy. It basically says that, if you think of what you want, you will get what you want.

From energy point of view, when you think positively, you will generate positive thoughts, and positive thoughts generate waves that interact with the environment. When you are in the mood of happiness or positive feelings, these waves will get even more amplified. Because of the happiness waves you generate, the bad waves input, such as credit card bills and stuff that enter your brain will be suppressed instead. This state-of-mind, will ultimately bring you to the course that you want to. You will never resist to smile back at a person who is really smiling so happily out of his/her heart to you, even when you are so down, right?

So what's with this secret? This secret is the law of attraction. It tells you that, like attracts like. If you are so fucking poor now, but the way you generate positive thoughts and being in the positive mood about you are getting to the point where abundance is your life, you will get to it anyhow. It's because the energy will balance itself. Mind me, it's not God that gives you what you want. It's you. You are the God now. You demands what you want, not God. Don't believe in that bullshit cause if you do, you will never understand what I am talking about. Everything in this universe is about interactions. Every interaction builds themselves from the ground of 'energy'. And thus, Law of Attraction works. You generate positive energy, in the end what you gonna produce is a resonance effect. Everything around you start to vibrate at your frequency, and thus the things you want to achieve start to materialize.

So what if you already think of what you want but you still don't get it? That's it. That's the Law of Attraction. When you start to ASK, you get the ANSWER from the universe, but because from the law of causality we know that there's always time lag between input and output, what the universe responds to us is not instant. So you have to RECEIVE. To receive, you have to be in the right mood, and you gotta really yearn for it a lot. Even there are theories which say ghosts exist because when hateful people die, the brainwaves they generate is so strong that it keeps vibrating around the space and thus when people with higher senses pick it up, they see the hateful message of that person---ghost. The same works with the Secret. If you have the thought of doing it, you have the way to do it finally, but you aren't just in the right mood to perform it, you will never get it. An example is, you want to become a great civil engineer. You want it real bad. You know how to do it, the universe has shown you to it...to be knowledge hungry, creative and etc. But you just don't believe you can do it. That's it. You are done. You get what you want, and you attract what you think. So in the end, the universe grants you that. You cannot do it.

Philosophy of doing it

I realized the philosophy that actually drives my life since I thought about it in form 3. I was always a lazy kid who never did my homework and in the end I got fished out by teachers. I was scolded by them, I was scolded by my parents. They kept telling me: it's too late for you to do anything. At that moment, I got the light on my philosophy: Nothing is too late, and nothing is too early. Things come to you at precisely the moment that they needed to, as you wish them to be. So I suddenly open myself up. I actually intended for the whole 'scolding' phenemona to start with. Of course, it is subconscious. But to think of it, why not it is actually subconsciously intentious? I had family problems, I had a lot of uncertainties in my life. And I wanted an alarm to change myself. And there I had it, the alarming wake-up call.

So what is the philosophy of doing it? To get what you want, to achieve what you want to? In the end it is not the desire that drives you to it, but the feelings. When you want to get rich, but you are so frustrated about your life, you might get rich in a way, but you will never be happy. The philosophy is, be in the positive mind while asking for what you want, and be grateful about it. When you feel grateful, you feel contented, and your life is full, thus you can start to give. When you start to give these 'contented' feelings to the people around you, things start to get positive, and things you want will appear eventually. That's how you wanna do it. You wanna believe in yourself that you are actually the God of your life. We are born with the power of manipulating energy. We are indeed, in the realm of Energy, thus the realm of God already.

Past, Present and Future

So that concludes it: the state we are in now, is an action from the past. That's present. And future has totally nothing to do with it. Trust me. When you failed test A, what you gonna fill your mind is just the bad emotions and self-blaming as a result from your failure in test A. Guess what? Yes you get it. You dwell on the bad frequency, you resonate more failures and bad frequency. Thus people tell you, the past is important because it is related to you. Absolutely no! The past only creates the present of you, and the future you, you can always tune your feelings and energies to breakthrough the past actions. What defines the future you is your present action, not the present state you are in because of your past actions.

I love weekends. Weekends are always the time when I can actually settle down and to think. I hope I do inspire you guys. And to my fellow Christians, sorry for the insults. I did not intend them. But really, treat your own religion objectively. Do not couple it with the laws and rules. Look beyond them and see the real philosophy inside. On the other hand, tradition and religion are always two different things. You can always sembahyang your nenek moyang even you are Christian. Come on la! Open up! ^^

P/S: Isn't it the science of wave energy balance the same as Christians' prayers and Buddhists' prayers? The same oso with the Guanyima prayers. When you pray hard, you generate solid brainwaves that resonate your life. Great! Yep, you can do it too, even without a religion!

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Work that you love

Being an engineer-to-be, and being a person who is constantly asked by my friends around me on what path do I set for my own future, I rarely have a fixed answer. I think that's why even my girlfriend get frustrated and feel insecure coz whenever she raised that question, my answer is: "I don't know". But that's life, we never know what we are, and here I will conjecture more: You don't even know who you are even you get there. Unless you are a few of the lucky ones. Like always, there's nothing that is necessarily true or untrue.

So, the serious topic I gonna put myself through now when writing this post is: What work do I really love to do? I guess this question is pretty much the question in almost every person on earth.


The Path: Form 5, and then...


I didn't choose engineering because I actually love engineering. I mean, I used to love playing with words in high school, and I know I am pretty good at it. I won prizes, by observing how the winning essays were presented and assume the 'frame' of a winning piece. And I am proud to say I am pretty good at manipulating emotions into words, twist them with a flavor of vanilla topping or whatsoever. Well, you know I am talking bout mandarin, right?

Until Form 5 is near to an end and everybody is troubled by their future. The choice to go to private college that gonna cost you a hell lot? Or to go to government-funded Form Six that seems to be a sinkhole for those who are from poor families and getting poor results (coz all those people got in the end are Malaysian universities)? Or dropout and find a job?

A lot among us are taking this seriously. And I am pretty much sure we don't know a shit about what we really like or love to do or to work on. You don't expect a Form Five kid to come at you and say, I like to become a doctor, for a reason other than 'saving people' and 'earning big money'. So a lot among us were pretty much blur, and those rich ones got sent out to foreign countries to be 'polished', while those who had not made their choices or those poor ones stay in Form Six. And Form Six, is pretty much what a lot of people call 'Hell'.

And in Form Six was the time I realized that my family is really poor. As in I found out from here and there that studying abroad in a good university is basically just a 'Cinderella'-like dream. The numbers are astronomical, although we were learning how the speed of light alter matter into energy at that time. So I decided to paint some colors into my totally fucked up life. I study really hard.

Most would have dropped their jaws if I tell them that I was not nearly a 'physics' or 'math' person in form 4 and 5. So I go for biology in Form Six, and then I realize biology is first and foremost, dull, and the second thing come into my mind is, I am pretty much fucked up if I don't get myself the good grades. So I change. I rather confront physics than the huge uncertainties of a jumbled up future career. This is the sad thing about Malaysian education. We are going towards money or prestige, rather than interest. Not because we really want that money or prestige, but rather that logic of the society and the people around us and the fact that Chinese is a 'secondary' citizen in Malaysia even we were born there.

Prestige


So when I got myself a good result, I told myself, hmm, this time I can bargain for my choice of work. So I weighed medicine, pharmacy and engineering. And to my genuine instinct, medical world just gonna fuck my life up because it is so 'routine' and lack of creativity. So I pick engineering. And because I love buildings to start with, so why not civil engineering?

Here I am, in a prestigious university studying civil engineering. Now I am starting to see the real question that is lurking behind: What do I really love to work on?

Till then I have this idea on how prestige works, but only vague ideas. Paul Graham clear my clouds and make my idea concrete. To me, this world is a whole junk of made-up prestige, especially in the business world. Tell me, which CEO is running a company happily while he has to flip through accounting reports, financial reports, schedules of meetings, endless tasks of client meetings and practically a weak heart when he goes to bed to have sex with his girlfriend or wife? So I guess that's a no-no. But that's how it works. When people don't wanna do this job, those people who want you to do it pay you a lot better, and with the 'light' of the prestige that comes along with it. And now, hear Graham out:-

"Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it prestigious.

The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. That kind of work ends up being done by people who are "just trying to make a living." (Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.) The danger is when money is combined with prestige, as in, say, corporate law, or medicine. A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone young, who hasn't thought much about what they really like.

The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?"


About discipline and my principles


I told WZ about my principles today: 1) Time efficiency: I don't like to spend too much time solving an easy problem. I don't mind procrastination, but I rather spend time working on harder problems; 2) Cost efficiency. I never wanna spend money acquiring gadgets before working, rather when I started to work, I figure out then what I gonna need to use for work and I buy it.

So you never see me buying high-end computer shit. Or any fancy cameras. It's not that I don't like them, but rather the fact that even I have them, I never will use them up to their fullest potential. So I feel great when I purchased a desktop and used up all the CPU's computing capability rather than buying a Pentium II 333 Mhz and left it there to rot. And obviously, WZ disapprove my first principle because he said that, if that's it, then it's not gonna be fun.

And so I am thinking, is there a work that you can call total fun, at all? You can find a work that fascinates you, but never a work that make you feel great and fun ALL the time. Pretty much now and then, you will get to the hard problems, and hard problems are always a pain in the ass. But why people always tell us to choose a work that we actually like? I guess the major reason is because we will procrastinate a lot less, and produce more. You couldn't actually tell an office boy to make coffee for fun, right?

"With such powerful forces leading us astray, it's not surprising we find it so hard to discover what we like to work on. Most people are doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain. Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige or money. How many even discover something they love to work on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.

It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably."

So what about work that you love? I don't think there's a fixed answer, ever. One has to keep switching jobs or their fields of interest to actually get to the thing they like. I like what Graham suggests, "always produce". What he actually mean is, if you don't like your current job, and you think that you are actually very much an author, then start producing, and "always produce". Only when you get your hands on the work that you think you are supposed to like, by then you will learn whether you actually like them or not. If you think you can earn enough money by doing the current job and get to author a book later, you may be in a deep shit when you quit your work and find that you are totally not an author after all.

So how to find the work that we love? I like the idea of a dynamic work for starters. Dynamic as in, you have a job that does not require the whole fucking attention of your time and life. And this always means a job that is less paid. The highly paid jobs are always those that require a huge attention during the working hours, for e.g. financial accounting firm. Now we know why business firms pay their workers more in general. It's because their jobs are totally boring and practically made their life wasted. So, if you think that you don't have an idea yet, start off with a dynamic job. And by that you can have enough energy to hop around different things and works. At least, you have the energy to 'always produce' at night or after work, am I right?


Being an engineering student; And...the Boundary


The thing I love about engineering is that, engineering is a field that will always (or somehow) converge in the end. People doing civil engineering can always switch to mechanical and EE and vice versa. All the things we learn are pretty much inter-related, and if you are a knowledge hunger freak like me who actually interested in engineering, you will be extremely happy. That's why I come up with the idea of having my own workshop in the future. I might like to do something mechanical, or EE or chemical on my own. I never know what field of engineering that interests me the most, yet, right?

And so the idea of being an engineer is becoming sensible to me at this moment. At least I am happy with the idea of working out a hard problem that I actually like to work on. But it does not mean it's fun. C'mon people, you gotta erase this idea. If you can watch movie rather than work, you will always watch movie and not work. That's the basic logic. There is no such work that is more fun than watching movie or reading manga or watching anime. But there is always this boundary, that if you have not produced anything and just having the fun, you will feel something is wrong, and you get to work on something then.

So this boundary should be the one used to remind ourselves now and then, not that the work is actually so fun. Find a work that you love doing, but do not expect it to be so hard-assed fun. I always believe that work brings pleasure, especially hard work that requires you to solve hard problems, like those in engineering. The pleasure here does not mean the one-second movie pleasure. The pleasure is not now, but rather the feeling of being great that lasts for one month, one year or even your entire life after finishing it.

So my dear friends, do not live in denial anymore. You should consider how to find out which work that you love to work on, rather than telling yourself that you are already working on one. You know the answers change from time to time, and I am sure one day we will find it. About how to do it, Graham suggests two methods: the Organic method; or the two-route method. You can dig up his essay and read it. Either method or any method of your own, there's always this principle: hard work always bring lasting pleasure; and the work you love is not gonna be always fun.

Cheers!!!!! And wish you guys have a great weekend! ^^



References

I always like Paul Graham. His essays are clear and easy to understand, even after you had drunk two cans of beer and a long tiring day. Here's the link: How to Do What You Love.

p/s: I welcome any debate or idea but inspire me, please. ^^

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Dream big, and persist

Dream big. That's what I keep telling myself nowadays. When a person's glorious moments are coming, I am sure he/she will know it. I personally do. To me, it's now or never. I can feel the vibes in the air, the gush in the wind and the God-like sermon playing about my ears telling me: Your glory is coming. Reach out to it.

Or is it that I am dreaming?

Well, I have a high percentage of being delusional as I speak. You can choose not to read this post. But I have a question to ask each of you who is actually reading: Have you ever dreamed big? If you had, what about now? Is it even considered big, or just another typical solution for the so-called perfect life in our society?

When we live, we always have dreams. All sort of dreams: dreams to make this world a better place, dreams to do what we really like to do and triumph in it. But when life's mandate hit us, we succumb. (the mandate says: you have no money. you have no money. you have no...please iterate until you reach the end) We divert from our dreams, and we start to look pathetic, in our own eyes. One way or the other, we divert now and then. It's life, come on. It's okay to divert, actually, if you have been true to your conscience. Even if you are making the dumbest choice, if you are happy with it, I will acknowledge you. Seriously. If you feel happy watching ants making out, why not?

So, here I go. I am actually hungering for heights. Heights in academic excellence. Here I don't mean that I wanna have all the A+s, but rather I am dreaming bigger. Now I have fresh opportunities to initiate breakthroughs in geotechnical engineering and also particle simulation programs. They are not impossible tasks, as they are actually do-able. They are within my abilities. But time never seem to be enough. And confidence fluctuates now and then, until I hit myself with the idea: why not me? I mean, why I have to be so pessimistic about it? If I can make this a feat, let's do it! I still remember clearly when my boss slapped me on the shoulder and said: "Make me famous! It has to be you." That, propels me, moves me, and totally catches me.

I happened to come across an article on Hardy Cross, a famous professor in civil engineering who invented Moment Distribution Method and conduit flow calculations. It is a story which I think everybody should read, especially the engineers:-

""

Once a student named Alford told Cross that he thought one of the problem solutions in their text was wrong. Cross paced back and forth, staring hard at the student, and pointing at him fiercely. "Can you, a graduate student, actually have the temerity to accuse the internationally known engineer who wrote this book of MAKING A MISTAKE? Can you really believe that the publishers would allow such an alleged error to be printed? Can you show us the error?"

Alford seemed unable to answer.

Still pacing, Cross said, "Can anyone help Mr. Alford? Do any of you see a mistake in problem four?"

The class was silent.

"Well, Mr. Alford," Cross said sternly, "would you care to retract your accusation?"
"It's just that I can't..."
"Speak up!" Cross thundered.
"I still believe it's wrong!" Alford shouted, his face red with embarrassment.
"Then kindly come to the board and prove it to us," Cross taunted. "We shall be pleased to see the proof of your unfounded allegation."

Alford labored at the board without success for the rest of the period. Cross began his next lecture by saying, "In our last meeting Mr. Alford raised a serious and unfounded charge against the author of our text." Staring at Alford, he said, "Have you reconsidered your accusation?"
"No, sir," Alford replied. "I still believe he is wrong."
"To the board, then. We still await your proof."
Alford's labors were again unsuccessful.

The third time the class met, Cross said, "Mr. Alford, are you ready to withdraw your ill- considered accusation about problem four?"

Moments 1ater Alford was at the board. Within a few minutes he managed to show the solution to the problem in the book was incorrect, and he returned to his seat. Cross's pleasure was evident from his expression. "You must always have the courage of your convictions," he aaid. "Mr. Alford does; apparently the rest of you do not, or you are not yet sufficiently well educated to realize that authority — the authority of a reputation or the authority of a printed page — means very little. All of you should hope to someday develop as much insight and persistence as Mr. Alford."

""

That's why I am here now. I want to make myself remember this feeling of mine, now. And I will remind myself of it if I happen to lose it for a while in the future. This feeling, has to be of my safekeeping, forever. And I will like to instill it in you guys too: If you have dreams, dream big. If you dream big, have confidence. If you don't have confidence, persist until you find it. The authority (here I refer to the collective logic of a society) is not always right and in fact, it means very little if you choose to believe in your direction and purpose. So my friends, stay foolish, stay hungry while you dream big. Fools learn alot more and in the end, they are always called geniuses.


References:
For those interested in Hardy Cross, visit these links:-
An account on Hardy Cross which is written beautifully <--- Hardy Cross - wiki <--- And if you are from engineering, you probably heard of Nathan Newmark, the pioneer of the elegant solutions to dynamic equations and also a very intuitively involved practicing civil engineer. Well, why I mention him? Because he is a student of Cross, and he was always so proud of Cross.

Enjoy reading!!


p/s: This is the 100th post of my blog, and Oct 1st is the national day of China. Hurray!!