Nom nom nom....regurgitate.

An average Malaysian would spend 12 years of his/her life huddled in rooms filled with wooden/plastic tables, semi-functioning chairs, and cruddy toilets; trying to make sense of the babble from the somewhat uncertain looking individual who; in their unmoving manners; wave their fingers and long metal rulers across the chalk-filled air occasionally banging on the front desks asking for their audience's attention and also to shut their traps. Our public schools hold many memories of trials & tribulations, first loves & love lost, self discovery & self detonation. Like many schools of other nations, our years in school would be remembered fondly, or dismissed when the topic comes up. 
Its a place where we find ourselves and somewhat try to learn the ropes in preparation for the big ugly world out there. The question is: Did we actually learn anything useful all those 12 years of education?

Answer is: Of course we did. We learned a lot We also learned that studying is akin to eating a bowl of soup noodles and spewing it out the exact same way it came at the canteen lady.

Sudents in Malaysia have been hum-drummed to believe that xerox-like skills are the pinnacle of the education system. If one could reproduce exactly what they scanned from a text book on to the examination paper - Ace! At the end of the day, our public schools produce students who can only CTRL+C, CTRL+V. No analytical skills garnered, no understanding needed. Just slap on what was printed back onto another piece of paper. Wow, 10 A1s! Does that qualify you as a 'smart' student, or just a machine with photographic memory?

Up to this date, there has been many stories of A1 students getting scholarships in foreign institutions, only to come back crying because they can't cope. Why is it they can't cope? It's because we are not trained to THINK. We have been spoon fed all our lives and when the moment comes that one is to be required thinking out of the box, the box crumbles under the immense gravitational pull of the individual's hollow mind.

The students are not the ones to be blamed for all this. It is the teachers, their parents, and the whole education system that has to be blamed.We need not lower standard to allow every child to come out as A1 students. We need not shout and brag about how many As our children collected over the years through CTRL+C. We need not publicize how 'smart' and 'accomplished' our nation's youth are in daily papers. It is just pure glorification of pseudo-intelligence. We need a society of genuinely intelligent people. People with the ability to dissect and think through problems and give solutions.

It is sad to think that our youths only seems to obtain that 'Life OS patch 2.0' when they hit tertiary education systems.

Beyond the Web - Savage Chickens

One wonders if people will realise it....

10 things about our boys in blue

1. If you got robbed, and lodge a report, they will tell you, "Ah...these things now very common so must be more careful ya? Must watch out for yourself, lots of criminals around these days"

2. Favourite activities include watching out for motorcyclists, people who don't wear seat belts, people with poor memories of their roadtax, people who look like they just came back from partying.

3. The love for blocking major highways 'just after a long bend' or 'right after a uphill' remains consistent; causing an unforeseen jamming of brakes or untold fender benders.

4. Guns are not used very much. So when an opportunity to use them comes to play, 'Shoot first, ask questions later!'

5. "Eh you people illegal gathering ah? What you doing here? Drugs? Pirate DVD? Pron?

6. They will always be a 'friend'. "Hmm....so how would you wanna settle ah? We can be friends right? You help me, I help you ah......" (with a smile ear to ear)

7. Flashing blue lights are great ways to beat the traffic! "Whoa! Look at the people stopping at the side to give us way. Quick need to go toilet eh!"

8. Stress levels can reach stratospheric levels in the department from all the mind numbing boredom. Releasing stress through physical means is much obliged on any new visitor behind bars. Usually happens before any form of interrogation or opportunity to speak.

9. Checking out couples making out in cars & parks, and interrogating them is a great way to pass the time on lovely evenings.

10.Nappy time. Always welcomed.

4 of the most timewasting, social de-provement things

Human Technology - as what Finnish mobile gadget manufacturer would coin it; is not really improving human lives if you look at the other side of the coin. A myriad of technological advances in mobile and connectivity technology has spurred human dependence on gadgetry to go along their daily lives - successfully isolating everyone on individualistic islands away from more 'humanly contact'. Here are a few things which ultimately waste your time, suck your leisure, kill relationships, and commit murder on your social circle.

1. Smartphones - Smartphones enable an individual to connect anywhere at anytime. Wouldn't it be nice to receive emails and pdfs of charts and proposals whilst on your week long holiday in the Maldives; and be expected to reply because your job says so? Technology supposedly alleviates stress by providing quick, one-touch connectivity; but would ultimately become our prison - enslaving us to our jobs and bosses forever. Sucks doesn't it?

 To add to that, in the advent of widgets, customizable and downloadable games through open-source programs and pre-made digital boredom-killers - we soon become individuals who only know how to interact via weird gestures with a mobile in hand. How many people have you noticed staring intently at their 3.5 inch liquid crystal screens, making poking & swiping gestures without a care in the world? For instance, I had a scenario where a friend called me out for a cuppa one night and all he did at the cafe was molest his mobile to no end. "Hey man you didn't just call me out to watch you give your mobilephone a jerkoff session right?" Put those down and talk like what our human mouths are designed to do!   

2. Satellite / Cable TV - How many of us own satellite or cable TV? Statistics have shown it to be at least 7 out of 10 people. How many of us find ourselves glued to the idiot box for hours to end, surfing channels programme after programme to wild away the day? Don't lie, I'm sure some of you would be guilty of that. TV sucks the soul away, putting us into a trance-like state where we can't pry our eyes from the pixel-filled screen even when a volcano erupts behind us. As our bodies remain idle for long periods, and our brains remain static from no human interaction; we will soon become a species of zombie-like husks who survive on commercialized liquids and junk food as we give praise and offerings to the TV God. 

3. FaceTwit - These things have been beaten to death by numerous articles already so I will cut it short: Farmville, online stalking, and announcements of your toilet duties will not bring you very far in life. I kid you not.

4. MMORPGs - Holed up in a dark room filled with light-emitting boxes, only moving your index and middle finger and mashing away on the WASD keystrokes for 18 hours a day will land you in the corner as a socially-awkward, weak-willed outcast of nature. MMORPGs are notorious for murdering time, raping the lives of many young impressionable kids. Yes they seek to fit in the social strata, yes they need to obtain instant gratification and a sense of achievement - these games in fact do offer them, albeit only in a digital world. MMORPGs are not substitutes for a real social life! Wake up boys & girls, there is a big big world out there for you to conquer! It's called REAL LIFE.

Blogging taken over by Microblogging?

You know the buzz.

Blogs seem to be experiencing a slow and painless death with the advent of more and more attention given to microblogs. Twitter has revolutionized web publishing in a way that enables people with short attention spans and bad writing skills to appeal towards a wider scope of readers.

Previously, blogs would garner readers through insightful articles, photos with captions that tell a story, or just plain inane rant that has some entertainment value. Most blogs were carefully crafted to reflect the personality of its author; creating a persona and online presence that can mirror (or even replace) newsfeed websites or fullblown corporate online entities. It seems that we humans reel from all that brain activity and now divert our energies to simple, more condensed versions of internet publishing - maybe because people are just too darn lazy to read anymore, or just too darn lazy to type.

Twitter, with only 120 words max for every post - forces people to shorten every bit of information and cram it all into a one, sometimes badly written sentence. In the next few years to come, and probably a breaststroke towards the future; news and communication would just mirror those bad one-liners your get in B-grade direct-to-video popcorn flicks.

We are Robot

It's here. Though it may not resemble what the media feeds us in shades of 'The Matrix' and shapes of 'Minority Report', or even the dystopian future where 100% 'meatbags' (unaltered humans) are a rarity in 'Ghost in the Shell' - we have already reached the age of technological symbiosis.

Look around you. Eyes glued to laptops. Minds focused on their smartphones. These devices are gateways to the Internet. Ask most users of these mobile devices whether they can live without their nifty gadgets. 9 out of 10 will tell you that they can't and the last singular one can only remain 'disconnected' for about 3 days - max.

Unlike the anime Ghost in the Shell where human brains can be uploaded and downloaded due to alterations of the cerebral cortex with artificial enhancements (or in some cases the entire brain is replaced with an artifical one where memory and mind are digitised), the laptop and smartphone act just like that except that it is a remote device outside of our meatbag selfs which is regarded as an extension of one's brain; allowing one to connect wirelessly to the Internet wherever and whenever.  

This is not necessarily bad in any way but it is not long before we start truly 'plugging' ourselves into the world wide web; which in turn will spell the end of that age-old line which divides what is real, and what is not.

Goodbye Saturday night meets at a friend's house for a game of cards, darts and beer
Hello virtual meets in cybespace over a game of kill me, kill you with digital swords and mana potions

Death of the child we once knew

Innocence murdered. Creativity bogged. The wonder of life, ceases to spiral like rainbows in child's minds.

Back date 40 years ago where the world was a much more simpler place; children grow up with a sense of wonder and question the world around them with as much cerebral and physical movement as possible. They question why nature works as it works, why the animals hibernate, why people behave the way they behave, how stick forts can repel monsters from the land Zerprok, and whether the boogie man under their beds may have a liking towards candy floss. They play with toys they make themselves; spearheading creative thought while they create and make a world of their own without a care of reality. This was only a few decades ago.

In actual fact, children of my era (the 80's and all of its big haired, electronica, multi-coloured lycra glory) were the last generation of children to experience life without much meddling of the adult world. We were born in the bridge of technology joining the new and old school ways of living - changed by a leap in telecommunicative technology. We saw the birth of the Internet and the death of snail mail. We witnessed the birth of one-touch communication and the death of the firm handshake.

Though one may argue that the world is increasingly becoming a more dangerous place to live in where greed, power, hunger, intolerance and ignorance constantly shifts the paradigms of human interaction; we must understand that over-protection is not protecting anything for future purposes. Adults cage their children like hamsters, teaching them that the world out there is a bad, bad, wicked place full of boogiemen that roam the streets not only under beds. They teach adult practices to ensure that their children are able to make cognitive actions for their own safety. They shadow their children with a cloak that is much less translucent, blinding imaginations and instilling fear under the guise of 'nurturing'.

The era of growing up, falling down, dusting one's self and running again is over. In fact, children now learn life's lessons through a LCD screen displaying pixelised characters toting guns bigger than refrigerators. They live out adventures and events of escapism through pre-made storylines made by adults. Never again will children make a world they can call their own.

These thoughts have been spurred by this song. This song speaks of the death of child-like imagination.

our daily papers = same shit, different day

Ever get the feeling that our daily papers just report local news which ONLY cover smiling overzealous politicians, gang raped girls, car accidents, angry politicians, sobbing cheated citizens, murderers and the murdered, motorcycle accidents, some mofo winning a prize, angry politicians getting angry at other angry politicians, husband kills wife kills son kills daughter kills husband, bus accidents, someone doing something insignificant which will be forgotten by the weekend, sobbing cheated citizens getting someone in their family murdered by other angry citizens which ride motorcycles or drive cars to accidents...

you see the trend here?

The news 'reports' are either negative, insignificant, or well......just plain negative. Yes, negative news does create more 'sensational' news due to the fact that "its always far more entertaining to laugh at the misery of others"

But then again, don't our reporters have anything else to report on in this country? Or could the reality be that our society is way closer to the aspects of these reports than we could ever imagine? If it is, we live in a sad sad world...

If it isn't, then i guess we just need to laugh harder.

The disappearance of delectables

Ever wondered what it would be like living 30 years down the road from now?

Dilapidation of cultures. The full stop of tradition. Discontinuity of teaching and skills. The younger do not take up after the older, leaving a whole new way of life in the wake of this conglomerated, media filled, cyber run society where people do not stop and engage in small chat over the weather, bees, and cardboard fixtures.

When the old die off, they take with them the wisdom, knowledge and skills to the grave. It has become very apparent that the younger generation seem more likely to not take up the footsteps of their forefathers. Mostly its because the two cultures that they live in are so different. One can't understand how it is that people can make friends and relationships with faceless people over this intangible space called the Internet; the other can't make it out how they can live sticking to Jurassic boulder by boulder habits. With this disparity, cultures of now and then will quickly disappear in time; bringing with it all the little nostalgic memories and lifestyles.

A great example would be to think of the one thing that binds us all together - food. If you go out often to eat, and are the adventurous type, you will notice that the foods of now have become less delectable, less wholesome, less munch. More old timers are throwing in the rag calling it quits to the culinary arts, passing it on to their children or some other human to continue their recipes. With this, many famous dishes have become smaller, less savoury and much less memorable. By the time 30 years rolls around from now, almost 50% of traditional recipes would be lost in time.

Never again would we see some old guy on a bicycle selling munchies, never again will we see small shops by the roadside offering morsels that make stomachs happy, never again will there be little little nourishments that possess two things that makes them notable - soul & passion.

It's a sad thing thinking of what our next generation would be missing out on.

......in the mean time, Bon Appetit!

Followers we shall always be

Social networking is a rapidly growing, attention-seeking trend that screams “look at me; see what I have to say about myself and the world as I see it”. As narcissistic as it may seem, but people warm up to the idea very quickly. As humans, no matter what kind of human you are – are highly likely to be interested with what other people do in their lives. It is because everyone wants a reference; a benchmark; an example to follow. No matter how we may like to disdain the idea, the very bulk of us are always followers rather than leaders.

Blogs that shout "Hey look! My life is much better than yours!"

Twits that tweet "My brand of toothpaste tastes much nicer than yours!"

Facebook accounts that show "My social life's more happening than yours!"

In the end, we stomach it, look up and evaluate ourselves, and try our best to follow what other people portray of themselves.

Lemmings. Sheep. We are all just that.

Change: don't we all want it?

I came across this interesting piece of art whilst traversing the interwebs.

This website is about designers ripping off other people's ideas and designs to monetise it for themselves. Its a sad thing that we live in a society full of copy cats.

http://youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com/blog3

Well...sometimes imitation is the best form of flattery; but really - is it morally right?

Earth Hour post-mortem

Earth hour. The supposedly 'green' movement that was conjured up to promote the awareness of global warming by uniting people all around the world to shut off their lights for one hour on March 28th. 

Earth hour successfully united the earth's population all over 88 countries to participate in this global event, kicking it off with massive gatherings that glued people together to soak up the pre-lights-out entertainment. Concerts were held with grandeur and extravagance. 

 

Soon after about 3 hours of partying through song and laughter; the time has come to experience the great worldwide phenomenon of darkness. Lights out. One hour. Hello world we are back again. 

Seriously. 

Don't you think this movement kinda defeats itself in the first place? Look at all the entertainment sloshed on the hours before lights-out. How much electricity, food and water would have been wasted there? And do you even think one frickin hour of being in darkness is going to help our planet? Get real.

In my honest and most humble opinion, I think that Earth Hour is just a massive marketing tool for companies to cash in on the 'environmentalist mentality' and 'green movement'; taking advantage of our goodwill and basic human empathy and camaraderie, making us 'think' that we are doing something good collectively, but in fact our cash is just being sucked up by all the merchandising, memorabilia, and ticketing that's being sold. 

If you were to really want to support earth hour. Turn off all your frickin lights AT HOME - AND STAY AT HOME. If you don't want to be home, you could just take a walk out instead of DRIVING. 

Events are well known to create wastage, thrash, and overblown electric consumption. If you really want to save the earth. Do so by doing your part and not contribute to all the waste. 

Think about it. 

Down with all this money sucking crap disguised as 'good intentions'

Media Consumers anonymous

It has quite occured to me that almost 90% of my waking hours are spent consuming media, then churning it round and round in my head to make some sense out of the barrage. Most of which I derive from my laptop and computer at home, googling (omg it's a verb!) the near and far ends of the Interwebs, surfing through things from the latest political melodrama, entertainment & satire and to the utter randomity. 

At the end of the day i produce my own anecdotes based on all the social and cultural stimuli that I stand at the brink of a mentally conjured cliff ready to spaz out. It doesn't help that almost 70% of my waking hours in a week are devoted to work and the neverending quest to find more money. 

I have realised that this is not unique to myself. There are countless of other people around the world who suffer from the same disease. We suffer from this media-consumer mentality that we need and crave for media stimuli to keep us running. We were brought up in this kind of environment that promotes the usage of subliminal and direct messages, aiming to shape the way we think and how we feel the world. Tell me how many times have you made a reference to something that you first saw in the media? "Hey that tulip looks just like the one in that I saw on a billboard yesterday"

It is like Coca-cola's mission to replace water in conjunction with the word 'thirst'.  It is not plain understanding of media that enriches our lives - it is more so that it propagates the very way we process information, leaving us nothing more than shells filled with jarble.  

Bottomline is we should try to make sense of the world with our own eyes and fingers. Get dirty once in awhile. Leave your sedentary lifestyle and go out there and hug some trees. We should try our best to once in a while stop by and smell the flowers at the side of the road. Not think how a flower smells by what you have read on wikipedia.  

The human disconnect

If you frequent Starbucks alot, the first thing you will notice is that people don't actually go to Starbucks to 'meet up for coffee' anymore. They are there as singular individuals totally devoid of their companions in favour of their snazzy shiny glossy laptops, plugged in and wired to the Internet via wi-fi. Their eyes are glued intensely at their screen, giving the notion of an intent work-in-progress. But in fact - they are just on Facebook. And this is not just a few people, its almost everyone. 

In less than a decade, online social networks have become very much part of our daily habits. To some it is habitual to spend each leisurely moment on the internet checking their Facebook accounts for updates on their networks. I remember very clearly a few years back when the 'Friendster' craze was hot and new. Now it has been taken over by Facebook, which is a much more powerful platform that allows users to interact far more than its predecessors. Besides Facebook, there are many other online social networks like Myspace, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged....the list goes on. All of which make the world a much smaller place. We can connect to anyone across the globe in a matter of seconds, liquidising borders and distance means nothing anymore. But has this really helped people in a way? 

We are becoming less and less connected in a 'human' way. Because of the convenience offered, keeping up with your network would 95% of the time be done looking at a liquid crystal display and frantically pressing plastic keys. What ever happened to the "let's go out and hang out?" What ever happened to "Hi, I'm just calling to check if you are still alive or not." "Of course I am! It's good to hear your voice anyway". 

We have grown to interact on such a faceless and disembodied manner that nothing is 'personal' anymore.  We converse not with real humans anymore, just virtual entities of what we perceive to be human (eventhough they really are actual humans, behind the interwined digital web of anonymity). Our social skills lack, we can only react by sending pixels that form a 'smiley face'. How many people have you met in the last year which can't seem to comprehend an absolutely normal human conversation without giving web references and splutter? 

So we 'think' we are connected. But think further into it. Besides the usual people that we see (collegues because we are stuck at work for the most of our waking hours, immediate family because they are the closest to you and you prbably live with them anyway, and also your very close friends because those are the ones that your have the most in common with), how often do you take the first step to meet up in REALITY?

Yes the world has become a much smaller place,  but it has made us humans very much further away from each other. 

So yea, enough of this ramble. 

Time to collect my coffee now. 

Video: Mankind Is No Island

Modernity. We live in a arid, emotionally disconnected world where everyone cares less about everyone else. 

'Mankind is no island' by Jason van Genderen

Random thought of the day

"Smokers kill each other willingly everyday...with a smile on the face." 

Think of it. 

If you are a smoker, it is quite often that you would offer a cigarette to someone else as a gesture of 'good will', and vice-versa. 

There are also times when someone asks for a lighter, you will notice that all other smokers, including yourself (if you are one too), would be more than happy to pass a lighter to the person.  

Also, there are moments when a hapless fellow smoker runs out of cigarettes, and asks whether anyone can spare a stick; most other smokers within the vicinity would be glad to offer one.

It is a funny culture it is. I guess its some form of camaraderie amongst people who share a common interest.  

Oh well, since we are going to die anyway might as well take a few more with us. 

ho ho ho.

Brain drain

Knowledge is garnered through experience and the proactive collection of informative material. In the days before computers and the Internet, we sought for knowledge through dusty books in libraries, journals, 4-inch thick encyclopedias, 9 o'clock telly sessions of Discovery and National Geographic, newspapers, magazines, and the grapevine (word of mouth) - to further enhance brain capacities. Information sharing was far slower as we need to be more physical, and manual with our reception of messages. I remember obtaining an Internet line way back in early 1996, running on a 'superbly-quick' 14.4 kbps dial-up modem that made funky beeping noises when it was connecting the lines. This was when everything in the world started to change significantly. 

The way we consume information is entirely different now compared to that of 20 years ago. Now we can look up and learn about something faster than making a cup of instant noodles in a microwave. All it takes is a little curiosity and flicks on plastic keys to know something new. Stroke of keys. Zap. I know more about alien dolphins, and that Aristotle died in 322 BC. 

Kids nowadays however, through my somewhat unbiased observations and non-prejudicial predispositions; have concluded that they are getting dumber (in the sense of general knowledge) than the average kid of the same age, 20 years ago. Tech has been so interwined with our lives that we take for granted its capabilities. For most of them as what I have observed, do not take this new age channels of intellectual material. A lot of things can be learned at much greater speeds compared to what we used to have in the past, but alot of it is wasted on hours and hours of wasted kilobytes of redundant games which bring one nowhere except impaired social skills, less vitamin D, and probably a level 73-sword of 'superbly-awesome-killa-of-digital-monsters'. 

I am not saying that it is essentially bad to use the Internet for gaming use, but excessive durations till one holes themselves in dingy, semi-lit rooms which hundred of other like-minded zombie-ish, bloodshot-eyed individuals is not exactly aligned to the meaning of the word healthy. Use this new method of communication and information to good use. Find out more about the world. Learn things about the past, present and non-existant. Increase your general knowledge. The web is a vast and endless continuity; use it to your advantage. 

Learn something new today, and everyday.