Modes of Life

One reason why I am writing here is because people don't generally read my blog. It helps me get things off my head by writing about them. So whatever I write will remain a mystery for the onlookers but those who are truly interested in taking a different view at the common things we see in life (and who are interested in me, of course) go that extra mile and visit my blog. It's more like yapping and ranting without having to torture someone. But if that someone is interested in being subjected to this torture, then continue reading.

Commoners say, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

However a great man (in a fictional universe) has rather... different opinions,

When I was a measly teenager, I used to think that living alone away from your family (maybe in a different city) would be fun; I was right. But I must admit, now, I have a new-found respect for my parents and the way they raised me over the years. It's only because of that kind of tough upbringing that I can survive on my own without submitting to follies common muggles might make. Although unlike my teenage days, I love and respect my parents now. 

From the way I'm getting all sentimental about this and reminiscing the past, it can't be more clear that I'm in trouble. For the simple reason of keeping this post short (which I assure you it wont be), I won't be ranting about those; at least not right now. This tale, I will leave for a day when we will be drinking at a table and then we can laugh at the whole thing. But yes, things are under control now and the explosion has been contained. Extensive personal experience with them has improved my skill of disaster management.

But honestly, when life gets hard it means that you have been playing on easy mode for too long and it's time to play hard mode. So face this situation like a boss. Screw the hard mode and set it to veteran |-_-|

Dimensional Explanation

This video has been bugging me for such a long time now. Hence here I am sharing it with you. A seat and an open mind are required to watch this. This might be a bit disturbing to some, entertaining to some but certainly thought provoking. Have fun ^_^

How being enslaved by an alien race would benefit humanity

Firstly, what's with the hysteric look? You probably clicked that link wondering, 'wtf is this about?' OR 'Seriously, how is that even possible?' In the next few paragraphs, I'm gonna try to elaborate my point. It's just one way to look at it, so if you disagree/ don't like it/ hate me in general, please don't shoot me. Secondly, to my friends, families, supporters, fans and haters (yes, my dear haters, I do love you) apologies for letting this place gather dust over there past few months. I can rant about how life is becoming busier day by day, but hell, that's not what you are here for, are you? Therefore, without further ado, let's get down to business.

So throughout history, we have seen a technologically superior race invade and enslave an inferior one; exploiting them and resources, which rightfully belong to them. The same old same old. As time progressed, they ran out of ideas for motion pictures (yeah, that's what they used to call movies, back in the day) and since science fiction was booming, they thought, 'HEY! Why not try something new; something from the past and something from the new!' and thus was born the epic genre of the Alien invasion movies. There are just SO many of them, the thought of listing a few intimidates me (not just because of the sheer numbers but also thanks to the raging alien movie fans who would go, 'you n00b! How could you forget the most epicest awesomest alien movie of all time - <insert name of the so-called epicest awesomest alien movie of all time here>').

Getting back, the basic theme of these movies is pretty much the same. A hi-tech alien race decides to come to Earth and enslave or destroy all human beings. The destroying part doesn't really make sense, unless they want natural resources, say minerals or vespene gas, without human interference.

But then again, they'll need to mine or extract these minerals or gases, which again, would require someone to man the stations. (or should I say, 'alien the stations'; no joke intended there) Here, they will have to either employ staff from their own planet OR implement machinery (or some psyonic technology) to look after it. Strictly, from a financial point of view, that requires investment and maintenance (at the very least). Why go through all this bs when you can just ask the humans to get it for you? That's the reason why I feel, destroying the human race isn't in their best interest.

Then again, there would be the old school non-believers, still living in their little bubble of, 'No, aliens don't exist.' I mean, seriously, grow up. You exist, I exist, we exist. A thriving population of nearly 6 billion species of the human race, so why not some other race on some other planet? [note - for those who talk about 'life supporting' planets, you must always remember, the Earth's atmosphere wasn't made for us, WE were made for it. Our ancestors evolved and adapted to it. So who knows, our alien invaders might just be Nitrogen breathing, Sulfuric acid drinking badasses] (< paranoia)

The other thing is, we, the human race, are trying so hard to venture into outer space. What if THEY have already succeeded? (< major paranoia)

Now ever since I came to Singapore (YAY!!!), I realized how different things would be if the British hadn't ruled this place so many years ago. One of the biggest differences, for a foreigner like me, would be that I would be speaking either Hokkien or Mandarin or some other Chinese dialect or Malay or maybe even Tamil! Overall, we have this linguistic uniformity thanks to the British gift of English.

For illustrative purposes, let's consider a fictional planet called Xeforonia (by common sci-fi conventions it has an X in it and is hard to pronounce. I can almost imagine our Xeforonian commander trying to communicate with Raj, the fictional Indian slave from Russel Peter's illustrations.

Commander : xquiie fuu ze kottan meeneraals, Raj  (Raj, go mine the minerals)
Raj : Saar.... It's not kottan... it's called Cotton. *picks cotton from the fields*
Commander : -_-"    *facepalms*

Raj : 1
Xeforonian Commander : 0

My point being, they will need to educate the humans and teach us their language and technology. Now this is the point where they are, practically, nailing their own coffin. Because once the humans, master their language, we will do what we have been doing for the past 'I-don't-wanna-count-how-many' years. MIGRATION XD

At this time, our Xeforonian bosses would wish they had never met us.

The benefit for humanity, here, would be a common language that all humans would be able to speak, since it was forcibly taught in school. Isn't that how people of most commonwealth nations learnt English? (Hell, I did) Might sound silly to an extent but it would foster a sense of oneness, unity, mutual understanding and <more words from the sociology text book here> amongst us humans.

Over time, what seemed like slavery, suddenly turns out to be an opportunity! So the next time, you see a flying soccer slowly landing, don't panic, scream and run; rather anticipate your new bosses. Wave to them, give them a warm welcoming smile, get to know them better. Because at the end, they might be invading our planet and enslaving us but in the long run, it's WE who will be taking over their planet XD

To top it, who knows, they might just be kinda cute! ;)

The Implanted Curse

Today, I wanna focus on a phenomenon that occurs quite predominantly in day to day life. More often to people who believe in a higher power or the paranormal compared to the non-believers. They say, words can be powerful tools. Once said, they can't be taken back, no matter what. A message given in an implicit manner may lead to misunderstandings and possible catastrophes.

We all know what a curse is. No explanation needed there. But just for people who might be new to the concept (rare people), curses are intentions or wishes to bring harm to others generally cast as words or sometimes even as spells or rituals. Some being of the occult nature, while others are just words said in fits of rage. Whatever the curse maybe, they give off tremendous amounts of negative energy which affects the psychology rather than the actual physical world.

Implanted curses don't necessarily have to be swear words OR curses cast with evil intentions. They can be a saying, they can be a belief, they can be a superstition or anything that prohibits you from doing something with a bad consequence if you fail to obey.

Good and bad things keep happening in everyone's lives. For instance, a ticket counter closing on your face would be considered as bad luck. Whereas, getting the last pack of your favorite cookies from the store would obviously be considered as good luck (almost as if it was there especially for you). My point here is, life is a ride of ups and down. Good and bad things keep happening.

People believe in things (more staunchly) due to experience. If you believe in karma and do something wrong, the guilt will be a burden to you; coz at the back of your head, you know it's gonna come back at you. After this misdeed, if something bad happens to you, the immediate reason for this action is given as bad karma, even though that bad incident was going to happen anyways.

Superstitions say walking under a ladder gives bad luck. So after walking under a ladder, if anything goes wrong with a person, s/he tends to blame it on the ladder. If the same scenario was considered without the person walking under the ladder yet resulted in the bad consequence, the same person might not have even paid attention to trivial bad occurrences.

I'll explain this with a real life example that forced me to think about this. Every three months or so, a beggar dressed in white used to pay us a visit. She was a very old lady and I remember being scared of her almost witch-like features, the first time I saw her. My mom was one of her regular customers who gave her used clothes, food and sometimes even spare change. On a whim, one day, mom decided to ignore this lady. She waited and waited at the door for alms but no one attended her. Eventually she gave up and walked away. With that, mom hoped she would stop coming, now onwards. As evening fell, my father returned home from work. He had a grave expression on his face; partly concealing sorrow. As it turned out, he had a minor car accident. Thankfully, he wasn't hurt. However the car was damaged and so was his spirit. At around the same time as every time, the old lady appeared the next month. Out of superstitious fear, my mom didn't turn her down this time.

Coincidence? Who knows. But the curse was implanted in my mom's head the minute she had turned down the old beggar for the first time. Her conscience was eating her away on the inside. She kept pondering over the thought of the refusing alms to the old beggar. As a result, the cause of the next bad thing that occurred HAD to be what was on her mind.

THAT is an implanted curse. A curse that doesn't really exist but gets implanted in your head because of a fixed mindset about an action and its reaction.

Implanted Curses are very often used in folklore to keep the children of the village from going in the woods. Eventually, a kid braves the odds and enters the forest on a bet or something. A few days later, s/he gets hurt while doing chores. What the other kids think - 'its coz s/he entered the woods!! So it must be true!!!' That is how superstitions are born. At this point of time, they are not something talked about, they are real.

So people, the next time you hesitate before doing something that will (inexplicably) bring bad fortune, remember, the curse has already been implanted in your brain >:)

If you have had any such experiences, I'd love to hear about them in the comments section below. Thank you for reading till the very end; appreciate it.

nemui Nem,
signing off :p

The Hands of Time

Well, since most of my pals are having to put up with their exams, I'm planning to make this a short one.

Its a common observation that time goes really slow when you are bored and super fast when you are at your favorite activity. I do get this itch to mention this one German scientist who did quite a lot of research on this and later migrated to the states and facepalmed when the states used his ideas to nuke down one of my favorite nations. But now that his grandson is skateboarding away, it really doesn't matter much.

I'm just gonna put my 'timely' observations in two simplistic categories - the Lazy Mode and the Workaholic mode. Here's how the hands on the watch seem like when on either modes -


Lazy Mode:

Hour's Hand - tells you what part of the day it is.

Minute's Hand - tells you EXACTLY how late you are.

Second's Hand - Existence remains unnoticed.


Workaholic Mode:

Hour's Hand - YOU CAN ACTUALLY FEEL IT MOVE!

Minute's Hand - used to tell exactly how long it took you to finish a task.

Second's Hand - a constant reminder of how fast time is moving.

So look at your watch's Second's hand and go study :p
That's all for now, catchya later this summer.

Nem,
signing off :p

ps - If you are afflicted by a certain catastrophe called 'examinations'. Try to make it out in single piece and DO NOT lose sanity, just hang in there. Good Luck :D