Whose life is it anyway?

Mountains placed

Upon millions lifted

Upon waters that come from up high

The sky

-

Separated by

An abyss that flies

The thousand mountains

and waters

Are but a dream

fluttering by

to the untrained eye

-

In a land

Where I stand

Moutains all around

and waters up high

confined

my thoughts

Of that impossible

Yet missing

-

Wait for me as a dream

Though we may still be unseen

my message will come

through the mountains

and the waters fluttering by

through a paper boat

Please be on standby

-

If you dream of

Many dreams

Then dream too about

me

Then perhaps you’ll

find me

My paper boat

The one fluttering by

in your dream

should it pass your eye

-

Pick it up and read it

So that eternity be in your hand

For I will never die

Once I know

you’d understand..

‘dead’ author

LOL

I translated this from chinese actually, from some sad story about an Indonesian maid who lived a hard life since young, needing to fish for coins tossed by tourists into the sea for a living.. then when she outgrew her childhood profession, together with her lover Rosli they fled to Malaysia to work as illegal immigrants. The Indonesian maid’s family was terribly poor, and her mother had a wasting disease while her siblings as skinny as bones.. so despite all the hardships she faced under a cruel employer, she persevered, for the sake of her dream of raising a normal family with Rosli, and helping her family..

However,

Rosli got into trouble for killing his employer, a palm oil plantation boss, because he refused to pay the worker his wages for the past 3 years.. needless to say, Rosli was now a fugitive, the Indonesian maid caught hold of the news from the newspaper.. due to repeated physical abuse by her employer and work fatigue, she accidentally murdered the employer’s noisy baby… soon she was arrested, and she never managed to contact her family.. she says she’s very tired of living.. and that poem was about the gap between her and her family, or in an abstract sense, her and her ambitions to lead a normal life, the imaginary paper boat, she hopes will somehow find its way across the Malacca straits and back to her home, to send blessings back home..

Hmm. People don’t always live happily ever after u know.. and some people are born into hardships, and leave the world in hardship too… meanwhile some people whose forefathers claimed they were Gods are now living as kings and queens of countries… those were the ones born with a silver spoon in their mouths.. an amazingly perfect, fairy tale lifestyle they lead…

People always express shock when young people die. Especially the sudden deaths of promising, intelligent young people.. as in the case of some recent motorcycle accident reported in the news.. but people don’t realize that being young is not being immortal… young people die all the time, society however obviously mourns for the ones they value more… despite the fact that all people, young and old despite their IQ and achievements, are all valuable human beings

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder you say?

ugly ugly ugly ducklings we are.. wahaahaaha

What a simple way to live each day of my holiday life.. waking up, walking to a mirror, and talk to myself:

me: Today you ain’t gonna get no rest till you do your best

Reflection: Today you ain’t gonna get no rest till you do your best

me: yep (does a 20394802km hop back to bed.. snorezzzzz)

hey, the 20394802km aside, this really is a good way to start a day… I often keep forgetting the importance of standing up to my full stature and it makes such a Eiffel Tower of difference in my personal performance.. does this justify the cancellation of talking to oneself as a symptom of schizophrenia? Er.. I don’t want to win a free lifetime stay at Tanjung Rambutan so perhaps I’ll just keep this routine within the boundaries of my imagination =)

Hmmm… priorities of life are as subjective as the clouds.. yet what a big influence it holds upon the way we think and act… by observing my little sister’s antics today I think I grasped something…

I woke up today to the melodic sounds of plastic CD cases creating music at the expense of their structural integrity.. my little sister just realized that broken CD cases don’t stick back together like LEGOS.. unfortunately, her realization was approximately 6 original cd casings too late = ="""""

My first response was to be angry. Those CD cases were expensive, they were ORIGINAL! and the CDs held sentimental as well as historical value to my household. In fact, one of them was my birthday present back in 1994.. bukan main marah lagi.. little sis, realizing I wasn’t exactly going to reward her with chocolate, quickly scuttled away to her ‘arsenal’ of toys and picked up her ‘magical rabbit stick’ (yea the stupid toys people make these days, a rabbit on a stick) and striking a defensive Shaolin Kung Fu pose in the event that I might ‘attack’ her… swt

I reprimanded her, and for a second there, was even about to execute the ‘big kor kor disciplinary microscopic slap on the hand’ attack when I began to ask myself… why am I so obsessed at the moment on disciplining her? All kinds of thoughts swam through my head.. so that she won’t repeat it.. so that she doesn’t become a spoilt brat.. but in the end.. I thought to myself, if I put my sister and the CDs on a weighting scale, my sister would definitely be more important.. with this thought, I managed to avoid acting stupidly… and released myself from the grasp of getting into the thick of thin things..

On the same neuron train, I thought of the management of organizations, how sometimes leaders are so concerned with the little actions of the subordinates… yet little attention to the welfare of the subordinates themselves? Also I thought of parents who find fault with every single little thing with their children, punishing them.. thinking it will do them good, when all the while unconsciously they were jeapordizing the child’s emotional growth as well as neglecting the more important thing, the child himself..

My paradigm of caring, understanding and unconditional love took on a few inches of growth today from this event… In the future if I get angry, I’ll be sure to remind myself to consider my priorities.. the important things… a tiny dispute? or the quality of the relationship itself?

TO ALL MUSICIANS OUT THERE

A recommended read, The Mozart Effect - written by Don Campbell… its available for momentary acquisition from the KL library (after I return it of course.. lolz) basically, this book outlines the music of Mozart, its healing properties and lots of other unconventional usages of music! Its really cool.. for me at least.. I’ve always had an innate belief that music heals the soul.. in fact I’ve even previously ranted about running a hospital filled with musicians which aim to promote and revolutionize the patient’s physical, mental, and spiritual recuperation.. hahaha… something like that.. Music is more than Ipods and Kazaa.. in order to not spoil any surprises of any musicians interested in having a look at the book later.. I’ll only talk about my personal experiences of using music to heal.. =)

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO!!! was running through my head as I sat at the Chancellor’s hall during educamp recently… it was basically freakin boring… and in order to prep my senses up and avoid falling asleep, I visualize the music as I have often perceived it from the vibratory electromagnets of my ear phones.. instantly I enjoyed myself.. I didn’t even need an MP3 player! Imagining a full fledged orchestra and relating it to events that have or have not happened, is indeed an art.. a musical art for that matter.. lolz

On another occasion remember I mentioned headaches after the 2nd day of the hospital trip? The headaches were terrible… but after playing TURKISH MARCH on my electric Casio keyboard.. my headaches I felt, left me! Call it miraculous or hocus pocus alakazam if you may, but that day, after playing some music, I managed to get my left and right brain synchronized.. my thoughts became clear again.. the headache fleeted like a cloud.. and yep, I saved on Panadol =)

Take heed however that THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO and TURKISH MARCH are both Mozart’s compositions… from the research.. it seems Mozart’s music has by far the best healing properties… (spoiler alert) some people in Japan even bake their breads with the background music of Beethoven and sell the breads as Beethoven breads! A sound example of something unheard of to date in Malaysia. Imagine.. music actually makes bread more tasty? LOL

Improve your quality of life!

Meanwhile, I’m off to dinner.. I smell KFC.. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… laterz!

There is a saying that real charity cannot be done without personal sacrifice.. and that if we give away the things we have in excess as charity, it would only insult the person who receive it.

Hmmm…

Yea, this is another facts-of-life-according-to-yours-truly-who’s-too-free kind of entry… bound to bore even the most unrelentless of unboredables.. wahaha

I recollect a time not too long ago, when every living cell in my body agreed unanimously that becoming a doctor is definitely what I want to be. No, it wasn’t instinct or a God sent calling that prompted such thinking but rather… a paradigm shift. Unfortunately… my self made paradigms have a habit of expiring faster than a loaf of gardenia bread placed adjacent a sewer.. argh..

Paradigms, paradigms, paradigms… what was I thinking.. hmmm

I think my subconscious craving to serve as a doctor may have something to do with my desire to lead a meaningful life… While most others would put top consideration to the monetary renumerations when considering a career… because money can help a person live in comfort, and obviously, live happily ever after with money to spare for generations to come… I am tempted to think… pleasures.. comfort, I’ve enjoyed my share of them for the past 17 years… and they serve a purpose only as occasional jolts to activity… isn’t the craving for comfort… akin to living the life of an animal? An animal does what an animal does because it makes the animal comfortable… as human beings, possessing a higher degree of consciousness generally, shouldn’t we strive towards… a higher platform of thinking… a higher spiritual plane?

There is a saying that goes something like this: If you received an income without working hard, then someone worked hard without receiving an income… an excellent way to describe much of the world we live in today… at one corner we have the likes of Bill Gates, Donald Trump, those good looking movie stars… and at another corner, we have those who worked hard without receiving an income… God knows who they are, there are trillions of them walking or, have already walked… the earth.. the only one I could think of is mother Theresa… as the rest were probably never recorded by the history of the known world.. they were just.. THEM.. I’m not trying to say that to make money one needs to take it from someone else, but I’m merely trying illustrate the great big valley of everything in the world that separates these 2 classes of people.

Personally, I think the most meaningful human life award could never be given, for the naming of its nominees would contradict the very nature of its meaning.. and I also happen to believe that to sacrifice personal comfort, safety, time, for the sake of serving another fellow human being… is a noble thing… and gives a warm fuzzy feeling in the heart.. after all, all human hearts, know very well that it is… the right thing to do.

The life of a human soul with too much worldly wealth.. what meaning has it begotten? to me, little.. if any… and what about the people who impose all kinds of conditions for people to receive their favour and affections? conditional love, a very obvious disease of most self centered people… really does more harm than good to the person with such traits… after all.. God created us out of love, what does a person gain if he hogs everything he possesses?

Unconditional love is important for good health.

Remember the parable of the 2 seas:

Two Seas

There are two seas in Palestine. One is fresh and fish are in it. Splashes of green adorn its banks. Trees spread their branches over it, and stretch out their thirsty roots to sip of its healing waters. Along its shores the children play, as children played when Jesus was there. He loved it. He could look across its silver surface when He spoke His parables. And on a rolling plain not far away He fed 5,000 people. The river Jordan makes this sea with sparkling water from the hills. Men build their houses near to it, and birds build their nests; and every kind of life is happier because it is there.

The river Jordan flows on south into another sea.

What makes up this difference in these neighbor seas? Not the river Jordan. It empties the same good water into both. Not the soil in which they lie, not the country round about. This is the difference. The sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the Jordan. For every drop of water that flows into it, another drop flows out. The other sea is shrewder, hoarding its income jealously. It will not be tempted into any generous impulse. The sea of Galilee gives and lives. This other sea gives nothing. It is named the Dead Sea.

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are two seas in Palestine.

Enough ramblings for today.. in a nutshell… sacrifice is good for health

quotes from the bible:

25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works

Well, doctors are not born but made… And from this I refuel my enthusiasm to persue my ambition.. wahaha

so er, to whoever’s reading this, I hope it inspires a few of your brain cells.. lol…..

END BORING (BUT MEANINGFUL) RANT

Place a cucumber in a marination jar and in weeks you shall obtain a pickle.

Place memories of events in CJL’s brain for weeks and soon the unbalanced acid alcaline brain chemistry of yours truly would distort everything remembered into a pack of lies…

And now ladies and gentlemen, I present you, whatever it is that is capable of permeating out my fingers into the decipherable information we humans fuel our eyes with… blablabla my brain isn’t exactly top notch at the moment, so bite me, I’m sleepy, I’ll probably bite you back too.. wahaha

Let’s see where I left.. ah yes, the hospital trip. On the 2nd day of the hospital trip, I recall a little too much faith in good timing LRTs and a lack of common sense which ultimately landed me jogging from the Chow Kit monorail station to the KL general hospital… as if that were not enough, by a stroke of rapid-stupid neuron connection I decided to get myself lost in the labyrinth of the KL hospital’s beautiful tar roads… urgh… I hate getting lost. I have this uncanny habit of crapping with friends when I really should be synchronizing with my internal GPS and at least finding out where am I and how I would get back to the same place in the future.. oh well, the chance to do that was on the first day.. no bonus point awarded for being regretful.. I was already late, darn.. hey look, a security guard

me: good morning sir, do you know the way to the academic hall?

guard: say atak tause babsa yaba rudisi ni

me: what?

Thinking the guard had an important life saving message to convey, I attentively invested 5 minutes of my time to decipher his unique message. And so, after several repetitive series of:

me: good morning sir, do you know the way to the academic hall?

guard: say atak tause babsa yaba rudisi ni

me: what?

I finally realized what the guard was trying to say and why he was getting nervous and waving his magic wand baton about like a fairy godmother.

guard: SAY ATAK TAUSE BABSA YABA RUDISI NI (saya tak tau sebab saya baru di sini)

me: FREAKIN BLOODY HELL

Nah I didn’t really say that… not wanting to get into trouble I decided to translate my statement into:

me: Oh. (vanishes)

I hate to be late, in all the fury of sweat and adrenalin.. I actually devolve into stupid.. swt.

Fortunately I eventually made it to my destination before the program started. Thank God!

The day started with the emergency ward… like what David said, jabatan kecemasan looked more like jabatan keamanan… lolz… pretty boring… but well, this section of the hospital is always on the ready for a worst case scenario.. the facilitator in charge of us had a voice like a 5 year old ballerina… MIND YOU HE’S A 40+ OLD MAN… so soft his voice (and he’s short too).. easily drowned in the pitter patter of our footsteps and lame jokes… lolz. Unfortunately, our lame jokes apparently caught the attention of the kecemasan department head who gave us a grilling for ‘inappropriate smiles’ and well yea.. ‘lame jokes’.. perasan control freak guy..

Suddenly, the air became charged! A wave of excitement surged through my half asleep group.

Apparently there were 5 new cases at the forensic pathology department. That means there are 5 dead bodies lining up to have post mortem performed on them! My group was exceptionally excited because yesterday when we visited the morque and the forensic pathology department, nobody died… today however…. someone was brutally killed, another fell from a building, still several others had some stuff on a building fall on them! WE SO WANTED TO LEAVE THE FREAKIN JABATAN KEAMANAN AND MARCH TO THE RUMAH MAYAT!!! so… when the facilitator in charge of us wasn’t looking, we gagged him and threw him into the biohazard waste tank… WAHAHAHA

lol

that would’ve been so much easier… but I guess it just shouts unethical future doctors.. and we wouldn’t want JPA to know that do we? lolz.. so some girls from our group requested for permission to go look for the hospital director for permission so that the group can get permission to visit the forensic pathology department during break time.. O_O

yay, pitter patter pitter patter… knock knock.. and we arrived at the house of the dead… literally.. Hmm.. faces of distraught relatives greeted us at the waiting hall.. excited as we were, we felt it was the right thing to figuratively wipe that enthusiastic grin off our face.. I mean, poor grandmother… she must be so distraught…. meanwhile near the department counter a tankful of fishes swims around in circles to bring good luck.. or good business… good business to the rumah mayat? ugh.. the grandiose ominousity..

Anyway, after gingerly strapping on our face masks, we entered the ‘operating theatre for orang mati’.. Hmmm… the other group was already there, and Dr. Rohayu as it seems, has already snapped open the dead body’s rib cage and is extracting the organs.. without wearing a face mask! URGH, the smell of dead people is REALLY REALLY REALLY TERRIBLE. Or was it because I wore my mask wrongly? lolz… anyway most of my friends were intrigued by it.. I on the other hand, having witnessed multiple documentaries of human dissections… the real thing looked exactly like what I’ve seen on my computer screen so it didn’t have the same hoo ha effect on me. No one puked, we were all very strong… lolz. I guess everyone present felt the same way I do, sympathy for the fresh dead body on the iron table… an indonesian lady who was killed at a construction site accident, her husband critically wounded… broke his neck I heard… but anyway.. the stench was killing me, so I made a quick exit.

Later I believe it was the outpatient department…. long story short, interesting. A very helpful head nurse explained to us lots of stuff… nice to see the doctors in action talking with the patients and stuff like that… this is the part where my headache got worst.. I came home and succumbed to the illness of stress and inhalation of death fumes… terrible headache… but with the help of my garfield bed, some mental discipline, a pinch of self hypnosis and some music.. I managed to ‘heal’ myself…

(sing to the tunes of the 12 days of christmas)

On the 3rd day of KL general hospital my true love said to me..

DON’T GET LOST AGAIN!

(end singing to the tunes of the 12 days of chirstmas)

This time, I totally distrusted the bloody LRT, and gave myself enough time buffer in anticipation of a worst case scenario where Ultraman decides to turn into a bad guy and destroy all the railway tracks in KL with his freakish cross forehand death ray… kaboom kaboom

well actually I just left 10 minutes earlier than the day before.. >.<

anyway this time upon arrival at the titiwangsa station, I decided not to go to Chow Kit, but follow people who according to my 6th sense, are walking towards the KL general hospital… so I stalked these people, and they led me… through a bus station, through some shop lots, through an empty junk yard land, through a hotel, and finally voila!

Turns out they were actually on their way to chow kit = =.. so I stopped following them when I could see the entrance to the hospital.

ah…  the 3rd day, actually the most boring day, went to the surgery department but saw only a slide show and only remembered a snappy surgeon who was quite entertaining… met a doctor kevin who was an inspiration to us all because of his attitude towards his work, met another doctor who was obviously rude and presumptious, shooting our questions back at us with WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT DO YOU THINK? remarks

us: so doctor, hospital work must be kinda tough eh

stupid doc: WHAT DO YOU THINK?

us: er.. so do you enjoy your work?

stupid doc: what to do, family no need to eat ar?

us: ……

stupid doc: ANYMORE QUESTIONS? WHAT DO YOU THINK? WHAT DO YOU THINK?

us: ……. (too flabbergasted to respond, teleported back to our mothership in earth’s orbit to charge up weapons and blast some sense into this doctor’s head)

sadly the last sequence of events did not take place in our dimension. Anyway, we quietly sat down on some nearby sofas and discussed the vast difference between the 2 doctors… perhaps the rude doctor was once as enthusiastic about becoming a doctor like us as well, but sadly, his heart wasn’t really really into it… and it really affects his attitude and the people around him..

unconditional love… the prerequisites of a doctor… in my head it rings again…

After the surgery department, we went to the big pink building where babies are given birth… everything was kinda predictable… some meowing babies… awww how cute… then we were introduced to HYPER EXPENSIVE counter kemandulan equipments.. and we were made to realize how lucky we are to not have such procreation problems.. lolz

Next was the closing ceremony… and then, more food… seriously, even though I’m not even a doctor, just being in the hospital saps energy from me faster than I could imagine… its just very taxing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually… the good doctor.. needs to be a very strong individual… and I left the place with redeemed motivation to lead my life in a more meaningful way…

well, I shall speed time up and come to my JPA interview day

NEGERI SEMBILAN

early in the morning, dad fetched me all the way to Nilai. Upon reaching the waiting room at the Malaysian Islam University College, I quickly made pals with the people around me… N9 people are generally nice and talented, nice to be around with… unfortunately, i forgot to take down All their contact! awww

First was the career aptitude test thingy…. don’t know if it really serves a good purpose… halfway through the test I sensed a burning smell in the air… apparently something like burnt rubber was permeating from the air vents… yuck

later during the interview, I had all the luck in the world to be surnamed CHONG, and thus, very naturally, was placed with a bunch of other CHONGs… unfortunately, the other CHONGs were not as enthusiastic as I expected… the interview went and was over quickly enough… I did my best… despite tripping over words, looking at the interviewers when I should be pretending they’re not there and discussing, introducing myself in English when the others introduced themselves in BM, and what not… I think I talked a lot… but I try my best not to be dominating… BM was shaky.. but English became better I think… haha.. I leave everything in God’s hands… life is a journey and not a destination… its not the end of the world if I don’t get a JPA scholarship, the journey of my life still continues… and I can still achieve my ambitions.. =)

yea from Nilai back to KL, CJL took the wheel! wooohooo… I love driving on highways… lolz

Ok now I’ll jump to the Petronas educamp. the time now is already 1.37AM… and I started typing at about 2PM.. =.="

As some of you guys know, I was shortlisted to the Petronas educamp at UTP, Tronoh from the 15th to the 17th… initially I was extremely reluctant to go… and I accredit such sinful thoughts to my awesome prowess of lazinesss… wahaha

In the end, I did go… and wow, it was an eye opening experience…

Almost 90% of the participants there were Malays!!!.. I’ve never seen such a large congregation of malay high achievers before… and they SO OUTNUMBER the chinese and Indians! In fact.. throughout the camp… I only came to know a few chinese… but they were all very very good, excellent all rounders in their own right… but they’re so rare.. ( including me) that you can count them from A to Z with just your 10 fingers.. literally

It was eye opening in the sense that well, back at SMK Cheras, I didn’t really have much competition nor social relation with really smart people… they were extinct ever since like forever I think… and at the Petronas educamp.. meeting all sorts of people from all over the country with unique talents, individuality traits and a common string of excellent SPM results, were the norm! I must say I had a lot of fun making friends there… though initially it certainly felt weird…. guess I wasn’t accustomed to living with a room mate and sharing a toilet with 20 other guys. lolz

On the first day, there was some educational activity, which I really enjoy… and by the wierdest of coincidence… 3 people who beat me in interschool, and interstate competitions were there too! there was Yee Lin from St Mary who beat our school team in the English debate back in 2004, Shakireen who beat our school entry for the science and engineering innovation competition in 2004, and even Faris from Perak whose team outranked us back during the Toyota Eco Youth Competitions! LOL… but the fact that I’m here with them, shows that my spirit is not quite defeated yet.. nyek nyek nyek

I made quite an impression I guess, by being able to speak in public rather naturally… on the second day, I was beginning to feel a slight wane in my enthusiasm… this was what I was worried about, I fear that history might repeat itself like what happened at the KL hospital… that my spirit would be weakened by headache and diseases… I pray that it may not happen… and I think God answered my prayer.. for I managed to stay in a good form and suffer from no fatigue problems… generally on the 2nd day, there were interesting career talks and even more entertaining so called english proficiency and critical thinking tests… lolz

Finally on the 3rd day, the day of the interview.. I was really excited… I decided to just have fun, don’t care about the outcome of the interview, but focus on doing my best for the interview itself… so for the individual session, I presented a very comprehensive and revolutionary solution plan which ate up more than my alotted 10 minutes… my panel mates must’ve been wondering what’s happening that I’m taking so long… but the fact is that I had so much fun elaborating it just didn’t stop there… the fun became a catalyst for me to sensibly answer the interviewers questions that were meant to render my points shakey… later during the group discussion, it was kinda fun too! I talked a lot, and realized that my solution to the problem encompassed almost everyone’s idea! So when I explained my solution, it sort of ate up a lot of the other stuff my other panel mates have to say… dangeth, I try really hard not to be dominating… I hope I wasn’t in any way.. it was kinda funny occasionally though.. as I seemed to know the points of most of the people there even before they talked, and there was this girl sitting next to me who kept complaining that I was mentioning her point… hey! I didn’t know it belonged to u.. and besides.. u’re using my Pilot G-6 pen, maybe u’re the one who’s stealing my ideas!.. lolz jk.. but it was still kinda amusing.. i think the interviewers were quite entertained… so after shaking their hands, we made our way to freedom…

while waiting for my parents who just came back from a blissfull holiday at Pangkor island to pick me up, I had the opportunity to visit the UTP library.. it was totally awesome… apparently its design was somehow similar to a massachusett’s library.. something something… giant bookcases, giant glass walls, glass lifts, staircases and its just oh-so-awesomeish I don’t know how to describe it! For bookie wormies like me, its literally heaven… wahaha too bad I didn’t bring my camera along

I look forward to having a nice long sleep… I didn’t even realize that its Thursday already… gee its chin leng’s birthday today, while zik and kev’s fall on next week… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….. time flies

On a side note, I added some awesome music at my profile page by the CORRS!.. it might take a while to load but it’s definitely worth listening at least once.. =)

FINALLY ITS FINISHED I’M SO FREAKIN GLAD… 2.06AM