Monday, April 27, 2009

The only bright side to all this, is that eventually there may not be a piece of the planet worth fighting over.

The first thing you notice as you descend, is the sudden peace. An absolute silence punctuated only by the sound of your breathing into the regulator and the air bubbles escaping into the surface.

As you descend, you start to notice a second thing: Blue. Lots and lots of blue. The vibrant color surrounds and engulfs you, with the sun rays piercing the surface occasionally.

As the last bit of air bubbles out of your BCD and you exhale slowly and calmly, the weightless feeling sinks in. The sound of your breathing and air bubbles makes a constant musical backdrop to the scene unfolding before you. As the pressure builds up while you slowly reach the bottom of the sea floor, you equalize constantly.

Once at the bottom of the sea floor, you check that your buddy is with you and you two set off in an adventure like no other.



The closest thing i can describe that is akin to diving, is flying. The weightless feeling, the sense of complete unrestrained movement and the gliding above the sea floor. This is what a bird must feel like when it flies: A sense of joy and unbridled freedom.

As you quest forward, the sea unveils its treasure to you. Fishes swim in schools, shimmering in vivid colors of red, blue and green. Stony corals placidly shelter teems of sea life while providing a fascinating background of colors and shapes. Soft corals wave lazily at you, while shy fishes peek out from their hiding places. Occasionally, a brave white fish will swim up to have a curious investigation of you before darting away.

As you glide along marveling at nature, fresh air is brought into your lungs steadily and reassuringly. You move along, trying to see as much sea life as you can. Constant monitoring of your SPG soon indicates that you don't have much air left. Reluctantly signaling to your buddy, you two head up to the surface, with the wonderful sights deeply embedded into your mind.

I'll be back, you fervently promise.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

I call a ten year time out to grow some more.

Eh. I don't think i'm sitting in your car. If i do so, there will be three people at the back. If there's a jam, they are going to suffer.

Okay lor. I anything one. But why you so stupid? Got car to sit, you don't want.

*outrage* Stupid?! I'm trying to be considerate here. I'm thinking for those people at the back.

*chuckles* Okay lor. Whatever.

Why is it that when you try to be considerate, people laugh at you for doing so?

I had always believed, perhaps childishly, that if you followed the rules, you would be protected, that things like that would not happen to you. Afterwards, I felt … tricked. Foolish. Gullible, that I had thought ideals could protect me.

Honour and courtesy and justice … .they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them to us like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims.

- “Assassin’s Quest” by Robin Hobb

Saturday, April 11, 2009

If you don’t get a good night kiss, you get kafka dreams.

"Take my memories of my mother, and the feelings that went with them. I do not want to know them at all.

Take the ache in my throat when i think of Molly, take all the sharp-edged, bright-colored days i recall with her. Take their brilliance and leave me but the shadows of what i saw and felt. Let me recall them without cutting myself on their sharpness.

Take my days and nights in Regal's dungeons. It is enough to know what was done to me. Take it to keep, and let me stop feeling my face against that stone floor, hearing the sound of my nose breaking, smelling and tasting my own blood.

Take my hurt that i never know my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and i could do so alone.

Take my memories of that tower-top, of the bare windswept Queen's Garden and Galen standing over me.

Take that image of Molly going so willingly to Burrich's arms. Take it and quench it and seal it away where it can never sear me again..."
-"Assassin's Quest" by Robin Hobb

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Isn’t it sad how some pple’s grip on their lives is so dicy that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

So anyway, you know when you're trundling on the so-called path of life, your body changes in unexpected ways.

Puberty is a good example, but not one which i'm thinking of...

Sometimes you will find that the food that you love to eat since you were young, will suddenly and unexpectedly disgust you.

Durians are a good example. For all your life, you've loved to eat durians. You probably eat one or two boxes of durians with little or no problem at all. But one day, for some explicit and unexplained reason, your body decides that durians are disgusting. Thats sad, isn't it?



And talking about durians, there are one or two old wives' tale about durians.

Such as drinking salt water from the empty durian husk will flush out any impurities of the previously eaten durian. And that if you get pricked or injured by a durian, for quicker recovery, you can use the remaining flesh from the durian husk to massage on the injured area.

But old wives' tale rarely have any credentials to them, do they? So we should use this opportunity to test this old wives tale of using the remaining flesh from the durian husk to heal durian-caused injuries.

A healthy body is preferable for this line of research. In order to conduct this research effectively, varying degrees of injuries should be performed on the body. Caused by a durian, of course. Three (3) varying degrees of injuries should be sufficient.

It is recommended that the durian should penetrate the body by 5mm, 10mm and 15mm. A general tolerance of ± 1mm is acceptable.

By the nature of this research and its objectives, a comparison must be made. The general recommendation of the second method is to leave the injuries untouched. It is possible but highly improbable that the body should bleed to death due to the second method.

However, since two (2) methods are used and three (3) varying degrees of injuries are performed, the healthy body must have a minimum of six (6) sides to perform this important research.

To truly complete the research, a third method should be used to compare between the first two (2) methods. Since there is a comparison between leaving the injuries untouched, and healing them with the remaining flesh from the durian husk, the third method should be healing the injuries via other means.

There is no recommendation for the said "other means" of healing. Therefore it is dependent on the discretion and objectives of the researcher.

Hence, with three (3) methods and three (3) varying degrees of injuries, the healthy body must now have a minimum of nine (9) sides to complete this important research. Should the body have more sides to experiment on, the researcher may experiment by using different types of durians.

This is very important research. Any advances in this area will greatly help the medical field in trying to cure the durian-caused injuries, which are in all probability, performed by the ah-bengs in this country.