one hundred and forty nine years ago: the first publication of the book that sparked the enlightenment era of our scientific knowledge, the birth of evolution theory: on the origin of species.

four years ago: world of warcraft was launched.

inquisition: reign of fear ***OO (toby green)
a good reading for those who wants to know more about the spanish inquisition. if only gw bush read it before he waged his war on iraq. imaginary enemy can only works to boost one’s power, but only to a limited period of time. economic hardship will follow from the invention of enemy, for there is nothing more expensive than battling to an imaginary war with real money.

the farseer trilogy ****O (robin hobb)
haven’t read much of fantasy novel, but i think this one is pretty good.

pecut bajrakirana **OOO (kho ping ho)
was looking forward to read this epic author’s work, and disappointed at the shallowness of the story. can’t remember noticing the weakness of the plot earlier. may have to read his novels again sometime later.

happiness of katakuris **+OO (takashi miike)
not as impressive as i thought, this musical tells you how to be happy, in its own quirky way. unlike miike’s other production, this one does not have any gore element in there.

got my passsport renewed. sometimes i think it’s a cheat. as i said before, the life time of the passport is 5 years, but you can’t really go to other country if your passport has only get 6 months to live. and the thing with passports is, at least the indonesian ones, they are issued on the day of the application, but need 5 working days to be prepared.

i applied for a new one last week, 11/11 (yes, ’twas the remembrance day), and was told to get it today. but the issue date was 11/11, stealing one week of the life of the damned passport. i guess, it’s similar to termed deposit in banks. one could do nothing but sighing when seeing the dates are pushed further and further.

at least, i didn’t have to pay for my address registration here. (free in the embassy in london, but here, they charge 10 aud for simple paper work.)

humans are adaptable creatures. evolution. that is how we get better; we change in order to survive, either as a society, or as an individual. we hone those which are useful, and discard or reduce those which are less useful.

sometimes, we discard our functions because of the pressure from the society. in a way, to be accepted in a society, we have to play along with their rules.

some of the common courtesies, such as biding good morning to stranger on the bus, are no longer useful. people will give you a strange look if you do now, especially in urban areas. so it is not surprising that our brains now function less in the area of politeness. and as an exchange, we now have more expertise in minding our own business and in ignoring people.

however, not all ancient rules are rejected by today’s society. some are still cherished, for the sake of obedience and preserving tradition only. and sadly, these are the ones that are obsolete.

rules that have been relevant 1000 years ago, might not be relevant now. ban on pre-marital sex is one of them. as i’ve often mentioned before, the puberty age remains constant, but the average age of people getting married is getting higher. demanding a person to hold their sexual urge for 3 years after their awakening (puberty) is alright. but asking the same person to hold it for 20 years is not healthy at all.

and what does that do to those who maintain the tradition? the sexual function will first demand its due (around puberty age), gets frustated when it is not met. then, the make or break point, and i noted four possibilities.

1. go rebellious and do whatever he/she can to get the demand meet. but the person will be condemned by the old thinking society as un-chivalrious, a pariah.

2. go somewhere in between. satisfy the need and be discreet about it. this can only possible if the self-guilt is removed. (the so-called guilty consience is nothing more than the fruit of implanted moral/religious dogma through brainwash during childhood.)

3. do anything to observe the rules, while meeting the demand. masturbation is acceptable in some case, although some overzealous parents will oppose it. the fear of getting caught and scorned by some people will make this option very similar to coitus interruptus. on the surface, the demand is met, but psychologically, it is not met at all.

4. observe the rules, be accepted by the society, and in the process, discarding the obsolete function. (if you are given a long period of time, and do nothing, any judge will deem you useless.)

this is getting out of topic, and i’ve wasted so much time already so i’d better summarise my point. yesterday, after talking to an old friend about waste management tehcnology, i realised that i’ve lost most of mathematics/physics/engineering knowledge. for the better or worse, someone is evolving.

wotlk has been released yesterday in usoa. in australia, the release date is today, one day late, as always.

now that i’ve got it, i will get myself busy with the new death knight, glodok (i found the orcish language is very close to the indonesians)

the great scientist albert einstein once said, “only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

kew informed me of this video, and said that this is a sign of the end of the world: human stupidity is reaching its maximum limit.

looking at the video, i thought it was a comedy show. but it wasn’t. it was a serious documentation of what happened inside a particular church. according to the tags, it was a relevation and annointing session. and what i see there, with my unbiased eyes, is a mass possession. (the scene at 0:46-0:50 shows such evidence.)

so yes, you can find stupidity everywhere, but you will find it concentrated in places like churches.

cok told me via sms that a glitch in wow enabled priests and warlocks to purchase their merciless gladiator gears for free. so i abandoned my work for a while (it was a hot day anyway, couldn’t concentrate fully) and running through the list of characters to get those freebies.

and good news travels fast, very fast. by the time i managed to log in, the hall of champions and hall of honour were full with people. some were trying to get the free stuff, but most of them were there just blocking the access to the relevant vendors, especially those with bigger 3d models (druid’s bear/moonkin, hunters with pets, etc)

reckoning they couldn’t get the free stuff, they decided to make it equally hard for those who can. polite requests for them to move away was futile, and some people resorted to rude languages (and the futility continued.)

after all the difficult efforts to find and click on the vendor, and got all the freebies, the servers were shutted down for maintenance. and the message on the login screen:

this maintenance is designed to correct a very recent issue where players were able to obtain certain pvp items without paying the intended price.

once the maintenance concludes, players who obtained such items will notice them removed from their inventory. however any tokens or arena/honor points on said gear will be approprietely refunded.

oh well… learned a lot of human behaviours, especially on jealousy and selfishness.

the more i read about the news, the more convinced i am that the leaders of the people or their employees are less knowledgeable than i am.

the north koreans are too poor to hire a photoshop expert, and that’s understandable (cos they’re poor.) therefore, they have to bear the consequence of this unperfect job. what position could i have if i am working for them now?

and it doesn’t just stop there. judging by the fact that a person who lacks the basic knowledge of geography can run into a vice presidential candidate, i could only imagine what position i could have if i were there (and have the required citizenship.)

if we have incompetent people at the top of world/national politics, we can be sure that things would go ugly. one example is the recent credit problem, which the pope blamed on the pursuit of wealth. perhaps his words will carry more weight if he doesn’t say those words while wielding gold sceptre and wearing gold threaded robe/mitre.

of course, we can’t just blame the leaders for anything that goes wrong. time changes. the world changes. some of them are just not well informed, and hence, aren’t prepared to face the shifting status quo. like the diamond price.

-
while the myth says a certain dead jew converted water to wine, our scientists make something even better (economically), by converting tequila to diamond. not sure if this could have any impact on the highly overpriced diamond market. for sure, some (especially females) already fell into the advertisement/status quo’s trap will demand “real” ones. their lack of knowledges in material science allows them to be manipulated by the marketing team (who will tell lies anyway.)

had a blackout for 15 minutes yesterday, 2.15-2.30pm. not sure if the energy demand in here is going up, or some problem with the station.

also, i can contemplate life without electricity during that 15 minutes. felt a bit hopeless, can’t even make hot water for tea or instant noodle.

yesterday, shortly after obama was elected as president of usoa, he gave a speech highlighting the power of democracy. while everything was filled with joy and happiness there, i am reminded of something grim in australia.

bush once said that his enemies attacked america, because they don’t like the american freedom. it was a false accusation. for one of the pillars of democracy, freedom of speech, is under attack not by america’s enemy, but by america’s deputy. (not sure who if john howard was referring to himself, or australia as a nation, and not even sure if this stance persists after the labour government took office.)

for those who didn’t update themselves with australian current affair, here is the long story short. and once you’ve read about it, take some action, please.

and not surprising anymore, the group who actually supported the au gov to launch this stupid project is …. the christians. everytime i see a project blocking the growth of knowledge, i see them there, with patronising banners of moral and religion.

they never learn nor accept that censorship is dead; their inquisition had proven it centuries ago. they are just a bunch of people who feel increasingly useless, as they do not have as much prestige and control as their predecessors had. and sadly, these people vote.

yeah, i still have my doubt on democracy.

remember remember
the fifth of november
a big celebration
of rebuilding a nation
’tis guy fawkes night elsewhere
for those who actually care

yes, the americans may insist it’s their fourth of november, but it was on the fifth of november that i lost many production hours due to watching the us presidential election vote-counting.

was touched when mccain delivered his conceding speech. apparently, he was a nice and honourable guy before pretending to be a tough guy during his campaign. wonder if he could win if he keep his original stance; the swinging states might vote for him for that, and the bible belt states would never elect a black guy anyway.

a rather expected behaviour from the gop followers on the conference; they booed mccain when he said he congratulated obama, and they cheered him the loudest when he thanked palin. confirmed that they are sore losers, and sexually repressed men who just want to fuck a milf. (they’re prudes*, what do you expect?) very different from the man on stage.

anyway, the market rallied, too late to buy any shares now. it shows how the world is getting impatient to get rid of the economically-incompatible thinking person in the white house. hopefully the world’s enthusiasm is not wasted tomorrow.

[a rather out of topic: there is still an unanswered question from teh internetz a few days ago; if obama won, will it still be called the white house?]

* wanna proof? see this article, and see the diagram there.

changed the theme of this blog to suit my latest obsession on steampunk culture. some changes are due in the near future. comments are now open (for a while.)

ever since i saw this goggle, i learned about the term steampunk and became obsessed with them.

already planning to brush up my old engineering workshop skills to make similar headpiece for myself, as well as other projects (such as keyboard, or even mechanostrider.)

and i have a vision in my mind when i woke up earlier this morning, about me wearing that kind of goggle, riding a strider, donning a hairpipe breastplate and having a mohawk hair style.

in order to make it come true, i have to start somewhere, right? so i started with the easiest one first; the hair style :)

in asia, women who are not married until late age are usually scorned. firstly, because they are thought to have some serious problems that no man want them. and secondly, because they tend to be rather nasty to other (as usually observed.) not sure what’s the cause or effect, as the nastiness could be because of the ill-treatment they got.

i used to think the symptom as a normal result of inter-human interaction. until yesterday.

i asked my traditional-chinese-medicine doctor friend about why women usually tend to worry more than men. his answer was that women lose blood once a month, and having not enough blood in the system could cause anxiety. [not sure if this claim is verified by formal western medicine. and note that 'blood' in tcm context is slightly different from what the western medicine practicioners have in mind.]

i suggested to feed the female with blood-nourishing ingredients, such as chicken blood, red meat, etc. to which he cautioned me to be more balance on this approach; female with too much blood in their system could lead to excessive anger. and one excellent way to build up blood is, surprise surprise, not to have sex. hence, the explanation of the first paragraph of this entry. but how about the lads?

for guys, the sexual restriction is not as severe. keep in mind that asia (or at least, eastern asia) is heavily influenced by confucianist ideals, eventhough some other religions have their impacts felt there. it is an idea that discourages carnal pleasure as tabboo, as well as states that a female is a second class citizen.

come to think of it, it all makes sense. make the female frustated, and get their mood swing, then blame them for not being a stable person, and hence, a lower being than their male counterparts. once the system is established, it is hard to trace back why the female is frustated.

and i found similar situation in spain, a few centuries after the inquisition reigned there. according to ‘inquisition, the reign of fear’ (a book i’m reading), the fear they instilled on the society made them neurotic. some ‘possessions by the devil’ could be explained in today’s psychology as hysteria, and tends to have the same root as the repressed female in asian culture; lack of sex.

of course, it is very hard to uproot the idea which had been planted for centuries by our predecessors. only when you think for yourself and without bias, can you be honest to yourself.

halloween
witch on a broomstick
penis envy

ハロウィン
魔女と箒
ペニス羨望

for some people, the words ‘religious’ and ’spiritual’ mean the same. i disagree.

being spiritual means you are in harmony with the spirits of other; humans, animals, plants, mountains, rivers, etc. and when you can relate to other beings, you can be peaceful with them, and hence.. spiritual.

whereas being religious means, well, you are indoctrinated by some people and proud of it. being a minion of some invisible mind-control entity, it must be very hard for you to find your own peace.

the dream (of a deity asking a peach) i had a few weeks ago is still vivid in my mind. it is rather strange as i usually have limited memory, so i asked around for other people’s opinion.

a few relatives back in indonesia concluded (or to be exact, recalled what they’ve been taught) that a dream about a deity of your background is a ‘warning’ to worship that particular deity more. their reasoning; that sort of dream only visits people who haven’t pray/worship the deity for too long.

[slightly out of topic; i dreamt about a talking statue, because that is what the deity is usually represented. i wonder if you are a believer of a non-iconic deity. in that sort of dream, who would talk to you then?]

but my flatmate disagrees with the interpretation, and have given another attempt to explain the dream via symbolism.
* equipped with a lantern => had some intelligence
* visiting every room/compartment => searching something in every part of life
* the missing fulushou was most probably the shou, longevity/time, that’s why the guanyin (symbol of compassion) is asking for peach (a symbol of longevity)
* full moon => perfection

this is what his version, based on the points above:
to reach perfection, everyone must have a balance of intellect and mind. i had the intellect part, but the compassion needs more time - of which i don’t have any. searching every aspect of life is fine, but eventually i’ll have to deal with this missing compassion time.

with both opinions in mind, i then came to my own conclusion:
more work means more time spent, and less time to attune one’s spirituality. time becomes an asset, where you must invest wisely to insure the maximum return of investment.

as we grow older, our need of worldly materials grow too. which means, we must work more to support this insatiable desire, and less time to sit back and think about our current spiritual level.

some people find it alright to just go to a temple/church once a week to listen to preaching/mass. it’s only 1-2 hours per week, or so they always told me. and that really disturbs me. how could you ensure you check your spiritual level in only 1-2 hours (minus formality and chit-chat time) per week?

perhaps, this is the product of media culture? just like going to a cinema, you get yourself some brainwashing, and stand up as a religious member of society (read: moral police.)

nevertheless, i think i’ll start re-attuning my spirituality.