More on afterlife and suicide

Shelly asked: "But will you want to end your stationary existence? Will you actually act to end it? Or will your reluctance to cease existing allow for future nudges to prod you into moving once again?"

Might be stationary... but it is not completely boring and nasty.

Acting upon the will to cease existing requires too much effort and reason to change the way things are. Things are still alright. Being crippled does not mean that one does not feel or feels only pain. Being unable to feel does not mean one does not live in hope that one may feel again.

If life is not completely nasty, it does not need to be terminated. I mean, if your computer bores you, it is not like you actually try to wreck it. Leave it in screensaver mode or something and take a trip elsewhere.

As for stationary part. If one has not reached there, try not to reach there. From Boston Legal, a fictional lawyer by the name of Danny Crane said something to this effect: "Do not ask yourself 'why'. Never ask yourself 'why'. It will kill ya." Without lofty ideals that requires a great deal of blind faith to believe in, like religion, everything will fall apart in the light of infinite regression. Ok... not all things fall apart, but whatever you conclude will not be pretty. So if you have not begun, do not ever ask yourself 'why'.

Sidetracking: I believe that Danny Crane is an extremely wise character. Nothing that exits his mouth is not like completely profound or something. =D Clarity in mad cow. Truths in apparent insanity.

I have not written about my thoughts on afterlife on this blog so here goes... (Thoughts triggered by http://meyanze.blogspot.com/2006/09/journey-from-life-to-death-and-suicide.html)

On suicide

In Neil Gaimen's 'Portraits of Despair' in one of his many 'Sandman comics', there is a picture of a woman's ghost sitting alone by the roadside after she committed suicide. The tagline was "Funny... she did not feel any happier..." as she sat beside her carwreck in expectation that things will be better. I believe that the author is try to say that if one does not feel happy in this life, one could not realistically expect to be happy in the next.

On afterlife in general...

I believe that most people like to believe that the soul is eternal and afterlife is eternal too. That too is problematic in many ways.

In western cultures, if I am not wrong, the soul is ethereal and eternal and does not require material sustenance. Is that not a big problem? If one does not need material sustenance, one cannot enjoy material comforts either. Perhaps it is just me, but ask yourselves this: "What are we if we are not driven by the hope of material comforts? Can you imagine a life that does not require material sustenance and is not driven by material comforts? How is life's experiences going to be even vaguely relevant to the afterlife?" That is the way I pictured afterlife in this context: an eternity of waiting for the warmth that will never come and the food that you will never taste. And since there is no indication that one will grow any wiser all the emotional bullshit will just carry over, though you will probably not physically feel it too so everything is just imagined? An eternity of makeups with no sex and breakups with no ice cream? For religions largely influenced by Judaism (I might be wrong to make this generalisation), you start it with a trial where there is no Danny Crane can save you. And you spend the rest of the VERY LONG segment of your afterlife preparing for the court of appeals at the end of time? Now why would I wish this upon myself and others. Reincarnation is not possible, if you REALLY hate yourself, that is what you will be stuck with for a VERY LONG time and good luck trying to kill yourself again. There is a way out fortunately. If you are good boy/girl, you will probably end up with a lifetime supply of an overdose of afterlife-functional prozac and sing/gibber about your favorite idol for eternity. IMO, in this setting, 'heaven' or 'hell' or 'purgatory' all seems to suck. I do not wish to be in a situation where I have to choose between these 3 hells.

In Chinese cultures of Taoism and Buddhism, it seems much more interesting. When I remarked that there is more than enough time to rest when we are dead, HP happily chirped: "错了！ 做鬼也很忙！ 要忙着收钱。。。 收房子。。。 收汽车。。。 下面 inflation rate 很高的！还有很多 corruption！" Sounds like the rat-race on crack. HAHA. Still sounds preferable to western views, because if I am unhappy I can go smell a lot of incense. The court of appeals system is also more flexible so as long as you 集一点德 to offset 你所造的聂... you will not be sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. And the best part is! You get to drink the 'Water of forgetfulness' and start over again! Maybe as a cockroach if you 造 too much 聂. For people who want to commit suicide, I believe this is what they are looking for. Start over! It is fun! =D

Personally...

Unfortunately, I do not subscribe to any known organised structures that has anything to say about afterlife. If there happens to be an afterlife, I am not sure how I will react to it. I will react to it really badly I suppose. I am not made to live forever and I do not wish for it. I certainly hope either that I fade into oblivion or be reincarnated. If I could live forever that will truly be hell. If I wake again to find myself in an eternal place where no reincarnation is possible, I will be majorly pissed. Ok... I might be relieved for a while, but I will definitely end up being majorly pissed.

I will like to to die while I still want to live. And not have my life drag out so long that I find myself wanting to die.

Disclaimer

I find it very silly but I will just write this anyway. This post reflects my thoughts and not anyone else's.

Please refrain from framing, 'crusading', 'jihading', 'lynching', I can be reasoned with unlike some people. Just post intelligently back in a coherent manner.

If you think my replies will offend you please do not post back.

Unlike many others, I do not believe I have a court case in my afterlife. Therefore, I am less constrained by rules in comparison to others. My actions will be clear and direct for there is less need for accountability or hypocricy.

Clarification

It seems like with my last post, I have freaked out at least 2 people (see tagboard and Puffy's post). Ok, maybe not Ruixian heh. (Goodness lah Ruixian if you *really* didn't mean your statement to carry so much meaning, should just pretend right? It's really cool if you intended it to mean what I thought it did =P.) Oops. Did not intend it to be that way. Sometimes something I read just strikes me in a particular way. As in the case with Ruixian's statement, I at first thought, yes, we all do need laughter in our lives. Whether it's from relief (e.g. after you fall down the stairs but land on your feet) or because you find something amusing, a laugh will always help to brighten up your day. However, I also felt that the statement was profound because there appeared to be an underlying message - that in life, things don't always go your way, but not everything leaves a scar, and if you're able to look back at an incident that affected you in a negative way, and laugh at it, you can move on with your life.

And because I'm me, I was suddenly struck by the phrase 'laugh it all off because there's no deep scar anywhere'. It reminded me of the times in my life when my whole world was falling apart, but I had to keep smiling and go on with the show. Yes, the deepest scars are also the deepest buried. And yes, I've definitely been hurt before in my life. When you've reached my age, it's highly unlikely that you've never ever ever been wounded deep down before. Just once is enough. And suddenly this whole new side of the world will become visible to you.

I'm not exactly sad or hurting now. As it was when I read some certain post some time in the 2nd half of 2006, the incident mentioned in the post below only served to provide me with a huge sense of relief. Any sadness related to the incident would be due to the loss of a very good chance, not because of the other person involved. And perhaps upset (angry?) that he appears to be telling others untruths about me.

Ruixian's statement simply served to evoke a whole train of thought, which I just had to blog about. I believe that being hurt is actually a good thing. In JC, my classmate said that she didn't believe in God, because she couldn't believe any God would allow suffering to occur in this world. I, however, believe that you cannot truly experience life without having suffered before. It is impossible to appreciate something if you cannot fathom what life would be without it.

And that is why I would like to say to Puffy, although I'm not sad (and anyway I didn't get abandoned, and definitely not by a person I trusted), you should know that, it's only because I have experienced sadness before, that happiness means so much more to me now.

And finally, I would like to say in response to Malcolm's tag: That which does not kill may leave you crippled, and you may get crippled to the point where you do not want to move anymore. But will you want to end your stationary existence? Will you actually act to end it? Or will your reluctance to cease existing allow for future nudges to prod you into moving once again?

No Crash, No Burn = No Scar?

From Ruixian's Blog:

Life should have more of these mistakes to laugh at, like maybe you slip down the stairs and you're expecting to crash (and burn) badly but you land, thankfully, on your feet, then you can recover from it and laugh it all off because there's no deep scar anywhere.

A very profound statement. Those in love, or who have known true love, could modify it slightly by saying replacing 'you land, thankfully, on your feet' with 'someone catches you in time'.

And yes, I agree with Ruixian, we really need more of these experiences in life. But as time wears on, and your notions of the perfect world around you are slowly shattered, you may start to wonder, after falling and landing on your feet, you can laugh, but can you really recover? Not all scars are visible, and those that hurt the most are usually buried deep down inside.

Last year I met a girl, who was (and still is) vibrant and full of life. 'Hyper' would be the choice of word many would use to describe her. Oddly enough, she says that I am more hyper than her. I do not claim to be like her. She has qualities that I have never possessed. And yes, she sometimes scares me. But why does she truly frighten me? I wonder if it's the intensity that she does things with, the happiness she radiates when she is being hyper. Maybe I see in her a part of me that has died over the years. 8 years can do a lot to a person.

My mother once told me that her friends and colleagues commented that I was an extraordinarily happy baby - I smiled in almost all the photos taken of me. I think I stopped being able to smile for the camera somewhere in Secondary school. I wonder if I will ever stop being able to smile.

Many people make New Year's Resolutions. I think, at least for me, they don't really work. Resolutions can be made at any time, and it helps if there is an event that happened around the time it was made to help you keep to it. New Year doesn't work for me.

Someone once said that, with one SMS, he finally saw a person for who she really is. I have seen this person for what he truly is for quite some time now. But only parts registered consciously. It took a statement from a friend, reminding me of that SMS, to let me clearly see what he really is.

Some would say that now is a good time for me to pick up the pieces and start over. I think I'll let the pieces stay where they are, and patch up the holes with new experiences. I'm not one to bear grudges. But I think the pieces should remain where they are, because I prefer not to forget. No matter what he may tell the world, there are some things I don't have to lie about. And those pieces should remain where they are, to serve as a reminder to me, always. Pieces to be viewed from a distance, because the sharp edges can only hurt when you touch them.

Circumcision?

Went to read Kenny Sia's blog and came across this entry. It's funny, of course, but as usual the comments were the most hilarious part of the post. I really had no idea that people would now view circumcision as something to be proud of (previously, I actually thought the normal view was that non-circumsized men had it better in bed), but hey, I'm not the guy, and maybe cutting it off is really more hygienic (like girls going for Brazilian waxes).

Samples of some of the more amusing comments:

• dude!! 24 years later & you still don't know how to pee right??
• u may wanna know that circumcised male are placed at a lower risk of AIDS as the cells of the foreskin are 'friendly' for the entry of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Me: Good point eh, but you have to have sex with someone with HIV in order to get HIV, and you should be asking yourself, why are you having sex with someone who has HIV, not if you should have a circumcision to reduce your risk of getting it.


• SLICE IT MATE!!! SLICE IT!!!!!!!
• So big liao only cut, very pain one. (I mean your age big, not ur kukuciao k?)
• Alternatively, u can pay extra money, to make u sleep during the process. which is good, so u wont panic when u see a doc with a light saber coming to ur kuku.
• (from the same guy who made the previous comment) But hey, now i doesnt felt that kind of thing on my dickhead anymore. Except sometimes when i accidentally drip some toothpaste on it. which can make u scream ur lungs out.
• (Still from the same guy, what a cool mom!) My mom said, zhanging kuku is really really good for ur dickhead. Sometimes after masturbating, the sperm is stuck inside the skin.
• (And again from the same guy, especially for Myron)Imagine leaving sperm in a condom and left it there for days. ewwwwwwww
• I never zhng my kuku & still chicks says there is no smell or taste when they lick the lollipop.

Me: Why this guy ask girls such WEIRD things o.O. Eeek. Oh. Maybe the girls he dates are so weird they comment on the TASTE of his penis. Eck. No. Maybe they really think it's a lollipop and are wondering why it's got no taste. *faint*


• JUST CUT IT!!! It will make you feel like a VIRGIN again!!! ;p


Me: Now how DOES this work hmmm....


• lan jiao stay uncut.. will look like torpedo.
• Kenny, you are a genius.You succeeded in getting rid of the typical Malaysian taboo by getting girls to admit without any sense of embarassment that they give blowjobs.
• it'll taste better if u cut.....


Me: For obscure reasons, I am thinking of how good blood tastes now....


• (Some people dunno how to count) kenny, one word. do it. im gonna do it. lets do it together.
• Before you go for it though, ask the doctor if he can sew the skin around the dickhead to form a sunflower shape... that would be damn cool.
• http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kenny
  kenny u are a foreskin! harharharharhar

And finally, the general consensus:

Thus, our logical conclusion today here is: LEAVE YOUR SCHLONG ALONE, MAN!

But if you can't, don't forget your camera.

Racial Discrimination?

On a recent post on his blog, Mr Wang laments on the requirement for one's race to be specified when filling in a warranty card. He says that it is "uniquely Singaporean". I guess I don't buy enough Singaporean products, because I don't remember ever having to fill in my race in on a warranty form. *Looks at Cannon warranty card on desk*. Nope, it doesn't ask for my race. As The Galoisian Radical pointed out in his comments on Mr Wang's site, putting 'others' as an option for race isn't "uniquely Singaporean".

I didn't write this to critisize Mr Wang. (I wrote this because his post reminded me of the lecturer I am going to write about =P.) I do agree with his opinion that some people may find it offensive to have to be labelled as 'others'. However, I would think it would be more impolite to actually not have an 'others' option for people to choose from.

Take A/P Chrys Mendis from NUS, who was my lecturer for UIT2204: Foundations of Engineering in 2003. He staunchly refuses to be labelled as an Indian, because of the conflicts between Sri Lanka and India. So when he was required to fill in his race on a form in the hospital (which does make more sense than having to fill in your race on a warranty form, I have to say), he filled in 'Human'. The nurse/receptionist saw that, crossed it out, looked at him, and chose 'Indian'. He then scolded her, and said that if she was to choose a race for him, it was to be 'others'.

So, if you really have to ask for race, and you give choices on the form (let's face it - not only do most of us prefer to pick an option instead of filling in a blank, the collation of the results for statistical purposes would be made much easier if choices were given), omitting 'others' would really be much more impolite than forcing some to choose 'others' as a race. Maybe what Mr Wang is suggesting is that all possible options be given, but this seriously serves no statistical purpose (considering that those choosing 'others' would really be a minority), and not everyone is ashamed of being from a minority race. Maybe it's because I'm Chinese in a country where the population is predominately Chinese so I never really feel slighted about my race, but I'm pretty sure if I were filling in a non Asian form which Chinese was not listed as one of the races, I wouldn't really feel slighted should I have to choose 'others' as my race. It's the truth after all. But I would be really peeved if they refused to even acknowledge the existence of my race by giving me 'others' to choose, or forced me to look through this silly long string of races just to find my own.

As for filling human as my race, I guess there was a point of time in my life where I would do that (i.e. that crazy time in Secondary school where classmates would bring in a stack of survey forms from the other GEP schools and we'd help some friend's friend mass fill them hahaha), but since I've had my fill of inventing answers (and adding options next to the existing ones heeheehee), I don't think I'd still do that now.

---

Back to Prof Mendis. It was rather refreshing to find a professor who during his lessons, instead of telling you what he did 'in 1981, when I was doing my phD' (goodness knows what THAT professor wanted - for you to follow in her footsteps, or to boast about her accomplishments?), complains about the people driving on Singapore expressways, saying that they drive so slowly in the right most lane, and announcing that he expected people to be able to drive above the speed limit in that lane.

He's also the one who tried to apply to be a Professional Engineer in Singapore a long time ago. Apparently, the form he had to fill was in landscape, and was to be filled in in print or using a typewriter. Since he didn't want to mess up the form with his handwriting, and because he couldn't properly fit a paper landscape into the typewriter, he copied out the whole form into his computer, and typed all his answers (without changing the format of the form, of course), and printed it for submission. It was rejected because it was not on the original form. He wrote in with appeals, and got the usual 'we are looking into this matter'. As of the time he told the story to my class, he was still not recognised as a Professional Engineer in Singapore, but as he cynically put it, as soon as he gets on a plane and it takes off, he is recognised as a Professional Engineer.

And, as he suspected it would be (when he tried to submit the form he printed himself, and said it would be during the class), the form to apply to become a Professional Engineer in Singapore can now be downloaded here, right into your computer, which you may are expected to print on your own paper for submission.

Never mind the corny jokes he made. (Said Prof Mendis to Justin, "Why is there no Justout?") Never mind the fact that I didn't actually learn any Engineering in his class (one must never complain about an 'A'). Though they are stories that I (and the class) initially found funny, the 2 that I have written about in this post have taught me more about the fundamentals of life than any other lecturer in NUS has.

Yes, even the Moral Reasoning (Philisophy) one.

Those Crazy DOTA Opponents

After playing DOTA for some time, you'd think you've heard all the trash talk possible from the members of the opposing team. Currently, most of this 'trash' revolves around MapHacking, which opponents seem to accuse you of whenever you kill them, or successfully escape from their gangbang. They will also definitely accuse you of MapHacking if you accuse them, or any member of their team, of MHing.

In 2 of the DOTA games I've played today, the opponents I encountered have once again reminded me that, there are, indeed, really bizarre people in Singapore who play DOTA.

In the first game, my teammates accused the Lion from the opposing team of MHing, which sparked off the usual response of 'We're not MHing YOU are'. However, as the game drew near the end (i.e. the opponent's base was being whitewashed), one of the opponents announced that he was lagging, and had been throughout the entire game, and that it was the person who was MHing that was causing the lag.

=.=". So now, not only do people think you can get the power to do whatever you wish in the game with MH (see post), they also think you can cause LAG with MH. I guess they must believe in Map Hacking, in the literal sense of the word.

I probably would have blogged about this lag-by-MH issue, except that from the start to the end of the game, the person we accused of MHing was lagging so badly that his lag screen would show up every now and then; and his was the only one to do so throughout the entire game, except for a crazy ally of ours who got bored and lagged himself out of the game on purpose. Apparently by pressing Alt-Tab.

---

In the last game I played, the opponents confirmed my belief that no matter how you play, and what you do, as long as one of your teammates accuses a member of the opposing team of MHing, the other team will accuse members of your team of MHing.

From the start of the game, the other members in my team suspected the Furion from the other team of MHing, and decided to test if it was true. They started to randomly ping all over the map to see how the Furion would react. I'm not exactly sure what they expected him to do, but if he was MHing, and seeing all those pings all over the map like I was, it may have been rather taxing on him (I know the pings on the Mini Map were causing me to hallucinate a little more than usual), up to the point that when he was accused on 'All' of MHing, he didn't even bother to deny it. He, instead, dropped all his items in his base, and ran straight into our fountain.

His teammates, as expected, immediately accused one of us of MHing (they always manage to find someone to blame, and weirdly enough, it's never me. Hmm....) when we asked them to stop MHing so blatantly. When the Furion was directly pinpointed out, he vaguely admitted MHing, and by his further action of suicide, it was rather obvious that he was, indeed, MHing. His teammates, however, kept insisting that we were the ones MHing, and that we were only accusing them of MHing because we were noob, losing, and being sore losers.

Noone on my team could see how having a kill-death ratio of 38-10 was 'losing', so we kindly informed the opponents of that fact. One of my teammates then asked the opp if he 'had Primary school English'. I'm not exactly sure what prompted him to ask, but that opp immediately retaliated by asking us if WE had Primary school English, and proudly proclaiming that he had Secondary school education. o.O.

The entire opponent team then proceeded to use the words 'sore losers' and 'noobs' in great quantity, while attempting to insult our proficiency of English. So we asked if they knew how to see the kill-death ratio (which was still very much on our side), to which one of them actually answered 'no'.

And then, because I was bored, I told the opponents to stop 'talking big'. Which got an immediately reply of 'You said I don't have Primary school English and you ask me to stop talking big.' or something along those lines. Er? So I asked him what talking big and not having Primary school education had to do with each other, and he said I didn't know what I was talking about. and said I should 'be mum'.

Now, I know that 'mum' can be used in the context of silence, but I've only seen it used as 'keep mum', not 'be mum'. I'm still not really very sure if 'mum' can be used in conjunction with 'be' (checked up with the online dictionary, doesn't really give me an answer).

So I decided to be funny. I told the opponents that I was a mum (well he asked me to be mum right), and I asked them if they were embarrassed to be losing to a mother.

Amazingly, everyone of them kept quiet after that.

Faint. Maybe they are all in Primary or Secondary school, and are still scared of mothers.