_han_ at rocketmail dot com

I know each of you, Meeks, Joli, Vin have email addresses and I know several times I have asked for them and you have supplied the ones that you use. But one final time: Could you all (yep, you three) send me an email, just a short one-line email that says "yep, dis be de email I be usesin"

As ever I'm with rocketmail. Vintage.

Am I dreaming about a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming about a man. In reference to Meek's post
To me, this justifies behaviour that celebrates everything. Living life to the hilt, not saving a single drop. Life is an adventure.

I don't believe it though. Because in life, there needs to be a certain amount of reciprocation before you can get things of the greatest value. So an outlook where you are sharply aware what's going on and using reason and, sometimes a little madness, to decide to act; this is the best recipe.

I don't see a problem in your situation, Joli. The point is refining your belief so you aren't taking things on blind faith. If your intuition tells you there is no God, then there is no God. If people who worship God show mental weakness, it reflects the shape of modern belief. Maybe your unconscious brain came to a different conclusion, saying, "here are the facts, Joli, and I'm sorry to say, God seems to be in the details".

Anger is good. It tells me you can keep a sane perspective if you watch religious proceedings. Through studying, you are getting a better idea of how the world works. The fact that our world isn't better than it should be, in part due to dogmatic principles, it is enough to make any intelligent person angry.

I attended a religious function at my mom's request. There was a point when the priest asked the guests to come up and share a moment when Jesus touched their heart. No one had a small miracle, no one thanked Jesus because there was a heart-shaped crack in the sidewalk. There were distinct trends on thanking Jesus. Some thanked him for good health, some thanked Jesus for making them financially successful, some thanking him on a successful medical operation. The thanks seemed to be give-and-take.

The logic: I have received good fortune, it is because of my belief in Jesus.

More logic: When we receive good fortune, it is perfectly understandable to us. But when something terrible happens, God's will cannot be understood.

It makes me worried that success confirms some people's faith, maybe this reflects on the kind of people they are. Maybe your faith doesn't conform to the conventional wisdom surrounding God. In that case, you have found your unique meaning of God. Also, that this God doesn't need to be sustained by reading the Our Father as penance nor setting aside all your sundays for worship and community building.

I'd like to think that if there was a God who was responsible for everything in creation and he even created the passage of time, the last thing he would want us to dwell upon (if he could ever desire anything, after making existance) is his presence.

If he's everywhere, If his face is reflected in everything, going to church on sunday is like showing my girlfriend once a year how much I love her. Everything I do/make/think/say to her is charged with my feelings for her; restricting those feelings to a day sounds like selective memory and I find it dishonest.

PS: Just an example, I'm still a bachelorsaurus

I'm having a dilemna. The thing is, never in my life have I said that I have believed in God. Never. I was the most atheistic child and teenager on the planet. I realised in the past few months, however, that I actually do believe in God. A few Saturdays ago, I even said it out loud, and it has been on my mind since then. I am not quite sure why I do now, when I didn't before. I think university had something to do with it: not because I was exposed to religion or any of that. Perhaps because I got to see at a different level how we have organised ourselves as humans, and have examined various cultural products. That still doesn't seem like a good reason, though.

My mind feels stronger, I feel like a more complete version of myself than I did before. I've spent the past 6 weeks, since I quit my job and have taken on the role of full time housekeeper/chef for my family (heh) thinking about this, about how I always believed strong belief in the existence of a God/higher power equated to being weak of mind or will: that it was like blaming your parents for your fuck ups and not taking responsibility for your life. I don't believe that anymore but I'm not sure how to explain why this has changed.

I always thought that if I attained some kind of spiritual definition in my life, I'd feel more at peace. The opposite is true though: I feel more angry than I did before. I believe that there is a God/higher power, but I do not have any faith in it. See, that doesn't make sense! Anyway, any feedback would be appreciated. Sorry this is so disjointed.

Furthermore, watched Dude, Where's My Car last night. I feel so dirty.

Today I saw three more Satyajit Ray movies and attended a jazz concert. Some Billy Holiday (sp?) stuff, a little swing, a little local flavor. Nice.

Meeks whenever I get close enough to criticising organised religion to my mother, she stops listening. I've been learning to keep on neutral ground when I'm talking about something so personal and sacred. Backing up my arguments with practical examples.

dope nonetheless
that is a cool phrase. It's all about the blend.

Did you read the comments on Chomsky's blog? None of them have even read what he has said. In the entry about being practical about activism, someone told Chomsky to speak plainly. Chomsky is the most readable academic, that is the most appealing thing about his writing for me. This of course, doesn't include his work in linguistics. His political discourse doesn't use alot of specialised words and they stay based on fact. His work comes across as a reliable representation of a complex situation.

Someone compared Chomsky to Pol Pot, another person compared Chomsky to Hugo Chavez.

I'm listening to A Perfect Circle's second album right now. I'm amazed at their ability to harmonise and the inventiveness of the songs. Maynard Keenan always seems to attack Jesus Christ, once or so, everytime he does an album. (Actually "Eulogy" was more like someone foretelling the future from the crucifix and everyone was too stricken with grief to listen to him. "Standing above the crowd, he had a voice that was much too loud") The quiet song on the Perfect Circle album is about the jealous boyfriend of a nurse beating up one of her patients. Weirdly, it blends soo well.

I haven't seen Passion of Christ, or read anything about it.

I just saw Pather Panjali (The Voice of the Little Road) by Satyajit Ray. It is a movie, made in the 50s in neo-realist style, adapted from a Bengali novel. After watching the movie, my mother said it is the filmmakers job to come up with new definitions for time. It surprised and pleased me. I think it's a filmmakers job to play with motion and montage (among other things) and out of this you get different feelings of time. I think the rule of thumb is that motionless is death. One of the great things about this movie is the music goes very well with the movie. There's always a playfulness with the sitar. Or maybe it bursts out with a flash of an eye.

I recommend seeking this one out, it's worth the effort. Clear your mind, sit down and watch.

Noam Chomsky has a weblog

I cannot honestly tell you if they would give you a job. I could inquire on your behalf. But I think you are better off mailing your resume to the HR manager and declaring your interest in employment.

I met up with Wan after work and we chilled out before going to Jeffery's studio. Finally got the Lyme album, that bitch is trickier than a squirrel in my pants. Boi came round. We watched Frank Zappa's drummer do an amazing solo performance. After that I had to go home.

A site for suppressed music (great interview with a turntablist)


from Aeiou

I heard the Grey Album. Very cool mix.

I'm at work. There's no school today, but it's still a working day. When I came to work on monday, I discovered that next week is spring break. I have no plans, but I've been toying with the idea of going to Taman Negara for a couple of days by myself.

I've been learning about mind maps lately.

Also I've been committing Blake's Songs of Innocence to memory (11 poems so far), they are tricksy but in order to memorise them, I need to break them down into rhythms and get a sense of the flow of the poem.

It puts all those techniques we learnt in High School in a completely different perspective. I mean apart from pointing out an alliteration or repetitions or echoes, they all serve to help you memorise a poem. A poet need to carefully distribute meaning in a poem, a poem is like a web of associations.

The difference between a repetition and an echo is that a repetition is word or a phrase reproduced in it's entirety. But an echo is an incomplete repetition.

For when we have learnt the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice
Saying, "come out from the grove , my love and care
And round my golden tent like lamps we joy

Thus my mother spoke and kissed me,
And thus I say to little english boy,
Where I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of god like lambs we joy,

The final lines of the stanzas are echoes. The word cloud is a repetition, it is directly linked to skin color, but it's a complex metaphor that needs taking apart.

This should interest none of you, except Joli, in the slightest, but I'm curious to know what interests you these days. This is a slice of what I've been doing in my spare time.

Someone mixed together Metallica's Black album and Jay-Z's newest album, the Black album and came up with Black on Black. Someone also mixed Jay-Z with Weezer and Jay-Z with Beatles, which you may have heard about.

The only thing is that it's only available via a P2P system called BitTorrent, so you're gonna need to get the program to download this thing.

I'm here, I'll write soon. I'm alive. Just going to pick up my boyfriend from school. It's his 25th birthday today.

It is elegant to see you shadow-boxing.

Once a philosopher twice a sodomite, Voltaire used to say.

But which one is more mature?
Does the philosopher have deeper knowledge through a profound understanding of an isolated, individuated experience?
Or does habit-forming experience have a greater value?

The question is not about being bummed.

I think once we have been toilet trained, that we can literally "wear the pants" we become adults. Unless of course, we urinate in our pants.

In those Indian epics where the king is 1,000 years old, it is more a reflection of wisdom rather than a generous estimate on their lifespan. Maybe adulthood is not laughing at sex jokes. Maybe adulthood is when you have the authority to say, "I am too old for this shit".

I'm the only member of the ISKL support staff who comes to work in shorts and flip flops. My boss allows me these small favours, I'm not sure why. I would definitely get alot sweatier making my way to work. Smelling faintly of roses.

We need to moderate the discussions. Accepting definition of terms. Apply logical problems. Attacking internal logic of problems. At the moment we are all trying to get the wind to change directions...

Becoming an adult, to me, means self-sufficiency and at the same time, aware when you'll need help. Unafraid to express your opinions, even to strangers. Generally, it also means you are responsible, you weigh and consider decisions before you make them, you respond in kind to the speaker, tactfully and honestly.

I'm far from an adult, I'm strung-out, I get many quiet moments, but they don't seem to calm me down. I have an idea of what to do, but saying it now may jinx the attempt. Oh yeah, another important thing about being an adult is that you are aware of what your words mean and you don't use them carelessly. I re-iterate: Far from an adult.

I'm going to incubus tomorrow. I'm going to shake my ass.

Vin I can't say anything about sonatas. My dad is really into sonatas, they help him concentrate, but for me, give me something escapist and time-consuming. Whenever I wind down to doing work, I prefer silence.

There was no joke. The conversation we were having had to do with letting our friends down when we need them. He pulled some strings he shouldn't have and I snapped at him.

When I'm bored I try to figure out something to do that I've never done before. Sunday night I attended a jazz concert with my mom. The concert gave her alot of food for thought and in hearing her thoughts about it, I'm beginning to understand what it's like to be my mother. She uses the words "harsh" and "abrupt" as pejoratives. She is very set in her opinions especially about music, opinions she has been developing over the past 10 years. She holds religion close to her, even though many of its unsavoury aspects stare her in the face. She thinks salvation comes through picking the right deity. In her parlance, the word "right" doesn't exist in the previous sentence. At the moment, she is the only person unafraid to slap me on the wrist.

Of course, the internal logic, given she is my mother, of the previous sentence is self-evident. I unexpectedly gave up my weekend to meditate the relationship with my mother and came to a new understanding.

Vin with shitty dialup I just go onto the internet to surf. It took over 10 seconds to load the Yahoo! Mail welcome screen. I perform my daily ablutions in 10 seconds.

We need crazy pics from the people with cameras (meeks creature and Joli). I thought of a fun one, that doesn't translate well into words. You take a picture at a row of public phones holding one receiver to each ear. How is that? I dare you two to make that uncrazy.

I think my evolution from teenager to adult (ugh) has been a slow process, but it wasn't only until the past few months that I have thought about it in any detail. Facing my parent's mortality is a raw and bloody blow to me at age 23, but it has changed its impact on me as I have aged. When you are a child and a parent comes close to death you understand it incompletely, you only understand beginning and end (my mother has come close to death more than once in my life). As you get older the other dimensions of death figure into the equation, equally trivialising and making death more of an event. The question of what happens to you when you die, being on your own and having your siblings being your closest living relatives come with the ugly matters of inheritance, what flowers you buy for the funeral, where to put the person who made you and was the first to love you into the ground ...

I do enjoy working, and I find myself quite excited about the opportunities I meet as I do age. I do like working (just not in banks), I do enjoy studying, and , blow me down, I'm even looking forward to getting married one day. I have taken pleasure in earning my own money and having the good fortune to have parents that insist until I have completed my education I just leave it alone to mature. I am looking forward to making my parents grandparents and knowing more about them as they got older. It wasn't until a surprise visit from my father in the last week that I knew that women in his family tend towards depression as they age. Sometimes I think to myself "I'm old enough to have children and not be labelled a teen slut!"

I'm moving to Canberra soon to take this law degree: it's very exciting. Fundamentally I haven't changed. I still fail to brush my hair most days. I still sleep on the same side of the bed, on the same bed as I have owned since I was sixteen. Getting older or more serious is certainly not about life becoming less fun, as you said Vin. I am enjoying the adventure.

I am sorry to hear that your story got rejected Han. I received your email, and indeed I shall reply.

Vin, The thought I have in mind is that if I'm feeling something, for instance, if I'm feeling happy I don't necesserily have to show it. Alot of things at ISKL make me feel that emotions and outward appearance are not related and this is my way of meditating on this. What suggests anger to you? Your interpretation is valid, you don't need to excuse yourself, it's probably what some people think of me.

I'm just disappointed that's the only kind of response I get from you.

Granted I am angry at times, I had lunch with the assistant in the publications labs and he ragged on me about taking our friends seriously when they ask for help and came up with the example where if someone depended on me for his life, I would be indifferent. Maybe he was trying to get a rise out of me, because that is what 20% of what he says is meant to do. I told him he was bitching and whining.

It would make a great story, no one learns anything, no one can actually say what they want to say, no moral lesson comes out of it.

My story got rejected. The 500 word crime story I submitted for the contest It's ok. After looking at it, two days later it didn't look great and I could pick out a ton of mistakes.

The anarchist argument got dropped like a bad habit.

Is this a three-way email?

I went out to a hardcore gig last sunday afternoon, after two glasses of beer and I felt sick and hungry. I'm back on the cigarettes. I've started a music collective. So far there's punk songs and something to do with playing different kinds of electronic music with acoustic instruments, Boy came back to town yesterday and I'm gonna jam with him tomorrow so we'll see what we come up with. I've been interested in freestyle rapping and I tried some tonight and generally that's what I contribute to the mix.

I don't know where that is going, but it's fun and I get to try out different vocal styles. I haven't been doing my research, I can't get the rhythm of a punk song. "What's to get" you may ask. I have no idea, but I can't write one to save my life.

Reading.

Sleeping heinously, alot of hours and waking up tense. Half the time I don't have my wits and I'm slow on the uptake. I've started exercising and this seems to help.

I've taken to fucking with people. I've started keeping a slack face so everyone thinks I'm pissed off or I stare into the middle distance like I'm dazed but when I get into the moment I start with the sarcasm and I smile, so no one knows what's going on with me.

Sometimes I hang out with Wan and Hobbit. I see Yan every couple of days, sometimes I see Zalfian. Rarely, I see Ahmed, Azalea and Efi. Sometimes I spend time with my parents, I had dinner with my mom at KLCC last monday. Keep in mind I don't live with her so I have dinner with her about three times a week.

brainstorming ideas on the guidelines for a dogme movie. Done in Mike Leigh/Ken Loach style. Tight and topical.

thinking about a play on censorship. Something to do with the screen kiss.

How is your internet at home busted?

I think I've changed slightly in that I've grown up on some levels. Life for me is serious business, at least nowadays. I am learning to emote, think, relate on a different level.

Deep down though I'm still the same. The same shit makes me laugh, I still like to hang out and talk like in the old days.