Per Ardua Ad Astra

All right, first up my good friend Jason Lim came up with quite an interesting entry in his blog about my entries on evolution and ID. For those who wouldn’t know him, he’s a great guy I had the honor of meeting while I was an ASEAN Scholar a loooooong time ago. We had a great time teaching some bits and pieces of theoretical physics to a ‘worm’ back then. Hmm, teaching wormholes to a worm, how often does that happen eh? Those were the good old days. By the time you’ve read this Jason, you’ve already read my response posted at your blog. Not much to add on because most of what I have to say have already been said here on my own blog. And note this now Jason, I am not to blame for any loss of sanity for reading my blog. So read on at your own risk! ;P

And then there’s Vee Vian with her second blog. Seems that all the ‘harsh realities’ of life are settling in and she needs a place to vent it all out. Although her entries may be a bit depressing for idealistic minds, it is still quite enjoyable reading her engaging description and thoughts of herself, society and the world through her point of view. Keep on going girl, with the entries! And that comment you ‘demanded’, I’ll give you one in due time. Just don’t chew off my head for my tardiness.

Enough about blogs. Let’s move on with something else.

Like say, the furore over the Prophet Muhammad cartoons among Muslims. This Time article, ‘Your Taboo, Not Mine’ takes quite an interesting view of the situation. But I would also like to echo a writer in quoting this line attributed to Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." That sums up the perception on religion and freedom of speech perfectly. And also, I still think that this issue is disproportionately blown out of proportion (must be the fault of politicians and religious zealots). For those of you who still wondered about the cartoons, you can go have a look at them here and here. To me, it’s just cartoons. Don’t know about you people out there. A blog has also been set up to follow the whole hullabaloo here at Blogspot.

Moving on, MSNBC probably came up with this Web-Exclusive Commentary on ‘Tech Ties That Bind’. This is probably related to Valentines coming up next Tuesday (but has been of little significance to me for as long as I remember). So much for the pessimists of modern technology. True, it may minimise physical contact among our acquaintances, but it does strengthen pre-existing bonds in the family. Glad to know that Nokia’s vision of ‘human technology’ in mobilising our lives does, in some small way bring the world together for us (at a price of course, as they run on money too). But most of all it looks like geeks would be most delighted with this article, as their vast knowledge with operating electronics will be viewed as an asset now, not a liability for those electronically illiterate potential spouses out there. Might be a good time for me to go learn to operate more electronic gadgets too.

On the other hand, we July 2004 intakers just had our Award Ceremony for the A-Levels top scorers. Needless to say, you people would have guessed my results. Thanks to CIE for being so generous with their exam questions, my results came out looking quite good. Not as good as I wanted, but I must be thankful for what I get. After all, there is always another time to sit for exams. So, what did I get? A 4.02 gram souvenir worth RM71 per gram. With workmanship, that adds up to RM300. No comments on whether the reward measures up to the achievement awarded, but my dad rewarded me with much more.

And then, after a short stop for refreshments it was off to have a farewell gathering for Ling Mien and Natassya at MidValley, who are scheduled to leave for Australia next Tuesday and Thursday respectively. They would be bound for University of Melbourne studying Actuarial Science and Biomedical Sciences respectively, joining my other friends Heng Lin and Lionel in going over to study there. Enjoy life Down Under ladies! Will post more on this later. That’s all for now.

P.S. : I nearly forgot! Thank you so much Thinesh for your strawberries brought all the way here (from Genting I think)! It better not be from a shop!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 8th, 2006 at 11:29 am and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.