Nothing in this world lives for eternity. No matter how long life is, when the end comes, the cold darkness will shroud yet another tiny world. For the living, death brings sadness.
History has shown human that death cannot be cheated upon. Yet, human tries from time to time. First, it was the legendary Fountain of Youth. Now, it’s cloning and cryogenic cell’s turn.
Death is painful to the sufferers and to the one that stays close to them. That's why human sometimes try to cheat death. It's eminent but they still try without complaining. Human is a stubborn species but yet one must agree that trait is what made human so successful as an intelligent being. Without stubbornness, Newton would have never found Calculus. Without stubbornness, Rome would have never been built because stubbornness is synonym to the word perseverance. That fact makes human afraid of death for death means the end of everything including perseverance. Stubbornness makes human a human
Human's fear of death is also the reason why religion exists. Religion acts as a guarantee to human's continuous existence. The body shall rot but the soul will be preserved to perfection. God promises reincarnation. This one paragraph could well be blasphemy but it's an argument. Whether it is fragile or not, I shall not answer. It's for you to sit and think properly for I am writing at 0443 hrs. Strange thoughts come frequently during the cold silence night.
"If you do not fear death, then you love your God."
That one sentence, written by somebody in Malay, a minor language, catalyst my mind to assault the idea of religion. How can one fear not of death? Death is something terrible one can bear alone. Even in a brave soldier, standing at the frontline, waiting to be charged to, feels a trace of fear. He fears death but his love for his causes makes him to be brave. He shoves aside that fear, forgetting it for the passing moment but his heart will always be at unease at the sight of a coming arrow.
One could argue fear can be confronted with courage. Yes, that's true. Courage will brings bravery but bravery is born by fear. Courage comes to life because of fear. Fear is what human is. The fear of a spreading war forced the Americans to enter the Second World War. The fear of a "higher being" makes human to embrace Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Fear introduced the notion of poly- and monotheism to human.

The way I see it, we should not be embarrassed to feel fear because fear is one of the elements of life. I shall fear death for that fear will help me to live a colorful life before it is too late. The fear of irreversible dimension will help me to live life to the fullest.
To those whom do not feel fear, you live in a false utopia. It's neither hell nor heavan. Your life has only two color; black and white. Perhaps, only white because you do not suffer fear. How dull is your monochromic life. I pity you.
These are sincere words.

While trying to write a decent source code for my new website, a realization came to me. I could track every people, every netters that visited my site with little problems. That realization makes me to wonder, if it is so easy for me to track people down in the web, then it must be easier for not-just-everyday-net-user to track me down. This notion scares me far more than death.
I have always value my privacy. That's way I've chosen to live alone instead of living in a triple room.
Privacy is important to me. That's why most people don't really know me. Sure they know me but their knowledge on me is just skin deep. I dare say even my parents don't really know me. They think I am their innocent, good-hearted son. Those words make me laugh my heart out.
My religion is privacy. That's why I wear masks. I have a scholar's mask at home. I wear a saint's mask in the public. I tape a joker's mask in front of my friends. Sometimes, I borrow a devil mask. Sometimes, I wonder whether I have ever taken off my masks.
Privacy. That's why, if you realize, I've stopped writing my personal feelings here.
Knowing I seldom show my face to the world, I found it disturbing that all of my preferences, my style of surfing , my ip addresses are easily obtained by anybody provided that 'anybody' knows how to manipulate the resources in the net.
By writing this, there is no way I'm saying I was ignorant. I know all of these violations of privacy do occur but I had never known to what extend. Now that I know, starting from this moment on, I'll practice a very safe surfing style. Disable scripts, never accept cookies. And Cookie Monster, you better stop eating cookies or else, somebody will be stalking you virtually...

P/S - Am I writing too much? I earned a place in Blogger's 10 Most Recently Updated Site too often a time. I'm a blogger..ouch, that hurts.

After such a long time of waiting and procrastination, I've finally, seriously started in building a homepage of my own. The design of the site has already been determined by me. Basically, the whole site will be based on the utilization of roughly 3 colors; the noon sky's blue, white and black. Those three colors are going to be my official color. Some of the prototypes have already been posted on Geocities. So far, no problems that I can't handle off.

The latest event is the reintroduction of SETI into my life. And yes, for those of you who were born in the eighties and believe in E.T., SETI is the acronym for The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It's also famous for its relation with the Aceribo's Dish in Puerto Rico. Aceribo Dish is the largest single radio telescope in the world. It could be the most well known telescope of all.
Right now, with Athlon 1.7, a processor that has a very respectable computation power for home users, I'm helping the people in UC Berkeley in their search for aliens. It's pretty interesting. It makes my computer even cooler. When the computer is being idle, it runs a screensaver that acts as a radio transmission analyzer.
SETI was first established by NASA in their quest to answer the question "Are we alone?” The program scanned the whole wide skies for unusual radio transmissions. The idea is to send out radio signals and hope that somebody out there will return our "call". For years now, the program has been scanning the sky without much success. A few of the researchers themselves believe the odd of finding E.T. will be as large as what 3-CPO's calculation of getting out of an asteroid field alive.
In the beginning, there were a lot of hypes and excitement. However, the excitement lost its momentum quickly and lastly, the American's Congress, the institution that finances NASA told NASA to drop SETI out of its program. The reason that was given - SETI program is highly expensive. Although there were a lot of objection against the Congress' directive, NASA finally bowed to the pressure and scraped SETI.
Nevertheless, a few scientists that were involved in that program continue to run SETI on their own in hope that their energy will not be wasted. One example of these group is the UC Berkeley's version of SETI.
Is there any intelligence life form out there? If there is, does that mean the foundation of the world's main religions will crumble under its own weight?
Most religions say that human is the best creation ever. They're the only intelligence species in this realm. It would be interesting to see people's reaction if we will ever meet up with another intelligence life form. We can speculate but the truth is out there. (Does that phrase sounds familiar?)

Guess what?
Master of Orion 3 is coming out. I can't believe this. First, it was Civilization 3, now, one of the leaders in turned-based strategy will be having its sequel in less than a season. Splendid. My life will further be rotted endlessly.Even right now, I am playing Civilization 3 again.
On other note, the completed structure for my external page has been posted on Geocities. Still, more need to be posted and I suspect the site will be completed in a few month, hopefully before spring 2002.

Test 25C (This is just another pathetic test. I've added a few sites, one is Lada's, one is the Univ of Michigan's Astro Society. While the CEO is trying to figure out the vector of a comet all by himself, check the site of the week.
Vector Lounge.

At last, the monitor has arrived in Ann Arbor after much procrastinations. With this, nothing will stand in my way.

Winter has finally arrived. Yesterday marked the unofficial opening of winter; the two famous quads in the University, the West Quad and the South Quad, wedged war on each other by lining up along E. Madison street.
While the South Quadrants pronounced aggression against us (The Great West Quadrangle), I was sleeping, too tired after trying to figure out my Computer Assisted Physics' problems. I was enjoying my slumber with a sweet dream, resting innocently on my cozy bed. All the sudden, the tranquility of the atmosphere was disturbed by a heavy knocking on my wooden door. I quickly woke up and tried to find the most polite curse I can think of to present to the knocker of my door. Upon opening my door, I saw the residential officer, wearing thick clothing, telling me an alarm had gone off. I told him I didn't hear any alarm but then he said the West Quad's had been sounded. He continued by telling it was probably a hoax but it has to be treated as a real alarm.
Adhering to him, I took the stair and headed to the exit only to found out hundreds of undergraduates catapulting countless snowballs at each other. Stunt by the moment, my mind raced to enquire the situation and voila! THE ANNUAL QUAD WAR! Excited by the event, I quickly ran to the aid of my fellow West Quadrants. After a few minutes, both sides exchanged names and curses (there was no 'f' word used though). By the time both gone tired shouting at each other who were separated by the E. Madison St., the West Quad launched a barrage, running across the street and trying to make the kill number as high as possible. Amazingly, the pathetic South Quad didn't charge the West Quad side. Perhaps, they ran out of snow. Hahaha, we almost ran out of snow too. Luckily, our courtyard is much bigger than theirs.
They ran out of snow. That is absurd but it's the truth. The War was huge enough, that the undergrads ran out of ammo. Imagine the scale of the War. That's it. I'll stay in West Quad again for next year.
Epilogue, the Daily proclaimed, West Quadrants emerged victorious. ("South Quad, we want your daddy...")

It's beautiful in the winter. Although it's cold but I'm beginning to change my perception. I love winter. I don't care much for the cold.
As I walked along S. University St., I saw tree branches covered with the clean white snow. The wind blew blissfully, letting the snow on the branches to fall gracefully to the ground. The sight of the falling snow is enough to change my hatred into love. Before this, I hated winter. The cold was unbearable. The feeling was undesirable. The fire inside burnt mightily only to be quenched by falling snowflakes.
Thus, my love for Ann Arbor is nothing but complete. This shall be my heaven. This shall be my home.

Well, another chaos in the environmental science. Scientists have found out that Antarctica is actually not shrinking nor it is warming up. Instead, it is cooling down. The new data suggest that Antarctica is unique compare to the other parts of the world which had generally warmed up by 0.60 degree Celsius for the past decade. What can this mean?
There seems to be a confusion concerning global warming currently. To some, who has always deny the existence of global warming, say that this is a prove that global warming is based on erroneous extrapolated data. Whatever it is, I wish I could believe that but the evidence of global warming to me is undeniable. Although Antarctica is cooling down, it doesn't mean global warming is a bogus. While the South Pole is not warming up, the rest of the world is becoming a living hell. And it's proven that the Earth increasing global temperature is not merely part of Earth's natural cycle. Furthermore, at this very moment, Europe's largest glacier is melting at a dangerous rate. That, must mean something.

For a peek to a car, click here.
Somebody, please, tell me that's really is a Proton. It's way too cool.
According to some sources, it's the new Proton car. It's Proton Sutera, developed by Lotus of England. As usual, the name isn't that impressive but this time, the name certainly does not reflect the design of the new car. If this really is a Proton, I guess my favorite car right now is Sutera instead of the new Toyota Celica.
The way I see it, Proton's design is getting better and better, given enough period of time. It was first established in the mid-80s as a national project by the Malaysian government under the supervision of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad. The first few designs were simply the recreation of Mitsubishi's Evolution models. Up to date, the most admired copycats are the Proton Perdana and the GTi (I can't recall whether Perdana is really a copy cat of Evo, but for the sake of this entry, what the heck).
Unfortunately, within a few years time, AFTA, a free trade treaty will come to effect in Malaysia. AFTA, from the free-trade world's point of view (according to Econ 101), is a good thing for the consumers. However, for Malaysia's arena, it marks a grave future for the local car industry. Fierce competition will surely force Proton to fall to its knee. There is no way Proton could compete with supergiants such as Toyota, General Motors and Mercedes-Chrysler. These supergiants are far too efficient, plus they can afford to have a high cost production compare to Proton, which by the standard of these supergiants, is a mere ant. To protect the local industry, I guess Malaysia should not have signed any deal about free trade in the past but, of course, we can never change the past.
My opinion is, the government must shield the local car manufacturing industry regardless any free-trade treaty it has signed. The American burnt the ABM Treaty just like that. Why can't we dump AFTA? (Don't answer that)

地球を除けば, 地球を愛しなさい...
Excepto a terra, ame a terra...
Save the Earth, Love the Earth...
Excepto la tierra, ame la tierra...
대지를 제외하고, 대지를 사랑하십시요...
Risparmi la terra, amare la terra...
Économiser la terre, aimez la terre...
Selamatkanlah Bumi, Cintailah Bumi...
Außer der Masse lieben Sie die Masse...

Lights...
They are everywhere nowadays. In the city center, the suburban area, in the middle of the jungle...
From space, surely Earth, especially in North America, Europe and parts of Asia, light illuminates the lands. People would say it is the sign of civilization. The part of Earth, which is dark, is the part that is less develops and poor. It's the third world country area. We should be proud that our night sky is lit with brilliant lights.

Those who agree with the above statement are nothing but fools. Light, yes, they are the sign of civilization and also the sign of pollution. Light pollution, what is the matter with light pollution? They aren't causing any actual pollution. Why bother?
Well, light actually does a lot of damaging to the environment. But I'll not argue from the scientific side and I do not hate the light. What I hate is excessive light. I hate the person who wants to switch on the light when he or she is going to sleep. Why must they switch on the light? Do they think that at least, in their dream, the dreamland will be a bit brighter? Do they afraid of the monster under their bed? Pathetic. Just switch it off and go to sleep. You don't need the extra light when you are asleep. You are wasting Earth resources by switching on the light while you are sleeping. All the resources that you are using excessively can be used for other meaningful activities other than lighting the room up to prevent the monsters under your bed to creep up and eat your legs. Here is a fact. If you are a female, sleeping with light on during the night can prevent your body to produce melatonin, a hormone that regulates the sleep pattern which in turn may affect the estrogen level, a hormone that stimulate breast tissue. An extra level of estrogen may cause breast cancer. How about that? Now, which will you choose, help to reduce the light pollution or suffer the rest of your days with breast cancer?
Another thing is that the local authority "I don't care" mentality on the light pollution. Why must there be a tall lap post in the middle of the jungle? For the sake of modernization, must we lit all of the forest with lights? And, in the cities, why must we target the clouds with light? To help the birds to navigate because these flying creature can't see in the dark? Just because it is just light, they do not regard light pollution as pollution. As a result, sky gazers like myself can't even spot Betelgeuse or even Sirius in the sky. I even doubt I can spot Venus up in the sky in KL. Here is another fact. If you think it's just light and nothing else, in Chicago, according to some reports, you can't even spot the moon. Yeah, that big round thing in the night sky in case you don't know what a moon is. Maybe, in a few hundred years, we will not be able to see the sun anymore at noon! Until then, sure, it's only light...

Please, it's Earth. It's our home. Don't regret when it is too late. If it is polluted, where are we going to move? Venus? O boy...exciting!!!
Hey, when your great-grandchild ask your grandchild "Have you ever seen a star father?", don't cry when your beloved grandchild say in return, "Nope son, but I've seen fireflies".

Check this out...Bernard Shifman
The war against spammers has begun (at least on my part, again)...Hail the anti-spammer!!!

p/s - For those of you who are interested in joining the crusade against spammers, visit SpamCom Foundation.

It feels so good to be home. Seeing Ann Arbor for the first time after more than two weeks really makes me appreciate the town even more. The best thing is that I can go out of any enclosed area without any thick clothing. Ahhh, I love Ann Arbor.

Finally, my new computer will be arriving next week. A computer with Athlon XP 1.5 processor, GeForce 2 MX 400, 40 Gigs, 256, a 5 ways speaker...plus, a connection with the speed of an institutional ethernet. Now, I can seriously plan for my conquest of the virtual world. Beware, it's whether you with me or against me. If you are against, better get your insurance coverage fast. Before I conquered world wide web, here is something for you to light up.

Just now, I thought I lost something. I was mad for a moment and almost cried. I don't know why I am so attached to that particular thing. Maybe it's too precious to me. After I lost all hope of finding it, I just sat on my bed, staring at the floor, trying madly to remember where did I put it. My vision started to blur, my eyes were getting watery.
A voice inside of my head starting to call me names, hating me for losing a photograph.
I can't believe how a photograph can affect me so badly. It's just a piece of paper.
At that one moment, I felt like dying but suddenly, I reached a book to ease up my mind. Upon opening up the book, the photograph fell to the floor slowly as any paper would. I picked it up and quickly recognized it as the photograph I thought I had lost. Of all the places, it was in the book. Maybe one of my friends had browsed though my album and accidentally put that particular photograph inside the book. Yes, I do remember two of my friends visited me. I cursed them quietly inside of my head. My heart was overfilled with joy and all the sudden, my day had been turned into a normal day again.
Thinking it back, I don't even know why I was so upset today. It's just a photograph.

This shall be my last babble in Minneapolis.

Being too bored staring at the monitor, I'd decided to visit some stuff about Malaysia. My first stop was catcha.com.my. Nothing much to be mentioned there. Second stop, thestar.com.my. I browsed through the news and read some of it. The same stuff over and over again. Politics, car accidents, some events, racial segregation...
Wait! Racial segregation? What in the whole wide universe is this? Racial segregation in Malaysia? I thought this thing has become the thing of the past. Of course, the issue the Chinese conquering the upper level of education level and the meritocracy has become the hot talk when I was in Malaysia but racial segregation in the system?
I say, people will surely blame the British for their divide and conquer method of ruling. Well, the British was surely the one to be blamed but that is the past and nothing can be changed about it, unless of course, if the physicists found the secret of time travel (spelling it out, back through time), that will be another matter. I shout, there's been a mistake in the Malaysian education architecture and design. I hail, the vernacular system should be stop one and for all, by phrase, slowly and be ended sometimes in the future. No All-Chinese, All-Indian, All-Malay higher education. The Chinese minority should not be allowed to establish a university of their own. Nor the Indian, nor the Malay themselves. The University in Shah Alam should be opened to all. Every University should be made for all. If the Malays argue that it is their right, then, let the quota for the Malay stand tall but not too big to degrade the quality.

I hate it when Malaysians are asked, "Which race are you belong to?" and the question is answered by "I'm a Malay", or "I'm a Chinese" or "Indian". Why can't the answer be just "I'm a Malaysian"? Is it so hard so for us to claim ourselves as a Malaysian?

It's so frustrating to write up a source code and see the result is nothing but in a mumbo-jumbo disorder. Now I can remember how the way I felt back when I was taking C++ 2. Doing all the programming from dusk to dawn back to dusk again and seeing only the error messages; it's great to know that that's a thing of the past and I probably don't have to worry about it for another 3 to 5 months. Ahh, I feel so lucky to be freed from programming (namely, the C language) but ironically, I'm teaching myself another computer language. And right now, instead trying to find the creator of C++ and cut his throat off, I'm trying to commit suicide for failing to comprehend a certain section of html. I guess a human mind is always as curious as a cat. Purrrrrrrrrrr...

It's so cold today. I dare not go outside even with full winter clothing. I just hate the cold. While I was in Bloomington Indiana, I went to a souvenir shop and bought a few memoirs. Waiting for my credit card to be approved by the online system, I had a little chat with the man behind the counter. I told him that it was snowing pretty heavily. He looked outside and saw snow coming down. Then, he turned to me and said it shouldn't be snowing heavily right now. Since the time taken for my credit card to be approved had been extended overtime, I continued babbling and said that I hate the cold. He said he understands and again, the same phrase I've heard, "...you shouldn't be attending Michigan, Indiana or any of the Midwest schools if you hate the cold. You should be in Florida or somewhere hot..." I said, "That's my mistake".
And it's all about he said she said... And I can't believe that I celebrated New Year's Eve in Chicago, at the Navy Pier for hours, under the zero range.

Don't you like free-writing or free-thinking?
I just love it. By practicing it, my mind is not being contained inside a small box. My mind just flies freely like a bird that soars mightily up into the clouds. It feels like I'm flying. But unfortunately, both ways sometimes make me unable to focus deep into a subject. My e-journal has been full with entries that concern my personal life to the marcoworld that lives outside of my physique. It is outside of my physique but never out of my consciousness. That's what makes me feel ever-powerful.

Come to think of it, the Great Library of Alexandria is comparable to the net. The Great Library held almost all of the ancient world knowledge. It would be exciting to rediscover this one particular member of the great wonders. The knowledge that it held could probably answer almost all of human ancient mysteries in the Old World. That knowledge will be so precious that I believe a Renaissance in arts and sciences will be reinitiated. Another Renaissance will prove to be human's greatest feat of all times.
Perhaps, we are already deep into the second renaissance. The key to the First Renaissance was the transfer of knowledge from the Arab's world to the European's. I believe the key to the Second Renaissance will be the knowledge again. Right now, if you are reading this, it means that the cumulative knowledge that mankind had ever collected is at your fingertip. It's just a click away. The word click that is used to describe the situation sounds absurd but it's true. It's just a click away. All the knowledge, although not in full details, is in the web. With it, comes power.
Nevertheless, with all the knowledge left unused, the power is wasted. Of course, the net changed the way we shop, communicate and live our life but it's just that. I can barely see people use the net for academic purposes. I do have the audacity to say that almost 99% of my fellow friends know nothing of the Guttenberg Project that's currently on the web. Be upset if you felt insulted but I am being as sincere as anybody could. I offer no apology. Face the facts and smell the flowers. If you still think I am wrong, then read the statistic for a Malaysian reading a book other than the thick textbooks per year. You'll find that stats pathetic. I found it truly humorous.
I definitely found it disturbing when people learned about the works of Tolkien through a movie. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings has already been named the Book of the 20th Century but yet, the common people start to admire Legolas when they don't even know the difference between elfs and elves.
My friends, go and read the books. They are precious for one day, there will be no books to be read and all you’ll be reading tomorrow is the writing on a monitor that's constantly releasing harmful rays into your eyes.