The Chinese New Year Celebration

It was two days ago when we had a blast in my college presenting the Chinese New Year celebration after weeks of preparation in hurry. The main aspects of this activity such as program, food and decorations were well done in the sense that we have got a very positive feedback from those VIPs as well as from our college mates. I was mainly in charge of decorative procedures and exhibition, that means I was no doubt one of the busiest men, so it is a kind of relief accompanied by satisfaction and joy to have this project done, not perfectly, but I'm certain that at least it has thrilled everyone in my college by which they could actually sense the Chinese New Year ambiance and explore more about our culture and tradition under such an exposure.

This backdrop is 100% handmade using "raw materials" such as mahjong papers, red papers black ink, glue etc. It is superb isn't it? =)

We invited a lion dance troupe to invite the VIPs and perform during the opening ceremony.

The spring couplet in the form of scroll rolling down after pulled by VIPs at the main entrance of the hall.
We normally read the couplet starting from the right one, from top to bottom. To translate, it simply brings the meaning of "Golden ox embarks on a new journey and there comes the tiger indicating the arrival of spring."

She is the head of our college, we call her "Datin". Her expression tells me that she might be wondering what those Chinese characters mean, perhaps?

Our very first show was traditional dance including eight of us dancing using Chinese fan and lanterns. I am the one holding the red lantern at a lower level.

This is another meaningful scene. They are taking part in "laosheng", using chopsticks to toss the raw fish salad high in the air. Fish is a homophone of "abundance" in Chinese, therefore it symbolises prosperity and auspiciousness.

The VIPs showing their calligraphy of a single word namely "tiger". This word is relatively complicated, so I guess they wouldn't have written such an readable masterpiece if I didn't use a pencil to provide a draft of the strokes on those pink papers :p

I did take part in the choir too. It was a wonderful experience to perform Chinese New Year song in full traditional attire with a group of friends!

The martial arts known as wushu in Chinese. Can you notice there is a Malay guy? :D

This lovely lady has a great voice! She sang folk song in the way opera singers sing, how wonderful!

'This guy is proficient in playing Chinese yo-yo.

Ribbon dance.

Mandarin oranges eating competition.

The middle guy is transformed into the God of Wealth and Fortune. The costume is handmade too!

The VIPs are trying to write 恭喜发财 (Gong Xi Fa Cai).

They are my favourite lecturers =)

VIPs visiting the displaying boards during exhibition.

You wouldn't have managed to come out with a correct estimation if you didn't know how much Chinese likes the number 8!

I particularly like these two photos.

I notice that although there are not many Chinese in my college, there are still a number of talented people interspersed in the nerd-looking scholarship holders. I have received some compliments regarding the decoration that worked under my mastermind, but I still need to declare that without the helping hands, I could not make it. I really enjoyed these hectic weeks which severely replaced my revision schedule, despite the fact that I am now slightly lagged behind in term of academic syllabus.

The hectic and memorable holidays

I have been relatively busy throughout these weeks as well as holidays. Make it short, my friends and I in Kolej Teknologi Timur are having a hard time preparing the first activity under the name of newly formed Chinese Cultural Education Society (CCES), which is the Chinese New Year celebration. Even when I'm now approximately 700km away from my college, I still have to compete with fast-running time to have my "homework" done and bring it back to Sepang.

I am the one leading the work related to decoration. I couldn't help scratching my forehead while trying to figure out a full plan concerning how the main hall which doesn't look like a hall at all, should be decorated. Certain artworks cannot fit to the framework of my initial planning due to limitations such as those pillars obstructing the vision towards the stage (actually there is no stage) and the extremely low ceiling. As I mentioned, my college is actually further modified and equipped from shops on an incline plane, so you can imagine the main hall consists of four lots of different height interconnected by staircases of three to four levels. I can even knock my head on the ceiling if I jump forcefully, no kidding.

We are going to get ourselves a formal exhibition displaying Chinese culture as well as Chinese New Year tradition. I searched and gathered the information needed using days and it took me another week to complete thirty slides of PowerPoint and those A3 size papers would be printed in full colour. At the same time I had to complete more than 20 pairs of spring couplets. It was overwhelming tired.

When there is motion, there is also friction. Thing doesn't come as smooth as we wish. 24th is the day of CNY celebration, however those inconsiderate allocate some candidates to take their internal examination until one day before 24th, that means we don't really own enough time to put on our decorative stuff in the main hall. It is even saddening and disastrous to receive the order calling us to take off our red tassels which had been set on ceiling before holidays. I am fairly annoyed and irritated, but what can I do?

Besides, I need to spare some time to manage my another private blog written in Chinese. Not to mention it is now the time I have to cope with the A2 syllabus. Much effort should be invested. Nevertheless, I still enjoy keeping myself busy with this activity. It somehow brings reminiscence of days I was busy with willingly committed activities during my secondary school life.

Honestly, I am starting a new relationship, my first relationship. I guess my family wouldn't even know that until they reach this line in my blog. Yes, we had a great time despite the fact I could hardly choose a time to hang out with her as I needed to respond to some gathering invitations. People were intrigued as I changed my relationship status on my Facebook profile. I would have revealed her identity if I wished to and I just hope everything can behave and go naturally =)

After this I would upload certain photos of this, or perhaps photos of my girlfriend and I =)

The Beneficial Course

In the last two days, I spent my time in Lu Jiang Cultural Centre located just a stone throw away from The Mines shopping Mall. It was a two days and a night course or camp held under the support of more than 20 college mates having an intention to explore more about Di Zi Gui (弟子规).

Di Zi Gui is an ancient Chinese teaching advocated by Confucius, where it has influenced a lot of learners to behave positively and wisely. It is not only a compilation of intelligence inherited from the Chinese ancestors, it also serves as a guidance to a happy life. Some people might have misconception such that Confucianism is religious and it could pose conflicts to their existing mindset about the way to live their life. In my opinion, unless you have not been exposed to those Chinese historical stories or anecdotes at all, you would at least have a sense of resonance with the Confucian teaching because Di Zi Gui is closely related to the analogy extracted from those allusions.

We reached the centre at about 8.30am on the last Saturday. A teacher welcomed us through a polite ninety degree bow. We were really surprised as a man with approximately three times our ages could show his respect to us in this way. He spoke softly, gracefully and gently. This is a trait we could seldom come across with especially in this modern era with everything should have done quickly and harshly. The place is clean and interspersed with traditional Chinese decorating. Lanterns, calligraphy couplets, wood carvings, the ambiance had really thrilled me as I have a great interest in these! The staff were dressing in samfu and cheongsam too!

The courses were fantastic and insightful! Because we had only two days and a night, the courses were tightly packed. I particularly salute Teacher Song, a kind woman whose great proficiency of linguistic skills were shown in her fluent speech conducted in many languages and even dialects!

We were introduced to Di Zi Gui, learned about practicing healthy vegetarian diet and sharing of allusions which I miss a lot since primary school. Di Zi Gui is based on eight-fold virtues: 孝(filial piety), 悌(brotherhood), 忠(loyalty), 信(trustworthiness), 礼(propriety), 义(righteousness), 廉(cleanliness), 耻(shame).


There was a session of movie sharing. I strongly recommend the Korean movie to you, namely "The Way Home" which tugged at my heartstrings to the extent that I phoned my grandma after that to express my love to her which I had never done before. However she didn't seem to have any response to my words. I expected, as I have written somewhere in my blog that my family is very conservative, we don't take much obvious action to express our love to each other. However, we do know how much we love each other.

Talk about love, I eventually realised that family love is the foundation of love, it is the fundamental relationship that everyone has the responsibility to carry. How could we expect ourselves to have a true friendship, or to have a long term and "high resistance" relationship with the one we have chosen, or in my case, to have the compassion needed in my future profession towards the patients, if we have failed to do so to our family?



An ideal place to live =)

Save the planet?

With the life threatening catastrophes happening all around the Earth and global warming approaching, human beings have realized the statement regarding the end of their civilization on this planet might soon become a reality. The leaders of the leading countries are currently trying to compromise on their responsibilities in slowing the effect of global warming by holding a series of incessant international workshops and so called “the G8 summit”. The main and mutual target achieved is to reduce their massive carbon dioxide emission respectively, for example, China should attempt to reduce 50% of that by taking appropriate and urgent incentives by the year 2020 if I’m not mistaken. However this could undoubtedly bar the countries involved from achieving a new height in terms of economic development. When each of them is suspicious about the happening of possible circumstances that some of their “alliance” might be trying to opt for violating the agreement made to overtake the others economically, the compromise is at stake at this very moment where global warming time bomb is on the verge to have entirely exploded. It seems that all of us have been brainwashed that the green house gases emitted by burning fuels do all the matters. We are encouraged to carpool, use public transports and so on, we point our fingers to car and factory exhausts when we are asked about the factors contributing to global warming. Miserably, most of us have omitted a greatest approach we could practice to tackle this existing yet “hard-to-eradicate” problem, which is just very simple – become a vegetarian.

Although I always remain sceptical towards all kinds of statistics and researches made to draw a conclusion proving something the professionals intended to, there is one I would like to refer assuming it is credible – if we make use of all the crops as the source of human food, no one on this planet would starve, even if we don’t have those harvesting machines. To elaborate on it for those who never came across with this, I would like to tell you, our food is turned into meat in large ratio. Why? In general, crop such as wheat is used to feed poultry, across the trophic level, approximately 90% of the energy would be lost, therefore we have wasted 90% of the energy that could potentially be supplied to ourselves. However you might wonder how the lost in energy could make sense with solving global warming. Now there is another research showing the carbon dioxide exhaled by poultry is surprisingly greater than the emission by vehicles in the world. Personally I don’t like to justify something using results of research, put the deduction aside, the remaining possibilities are what we could reflect on. Being a vegetarian is not merely confined in religious practice, it is a potential way by which human can really save our environment. How if the government starts encouraging the residents by setting a day in every week to take vegetarian food?

Frankly, I’m not a vegetarian, but a vegetarian-to-be, not sure when to become full time vegetarian. I take vegetables whenever possible, and it gives a healthier lifestyle =)

Happy birthday mama!

This is a delayed post, as it is meant to be posted on Thursday, 14-01-2010. Thanks to the half-day breakdown of electricity.


Today is my mother’s birthday!

So now you know this post is dedicated to her =)

Here is some introduction:

My mother, madam Ooi Kim Lee is more conservative than my father. We are less likely to share secret or feeling, but deep inside our heart, both of us know how much we care about each other. The best word to describe her is “moderate”, and, she has the best smile in my eyes =)

Being the first son to leave home in order to seek for a further study, I know how much she misses me, as whenever I occasionally went back to home during holidays, I noticed she would cook my favourite food in almost every meal!

The intriguing thing is that she seldom questioned nor rejected my demands, such as hanging around with friends at night which most of the parents disallow, participating in numberless co-curriculum activities, and asking for more money to spend, therefore normally my requests would be directed to my mother in order to be granted a quick and clear permission without my father’s notice :p

She has been working as a chemistry teacher of a secondary school for a long term of time, that’s why I could still be able to proudly announce chemistry as my “pet subject” despite the fact that I was fairly lazy during the period preparing for SPM examination. Under her experienced guiding, I have developed most of the fundamental and critical concepts that is still currently driving myself through A-Level syllabus in a relatively easy way. She is the best chemistry teacher I have ever had!

I enjoy the moderate freedom and continuous support given by my mother. Although she never voiced out her personal anticipation concerning my future, I do know that she puts so much of her hope on me such that someday she would be able to share the happiness of being excelled under her inculcation.



Maybe she hasn’t realized, I love her as much as she loves me =)

Happy birthday Mama! ;D

Randomly arranged? Designed?

Note: I would like to apologize for not being able to convey my thoughts precisely due to my limited access towards the terminologies involved and scarce proficiency in the language used. Ignore the syntax errors, and try to broaden your mindset to walk with me. This article is not written under the intention of offending nor challenging any believers that hinge to the conviction that our world is created by the only entity namely God. I find it fairly intriguing when I recently discovered I do have some points to raise in response to religious topics which I never really concerned.

To which extent do you believe our world is perfectly designed? You would be indoctrinated by tonnes of preaches convincing you the “truth” since childhood if born in a family held tightly to Christianity. You might question what you had been perceiving, or you might not. Most of those converted clearly understand the conflict they experienced that you might not. To those holding fideism, which compartmentalizes reason and faith, and believes merely on faith, believe or not, the argument that seemed as solid as rock to you has been an object of ridicule in some others eyes, mostly allegedly you may guess, but you should also be careful it is possible that the one with blindfold might not necessarily be those defying your faith.

In this article I focus only on the aspect whether the premise “world is created and perfectly designed” could be a strong argument. In certain books, some experts including scientists pointed out that the discoveries of science are actually in the direction of proving the existence of an intelligent creator. Cosmology, biology, physics and many other fields related on the basis of science are actually contributing to the conviction of theism, according to them. For example, the human genes, the biological molecules are miraculously coordinated. The laws of physics are designed such that the integrative complexity could be resolved using mathematics and logics. No one could explain why the speed of light must be approximately 300000000 metre per second. In similar context, they infer all of these behave beyond the naturalistic explanation. It is unnatural, where there is no chance to have the same situation happening if random ways are to replace it.

They always amaze us by using probability to show us how impossible it could be if random way goes. Yes, random nature is the point I advocate. You tell me in order for the human DNA to function properly, it takes certain probability to account for the systematic and perfect matches by monomers namely nucleotides, and to be able to synthesis proteins using amino acids, so it takes another probability. It goes on until how these biological molecules interact with each other, how the blood clotting mechanism is, how systems in a human body work by calculating the probabilities, and deducing it is almost impossible that human stays alive! You could have told someone, look, the probability is one over ten to the power of integer with astronomical number of digits behind, it is approaching zero, so the world we are living is not randomly arranged! You got a point, I have come across with a lot of so called evidences such as “do you know that if the earth is orbiting slightly nearer or further to the sun, the earth would be either too hot or too cold to sustain life? How amazing!” or “if the universe is expanding at a rate that is a little faster or slower, we could not have a universe that would be capable of supporting life!” They are indeed amazing, but to me it makes no sense to support theism.

People often attribute the fine-tuned universe we are living to the mighty creation by the god simply because it provides a better explanation where science has failed to do so, especially to explain the origin of universe and life. Now try to reflect on the probability. Let say something will happen by the chance of 1/100000000. When it does happen, can we say “99999999 circumstances have failed, and the one happening is right beside us.”? The same logic goes on if you insist to use probability. You say “our universe is created by god because it is fine-tuned!”, why can’t I say “according to your probability 1/N to have such a fine-tuned universe, we can have equal number N-1 of not-fine-tuned universes besides the one we have!”? Isn’t that there are more chances to have something not happening than just happening? As you know universe is vast, who knows there are universes in other dimensions of realms with more physical elements other than just time, space and matter? It could just happen =)

Thank you for finishing my rambling, sorry if you felt offended or annoyed, but that is truly what atheists think, and they may have the same feeling when you say "yours is the wrong one."

Not to forget to thank SuSu my senior who borrowed me the book "The Case For A Creator", I learned a lot =)

Another religious piece

Being a weak atheist, I always question myself, can human embrace to no religion? Without religion, can human still be able to generate and bring forth the civilisation assimilated with bloom, dignity and humanity? We shouldn't miss another point we must take into consideration: "Why is that religion there?"

Despite the different identities of each religion, I was so naive to categorise religions to an equal group of education based belief that has only been attempting to indoctrinate the followers without using justified theories in order to build a fine character. I have never been able to come so close to religious topics before stepping in a whole new environment which is totally different in comparison to Chinese Buddhist society I was bound and inclined to.

I was warmly invited to visit a church for my very first time in Subang. The to-and-fro trip took us two hours on the road. During that direct exposure, I learned a lot about perception of Christian towards the religion that has the greatest population of followers in the world. However the more I discover, the more I realise what I really need. Honestly, although I'm not a strong nor a devoted Buddhist, I felt embarrassed and challenged in the sense that I can't force myself to resonate with the talks given by those pastors. The reason is just simple, I don't believe in the existence of deities. Consequently, I felt so sorry whenever I rejected their invitations after that. I do appreciate their hospitality very much.

Besides, I constantly questioned my another housemate, a Bajau from Sabah who worships Allah. I asked something fairly sensitive, I consulted his opinion about why a Muslim can't convert, why Islam forbids pork etc. His told me he can't question or critic what has been stated in Al-Quran, he has no right and necessity to do so and it is possibly considered insulting the sacred ancient intellectual heritage.

On the other hand, I attended meetings held by newly formed Buddhist Society every week. Most of us had misunderstood Buddhism. Instead of religion, it should be called education by Dhama granted to mankind. There was a monk once told us: "If you are a free thinker, it is the best for you to attach to Buddhism."

We would always include this unique phenomenon whenever we were to write an essay concerning the mixture of compromised multiracial and multireligion background in our country, however those were the moments I felt I couldn't be more agree with that.

The Experiment

About five years ago, I remember my brother once told me there was an experiment featuring the incredible effect of human thoughts or speech that could be directed to non-living things such as water droplets, discovered by Masaru Emoto who was the first man to begin this quest. He consolidated his controversial claims by gazetting his microscopic images of different water crystals resulted in his experiments to the public.

I didn't believe in it, until my scepticism ceased a little after I had come across with some positive results shared by people on YouTube and some related articles trying to explain the theories inside this mysterious response shown by non-living things. It happens to be totally out of logic to me. The behaviour of water droplets which is only explicable using non-scientific sense has thrilled me to try this out by myself, using rice which may show the similar response. I would soon gather a group of mates in my college to test the plausibility of this renowned Emoto test!


First you have to prepare two identical containers which are then filled with equal amount of cooked rice and sealed, preventing any other factors to intervene the only controlling variable. Then, write two contrasting phrases such as "I love you" and "I hate you" on pieces of papers and paste it, or directly on the container. Do notice in this experiment, your speech is vital as well, so prepare a few words to be spoken to each of them daily and repetitively. Make sure whenever you are showing love or hatred, you mean it. If things go smoothly, you will notice the rate of decomposition of the "poor" rice is much faster than the other one.

If this is your first time to know this, I'm pretty sure you are doubting it too. But isn't it fascinating? Hopefully I will not get a fruitless result :)