The Naked Truth

This post is about an honest reflection about myself. As the year is coming to an end, I guess it's a suitable time after 21 years to get an honest reflection about what i really am as a person. I got alot of things on my mind which i want to express but i don't know where to start, so i shall just blurt what comes to mind

I am a very frugal man. In my heart, there is always an invisible calculator. whenever i purchase items or good or services, the reward in return should be more or less equals to what i pay. if not, i will be very uneasy inside, a lot of cognitive dissonance probably. and it takes some time to reduce the dissonance. As an example, let's say i go MidValley. The cheapest food i can get there is from the food court, which would cost about RM 7 to RM 8. but with RM 7 or RM 8 for a bowl of soup noodles is inequity to me. i would add a little more to the money, to eat something better, with 'brand'. with that, it is more equitable. But i dislike spending that much money, and therefore, i would rather opt to go out of MidValley and go eat RM 4 or RM 5 noodles at other places. I AM THAT FRUGAL!!!

Since young I have been this way i guess. maybe it's the upbringing from my dad, who is always calculative about items purchased. i think i really am like him, or probably worse. XD that's y i like to go to cut my hair at the same place. RM 5 for haircut, eventhough i will have to sit there fore 2 hours, trimmed by a student hairstylist. I also get cognitive dissonance if people spend me, but i guess it's less dissonance as compared to me spending on other people. XD

My aunt say i so leng zhai, how come no girlfriend. Maybe it's because i am frugal ba.. but i think it's more than that and sometimes i indeed do wonder why. I go night market and supermarket and gai gai and i see young couples together. Look at the girl, not bad, look at the guy.. swt.. i think i could be a better candidate. but then why don't i have 1?

i went for counselling this sem for bonus marks and i talked about relationships and how hard it is to maintain a good relationship. i presented my problems telling the counselor that i am afraid of not becoming a good boyfriend. because i do not have a car, which means transport will be a problem. i might not have that much of time, because i am mostly at home doing assignments, and also i play volleyball for college. this translate to me probably not spending enough time with her. thirdly, as i have said, i am a very frugal dude. i always am calculative. i think girls don't like it :S but at the end of the counselling sessions, i guess these things are just things i use as defence to not go into a relationship. maybe i am afraid that i will hurt her, maybe i am afraid that it won't end up well. or maybe i am just afraid that i will get hurt in the process

would you prefer to go into a relationship and risk getting hurt over and over again? or to play safe and only go into a relationship when u really really really are certain? I am the latter currently. previously, when i was younger, i probably am the earlier.

censor.. when say things, i am scared that i will hurt others and therefore there is a lot of censoring in my mind before saying or doing things. i am scared of hurting others but if the person is genuine, the person should say the truth although the truth hurts. but i guess life is not just about myself. I can't be too selfish and just say things which i think is right. i need to think from their perspective as well, and their feelings. to say or not to say? :S

my friends say that i am a peadophile cause i always say things such as 'she's so cute' and 'oh he so cute' whenever we are out. then they will turn to me and say me peadophile. i really don't know what my feelings are towards some girls. it seems that i want to protect them from harm and it hurts when i see them sad, stress, frustrated and all the negative emotions. i sometimes want me to be the one suffering instead of them. wanting to alleviate their burden but don't know how. When they are experiencing joyful emotions, i feel happy for them as well. is this love? paternal protection? sternberg said that there are 3 components to love: commitment, passion and intimacy. which component would the above case fall into? :S probably the topology of love can explain it better where i am experiencing agape love?

sometimes i feel so sad and upset about how people whom i care about do not seem to invest emotionally as much as i do. it's draining really. i sms, no reply. i call, don't pick up, mail no response. what does that mean? don't 1 to talk to me? don't 1 to care? busy? not important? other times, i find it hard when i do so much, but get so little in return. inequilibrium, leading to cognitive dissonance, leading to dissonance reducing, which needs lots of brain work.

this year, my peers who are mostly 1988 are 21 years old. everytime go in FB, i will see wishes such as "today's your 21st, have a blast". i also see many events being posted up about their birthdays, and i envy them. recently i saw Micky's birthday party together with her twin sister. Oh i miss her.. that day saw her, only spoke to her for less than a minute.. roar~ she's in butterworth now if i am not mistaken.. anyway, back to 21st. how did my 21st went? err? nothing out of the ordinary i guess.. the out of the ordinary thing is that teresa gave me a doughnut as a present. my only present XD THANKS TERESA!!~~ my sis also brought me makan a day before as celebration. Not bad not bad. :)

1 thing which i am always battling on is about lust. i don't know how to express, but there's a constant ongoing battle within myself between doing what constitutes as normal, and what constitutes as holy. the other day, i went sunway lagoon and many ladies wore skimpy cloths. ok.. even without them wearing skimpy, i still do look at cha bos and scrutinize them. considered as lusty? where is the line between what is considered as lusty or not? is having fantasies lusty? watching porn? talking dirty?

the other day, we went to a christmas party in my err... godbrother's house. there, a topic came up which is pretty interesting. they talked about money and health, and one man said that the end for people who don't have money is to wait for death. another man said no no, man should strive to live, because if people with no money were to just wait for death, then all the beggars will already commit suicide, and i took interest in this point of view.

indeed, everyone is waiting to die literally. rich, poor, very poor or filthy rich. no one can live forever, or at least for now. they say that it is possible to live forever in the future, but we shall leave that for the future. and so therefore, the question is this, if everyone will die, and money plays no role in death, then y earn money? this question, or similar question was posted by one of my friend in FB, and the reply she got was that it depends what kind of lifestyle she wants to live in. the difference is in the level of comfort, where obviously people with money will have a more comfortable lifestyle. but then it depends on how one defines 'comfortable lifestyle'. if to me comfortable is living in a hut in a peaceful jungle, then i need no money (i think Meng would agree with this). but if comfortable is always wanting to buy new things, then money will always not be enough (proponents for this idea will be Hui Keng, Evie and Shyuan XD). what we have absorbed so long in life is the society's standard of 'comfortable life'. it should be remembered that comfort does not equate happiness. I guess to make life meaningful, we should find what we really want to do in life. death matters no more then, i suppose

i love volleyball. it's really an AWESOME game and i guess if there's one thing i am addicted to, it would be volleyball. XD from serving, to first ball, to setting, to spiking, to blocking to covering, it's an awesome game which needs both strong team work and strong individuals. dang syok la. :D

i don't like people who only knows how to complain this and that, as if the world is going to turn the other way round when they complain. knowing that the world won't be a better place even with their complains, they still will keep on complaining. WHY? people who complain just for the sake of complaining only make people around them feel worse. i get it when you want to express discomfort, and i am fine with it, but need not harp on the issue over and over again right?

i don't like people who likes to force other people to accept their viewpoint. you can have your viewpoint, and i can have mine. No problem with different viewpoints is there? we can still respect each other for our point of view. But it's a different matter if you want to persuade me to take on your point of view. If i see sense in it, i will, but if i don't, y force?

i don't like people to argue with seemingly impossible outcomes. these people will present viewpoints which have so slim a possibility. the problem is that they seem so scared with everythings and it makes the argument go on and on. when people say them back, they just shrugged it off as if it's nothing. apa maksud?

i don't like people who exaggerate things.

i like things and ideas which transcend normal imagination. that's y i like movies like Avatar, and manga like One Piece. I like films with martial arts in it. Wushu and wuxia flick is awesome. i like movies with provoking thoughts like The Pursue of Happiness. All these gets my mind working. i like movies which makes the heart warm and make people think twice about what are the most precious things in life.

i like mythology, and therefore if movies or comics have some myths as it's support, i like it. That's y i like the original Yu-Gi-Oh, where ancient Egypt relics are one of the important characteristics. That's y i like Bleach, where they talk about Shinigami. That's y i like The Legend, which ties to ancient China.

i think i am very prejudiced towards certain people of a certain races. but more important than race, i think i am prejudiced towards people whom in my eyes don't look like good people, regardless of race. I don't know how to define, but if they fall below my standard, i really don't like them. maybe it's their hair, maybe it's their dressing, maybe it's the way they carry themselves. i also dislike 'lala' people. XD

i sometimes envy people who always seems to be in attention. eventhough they do nothing, they are always in the limelight. why? i LOA. but i also enjoy my solidarity sometimes. :D

the hardest thing in the whole wide world is not to solve the hardest maths question, or inventing something evolutionary. the hardest thing to do in this whole wide world is to be a good person. people will and can survive without the invention of telephone, internet, tv and so forth, but people will not survive without acceptance, family, love, forgiveness, and these are the things that is hard to do.

I have taken an honest look into myself. Can you?

Happy 2010.

God Bless~

Liar Game

I just finished watching a Japanese drama, Liar Game. It is adapted from the manga with the same name and it's premise is pretty interesting.

People are selected to participate in a game known as the Liar Game, and participants will have to deceive each other in order to obtain money and those who win will keep the money won, while those who lose will be in debt to the company.

Kanzaki Nao, an honest female is one of the participants and being stupidly honest, she was easily cheated of her money. she then sought help from Mr. Akiyama, who is known to be a genius swindler. Together with Akiyama, both of them progressed through the game stage by stage. But while Akiyama always thinks about how to save him and Nao, Nao on the other hand always thinks about how to save her opponents so that they do not fall into debts.

and this trust she has in others always leads back to problems where Akiyama will need to conjure up something to save the day. although deceived so many times, she is still very trusting till the very last moment.

in the last episode, she posed a question

"is it bad to be stupidly honest?"

the answer? i don't think i would want to reveal here what the answer is, but i think if we were to become stupidly honest, then we should learn how not to hold grudge towards others. that way, even if we are being cheated, we will not feel bitter about it. and that is what Kanzaki Nao is as a person.

or probably Kanzaki Nao just doesn't learn from mistakes? hahaha.. she probably have low aversive emotional conditioning and therefore being cheated to her is non or less aversive. XD

God Bless~

Some thoughts

The other day i came across an interesting thought

I was thinking to myself, wouldn't it be easy to clean the house if we were able to ionize the dust particles? It works like this. The room will be ionized and of course it will be on a low scale so that only the dust particles will be ionized due to it's small size. then there will be a container which is known as 'collector' which will have the opposite charge.

therefore if the dust particles are being charged negatively, the container will be positively charged and because they are opposites, they will attract. the room therefore will be easily cleaned. then after that, the room will be charged oppositely again, so that things in there will remain neutral of any charge. cool thought isn't it? XD

but who am i kidding right? charging dust particles? hahaha..

"we started with like, journeyed through with care and ended up with love."

"i can't changed what had happened in the past, and i don't know what will happened in the future, but i can only sincerely hope that our love for each other may never stop growing"

God Bless~

Psychology Colloquium 2008

To me so far, this colloquium was the most energy consuming because we have to present 2 presentations. 1 for social psych, and another for advanced research methods. 2 presentation on the same day and therefore we were pretty much exhausted before, during and after.

but we did not let the stress take us out, but rather, faced it with determination. 1 day before colloquium, all of us camped at Lam's house and we were perfecting our presentations.

See Joel so rajin doing his work..

See.. all so rajin do work.. or is it? XD

practicing yet again when we reach college the next day.

finally after presentation, all of us were sitted at auditorium. Here, we have Mr. Teh together.. :D

see this xiao cha bo? don't see her xiao xiao like that, she smart ok.. XD

but all the practice and hard work was worth it cause we did win ourselves something. until this very day, i still haven't spent my present yet. :S don't know what to buy

it's a sad thing nobody took our photos during our presentation yea? or maybe someone did? just that i don't have those photos.. hahaha.. i don't think any colloquiums in the future will be as stressful as this. thesis defence just passed.. nothing special also.. ngek ngek.. XD

Blessed Christmas everyone

God Bless~

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The other day i managed to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on tv and it's a really wonderful show. When it first came out, i didn't thought that it would be such a good story with some highly important values embedded into the story. so i didn't watch it then, but i was so wong.





The story talks about Willy Wonka, an owner of a super-state-of-the-art chocolate factory and he is the best chocolate creator in the story. He sent out 5 tickets to 'lucky' children who are given the opportunity to visit his factory and one of them will have a suprise at end.





So came five children together with their parents for a visit to his factory. Willy Wonka is greatly depicted by Johnny Depp, and i pretty much like him in the story. Slowly, the children were eliminated one by one due to their own misbehavior. and the last boy standing was Charlie. the suprise was that he will be the heir to the factory, with one condition, Willy Wonka said that Charlie would need to shift in into his factory, leaving his family behind, and because of this, Charlie rejected Willy's offer. well, it later ended well :D





throughout the story, there are some thought provoking moments.





1. the children in the movie were brats, and that got me thinking... will my children grow up like that? with the things they show on media nowadays, it's really REALLY hard to fend them off, especially since they would believe and like things which looks cool. if they asked me to buy them this and that, will i give in? i remember when i was still young, i do ask things from my parents, but more often that not, i don't get what i want. i do feel unhappy then, and therefore i should not make my children feel what i felt right? but it's a debate about pampering too much vs child disciplining, which is hard to balance and find the fine line between the two.





2. one thing i like about the movie was how it transcends normal logic. and that's what i like about manga too.. especially One Piece. it fosters creativity and make people think about what are the possibilities out there. logic is logic, but to be able to think about illogical stuffs which are out of the ordinary, it's creative. i thought to myself, have we (we referring to humans in general) been trained to think so logically that we sometimes don't see some other view which is totally out of the ordinary? if we could just tap into this power of creativity, i think the world will be a better place to live in. ^^





3. the value of the people around us. in the movie, Charlie would give up owning the factory just because he had to be seperated from his family. And that's a point of view coming from a child. how many of us would be as him, to be able to say a big 'NO' when the bargain on the other end seems so so good?





Love this movie

God Bless~

What shall I do?

The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. "What shall we do then?" the crowd asked. John answered, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same." Tax collectors also came to be baptized. " Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"

"Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people fasely-be content with your pay."

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Christ. John answered them all, "I baptize you with water. But one more powerful than I will come, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." (Luke 3: 9 - 17)

That is the Gospel message of today and how very suitable it is. As we come into the 3rd week of Advent, it is high time we ask ourselves, "what shall I/we do?"

Christmas for many is a holiday rather than a holy day. and we shall not forget the true meaning of Christmas. Instead of praising Santa Claus and doing our Christmas shopping, we should instead ponder on the birth of Christ and give attention to the people around us who needs help. Indeed, sometimes we are so caught up in doing things among ourselves that we neglect people who really needs our attention.

we do Christmas carolling among BECs, buy presents for friends and familes etc., but have we ever wondered whether we can sing to the old folks in the old folks home, or the orphanages? have we thought about buying gifts for the orphanages, the migrant workers, our maids, give donation to the poor, and give attention to the lame, the afflicted or simply offering up a little prayer for the sick, torn families, people in war who are in fear etc.?

as Christmas is coming, let us not forget the root of Christmas which is CHRIST Himself. Let us be aware of the people around us who needs help. The true spirit of Christmas will only be experienced if we reach out to people.

"What shall I do?" I blogged about His glory. Now what about you? :)

God Bless~

MAPCU 2009

This year volleyball MAPCU was filled with UNCERTAINTY. Mainly because the main organizer did not want to organize it. And it was initially being called off. But our head of DSA didn't want to call it off and said that HELP will organize it.

So DSA have been working to organize the volleyball competition. I should give credit to the people who organize cause they did manage to pull it off. Although there are many uncertainties, but i can see that a lot of effort have been put into making the event a successful 1. Many colleges don't want to participate cause they don't have teams, girls teams especially, and it is not until the 11th hour that we know whether there is the competition or not. but they did try their best to get participations for both males and females category and finally, it did happen

Date: Nov 29 2009
Venue: Sports Complex, University Melaya

There are 8 teams for males, and 6 teams for females.

Males: HELP UC, Lim Kok Weng, Apiit, UCSI, Nottingham, IMU, Segi and KLIUC
Females: HELP UC, IMU, Apiit, UCSI, Nottingham and i don't know another 1. XD

In the grouping stage, males went against Apiit in the first round. And we lost. :p Lim Kok Weng didn't manage to turn up. So we need to win against UCSI to go into semi. And we did won UCSI.. yea yea.. happy.. so we were in the semi.

match against UCSI i think XD

For the girls, they fought pretty close with IMU, and won. and then won Apiit as well, with a breeze if i not mistaken. Our girls strong ok.. Roar~

Against Apiit?

In semi, the guys was up against Segi college. Erm.. nothing to comment i guess.. just that lose a lot of points in service. grrr... after losing to Segi, then compete with Apiit again for 3rd placing. and this time we won.. woo hoo hoo.. so males got third placing


For the females, semi they went up against Nottingham, and won. In the finals, they finally met their rival UCSI. And it was a very close fight. Both teams won a set, and it was the final set. Both teams service also fail. XD... but in the end, we won.. woo hoo..


time for some pictures shall we?

male team with the coach for the day, Mr. Mark

female team with coach, Mr. Cheng

everyone together..

our new president.. XD

and the GLORIOUS CUPS. :D

God Bless~