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"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." - Steve Jobs' commencement address, Stanford 2006

Between studying, working and finding out where does the road less traveled leads to, there is little time for discussion papers.

There is a plan to write one regarding happiness, hopefully that would come soon.

But as a great man once said: "the only certainty in life is uncertainty".

News and Views

"Dear Readers,

It is imperative for me to explain this: I am a mere observer, with no interest in affiliating myself with or against the government. The reason behind this writing is due to the past week's interesting commentaries on the formal and informal channel, thus I have done an analysis and presented it for your reading pleasure.

The following would have a pro-Bersih stance due to balance out the heavily tilted mainstream media. But to clarify, I will reiterate my previous statement, I am only interested in championing human rights issue and in no way supportive of either for or against governmental institute."

Letter from K:

The night before D-Day
"This is the final night before the departure to Normandy-before D-Day. Our training that had lasted for six months is suppose to prepare us for the coming war, but truth be told, I don’t feel combat ready. Don’t reckon I ever will.

It was strategy briefing a while ago and there was an awkward silence before the Sarge spoke. Everyone had known their position in the transport and their company months ago, and since there isn’t much of a strategy in direct assault anyways- I couldn’t be bothered; rather have a smoke.

The military demands that we bunk in early for the invasion, but none of us could get any shut eye. God damn kid below is reciting passages from his bible all night long, must’ve peed his bed while he’s at it. He’s too, what’s the word, oh yeah, too much of a chicken shit- goes trigger happy when he’s shit scared. Don’t know how he got recruited, but I thank the Lord that he’s not in my company. Wouldn’t want to drop dead before I even shoot some of those bastards now eh?

My pin is I945020267 and my name is…Nova. Well that isn’t really my name, just what I’m called in company Delta since nobody have names in my company anymore ever since big Mike vetoed that. I miss you, G. The assault will begin at 0630, and I’m on the second wave heading into sector Juno…that way if I don’t make it, you’d know how to locate me through the officers. But don’t worry; I’ll hide behind big Mike when everything goes FUBAR. He’s so big, it should take a lot to get to me. Heh.

I’ll be back G, and we’ll be together like before. I promise.

Love,
K"

Dinning with the Devils

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts...” –William Shakespeare

It is a dark setting in front of two dozen men and women, or less. The lights lit up at centre stage where a round table and four chairs sit. The actor and actress hurry into the scene. The man in front of the woman is holding a plate of rice, in the late fifties perhaps, has a mean demeanour. The woman at the back tails along, looking about the same range of age.

“Shut the f*ck up!”

“No, I...”

“Just admit it, you f*cked up!”

“Wait, but-“

“Just admit you f*cked up b*tch! The facts are there, just f*cking admit it.”

“...”

The audience, numb struck by the fiery opening scene, stood still in their seats, said nothing. All eyes are fixated upon the scene on the stage, anticipating another blow up, awaits for clue of the explosive entrance; yet there was only silence. Another actor enters the scene, with him is presumably the order of the lady. He lays it down in front of her.

The man and woman continue to dine, albeit the man’s body language suggests that he is still unhappy with whatever that happened. The sound of his spoon and fork clunking against each other angrily, as though expressing his displeasure, his stare from the corner of his eye suggest contempt against his wife- who kept her head down the entire time, dejected by the outburst. A hint of tears erupting from the corner of her eye, but it is too far and too faint for the audience to see.

The awkward silence ensued. The audience, who did not know how to react, chose to ignore the outburst, took down mental notes to gossip upon leaving.

As the drape falls upon the stage, the lights lit up, everyone stood and walked away. The scene comes alive in the bewildered audience head as one turn to another, whispering soft enough for one or two words to slip out; judgement is inevitable.

The Power of Incentive:

The Serengeti Equilibrium

In Malaysia, an ATM machine will charge RM 1 from a non bank cardholder should they withdraw; granted that RM1 is a relatively cheap price to pay, we find ourselves scouting for our respective bank’s ATM machine. From a time where we could withdraw from any ATM machine for free, this tiny amount of money seems to have changed behaviour. If everyone, in response to this policy, chooses to do business with the bank which has the most amount of ATM machine in a particular area, the said bank would inevitably gain an upper hand. Convenience became the advantage of a company because of RM 1.

This is the power of incentives. Through its subtle policy changes, it could manipulate behaviour into conformity. Incentives could be the wages that we earn, the tax deductions that we get from the federal government, the cheaper petrol price we pay to fuel our tanks, etc. Incentives could also exist indirectly in the culture of our upbringing, the dictation of what is accepted and what is not, the subtle influence of governmental policies and so on. Incentives, therefore, is the single most powerful driving force that affects our every day decisions.

At a macro scale, the government determines the path of a nation, and then designs a policy package that contains incentives that motivates its people towards goal congruence. What happens if it is not well thought out?

Thoughts on:

The Death of Bin Laden

When the World Trade Centre was struck in the United States back in the year 2001, I was only 13; waking up from my slumber, accidentally catching CNN replays the footage over and over again. I was in shock and disbelief, oblivious from all the other struggles that were happening around the world. At that point of time, I thought the world was well...at peace.

Refreshing my tweets over and over again in hope of something interesting would come up for me to pass time in lecture, little did I expect the news of Osama’s death would pop up. The manhunt has finally ended. As I scanned through the short report on the assault and his subsequent death, more and more tweets came in, reporting US citizens chanting “U.S.A, U.S.A” in front of the white house, celebration taking place on the streets, American flags raised, and people rejoiced, celebrating the victory against the man who caused much grieve over the past decade.

J. Gary Wise, a writer at ESPN, had his say on his blog about the death of Osama bin Laden and it was thought provoking. There is a hint of disdain on his views of the celebrating Americans, citing that his fellow Americans are celebrating more death as we speak; at hindsight, I had to agree with him, but after dwelling on the issue, I now draw different conclusions.

The Peril of Love : Part IV

The Fall

Most of our days are habitual, we perform the same routine that is required of us and our day ends as soon as it begins. It would not be unfair to state that most days of our lives are unremarkable. Due to the fact that I’m living in the country that borderline the equator, most of my days are unremarkably hot.

Late 2010, I woke up quarter past morning, stumbled and fumbled my way out to brunch. As I walked under the scorching hot sun, I realised I left my wallet in the drawer. Swearing under my breath, I turned back to retrieve it, not realising what I almost missed had I not forgotten my wallet on that fateful day.

Even as I was climbing the steep hill from my allocated parking spot, I thought to myself: “This is what it feels like to be a rotisserie chicken.” As I slouched my way up the hill and subsequently the stairs, I entertained the thought of fasting, chuckled a little and braced myself for glorious heat of the Malaysian weather.

Next, the unexpected happened.

If the sounds I heard while in the descending elevator weren’t preceded by a loud terrifying scream, I would’ve thought that a vase had fallen from six levels above. As the elevators door opened, I walked out and there was silence, and nothing else. I noticed fragment of roof tiles on the ground as I inched closer to the source of the noise, and still there was only the sound of silence. The beat of my heart increased accompanied by adrenaline kicking in; something was amiss. I shifted my focus a little further up, and lo and behold, before me, was a body.

On that unremarkable hot day, I was first on the scene of a suicide.

The Peril of Love : Part III

The Butterfly Effect

“In the quiet suburban of East London, there is a boy queuing for an afternoon cut. The clock strikes four as the boy sat on the lumpy couch, having waited thirty minutes for his turn. Staring vacantly at the magazine in front, he ponders upon his decision to get a Mohawk cut; his new haircut would make him look distinct compared to the conservative neighbourhood kids of Leytonstone. Not to mention the fact that he could finally fit in with the cool gang at school and perhaps he would garner the attention of that uber cool rocker chick Lydia, who can play wicked riffs on her electric guitar.

Weighing the positive outcomes of his prospective haircut, the boy relaxes and breaks into a smile. Dreaming upon the chance of speaking with the illustrious Lydia, the boy is now adamant that this is the way to go, his way into her heart. In his mind’s eye he can see her now- the messy cut, badass attitude with a pinch of Goth thrown in, the electric guitar strapped around her shoulder, playing to heavy metal, nu metal, and metals that none have heard before! How is a boy who lives in the east part of London, who combs his hair from left to right everyday in the morning, who plays only classical pieces on the piano and listens strictly to N’SYNC and Backstreet Boys, ever going to be cool enough to be her boyfriend?

It is hardly the boy’s fault that he turned out this way; his parents are conservative Christians and a tad bit on the extreme side. Rock and Roll music are branded as satanic music, with Led Zeppelin leading the charge as the ambassador of Lucifer. He felt even worse when he realised how much his childhood mirrors that of the character Flanders from the Simpsons TV series. No, he thought to himself, “I would not be confined to the expectations and conform like a mindless robot, I would not be the spitting image of those loony cartoons from across the Atlantic...”

“Next!” says the barber, like the way people in clinics do.

“...ocean.”

Disrupted from his trail of thoughts, he walked across the room toward the chair in a trance, nervous about the event that is about to happen. As he stared into the mirror in front of him, the boy started to imagine how he would look like, twenty minutes from now. Nervous at the uncertainty of the impact of his haircut, his palms began to sweat, his heart picks up speed.

“So, what would it be Johnny?”

“M-m-Mohawk, sir,” he sheepishly muttered.

He heard a loud click, signifying the wake of the shaver. As the buzzing of the shaver inches closer toward the back of Johnny’s head, his body tensed. A drop of sweat fell to his cheek as he holds his breathe, embracing the moment. He closed his eye, trying to focus on the happy thoughts that he had earlier as his nerves sets in, only to remember where he left off, his parents.

The barber shaves off a small portion of hair from the back, but from Johnny’s point of view, everything slowed down to nanoseconds. His mind races from the anger that he would rouse in his house, to how his parents would write him off as a disappointment. In the end, parental opinion mattered too much to him as he weighed between the merits and his parent’s wrath, and subsequently decided on a heartbeat, that this haircut wouldn’t be worth it.

The barber moves the shaver upwards.

The boy panicked; he jerked forward and yelled “WAIT!” as everyone in the saloon stood wondering what had set off the boy to such a manner. The barber, bewildered looked over to his boss at the cashier and exchanged a shrug. The boy stood in his chair, shocked by his initial outburst, looks up and clears his throat.
“M-maybe a faux hawk would be m-m-more...appropriate.”

The inconspicuous Saturday afternoon turned out to be more dramatic than it needed to be; after all, it was only a damn haircut. Judgement day came when Johnny walked past the gates of Chingford Foundation School. To his dismay, his haircut yielded no attention from the said cool kids, and too much like a wimpy version of the true Mohawk, he got dissed for trying. His parents however, thought it to be a little too badass for the family’s liking, and that it has to be a sign of a rebellion, and thus cancelled the plans for his sixteenth birthday party as a punishment. Only his friend, David at the football academy thought his haircut was cool.


At the World Cup of 2002, David Beckham became the tipping point of the faux hawk cut.

“A butterfly flutters its wing in New Delhi and half way around the world, a tornado hits Taiwan. “

The butterfly effect describes how a single, tiny and inconspicuous variation may have a large impact on a complex system. Because every action or inaction inevitably results in a reaction, identifying the butterfly in a particular event remains to be confusing, difficult and subjective. Where the mere observation of the particles would result in an indirect influence of the behaviour of quantum atomics in quantum physics, life is not all that different.

Let us explore.