The Converts

Easter Triduum has been concluded last night. It was a beautiful ceremony, to celebrate my Saviour resurrected and conquered death. Saturday Vigil has always been my favorite mass of all the masses held in Church. It is the time when I feel tremendously moved by the music, chants, and words that hung in echo of the Cathedral. The awesome time of the year!

Speaking of which, just today I have finished watching a soul-searching movie by the late Yasmin Ahmad, Muallaf (The Convert). I have always been an adoring fan of Yasmin's movies and ads (she did quite a lot for Petronas). There are always fresh messages in her creative works; something untangible that one has to contemplate the meaning of it all. It is always surprising at what each one can come up with.

In any case, Muallaf: I learnt many lessons from the movie alone. How my belief and others, Islam and those who do not believe in God or prophets, have so much in common. In my case, I strive to find God in some ways. Solace, peace, you name it. Being a scientist does not add to the ease of taking a great leap of faith. I constantly find Science that I believe (of course with the advent of many irrefutable evidence) at logger heads with the Faith that I embrace. Big Bang and Darwinian school of thought make more sense to me than what Genesis gives in the first 5 chapters.

A conversation in 'Life of Pi' between the mother and the son gives assurance: 'Science can teach us what's out there' (mother's hand stretch to the sky), 'but religion teaches us what's in here' (mother's hand gesturing to her chest). It is an apt conclusion.

I personally knew people who have grown cold to religions, shrugged it as ignorance, and to a certain extent criticize and mock those who'd done the unspeakable in the name of Lord/God/Allah as the representative of that religion itself. On the other end of the spectrum, I knew as many people grappling to latch onto any beliefs that make their hearts flutter. 

Ignorance is the first step of descending to hell, I believe. Be it towards other faiths or towards what we professed. Once one stepped onto this stage of hell, there it will roll downhill. Hatred snowballed, what started to be a jest becomes a cancer that doom to damn one's soul. But amidst the fog of damnation, one can reach out his/her hand for help. For I am sure, there is always an Angel hovering next to the cliff where we have fallen from.

Comment: Just as much as I would like the authority to stop playing the bigots on the "Allah" issue, I plead my brethren in faith and those I have known from other religions to exercise grace. I am quite sure we'll share the same Heaven as my Father promised us, just as Allah has promised you too. And who knew, maybe we even see the God's/Allah's prophets and messengers playing Chinese chess together?!

People of subtance

This video is the second part of the 16 mins long clip. For some reasons, I couldn't get the first part of the video up here. The link to it is Global Witness: Sarawak CM's expose.

I feel sick to the stomach listening and watching these people treating the Sarawakians. These 'pengkianat' should be sentenced the strictest law we have! You make your own judgment. Share this with your lovely Sarawakian family and friends!

Comment: Accusing the indigenous of 'squaters' in the land where their ancestors have thrived and evolved is one I cannot stomach!

Back, for the adventure!

Oh ho!

How long has it been since I last wrote a piece here? July 2012!! It felt like many light years ago. The good news is that I am back, not from the land of the dead, from the land of adventure!

Even a briefer introduction of what I've been stealthily doing the last year of silence is appropriate here. The last 6-7 months had been hectic: thesis writing, conference's invited speaker, another collaboration with a lab in Frankfurt, writing up an article for journal publications.  All of these are in no particular order. Now, the thesis has been submitted, the article is published, the collaborators offered me a job in their lab, the speech was overwhelmingly received and since then I have a barrage of emails asking for a position in our research group. People say I am more famous than my supervisor. I say it's luck. So lets stop self-glorifying here, I felt a somewhat narccistic promoting what I did in the last few months!

Lets talk about now! At the moment, I am learning how to canoe, and sew! These two are unconventionally put next to each other, I agree. The first, canoeing, is really a fashion to do in our department. Being guys, my friends had been nudging me for hours to join the fun. I always have a reason to back out: I've got experiments to do in the lab. Now that the thesis had been submitted, I ran out of luck, and so I am joining the guys tackling the rivers (and at some point, waterfalls!) in NZ with a canoe. Unfortunately, despite having learnt to swim properly and overcoming water-phobia (I actually think it's not the water/current, but more of the flash of memories I have from watching Hollywood's Jaw 1-4!), I am still a novice in the water. So, in the next couple of weeks, I'd be spending my time with my canoe in a swimming pool (boohoo!) practising for real stuff. So far, nothing exciting yet happening in the pool (there's nothing 'adventurous'!), therefore I've got nothing to report on that.

The second, sewing lessons, are awesome. I picked up sewing after accidentally clicking on one of the most cutest skirts I've seen on the web. And the tutorial about how to go making it is superbly easy to follow, even for a noob-sewer like me. Mind you, the last time I tried my hands on needles was...10 years ago? And that was for a school project making a pouch (which I got rated a B+). I hated sewing then, it takes up too much time when I rather do calculus! It's a different feeling now, because 1) I do it with a machine, 2) I sew what I want. So in the past few weeks, I was learning from the pros' posts in the internet on sewing terms and tricks. I am proud to say, until now, I have 2 dresses, and 1 skirt made from scratch by myself! I've worn 2 of them to school, and the compliments I have received ("Wow, that's a nice dress you've got! Where'd you get it?", "I love your dress!") have been flattering. Perhaps, it was because people rarely see me in girly dress. It's always khakis, jeans with wacky printed T's back then, you know, those apparels that help you move faster and tackle 8 flight of stairs easily.

So, there. A good start of blogging this year.. Well, stay tune for the next post. I've not decided what I want to put up yet, but maybe my new summer dress? I should go shopping for fabric then!

Comment: 2013 is going to be a superb year to accomplish things that I never imagined I could do! I hope it's going to be a fabulous year for you too, be it for a career, family or personal achievement outlook!