The big 100! (No, seriously this time).

Okay, I've been meaning to update this diary for almost a year now, but never got around to doing so. As it turns out, this would be the ACTUAl 100th post, as opposed to the last one. Anywho, a little update of my life is in order.

First of all, I got into Dalhousie University for a masters program in Pathology. I also managed to get funded with the CRTP traineeship. Ironically, I almost failed out during the first semester, due to my beyond dismal marks (they kick you out if you get under 70% in any course). Luckily however, I managed to pass both courses BY A HAIR!

During the semester, I had an opportunity to witness an autopsy. Seeing a dead body disturbed me a lot more than I thought it would. One moment, the person is alive, and the next, they are gone. A whole slew of existential problems regarding what is life occupied my mind for a good deal of my time (and it still does). I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Death scares me. It is not the prospect of eternal damnation that scares me. It is the prospect that when we die, everything ends that scares me more. If a supreme being came to me and told me I'd go to hell after I die, and there's nothing I can do about it, I would actually be extremely relieved.

Getting back to the part when failing out was actually a serious threat. At that time, I actually recalled that earlier that year, I've thought about how an interesting life would be desirable. Being in a position to have recieved funding, and almost failing out, was indeed interesting. Not to mention that in the history of Dalhousie University, there had only been one other case where the grad student
failed out. And I doubt that person tried their hardest. In my case, I've put in as much effort as I could have possibly put, and still did miserably. I was making history. And in that aspect, life was fun.

Sometime in the semester, I had to receive radiation safety training. We were dissembled into groups of 2 or 3, where we had to clean up radioactive spill. One of the people I teamed up with was SCARY! He would squirt water on the radioactive area very roughly, which splashed the radioactive material all over the place. He would then wipe it even more roughly, spreading the contamination. At one time, his lab coat was actually soaking up the radioactive spill. Working with him was very tiring for my nerves. For the first time in my life, I was trembling in fear. When the safety training was over, I had to get my collegue to load my gel for me because my hands were too unsteady from the shakes.

I've thought about a few philosophical questions as well. Firstly, I thought that the fear of death is actually a good thing. To fear death means you love life. And loving life is quite virtuous.

In regards to the idea that death means the end, it would mean quantity of life is more important than quality of life. That is because it is only when you are alive, you can experience things. And to experience things, regardless of how painful or uncomfortable something is, is better than not experiencing anything.

Life is meaningless. But it is precisely because it is meaningless, that we are completely and utterly free to do as we want.

Oh, in regards to the new years resolution of 2006, I would have to say, all except one was achieved. I got a job last year, got into grad school, and kept breathing. I never actually finished my original fiction, and I'm seriously considering abandoning it. Although I love the character Tisiphone a lot, I might use her for future stories.

Okay, back to philosophical ramblings. It is not an uncommon belief that people of the echo-boomers have a sense of entitlement. Living in a democratic society, I think most people feel power belongs to the people. However, I don't think people realize that a capitalistic society is actually quite close to a despotic society. The people that are your boss control your life. You don't really have any entitlement whatsoever. It is not too unlike slavery. We are really not entitled to anything at all. But that's really not that bad. They are paying for your livelihood, so they deserve your best efforts. I could organize my thoughts and wording better in this field, but I'm too lazy at the moment to do so.

Oh, and I had a random urge to want to be a parent of a pregnant teenage daughter or a teenage son who knocked someone up. It then progressed into me wondering why people get really upset at their teenage kids when said incidence happens. This was all before I saw the movie Juno. I'm too lazy to reword the whole train of thought, so I'll just copy and paste a philosophical message I sent to Belinda:

"Anywho, there's basically 2 major ideas that brought upon this question. The first is I believe what makes life worth living is the experience it gives us. To live is better than to die. To live means to experience, and to die means to not experience. I believe no matter how uncomfortable an experience is, it is still worth experiencing, because to experience means to live. Having to deal with a pregnant teen offspring is a very unique experience that aren't experienced by a vast majority of people. That is one reason why I think said situation, although could be uncomfortable, is desirable. A second reason why I think having to deal with a pregnant teen is desirable is because I think it might be fun. It would be an interesting and unique situation to be in, to have the benefit of interacting with my grandchildren for many decades. (Although I think I'm the only one on this planet that might think this way). Teenage pregnancy of my kid would also most likely allow me to see my great grandchildren. It would be incredible to live and witnes first hand the life of many generations and how they interact.

So this brings me to the second reason. Science people are taught that everything in life is a combination of genetic and environmental factors. That is to say, behaviour is this way too. However, if our behaviours are only dictated by our genetic disposition and how we were brought up and influenced by everything around us, then what is us? We would be no different than a robot, or a piece of rock on the ground. I am uncomfortable with that, and I believe there is something more. Call it our soul, our essance, our ego, our anima, or whatever. If I was a parent, I would be confident that I had brought up my kid well enough to know better. I am also confident that my genetic disposition wouldn't dictate my kid to do that, and I'm pretty sure the girl in which I marry would be the same. Thus, taking out environmental factors and genetic factors, if my kid still do something that silly, it would prove that there is something more that makes us who we are. And that would make me happy.

The desire to want to deal with my kid being pregnant, or impregnating someone, is how the question of why parents would get upset with said situation. Personally, if I had to deal with the situation, I would first say in a matter-of-fact way, "you've been a very bad boy/girl." Then, I would point my finger at him/her, and laugh uncontrollably, saying "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! You are SOOOOOOO screwed!!" (But of course, still offer my aid as best I can). I wonder how many people on earth actually have a desire to deal with said situation."

During that period, I've asked several friends in regards to this topic. The reasons why parents are angry may be caused by shock, increase in financial stress, anger at child's irresponsibility, and anger at self for not raising child properly.

Well, that's a rather big post I think.

The Big 100!

Wow, March 12 was the last time I updated this. I really should update more often. I blame lethargy and apathy, although I attribute them as being the keys to world peace. As you can see, this is my 100th post on this blog.

First thing's first. I finished chapter 6 of my story. click here for the goods.

First off, had a post from March something, didn't finish, so combining that post to this one as well:

Started this post wayyyyyy back, can't remember what I was planning to write. Ah well, just gonna post what I had written.

Hung out with Kim. She mentioned something about a friend of a friend going to Uganda with an outreach program. The outreach program pretty much said to the group that they would most likely be raped at least once during the trip, and hands them a rape kit. Kim and I were pretty much saying how "sure, I'd like PAY to experience being raped, and possibly catch AIDS!". Also, we talked of shrunken heads "I don't care about the people that died to be my shrunken head". (Oh yea, that was what I was thinking before. AAAAHHHH, I'm being brainwashed by normality that is society, 'cause I was subconsciously making arguments of how killing of those people was mean. Because you know, we HAVE to be superficial and nice).

This is why Kim is my friend. We enjoy conversations of eating people, where such conversations would disturb most others.

That ends the post from March.

Onwards!

Urgh, don't feel like recalling all those things that I meant to have written up. It's too much effort. Let's give you the shortened version of what I can remember. And skip over all those philosophical mumbo jumbo. Tried pot a little while ago. It feels like you're drunk without the disorientation. It also feels like you haven't slept for a day, but without the grogginess. You won't be able to have a decent train of thought without great difficulties. Oh, and did I mention that it totally burned my lungs? IT HURT!!!!

Had a nice drinking get together with Sylvie and Melissa on Saturday evening. Did tarot card readings. It was a blast. The tarot cards told me my next 4 months are gonna be hell, friends are gonna drift away, and I'm probably not gonna get into any grad school. October and November are months of healing for me, but sometime at the end of November something will royally piss me off, making me angry the whole December. Things however, will take a turn for the better starting January. And supposedly I'll find love in my life at April.

I can't recall the details for Sylvie's reading, but supposedly her studies will go to shits. She'll get pregnant early next year, making her parents pretty much disown her, and she's gonna elope with her mate a couple of months later.

I bet you don't get those kinds of readings when you go to a psychic ;).

Oh, and for the first time in my life I had a hangover. And a very looonnnnggg one too. It was awful! Not gonna touch ethanol for the next several months.

That's just wrong!

Sylvie and I went and had hot and sour soup. At the end, they gave us fortune cookies. For her's it read "Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time."... in bed. WHOA! That's actually profound! It's sooooo wrong when a fortune became more profound when you add "in bed" after it.

Chapter 5 is here!

Yea, exactly what the title said. Took me long enough right? I had something else I wanted to write about in this diary, but I forgot. Ah well. It's proof that I'm getting ooooollllllddddd!

click here

I need to stop thinking.

It is quite annoying that in facebook, you look up people you want to reconnect, add them to your list of friends, and have them message you once, or twice if you're lucky, and then have them fall off the face of the planet again. What's the point? I want more than just a "hello, where have you been and what are you up to now?". I want to hear life stories. I demand life experiences. I want to know how people have changed or stayed the same. I want to know what makes a person that person. That isn't possible without actual conversations. If people aren't willing to converse, then they really shouldn't add you to their list of friends. The whole shallowness of facebook is a constant reminder of why I hated high school.
That being said, I have to keep reminding myself that I'm weird. My way of thinking and personality are a lot different than most people's. Most online quizzes have confirmed that, not to mention most of my friends confirmed it as well. I should not expect people to have the same values as me. Heck, I should not even expect people to have remotely similar values as mine. So, the question now becomes, what's important for people? I want to know. Is it to be appreciated by many? Is it to have deep connections with a few? Is it money? Is it success? How do you define success? What do you care about? What does it mean to live a good life?

The Problem of Evil

In the past, I believed that the concept of evil is an absurd one. "There are no such things as good and evil", said I in my high school grad blurb. That was because I believed people judge acts of goodness and evilness according to their own up-bringing and personal beliefs. The flaw in that thinking was brought to light in Nietzche's idea that the opposite of good is not evil, but bad (or rather, he pointed out that in the ancient Greek, that's what they thought). Good is something that has greatness and fulfills their role (ie. a sharp and hard knife is a good knife), while bad is something that don't do that (ie. a dull and soft knife is a bad knife). Evil is something all on its own. After years of thought, I decided to define evil as the following:

purposely trying to make the universe a worse place than before, for its own sake.

Which means, the only ones capable of evil are sentient beings. Acts of evil would include burning piles of recyclable paper for the sole purpose of pumping out green house emissions onto the environment (which I've done before, after the stupid recycle truck took every piece of paper outside the blue box, but not the ones inside!). Torturing a random person for the sake of causing pain and suffering for the victim and people that loves the victim.

I'm so emo it's not even funny.

Bah. CURSE YOU PHILOSOPHY!!!!

Well, now I found an answer to the question of "what good is a philosophy minor?". The answer is, "allow you to form logical arguments for depressing concepts". YEA!

It's been soooo long since I started this post, I figure I should finish it. Well, I'm currently not that emo now, so the effect isn't as great, and I've probably already lost some of my original thoughts.

Anywho, these were my thoughts. Sure we seem alive, and we appear to stay exactly the same when one cell leaves us. Even if one brain cell dies, we don't even give a damn about it. So what happens when we add one more to the mix? And one more, and so on? To what point do we consider ourselves significantly injured? How do you define you?

What exactly am I? I change every single moment. I am not the same person as before. If my brain gets damaged by a pipe similar to Gage, I'd transform into a completely different person. Should I be considered alive? Having so much difficulties defining a person, I am suspect that a you-ness or me-ness is possible. In that sense, dying is really not that bad, 'cause there really isn't a "you" that dies. That is to say, since there is no beginning of "you", then obviously there is no end of "you".

That's wonderful. Made me feel slightly better about my fear of death, but now I've got a problem of self identity. There is no "me", so why do I bother living? What's the point? Sure, we act as though there's some meaning for life, but if the truth is that once we die, we die, what does it matter? You can say that sure, it matters to you personally at that moment in time, but there's problems with that idea. First, since I have a huge difficulty defining who and what I am, I'd have difficulty understanding to what and who life is important. You may say that it's important for the people around you, and for your decendents. Well, who the heck gives a damn in 100 years? 1000 years? A million years? How about a billion years? You'd think in a billion years, people will remember someone as terrible as Hitler? And your life really doesn't matter to the people around you. Other people's lives go on. You could also say that there's no proof that we don't have souls, and there's some sort of afterlife. Well, if we have souls, and afterlife exist, then I'd be very satisfied. In fact, I would give an arm and a leg and perhaps one of my eyeballs as payment for someone to come and haunt me, if that's what it takes. Oh heck, I may as well as throw in a kidney, a lung, and one testicle while I'm at it. But what I see what's in front of me, of a functional body that moves and does things one moment, and no longer doing so the next. It's exactly the same as a funtional machine, that broke down and no longer works. We see that when machines fail, it just fails. Never again funtioning. We can't imagine a machine having a soul and have some sort of afterlife, so why do we imagine our body to contain souls?

And now for something completely different.

As some of you know, my grandparents from my dad's side aren't exactly supportive of my immediate family. They give no love to their children, but demands love and money in return. They complain that their children do not honour them. I'm not sure how common their behaviour is, but I blame confuciousm philosophy in the orient. The whole idea of filial piety is bogus. Honour your parents yes, but only if they exhibited love, and thus deserve to be honoured. Respect should only be given to individuals worthy of respect.

And now for something completely different, part 2.

I wonder, is jealousy of children common? That is to say, if children are better than you in every shape and form, what proportion of parents would be jealous? Personally, I'd want my kids to be great. That is to say, be the best at what he/she do. Be it instigate a revolution to overthrow a government, or be the best serial murderer, or one who finds the cure for every diseases, or one who brings world peace at last, or the world's best con artist, or the next Hitler, or the next Mother Teresa. What ever the deed, I'd be proud. Better to be a terrible monster than to live a life of mediocrity. If my children become monsters, I'd be proud of the fact that they became an icon for society to know what not to do.