When Books Go Wrong

I've always been very skeptical about miracle cures. My mom and sisters, on the other hand, believe it everytime someone says, "It's great! It really works!". Nevermind the advent of the Internet (and the consequential introduction of Google, that lovely tool) that provides information at your fingertips and allows you to check out the research done for yourself.

So obviously, when The Secret suddenly became the most talked about book there is, I didn't believe it. I tried reading a little bit, and I watched a little bit of the DVD, and I came to the conclusion that, "Holy crap. I can't believe people are buying this. It's ridiculous!"

The main tenet of the book is that, if you focus on what you want, you'll get it. That begs the question then of the more than 25,000 people who die of starvation every day (Source: United Nations). Are they just not focusing their minds on getting food?

Nevermind that. I'm glad at least that some Malaysians have common sense and agree with me. I've always believed that Malaysia is a country of intellectual extremes - you're either ridiculously close-minded or open-minded and intelligent (like me. Ehem.)

Suffice to say that I agree with K.W. Wong in "snide comments" regarding The Secret. Seriously, people. Come off it.

What I'm talking about: The Star: No secret here.

I'm putting on weight and I don't care

Because I'm off to the jungle for 5-weeks in exactly 10 days.

My Carbon Footprint

As calculated by carbonfootprint, my carbon footprint is 13.258 tonnes of CO2 per annum. It's deplorable. Here's my report:


What's your carbon footprint?

It's not Malaysia

From BBC: Swedish theme park ride collapses:

Dozens of fun-seekers have been injured after a theme park ride collapsed in the city of Gothenburg, in western Sweden.

Officials said around 20 people were seriously hurt in the accident, which happened at the Liseberg theme park.

Several people were thrown out of the swinging Rainbow ride in Tuesday evening's accident, police said.

See, if something like this happened in Malaysia, people would go, "Ya of course la... what do you expect?" The lack of support that Malaysians have for Malaysia just appalls me. It's like Malaysians have to work three times as hard as foreigners for other Malaysians to accept their success. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Sometimes

Sometimes it gets a bit overwhelming. Sometimes, when you get up in the morning and the first thing you think about is, "Shit. It's only Monday." Then you pull yourself out of bed and you get to work and then it's lunchtime. Then you think, "Shit. 4.5 days to go." And then you get through the day and you get home. And it's still, "Sigh. It's not even Tuesday yet."

Sometimes it's, "Shit. There's officially less than 2 weeks until I leave for 5 weeks to the middle of the Borneo rainforest with no contact to the outside world."

At this stage, I still have a list of things that I could do in the next few weeks that I have to put on hold for at least 2.5 months because of Sabah and Puasa and Raya, and it just seems like forever. And for some reason I feel like I'm so scared of missing out on doing things that I may regret not doing that I have to do them. I have to.

It's 12.39 a.m., 15 July 2008, and it's officially less than 2 weeks until I leave to the Borneo rainforest.