Power to the People

Warning: This is a general blog post with no real point and so rambles on for a while. Don't complain if you decide to read it and go, "what the fuck was that?" at the end. 

Has anyone noticed how smoking on TV has become persona non grata? Seriously, try to find a contemporary TV show with someone smoking and it's either a classic bad guy character or it's a main character with a guilty vice trying to hide it from his friends.

It just goes to show how powerful the media can be. They decided that smoking is bad for people. They decided to champion the cause. And look at what's happened. It's like the whole, what I like to call, 'Plastic Bag Incident'. Someone somewhere one day decided to go to war against plastic bags, and now everyone has to pay 10 cents for a bag.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for these movements that help the world (I hope) and try to uphold values for impressionable young children. It's just scary how powerful the media can be when they're harping on an issue. They should support more causes like that.

Which brings me to my next issue - what the hell is up with these 'Community Service Ads' on the radio these days? It's ridiculous. They're out there saying things like, "Don't put your handbags in plain sight - it will get stolen" or "Don't put cushions in your car - thieves will target women's cars". Am I the only one who thinks this is retarded?

Why are women being blamed for having their handbags stolen? Why don't the ads say, "Don't steal. Stealing is wrong. Get a job."? What is wrong with these people? Yes, that's right, 104.9 Red FM. I'm talking about you. Get your head on straight.

All Woman

I've decided to follow up on the I Am Woman blog post. After about 3 weeks of taking the prescribed treatment for my condition (which, by the way, is neither serious nor permanent - rather, it's dependent on conditions like stress, environment, etc), there's actually a difference.

I no longer feel (quite as) aggro when I'm driving (though I still call most people retards on the road). My skin feels and looks better, and though I don't feel the need to dress in pink, I definitely feel more settled. It's amazing the effect that hormones can have on people. 

Actually, it's quite scary. I mean - you go through your whole life thinking, "This is me. This is who I am." Then you find out that you change a little bit after a bit of pills that aren't even prescription and there's a mindfuck right there. That's how much we are dictated by our physiology. Whoa.

On the Dangerous Topics of Islam and Translations

Those whom I follow on Twitter can quite easily be categorised.

1. News sources: @reuterskl, @staronline
2. Humour and merriment: @ichcheezburger, @qdb, @aaronkaro
3. Entertainment: @thesuperficial, @junkonline, @klue
4. Hoping for good deals/freebies: @airasiadotcom, @digi_telco
5. Friends

And then there are those that even I don't know why I follow, like the subject of today's blog post: @EvilBibleQuotes. I want to say that it's a source of humour and merriment, so that I can laugh at those idiot heathens (j/k... or am I?) and their silly ways. Like in this tweet:

American Family Assoc.: Exodus21 demands executing whale and SeaWorld director after whale "murders" its trainer. http://bit.ly/954YOK

Pat Robertson: "Waving those [Gay Day] flags in God's face... will bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor." http://bit.ly/58vQry

The last one is fun because it reminds me that it's not only Malaysian dignitaries that make stupid comments.

But the fact is that @EvilBibleQuotes doesn't just quote the Bible. They (quite rightly, I might add) also quote the Koran, the Torah and I assume other bibles of other faiths.

It's actually a bit disturbing, some of the quotes that come up:

Men are in charge of women...for those women who you fear may rebel, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them. Sura 4:34

Gentiles who study the Torah deserve death, for it's written: Moses commanded us
a law for an inheritance-it's ours, not theirs. Sanhedrin59

And the last, the one that prompted this post:

O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him. Bukhari 52:256

That one set me thinking: it's unlikely that the Koran would have propagated such a thing, because in all technicality, Muslims are allowed to marry the people of the 4 bibles - the Koran, the Torah, the Zaboor and the Injil (the original Christian bible) without them converting because all are recognised to be people of God. In fact, in all technicality, a Muslim can marry Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews without them converting.

So how can it be that the Koran advocates the killing of Jews - the people of the same God? Could it be due to a mistranslation due to the current political headwinds of the time? Don't forget, up until a few hundred years ago, reading was not a right - it was a privilege and a hobby for the rich because books were difficult to print and thusly expensive. In fact, it was only in the 1400s that printing books became efficient enough to be cheap and done mechanically.

Most books printed before the invention of movable type were actually copied out by hand, slowly and painstakingly by scribes who played a very important role in civilisations. Obviously, mistakes were made sometimes, though scribes prided themselves on accuracy and speed. And just as obviously, it was easy to subject the translations to the interpretation of the times due to political/religious warfare. And we all know how that ends.

How is it, then, that the Koran advocates the killing of a Jew?

Various Disclaimers:
I've read the Koran in Arabic a few times but I don't speak Arabic so I don't pretend to know what it means. Also, this is pure speculation on the part of someone who's not educated in any of these fields other than everyday Islamic tenets. And also, if you flame illogically, I won't post your comment. And this post was not intended as a flame for @EvilBibleQuotes. I don't think they're doing anything wrong. They could actually be perpetuating mutual understanding.

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Tiger Temple, Kanchanaburi, Thailand

I went to Kanchanaburi, Thailand over the Chinese New Year holidays to go and see the famed Tiger Temple that my parents discovered last year. Being animal (and especially cat) lovers, my sisters and I were totally up for it.

So off we went, other experiences totally aside (it was a hell of a trip!), and I was all ready to submit a review on TripAdvisor when I discovered some differing opinions of the temple. It's pretty intense what people are saying about the temple, so of course I just had to write up an entry on the allegations and some ridiculously asinine comments.

To start with, some had apparently accused the monks who run the temple of drugging the tigers to make them compliant, de-clawing them and only feeding them vegetarian food. These have been disproved and and are totally and absolutely not true.

The more serious accusations were that the tigers were being kept in cages and were being chained, not being allowed to roam free. Some say that the sole reason the tigers were being kept was to get money for the temple and not for the welfare of the tigers. Here's the thing. It is.

• The big picture is that the abbot of the temple isn't just a tiger man. Sure, he cares for the animals and wants to ensure they don't become extinct - but he also cares for the community. He provides jobs for the local village people (hee hee, village people), built a school for local children, built a free clinic, promotes free education and free access to water and does so much more with the money as well.
• Some on TripAdvisor commented that it's a tourist trap, and that he'd rather see the tigers in the wild. Well with less than 800 Indochinese tigers left in the world, I wonder just how he's going to swing that.
• Some said that the surroundings were not clean and that the water was dirty. When I went, it wasn't. The area was very clean. The water bottles left around were due to dirty tourists who ignored trash cans. I can't verify or deny this because it's something that could change from week to week.
• Others said that the tigers were beaten and chained and that means that they're not happy. The fact is that the temple has a very good reproduction rate - and cats who are not happy will not reproduce.
• While some say that the Tiger Island that is being built with proceeds from daily activities is not actually being built, I've seen it with my own eyes. It's incomplete but it's almost there, and once it's done, the tigers will have a much more comfortable environment.

Here's the benefit of my own personal experience with cats: the tigers looked like very happy, very contented cats. While some don't like the way they're treated - they're chained and dragged around and etc - it's just like a big collar on a cat. A tiger has a thick hide so petting them or touching them gently does not result in anything other than them thinking you're an annoying fly. And you are. Because you're an idiot.

Yes, I would love to live in a world where the tigers roam free and are not confined. Unfortunately, we live in a world where people poach these gorgeous creatures, skin them, grind up their bones, and do god knows what else. With less than 800 Indochinese tigers in the world, we desperately need institutions like these to help replenish the population and safeguard their future. Once there are enough, we can hopefully slowly release them to the wild.

To that end, I will not submit my review to TripAdvisor, but will do so here.

Tiger Temple, Kanchanaburi

The Tiger Temple is awesome! You get to play with tiger cubs and hang with the big cats. It's an experience unlike any other. I recommend it for all cat lovers. Here's a few things to remember though:

• The people at the tiger temple are not there to serve you. You are there because they let you be there. Show some respect.
• Bring some Baht with you so that you can do what you want. Pictures with the tiger's head in your lap are THB1,000, whether individually or in a group. Feeding the cubs is THB1,000 as well and most definitely worth the money as you get to play with them for half an hour with some toys, then feed them a bottle of milk.
• Listen to the advice of the monks, the workers and the volunteers. Don't forget, these are wild animals.

Don't forget that the big picture aim is to (1) replenish the cats' numbers in the world, (2) rehabilitate them for the wild, and (3) have a respectable number of big cats in the wild. This is my world, and that's how I'd like it. Please and thank you.