Random thought:

"Buddha jumps over the wall", in my opinion, is by far the BEST name that any dish can have. The name of the dish is itself a complete and grammatically correct sentence. Being the name of a dish, this makes it a proper noun too. This leads to interesting possible constructions of garden-path sentences such as:

"The Buddha jumps over the wall tastes good."

"I like Buddha jumps over the wall."

Seriously, how cool is it to have the name of a dish being a complete sentence? What's more, this complete sentence tells you nothing about the dish, which makes its name all the more cool.

Supposedly the name of the dish is meant to imply that the dish, which contains meat, is so good that even Buddha himself, an advocate of vegetarianism (if there's such a word), would jump over the wall to eat it. Good thing though that Buddha is mortal, otherwise that would constitute as blasphemy.

Perhaps the name of the dish itself pokes fun at Buddhism. The name does make sense, since Buddha doesn't have special powers, so he could only jump over a wall. But what if the one whom one wishes to suan has some powers? Let's see...

Moses parts the wall.
Jesus rebukes the wall.
Muhammad flies over the wall.
Xenu H-bombs the wall.
Xun Zi punishes the wall.
Lao Zi becomes one with the wall.
Mencius nurtures the wall.
Shiva destroys the wall.
Vishnu creates an opening in the wall.
Brahma... preserves his status of hunger.

I'm off for England tomorrow, not sure if I'll have internet access. Blog may die.

Random thoughts.

Hindsight bias: "I knew I loved you before I met you."

And the perfect retort: "Don't say you love me, you don't even know me."

Ok old joke.

The weather, in my opinion, has been PERFECT recently. Sunny and Windy at the same time! Sunlight supposedly has an anti-depression effect, and being able to keep cool in the blazing sun is just wonderful. Maybe it is the effect of PSLE Science on me, but it always reminds me that it's a good day to take out the laundry (despite the fact that I don't do housework).

If you are feeling random, click here.

I've discovered the ultimate IM act-cute expression:

squee~ *dies*

I wonder if people with Prosopagnosia(inablility to recognize faces) can judge beauty. Could they be the "disinterested observers" that Kant seek?

Angst ahead. Be forewarned.
____

I don't want to be a bad person. I try not to appear like one. But I could just end up not appearing like a bad person. I still have bad thoughts, and bad thoughts are punished by bad feelings.

Why do I deserve bad feelings? I have tried hard to be good. But it seems like there is more to being a good person than acting like one. Good people have good thoughts, that's why they behave well, right?

I have bad thoughts, and I am punished by bad feelings, but I have tried to be good!

Why do good people deserve to feel good? They are born this way. It so happens that good thoughts are what they think. They become good people, and they feel good. Not fair! I want to be a good person too! I want to have good thoughts like a good person, so that I don't need to try hard act like a good person, and still be good. I want to be a self that is good.

But changing the self is as foreign a concept as death. It seems like it is impossible to become a good person with good thoughts, since I am already a bad person with bad thoughts. Whether I act like a good person or a bad person, I will still be punished by my bad thoughts. Why do I still act like a good person, then?

Because doing bad things will make me feel even worse than thinking bad things. If I act like a good person, I will only be punished by bad feelings due to bad thoughts; if I act like a bad person, I would be punished for both my bad thoughts and bad action.

I don't feel good even if I act like a good person, because I don't have good thoughts like they do. But at least I don't feel worse than I currently do. Maybe if I do more good, they become a habit, then I don't have to listen to be bad thoughts and be punished by them so much.

I don't know who are the good people. But if I meet one, I won't know if he or she is a good person or not. His or her good intentions and thoughts will surely be doubted by my bad, cynical self. And my bad thoughts and actions will surely be interpreted as those having good purposes and good intentions.

In my world, I can't find good people. In their world, they can't find bad people. I am a bad person, and I feel sad for other bad people, because they are punished for their bad thoughts, and I don't think it's their fault. The good people, on the other hand, are glad that everyone is good, because they are rewarded for having good thoughts, and they don't have to work for it.

I want to be a good person. But I don't know how.
___________

Two incidences involving little kids.

When I was at Metro, I saw two boys, around the age of 5, playing on a chair. Then, a man came by and pushed a pram with a boy in it, and the boy looked like he was 4 years old. One of the boys playing on the chair pointed at the pram, and shouted, "Baby! Baby!" The other boy on the chair turned around, and also pointed at the boy in the pram, shouting, "Baby!"

I chuckled to myself, "50 bu4 xiao4 100 bu4."

The boy in the pram turned and just looked at those two boys. The man appeared embarrassed, and he explained to me, "He's not a baby, he's just lazy to walk." Then, the man pushed the pram along the aisle, and I heard him say, "They called you a baby. Why? It's because you are sitting in the pram. You are already so old..."(cannot hear) Then, he pushed the pram back to where the two boys were, and again, the two boys pointed at him and again shouted, "Baby! Baby!" It appeared that this time, the boy in the pram understood that he was being insulted by them, and he climbed out of his pram, walked up to them, and GLARED at them. Boy, did he look furious! The boys who called him "Baby" stopped immediately, and went behind the chair, staring at that boy. That boy continued glaring at them. This stalemate ended when the man held the boy's hand and walked away.

Really, that scene is priceless.

Today, I sat next to a little girl, about 4 years old. She smiled at me! Goodness. It brought joy to me.

Random stuff:

Why are the words that you are supposed to shout when you are in an emergency so difficult to shout? For example, in English you shout "Help!" which ends with a "p", so it doesn't carry. In Mandarin you shout "Jiu Ming" which is even worse. (Although Mandarin has an advantage that you can add an "ah" at the back, so "Jiu Ming Ah!" is still proper mandarin, but "Help ah!" just sounds weird.) Perhaps, when we need help, we should just shout "AHHHHHH" since it is probably an exclamation word in every language, and it is easier to shout.

Horlicks contains as much calcium as 5 glasses of milk, as much vitamin B6 as 48 bananas, and as much iron as 3 kg of spinach! Wow! I'll bet sea water contains more of these. Of course, that would depend on how much Horlicks and seawater you are comparing. (Don't you think "Horlicks" is a rather provocative name?)

As I browsed through NTUC aimlessly, I found out that they stock palm margarine, sunflower seed margarine, canola margarine, olive margarine, and extra virgin olive margarine. Wait, canola and olive margarine? Aren't canola and olive oil considered healthy oils because of their high monounsaturated fat content? So when you hydrogenate canola/olive oil, wouldn't you get really expensive margarine that has as much monounsaturated goodness as palm kernal oil? But that's not just it. Theoretically, hydrogenation is reversible, so some dehydrogenation should take place at the same time, and by Saytzeff's rule, you should get some extra trans fatty goodness too!

So theoretically, canola and olive margarine should be more expensive and contain more trans fats than palm margarine, since palm oil naturally contains more saturated fats and thus need to be hydrogenated to a lesser extent. However, it turns out that from a comparison of the nutrition value chart, the proportion of trans fats os as follows:

Praise(Palm) > Canola > Olive > Planta(Palm) > Extra Virgin Olive

Quite surprising. But once you consider price, Planta owns all. And it doesn't even need to be refrigerated.

I was somewhat against ranting about people not blogging despite the fact that A levels are over (assumption is correct as none of the blog-owners whom I read from take H3 Econs), since my math teacher used to say, "When you point a finger at others, four more are pointing at yourself." Thus, if I didn't blog despite my A levels being over, then I would be a hypocrite. But wait, the very act of ranting against all the others who do not blog after A levels constitutes a blogging action, and thus I am immunized against the tetraretrophallanx attack. Hence, I continue.

When blogs close down and become inactive as A level approaches, one would suspect that the approach of A levels is the cause of the inactivity. However, the converse of the hypothesized cause, i.e., the end of A levels, does not reverse the trend. Blogs remain dead. It is possible that blogs have a certain natural lifespan, because the creator gets bored after too long, regardless of whether he has other important things to do. In normal times, you see blogs dying, then getting resurrected, or new people starting to blog, with no regular pattern. CT 2 come, they start dying. But unlike neopets, dying blogs do eventually become dead when nobody visits it anymore.

So will blogs resurrect after A levels? I hope so, because they are sources of entertainment. However, some blogs may die for a long long time as the creators have something (or someone) to occupy themselves with, and thus are far too busy to blog. Oh well.

I think Stephanie Sun's "ASEAN Rise" is nice.

I was feeling lethargic before the A levels were over, because there was this nagging feeling that I should study despite me not wanting to. Now that the A levels are over, I hear people making self-improvement plans, and stress starts again! This signals the end of the competition for grades, and the beginning of the competition in life. The end of A levels doesn't really feel that great after all. When we were preparing for A levels, there was an end in sight, and we could look forward to it, and expect ourselves to be truly free from our sole responsibility of study. Doesn't it seem so? Regarding anything that bugs you in a couple of years time, you are told that "It's okay, focus on your A levels first." Now that A levels has ended, it starts to dawn on me that "WTF it's just the beginning!" There are still some 60 years ahead, and the supposedly best part of life, teenage, is over. Perhaps, reminiscing the old times would make it seem more wonderful than what it truly felt like at that time, because our memories are fallible, and people prefer to share the happier moments with others. Thus, as time passes by, the bad events fade out of our memories and the happy memories get exaggerated, distorted, and reinforced. Moreover, as past events are communicated in language and not in terms of emotion and sensation, the value judgment on an event would change as we age, since the connotations of words change as we use words differently.

It is a rather scary thought that the way we alter our memories of the past implies that past can always seem like a better period than the present or future. Wouldn't it seem like life has always been getting worse as one ages? From Dan Gilbert's TEDTalk, it seems like we can rationalize our joy and pain away, such that a person who is paralyzed and a person who won the top prize in lottery would feel just as happy in a year's time (it doesn't sound convincing here, but go watch the talk, it's good). As such, even though we strive towards what we believe to be our sources of happiness, our rationalization ensures that once we get there, we'll stop being happy, and we are back to square one in terms of happiness. Happiness that we aim for is not the happiness we get.

Yet is there any source of happiness that the mind cannot rationalize away, such that we can constantly rely on it as a source of happiness despite making no actual progress? I think the answer lies in a certain part of the brain that can be triggered by an electric impulse. Sounds amazing. That person getting treated by the impulse may be rendered useless to the society as he may simply work towards the trigger, but he'll be very happy unless the people who give him to electrical impulses decide to use him as a remote controlled human. He'll probably feel like a slave to his passions instead of being a real slave who is forced to do the things he don't want to do. If you pity this guy, maybe you should pity those who are in love as well. It doesn't seem like they have a choice either.

I digress much. Therefore I win.

I can see how crocodiles and hippos survived the Cambrian Explosion that killed the other dinosaurs, but what about elephants? They couldn't all have been in the water at the time it happened. And they were too big to be underground with the small ratty mammals from whence we evolved. Why do we still see elephants today? --Fuhghettaboutit 01:15, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Dug from Wikipedia. Entertaining.

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