Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

It’s been five months since I’ve ‘moved’ to Australia to study. How’s it been? Life is different, and I think I finally realise what it feels like to mature. For once in my life, I can actually say that I’m maturing. Independence and responsibility are mandatory. I miss everything in Malaysia. I can’t stop counting down the days till I go back.

Have you ever looked back on your life and realised how simple things were? Especially when you had everything? Thats what I’ve done and I’ve just never been happy with what I had. It’s sad to always miss things or people.

I live in the past a lot. If I don’t change, I don’t know how I’ll ever enjoy the threads of my life before they runs out.

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

Everyone hates social smokers. Smoking socially seems to be fine, but admitting that you do seems to be an act that has been condemned.

Social smoking is basically someone who smokes only when his/her friends are smoking too. However, social smoking has modernly been defined as something done by ‘losers’ who are just wannabes and do it to be cool and to socialize because they are unable to socialize through conversation and normal methods. I too, agreed with this, until I thought about it and realised that social smoking goes much deeper than doing it just to socialize with peers. We all often condemn smoking itself as something done by people who just want to be cool in front of others and many smokers just say that they are too addicted to stop (which is usually true). Thats an entirely different article though – So because we already think of it negatively, those that smoke socially basically can’t use the excuse of being addicted thus we accuse them of smoking thus causing hazards to their own health for the sake of making friends. This itself already sounds pretty harsh, but theres much more to it.

What if you looked at social smoking as an activity done for enjoyment? Smoking is definately enjoyable and so it can be categorized here too. So smoking can become ideal as something friends do together, thus it can be like drinking beer or just hanging out and playing video games. Social smoking can thus occur when someone just wants a stick to enjoy, kind of like shisha. Well, this made sense to me – Whether addicted or not, as long as they are enjoying it, social smokers seem to be fine because they’re just involving themselves into something they want to receive enjoyment from.

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

Graduation from college was nice and simple. Passed through my life like another simple event.

My results, however, involved much more concern and anxiety. Just receiving my results today, I’m relieved that the outcome was indeed better than what I had expected due to my performance over the year in college. I’ve always had results for my finals that are either predicted or above my predictions. Basically, I’ve always had it easy when it comes to collection of results and because of that I have started to think about the other people who have it different.

I went through a ton of stress though already giving myself an honest prediction of what I thought I could get. But what about the stress others may go through who have no definitive idea of what they are going to see in their results? It’s like gambling, is it not? I am not saying that my confidence is always there and that I’m some kinda smart-ass who can score or something – however, it is just something I have thought about. First I thought about if it was possible to take your results and not have an idea of what you are about to see – then I thought it had to be existent.

Then again, I have heard that this is how it is in University – you won’t have a clue about what your marks are going to be.

This is where the worrying part comes. A sudden change of how things have gone as a routine for so many years – will that affect me?

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” – Niels Bohr (1885 – 1962)

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

This article is based purely from logical thinking, and not out of psychological research of any sort.

So back in high-school there were various things we could have been like the perfectionist, the sportsmen and so on. This article focuses on the bullies and the victims.

Contrary to regular belief, not all bullies are the same. We’ve all heard that usual statement of how they’re all the same or how they’re all cowards. I don’t think that a guy willing to beat the crap out of you is a coward. The modern day bullies can be anyone, and through observation it seems that bullies aren’t like the ones in movies anymore. Bullies these days don’t just stop at picking on smaller people they see as nerds or geeks anymore, nowadays bullies stand as independent figures that victimize anyone they can.

To me, the reasons bullies exist can be summed up in a few reasons.

The bully may do this because he wants to receive attention. By doing anything rebelious, it is obvious that attention is received both when he/she is caught and forcefully received from the victim that they bully. A bully may also want to show the world that he/she is independent and by showing the world that they are above others, this will give them satisfaction in thinking that they are able to take care of themselves.

Lunch money or any other physical loot can be plundered from the victims. Apart from this, other gains such as power itself is involved. This power is obviously power through fear which can be easily related to Hitler. So do these bullies try to be Hitler? Hah, maybe.

All in all, most bullies would probably do what they do to gain respect, to show the world that they are superior to everyone else. Most teenage bullies gain their larger size through their upbringing thus it is ironic how they use this ‘given’ frame for such uses.

So why do people call bullies cowards anyway? Tell your son to stand up to the bully because the bully is just a coward and your son will be shitting teeth he swallowed after getting them smacked in. Bullies do what they do to show that they’re more powerful, why would a coward do it? Nowadays, there aren’t many bullies that are ‘insecure’. Do you think saying out loud “Hey! I know you cry under your blanket every night you insecure coward! Thats all you do!” is gonna make him feel guilty and sob to his Mummy and Daddy? Uh, no. He’s gonna bring a fist to your face so fast, you won’t even be able to cuss. Bullies aren’t cowards – even if they were, fuck with them and they’ll probably have connections to fuck you deeper than what you did. Sucks doesn’t it? The only thing bullies are probably afraid of are either their parents (not likely) and the police so yeah, thats the only way to handle them – or you could let your son just go through it like all normal kids would have to do and not humiliating him in front of his friends and that girl he has a crush on.

Bullies continue to exist because of obvious reasons right? Bullies get it all! Power, control, wealth (little exaggerated), respect and even the chicks sometimes. So whats there not to love? Apart from the occassional parental arguements and police run-ins, you’ll be living a life like a teenage pimp. To be a bully though, you’d probably have to have a larger frame than the average kid-next-door and be have a face that scares him easily just so you don’t have to get your hands dirty to run your extortion.

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

PS: The above quote is utter bullshit.

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

Definition/History
There are those that Blog and those that do not. The Blog itself is basically an online diary. “The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999. This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb.” (Wikipedia)

So.. Why do we write Blogs?
Firstly, why do we read Blogs? We read Blogs for the same reasons that we read any sort of news or entertainment piece on the Internet. If a Blog is entertaining, we usually keep ourselves updated with new postings (ofcourse, if the blog is frequently updated, it gives us newer things to read each time we check). Thus, a Blog is a form of entertainment that is presented to us as an online diary sort of thing.

With this in mind, is it not obvious that the reason Blogs are written are for entertainment purposes? Unless we are not looking to advertise our Blog, our Blogs are literally made for the publics’ eyes. Thus, placing the Blog URL in MSN messages, or telling lots of friends to read it just shows that the owner is seeking attention mainly.

So, there are various types of Blogs – You can call this website itself a Blog too. Blogs can present entities such as information, opinions, feelings, and many others. Blogs give us a basic freedom of speech, it gives us a basis to let ourselves be heard by the world thus sharing opinions and information to the world can be very much helpful. However, sharing feelings to the world? Unless you just want a single person to read your Blog to get him/her to read the secret message in your blog; I do not see the purpose of letting the public in on your world. Or heck, I don’t see the purpose of getting the public to read about your world (that is usually emotionally exaggerated). “My life sucks, I want to die. I want to die now.” – Isn’t it obvious that the user (whether genuinely depressed or not) is just seeking pity from an individual, a party or maybe even from strangers?

So mix up the two things together and what do we have? Its simple, the worst form of blogging is basically writing long emotional pages and then publicizing them to get everyone to read about your sad little life. This then causes them to pretend to care about you because they were probably mean to you at school the other day. A diary was made to be private – Blogs were made to be public thus feelings were never supposed to be thrown into them. My theory is that Blogs were always about information, then opinion and from opinion, feelings started to inhabit them.

“The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.” – Kevin Kelly

PS: This post is pretty messy, I don’t know, didn’t plan out the text too well.

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

Does freedom really exist?

So first, let me define freedom as “exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc.” or maybe “the power to determine action without restraint”. These seem like the best definitions to me (dictionary.com as always).

Everyone wants freedom. The word itself represents much more than just a single definition. Just seeing a sign bearing the word “FREE” itself grabs our attention with ease. But do we even know what freedom really is or whether it even exists?

In most opinions, freedom can mean various things depending on the situation. The easiest example would be a prisoner of some sort looking to be free or another example, a teenager who has just finished his exams and considers himself ‘free’ from school on his holidays. However, in my opinion, there is no freedom. The prisoner escapes – he runs – he is free – he finds a place to stay, he has to hide, he dodges police when they walk by, he wears a disguise everyday – not freedom. The boy has his holidays – he goes out the next day – he parties, he drinks, he dances, he smiles – his parents call him and ask him where the hell he is, he frowns. – not freedom. Maybe I’m interpreting it wrong, lets say the prisoner was set free legally, but would he ever be able to escape from the shame and embarassment of being marked as an ex-convict? Or the boy, his parents were dropouts, they don’t care about him – he can do whatever he wants, after the party he gets caught by police being an underage boy drinking, still not freedom.

We’ll never have what we’ve all wanted. What I am refering to is the ultimate freedom. The freedom to go where we want, to be what we want, to do what we want, it does not exist. However free we might think we are, there is always a constraint somewhere if not another human, the law, or even physics.

Why do men believe in god? Because they believe in the afterlife of being free isn’t it? This is the reason men believe it is wrong to sin, because if you sin, you will be imprisoned in hell forever in your afterlife – Ever thought why we still believe in all this? Because we really have yet to find the ultimate freedom though this is referred to heaven very often and that is entirely another article altogether…

After reading this, atleast the word ‘freedom’ won’t be used so often. I just finished my exams – I’m free, but not free enough to do what I want. We are all free in our own ways, knowing we have this freedom makes us proud because we feel responsible for something. This is our freedom. This is our own flavour of it, we’ve always had such freedom – to think of what we want – We have the freedom to be confident or not and that is what we should practise. Confidence usually makes us think we are free, confidence has been referred to as the feeling gives us the edge, the edge we think is freedom. Just remember though, there is no real freedom.

“Because you are in control of your life. Don’t ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.” – Barbara Hall

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

Feeling emotional in terms of depression hasn’t exactly been how I’ve been at all lately. My life has been fine and nothing much has pushed me down for a while.

But I just read a post off my old blog that was a little more than a year ago. Entitled “Life is a Bottomless Pit”, it can be found here.

The Funny Part
Lets comment on this, first, the colourful words of emo-ness make me giggle a little bit. “The frowns I make each day like the blood that seep from my wounds.” – I love that line, because it just doesn’t make any sense. So everytime I frown I lose blood? Its a pretty crap metaphor. The first line, “The life I live in today feels empty.” – I think its grammatically correct but it lacks something… Sense. If I were living in lets say a container that was labelled ‘life’, how would it then feel empty? Wait, unless the container was really large and I looked around and there was nothing, but how then would I know I was in a container. Then again, how can life be referred to as a container? If I was to live in this container and when I said that it felt empty because I was missing something except friends or stuff… Then wait, how come my friends can come to my container? Don’t they live in their own containers too? Uhh.

The Emo Part
Right. Apart from the above, reading this post really does make me think of the numerous things that has happened in only one year. First of all, now, I’m just about to graduate from college (the post mentioned I wanted to go to college) and its definately been fun. The friends I’ve mentioned in that post have totally gone – or atleast we’ve just drifted while some really have left my side. The post kind of mentioned I was bored and wanted to get into a relationship. I did get into one soon enough, but as much as I loved the girl I got into the relationship with, I regretted as much because of how I had betrayed one of my friends and lost his friendship in the process. I don’t know how things are between me and him now, hopefully he’s forgiven me – But I still, to this day, feel that the pain that the three of us went through was just not worth it.

The Moral
Being bored is just a feeling of desperation. A feeling that can cause us to hastefully make decisions because we think we know what we want. We’re all just finding our way in life so take it easy and be careful not to rush into anything you’ll regret. Making quick decisions to find something you think you want can bring you things that you won’t be able to control.

“Give no decision till both sides thou’st heard.” – Phocylides

Note: This is an archived blog post from an old personal blog, On The Contrary. Please see this post for more details

We all live in a world that we think we know.

In a community of our own, we sit in our cosy chairs enjoying the company we’ve chosen.

Once we open the door to the outside world, however, we look upon the horizon. Faces stare back at us, eyes fixed on our position, faces we have never seen before. Tropical trees we cannot recognize towered above them shading their already mysterious visages.

This website acts as a reminder of how important it is to understand everything around us. Apart from some personal postings, articles will serve as presenters of opinion – My opinions on various aspects in the modern world we live in today.

Read the articles with an open-mind and take my perspective as yours.

Life only comes once – understand it.

“What is important is to keep learning, to enjoy challenge, and to tolerate ambiguity. In the end there are no certain answers.” – Martina Horner