It’s a day after the last of practicum. And I wake up so early?

What to do, I knocked out immediately after reaching home yesterday and slept till now resulting in me missing a Gosho study last night and an Education Seminar this morning. This is not good at all; I don’t need rest for I am RA!

Will post some pics of my students when I have more energy. Back to bed for another 2 hours before Gajukai.

What is the difference between a poster and a brochure?

A brochure is the same as poster, but it is different.

Courtesy of one of my students. Aren't they just adorable?

Finally making waves~~~

KJ wrote in his blog recently, commenting that he was amazed at the length of my posts. And wondered how I do it. Here’s how:

Firstly, I don’t always think with my brain. Just take a look at the disclaimer I have. After being a web-surfer for years and seeing thousands and thousands of blogs, I learnt that 99% of those blogs have authors saying that they are writing to share a piece of their minds or thoughts. Sharing too much of my mind makes me mindless, and the same for thoughts.

Hence, most of the time, I try to write from the heart. But then, the nice doctors at CMPB told me that I suffer from irregular heartbeat and heart murmur. That means that once in a while, I tend to be a heartless jerk.

And of course, at times like that, I have no choice but to do my thinking with my backside. We all know that backsides are always full of crap (pun intended). That is exactly what this particular post is.

Now, I must also admit that there will be times where I think with my penis. I am, after all, a hot-blooded male human. But when fingers communicate with the penis, their thoughts are not usually on typing a blog.

*hic! Early in the morning and I’m semi-drunk because the bloody sun is too hot!*

Some young people, in an attempt to forget their anguish and pain, use a knife to cut themselves. This technique is widely claimed to have worked. They shift your pain from the mental to the physical. And it is also well-documented that this problem of self-abuse is rather widespread.

My only peeve with it is: why not just bite yourself! That was our most powerful weapons before civilizations. And if you’d never realized, we humans do have very sharp teeth and evolution had not blunted them. If you don’t believe me, please go and bite yourself!

Oh ya, if you ever talked on the phone with me, ever wondered why I keep asking you to speak up? I’m 50% deaf in the left ear and 30% deaf in the right. That is why I can tolerate loud noises from my students and have the tendency to speak really loudly sometimes. Someday I’m going to miss hearing my own voice.

Okies, I’m off to bite myself.

In response to a Cindirella's recent post:

How do you even begin to comment on a post like this that demands attention? Maybe I should begin with a scenario you should have seen. In an episode of “Desperate Housewives”, Lynette was having the hardest time handling her children when the thought of suicide entered her mind, manifested on the screen by the vision of her dead friend(the narrator) urging her to pull the trigger on her pistol. Fortunately, she didn’t, and when she learnt later that her friends had equally struggled with parenthood, suddenly things are endurable.

KJ brought up a good point on people, who understands our profession, will really take their hats off us. This sort of explains why teachers tend to “click” together because there is a certain degree of truth that it takes one teacher to truly empathize with another.

Being jealous of our peers is the most natural of human tendencies, yet nothing can be more destructive to our mental resistance. Jealousy is an emotion that arises from the primeval and beastly of our spirituality. But there will always be times where we can’t help ourselves and fall into this personal abyss.

Feeling inferior is the natural extension of jealousy. I remembered the first time I let jealousy totally overwhelm me. It was when I missed a single point during the PSLE to enter the Special Stream. There were classmates who had always performed weaker than me making it for the Special Stream. Instead of blaming the self for not studying hard enough, I find myself cursing them and started to wallow in self-pity. It did not help that in my childish arrogance, all the closer friends I’d made in my secondary school are from the Special Stream. When the O-levels were here, every single one of them went to a top-5 JC with me as an exception. And to make matter worse, every single one of my cousins, including my own siblings are from the top-5 JCs. I was the only exception. The pressure and the weight of inferiority crushed me so badly that for the next 4 years, I self-inflicted depression on myself and my life in the JC and NS was the most miserable I’d known.

And yes, I truly felt that everyone around me is doing so much better than me and I no longer dared to cherish any big dreams. And to add oil to fire, I applied for NUS and got NTU. WTF!

It took a long time to climb out of that abyss. But the first step is to excommunicate yourself from the self-pity. You are not doing badly with your life. If others appear to be doing very well, then congratulate them. That does not make you any less capable. Your potential simply lies in other areas. Believe whole-heartedly that you are full of potential to become a truly noble human.

Aright, I know the paragraph prior to this one sounds preachy and all, and I know that words can be cheap. But all I wish you to know is that there are friends around you (Inclusive of me! *smiles*) that sincerely wish you success and happiness. Be strong!

A friend lamented the fact that the world is a sad place and is total unfair. And in a sense, it is very true. There are those who are born ill or crippled while others are healthy and enjoy favorable circumstances. What is the cause of such a difference in fortune, even among infants who are yet able to live out their lives?

And then there are others who just can’t seem to be able to do well no matter how hard they try, while others appear to achieve success with relative little difficulty. Is it luck? Can it be because some people are just meant to luckier and more fortunate than others?

Before I begin to answer these questions, I would like to mention the law of causality inherent in life. In layman terms, this law is often referred to as the cause and effect of life. This law actually plays a heavy role in influencing the direction of our lives. Everything that takes place does so because there is a cause and similarly, every cause yields some kind of result. Nothing happens completely spontaneously, without some sort of underlying cause.

A good cause will produce a positive result or effect and a bad cause will give rise to a negative result or effect. This principle then leads us to the concept of karma. Karma is a latent force, or potential in life that when activated by an external stimulus, produces a corresponding good or bad effect (happiness or suffering).

It is this acceptance of the concept of karma that allows me to discard the idea that our lives begins at birth and ends at death, be it to go to heaven, hell or otherwise. I prefer to embrace the concept of the eternality of life, and that living and dying are but parts of a cycle not unlike the flow and ebb of the tides, the changing of kinetic energy to potential energy and back, obeying the same rhythm as the rest of the cosmic ecology. This is because karma will have to transcend a single lifetime. The principle of karma has been operating in our lives since the remotest past and will continue to do so in the limitless future.

Hence, the answer to the questions at the beginning of this essay is that of the individual humans harvesting their karma.

However, karma should not only be used to understand the present circumstances but rather, expanded to understand how we can determine our future. Instead of viewing our lives as the harvesting of past karma, we should instead actively seek to create positive karma. We do this by shifting our focus from harvesting to sowing.

Buddhist philosophy of karma is not fatalistic. There is no ill effect that is so fixed or predetermined that good karma from the practice of Buddhism in the present cannot transform for the better. I must also add that in expedient Buddhism, the practice is to accumulate enough good karma so that we will be born in favorable conditions in the next incarnation. However, Nichiren Buddhism, which is based on the Lotus Sutra, taught that it is possible to actually transform our negative karmas to positive karmas within this lifetime. I am very willing to believe that. With no disrespect for other major faiths like Christianity and Islam, I think this kind of “salvation” suits me a lot better than an eternity in an unknown place referred to as heaven.

There will be nights where we let ourselves be pushed by memories. Some bitter, some sad, and others sweet. But ultimately, we are but audience to our own memories. As some scenes acted out, I longed so badly to scream for it to cut; to alter the course of events, but it will all be futile.

A river will always flow towards the ocean, never backwards. So does time.

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.” – Abraham Lincoln

It is hard enough to advance forward and not be caught by the inertia of the past and unhealthy memories. But then there is the choice of walking forward slowly or to run. If we were to walk too slowly, do we have enough time to complete our journey? But if we were to run, will we collapse from exhaustion before our time?

It is a frustrating decision to make. I guess that is why there are nights where we just let ourselves be absorbed by memories of the past, and maybe even allow ourselves to be drowned.

We watched the drama of memories play out, not unlike the watching of television programs. Trying with every ounce of our energies to seek out hope and to seek the positives of the things that had come to passed. To learn that even with all the grief in the world, there is a chance of a cheery conclusion.

Not everyone loses at Casino. But you are not Superman!

A: Ladies and Gentlemen! The government had finally decided to approve gambling in Singapore.

B: Finally?! But then people are gambling all the time. I mean, people even bet on whether the government is going to build the casino or not? Gambling has and always will be here.

A: And they all lose because the government is not going to build casinos. They are just going to build resorts that happened to house casinos. They are called integrated resorts.

B: They?

A: Yes. Not one, but two. You do know that we need two of everything, from two media companies to two phone companies to two transports companies to two integrated resorts.

B: Now I get it. But forget the casinos. I have to pay a hundred dollars to just to enter the casinos. Before I start I lose already.

A: It’s integrated resorts my friend, not casinos.

B: Whatever lah, I rather go play guessing games like 4D and Toto, been doing that for years.

In order to control gambling addictions, there will be help from various institutes providing services such as counseling.

Recently, I have been following an anime series Full Metal Alchemist. In one episode, it was explained that the basis of the fantastical alchemy in the story was the equation that Individual = Whole.

The individual represented the self, and the whole was another term for the entire cosmos. What this meant was that the self cannot be absent from the cosmos and vice versa. Allow me to take this concept a little further.

The self, as we perceived, may appear to be another matter, made up of complex compounds and integrated together in a most mystical way. As is all sentient beings. However, even though a young child can pin-point, with great accuracy, where the major organs of the human body is, not even the most intelligent adult can identify where life exists in our physical body. Herein lays the mystic property of life. Unlike other physical objects made of matter, life cannot be created or manufactured. Matter can be molded into the most amazing machineries and set to function on its own. But even these required an external energy source. But life is a self-regenerating phenomenon. We learnt, from a young age that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It is merely converted from one state to another. Life is the only phenomenon that is able to perform this conversion without any external catalyst.

This was why the protagonist in the anime failed to resurrect his mother.

Now, the cosmos also have the property of self-regeneration and the self-conversion of energies. Upon closer inspection, we can identify that the cosmos do not behave very differently from the life embedded in our individual self. The heavenly bodies are interconnected to one another through a system of forces of which gravitational force is the one we are probably most familiar with. They are constantly interacting and affecting changes.

Similarly, our bodies are composted of millions of cells that are constantly affecting one another and are intimately linked. In a sense, our lives are like a micro-cosmos. And even the individual cell or even atoms that made up the physical world are in that aspect, a micro-cosmos. In the Buddhist philosophy, it is said that the entire cosmos may be viewed as a single living entity. And each individual self are but part of this entity and the link between each individual is defined as karma. Upon death, the individual life is simply returned to the cosmos in a latent state to await the right conditions to be manifested and regenerated again. The act of becoming a Buddha is nothing more than to fuse our consciousness with that of the entire cosmos and thus, developing compassion and wisdom that embrace the whole world and its eco-system.

And this fusion reinforces the equation: Individual = Whole. This is human alchemy.

<< 童话 >> -光良-

忘了有多久，再没听到你
对我说你最爱的故事

我想了很久，我开始慌了，
是不是我又做错了什么

你哭着对我说，童话里都是骗人的
我不可能是你的王子
也许你不会懂，从你说爱我以后
我的天空星星都亮了

我愿变成童话里，你爱的那个天使
张开双手变成翅膀守护你
你要相信，相信我们会像童话故事里
幸福和快乐是结局

有梦想的人就不会寂寞。

= = = = = = =

When I first heard this song, my reaction was, the prince and the angel may not necessary be the same person. And if it is not…

You see, all the angel wants is to protect and bring happiness to the person he cares about. It does not matter that the lady does not regard the angel as a possible candidate to become her prince(Maybe she can't, if you follow the storyline of the flash MV above). The angel just wishes that her life is filled of joy and good fortune.

How many angels are there?

“站在地面上看，石壁耸入云霄，高不可攀，但从飞机俯望，像是趴卧在地面，只不过是低矮的界线。同样地，自己的境涯提升，对事物的感受和看法也会随之改变，能把逆境或苦难当作人生的跳板，悠然超越。” – 池田大作

“A stone wall that seems infinitely high when seen from the ground appears no more than a slightly raised boundary line when viewed from an airplane. Similarly, if your life-condition changes for the better, so will the way you view and respond to things. You’ll find yourself surmounting every adversity and hardship with composure, and thoroughly enjoying the drama of life.” – Daisaku Ikeda

Recently, I have a discussion with a friend on the topic of pendulum. Indeed, life is like a pendulum, completed with all its ups and downs. However, it must be noted that when the pendulum is at rest, it is at its LOWEST point. Therefore, inactivity in our daily life is the most miserable of existence. We have to "swing" and to actively seek out ways to improve our lives. Inertia is a terrible enemy.

Problems in life are inevitable. They are like a formidable stone wall obstructing our paths. But when we attempt to live our lives with courage and optimism, we will definitely be able to elevate ourselves and then, even the Great Wall is nothing but a minor inconvenience. Let us press on!

Wisdom is the removal of delusions. The swinging arm of the pendulum represents the delusions in our lives that keep our life-condition low. If we were to shorten the arm by opening our eyes to the delusions, even the lowest point of the "updated" pendulum will be much higher. Hence, nothing can be for worthy of our time then the cultivation of wisdom.

SALINE implants, known for their breast-enhancing function, are now being used to tuck in one's tummy.

A new method of dealing with obesity here, the endoscopic intra-gastric balloon procedure involves inserting a silicone balloon, which is then inflated with saline into the stomach of the patient, thereby curbing the desire to eat.

The balloon is removed after six months using the same method as the insertion — through the patient's mouth.

- Source: http://www.todayonline.com/

After discussing on physical fitness previously, I thought I might follow up with the topic of obesity. With a relatively good life, with good food and good sleep nightly, a large demographic of the young people in this country faces the problem of obesity.

Basically, obesity is a condition where your body mass is too much for your height. It is usually caused by eating more food than required by the body or by eating excessive amount of food high in sugar and fats. But seriously, with Singapore being the food paradise that it is, how to resist those all those mouth-watering food.

And then somebody came up with the idea of inserting a balloon into the stomach to control the amount that we eat.

But come on! Our stomachs are the size they are for a reason.

The elders have a saying: 能吃是福

By altering our physically artificial so that we may eat lesser seems debilitating to me. Haven’t we been told often that we have to let our minds take control over our bodies? Adding a balloon into our stomach is telling our bodies to cheat on our mind. No?

Diet should be achieved the healthy way; by sheer determination to eat less and exercise more. But of course I’m saying all these because I had just lost a lot of weight recently and am rather ‘yaya’ about it. Hmm… actually I lost weight in the unhealthiest method – by falling sick. I really couldn’t eat much now. But I still need to increase my efforts in exercising.

I will not put a balloon down my mouth. That is just so eek! I have better use of silicone.

But then again, I am NOT obese. So this isn’t really my problem. I’m just ranting for the sake of it. And maybe because I haven’t had lunch and is thinking that I’m seriously lacking in exercise.

The stopwatch had to be one of the hardest sports equipment to use. Ever!

I was roped in to help with the NAPFA test today. Before I continue, does anyone actual remembers what NAPFA stands for? It actual stands for National Physical Fitness Award! My goodness, it is actually an award. I wondered if the students who had to try for the award are even aware of it, especially those who receive a ‘fail’ grade regularly.

Anyway, I was assigned to help out at the shuttle run station. For almost 3.5 hours, I was having a personal battle with the stopwatch. You see, the timing for the shuttle run is recorded to the accuracy of 1 tenth of a second. Now, the question is, how long does it take from the time I shout ‘Go!’ to the student-helper pushing the button?

The standard derivation is simply too large for an accurate reading. I witness a student who ran faster than another actually getting a slower timing on the watch. And then I wonder… Award?

Had an urge to join my students in a game of basketball after school today. If I had not observations for the next three consecutive days, I might have just done that. It had been a long time since I last played the game. I remembered being a decent shooting guard/small forward once. Now? Erm… no comments.

B-ball anyone?

Opposing good is called evil; opposing evil is called good. Therefore, outside of heart there is neither good nor evil. Good and evil in themselves have no substance. In order words, they are not in themselves absolute, but reflect relative distinctions. It is important, therefore, to ceaselessly direct one’s heart, and take action, towards good.

- Daisaku Ikeda

After a 2 week break, the practice for the culture festival resumes. All I had ringing in my mind was: Make a difference in their lives.

Honestly, why do people bother?

Early in the morning, and Sunday for that matter, over a hundred young people, fresh from their examinations gathered together to learn a dance. Who are they dancing for? They are definitely not doing it for the money for they will not be paid. In fact, they have to pay for the props and costumes out of their own pockets. They don’t know who will be watching them. They just know that they want to put up the best show they can. These youthful spirits are noble. Would you do what they did?

Some of them even traveled all the way from Boon Lay to Tampines just for the 3 hours session. When I thought of it, I cannot help feeling guilty that I can afford to “snooze” my alarm clock a couple of times before I’m fully awake.

Make a difference in their lives.

It is strange that this is also one of the slogans of the teaching profession. But indeed, as the first voice they hear on Sunday mornings, it is really up to me to set their tempo for the rest of the day.

They join the cultural festival not because of the love of the art of dancing. None of us is a professional dancer. But it is because each one of us is seeking something. We seek to realize our potential. To learn that we have to ability of create something beautiful together and to achieve a higher level of aesthetical value.

What exactly is the culture in this Youth Cultural Festival?

It is the culture of hope. With all the unhappiness around us, we want to spread the message that with hope, every situation is a joyful voyage. That is the way of the youthful heart.

I cannot fail. I have to lead them to what they seek. I have to make sure that every single one of the participants grows in their lives. I have to make a difference in their lives. The future of humanism demands it. It doesn’t matter that I’d not fully recovered from the food poisoning that I’d suffered. It doesn’t matter that I’m having trouble keeping up with the lesson plans I have to prepare for the practicum. It doesn’t matter that I barely get enough sleep each night. I cannot fail them.

Soka Gakkai International Expresses Condolences on Passing of Pope John Paul II

TOKYO: April 4. Soka Gakkai International (SGI) has today issued the following statement regarding the death of Pope John Paul II:

“The passing of Pope John Paul II is an occasion of great sadness for all who have admired and been inspired by his profound commitment to peace. In a world torn by violence and mistrust, his courageous endeavors to promote dialogue, tirelessly reaching out to people of different faith traditions and building bridges of understanding, are of profound and enduring value. His contributions to the cause of peace will live on as a precious legacy to all humankind. We join people of goodwill throughout the world in mourning the loss of this great man.”

Soka Gakkai President Einosuke Akiya visited the Vatican Embassy in Tokyo today to formally express his condolences.

Soka Gakkai International is a lay Buddhist association with 12 million members in 190 countries and territories. Its activities to promote peace, culture, education and interfaith dialogue are based on the longstanding traditions of Buddhist humanism.

Source: Soka Gakkai International

Funerals are always an interesting affair. It is an event to celebrate death. Yes, I said celebrate. But why do I sound funny when I said that?

I believe it is because celebrations evoke images of joy and happiness while death describes pain and suffering. Hence, celebrating death is a contradictory statement. Yet, funerals are exactly that. And we, humans hold funerals all the time. That is one of the main achievements of our evolution when we advanced from beasts to civilizations. We start to take care of the dead.

Dying is inevitably for the loved ones of the decease. However, the truth is that all man will have to die some day. What is important is to die knowing that a life had been well-spent.

To hold a funeral is to confront the pain by taking accounts of the life. In the minds of everyone who ever knew the decease, calculations are made to determined if the life is worthy indeed. And upon learning that the person lived well, we celebrate.

To all the dead people who had lived well, I raise my glass to you. Cheers!

"It doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you. Always." - Oprah Winfrey

“Do not expect good times, but take bad times for granted.” – ND

One of the biggest faults of mankind is the failure to fully appreciate the good that happens to them. Only when we come to the realization that bad times are the norm; and good times the exception, then we will truly treasure all the good times.

But chins up! That does not mean that life is not worth living.

“I used a $3000 computer, a $1200 laser printer, $500 word processing software, and yet I got only a D for my assignment. So money doesn’t really matters.” – Unknown

My latest AVATAR! cute?

As the old saying goes: 祸从口出，病从口入。

For the past few days, my life alternates between me crawling to and fro the toilet from my bed, to parking myself in front of the television in order to numb myself. It suxs!

I still get the weird rumblings in the tummy every now and then. But I can’t rest much longer. This is a society that does not tolerate weakness, even if it’s a rare case of food poisoning for me. Despite having my brain functioning at most at 20% level, I’m expected to provide lesson plans. And more lesson plans. And I had to be observed a pre-fixed number of times before I’m allowed to be graduated with the teaching diploma. It matters not that the doctor ordered a week of rest for me. I don’t have that time to rest.

A good thing came out of it though. I lost 7 kg. My belly is… ahem… flat!

Cheers!

Happy New Year!

Alright, it’s not exactly the New Year. But it’s All Fool’s Day, otherwise known as April Fools’ Day. Just for the uninformed, the origin of this day was the result of some big shot long time ago deciding that it’s time to adjust the calendar. Hence, the New Year was shifted from April to January.

And because at that time when this change took effect, information crawled instead of flying the way it does now. Therefore, it took many years for the some to finally learn that they were making New Year resolutions on the wrong day.

These people were then called fools, even if they were really very smart people.

Therefore, when people go wishing Happy New Year on this day, there’s really nothing wrong with them except they were trying to play the fool.

*wink*