Check this out…Bernard Shifman
The war against spammers has begun (at least on my part, again)…Hail the anti-spammer!!!
p/s – For those of you who are interested in joining the crusade against spammers, visit SpamCom Foundation.
It feels so good to be home. Seeing Ann Arbor for the first time after more than two weeks really makes me appreciate the town even more. The best thing is that I can go out of any enclosed area without any thick clothing. Ahhh, I love Ann Arbor.
Finally, my new computer will be arriving next week. A computer with Athlon XP 1.5 processor, GeForce 2 MX 400, 40 Gigs, 256, a 5 ways speaker…plus, a connection with the speed of an institutional ethernet. Now, I can seriously plan for my conquest of the virtual world. Beware, it’s whether you with me or against me. If you are against, better get your insurance coverage fast. Before I conquered world wide web, here is something for you to light up.
Just now, I thought I lost something. I was mad for a moment and almost cried. I don’t know why I am so attached to that particular thing. Maybe it’s too precious to me. After I lost all hope of finding it, I just sat on my bed, staring at the floor, trying madly to remember where did I put it. My vision started to blur, my eyes were getting watery.
A voice inside of my head starting to call me names, hating me for losing a photograph.
I can’t believe how a photograph can affect me so badly. It’s just a piece of paper.
At that one moment, I felt like dying but suddenly, I reached a book to ease up my mind. Upon opening up the book, the photograph fell to the floor slowly as any paper would. I picked it up and quickly recognized it as the photograph I thought I had lost. Of all the places, it was in the book. Maybe one of my friends had browsed though my album and accidentally put that particular photograph inside the book. Yes, I do remember two of my friends visited me. I cursed them quietly inside of my head. My heart was overfilled with joy and all the sudden, my day had been turned into a normal day again.
Thinking it back, I don’t even know why I was so upset today. It’s just a photograph.
This shall be my last babble in Minneapolis.
Being too bored staring at the monitor, I’d decided to visit some stuff about Malaysia. My first stop was catcha.com.my. Nothing much to be mentioned there. Second stop, thestar.com.my. I browsed through the news and read some of it. The same stuff over and over again. Politics, car accidents, some events, racial segregation…
Wait! Racial segregation? What in the whole wide universe is this? Racial segregation in Malaysia? I thought this thing has become the thing of the past. Of course, the issue the Chinese conquering the upper level of education level and the meritocracy has become the hot talk when I was in Malaysia but racial segregation in the system?
I say, people will surely blame the British for their divide and conquer method of ruling. Well, the British was surely the one to be blamed but that is the past and nothing can be changed about it, unless of course, if the physicists found the secret of time travel (spelling it out, back through time), that will be another matter. I shout, there’s been a mistake in the Malaysian education architecture and design. I hail, the vernacular system should be stop one and for all, by phrase, slowly and be ended sometimes in the future. No All-Chinese, All-Indian, All-Malay higher education. The Chinese minority should not be allowed to establish a university of their own. Nor the Indian, nor the Malay themselves. The University in Shah Alam should be opened to all. Every University should be made for all. If the Malays argue that it is their right, then, let the quota for the Malay stand tall but not too big to degrade the quality.
I hate it when Malaysians are asked, “Which race are you belong to?” and the question is answered by “I’m a Malay”, or “I’m a Chinese” or “Indian”. Why can’t the answer be just “I’m a Malaysian”? Is it so hard so for us to claim ourselves as a Malaysian?
It’s so frustrating to write up a source code and see the result is nothing but in a mumbo-jumbo disorder. Now I can remember how the way I felt back when I was taking C++ 2. Doing all the programming from dusk to dawn back to dusk again and seeing only the error messages; it’s great to know that that’s a thing of the past and I probably don’t have to worry about it for another 3 to 5 months. Ahh, I feel so lucky to be freed from programming (namely, the C language) but ironically, I’m teaching myself another computer language. And right now, instead trying to find the creator of C++ and cut his throat off, I’m trying to commit suicide for failing to comprehend a certain section of html. I guess a human mind is always as curious as a cat. Purrrrrrrrrrr…
It’s so cold today. I dare not go outside even with full winter clothing. I just hate the cold. While I was in Bloomington Indiana, I went to a souvenir shop and bought a few memoirs. Waiting for my credit card to be approved by the online system, I had a little chat with the man behind the counter. I told him that it was snowing pretty heavily. He looked outside and saw snow coming down. Then, he turned to me and said it shouldn’t be snowing heavily right now. Since the time taken for my credit card to be approved had been extended overtime, I continued babbling and said that I hate the cold. He said he understands and again, the same phrase I’ve heard, “…you shouldn’t be attending Michigan, Indiana or any of the Midwest schools if you hate the cold. You should be in Florida or somewhere hot…” I said, “That’s my mistake”.
And it’s all about he said she said… And I can’t believe that I celebrated New Year’s Eve in Chicago, at the Navy Pier for hours, under the zero range.
Don’t you like free-writing or free-thinking?
I just love it. By practicing it, my mind is not being contained inside a small box. My mind just flies freely like a bird that soars mightily up into the clouds. It feels like I’m flying. But unfortunately, both ways sometimes make me unable to focus deep into a subject. My e-journal has been full with entries that concern my personal life to the marcoworld that lives outside of my physique. It is outside of my physique but never out of my consciousness. That’s what makes me feel ever-powerful.
Come to think of it, the Great Library of Alexandria is comparable to the net. The Great Library held almost all of the ancient world knowledge. It would be exciting to rediscover this one particular member of the great wonders. The knowledge that it held could probably answer almost all of human ancient mysteries in the Old World. That knowledge will be so precious that I believe a Renaissance in arts and sciences will be reinitiated. Another Renaissance will prove to be human’s greatest feat of all times.
Perhaps, we are already deep into the second renaissance. The key to the First Renaissance was the transfer of knowledge from the Arab’s world to the European’s. I believe the key to the Second Renaissance will be the knowledge again. Right now, if you are reading this, it means that the cumulative knowledge that mankind had ever collected is at your fingertip. It’s just a click away. The word click that is used to describe the situation sounds absurd but it’s true. It’s just a click away. All the knowledge, although not in full details, is in the web. With it, comes power.
Nevertheless, with all the knowledge left unused, the power is wasted. Of course, the net changed the way we shop, communicate and live our life but it’s just that. I can barely see people use the net for academic purposes. I do have the audacity to say that almost 99% of my fellow friends know nothing of the Guttenberg Project that’s currently on the web. Be upset if you felt insulted but I am being as sincere as anybody could. I offer no apology. Face the facts and smell the flowers. If you still think I am wrong, then read the statistic for a Malaysian reading a book other than the thick textbooks per year. You’ll find that stats pathetic. I found it truly humorous.
I definitely found it disturbing when people learned about the works of Tolkien through a movie. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has already been named the Book of the 20th Century but yet, the common people start to admire Legolas when they don’t even know the difference between elfs and elves.
My friends, go and read the books. They are precious for one day, there will be no books to be read and all you’ll be reading tomorrow is the writing on a monitor that’s constantly releasing harmful rays into your eyes.
This coming new year will be another year with full of surprises. Once the clock marks midnight, the most enthusiastically awaited event for the European, the E-Day will be launched. It’s the launching of the Euro, the so-called rival to the United States Dollar.
The Euro was actually introduced in 1999 but its usage, up to now, is limited to financial transaction only. After two years of waiting, the Euro will finally emerge in the daily life of 12 European countries’ citizens. The Mirage 2001, Ford and Playstation 2 will be paid in the new Euro, not in Franc, Lire or the Deutsche Mark anymore. The new currency will be the glue that unites the European Union’s members as one and makes them more competitive in the game of globalization. The E.U. leaders smile victoriously as they now have another common ground to talk about Europeanism (if that term ever exist).
While they are embracing for the much-awaited changes, the whole world including the Europeans themselves are cautiously observing the situation and hoping the launch of the Euro won’t hurt the European themselves. The American perhaps hope the new project will be a folly and while the Asian countries hope that they will have an alternative to the Dollar. Such a huge change may help catalyst a lot of events and thus, opening up numerous paths into the future for everybody worldwide. If the usage of the Euro is successful, it may encourage dozens of regional currency. One of such region is Southeast Asia, held together by the ASEAN, an EU counterpart for 10 developing nations.
However, for the European citizens, the pizzeria owner in Italy and the pub owner in Germany will be reluctant to accept this change. The conservatives fear that their country identity will be lost forever. The Franc has been synonym with the Frenchmen since the dawn of the French Empire. Once the Euro takes over, the will be no more Franc that will be related to France. The French will for certain lost a French identity. I see this currency conversion is similar to the lost of the New York World Trade Center in September. As the Twin Towers crumbled down to earth, the American lost part of their soul. Surely, the magnitude of the lost of the Franc to the common Frenchmen is as huge as the lost of the Twin Towers to the Americans. For the Germans, the pharse “eine schnelle Mark machen” (in English, to make a fast D-Mark) are senseless without the Deutsche Mark*. It seems to me that Europeanism is sacking each and every distinct Europeans’ cultures.
While I’ll be celebrating the New Year in Chicago, I will certainly remember that on the eve of first January, the Europeans are betting their head for a better future. It may turn ugly but let us just hope that the Euro will be a good development for us. We don’t need another folly that will affect the whole population of Earth. We don’t need to suffer more than we do.
nb – The words marked by ” * ” is taken from Andreas Purkott’s entry in EUROTRASH.
Visit the official Euro site for the E-Day.