travelling

Several years ago, the army sent me to Australia for a military exercise which lasted 3 weeks or so. The most vivid memory of which i retained was of a couple of nights, in an wide open field, where i laid on top of the canvas of my truck, staring up into the Milky Way in the middle of the chilling night. It is more beautiful than the most amazing fireworks i had ever seen, right above you, passing you by, as the earth beneath my back rotates away.

Several weeks ago, i realized what exactly i was staring at. I had not a clue at all, that i was looking back in time.


The sun is a little over eight light-minutes away from us. One light-minutes equals the distant light travel in one minute, which is 18 million kilometers. That makes the ray of sunlight warming our face on a hot summer day 8 minutes old, after travelling 144 million kilometers through the universe, and the Sun is only one of 400 million other stars in our galaxy called the Milky Way.


Right now at this precise moment as i type, or as you read, someone on a distant star somewhere in the Milky Way looking through a powerful telescope pointed at Austraila could be seeing a silly chap in military uniform laying on the canvas top of a truck staring stupidly at something amazing.

And in the same length of time into the future (from that starry starry night when i was in Australia), i could be looking at the Milky Way through a powerful telescope, and find that very someone looking at the me in Australia in that fateful night.


As the only way to look out into space is to look back in time, to travel thousands of years back into the history of space, to the hundred billion galaxies in the universe, millions of light-years away from our Milky Way.


P.S. paragraphs in italics is with reference to the book: Sophie's World

substance over form

last thursday, while at my deskbound slavery, i received a call from my manager.

Manager : Yap, will you be able to go KL for work on friday? 10am flight.
Which in substance, reads : hey, i called to inform you that you will be flying to KL tomorrow for work!!

TOMORROW!!

Which makes it a Thursday that day, and on thursday, i have to rush to attend class after work which finishes late and by the time i usually reach home, is crashtime! like a drunkard intoxicated with fatigue crashing into bed.

Which also means i have no time to pack my luggage for i had to somehow make myself present at the airport 8.30am the following freakeane morning with my luggage, where i freakeanne lived at the other end of the goddamn island.

Which also means i have to WORK THROUGH THE BEAUTIFUL WEEKEND in which the manager kindly added : have a nice weekend at KL, Yap.
Which in substance, reads : make sure you do what you are suppose to do over the weekend at KL, YAP!!
Which translate into slogging till ONE FUCKING THIRTY AM ON A SATURDAY!

preference parity

Preference, whether in equivalence or in absence had always been a headsplitting situation for me.

I believe that we cannot live without reason(s), sorta like i cannot make a decision without a reason - or preference. i remembered when buying lunch yesterday, i had a bag of Doritos' Nacho Cheesier in my left hand, and a bag of Doritos Spicier Nacho in my right. After which i stood still there staring down at them for what seems like an eternity of uncertainty. and for a moment, i was totally spaced out, hoping that maybe time would just stop for a bit while i pull myself out of the trance.

i need a distint preference, a solid reason, before i can make a decision to go for the Cheesier or the Spicier. I simply cannot take a random pick.

indecisive. . . ?

continental rationalism

lately, while at my deskbound slavery, i had sensed once too many that something is not quite right around my torso. i sensed that my pants are shrinking my tummy is expanding.

but recently, Descartes had said to me that our senses cannot be trusted because it is unreliable. i had thus bought a weighing scale last week. Our weight you see, is "human reason" and as such cannot be disputed against.

i was soon to realise the brutal truth, as i stood on the machine, a 10 tonne giant brick smashed right into my head, quantifying the human sense to a sheer 3 kilograms. i am since fully convinced of the truth. my pants had not shrinked. it is i who had placed 3 kg of stuff beneath my skin.

i am now addicted to the digital machine at the corner of my den.

agnostic

after being through with about three fifth of Sophie's World, i came accross a term somewhere, i can describe myself. Agnostic.

a really interesting book, especially for someone who had always had an interest in the subject therein but too lazy to research on it. so captivating it is that The Half Blood Prince which i had bought at Borders for $9.95 is starting to collect dust.

so absorbing that at times i get drawn into it, to the extent, i have to tell myself that im just reading a fictional novel. it's quite a bizarre feeling though, to get from a book, a feeling that i cannot describe.

big bang

Nebula NGC 604, 2.7 million light years away. 1,500 light years accross. At the heart of it, new stars were being born. image from wikipedia, from nasa.