Animal vs. Oh mighty lord.

It has been a month since mom's passing away and aside from adapting to the situation, I've also started to wonder what is the purpose of life and came to two theories. First one suggests that we are nothing but stupid animals pretending to be smart trying to decipher diseases, creating science, making up beliefs, and polluting the Earth. Second one suggests that there's some higher power playing a sick'n cruel joke on humans and breaking families and faith through diseases, accidents, and disasters.
What happened to old sayings that being alcoholic, smoking, or living with bad lifestyle will lead to untimely deaths? It doesn't work like that. Just as what happened to mom, we see that cancer amongst other diseases is just a random lottery that has a ridiculously high rate of hitting it. Just talking w/ close group of friends (aka. not any Joe Blow), I can already count at least 10+ immediate family members having someone pass due to cancer.
So that makes me conclude that either we are at the mercy of either some higher power that can destroy our lives with an itchy middle finger, or we're just animals trying to pretend we know what's going on. So when someone says 'lord has a better bigger picture' or 'you are better than this' - all I can say is 'that's a pretty lousy picture'; or 'nope, I'm really no better than this because I'm just an ape and I don't give a damn of trying to be better or nice'.
That said, I'm not saying we should be bad and immoral. We should be who we are, say what's in our mind, and just do what we want granted that it doesn't hurt anyone else (or any other animals) in the process. There were many phoney people over the course of recent events and what they are doing is just plain superficial which can be very evidently seen, and it really gets it to me when someone says 'everything is so orderly in the world so there must be a great maker'... yeah, my ass.

-Post from a dressed-up and over analyzing animal-
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9.22 A new chapter into my life

9.22 4:30am mom passed away.
She had been fighting cancer for 3 years and had been through a ton of trials. I am not sure if I would've been brave enough to weather the same trials if it was myself. CHOP/DHAP/SCT were not simple treatments and unfortunately the Lymphoma relapsed after SCT was performed. Mom's the bravest and prettiest girl I know, and her passing during a comfortable and peaceful sleep is a blessing itself. There's so much more things I want to talk with her about, but now I'll have to find her in my heart and feel the presence instead. Rest in Peace mom.

Testing Waters - Jam upload #1

Music is a great way of relieving stress, here's the first upload of our band with a simple tune from Pearl Jam - Lass Kiss:

Enjoying the weather

<- Pic courtesy of Ka.
I haven't been updating the blog much due to family errands, endless work, and studying - they had been occupying most of my time. Thank goodness for a long weekend for a breather to rest and chill. It had been 35-40 deg C during last month; one would hear the sound of AC's humming throughout the day and into the night. Thank goodness there were thunder showers last week which soothed the temperature a bit, and lessened the burden on our water depleted reservoirs. To take advantage of the nice weather, of course there's endless BBQs and gatherings! I'm very blessed to have a group of close friends who support me and all of them has their head on straight... hahaha. Afterall, it's our family and friends who makes us who we are!

Start to a series of weddings in 2k11!

Life's interesting. Some things you try hard but will never get, while some things will pop up when you least expect it to. As one of my close friends told me never second guess and doubt what could've been; this aligns with my genuine belief that all things happen for a reason, and it's usually for the better (for the good ppl out there lol). Striving too hard to try and achieve what's not meant to be is not good either and this reminds me of a recent popstar divorce in HK. Nick had been trying hard to stand by his skanky wife for two years throughout scandals, x-pictures, and attempted to forget the past in order to raise a happy family. However, human nature doesn't change easily and the couple is going across divorce procedures as infidelity rumors spread for the wife again. That being said, I attended my coworker's wedding last weekend. He's a tad older than all of us and very much a workaholic, we're all very happy to see him find his other half when he least expected it. It was a simple ceremony/banquet with some traditional rituals intentionally left out but in fact I found out that the meaning of marriage was conveyed more stronger than some ceremonies that had endless entertainment and games. Grats to the newly wed!

Let the music continue

And so.... the passion for music continues to flow. We've checked out a couple studios and most of them are pretty ghetto in dark rundown buildings, smoke/weed-smelling rooms, and water-dripping ceilings. However, fun continues as we jam into the night. We're still amateurs but it's a good motivation to keep all of us practicing and tryin to perfect that tune. Feels just like school again with everyone aiming towards a common goal lol.

Sunny skies across town

Weather was awesome last few days as temperature shot up to 30deg Celcius. What else to do aside from enjoying the sunshine with a group of buddies? As coconut will be delivering and myself heading to Austin later parts of the summer for work, we decided to move up our annual Center island outing. Part of the crew headed DT for lunch gathering before roaming across Lake Ontario. There were huge lineups of people waiting for ferry but luckily Ka got a bunch of tix for us without us having to wait crazy hrs.
Biking, chilling, playing frisbee/baseball, beating up busman, and fooling around with cute dogs were highlights of the trip.
Thx Jesse for bringing Buddy and showing us so many tricks, the huge dog in the pic belonged to a friendly lady there and I just had to run up to grab a pic w/ the giant Husky - reminds me of dogsledding! Stay tuned for more activities across summer!

New addition to the family!

As my guitar passion is regaining, along with motivation from friends in renting studio and jamming songs regularly; I've picked up a smexy sister for my elegant yet subtle Takamine... Please to introduce my red hot semi hollow electric... Oh yea... she's a beauty ;) I got them matching cases too! Weeeeeeee

2011 Doors Open

Doors Open occurs once a year and allows visitors to visit the site for free, and there are also rooms that are generally not opened to public which is open on that day. This year, we went to 3 stops - Redpath sugar refinery which has 80+ tonnes of sugar in its silos, King Meridian's hotel which dates back to 1902, and St.James Anglican church that allowed us to roam to the ceiling bell towers.
It was an interesting outing and very enjoyable with the current weather. I haven't been updating my blog for a while due to various situations I was in earlier. However, I'm glad I expressed my mind allowing me to move forward now; which also led myself in carrying some momentum into short term goals I would like to achieve.

An under appreciated occupation in Canada: Nursing

I'm impressed. And for those who knows me, I don't get impressed easily. Due to circumstances, mom has checked into Princess Margaret for her treatments. The doctors are very professional and the place does not resemble a hospital at all. Being family of patient or friends who needs to be admitted to a hospital, sometimes one ponders if there may be alternatives and would it be better to hire homecare to stay at home. However, PMH completely changed that thought. It specializes in specific fields of research and to be honest, I really cannot think of a better alternative given the situation. However, I am impressed not because of top-notch doctors or the hospital being one of the top 5 in the world; I am impressed because of the level of detailed planning gone into hospitality/food, and the nurses. Despite working long hours and over the holidays - the nurses continue to genuinely care for each patient and tries try their best to make everyone feel better, keep the environment clean of germs, give strict warning to visitors not to bring germs in, and listen to the patient attentively. I'm not going into too much details as there are much examples and I do not want to create some sort of unnecessary guideline for reference. All I can say is that the nurses doesn't get much credit for the type of work they do, and I am truly grateful at their professionalism and care they provide.

Earth Hour 2011

And so, it was Earth Hour 2011 on Saturday where buildings and businesses were encouraged to turn off lights for an hour to ease electricity consumption - the outcome was an 8.9% decrease of electricity on the powergrid. It was pretty cool to see the Toronto downtown core dimming down for this event despite there were still some offices here and there that was still being lighted. One of the events that was opened for the public during this hour included the U of T telescopes since the light pollution is lower during this period of time.
After my friend and I finished a superb grilled sea-bream for dinner, we headed towards 60 St.George Street of where the telescopes were housed, and found ourselves stumbling inside pitch black rooms filled with huge crowds of people lining up for the event. We saw the Beehive cluster, and Saturn which was pretty cool with its' rings and an orbiting moon clearly visibly in the dark crisp skies. One of the ladies suggested that we were quite lucky to see this since she was here past 3 yrs but was unable to make out the Beehive cluster - guess the goddess of Saturns likes us ;) lol

Human Nature

Al Jazeera has great coverage of breaking news, documentaries, to even small reports like this. This short clip depicts that Japan is working hard in surviving the disaster of the 2011 earthquake, hopefully the nuclear crisis will be controlled soon. The education levels in Japan is also very impressive and people helps each other. At difficult times, survivors line up for food instead of being like Haiti/India/China where people breaks into stores and steps on each other for food. The survivors in the hard hit cities also only buys what they need from the supermarket shelves, and an elderly says 'we only take what we need to survive and leave the rest for others who needs them more'. This is a stark contrast against the ridiculously ugly human nature as listed in recent newspaper where where people in China/HongKong hog iodine salt (they hear Iodine safeguards against radiation) and merchants driving up the prices because of their greediness to earn a few more bucks during this crisis. Quite a huge difference in mentality for cities that are so close to each other eh?

Japan Earthquake/Tsunami Relief Fund

Corporation that I work in will match any fulltime engineer's donation up to 3000$ for the Japanese earthquake/tsunami relief fund from this website here. Please let me know before this Friday if you would like to join in for this as I will be making spreadsheet tracking all donations towards this cause and will scan all participants a receipt once avail. Thank you.

Condolences to Japan Quake Victims

There's nothing more terrible than to see a country with leading edge technology, strict building laws, and proud country values lie in shambles. My heartfelt condolences goes to Japans' quake victims, and their families. I don't think any other country will be able to handle the situation as well as Japan. And certainly that douche from China stating 'our nuclear reactors in Shenzhen will not leak and we have the utmost preparations for earthquakes' was an insensitive/inappropriate comment for someone who cannot back their talk - it always better to stay quiet than talk nonsense. Here is an aerial view of before and after, and hopefully Japan will be able to recuperate soon from this incident.

Powerful Media Age

So I was following on the Egyptian revolution across multiple media hubs (BBC, CBC, AlJazeera) and stumbled across this very powerful yet graphic depiction of what goes around in the background of a highly prosperous and booming society. Suggesting that internet and information sharing changed our lives is an understatement of how much effect it has. I truly believe that we are now living in Media age allowing us ease of access to information and documentaries that may span halfway across the planet. Enjoy :)

Typing without really thinking

Haven't really been the most active of blogging lately. Too much happened past several months. One of the things was that my new vehicle finally arrived after 2.5 months of waiting. It's a quite powerful 1.5 tonnes of spaceframe technology (that's what they call it or whatever that means) and has latest gadgetry (more electronics = more potential to fail lol) and would possibly make myself drool over it if I was back in High school or University 10+ yrs ago. However, before we know it - our perspectives change alot from the environment around us and and I didn't find my level of excitement/enthusiasm as I would've expected. I guess as we grow up, there's more things we need to plan, think, and worry about. Since many of my friends asked me; the reason why I spent such a hefty amount on my car is because I can see crap happening just in the blink of an eye; bombs, heart attacks, cancers, car-crashes, accidents etc. Maybe it was there all along but I was too young or hopeful to notice it before. We only live life once and should go for what we want within reason and be whoever we want to be. Over the course of working, traveling, and studying - I do notice that there are many people trying to be someone that isn't really themselves, maybe I was also one of them when I was growing up too. Not sure why I decided to post this but just wanted to type out what I felt without thinking too much today.