About the Japanese Quake

I won’t start by introducing my topic. I’m sure we all know about the earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 and the subsequent tsunami and nuclear disaster. And I think we all know about all those fundraising efforts that are taking place right now.

But, but, BUT…

Are donations really reaching the people of Japan, or are we merely paying a government who doesn’t give a damn about their people or the environment? Reports say that when aid (in the form of food and clean drinking water) reaches Japan, the countries who donated the supplies also have to distribute the supplies themselves because the Japanese government doesn’t care enough to allocate human resources to the distribution of basic necessities amongst those affected by the disaster.

As for the nuclear crisis, they’re dumping the contaminated water that’s been leaking from the power plants into the ocean. I guess I won’t be eating seafood for the next sixty years until all the Caesium’s decayed.

Sure, I feel bad for the regular people of Japan, the ones who are truly suffering, but as for the Japanese government, I have no sympathy for them at all. Those politicians are sitting comfortable in their own homes whilst the survivors of the disaster are freezing and starving to death in a developed country.

Disasters often reveal the true nature of a nation. When the earthquake struck Christchurch on February 22, people from all over the nation rallied to help, driving their own cars down to deliver home baking and forming clean up armies to clear out liquefaction. The emergency services’ efforts must also be mentioned, because a lot of these people focused on saving the people trapped beneath collapsed buildings even though many of them were really worried about their loved ones in other parts of the city.

In Japan, people are left to their own devices. No help is given. Some went back to their homes within the area affected by radiation rather than stay in government operated shelters. Japan has often been touted as a very advanced and sophisticated country, and yet no help is reaching the people who need it.

I feel bad for all the people who are suffering. I want them to get the help they need. I will pray for them. However, I am not going to donate money as I don’t know where it’s going to go. I don’t want to feed an unworthy government.

 

I am what I am; don’t deny it.

I’ve been ranting about this for a while, but it’s really getting to me and making me upset. A couple of months ago, I quit the Catholic Church because there were certain doctrines that I could not possibly agree with. I’d been fighting for this for about two years and this final struggle came during one of my emotional lows. I think that in order to placate me, my mother, who is the boss of this household, let me stop attending mass.

Then, today, when I told her to stop calling me a Catholic because I am not one, she said that I was being extreme and unreasonable, and that I would always be a Catholic as far as she was concerned. She wouldn’t listen when I told her she ought to respect my decision to remove myself  from the Church. Why this denial? I don’t want anyone to deny my identity and beliefs. If she really loved me, she would accept me for what I truly am, non-Catholicism and all. I’m not ashamed of not being affiliated with any church or organized religion. Call me a heretic or an infidel if you must, but I have no reason to be ashamed. Many of the greatest people who shaped the world and made it a better place were ‘heretics’ or ‘infidels’. However, she is denying me my identity by not recognizing it. It’s as if she loves this image she has of me, and not really me.

Even if no one supports me, I’ll go my way, as I have learned to do. However, it is a bit discouraging that the person I am closest to in the world would actually refuse to acknowledge me the way I am, and I shudder to think how she would react if I did anything more than just refusing to be a Catholic. I have never been more aware of how isolated I am than right now, although my rational side knows just how many people are going through the exact same thing all over the world. It might be something else other than religion, but the concept is the same. A person’s identity should never be denied or hidden like a dark secret if it causes no harm to others. God made us what we are; no one should be able to take that from us.

 

More of the Same Rant

I know I preach tolerance and this might come across as extremely hypocritical, but I feel it is something that needs to be said and acknowledged, and that is I hate it when people claim that the world or a country is in decline because of a lack of Christianity –or any other religion, for that matter– and that the best way to revive a society is by having everyone follow this one “superior” religion. I know I said people shouldn’t judge, and I probably should probably take a step back and follow what I preach, but I can’t help but judge people who say those things as narrow-minded. I need to make a few points.

1. Irreligious people are not immoral and completely without virtue. Many of them are very decent people, perhaps kinder and more generous than some religious people.
2. Religion is not God’s word. Religion is human interpretation of God, and there is room for error. Thus each religion has its good points and bad points, and there is no one superior religion which everyone should follow.
3. Difference in religion equals diversity. The only problem is that people refuse to accept difference. If we can learn to accept others for what they are and not try to convert them to our religion and our way of worship, then there is no reason why we can’t all get along.
4. Faith is something which one comprehends with the heart, and not the mind. It cannot be determined by our logic because human logic is too flawed.
5. The truth is out there, but human beings don’t have it. Same reason as that which was stated above.

 

And the fanfiction feud continues.

I admit, I lurk a bit in other people’s forums, if only to better my understanding of the so-called ‘enemy’. Mind you, while I respect a lot of them as wordsmiths, I have no respect for them as people. They tend to like to stick their noses in other people’s business. One of them, I’ll call her N for the sake of her right to anonymity, attacked my friend for writing a parody of a really bad story. Now, I only write parodies of other people’s stuff if I have reached the end of my patience with them (that occurs when the author has refused to accept any helpful advice which people have given them and has rudely said so), and to my knowledge, that bad story was the only story which my friend has ever mocked, and the author doesn’t care. 

As a result, the parodies and MST’s of other people’s stories have now been banned on the site, where N is a moderator. To add insult to injury, N has been gloating, yes, gloating about her victory. Not that it’s much of a victory to speak of. I was actually thinking of giving up my MST because frankly, I don’t have the time to MST twenty-one or more chapters of a bad story. However, after this little episode, I’m determined to finish the MST no matter what, if only just to spite those who think they have won. We’ll not stop just because the site has banned us. That’s why my friend made a site, and I’m advertising it. If you’re interested, you’ll find the site here. I’ve also made my own MST blog, called Mockfiction. That’s just my nature. I’m not doing this because of the story. I’m doing this because I refuse to admit defeat to those women who are acting like children. Yes, I know I’m being immature, but hey, I’m a teenager; I’m allowed to be immature. Those women are mothers or are over thirty. They shouldn’t be having bitch-fights with teenagers.

It is an author’s right to write bad fiction. It’s called ‘Freedom of Speech’. It is also someone’s right to mock bad fiction; that is also called ‘Freedom of Speech’. No one complains about parodies of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, simply because they’re published works. When someone puts his or her work on the internet, it is open to scrutiny, and readers have just as much right to write parodies of those as they do to write parodies of actual published works.

Our parodies might not be well-written, but some of them are very well written, and it’s a way to relax, to let off steam after having read bad fiction, or just to try and convince the author that they have made some stupid mistakes if they won’t listen to nice suggestions.

 

Restlessness sans Reason

You know those days when you feel totally restless, and you’re in a bad mood but you don’t know why? Well, I feel like that today, although I think I know why; the reason is so irrational that it can’t really be counted as a reason though. In fact, I shouldn’t really care, but there’s this teensy weensy part of me who is determined to be a child and care about it. All right, it’s about relationships, and I’ll leave it at that. Perhaps I should spend the rest of the day with my journal and my camera, or perhaps a sketch pad and a pencil, or something very very time consuming which takes up all of my concentration. Chatting with the girls online is a good way to relieve stress, I guess, but I feel like I need something more intensive, like video making. I’ve been making a trailer for my latest fanfic, but it’s finished now, and I need a new subject to make a vid on. So far, I’ve only managed one tiny shot of my dad pushing the lawnmower for my completely-from-scratch vid (that being said, I’m using other people’s music).

I feel a bit better now, after having typed up that brick full of rambling. Why can’t I do interesting blog posts recently? I did have this interesting idea running around in my head, but now that I can write it down, I have forgotten it. I think I need to actually start using my multiple writer’s notebooks.

 

A Rant

What should I write today? By rights, I shouldn’t even be writing. I have an exam tomorrow and I should be studying, but oh well, procrastination is my specialty. I’ve been lurking around the forums this evening, trying to guage people’s characters. I’ve given up waiting for a reply from my friend’s enemy, the one who has condemned me by association. (I’ll call her C, for convenience. I don’t like mentioning names)

I sent her this completely diplomatic reply saying I wasn’t interested in her grudges against my friend (whom I’ll call B, again, for convenience), but she’s free to discuss my inadequacies. Either she’s not interested in arguing with me about me (which was our original topic) or she can’t think of anything to say to that. At any rate, it doesn’t show C in good light, especially since she’s been saying nasty things on other forums about B and my other pals. However, I haven’t been mentioned, so I really shouldn’t be caring, even though I do care. I’m loyal to my friends, and I’m protective in a way. She’s been downright horrid to some of my other friends from B’s forum. I guess I can safely say she’s the first person I’ve ever labelled a b*tch, except then I’ll feel guilty because female canines don’t deserve this sort of association.

Anyway, that was a whiny feminine rant. My life is boring, and I have no social life Everything is centred around the academics at the moment. Exams suck. I don’t think they’re accurate tests for how much a person actually knows. I mean, I’m all right when it comes to pressure and working under pressure (most of the time) but some people just can’t deal with it, and while they might be utterly brilliant, they just lose their ability to process information under pressure. That’s rather unfair to them because people whose brains are equipped to deal with this sort of pressure get better results than the truly brilliant ones.

 

 

A Random Post

Well, it’s the last day of lectures and I have a test this afternoon. I truly don’t have anything inspiring to write; I just want to type something, and see words appearing on a screen. Weird, huh? Maybe that’s part of being a writer. I just love the look of words as they appear on the screen. It gives me a sense of achievement, and typing has a music and rhythm all of its own. Mind you, handwriting is cool as well because I feel like I’m connecting with some higher being, even if it’s just my brain. (Not that my brain is a higher being or anything. It hardly ever functions on a continual basis.) And handwriting is so old-fashioned. I just love it. People have been doing it for years.

It’s just like when I go to mass, I don’t think about the prayers or the liturgy or that sort of thing. I think about the fact that this ritual has occurred Sunday after Sunday for about two thousand years, and I’m doing more or less the same thing as what my favourite historical figure, Balian of Ibelin, did back in 1187 when he took time off his mission to take part in mass because it was the feast day of a saint or something. It’s probably partly his fault that the Battle of Hattin happened, because if he hadn’t been late, he might have been able to stop Gerard de Ridefort’s suicidal attack on the much larger Muslim delegation, but it’s still exciting to feel this link to one of the people which I admire very much. Anyway, it really seems like it’s God’s will that Balian survived but the Kingdom of Jerusalem didn’t.

I go from having nothing to write to writing about writing and then writing about religion, and then history. The mind is a wondrous thing (now I shall change topics suddenly again and talk about psychology. Am I even able to stay on topic?). It moves so quickly, and you don’t really notice the changes until you actually look back and then think ‘where did that come from?’. I guess it really contributes to the randomness of humans. We think about such a lot, and we don’t do half of what we think, mostly. Personally, I’m just not motivated. I mean, I promise myself I will be a good student and study, and then I end up getting addicted to the computer and totally neglecting the academic life until a week or two before exams. That’s fate, or just an odd coincidence.

So to close off today’s totally random post, I’ll just quote Ned Kelly, my favourite outlaw. “Such is life.” (Not sure where that came from or why it’s relevant but there you go. It’s a random post.)

 

Imposing political ideologies.

I was walking around the university today (actually, looking for the computer shop on campus so I could buy software which my brother needed) when I was intercepted by two chinese women (one young, one old) handing out fliers. I didn’t really know what it was about but I thought I’d take a flier and then be done with it, but they greeted me in Chinese, asking me whether I was Chinese. This led to an odd thought. What if I hadn’t been Chinese? What if I’d been Korean or something else? Just because I am Asian doesn’t mean I am Chinese. Well, anyway, that’s going off on a complete tangent. The exchange went something like this.

Them: “Are you Chinese?”

Me: “Yes I am.”

Them: “Oh, then you must take this [hands me sheets printed in Chinese] and this newspaper [hands me newspaper in Chinese].”

Me: “Um, I can’t read Chinese.”

Them: “Oh. [hands me English flier]“

Them: “Read that. It’s very very important.”

Me: “Um, okay.”

 

Of boring lecturers and Islamic kings of England

Once again, I have to go to class in forty minutes, but I really have no desire to do that. I spent the hour of linguistics lecture taking notes for my other history essay. History lectures are still my favourite. I think the enthusiasm of the lecturer about the subject really does do something for the listeners. Out of all my subjects, only the History teachers seem to love what they teach, and even the dullest of them can keep me interested, and I don’t go to sleep during their lectures.

I don’t think the lecturer for Communications Disorders – the anatomy and physiology of speech really cares much about the subject. If she did, her lectures wouldn’t sound like a speech sample which a speech and language pathologist needs to analyze. When she lectures, it sounds something like ‘And these are the…errr…erm…uh…hell [hair] cells…and they have…erm…cilia coming out-coming out of them which…err…pu-ushes the…erm…erm…mu-mucus up.’

She sounds like she has a communication disorder, and her pronunciation of words really annoys me. There is no way in the world I can link the word ‘hair’ to ‘hell’ and yet, she can make that mistake. Her grammatical mistakes are also constant. I wouldn’t notice it much if she spoke slightly more fluently, but I think she needs to get treatment for her speech disfluencies, or else she just needs to prepare her lectures a bit more. I’m not going to bother going today. I need to do my research for my essay, and am too busy to sleep in class. Not that I need treatment for insomnia.

The Medieval History lecture was interesting today. I learnt that King John of England (Lionheart’s brother) once threatened to become Muslim, which was pretty funny, considering his older brother was a Crusader. He didn’t mean it, of course (he would make a horrid Muslim) but the Pope didn’t really appreciate his sense of humour.

It’s now almost the end of lunchtime. I’m debating whether I should get a large or small coffee. Caffeine tends to help me to concentrate on my work (as opposed to falling asleep on top of it). Ah, stuff it, I’ll go into caffeine withdrawal in the weekend. It doesn’t really matter since I don’t have lessons. I just want to be able to finish researching the Revolutions of 1848 so I can start drafting the essay.

 

Practicality vs. Imagination

Ah, it is a bad start to a new term. I fell asleep in Linguistics for the second day in a row. Okay, I know I can catch up with the work by just reading the text book, so why do I even bother turning up to class? Still, maybe I should make it a rule to have coffee before Linguistics.

I feel like writing something. To tell the truth, blogging is becoming addictive. I hardly ever used my blog for the first couple of months, but now, I do it every day of the week. Perhaps it’s the lack of real life friends, but I find it hard to find acquaintances who share my interests. I love discussing the implications of religion and history on people. I talk more about theories and fiction than I do about who’s going out with who and that sort of gossip. I’m not what they call a people person.

Fiction does seem a lot more interesting than real life, and more free. I make my own rules, and everything that’s supposedly impossible becomes possible. I suppose that’s what drew me to it in the first place. I’ve always been accused of being a daydreamer, and I’m proud of it in some ways. Dreaming helps me to stay young, and to not lose trust in life. I love my life, even though there are those occasional down moments.

I should be studying History at the moment. I’m trying to learn the first three crusades, and then there’s so much other stuff like starting on my essays or studying for my tests. But I’m just not in the mood. I wonder what is better; to be governed by the heart or by the mind. The heart, even if it does not make the most sensible choices, is the more free of the two. The mind has logic, but it is limited to what we are certain of. That has its uses, but it is very boring, in my book. What is life without imagination? We might as well be robots if we are always stuck in reality. Robots are realistic, grounded, sensible, efficient. But without imagination, who would be thinking up new designs for robots, or even the idea of a robot?

Science is governed by logic, but science itself was discovered through the imagination, and asking questions that no one else has ever asked before. I’m sure the people who invented wheel, the chariot, the stirrup, gunpowder, the cannon, and all those other things, both wonderful and not-so-wonderful, had loads of imagination. It takes innovation to make something new. Being a daydreamer isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even though my thoroughly grounded father makes it sound like a sin. I guess that’s the problem with modern urban society. Everything is based on production, on efficiency and mostly on money. Money is a means to life, but not the meaning of life.

 

On the Block

My family looks at me blankly whenever I say I’m in a bad mood because of writer’s block. They don’t see why not being able to write or create should put anyone in a bad mood. When I told my mum, she just simply said ‘it’ll be fine tomorrow’, and sometimes it will be, but at other times, that isn’t the case. Writer’s block is a spiritual thing for me, and it really does affect my emotions, and even my physical state. On days when I have writer’s block, I wander around listlessly, not doing much at all. I’m restless, I can’t sleep, I get angry easily–those are all symptoms. The thing is, unlike physical discomfort, the rational side does not see writer’s block as something that should affect your mood, so most of the time, I don’t really know why I’m feeling so crap. I just do. At least when I’m feeling bad physically, I get sympathy. Writer’s block is generally dismissed as not much of a problem at all, but for those of us who write, we understand how frustrating it is.

Since Tuesday, I’ve been affected by writer’s block. I wrote a crap draft for my latest fanfic chapter. Usually, typing out crap drafts makes them decent, but not this time. I seem to be having an idea jam. There’s a rut in my story that  I can’t get out of. I’ve been trying. I’ve journaled, I’ve written here, I’ve written stuff, more drafts. It all sounds a bit forced. Perhaps I’ve been fixing my attention on the wrong thing, but if I know that where I’m looking is wrong, I don’t know what’s the right place to focus on. It’s very confusing. This is an essential part of the story. I just have to get it right or else the entire thing will not work out. I just hope that by the deadline tomorrow evening, time pressure will have forced my mind to churn out something acceptable.