If You're Free This Sat, Let's Go To My Church

Before I start ranting on proper, just a few things definitely worth taking note of:

(i) "ALIAS" SEASON 5 HAS STARTED IN THE US!!!
(ii) THIS IS MY 47TH POST!!! AN INSIDE JOKE WITH MY FRIENDS WHO ARE ALSO "ALIAS" FANS!!!
(iii) End-of-year exams begin officially next week. I'm dead if I don't cut down on computer time to study. Really hard.

Ok, my rant.

I was reading the newspapers this morning, and what a [non-]shock it was when I read a reader's letter to the Forum section concerning the things that people do to convert others to their religion.

This incident was specific to Christianity, which is why this post is aimed at those "Christians" who go to lengths to attempt to convert people to their religion. The main target, however, would be ALL THOSE who have ever attempted, or are attempted, or will attempt to convert others to their religion.

The reader wrote about a teacher who was trying to persuade her friend's daughter to attend church with her. The problem here was that the girl was a Buddhist and therefore the parents were unlikely to allow her to attend.

Guess what the bait was? There was going to some Christian rock concert/festival/whatnot at the church, and it would be great for the girl to go and get converted.

What is your problem, O Hippy-Converting Christians?

I have come up with a term for those Christians who attempt to convert others by using rock music, pop culture, and whatnot as a bait. These are known as the HC-Christians, or Hippy-Converting Christians.

They ask their friends who are non-Christian whether they want to attend a Christian music festival, and there, they start expounding to their friends the virtues of Christianity and begin their attempts at conversion. Then, they start making religion into a sort of pop culture, that you're cool if you're listening to CCM or Christian rock and a bozo if you're stuck with some sort of traditional hoo-doo religion.

Hogwash. Niddle-poomps. Etaoin Shrdlu.

Whatever.

Look, you picked your religion as a choice (or you were inducted into it since young) and you're sticking with it.

Let other people do the same, ok? Unless they're choosing to enter some suicidal/terrorist/violent cult encompassing daily orgies of 1,000 people sans condoms or regular baby sacrifice, let them have their freedom. Why should you care if they're Wicca, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, etc. etc. ? It's not like they're here to abduct you to their worship grounds - so why should YOU do it?

Let's stop this "Spread the Good News that Jesus Saved You and You Should Go to [specifically] MY Church So You Don't Go To Hell". Instead, go "Spread the Peace of Religious Harmony" instead.

Wait, there's another type of conversion - between denominations of a religion. Yes, that means Protestants attempting to convert Catholics over and vice versa. This is even more ridiculous.

Look, you're both part of Christianity. You both share similarities and have differences, but all in all you're more or less the same thing. Stop badmouthing other denominations.

From what I hear, Catholicism suffers the most bashing from other denominations (excluding the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses). Stop the Revelations comparison, ok?

We've had enough war in the world already. We don't want anymore.

Let us live in peace, ok? No more attempts at conversion, please?

And stop the pop-and-rock-music-hook-up-thing. Music isn't the only thing in religion.

In fact, it shouldn't be the starting point for religion.

Let it stop.

Please.

On hiatus again.

I'm finally getting down to posting!

I'm really sorry that some people have been experiencing server or site problems when they attempt to visit this blog - there has been a moving of files over to a new server by the server provider, hence the downtime.

I can't really post long today - I need to go off and study. Yep, that's right, other than the long hiatus before this post there's also going to be a long hiatus after this post. From the 3rd of October 2005 to the 7th of October 2005, I should be offline most of the time to study, meaning minimal or no time at all spent on the computer (I hope). Please pardon my inactivity online in this period of time, and do hope I do really well for all my exams this round and next time so that I can be allowed to spend time online =]

Well, gotta go all. Have a great time, and study hard!

From Eud's Blog.

The painful world and the painful truth. I found this on Eud's blog and the pain of it is that everything mentioned can be true, and will be probably be true if homophobia continues.

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.

Stop all this homophobia crap. People are suffering from famine, natural disasters, wars, bombings, and terrorism all over the world. There's enough fighting going on.

Why start more?

Reminiscence.

I just realised that I should talk about the Sec 3 Adventure Camp before I forget all about it.

Well, the camp started on the 2nd of September. Way before the camp I had been dreading it, but I managed to deal with those feelings of dread by fooling myself into believing the camp as a form of field agent pre-training (yes, the result of watching too much "Alias"). That loosened my dread a lot more and I felt a lot better. That day of the camp also happened to be my violin exam, so I didn't go to school in the morning at 0730 hrs. I'd say the exam went ok - though I had to repeat a few scales (eeps). I hope I passed.

After I came out from the exam room, my mom told me that Mr. See (my form teacher) had given her a call and told her that the class hadn't left school yet and that if I could rush there in time I could go to the Jalan Bahtera campsite with the rest of the class. That's what we did - but before that we popped over to King Albert Park's Cold Storage to get a box of Panadol just in case.

So I reached school and realised there that I wasn't supposed to bring any sweets. Luckily my class loved sweets (loved them too much in fact) and they were gone within seconds.

The bus came and everyone just bundled on. We sang and sang and sang and generally made a lot of noise on the way there (in my opinion, it was a good way of hyping ourselves up for what was coming up next).

It took about 45 minutes to an hour to get to the campsite. Jalan Bahtera's really really far away apparently and there was practically not a single living soul in sight (except for us) in a 1-km radius around the campsite. When we got to the campsite we assembled in the carpark to be directed to our respective groups.

wOOt! I was dispatched to Group Nine (actually, the grouping was done earlier, before the camp), and our group name was Kit (from "Kit-Kat" - yes, there WAS another group called "Kat", which would be our partner group). The atmosphere was kind of quiet at first since no one really knew anyone (I did know Cherrylene, and Franz too). I tried to start the ball rolling by asking everyone for comments and all that, but for some strange reason I got greeted by a haunting silence.

Eeps. So much for trying to be enthusiastic.

Luckily, things managed to loosen themselves up a bit (which proves the point that humans, when it comes to such things, are actually rather helpless, as I can attest to it). We got along more easily, and managed to keep together as a group.

Our first activity was the Challenge Rope Course. I've never seen an obstacle course at such a height before. I didn't manage to go through the CRC though since there wasn't enough time. Some of the others who did try were screaming their way up and screaming their way down.

The next was Rock Climbing. I mananged to give this a try and I must say, it's not as difficult as I expected it to be. I was expecting myself to be either stuck halfway or left suspended in mid-air, but surprise surprise - I got to the top with much ease (although getting down was a little more difficult and I ended up with a bruised knee). It was really fun but quite tiring, and I didn't go a second time.

Finally, there was Abseiling - or walking down a wall from a tall building. This activity was done from a tower about three storeys in height. This activity looked really cool (though rather slow) because it reminded me of the way the agents escaped from tall buildings (excluding Irina, who does it semi-bungee style). It looked difficult and was supposed to be very tiring (as many people told me) but when I tried it, I realised it wasn't that tiring at all. The hard part was keeping the body back and away from the wall - I had this habit of bending upwards. Keeping the body down as essential to keeping the legs on the wall. Whenever I tried, or subconsciously straightened myself up, my legs would lose their grip on the wall and I would just sail forward and swing into the wall (ouch). I mananged to get to the bottom safely and swiftly and I must say, it was really fun.

Skip skip skip all the usual stuff that goes on during a camp and we come to the next day (I didn't mention the Night Hike, did I? Right now I have no idea how to talk about it, so I'll leave it for now). Our first activity in the morning was - *shock* - the Land/Sea Expedition. Yes, the Land/Sea Expedition. I dreaded the Land Expedition because I heard from another group who had gone through it the day before that they had to go knee-deep into a mud pool. I also dreaded the Sea Expedition (which would be Kayaking) because I wasn't a good swimmer, or rather, could hardly swim at all.

The Land Expedition reminded me of an orienteering exercise - we were given clue cards with either bearings and directions or letters and numbers which represented something that could point us in the correct direction. Some examples of the clues include "Bearing: 100 degrees; Distance: 1km", "B04" (which actually referred to a bus-stop - bus-stops in Singapore have letters and numbers assigned to them, apparently), and "165 372 M.G.R." (i.e. grid reference). We were given maps to assist us in looking for these places. The bus-stop, however, wasn't marked on the map but luckily enough we were resting at a bus-stop when we were given the "B04" clue. The bus-stop we were at happened to be "B07" (or something close) and just down the road was another bus-stop saying "B06". From there we figured out that "B04" had to be somewhere down the road.

We managed to get to the third or fourth station and the trainer decided that due to time constraints we should be going straight to the mud track instead (eeps). We were like,"Oh dear!" and all that, but we followed the trainer anyway. We retraced our steps back to somewhere along the road that led out of the Jalan Bahtera campsite towards Lim Chu Kang Road. It was just a normal trail through the grass at first, but we eventually got to a point where the mud levels started to increase. We waited somewhere along the trail for the rest of the groups and when they arrived, moved off towards a slope which led to a wide dirt clearing. We climbed down the slope carefully, supporting each other and eventually managed to get to the bottom.

We finally got to the mud pool. The trainers joked that they were treating us to a free spa and that the mud was really good for our skin. They brought us to the mud pool (which really was knee-deep!) and I must say, it was...muddy, for the lack of a better word. Stepping into the pool our shoes sunk really fast into the loose mud and we sunk downwards as though we had stepped into quicksand.

The trainers made us sit and lie down in the mud - my EL tee was totally ruined (*sobs* - an injustice I had made towards the EDC!) and my shoes were mud-covered. Luckily I wore PE shorts and the mud didn't get into those. There were tadpoles in the mud pool, many of the others claimed, but I couldn't really see those for myself (I wouldn't want to, actually).

When we got out of the pool, we were absolutely filthy. Mud was all over my back and all over my skin. It felt weird to walk since my shoes kept squishing with muddy water. I was so glad that my shoes were made mostly out of canvas - this meant that the mud didn't stick and my shoes were quite clean within seconds of having gotten out of the mud pool.

We went for kayaking next. The buoyancy test was freaky - I couldn't maintain my balance in the water and had to grab onto poor Franz and another person next to me to keep steady. When I got onto a kayak with Franz I was wondering how I should paddle and hoping that nothing would go wrong.

It was a really sunny day - I got a tan on my legs that day. The kayak floated kind of unsteadily, bobbing up and down in the water. I couldn't really keep up with Franz' paddling, but the kayak moved quite smoothly through the water nonetheless. The feeling of the sea breeze was quite cooling.

Eeps, dad's calling me to go out. I think I'd better stop here. Next entry coming up soon!

Found this.

I'm currently listening to: "The Day You Went Away" by M2M

I found this when looking through the Unilang forum: a document describing the advantages that American English (AmE) has over British English (BrE) (Original thread can be found here).

I must firstly clarify my stand - I am neutral to the issue. Having been taught the UK system of English since young I must say that both has its merits. Some of the statements that the above document makes about UK English are debatable, such as the description of BrE's tendency to distinguish between verbs and nouns which have similar spellings and derivatives as unnecessary (e.g. to practise/practice, to license/licence, and to prophesy/prophecy - note that "licence" is now rarely seen in BrE and "license" seems to have taken on its function as well) . I don't find this statement well-founded mainly because the distinction is necessary (at least for BrE) to separate the verb from the noun. This would avoid ambiguity or confusion (there are, of course, other ways to prevent this from occurring).

As another example, the document finds the distinction between "story" and "storey" unnecessary, which again I feel is unfounded because distinguishing between one floor of a building and a fable or tale isn't something that's negligible either.

Some points presented in the document, however, are, in my opinion, reasonable. AmE remains true to the original Latin spelling of "sulfur" while BrE complicates matters and chooses to represent it as "sulphur". Another example includes "foetus", which is pseudo-Latin since the original Latin has "fetus", which would make AmE closer to the original.

I also agree with the point that AmE spelling is a lot more phonetic. Just look at BrE "favour/devour". AmE "favor" removes the confusion in pronunciation. Another such example would be BrE "organise, organisation" and AmE "organize, organization". The former spells them with an "s", which is pronounced as a "z". In the latter, however, the "z" clarifies the pronunciation and there is less ambiguity.

English, in general, is a very irregular language, especially in terms of pronunciation. This is one major flaw that would be near-impossible to solve since the irregularities are so rampant and widespread in the language - they infiltrate practically every word in the English language. I remember a very interesting example - "gheti" would be the same word, pronunciation-wise, as the word "fish" if you pronounced it with the "gh" from "rough", the first "e" from "meteor", and the "ti" from "action". *sigh*

Yep, that's how irregular English is! =]

I finally managed to fix the whole thing!

I'm like OMG and OMGing all along because I finally managed to fix the whole blog design! Yes! The text is looking right, the frames are not out of place, and the div layers are not messed up. Yes yes yes! I managed to fix everything and install a brand new layout I made in a day finally! I am so so so proud of it! My brand new Irina Derevko design!

Ok, had to boast a bit. After two failed layouts I am so glad that I finally managed to get a functional one up. Now I feel ready to post all over again.

Hey, don't forget to check out the new writing blog Raven Chase [ http://ravenchase.blogspot.com/ ]. Do remind me update it in my comments, okay? Please comment, everyone! Thanks!