Been having assessment skills workshops and then counseling workshops, and the instructor said:

Accept that you're a human being.

Sometimes I, we, forget to do this.

Tonight, I ended up reading the constitution of PKMS (Singapore Malay National Organization), and the first listed aim is apparently:

Memperjuangkan dan mempertahankan sehingga terlaksananya hak kedudukan keistimewaan orang-orang Melayu dalam Singapura sebagaimana yang termaktub di dalam Perlembagaan Singapura.

or

To safeguard and work for the full implementation of the special rights of the Malays in Singapore as enunciated in the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore.

Errrm. ?!?!?! What has PKMS achieved so far, I ask you. In fact, how, in any way, have they attempted to assert Malay identity and roots in this country? (Other than my having religious classes when I was a blur little primary school kid, in that hot, stuffy, ancient building with the letters PKMS on its side, across from Masjid Darul Aman, I actually have not much contact with PKMS.) In fact, much the opposite has happened; somehow, we are today grappling with the confusing and strange possibility of teaching Malay as a foreign language. Omg, seriously, I don't understand; it's almost laughable.

And frak, because I am such a stickler for thoroughness, I went to look up The Constitution of The Republic of Singapore, and Part XIII, titled General Provision, says this:

Minorities and special position of Malays

152. —(1) It shall be the responsibility of the Government constantly to care for the interests of the racial and religious minorities in Singapore.

(2) The Government shall exercise its functions in such manner as to recognise the special position of the Malays, who are the indigenous people of Singapore, and accordingly it shall be the responsibility of the Government to protect, safeguard, support, foster and promote their political, educational, religious, economic, social and cultural interests and the Malay language.

!!!

Somehow, I just really wish I had this 4 years ago, in Patrick Daly's Politics of Heritage class. To a question addressed in tutorial about the natives of Singapore, everyone was like (I shall never forget, as I recounted to Lin this morning), "Oh, Singapore is a country of immigrants. And before that we were a tiny fishing village, and the only people around Singapore were these people called Orang Laut." And there I was, in my seat, blood-rising at the sheer incredulity of the scene I was witnessing, waiting for just one soul to maybe, just maybe, speak some sense. But no. I was the only one who seemed to even consider that yes, historically-speaking at least, we are a Malay country. And then me, being the little volcano that I am, finally burst out, "The Orang Laut are the Malays!" Bloody hell, the name itself is in Malay, have a brain, why don't you. And just please, look at the region surrounding us: this IS a malay region. Look east, look north, look south, and even west.

Seriously, I wasn't and still am not, even advocating we have Malay privileges like we used to; all I wanted was hey, some respect and acknowledgement that the Malays are the natives. But no, even this was met with some sort of animosity when I was the sole "Malay" person (and some people would say I'm not even one, exactly) in that class who spoke for this fact; like I was some backward, weird person. And now, LOOK, the constitution clearly says so, but the people of course (and perhaps ministers?), generally, do not know.

Today, pleeeease lah. What special position of Malays! We are so special we are in danger of being labeled foreigners. O.O I don't know, you try explaining.

Because every time my sister throws something by BigBang at me, I like it even when I try not to:



The music video is always different and preeettty, and everyone is now becoming even more refined. (GD, why are you so cool without trying.) I feel like Big Bang seems like a valid Kpop group because they don't have uncountable people dancing together, ahahah, and they actually each look different! I like it when a group has member individuality; Arashi being best example.

Exam week will be done with soon, yatta.

All the people in my house are learning arabic. (Also, my aunt and her friend have Arabic lessons here too!) :s It's making me feel... guilty? left behind? threatened? I must find a way to buck up. There's this wall of Arabic grammar that hits you whilst learning, and if not enough effort is put in, and with excuses of lack of time and opportunity, you can get stuck at one position forever. Oh noes. I need to develop focus, seriously. Distractions (e.g. sappy korean dramas) = personal major challenge in life.

!!! Deep down, I'd always felt this; because it's not like we can prove evolution by encasing a pair of drosophilas separately to see if they evolve differently from the rest of the free-roaming drosophilas. And yet, everybody in the secular world seems to take the evolution of man as fact so unquestionably. Why is this. It is so puzzling.

The ninth chapter (The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Ed. J.W. Burrow. London: Penguin Books, 1979, 291-317) made it clear, from what Darwin modestly calls the "great imperfection of the geological record" that the theory was not in principle falsifiable, though the possibility that some kind of evidence or another should be able in principle to disprove a theory is a condition (if we can believe logicians like Karl Popper) for it to be considered scientific. By its nature, fossil evidence of intermediate forms that could prove or disprove the theory remained unfound and unfindable. When I read this, it was not clear to me how such an theory could be called "scientific". 

If evolution is not scientific, then what is it? It seems to me that it is a human interpretation, an endeavor, an industry, a literature, based on what the American philosopher Charles Peirce called abductive reasoning, which functions in the following way: 

(1) Suprising fact A.
(2) If theory B were the case, then A would naturally follow.
(3) Therefore B.  

Here, (1) alone is certain, (2) is merely probable (as it explains the facts, though does not preclude other possible theories), while (3) has only the same probability as (2). If you want to see how ironclad the case for the evolution of man is, make a list of all the fossils discovered so far that "prove" the evolution of man from lower life forms, date them, and then ask yourself if abductive reasoning is not what urges it, and if it really precludes the possibility of quite a different (2) in place of the theory of evolution. 

From Nuh Keller's Evolution and Islam.

From another wonderful tumblr place here!

<3

My study week has commenced! And I wonder how on earth April came so fast. O.O I think I am discovering a new feeling called happy stress.

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And I didn't think it would be C.S. Lewis to say this, but so true. : ( Women, take care of yourselves.

A society in which conjugal infidelity is tolerated must always be in the long run a society adverse to women. Women, whatever a few male songs and satires may say to the contrary, are more naturally monogamous than men; it is a biological necessity. Where promiscuity prevails, they will therefore always be more often the victims than the culprits. Also, domestic happiness is more necessary to them than to us. And the quality by which they most easily hold a man, their beauty, decreases every year after they have come to maturity, but this does not happen to those qualities of personality — women don’t really care twopence about our looks — by which we hold women. Thus in the ruthless war of promiscuity women are at a double disadvantage. They play for higher stakes and are also more likely to lose. I have no sympathy with moralists who frown at the increasing crudity of female provocativeness. These signs of desperate competition fill me with pity.

C.S. Lewis in We Have No “Right to Happiness”  (awesome read, btw!)

“God enjoins you to treat women well, for they are your mothers, daughters, and aunts.” - Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)

source

I know I sound nutso about this, but how is it that this girl seems to get more gorgeous by the day?!? I want to be like this also! Who says that a girl's beauty peaks at 17??? This is proof! Haha, I cannot forget the time long ago when Lin and me were chatting and I laughed like crazy when she went, shrugging her shoulders and giving her we-should-give-up-face, "That's it, lah. That's it." -- we're past 17, it's all downhill from here. Heheheee. XD



Haiyoh, Maki why you so pretty.

We are approaching the peak of mugging season, but as always, I find myself digging up stuff on anything but the required syllabus.

For instance, this upcoming elections. Being finally old enough, I can technically vote, but... I feel clueless. While, yes, I have a general idea of things, it still feels like a cloze-passage situation with large gaps in knowledge. For example, just how many parties are there? Who are these people and what exactly will they end up doing on my behalf??? I don't have a big picture understanding of things O.O and I am appalled by myself! How to make wise decisions about voting? Cannot just blindly vote against PAP, which is what my fiery pro-opposition elders keep recapitulating.

Also, it doesn't help that our media monopoly gives one-sided stories i.e. PAP candidates. (Read: onesingaporean's Straits Times, you not embarrassed meh?) How much do I have to dig to really find out about things? :\

Why aren't we generally more politically aware? I do not want to be an apathetic citizen! Maybe I don't have the right politically-minded friends, but it seems like all we're concerned about are acing exams and money-making endeavours and having micro-concerns about our livelihoods. Our minds should be broadened. (And... my thoughts lead me back to our PAP-schooled mindsets, meh. Homeschooling is really looking to be more and more a preferable alternative.)

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Something else before I go: a documentary (shared by Ain) on the 2008 Gaza Incursion, and the amazing kids who survive the ordeal. How it is that they're so young and yet, so brave. Hard times really shape strength and character, I think. And maybe, children, like Gatto says, stop acting like children if you let them be adults.

This post is testimony to my lack of priorities, seeing as how I have a test tomorrow, and I haven't exactly memorised everything I need to. I feel the information leaking out of my ears, ohdear.

Anyways, today, I was thinking that maybe, it's true: kindred spirits migrate toward each other. (:

Had a long discussion this afternoon (again despite looming test tomorrow and therefore putting into question my priorities) about everything under the sun, but then we got really fired up about education, and I want to share this (which I learnt about from Shaykh Hamza, of course, hoho, who else.):

John Taylor Gatto's Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids and Why, at Challenging The Myths of Modern Schooling.

"Mandatory education serves children only incidentally; its real purpose is to turn them into servants. Don't let your own have their childhoods extended, not even for a day. If David Farragut could take command of a captured British warship as a pre-teen, if Thomas Edison could publish a broadsheet at the age of twelve, if Ben Franklin could apprentice himself to a printer at the same age (then put himself through a course of study that would choke a Yale senior today), there's no telling what your own kids could do."

oops.