Lamentations

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

So lately, I've been reading a lot of books (as usual). But I'm reading a lot more than I usually do, for some reason. I'm even taking a few minutes during work to read some e-books. Shhh. Lol.

And they're not storybooks. I realize I haven't read a full storybook in a really long time! It's been Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Satanic or atheistic material nearly all the time. And news articles, columns and humour websites. Anyhoo, it seems that all my reading is for learning, and while that is very nice, I'd also like to read some fictional books regularly too, because I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of storylines and material that'd be very interesting too. But yeah =/.

So, my most recent books I've read in this past month are Misquoting Jesus, Jesus Interrupted, The Case for the Real Jesus, My Jesus Year and Islam Unveiled. Yes, I realize that's a lot of "Jesus" typed there in the titles. The first three books deal with Jesus and His words, and the manuscripts of the Bible. Misquoting Jesus and Jesus Interrupted are both by New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman. Apparently he's highly respected in the field of New Testament studies. Reading his book, I can understand why. He brings up a lot of cases where the text of the Bible supposedly isn't accurate, full of contradictions and mistakes on part of the authors of the gospels. It was a very interesting read. He used to be a Christian until he entered seminary and answered a question with much reasoning and thought. The examiner simply wrote on his paper "Maybe Mark just made a mistake?" and this led him to take the Bible as full of errors, although an important part of scholarship and literature. At the time he wrote the book he was no longer a Christian. His second book expands more from his previous book, and explicitly states that it was never the fact that the Bible was riddled with errors which caused him to stop being a Christian. It was the world so full of suffering that he couldn't handle, and gave up believing there was a God. He mentions several times that he knows Christians who are much smarter and better educated than him who have no problems believing the Bible is full of errors, but are still devout Christians in their churches, and that he used to be one of them, until the fact of suffering was too obvious for him. Reading his book brought quite a shock to me, as he brought up many cases that were legitimate, and I could not answer well, despite reading so much. Also, the guy has credentials and is a leading scholar in his field. He knows his stuff.

Which is why I laughed when I read The Case for the Real Jesus, written by Lee Strobel. It deals mainly with the matters of defending the traditional view of Jesus, in light of all the New Age and spiritual stuff that people have done to Jesus. I didn't know when I began reading it, that two sections of the book deal heavily with matters that Bart Ehrman wrote. And one particular chapter deals almost entirely with his book, explaining away Bart Ehrman's cases and using various evidences and sources to argue against Ehrman's arguments and critiques. Also interesting to find out was Bart D. Ehrman's father-mentor was actually Bruce M. Metzger. Funny thing is Bruce Metzger was interviewed by Lee Strobel for an earlier book, where Metzger defends the accuracy of the gospels! Metzger talks about the wealth of New Testament manuscripts available, and how they've been accurately passed down over time and the defence of the doctrine of the Trinity, as well as the traditional view of Jesus. I found it extremely ironic that Ehrman, who's book talks about the errors and corruptions in the Bible, had Metzger as his mentor, who defended biblical accuracy and veracity. Either way, it was a very good read, and it helped deal with a lot of the arguments Ehrman brought up, which initially caught me off guard.

My Jesus Year is a funny book by a Jew, Benyamin Cohen, who has been feeling dissatisfaction of attending synagogue services which feel empty to him. He notices that churches all around have so many, devout, happy members, some numbering in the tens of thousands, and he wonders what are the Jews missing that the Christians have? Believing that somehow going to church will make him a better Jew, he goes church hopping, to Pentecostal churches, megachurches, Episcopal churches and the like, and even an army base service. He meets various people, several who are like him, who find a closer connection to Judaism through Christianity. One of the most interesting ones that surprised me was the co-founder of the Gospel Music Channel is actually a Jew. He's a devout Jew who asked his rabbi whether it was right for a Jew to work in a job that actively spread Christianity and his message. And his rabbi said there was no problem. Not to mention he found that he was doing a very fulfilling job that helps a lot of spiritual seekers and Christians, teaching good values regardless of religious belief. And that was something that Cohen could easily resonate with.

Perhaps the most controversial book I've read this month has been Islam Unveiled. It's written by Robert Spencer, a prominent critic of Islam. Hence, naturally, the book won't talk favourably of Islam. I haven't been really familiar with Spencer's work, but after reading his book, I think I'm quite a fan. He brings up a lot of very sensitive topics in his book, such as the role of women in Islam, whether Jihad is only an inner spiritual struggle, and questioning the Qur'an. I discovered a lot of disturbing facts, like a group of students threw their lecturer out of their school window because their lecturer talked of the Qur'an coming down to us through a process, instead of having an outright divine origin. Also disturbing was that when the USA had the 9/11 attacks, Muslims all over the world rejoiced, most notably in Palestine. Many of the imams that George Bush invited to a ceremony regarding the 9/11 attacks were also prominent in their criticisms of what would happen to the US. Irony. It also speaks of Jihad and admits that while the inner struggle of jihad is doctrine, and is a greater jihad, there is no verse that forbids the violent jihad to non-believers. From the Qur'an and hadiths themselves, Muslims are told to be the best people to their brethren, but to kill infidels and apostates. People who convert to other religions from Islam are to be put to death. It's all part of the religion. Another section that surprised me was how to report rape. Reliance of the Traveller, which is a highly regarded text (all over the Islamic world) on how to live an Islamic life and over jurisprudence, states that rape requires four male witnesses, or else the rapist cannot be charged. Seriously? And also from the Qur'an itself “Call in two male witnesses from among you, but if two men cannot be found, then one man and two women whom you judge fit to act as witnesses; so that if either of them commit an error, the other will remember” (Sura 2:282). Women's testimony are only worth half as much as men. So, what... you need 8 women to report a rape? And of those four good men who report a rape... what are they doing watching it and not helping?

Other stuff I've been reading that I don't quite agree with are strange parts such as Sura 9:30 "The Jews say, "Ezra is the son of Allah"; and the Christians say, "The Messiah is the son of Allah." That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before [them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?" Jews never, ever claimed God had a son, especially Ezra of all people, a minor prophet. They considered God having a son blasphemous. Another case I read was about this Jew who verbally harassed the prophet Muhammad, and a follower of his asked whether he would like him to kill him for the prophet. The prophet said "yes" and he proceeded to kill him. I've also read up on the Uthman redactions of the Qur'an, of Mary in the Trinity and finally reading the whole story of Muhammad marrying that child. And it's not one-sided. I've delved into Muslim apologetics to see their defences for these issues, and so far, I'm really not impressed in the slightest, with exception to the passing down of the Qur'an, which I see defended excellently. Here's an excerpt describing the child-bride incident.

Narrated Aisha: My marriage (wedding) contract with the Prophet was written when I was a girl of six (years). [Apparently three years then elapsed.] . . . My mother, Umm Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became normal, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari [recent Muslim converts] women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Messenger came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age.

At this point, according to the best Muslim sources, the Prophet was a little over fifty.

This marriage at least could have been politically motivated, as Nasr maintains. Muhammad may have married Aisha to cement the loyalty of her father, who was his principal disciple and who had earlier agreed to give Aisha’s hand in marriage to a pagan. Even if that were his only reason to take his child bride, However, surely he could have waited until Aisha was older to consummate the marriage. But Bukhari reports: “Narrated Urwa: ‘The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).’”

Of course, this was not unusual by the prevailing standards. Muslims in Muhammad’s day thought nothing of marrying girls who had just begun menstruating—and even girls who had not yet reached that point. Indeed, this practice was common enough that, after the Qur’an instructs that a man must wait three months before divorcing a wife who has ceased menstruating (in order to make sure she isn’t pregnant), there is this additional command: “The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (Sura 65:4). Those who have not yet menstruated! One may imagine that the prospects of a prepubescent divorcee would have been rather dim. Problems arise when behavior like this is abstracted from its historical context and proposed as a paradigm for human behavior in all times and places.

That last sentence sums what I think.

I'm not trying to piss off Muslims here. A lot of my close friends are Muslims. And I know that most of my Muslim friends are ordinary people who have no thought of killing others or being pedophiles. However, if I see someone believe in Nazism, or Mormonism, I'll be concerned for him (not myself), even if he's a nice guy. Same thing here, with what I've learned. It's the theology, not the people. It's just that these are legitimate cases that I've brought up from what I learned in the book. I've had the same with difficult Christian doctrines and troubling verses before, and even then there aren't satisfactory answers for every single objection to Christianity. Robert Spencer concludes in his book that the early Muslims were a people very willing to learn from other people (like mosque domes were actually inspired by church domes) and were experts at science and philosophy until the fanatics won over. And until they can find a way for them to theologically explain these difficult verses in a way that allows for peace, he says they are something that need to be watched.

Chronicled
11:40 AM

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This is Jimmy Tang.

And this, on the right, is Jarrah Al Kandari.

Hah, I'm not putting up pictures of poster boys (and why would I?). These are the two oldest friends I have, who I still keep in contact with. I had a huge bout of nostalgia and memories as I was only able to find and add them on Facebook recently. Jimmy remains the oldest friend in my life that I still keep in contact with. When I had graduated from Kindergarten, I moved onto Grade 1. I actually got lost because I didn't know what class I was suppose to be in so I cried. Lmao, yeah. Some kind teacher told me that our names were posted in a board beside the class we were assigned to (making a child feel stupid is very easy), and she brought me to the correct classroom. I was still sobbing a bit, and we were told to just read books and talk with our friends. My first day of class in grade 1 meant I had no friends, and my kindergarten classmates weren't in my class. None of them. Anyhoo, some chubby boy walked over to me and gave shared his book with me, allowing us to laugh and read. He eventually became my best friend, and we were tight. A genius (I mean that in a literal sense) joined us later, named Kevin. Kevin shared a love for dinosaurs with me, and he even did this cute little dinosaur workbook for me, like filling in names, colouring triangles to form the teeth in the jaw of a T. Rex and stuff like that. He was so smart that he actually entered the gifted program, and left for a gifted school. I made many other friends, but they are just names and faded memories. Vince, Vincent, David, Drawzen (that's how it's pronounced, screw the spelling on this one) and Cindy. Cindy was an annoying girl with a loud voice who hung out with Jimmy, Kevin and I. I remember she always wore this very plain outfit of a sweatshirt and sweatpants, of grey colour. She was annoying, but she was a nice person too, giving us gifts and craftwork. I moved to Orde Street Public School later on, so I left behind that group. Many years later, I would eventually find an old phonebook that contained Jimmy's number, and called, and lucky me, it was still his number. It let us catch up and I introduced him to my Orde friends, namely Ahmed, but he also briefly met Jarrah. Jimmy was there for my final birthday in Canada, and we did this kiddish thing where we would charge at each other with our arms folded and clash our shoulders really hard to see who would fall, shouting "You go!" which comes from some inside joke I can't recall at all now. But yeah. He's changed a lot.

Jarrah was my second friend when I moved to Orde. All the crying had stopped by then. Lol. I was still the new kid though (as I realize I often am), and didn't know anyone, since it was a brand new school. I actually made friends with a guy named Morrow first. He was a blonde, white guy. I found out later he hung out with me because he had no friends (and I'd soon find out why). He was nice enough. During lunch time, when we were supposed to enter the gymnasium for lunch, we ate at the playground, which we found out the hard way was not allowed. We'd sit inside this small wooden shelter and talk about Beast Wars. In class we had this playtime where we could take a bucket with toys inside, and play. One day I randomly picked up some kind of building block toys. It wasn't lego, nor duplex. It looked similar to Bionicle's kind of mechanism. Sort of. Hard to explain. But I ended up making a really grand building and even my own character piece. The teacher (Mrs Prymak, from Iran) was so impressed she let me keep it at a corner. Morrow added in his pieces later on, and soon Jarrah, a classmate I had never spoken to before, was interested. He ended up talking to me, and started hanging out with me and Morrow. By this time I had gotten to know most of the classmates already, and then I realized that Morrow was beginning to treat me bad, lie to me frequently and tease me. Sure, bullying is easier to deal with now, but as a kid? It's difficult. It ended up getting into real fights on the playground, and somehow the moron Morrow had turned everyone who used to be my friend against me. Jarrah, Leo Wang, and some others I remember their faces, but not their names. Recess was a dread 'cause that was the time they'd all disturb me and chase me, pushing me and stuff. Eventually I grew to deal with it, and began fighting back. That led to them slowing down until they stopped. And then I began regaining my friends. Jarrah actually lived in the same condo as me, at One Park Lane. He lived 11 floors higher than me. We would go swimming together in the condo pool, and very often in the morning, we'd walk to school together (I was always late... something that hasn't changed growing up). This stopped during the bullying. But after a few minor chats and phone calls, we became good friends again, and he had more or less become my best friend. Morrow lost all his friends after the bullying stopped. They had become my friends instead. And we didn't bully Morrow back. We just ignored him. Anyway, Jarrah and I remained good friends even when we ended up in different classes the next few years. Every recess we'd still play a form of soccer with a tennis ball with many others, including Ahmed, another friend who I considered a best friend later on. We'd get into a few arguments here and there (normally over the soccer game), but after a few hours of cooling down he could still call me up for a swim, or to eat at his house. Our parents were decent acquaintances as well. My family took care of his guinea pig when he went for the Hajj, and their family took us out to ice skating and meals outside when my family wasn't around.

And those were the times in Canada. Keeping in contact wasn't something that I value as much as I do now, so I lost contact with a lot of them. Now I still maintained contact with plenty of my Canadian friends, chiefly Victoria, Alison and Pauline. But I lost contact with Jarrah and Jimmy. Ahmed managed to find me later on, and I found Anayatul. Then recently I was looking back at some old pictures from Canada, and I began trying out names I remembered. And I found them. Sally Diep, Jimmy Tang, Jarrah Al Kandari. And wow, what a surprise they had become. Jimmy ended up running some kind of business that helps improve family lives (he's also become a Mormon... hmm), and Jarrah went back to Kuwait, and is now studying dentistry in Egypt.

And the feeling when you find them, and catch up is pretty amazing. It's like finding a part of you that was long forgotten, and the memories that you recall. And seeing them so different now. Geez. Jimmy is still slightly chubby, but he's a lot slimmer now. Jarrah was super active and sporty as a kid, and that hasn't changed. Instead of soccer though, he's now into water polo, and his body is ripped as hell.

And speaking of all this nostalgia, I found this website that allows students to grade their teachers for their easiness, performance, skills and lets them leave comments. I found my most hated teacher, Mr Moore and it seems that lots of students hate him as well. Although I don't deny he was an effective teacher, being a moron could've been left out. I remember him creatively making homework through "Choose a Chart" where we would bring home a chart with questions and stuff on it. It range from math, to English, to codes (my favourite one), poems and other stuff. However most of the time he picked out the homework for us, and for some reason he always gave me the hardest charts. Geez. Only towards the end of the school term when the cycle of charts was almost ending would he give me the easy ones (like the codes) because he had no choice. Pfft. My mom said it's because he believes I am capable of hard questions, and thus gives me the hard charts. But heck, I'm a kid! Give me EASY assignments! I loved the codes! Should I feel complimented that even as a kid I was considered smart? I don't care! I wanted EASY stuff! Zzz. Anyway, I also discovered a bunch of other names that ring really familiar... Mr Richard Stein from grade 6, room 15. Ms Giovanna Riccio of grade 5, room 21. Mr Michael Alan Moore taught me for TWO years in room 16 for grade 3 and 4. I thought I was free of him after grade 3. And as stated above, Mrs Jasmine Prymak taught me grade 2, in room 18. A bunch of other names that ring familiar but weren't so close were Mr James Snetsinger, the gym teacher, Mrs Mann, the librarian, Mrs Pike, Mr Martin Lewis of room 17, Mrs Pearse, Mr Verba, Mrs Tomlinson-Morris of room 22, and of course Helen Illes Vernon, our principal. There were some staff like Josie, Rose and our French teacher, a Chinese lady who liked to wear lab coats for some reason. Speaking of which, I've forgotten the names of the Cantonese and Spanish teachers =/. Also of note is Ms D'desse (pronounced like that) who was a teacher in training who was with us for a few months. And she was freaking pretty! But puberty hadn't hit yet. So yeah. Ms DiPaola was also a teacher in training, although I didn't like her as much.

I've often said I don't like forgetting things, and that losing all my memories is something I dearly dread. However, these early years can't be helped. They're not easy to remember, and as a kid these things didn't mean so much in the first place. But now they do, and to think I've found my two oldest friends who I can still keep in contact with. They were my best friends in the past some time, and remain the oldest of them, and the oldest I can still remember and now, proudly, and happily, remain in contact with.

Chronicled
10:01 AM

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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Oh GEEZ my neck hurts like hell.

Went for a metal gig that Sacwrath was invited to, along with Kolbenfaust and a few other bands earlier this Sunday. Oh, which reminds me, a link! Click here to see a bunch of facts (and jokes) on the number 666! Pretty funny and interesting, as well as learning (from other sources as well) that 616 is the very likely correct number of the beast, as the oldest manuscript that we have of Revelation has 616 written instead of 666. Too bad for all the bands that use it, and all the idiots who are afraid of the number!

Lmao, anyhoo, on the fourth day of Chinese New Year, Miki invited Symposium to go to her place to celebrate and eat, play games and all. Even on the Wednesday before that day, she had reminded us. So on Thursday, the Sunway guys met up and went to Cheras, supposedly to pick me up and head over. Then they got screwed over. Apparently they called Miki and told her that they were on the way to Cheras, when Miki told them she had a fever and she cancelled the plans. Without telling us. What the hell. And the way she said it wasn't a nice way either. It was like (in a snobby, condescending tone) "I HAVE A FEVER!" as if that granted her all the bitching rights in the universe. Bloody hell. Then they called Michelle and Aaron, who promptly cancelled on the spot saying they wanted to sleep in, 'cause they were heading to Penang at night. All these inconsiderations pissed off everyone else, and in the bloody morning when the plans were supposedly set. So they went to my house where we decided what to do. We agreed to go for lunch and karaoke as was planned, and think of the subsequent plans later. So yeah, we sang, ate, drank and all that at Neway Karaoke before heading out and wondering what was our next phase. Someone suggested going to Genting and spending the night there, leaving in the morning, and I agreed, as did everyone else!

So while heading to the road that would lead to Genting, I suddenly remembered THAT I HAD WORK THE NEXT DAY. LMAO. I honestly had no idea how that slipped my mind! It just came to my head, and I was like "Stop the car! NOW!". Sareena and James, in the same car wondered what the hell was going on. I told them I still had work, and called the other car with the rest. We went back to my place where I told them that I'd pass, and that they could all just go along without me. But they kept insisting I go! Lmao, from getting an MC to asking for an extra day of leave and other unreasonable stuff, until they finally decided that we should go to Genting and spend the night there, but leave in the wee hours of the morning, in time for me to get to work. And we did. Awesome eh -.-. We went to Amber Court once again, chilling out, enjoying the freezing whether and eating cup noodles, sharing stories, jokes, and for the guys, sparring with one another for fun. I ended up accidentally elbowing Andrew Joel in the lip, busting a small hole that bled. Ironically Redzuan said for us not to stop fighting until one of us bled, prompting Andrew to spit out a wad of blood. HA.

We also acted like idiots to the drivers heading to Amber Court. We walked along the dark, desolate road that led to Amber Court and did stupid stuff when a car drove past, like hump one another, dance like idiots, give a scary face, give a smiling face that looked scary, stand with our heads down and in one line, and a lot of other stuff. Brilliant! Around 5am we slept for an hour in our cars outside of Amber Court before leaving for breakfast, and leaving for Kuala Lumpur. Back at my place, I headed off to work, where I proceeded to be a zombie at work, unaware of almost anything that was said that day. Yeah. But it was a great time spent, and also a great time to share a lot with each other and just have fun. Luckily the idiocy and inconsiderations of the 3 Cherasians didn't ruin our plans as a whole. In the end, we had much more fun than expected!

And as I was saying earlier, after church service and fellowship, I attended a metal gig hosted by Heartshaped Studios, which invited Sacwrath, Kolbenfaust and many other bands. This was by far Sacwrath's best performance yet and I was impressed. Kolbenfaust did a brilliant job as well, and Justin and Asri were each featured in one of the other band's songs. Much charisma and showmanship, as well as a great crowd. A few hardcore kids were being idiots though. I can say that although I'm not really a fan of hardcore dancing, its become a very common feature in metal gigs and is more or less part of the scene and I'll respect it as so. But the people doing the hardcore dancing in this gig did some moves that I had never seen before, and that's not a compliment. Retardedness went to a whole new level with the moves they've made and several kept falling over to the floor or into the people standing at the sides, which pissed off quite a number of spectators. Luckily they were only doing these moves for a few bands. I headbanged till my neck hurts like hell now, and my entire body is stiff with soreness. It's as though I went for a full body workout at the gym, except with none of the physical benefits and all of the pain. However, I enjoyed it greatly, and I was pleased to discover a new band, Behind The Death, that I quite liked. Resembles an unpolished Cradle of Filth for some reason.

But yeah, time was well spent and enjoyed this week, and now my body shall pay for it!

Chronicled
12:45 PM

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