Ervan’s Weltanschauung

SPEED OF SOUND

How long before I get in?
Before it starts, before I begin?
How long before you decide?
Before I know what it feels like?
Where To, where do I go?
If you never try, then you’ll never know.
How long do I have to climb,
Up on the side of this mountain of mine?

Look up, I look up at night,
Planets are moving at the speed of light.
Climb up, up in the trees,
every chance that you get,
is a chance you seize.
How long am I gonna stand,
with my head stuck under the sand?
I’ll start before I can stop,
before I see things the right way up.

All that noise, and all that sound,
All those places I got found.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you’d understand…

Ideas that you’ll never find,
All the inventors could never design.
The buildings that you put up,
Japan and China all lit up.
The sign that I couldn’t read,
or a light that I couldn’t see,
some things you have to believe,
but others are puzzles, puzzling me.

All that noise, and all that sound,
All those places I got found.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you’d understand,
ah when you see it then you’ll understand…

All those signs, I knew what they meant.
Some things you can invent.
Some get made, and some get sent,
Ooh…
Birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground,
if you could see it then you’d understand,
ah, when you see it then you’ll understand…

I have always been the odd one out in my family. As most of my family are happily using Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, I slowly moved from a Windows 98 machine to a Mac OS 9. Now, I am using a Mac OS X on my ancient G4 machine. Not bad. 5 years on Windoze, I would have upgraded my PC, but I am still happily using a 400 Mhz G4 machine running on Mac OS X. The only addition to my G4 is an extra hard disk (that I salvaged from my old PC), an extra network card and of course, extra memory.

Yesterday, I was on YM with my niece in Seattle. She got a brand new laptop. And her dad, my beloved brother, bought her an iBook. Well, I wanted to get a new laptop since ages ago, and when the iBook G4 came out, I set my eyes on it. And now, my niece beat me to it. Ah well, PPP at it’s best. On my meagre salary, I can’t afford to buy iBook. Wish I am earning USD or GBP now.. *sigh*

Anyway, managed to YM with my brother later in the day. And he told me that my niece’s iBook is the flavor of the month in the Junus family. Plus the fact that she got herself an iPod while my nephew recently purchased an iPod Shuffle. It seems that slowly, the Junus family is adopting Macintosh.

There’s nothing much superior of Macintosh over Windows, but one fact that I really love about my G4, it never give me any major problems in all the 5 years of me using it. It was quite a price to pay. But, for that extra peace of mind, I don’t mind.

And now, I still have yet to purchase a new PC for me to play Linux with. But then again, with the OS X around, do I really need it? By the way, I finally got Windows XP at the office. Just days after returning from Japan. All looks good, it haven’t crash on me at all. Unlike my colleague who’s PC crashed the moment he touched it… hahahaha

Basketball is a team game. It is not a one man show. This is why, when Michael Jordan was still a rookie, he scored 63 points in a game against Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics and yet his team, the Chicago Bulls lost. Only when he had a strong supporting cast in Scottie Pippen, Horrace Grant and Bill Cartwright did the Bulls started winning championships.

I could not help remembering those facts when I was watching Coach Carter. Have to admit, that this MTV Production, in a way, is trying to tell kids to stay in school. And education is very important, even if you are a basketball star. And Coach Carter stood fast in his belief, even willing to forfeit a few games just to ensure all his team members maintain a 2.3 grade point average. Like he said, it is not hard to maintain those grades, and I have to agree with that. He is not asking for a 3.7 average, which requires quite an effort.

Coach Carter is nothing spectacular. But there are plenty of hidden message inside. And my favorite quote…

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our dark that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people don’t feel insecure around you.We are all meant to shine as children do. Its not just in some of us; its in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsiously give other people to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I overheard someone in the back row of the cinema saying “Fuish, Shakespeare siut”

Ah well. To put things right. It is a quote from Marianne Williamson. I was thinking along the Nelson Mandela sayings, but I was wrong….

This thing caught my attention when I was browsing through my old notebooks.

Rukun Negara

Bahawasanya negara kita Malaysia mendukung cita-cita hendak
- mencapai perpaduan yang lebih erat di kalangan seluruh masyarakatnya
- memelihara satu cara hidup yang demokratik
- mencipta satu masyarakat yang adil di mana kemakmuran Negara akan dinikmati bersama secara adil & saksama.
- menjamin satu cara yang liberal terhadap tradisi-tradisi kebudayaan yang kaya dan berbagai corak
- membina satu masyarakat yang progresif yang akan menggunakan sains dan teknoloji moden

then we have the Maka kami, rakyat Malaysia berikrar akan menumpukan seluruh tenaga dan usaha kami untuk mencapai cita-cita tersebut berdasarkan atas prinsip-prinsip yang berikut…

Kepercayaan Kepada Tuhan
Kesetiaan Kepada Raja dan Negara
Keluhuran Perlembagaan
Kedaulatan Undang-Undang
Kesopanan dan Kesusilaan

Well… ten years on, the words seem different today then it was before.

“Watashiwa no namae wa Ervan dess”
“Arigato Gozaimasu, do itashi mastay”

And those were the words I used, and managed to survive in Japan for 10 days. Should have learned more, but, I got by. I even managed to navigate through their very efficient subway, although it’s “not foreigner friendly”.

I was not really prepared for the trip to Japan. The moment I touched down at Tokyo Narita, the captain greeted us by telling us the temperature was 0 degree Celcius. Like I said, I was not prepared, because I only brought along my business suits, with no overcoat.

My schedule was packed throughout the ten days in Japan. I was whisked to the hotel, and barely an hour after that was brought to Yokohoma, our office there. Yokohama is a beautiful port city, too bad I could not see much as I was whisked immediately for a meeting with the MITCO Japan’s staff lead by En Zamani Ahmad, En Ahmad, En Zainul and the very bubbly Nakamura-San (who was about to get married on the following Monday!).

By Sunday, the weather got warmer, and I could walk the streets of Tokyo wearing just my shirt without jacket. Since Sunday I was free for half a day, I decided to go to Shinjuku, and was tempted to go to Koenji, the place where my sister stayed when she was in Japan. It was a walk down memory lane for me, as the last time I was in Japan was 13 years ago…..

Throughout the week I was busy following the management for their meetings, lunch meeting and dinner meetings. By Wednesday I gotten sick with Japanese food, as all our lunch/dinner meetings were all Japanese, “keisaki” style…. eugh… Thank God, the last night I was in Tokyo, my colleague brought me to an Iranian restaurant. She insisted we go there and boy, the food was good!!!

As I took off from Narita, I felt kinda sad leaving, met a lot of new friends, and hopefully, can meet them again real soon….

Oh yeah, the new seats at Malaysia Airlines Golden Club is so bloody comfortable!!!