Strange Customs

Earthlings have strange customs.

Newborns are celebrated as lifetime achievements whereby people congratulate each other,  that which occurs  in the animal kingdom as ordinary events resulting from sexual relations between male and female.

Dogs have babies, cats have babies, pigs have babies, elephants have babies, even mice have babies, all as a result of sexual relations between male and female. It happens all the time in the animal kingdom, day in, day out, without fanfare of any sort. You have sex, the female gets pregnant, a baby is born. Simple as that. What's all the fuss about? What makes it an achievement of a lifetime?

A kingdom may have cause to celebrate the royal birth of a son, an heir to the throne, but who's to say he will rule as wisely as his father did? Who's to say he won't bring about ruination instead? Is celebrating his royal birth not presumptuous in such a case? What about all the illegitimate children sired by the king as happens when a king's sexual appetite overflows from the royal bedroom into the royal harem? Are they celebrated when they are born? Are they not swept under the royal carpet as dirty royal secrets instead?

You have sex, the female gets pregnant, a baby is born. What's so difficult about that? Happens all the time in the animal kingdom, day in, day out, from the largest creature to the smallest. What's all the fuss about?

Another strange custom is celebrating the aging process each year with birthday cakes and party hats from childhood until old age. What's so joyous about indirectly celebrating the onset of inevitable death as people approach it with the passage of time from childhood to old age?

Mighty strange customs indeed hath earthlings.

Ritual Cleansing & Dead Bodies

A dead human body is the most unclean of all unclean things on earth according to the Law of Moses which, incidentally, the Ten Commandments were derived from.

Coming into contact with, say, a dead animal or creature of any sort, renders the person concerned ceremonially unclean, in which case the person concerned may not set foot in the temple, the first one built by King Solomon incidentally, or participate in any religious ceremony conducted within.

He / she shall be required to bathe and wash his / her clothes as well as everything he / she may have touched while still remaining unclean until evening, the washed items included. The uncleanliness in such a case lasts for one day. Incidentally, the same is true in the case of uncleanliness resulting from sexual relations with one's spouse.

The uncleanliness in the case of contact with a dead human body, however, without subjecting oneself to ritual cleansing, a ritual involving what's known as the water of cleansing made from ashes and blessed by no less than a Levite, a designated temple priest, within seven days, lasts forever.

Even being in the same room with a corpse renders one unclean, let alone actually touching it.

What does someone who has a high regard for this particular statute of Moses' but without access to such a purification ritual do where deceased friends or relatives are concerned, since it is known that what Moses instructed the Israelites to do were not from his own mouth?

In the case of a very close relative, I suppose one may turn a blind eye to the fact that one shall be rendered eternally unclean by contact with, say, a dead mother or father. After all, what choice does one have in such a case?

In the case of friends or their close relatives however, I suppose they shall just have to make up their own minds as to why one does not show up at their doorsteps to show one's respects to the deceased person concerned, should such an event come to pass, since anything to do with Moses, except for those sacred Ten Commandments, the first ten out of over six hundred incidentally, is considered archaic in these parts anyway.

A New Car In The Garage

Forgive me if my handshake for my new sister-in-law is cold

For I have but one sister-in-law,

And this is not her.

Was my sister-in law traded in like an old car you no longer had any use for

For this new wife of yours I'm supposed to accept as my new sister-in-law?

Forgive me if my eyes find it difficult to meet hers

For I have but one sister-in-law

And this is not her.

Was my sister-in-law traded in like an old fridge whose usefulness had been outlived

For this new spouse of yours I'm obliged to accept as my new sister-in-law?

Forgive me if my mouth finds it difficult to speak to her

For I have but one sister-in-law

And this is not her.

The Festive Firecracker Issue

Explosive firecrackers are officially banned in Malaysia. However,  good politics necessitates that the law looks the other way when it comes to the various festivities celebrated by the various communities - Eid al-Fitr (Hari Raya Puasa) by the Malays, Chinese New Year by the Chinese, Diwali (Deepavali) by the Indians -  for the sake of not jeopardizing, theoretically, the Malay vote, the Chinese vote or the Indian vote which will indeed be the case should the authorities come down hard on each communal group for detonating explosive firecrackers each time its respective festivities comes along.

The practice of detonating explosive firecrackers during festive seasons originates from the Chinese who, during Chinese New Year, detonate explosive firecrackers to superstitiously ward off evil spirits which is the reason the Chinese do it year after year since the days of their ancestors.

What reason, then, do the Malays and the Indians have for doing it when their respective festivities come along? Surely not to superstitiously ward off evil spirits too, right? What then are their reasons? A herd mentality? Revenge? Lack of parental guidance? Lack of relevant schooling?

This is the scenario in modern-day Malaysia, a nation that recently turned fifty-five but behaves like a five-year-old, a five-year-old who does not understand right from wrong, what's banned from what's not banned, what respecting your neighbor's right to peace and quiet is from what respecting your neighbor's right to peace and quiet isn't.

Or perhaps it isn't an age issue at all. Perhaps we just need to come down from our tree houses and move into the city dwellings provided for us. Is the concept of being a civilized people so difficult to grasp? Being born Asians doesn't mean we cannot behave like we were raised to be lords and ladies, noblemen and noblewomen, princes and princesses, kings and queens.

My kids are still awake. It's almost one in the morning but they're still awake, too terrified to shut their eyes and sleep for fear that the next bomb explosion-like explosion will blow them to bits.

I tell them it's not a war zone that we're in. I tell them, no, war between us and neighboring Thailand is  not being waged. I tell them we're living in the midst of a primitive, tribalistic, culturally backward people who've never come across a festive occasion before in their lives and, having now done so, are behaving accordingly. My kids are confused. They've seen the people I'm talking about wear modern-day clothes, not the garments of tree or cave dwellers.

The funny thing about kids is, the one word adults employ to describe other people which they have no problem whatsoever understanding is this one word: stupid, which is what I end up telling them everybody out there making our lives miserable is, which seems to help, somewhat, between the thundering explosion-like explosions we're shaken out of our skins and deafened by.
It's a good thing we're on good terms with Thailand, because if we weren't, now would be a good time for them to launch an attack. By the time the real explosions were sorted out from the fake ones, it would all be over. The tide of battle would be in the aggressor's favor.

Now wouldn't that be funny? 

Thrill Of The Kill

Man's fascination with acts of killing as exemplified, even glorified, in movies, video games, wildlife documentaries, actual battlefield footages and so on reveals his true nature.

For this reason wars will always be a way of life on earth, let alone lesser acts of murder and mayhem.

Famous Quotes

"It is said, never a lender or a borrower be. However, if you  must, better a lender be, as dishonorable borrowers, whom most borrowers are,  have given borrowers a bad name." - Anonymous

CO Emission Alert

We Malaysians are not from a deprived background, the way we compete with each other in the race for having the biggest house in the neighborhood or the flashiest car on the road. Our lust for such status symbols stems from materialistic impulses, hence streets choked to overflowing with CO-emitting cars.

Generally-speaking, the Chinese are materialistic by nature. So too the Indians. The Malays are not, but, sadly, they've begun acquiring such habits as a result of close proximity with their more affluent neighbors, hence streets even more choked to overflowing with CO-emitting cars.

Interestingly, the Dutch in comparison are the exact opposite.   In Holland, the wheeled status symbol is the humble bicycle, hence streets totally uncluttered by congestion of any vehicular sort.

Not only that. No one can accuse pedal power champion Holland of being an active contributor of vehicle-generated greenhouse gases which in turn contributes to global warming, rising sea levels and chaotic weather patterns.

If each one of us is guilty of abetting the ultimate suicide of Mother Earth directly or otherwise, forensic evidence will reveal no Dutch involvement at all in this respect.

Unfortunately, the day Mother Earth dies, so too will the innocents, and that is the real tragedy of it all.