The end of blogging?

Yeah... that's how I see it... At least, the end is nigh for the casual bloggers who used to update their blogs as a form of diary writing, as a form of updating their friends about the things in their lives.

However, a quick sweep through my old networks have found that most of my friends are not blogging regularly anymore. Those same friends can now be found actively involved in FB, whereby they are posting stuff that's about a twitter long.

The thing is, people are slowly using shorter and shorter forms of communication.

The need for speed, as it were, is so intense in our lives that we want to keep in touch with our friends, but we have so little time to write out a long and detailed article.

The days of keeping in touch via a letter seemed so long ago that a 15 year old might not even know what an actual letter looks like. For all you know, when we teach 'letter writing' in English class might seem like redundant in 5 years' time. Heck, even now, my students don't seem to have grasp the entire concept of what a letter feels like.

Not so long ago, perhaps about 20 years ago, people literally kept in touch via letters. My mom, when she got married, wrote a letter back home to tell her mom about this wonderful man that she's met and when they are getting married. That was in 1979, exactly 30 years ago.

Then came the phone call. Back then, we had to literally dial the phone. The phone had a dial whereby you slot in your fingers to the number and you turn the dial around until it hit a point and you let go. Kids, I know that you can't even envisage this in your mind. That was the time of the analog phone.

The digital dial came in when I was about 10 years old, which makes that about 1990. Then, in and about 1995, we were introduced to the 'mobile' phone. The mobiles were so huge at that time that you only brought it around if you were driving! It's hard for the kids today to envisage also a mobile phone that couldn't fit into your pocket. Well yeah, back in those days, mobile phones were bigger than your 15" laptops.

Then, the mobile phones got smaller. I still remember the days whereby the 'text message' was still like the new thing in town. It used to cost RM0.50 per message. And a meal used to cost RM3.00. That's like 6 messages and you've lost your chicken rice for lunch.

And now, about 30 years on, we are so wired that we have seemed to forget how things were about 30 years ago.

Now my mom gets to hear her grandson via the mobile phone. I did not write my mom a letter when I told her about my wedding, and I sure's did not send her a RM0.50 text message.

And then, we come to the point whereby mobile phones are the defunct devices of the future. Today, there's no such thing as just sending a text message.

My parents-in-law keep up with the developments of their grandson via FB. Every month, or whenever we have nice photos, we would load it up into FB and we'd give them a msg asking them to check out the photos.

Soon, everyone will be writing shorter and shorter texts, communicating faster and faster. And this is going to change the usage of language. Sometimes, I feel that teaching English according to the old school methods is so oxymoron. On one hand, we are asking the kids to advance, and at the same gesture, we are restricting their advancement by asking them to keep on looking back.

Let me ask you. After being brought up on push button on your phone, will you even want to go back to dialing your phone the analog way?

Oh... you don't even know what I'm talking about...

If I didn't sign in today...

this blog may cease to exist!

That's how long I've been out. I almost forgot my own password!

That shows you how busy I've been in the past few months. Well, it's not actually THAT busy, but there's always something at the back of my mind that I can't sit down and bother about writing something in my blog.

Maybe this is all it's about working in an executive level for a big firm. Yes, my school's just started and it's a rather small staff team, but we're like a new subsidiary of a larger group. We have to report to our immediate boss, which is the Chairman of the Board of Directors, which is also the Rector of one of the largest churches in Sabah. Then we also have to take orders and requests from the our boss' boss. This is how pre-occupied it is working in a 'small school' like ours.

Well, it's been about 3 months since we started off in mid-June. We were requried to hit the ground running, so we ran. And some of us are feeling the strain. We've been working through public holidays, we've been asked to come back during the school holidays, and it seems that the work has no end.

I guess only after so long that I have had the time to sit down and think about something which is not work-related.

So now, what's changed?

-- posting disturbed by demands of work --

- continued the day after -

So, yeah.. what's changed is this...

We're finally settling down. We are starting to think like 'orang Tawau' if you know what I mean. I seriously need to get out of this town for 2 weeks to give myself my life back. Else, I will start driving 40km/h on the fast lane.

Joshua's been a good kid to take care of. He's happy. We try to spend as much time as possible with him. At nights, he'll spend most of his time on our bed whilst we play with him. He seems to have developed a liking for his mom when he's sleepy, but when he wants to play, he'll look for me. He's growing bit by bit and on the run of his 4th month, he was able to turn over by himself. He's on his way to crawling. He just needs to build up his arms and leg muscles.

We've started to buy rattles for him and he seems to enjoy them. His hands are grabbing things all the time and he seems to find comfort in blankets and towels.

Now, looking back at his old photos, it's like he's changed so much. He's grown up so much and we hope that soon enough, he'll be able to learn things fast enough too.

On our side, the family's doing ok. We just sold off our apartment in Sunway and thus, relieving our financial pressures a bit. However, much still needs to be done until the final handing over, which we feel would be some time in December. By then, I'd have to go to KL for a couple of days to get everything settled I guess.

As for now, we are settling our debts one-by-one and hopefully, by the end of this month, we'd be debt-free. Well, asset-free as well.

-- duty calls again --

-- The writings above have been sitting there in my draft's folder for... like... a few days... --

And so I've come back to finish this article. It's been so long since I've had the time and opportunity to sit down and think. I guess with a baby around the house, that's what happens. The kid demands and demands your attention. And when he's not demanding attention, he'd be demanding that he be fed.

So most of my nights have been used up by him. My wife and I, we juggle our nights with him. Lucky for us, we were able to fit everything we need into this huge master bedroom that we have, so we don't need to go into another room just to do something. So, effectively, we are living in our bedroom, and the other parts of the house are just there... for storage... The only time that we need to do stuff outside of our bedroom would be when we need to cook, or do the laundry.

So, I've been thinking... Maybe teaching isn't my first calling in life. Maybe I'm called to do something else. I've just figured out that my primary passion in life is to see life changed. Not to impart knowledge based on a syllabus, but to change the way young kids think and act. It's a shame that I've figured out why this nation lacks in mental capability.

Our society doesn't seem to be able to move up the cultural ladder simply because of a few things. The first is history, the rejection of it, and the lack of it.

People say that our nation is just about 50-years young. But how is it that we cannot compete with our neighbour, who is actually 5 years younger than us?

I feel that this is our mentality. The majority of our people have been 'programmed' to reject western philosophy.

Now, I hope that this will not get me into trouble, but let me speak openly here.

History dictates that the Christians and the Moslems have been at war since the Crusades of a few hundred years ago. The feud seems to be still there.

We can see a rather active rejection of Western philosophy in our country simply because Western philosophy is very much influenced by Christianity. I've met the son of an ex-Communist (Chinese) from Johor whose father still thinks that Christianity is a gimmick from the Western world to control our society. Therefore, he rejects it totally. Needless to say, the Moslems will not even bear to think about Western (Christian) Philosophy in any good light.

Then, the majority of this nation also rejects the bulk of Chinese philosophy because of a certain May 1969 incident. The subliminal message that the nation is getting is that the Chinese are blood suckers and their only goal in life is to gather economic wealth from all around them. And most of the nation's policies are still geared towards 'Economic Balance' and 'Poverty Reduction'. These two ideas have not just put Chinese culture in bad light, it has also caused a subliminal rejection of all things Chinese.

Then, the only culture that we, as a nation can look up to, will be the culture that's on offer in this Archipelago. And as and when we look at our neighbour, we see a culture that is so diluted and so open that our conservatism rejects them.

So this leaves us with???

NOTHING!!!

Well, we do have the Middle-East to look toward, but then, have you heard of any world changing philosophy from those parts? They have been warring since the dawn of time and it seems that there won't be peace in those parts of the earth any time soon. So, how can you have learning and philosophical debates when the nations are at war all the time?

That is why, in my twisted opinion, that our nation cannot, and will not improve in terms of mental capability. If we continue to reject the two major philosophies in this world, then, how can our thinking improve?

So, yeah... the challenge for today is to think more...

If I have the time...

Fatherhood

I guess the change from being a free man to being a father is a sobering and deeply profound step.

Only when one becomes a father that you start to realise how deep is the Father's love for His child. I guess as someone who hasn't been a father before, it is indeed incomprehendable. This kind of love surpasses the love of a man for a woman. It surpasses the love for your parents, and it surpasses the love for anything else.

I find myself being inconvenient to so many things nowadays; I am getting less and less sleep. On a happy day, he'll sleep through most of the night without much coaxing nor attention. on a bad night, you'd be spending most of your time trying to coax him to sleep. And the thing is, you will still find it in your heart to love him.

A few months ago, I'd not even thought about this. I didn't have to. I used to go anywhere I like, whenever I like, however I like. Now, even stpeeing out the main door seems a challenge. The constant question will be: Will he be ok?

The impactful thing is that every time he makes a sound, everytime he doesn't sleep, everytime he makes a fuss, I will still draw near to him and hold him and give him the reassurance that he needs. He doesn't know it, nor will he remember it because his brain is still not fully developed. But That's what makes being a father so profound.

When you tie this to the love of God, you will indeed get a sense that He is so much more then just the God who saves.

He is the God who cares, loves, and gives unconditionally.

Blogging?

It seems that blogging will slowly become the thing of the past, especially with the emergence of facebook and twitter.

I have found that the more active I become on facebook, the less people need to visit this blog of mine.

Afterall, these 2 sites head toward the same direction; getting in touch with friends. A couple of years ago, a blog was one of the best ways to keep in touch, to keep your friends updated on the things that happen to you. But now, it seems that blogs are slowly becoming a thing of the past.

What is happening on facebook, which friendster failed to do, is that we are successfully adding emotion into our wall posts. This includes things like 'like' and 'comment' about anything that a person does on FB. Whereas in a blog, you'd need to be actively searching for what the writer is trying to say.

If this continues, sooner of later, we'd be all abandoning the keyboard for emoticon-boards. Words would be pre-typed and all you'd need to do is click the word and it'll be published.

Welcome to the world of pre-sets. If you look closely, you'd have seen the trend that the world is slowly going into a trend that is 'pre-set' yet customisable. Instead of thinking of a sarcastic remark to make about someone's post on FB, I can now conveniently click 'like'. And slowly, there would be buttons such as 'dislike', 'lolz', :), etc.

And slowly, the human brain will only process things such as this. Call it what you like; systematic improvement, technologically advanced, bringing life into cyber-space... I call it, the dumbification of the human mind.

If this trend continues, our brain will be trained to function as such. We will become from thinkers to button pushers. I do not need to tell you why I like a certain post, I just conveniently click 'like'. I do not need to say anything anymore, since I have already told the entire world that I 'like' the post. Everyone does it, and so I too must also do it.

And if everything is just like that, then no wonder the children's vocabulary is getting less and less expanse. Children nowadays read 'pre-set' words from the internet. Long gone are the days of the books where you are bound to learn a new word every day. Now, all you need to survive in the internet era is 'like' and that word says it all.

'like'

Busy, Adapting, Tired, Struggling...

Nuff said.

Hahaha...

Nah, I won't be that mean. But in terms of a brief summary of my life now, that's a pretty concise but accurate few words.

I'm rather busy at the office nowadays and mostly it's because we are still adapting to life as a new school, a new office, and a new administration. Equipment is still coming in, there's so many rooms that we need to prep-up for daily use, the students have to be taught, lessons need to be planned, and we are running a full-day school which means that whatever work we have to do besides teaching has to be done outside teaching hours, which means, at home.

I guess no one foresaw this issue creeping up from under our noses. I mean, it is normal for the Principal to ask for your paperwork on your lesson plans and all that if you're doing a half-day school session, but when the same demands are asked of you whilst in a full-day session school, it's a bit different. I mean, you have your teaching periods, and in between, you have your ad-hoc jobs. Then in the afternoon, you have your afternoon lessons, and when you really get home, you're a good as toast.

I'm feeling the crunch nowadays especially when baby doesn't want to cooperate with us on his sleeping time. He's been waking us up once an hour every night for the past week or so, and it was only until last night, when we didn't let him sleep through dinner time, that he was so knocked-out during the midnight hours.

Well, I guess life's like that until we get used to everything; the work, the baby, the new life...

3 weeks plus

This is the first time that we coaxed him into the basket. He's been acting really mature beyond his days apparently. The confinement lady noted that she hasn't seen any baby like him before. He's very sensitive towards his environment and well-being. Unlike kids his age, which is only about 3 weeks now, he knows when his pampers are full, he wants a nappy change every time he passes urine, he knows how to demand his rights to clean sheets and comforts.

Apparently, kids 2 months old don't even start doing that. It seems that he has a brain that's more developed than it should, which is a good thing. However, with a kid so demanding, it's gonna be tough for us as we struggle with his demands.

I guess when you name your son, you really get what you asked for.

And now for alittle bit about myself;

It's been an exciting week so far and all our energy levels are dropping as we get used to the demands of teaching a full-day school. There's never a dull moment and deadlines keep coming at you like nobody's business. There's so much to do, so many lessons to prepare for and the students welfare must be taken care of. There's so many demands on each one of us that even the Principal is stressed out.

The only solace that we get would be that we are indeed making an impact in the lives of these few students that we have, changing them for the better and giving them some direction in life.

So do pray for us whenever you remember us.

So yeah, if you still haven't gotten the news, "HE'S OUT!!!" 

If you asked me about what fatherhood is like, it's still early days yet. 

He's been a rather good kid thus far, and he's got an attitude. Even from the start, he has his likes and dislikes. He smiles well and I think should be a rather happy kid. 

What my wife and I were really worried about was that our kid would come out unhappy. I've seen some really unhappy kids out there and we sure hope that this kid won't be one of them. 

But now, the journey begins. 

He came out looking very much like his mom and day by day, he is still changing his looks. But from what we see, his distinct eyes and mouth will make him looking closer to his mom. But we are hoping for a good mix of the best we have. He has a longish body and his fingers and toes are all long and thin. If he does grow up to be a tall lad, and looking like his mom, he's gonna look exactly like his uncle, mom's brother. 

He's eating well, sleeping well and he's got some fight in him. Even from the first day, he's shown that he's a toughie. Even before he turned a week old, he's been turning his head to the left and right. It won't be long before he'll be turning himself over in his sleep. 

As for the experience of being a new parent, it's a culture shock altogether. I've never envisaged that there's so many extra things to do. Just because his systems are weak, I have to boil everything that touches his mouth. I have never spent so much time waiting for water to boil ever in my life! 

There so much washing, there's so much cleaning up, there's just so many things to do!

Well, will update later when there's more things to tell. As for now, both mom and I and little Joshua are doing fine.