(Review) Jay Chau's Exclamation Mark/驚嘆號

I have to swallow my pride and let it all out, yes I love Jay Chao's new album (驚嘆號/Exclamation Mark). I know, I bitch and moan about how he should burn and die because he uses auto tune, but after going through the album again and again (17 times to be exact) in the span of 13 days,  the auto tuned song fits with the rest of the album when you listen to all the songs one after another, it sort of break his previous formula of fast song then slow song then back to fast song. Now it is fast song, then kinda slow song (Heavily auto tuned), then slow song, then back to fast song, I hope it sense to you : )

He still include his signature slow song in the album with the song (你好嗎/How are you), it is the only slow song in the album, I wish there are more. I am not sure whether it is intentional or coincidental, but I felt that certain songs in the album is meant to be the continuation of his past hits, the most obvious is  (世界末末日/End End of days?), I felt that he is trying to put a closure to (世界末日/End of days) with more upbeat tempo. Another departure from his past album is the use of repetitive word in the chorus, for example in the auto tuned song (Mine Mine), he repeat the word mine for at least 8 times, I have to admit, it is pretty catchy especially when he intertwine the meaning of Mine with a similar sounding Hookien word meaning don't.

Jay Chau got a lot of bad press in southeast Asia recently due to his cocky response to an allegation where he is accused of plagiarizing other singer's song. We Asian prefer our singers to be humble and shy, like what Jay Chau used to be before he became one of the heavenly kings, I hope it doesn't hurt sales too much. He is certainly the most creative and innovative singer/song writer of our time, chinese music industry won't have this much international impact without him.

Q: What motivate you into writing this Questions and Answers about death?

(This is part of a series in a long question and answer session with myself throughout my life regarding death, click here to view all questions and answers)

Since I was 12, the time when I finally has the mental capacity to understand what death is, I was horrified with the prospect of me, as an individual would cease to exist, and the world will go on without me. I am terrified with the arrival of night, and would be so afraid of falling asleep, fearing that I would never wake up again. I was especially terrified of dreamless nights because in my little head, I thought I was dead, and when I woke up I’ll thank the heavens for bringing me back to life.

When I was about 13 years old my grandmother brought me to a traditional buddhist monastery, I asked what lies ahead of life after death, and the elder monk told me that I’ll be reborn again, in fact, any living beings will be reborn again and again. Being 13 I recall the monk talks about Karma and other religion’s mumbo jumbo stuff that I have no clue about, in my mind I am just happy that there are other realm then this one after I am dead. I take refuge and great comfort knowing that I will be here again in the next life.

But the refuge didn’t last long, throughout my life I am always haunted by questions and doubt. Questions like, what if the monk was wrong? What are the evidence that support the theory that there are after life? As I grew older, the question became more and more complicated, and I grew more anxious when I can’t find the answers. Books in the library doesn’t convinced me, and answers from my parents, and other elders in my life doesn’t yield any satisfactory results that can comfort my uneasy mind.

Then the internet came along and it change my world view in more ways then I can possibly count. However the Internet is a double edge sword, it brought many possible answers, and sometimes those answers can lead to even more confusions when two or more possible answers doesn’t agree with one another. Hence my life is seen as a perpetual emotional roller coster, when I found the answers to my questions, I’ll feel happy and settled, but when I found a new set of questions that puzzled me, I’ll fall helpless with the thought of morbidity, and I’ll slip into depression for weeks, sometimes even months.

Hence my motivation is to record the journey I’ve been through throughout the years, with hope that someone out there can find the answers to what they are looking for, and take comfort in the answers that I found; I try to be as honest and earnest as I possibly can.

If you have a question on your own regarding death, feel free to ask away at the comment section below, remember, there are no such things as stupid question here.

Q: Why do you keep this in a question and answer format? And not in one long post like you normally do?

(This is part of a series in a long question and answer session with myself throughout my life regarding death, click here to view all questions and answers)

Well the first reason is because that’s how my mind format and organize broad  issues regarding death; There are many angle to tackle here, and to me it is the easies way for anyone, especially myself to refer to my point of view to such complicated and personal matter in the future. I organize all questions regarding the subject matter in this web blog under “Death and Reincarnation” tag for easy browsing.

The second reason is because, as sciences and philosophy progresses, we bound to encounter more interesting, or rather, fascinating questions regarding life and death that never crosses our mind before. What we knew today might be dead wrong tomorrow (no pun intended). Hence nothing here is carve in stone, as my life progresses I bound to find far better explanation to the questions posted here.

Thirdly, my mind tend to fire different questions at different point in time, to write one long article regarding this matter will undoubtedly limit my ability to expand on the subject matter. Bare in mind that I don’t plan to complete, or more morbidly, finish the quest of discovery till my dying breath, to me putting it down in this question and answer format is the easies way to revisit all my past adventures if you will, and update them as and when needed.

In conjunction to my third point, sometimes I am bothered by a particular questions that linger in my mind for many day, week, month or sometimes even years. Worst of all, I don’t even know what the question is. It is my hope that people can easily glance through all the questions posted here and find what they are looking for. Hence it is important for me to find the right answer, as well as to answer them with as much accuracy as I personally held true.

Lastly, I plan to either publish my own book, printed and in digital format or write a thesis about the subject matter in the future, this format is easy for the reader to digest, and to jump around any topic that interest them at any point in time.

If you have a question on your own regarding death, feel free to ask away at the comment section below, remember, there are no such things as stupid question here.

Wave son, condom man said hi.

Sign of self defeating thoughts

One of the primary reason why I often failed in many of my pursuit in life is due to my inert tendency to have self defeating thoughts. The notion that I am not smart enough, or good enough, or fit enough to push through obstacles and finish what I started. Every night before I fall asleep I tend to feel like a loser, a person that is wronged in life, cheated, and defeated, struggling to find a spark of true success in life, and it shows in all aspect of my life. I stop blogging a year ago,  stop reading a book a day and going to gym 2 years ago,  gain more then 15 KG in weight and hardly found anything that can satisfy my thirst for happiness. Without the support of my family and friends I don't think I can pull through and find the courage to write this post today.

The first sign of self defeat is to think about why I am doing this and that, especially when I am doing something entertaining and fun, like the joy of writing or playing video games. My inner thought process will kick in and start releasing comments like,

• You should be working right now instead of enjoying yourself, do you think you deserve this?
• Think about Mark Zuckerberg or Adam Khoo, do you think they enjoy the activity you are doing right now?
• Can't you find something more productive to do then wasting your time doing mindless things?

I  tend to suppress those thoughts and in the end, I can't really submerge myself with what I am doing, can't really enjoy fully, and felt dissatisfied. When I start working on projects, I tend to finish it off quickly to enjoy myself, the vicious cycle continue on and on.

The second sign of self defeat is to think about defeat before my pursuit can yield any results. The thought of failure often plague me when the risk is high. For example when my previous blog post show sign of stagnation, my immediate urge is to stop writing all together. I feel like no matter how much effort I put in writing a post, I don't see any tangible results. Now I believe that the golden rule of success is to continue delivering my best work regardless of external, uncontrollable factor, my hero, Steve Jobs frame it perfectly when he said:

you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.
So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

The third sign of self defeat is when I start setting goals I don't really care about, even the notion of setting a goal to keep myself motivated to do something I don't really care about is absurd.

Being aware of my inner voice at each and every moment require mindfulness and a strong will, that is what is necessary to hinder the tendency to have self defeating thoughts, is to being aware of it. Lets see whether I can pull it though this time.

Focus on the joy of Writing

I love to write, in fact on and off I have been writing passionately for almost as young as I can remember. I wrote my first short story in Bahasa Malaysia when I was around 11 years old, its about a hero with super powers trying desperately to save a princess trapped in an elaborate dungeon. Up until this day, I still don’t know how I came out with the plot, and all the adventures that leads to the climatic scene, where the hero successfully save the princess, and they live happily ever after. I remember I pour all my imagination in it, and use limited vocabulary that I have at the time to describe the awesomeness I am trying to portray in the story. Frankly as I read the story now, it is not as awesome as I remember it to be, but impressive nonetheless.

Then as I get older, I tried this online thing called “Blogging” and I am instantly hooked, I recall at one point in my life, I couldn’t have any inner piece without regurgitating my thought into a blog post. But as time goes on, my inner perfectionism got the better of me, I start to get obsesses about web site design, I thinker with it as if I am posses by demons. I would adjust the color of the background till the late hours of night, until I found the correct shade of gray I wanted. That wasn’t enough, I would submit the source code to HTML Validator to ensure that the code behind the page compliant with the latest HTML standards. I wanted more, I subscribe to web server hosting, and end up installing my own webserver, wrote my own content management system using PHP, and design my own webpage using CSS. Eventually the whole enterprise of publishing my thought and conveying my true inner feelings become a whole lot more complicated that I thought it would be.

Indirectly, my obsession with my own personal website help contribute to the success of my day job, so I was happily being carried away with the notion that setting the proper font size contributes to the success of my overall well being (What a pile of bullshit). Then as my site became more and more popular, my visitor starts to complain about the quality of my content, and some even made fun of my use of words and the obvious wrongness of my English grammar. I enroll myself in an English class online to “fix” what I thought was embarrassing display of weakness in the overall package of supreme awesomeness. At the time I was still in Software Engineering and learning proper software development methodology, while working on the next iteration of my Content Management System, AND learning to grasp the complexity of the English language. I lost my 8 hour sleep, I cut down on social activities and even created a timetable like a 12 year old to properly distribute my time. When I was promoted to Project Management in 2010, everything start crashing down.

I have to let go my obsession with the website and start focusing on all my projects in hand, I honestly don’t have much time to spare, after a year my web hosting renewal contract lapse and I didn’t even notice, by the time I revisited my passion in the early 2011 during chinese new year, I was shocked with the realization that all my content is deleted by the web hosting company, and the domain name has been released back to the outer space. Reflecting back, I strongly believe that if I just concentrate on writing, I wouldn’t have stop. Now I have to build my content all over again, from scratch, but it is a lesson learned, and it is a mistake that I will never repeat again.

Tips to those who is just starting out:

1. Once the website look decent enough, and it is able to render properly on all web browsers on all platform, stop tinkering with it and start writing. No one actually cares what shade of green you are using in your background.

2. Using proper English is important to convey you message across. Mastery of language require constant use, you’ll get better at it overtime, so write more. If you still not convince, listen to Stephen Fry’s take on Language: [Audio]

3. Good quality content is the most important asset for your website, so revisit your old post, update them and rewrite them if necessary. And don’t stop creating new content when you are at it!