Ratz in the City

Dear brothers and sisters, I announce to you a great joy: We have a Pope! The most Eminent and Reverend Lord, the Lord Joseph Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church Ratzinger, who takes to himself the name of Benedict the Sixteenth. ~Cardinal Estévez

I am a self-professed big fan of Dan Brown and one of my favourites is Angels and Demons. The plot of this book centres around the sudden death of the pope, which was later shrouded with conspiracy theories. Some claimed that the pope was actually murdered but the speculation could not be verified since all requests to conduct a post-mortem on the pope were denied – until our protagonist, Robert Langdon came into the picture. As is Dan’s unique style of writing, the twist in the plot came in the least expected way – it turned out that the antagonist was none other than the camerlengo.

“Faith and science”, that’s the theme of the whole story. Since time immemorial, we have been debating on the possibility of striking a balance between science and religion. During the 16th century, a judicial institution, the Inquisition, was established by the Church to punish “heretics” by coercion and torture; when Galileo’s discoveries supported the Copernican model of the universe, the Church dismissed the idea as heretical. Such were the olden days when the progress of science was suppressed by fanatical beliefs.

In the story, the pope was portrayed as a liberal thinker, who seriously supported any scientific development which can benefit mankind. Unfortunately, his chamberlain, the camerlengo, was not too ready to embrace science. He believed that the progress of science has eroded the people’s faith.

“Medicine, electronic communications, space travel, genetic manipulation… these are the miracles about which we now tell our children. These are the miracles we herald as proof that science will bring us the answers… God has become obsolete…”

It was then that he realised something had to be done to restore the people’s crumbling faith. At the climax of the story, the camerlengo performed a “miracle” in the bid to save the Vatican City from an anti-matter time bomb…

Following Pope John Paul II’s death on 2 April, our imaginations run wild; speculations abound (thanks to Dan), albeit in not-so-far-fetched a manner. Some Vatican watchers claim that the date announced is not that of the actual day of the pope’s death. This is allegedly to gain the sympathy from the public and especially the conservative sects, the Opus Dei, for instance. (Hmm, that makes me think of The Da Vinci Code…)

Personally, as an atheist, the pope does not concern me as much as my neighbour, Brother Amoeba who lives down the drain. Merely mention the pope and the image of a frail old man with an awkward looking skull cap would immediately pop up in my mind. But after all those accounts, I just can’t help respecting the man who has touched the hearts of so many people; the man who is revered by the world, regardless of their religion. Hence, there is no reason to doubt that Pope John Paul II is a better role model than George Bush.

Also, the shenanigans in the Vatican City, the holy of holies, never stop to amuse me. I keep wondering why on earth would a group of old men cram inside a chapel with all the windows locked and the doors heavily guarded by the Vatican guards clad in funny-looking pyjamas. To me, this level of secrecy makes no sense at all. Why should the College of Cardinals be worrying about the leak of the results when suffocation is a bigger issue at hand?

The insanity doesn’t just stop there. Here are among some of the past events which never cease to baffle me.

“The longest conclave began in 1268 in central Italian Viberto and lasted two years, nine months and two days. The cardinals had been unable to reach the two-thirds majority required even after they were given drastically reduced food supplies. Only when incensed residents began dismantling the roof above the election room did they elect Pope Gregory X in September 1271 as the conclave feared a deluge of the first stormy autumn rains.”

“A conclave held in 1314 in Carpentras, southern France, proved especially dramatic. Impatient mobs set fire to the bishop’s palace where the crimson-robed conclave members were conferring, causing them to flee.”

Then there is the curious crowd gathering outside the chapel in the square just hoping to watch white smoke billowing from the chimney. Heck, the last time any smoke ever billowed from it was long before I was born! In fact, it was set up there only before the conclave. Obviously, the chimney served no purpose at all even in the winters during the period of twenty-seven years.

This recent conclave has set some new records. Dear Ol’ Ratz is elected as the 265th pope in less than twenty-four hours, one of the shortest conclaves ever held in history. At the age of 78, he is the oldest pope elected since Clement XII in 1730. By the way, John XII, who was elected at 18 in 955 was the youngest pope. Whoa! A year younger than me when he was elected! So, I was seriously wrong about popes being only old men!

As is the nature of human, the election was greeted with tributes and criticism. It happens that Pope Benedict XVI is a controversial pope who stated the use of condom to prevent AIDS is “a kind of behaviour which would result in at least the facilitation of evil”. He is also against abortion, euthanasia and feminism. Besides, he has, by and large, offended a handful of other religious groups. In March 1997, Ratz called Buddhism an "auto-erotic" spirituality that threatened the Catholic Church.

As if he has not sparked enough sentiments, he argued in a document that “only in the Catholic Church is there eternal salvation”. I may have a limited vocabulary because the only word I can think of to describe Ratz is “arrogant”. How then, can such a spiritual leader lead the Church towards world peace?

Frankly speaking, Ratz is far out-shined by a lot more unsung heroes out there. These are the ones who are not showered by limelight even though they reserve more credits than the primate of Italy. No, with his current track record, Ratz is yet to impress me.

Mercury Rising

For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble and the day which is coming shall burn them up. ~Malachi 4:1, 3

The shower after the long period of dry season was indeed a much welcome respite. As predictable as the years before, after suffering the prolong dry spell, the government urged the people to save water, or else, water ration would have to be imposed. Yet, water consumption was at a eyebrow-raising level – you can safely bet that Penangites, after hearing the news, bathed five times a day and washed their cars three times a week lest the dams really ran dry. However grim the situation might have been, Penangites were nonchalant as ever. Heck, for some reason, God loves us! No sooner than the news ran out did it rain. Hallelujah!

Some time in the last week, Mr T, my ever-rambling teacher cracked a joke on the subject. “We are not the only ones suffering from the dry spell. Certain people from our neighbouring countires prayed day and night, but there was not a drop of rain falling from the heavens; Penangites kept on with their lives without even bothering of burdening their minds with the problem, but the shower of blessings came without prayers at the most dire hour,” he jested.

Okay, I can’t agree more with that, but we may have jumped to conclusions a little too early. The rains brought relief but only a temporary one. It is now hot, hot, hot as ever! It’s a calamity! A disaster! The end is nigh! Do I need to say more?

I wouldn’t as much as bat an eyelid if the thermometer bursts faster than you can yell, “I’m burning alive!”. I am totally soaked with sweat like a wet rat as I sit in front of the terminal typing away my lamentations. (Have to be careful not to go near the wire or I’ll shock myself to death with my dripping sweat!)

You can either blame this suffering on man’s sin or the exhaust from cars and factories, but the world is burning like hell all because of our own doings. Now, I certainly don’t have to brief you through the causes of global warming, do I? The breach in the ozone layer… Weird gases emitted from cafeterias… Green house gases: the foul smelling one from your intestines, just to quote an example… And perhaps, man’s sin(?!)… Yada yada yada…

It is so obvious that the planet is gradually burning into a hellish ball of inferno. Yet – horror of all horrors – there are still debates over the impact of global warming! Some observers are questioning whether temperatures have actually been rising at all! Bah! These people either live in refrigerators or have numb receptors.

I am sure you have heard of Michael Crichton’s “The State of Fear”, which is still in my “to read” list. When I first read the book review, my eyebrows raised so high that they were in danger of disappearing into the hair – Mike must have been out of his mind when he chose to write that book! I guess he hasn’t very well got through the trauma of running for his life from a T-Rex in Jurassic Park…

If you think that the global warming leads to rising sea levels, drop in the yield of crops, increased libido, La Nina and El Nino – the Christmas Child, think again. The effects are, in reality, even more far- reaching, either we realise them or not – it is driving people mad, quite literally. Let me quote you some examples.

To begin with, Malaysians had a good laugh over a couple of unusual proposals presented in the Dewan Rakyat last week. A backbencher – apparently not in the right frame of his mind – proposed that in order to combat drug abuse in the country, the Government could “supply drugs to addicts free of charge and have all the addicts placed on an island”. Hmm… Drug traffickers would then have to switch to selling pirated CDs then…

As if unwilling to lose out in the jester performance, another backbencher suggested the “public beheading of addicts and traffickers… showing it over the television. (Gasp! Those extremist ideas of terrorists sure are spreading like fire under the rising temperature!) These witty MPs can definitely make a living getting a job in the courtyard as jesters if they decided to quit politics one day!

Well, the weird news is indeed head-scratching. I guess the hot weather must have melted some of the wirings in the brain, or perhaps have dried up the grey matter. As such, the ball of tissues in between the two ears doesn’t seem to work too well.

Now, switch the scene from those jokers to – the toilets of my school.

Last week when I went for a small business transaction in the loo, an unfamiliar gush of air greeted me as I entered. Then, I looked up and saw (take a deep breath) – a fan! Yes, a fan as in “an electrical device with three rotating blades to cool or circulate currents of air”. What was it that led to this insanity, it searches me.

I can only imagine brother John who is squatting over the toilet for half an hour, (apparently suffering from constipation,) finally decides that he has sweated enough in this hot weather and complains to the school about the “poor air ventilation” in the loos. Then, Mr S, the HM who might be also having the same problem, and is therefore understanding of John’s misery, gives the incredulous proposal the green light. Wow, next time, dear John may be requesting for a television set to keep boredom (and frustration) at bay while he waits for the transaction to be done!

So you see, global warming does indeed result in a multitude of headaches never before imagined, either directly or indirectly. Come to think of it, freak accidents may as well have to do with this phenomenon. I have just read of a report about a man in London getting injured by a sausage!

Even at this very moment, I have reasons to believe that the heat is taking its toll on my mind as well. My things are disappearing – only to appear elsewhere! Take, for example, the graph which was supposed to be handed in this morning. I remembered very well that I left it at my desk but it was no where to be found later. Imagine my helpless and hapless look: the gruelling forty minutes spent over the tedious work that taxed the myopic eyes of mine greatly!

Of course, you don’t suppose that I believed the paper just sublimed into thin air, do you? My crumbling faculty simply does not imply that I have totally lost cognizant of reality. So, high and low I searched, only to discover it among the files which were to be handed in to Miss T. Hallelujah, once again!

This phenomenon may not be registered as something strange especially among the multitude without the scientific mind. However, I am more than willing to condescend to that intelligence level in my (most probably futile) endeavour to link this incident to the laws of thermodynamics.

The second law of thermodynamics gives a definition of a property called entropy, which is closely related with the temperature of a system. It so happens that nature “prefers” chaos and disorder: the entropy of an isolated system can never decrease. So, in this hot weather, chaos reigns – it becomes more difficult to pinpoint the exact location of an individual particle. But it seems that this anomaly has extended from the microscopic scale to the macroscopi scale, as in the case of the “disappearance” of my graph.

The heat is more than unbearable by itself so don’t burden your feeble mind too much if you do not get what I mean…

Oops, I think I’d better not proceed. The heat is turning me into the priggish Professor Challenger with his irritable (and irritating) behaviour! No eggs, no profanities, no one-finger salutes, please. I’m simply not myself today. My apologies.

By the way, I am saving money for an escapade to Arctic Alaska. I just can’t stand the heat over here. Please donate generously to my “Kryptos Off To Alaska Fund”. All cheques, money orders and cash are accepted.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going off for my nap in the refrigerator now.

And oh yeah! Just to remind you to drink lots of water. You don’t want to get constipation, do you?

A Dreamer? An Escapist?

Untell the secrets told
Unbreak the heart broken
Unshed the tears shed
Undo the grief done
If all these are but futile
Resort to escapism
~The Escapist

Finally, after grovelling at the lowest ebb for a couple of days which felt like eternity, I turned to a self-assigned project as a solace – a major revamp for my blog. Of course, the idea did not just pop out from thin air, but rather from an accidental visit to my friend’s blog. I used the word “accidental” because I did not know he has a blog and a fortiori, did not know of the address; neither did I get it from someone else. But then, how I ended up there I will not tell – the magician never reveals his bag of tricks.

The first task, of course, was to sniff out the source of the template used and to choose a skin for my own blog. These were done without much difficulty. The major headache realized, however, when it came to designing a custom layout. Countless hours were spent staring at the head-scratching and unintelligible codes… sizing and resizing the elements in the page… looking for the best colour scheme for the headings and posts purely by trial and error… previewing the results with different browsers and resolutions… It was a tedious job, an ambitious project, but the rewarding end results are self-satisfaction and the sense of achievement – which definitely boosted my ego to a healthy level after my period of grief, during which I suffered from extremely low self-esteem.

And that is how I discovered by chance the best, albeit an unrealistic way, to temporarily relief the mind of woeful memories. Sometimes, when problems start to get a little too crowded and suffocating, it is best to loosen out by ignoring them. However, more often than not, it poses a great challenge even if one summons all the might of his faculty in doing so – the human mind has the bad habit of remembering the things which are at best, left forgotten.

A few days back, the terrible tempest that marauded my crumbling life showed no sign of abating. Gloomy clouds curtained my world, blocking the warmth of the sun away from me. As I was looking for a shelter to brace myself for the worst, sun rays filled the world once again; eerily, the weather changed so suddenly as if at the flick of the finger by a mighty Power. And He, I later realised, is the stagehand who had merely conjured an illusion of calm and serendipity amidst the play, by blocking reality away from me with props and stage sets. Not withstanding the absence of the usual warmth in the rays, it offered me solace.

There are also times when I try to escape from Grief, though I am very well aware of his omnipresence and that no mortal can outrun him. That is when I hide myself in a maze to keep Him out of sight. But, does that mean He is not around? No! For he can sense the fear emanating from His prey, and inches towards him unknowingly, observing from around the corner, getting ready to pounce and ensnare the cringing victim matchlessly. I have witlessly locked myself up in the Labyrinth of King Minos, in which resides no hideous Minotaur, but Grief, the faceless wraith.

The sun shines brilliantly from atop the labyrinth. In the midst of this cat-and-mouse game, I try to reach out for it but could not. I can only take in the view of the sky which I share with the world outside, totally oblivious of the looming shade and of those cheering for me from behind the walls. Daylight is but a short-lived period, for I know, in this living tomb, it is extremely short. As the sun proceeds towards the west; as it makes an angle with the walls, the maze is cast in shadow – darkness falls prematurely. It is then that I have to face my old fears.

Legend has it that the Minotaur that terrorised the people of Cretes was eventually slain by a mighty hero, Theseus. Now, here I am, confronting not the half-man-half-bull but a cold, dark shade. Theseus or not, I know I must stand up and face Him one day. I am but now mustering will and courage to come out from my hiding place and take Him by surprise, challenging Him to a duel hand in hand. I shall make Him laugh on the other side of his face. This is what I promise myself, or at least, persuade myself that I will do.

Sometimes, how I hope I can fall into a deep slumber, drifting off to far-away realm where dreams are reality and reality is ever so sweet. How I wish I am a prince with a lovely palace in that distant land, my sanctuary.

Should I be a dreamer, or merely an escapist? I wonder.


P/s: To everyone of you who showed concern during the dire moments, please accept my heartful gratitude. Rest assured that I am feeling a lot more better now. I am but a Jeremiah who is a total pessimist moaning over small issues. The mind is currently taking its vacation from all stressful thoughts. For the time being, I shall accept Providence as it is, with acquiesce. The problems shall be dealt with later – or so, I think.

The Second Wave

Readers beware: This is yet another of the jeremiads of my never-ending grief thanks to Woe the Sadist.

On 26th of December 2004, just moments before the devastating tsunami hit the shores, the waves were observed to recede unusually low. Yet, many failed to realised that wrathful nature was brewing an impending disaster; no one reckoned the sign as a harbinger of doom which was set to bring grief to a lot of people.

It has been a month since 11th March – a hurtful day – as I called it in my previous blog. Time the Healer has done a clean job washing away my grief; the wave of sorrow has receded. But, alas! I have just committed the same mistake as the picnickers who fell victims to the killer waves. Just as I thought all was going well, the second wave struck but a stronger force this time, sweeping me into the sea of woe. Judging from my current situation, I would say it did a rather good job in trying to drown me.

This is as yet the most traumatic experience I have ever had. Nothing has been more disappointing and humiliating than being accused as a liar, especially by her – the girl that I revere! However, she told me yesterday she has the uncomfortable feeling that I have been playing around with her feelings. What was it that led her to this conclusion, I did not quite understand, considering that I have been constantly reminding myself to act naturally in front of her ever since that day. In fact, I have never felt more like myself in these past few weeks.

The truth is, I am having a stressful time posing as two persons: the one that the world greets and my actual grieving self. The image others perceive is that of a jovial person; someone who seems to be free of worries; the real image under the deceitful mask is that of a battered soul.

I tried to treat her as a normal friend, be wary of not showing too much concern so as not to pressure her. But sigh. She mistook it as sign that I was treating her badly, as I later learned. And I was quoted with several occasions which caused her to jump to the hurtful conclusion. Never had I the notion that girls are so sensitive to the extent that even a small action that boys hardly notice can be misconstrued and misinterpreted in a totally different manner.

I am feeling as if I am at the centre of a vacuum void that sucks all the plagues of sorrow into my psyche. How much of this I can withhold before the point of breaking down, I do not know. I just can’t help believing that I have been singled out by a very sick sadist to be the gambit of this callous game that consumes me as a whole.

When she rejected me exactly a month ago, I accepted it with such grace and magnanimity that I never knew I had – though it crushed the heart painfully with the equal magnitude – as things turned out quite within my expectations. However hurtful it was, it is nothing relative to this very woe that I suffer. For the first time after a period longer than I can remember, I wept. With no one to turn to but my ever-faithful friend, Solitude, all I could do was to wipe off the welled-up tears and turn my thoughts to other things. Unfortunately, it was harder than I thought for the longer I wallowed over the matter, the worse I felt.

I promised to forgive her. As I later turned the matter over in the mind, I realised that all these sorrows came from me in the first place. If only I had not divulged my feelings towards her, things would be a lot more better this day; if only I had not done the selfish things that only comforts me, she would be spared from all this grief; if only…

When I was posed with the question a few days back whether I was still in love with her, I could not come up with a sure reply. I have done quite well in trying to relieve her from my thoughts but does that imply that she no longer means that much to me? However, yesterday’s turn of events provided me with the sought-after answer…

Right now, I am strolling down via dolorosa, the path of sorrow. Where will it ultimately lead me to? I wonder.