Belum-Temengor and more...

On Tuesday, Jean, Mum, Sara and I went to KLCC to watch the screening of the Belum-Temengor Campaign documentary at Tanjong Golden Village. There were some three daily shows, running for about a week; I wonder if many went.

Anyway, the long and short of it is this: there is a forest in northern Perak called the Belum-Temengor Complex, and it is being threatened by deforestation. The Malaysian Nature Society launched a campaign earlier this year to call for a gazettement of the area as a State Park. So far, the Perak government has agreed to stop logging by 2008, but the Society is still pushing for more direct action.

Click here to read more about it. In case the link doesn't work, visit the Society's website here, and do a manual search.

Containing over 75% of ALL the species of plants and animals on earth (including the famous Malayan Tiger and Sumatran Rhino), it is definitely a forest worth saving, most of all for its ecological importance in the sustenance of biodiversity in this country (which is one of the 12 Megabiodiverse countries listed by the United Nations).

Go to the links above, and the least you could do is add your name to the signature campaign, whereby all signatures will be sent to the Menteri Besar of Perak and the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

This is our Father's world, and when God told Adam to 'rule over it', I believe God intended that rule to be a responsible one, not like what we're doing to the world now.

* * * * *

There was a rather hilarious article in today's Mind Our English section in The Star. Contributed by Pola Singh, here are some excerpts:

My first job was working in an Orange Juice factory, but I got canned. I couldn't concentrate.

After many years of trying to find steady work, I finally got a job as a Historian -- until I realised there was no future in it.

My last job was working in Starbucks, but I had to quit because it was always the same old grind.

So, I tried retirement and found that I'm perfect for the job.

* * * * *

One of the best things about foreign A-Level (or more like First Year University) texts is their sense of humour. Our local publications seem to take studying to be a journey of death or something; the pages are mostly rendered in black-and-white or monochrome, and facts are just presented as facts in point form, no more.

In contrast, consider this sentence in Sylvia S. Mader's Biology:

"A reduction in the level of abscisic acid and an increase in the level of gibberellins are believed to break seed and bud dormancy. Then seeds germinate and buds send forth leaves."

The first sentence is nothing less than explicitly scientific, but the second has an aesthetically literary air about it. And I like that!

But nothing prepared me for what Denise said was written in her book; apparently, when we smoke, our bodies will go whack! (Yes, 'go whack' was actually printed in that particular book...)

Longman, Sasbadi, Fajar Bakti... he who has ears, let him hear!

* * * * *

Poetry Speaks, 19 September.


I Pick Up a Hitchhiker
By Jay Leeming

After a few miles he tells me
that my car has no engine.
I pull over, and we both get out
and look under the hood.
He's right.
We don't say anything more about it
all the way to California.


I don't get it. But there's something distinctly atmospheric in spite of the rather transparent words. It had an effect on me when I read it, though I still have no idea what the poet meant.

* * * * *

From today's Every Day with Jesus reading. Selwyn Hughes writes:

"Expressing feelings of hurt to God can either take the form of an unholy diatribe that revels in engaging Him in a fight, or a passionate and earnest cry that reveals the depths of our desperation... God is sometimes mysterious, but always remember that His heart and purposes are good."


As I read it, I thought to myself; sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between an 'unholy diatribe' and a 'passionate and earnest cry'. Perhaps this is the dichotomy meant by C.S. Lewis when he wrote in The Screwtape Letters:

"The great sinners seem easier to catch. But then they are incalculable. They are capable, you see, of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt."

When wrestling with God, it isn't always clear if we're passionate and earnest, or not. But that shouldn't stop us from wrestling when we need to, because wrestling reveals two things: first, that God is real and stronger than us (or else what point would there be in wrestling something false and fragile?), and second, that we want to be made more than what we merely are, even as we throw ourselves into His great mystery and abandon ourselves to faith.

Mysterious
That's what I call You
I'm curious about You
I'm scared and I'm not sure that You are safe
But your eyes seem to say that You are good...

--from Rebecca St. James, 'Lion'

* * * * *

Just a note on the layout change:

I thought a change in the design would be good for a blog heading into the end of its second year. Perhaps, thematically, it might reflect something like U2's journey from The Joshua Tree to Achtung Baby, though not as dramatic as that... not yet, anyway.

I'm limiting the font colours to blue, yellow, white, purple and green.

Blue, yellow and white reflect the picture above, which I call 'Breakthrough' (more has been written on it in a previous entry).

Purple is the staple colour of a special person's blog.

Green was the colour of my blog. It's good to remember our roots. ;-)


(I baked my first pizza this morning!)