2011

Life is no fairy tale.

"Happily ever-after" is not a spell.

Dreams don't come true just by "wishing upon a star."

But, I believe in one thing:

Dreams do come true when you decide to wake up and start to work,

With heart and soul and mind wrapped in solid prayer and faith.

It's never easy.

But it's worth it.

And in the end, we will stand tall.

Thank God, we've got this single life to dream and fight for.

Welcome, 2011.

Christmas 2010

Christmas and Easter: two celebrations that are no less than two sides of the same coin.
People may celebrate Christmas far more extravagant than Easter, but what would Jesus' birth mean if not for redeeming mankind upon the cross? But, then again, without His birth, there would be no redemption and salvation.

Give thanks to God, the Savior is born today!
Let all His redeemed people glorify Him!
May every second we live on Earth is filled with realization that we are redeemed for the glory of His name.
May Christmas and Easter dwell forever in our hearts.

Have a very Merry Christmas 2010, Folks!
God bless :-)

Coffee, Anyone?

"Would you like a cup of coffee?"
We often offer this blackish tasty drink whenever some guests happen to drop by for a visit -- little knowing what a cup of coffee could benefit our health.

Recent studies and researches have proven that coffee has the positive effects in:

(1) Reducing the risk of Parkinson disease, due to the amount of caffeine that helps to protect our brain cells.
(2) Fighting diseases with its antibacterial agents.
(3) Decreasing the risk of gallstone crystallization.
(4) Enhancing mental stability.
(5) Preventing diabetes type-2 by enhancing insulin-flow to certain parts of the body.
(6) Reducing the risk of all types of cancer, Alzheimer, and coronary heart attack, thanks to its antioxidant contents (including chlorogenic acid and caffeine acid) and polyphenol.
(7) Increasing physical endurance.
(8) Healing headaches.
(9) Soothing respiration in asthma patients due to theophyline, a bronchodilator substance.
(10) Increasing fertility in males by accelerating sperm-cells speed.

Still think that coffee is bad for your health, or simply a drink to treat your guests?
Think again!

True Love

So often in everyday life, we hear or run into the term "platonic love." What differs it from "true love," one might ask?
Let's get into focus.

Many people regard "true love" as the highest form of love, without ever understanding the meaning behind the term.
Viewing it from platonic theory, first we need to refer to what Plato once proposed.

Back in Ancient Greece, Plato once established the Theory of Forms, which states that there are two worlds:

(1) The ideal (true) world, which is eternally unchanging and in complete perfection, and
(2) The real (present) world, where we live in, which is marked by the constant cycle or process of birth-maturity-decline-death-rebirth, and where everything is imperfect and ever-changing.

Plato said that everything we find in our real, sensual world, are copies of the true forms which abide in the ideal world. And, as copies, all that exists in the real world is marred by flaws and imperfection.
So is love.

True love is divine, eternal, perfect and unchanging. In the ideal world, love is kept pure without the least taint of imperfection.
What happens if true love is manifested in reality?
Yes, it will be degraded of its perfection and truth!

In fact, there are no two human beings on the planet who can love perfectly and purely without finding taints of imperfection in their relationship.
Suffice it to say that, from platonic point of view, true love cannot possibly exist on earth.

When you love someone so much, and wish to keep your love true, you might as well keep it to yourself and not manifest your love into a relationship, else you will find out that no matter how great your love really is, it can never reach perfection. It can never be true.
So would a platonist say.

I once recall a scene in the movie Dune, which stated this line, "Sometimes, when you love someone so much, you'll have to be willing to let him/her go for his/her own greater good."

And Shelley conveyed it perfectly when he wrote, "I can give not what men call love. But wilt thou accept not the worship the heart lifts above, and the heavens reject not -- the desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow, the devotion afar from the sphere of our sorrow?"

True love means worship, my Friends.
And when we talk of worship, we know that no one else deserves being worshipped other than He who dwells in the realm of eternal light and perfection, the Creator and Keeper of our souls.

Tragedy: The Myth of Fall

A flashback on my favorite study on theory of literature: Northrop Frye's "Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths: The Mythos of Autumn: Tragedy" (Northrop Frye, "Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays." Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1973).

'In contrast with comedy, which deals with characters in society, tragedy is more concentrated on a single individual.
The tragic hero is indeed very great, but there is something on the side of him, compared to which he is small. This can be God, deities, fate, accident, or some other aspects.

The center of tragedy is in the hero's isolation.
Concerning something beyond, its name is variable, yet the form of which it manifests itself is fairly constant. Whatever the context is, tragedy tends to lead up to an epiphany of law ("what is, and must be").

The vision of law in tragedy operates as a revenge.
The tragic hero provokes enmity or inherits a situation of enmity, and the return of the avenger constitutes the catasthrope.
The tragic hero is a disturbance toward the balance in nature, which sooner or later must right itself.
The righting of the balance is called "nemesis."
The agents can be human/ghostly/divine vengeance/divine justice/accident/fate or the logic of events, but the underlying point is that the nemesis happens!

There are two reductive formulae which are frequently used to explain tragedy:

(1) the theory that all tragedy exhibits the omnipotence of an external fate, and
(2) the theory that the act which sets the tragic process going must be primarily a violation of moral law, whether human or divine.

Tragedy seems to elude the antithesis of moral responsibility and arbitrary law, as well as the antithesis of good and evil.
Anyone who is used to think archetypally of literature will realize that there is a mimesis of sacrifice within tragedy.'

Behind Blue Eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows
What it's like to be hated
To be fated to telling only lies

But my dreams they aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do, and I blame you!
No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

No one knows what it's like
To be mistreated, to be defeated
Behind blue eyes
No one knows how to say
That they're sorry and don't worry
I'm not telling lies

No one knows what its like
To be the bad man, to be the sad man
Behind blue eyes.


(The song was first sung by The Who in 1971 and was later on covered by Limp Bizkit in 2003.)