An unexpected event in the office

Going back early today! because there is a black out in my office around 330pm.

Its funny to see the system administrator running in the light speed to the server room to check on the UPS power backup, while the others cursing like mad as their workstation shut off without warning.

And thats when i shouted happily,

"Yeah, balik rumah!"

Everyone was quiet for a second, and followed by great cheers and laughters.

I swear its a reflex!

Where did human come from? Pt1

This week is a lazy week for me.

Apart from having the usual vendor/customer meetings, the one and only 'unusual' task which i'm working on is to prepare a scientific presentation for my company fortnightly get together session.

My company has a very weird policy, which is anti-knowledge base (KB). The management does not believe the concept of computerized collection, management, retrieval of knowledge a.k.a storing knowledge in a database. In their opinion, Knowledge can never be stored. Knowledge acquiring is a process of interpreting and understanding a sets of information or data, and that process only happen in a person's brain. As such, the management came out with this idea called 'Xchange' to encourage free flow of knowledge, vertically and horizontally (peers to peers/ science to technical team/management to employees) within the organization. In which, all the employees of my company were required to take turns to present a science/technical intensive topic during this Xchange session.

Well, it is my turn to present next week.

I have been scratching my head for the past few days to come with a scientifically sound topic, yet interesting and able to ignite thoughts. After reading through tons of papers, here come my final topic "Where did human come from". My thoughts of line is looking the subject matter from religion and scientific point of view, and whether there is a harmony between the two.

I hope my colleagues are not reading my blog, cuz its a big spoiler since i am gonna write some of my thoughts for the presentation here.

From the religion point of view, the origin of human dwells around the concept of creationism. I'm appalled at how similar the concept of creationism among different religion. They all sharing two things in common, which summarizes the creationism sciences:

• There is a creator-the deity or deities
• The creator(s) creates human

For example,

• Christianity and Jew talk about God (Yahweh) make man in His Image (Genesis, 1:26-27, Bereshit)
• Islam talk about Allah created man from dust and little fluid and make them pairs (Al Quran: Surah 35, Ayat 11-12)
• Hindusim talks about Brahma splitting himself into 2, one have the form of man and the other have the form of woman, which together the two created the beings (Siva Purana)
• Greeks believe that Zeus instruct Prometheus to form men in the image of God, while Athena breathed life into them
• Taosim principle stated that The way give birth to unity, which in turns give birth to duality, which in turns give birth to Trinity, and Trinity give birth to myriad creatures (Tao Te Ching)

The only outlier is Buddhism, the religion simply ignores the question of origin of life. Buddha said that "Conjecture about (the origin, of) the world is an unconjecturable that is not to be conhectured about", why? because they are not connected with the goal, are not fundamental to the holy life, do not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation, calming, unbinding, self awakening. (AN 4.77, Acintita Sutta, Unconjecturable)

When i read this, i'm utterly impressed. Being a human, its kinda hard not to care about where are we from, and what makes us the human we are today isnt it? In fact, some said that life is nothing but a journey of soul searching, of who we are and what is the purpose of life. However, its not too hard to understand where the ideology come from as Buddhism practice detachment.

Anyway, back to my point, mainstream scientific research produces conslusions which reject the creationism sciences. For this reason, creationism was labeled as pseudoscience and were perceived as a set of believe instead of a proven scientific hypothesis. The most notable disputes is Darwin's 'human come from apes' theory.

Anyway, you know what my next post will be....

To be continue...

Italiannese is way overated

Fine dining and big fat bill do not always guarantee a quality meal, Peter and I learned the lesson when we visited Italiannese, Sunway Shopping Mall recently.

We've been hearing alot of good comments about Italiannese for quite sometimes but never have a chance to try it. Partly because Peter cooks great Spaghetti and we love to add a bit of extra personal touch here and there to suit our taste (which means ALOT of bacon and Olive oil). Hence we are not too keen on trying out the food which are common and easy to prepare but way too overpriced.

A few weeks before we went for high tea in Italianese, Garden and the experience was fabulous, the environment is classy and quiet, since it was late afternoon so there was not much of crowd. We've ordered a creme brule and chocolate hazelnut cakes, and both of us enjoyed the creme brule very much.

Thinking of maybe its worth a try to go for full meal, hence after a week, we went to Italianese to have our lunch again, but this time we went for the one in Sunway shopping mall.

That was a big big mistake.

For the same kind of price, we received lower quality of food, services and environment, all together! The restaurant was hidden behind TGI Friday, and we had to go out of the shopping mall to get to the main entrance or through a 'small alley' to get in through the side door. The air condition wasnt cool enough as the 36 degree's sun was burning outside, and the setting was less classy compared to the one in Garden.

We've ordered the mince meat penne and giant meat ball spaghetti and it turned out to be a big disappointment. Although the portion is big, the penne was too salty and dried. Whilst the spaghetti was literally swimming in the gravy cuz its too watery. The two different pasta tasted exactly the same as though the gravy was cooked from the same pan.

The watery gravy

The funny thing is the tastiest out of all, is the appertizer which is consist of pieces of whole meal and white bread with Olive Oil and Balsamic vineger sauce, which came as FREE!

Frankly speaking, i rather go for Peter's 'leeky balcon-ish' Spaghetti which does not cost me RM65++ than having spaghetti from those high class Italian restaurant again.