Philip Khor

Diwali is one of the biggest festival of Hindus, celebrated with great enthusiasm and happiness in India. The festival is celebrated for five continuous days, where the third days is celebrated as the main Diwali festival or ‘Festival of lights’. Different colorful varieties of fireworks are always associated with this festival. On this auspicious day, people light up diyas and candles all around their house. They perform Laxmi Puja in the evening and seek divine blessings of Goddess of Wealth. The festival od Diwali is never complete without exchange of gifts. People present diwali gifts to all near and dear ones.

1. Our French lecturer from Mauritius is Hindu. She was ranting about the Star publishing pictures of Deepavali on the day itself (today), usually of prominent politicians (think uncle Samy) going to Batu Caves for the rituals. She claims that a lot of youngsters nowadays do not know the meaning of Diwali. They merely follow their elders to the temple out of obedience and compliance.

The point is: today’s pictures in the Star, yeah, they were taken YESTERDAY! Its a 5 day event, so the REAL excitement climaxes today and shall be reported tomorrow (lest your source of news in the internetz).

2. Fireworks. Whilst being driven home from cell last night, there were crackles of fireworks along the PJ NKVE toll near Tropicana. Isn’t it amazing that a cultural phenomena lasting thousands of years backdated “before Christ” is still being practiced and observed. Once you think about it, there are quite a number of things that has lasted through the ages. War, conflict, jealousy but at the same time, cooperation, collaboration and superstition.

3.  Loy Krathong is held on the full moon of the 12th month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar. This year, it is end of January.
“Loi” means “to float”. “Krathong” is a raft about a handspan in diameter traditionally made from a section of banana tree trunk (although modern-day versions use specially made bread ‘flowers’ and may use styrofoam), decorated with elaborately-folded banana leaves, flowers, candles, incense sticks etc. During the night of the full moon, many people will release a small raft like this on a river. Governmental offices, corporations and other organizations also build much bigger and more elaborate rafts, and these are often judged in contests. In addition, fireworks and beauty contests take place during the festival.

Need to make booking to Thailand during this time. Excuse me, did you see “beauty contests” :) woohooo!!!

4. Breathtaking DVD + Audio CD. Ordered my copy, throughly excited. I really like the tracks with detailed synth and effects, the happy ones :)

Oh, our cell will be hosting today’s Saturday service. @joelvergis VALIDATION (of parking ticket)

lol, it would be nice to smile to people and make them excited about service (and the fellowship thereafter).

And tonight, Manchester United vs Bolton. Big win for United on the cards!

SIB Couz Camp 2009 was held at El Sanctuary in Melaka over the past 3 days. Compared to other camps in which I’ve taken part in, this is by far miles ahead. You can imagine the shock (and poker face) I had when my friends told me it wasn’t the best Couz had to offer.

Instead of pointing the flaws of others, here are the top 10 things I liked about the trip to El Sanctuary.

10. The food was delicious. Seriously, one of the better camp food around. Although we did crave for Mc Donald’s on Day 1 itself! I went to great lengths to make it happen; unfortunately it was 20km from Senawang (nearest 24 hour branch) so they didn’t bother.

9. The games and activities were good. Despite lacking clear direction, instructions and purpose. We had fun.

8. My dorm mates were awesome. Having familiar faces helped. I think that each dorm should have someone senior with a cool head and common sense. This is important because 70% of the time we are spending with dorm mates throughout the camp. Again, it was the flip of a coin, as to who we sleep with. That’s the way the cookie crumbles!

7. I personally feel the attitude of the girls especially, were much of a more acceptable standard than that of previous camp experiences. Allow me to clarify. As we know, God created super awesome beings called girls. Contrary to Einstein, I believe God somewhat “played dice” and made different personality traits. I give Couz Camp a 80% pass “approval rating”.

6. Most guys were well behaved, and the leaders made sure the shy ones weren’t left out, while the outspoken ones didn’t steal the “show” all the time. Kudos on that.

5. Surprisingly, Wifi was available. I didn’t have to worry as I was on Digi’s Data Unlimited Plan! Furniture and Fittings were all in order, so points for that one.

4. Pastor Victor was awesome. Well delivered message presented in easy to digest “chunks”, something which is relevant and practical and most important of all, honest.

3. The campers and leaders were very sporting. That’s what I really like, because I’ve seen teh evil in some people’s eyes in pervious camps.

2. Jungle tracking at night, crossing a river getting our shoes wet on DAY 1, slipping a sleep hill and enjoying the company of great friends at IMATION. Whoa, indescribable.

1. I was truly blessed. Everything just clicked in place, right from the worship, to the games and activities, the fellowship, as well as the most important, the encounter and dwelling in God’s presence.

There’s another camp coming up, and I’ll see if the guys are up to it.

Right now, I have to snap back to reality and recaliberate my senses. In the words of a shrink, its like “Getting out of la-la land!”

Here we go!

Follow us on twitter hashtag: #couz

Will be posting pics as they come on my Photo stream!

Whooopeee…..

31 July FRIDAY = SIB camp at El Sanctuary in Melaka.

Promises to be a great time there.

Michael Schumacher is back in F1, probably for 3-4 races while Massa recovers. F1 seems to be in turmoil after BMW pulls out and Toyota will make an announcement within the next 3 weeks.

Lukas will have his Honda Civic 2.0 by 5pm, if all goes well.

My streamyx is fast again. Just for kicks, I put a stopwatch to see how much I can suck over 3 hours and what the average is, well, here it is!

171 kilobytes/sec average combined (1368 kbit/sec). This is not a “peak”, but rather a “sustained average”!

1450 Megabytes = 290 MP3 songs! = 2 movies at decent quality (think axxo) = 2 episodes of Top Gear.

What that means, is that if a phone call is encoded at 28kbit/sec (4KB/s), I have tied up Telekoms “capacity” for 48 simultaneous calls for the past 3 hours!

Same story with SMS. If each SMS is 200 bytes, then I have transferred 7.25 million SMS. I have been downloading stuff from BitTorrent, so if it were to happen on Maxis or Digi’s SMS network, it would have costed me RM 700,000 just for that 3 hour session.

REMEMBER, data is all digital, so its the same whether its SMS or Bit Torrenting.

Now, are you angry as to why your telco overcharges you for SMS when so little data is transmitted?

Congratulations to Cain for successfully passing the final paper. Guess I don’t need to chop off my balls now!

Working on 2 projects: khalij-petroleum.com and cherrygoround.com (online shopping sites selling women’s clothing).

GO KART – hmm.. week of 10 August, ok? Save up your cash, cuz we’re going 2 stints (thats RM 70, ok)?

Badminton Tue – Thursday 4-6pm, Subang Jaya. Going right now :)

August is here, new experiences. New friends in college. It can only get better!