Heresies

Now the battle for the soul of the planet Safehold has begun.

The Kingdom of Charis and the Kingdom of Chisholm have joined together, pledged to stand against the tyranny of a corrupt Church. The youthful Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm has wed King Cayleb of Charis, forging a single dynasty, a single empire, dedicated to the defense of human freedom. Crowned Empress of that empire, Sharleyan has found in Cayleb’s arms the love she never dared hope for in a ‘marriage of state.’ In Cayleb’s cause, his defiance of the ruthless Group of Four who govern mother Church, she has found the task to which she can commit her mind and her courage. It is a cause for which she was born.

Yet there are things Sharleyan still does not know. Secrets Cayleb has not been permitted to share, even with her. Secrets like the true story of humanity on Safehold. Like the intricate web of lies, deception, and fabricated ‘religion’ which have chained humanity for almost a thousand years. Like the existence of the genocidal alien Gbaba, waiting to complete mankind's destruction should humans ever attract their attention once more. Like the existence of a young woman, Nimue Alban, nine hundred years dead, whose heart, mind, and memories live on within the android body of the warrior-monk she knows as Merlin.

And so Empress Sharleyan faces the great challenge of her life unaware of all that task truly entails... or of how the secrets the man who loves her cannot share may threaten all they have achieved between them... and her own life.

I’m so glad to have finished By Heresies Distressed before August ends, though barely. The Safehold series definitely has the potential for becoming a very long, epic series, which I think is simply awesome. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next (and next, and next...) book.

Voices

Joseph Mallozzi offers anime Voices of a Distant Star as an example of intelligent science fiction. I remember feeling cheated – and more than a little annoyed – when I bought the DVD online a few years ago to find the movie only 25 minutes long. But then I watched it, and saw that it was really a beautiful movie. Seriously, there were tears.

Voices tells the story of a girl, Mikako, who is a member of an interstellar military expedition. Left behind on Earth is her boyfriend, Noboru, with whom she tries to keep in touch via text messaging using her mobile phone. As the expedition travels further away from Earth, the time it takes for her messages to get to Noboru increases.

The movie is on YouTube if you haven’t seen it (and want to).

Tech Support

As the department’s honorary support technician, I think this is just awesome!

Tech Support Cheat Sheet @ xkcd

(Click for full size)

D9

(or When I Took My Mother to the Movie)

I bought tickets for District 9 as usual on Tuesday before my brother told me that he was going to Penang for work. Everybody else already had plans, so came Thursday evening I went to the cinema with my mother.

“Cerita apa kita nak tengok ni?”
“Cerita alien”
“Malulah, nanti mak seorang saja orang tua tengok wayang tu”
“Alah, mesti ada orang lain lagi tua, kalau tak pun orang bukannya kisah”
“Kau tak malu orang nampak dah besar-besar jalan dengan mak?”
“Apa nak malu pulak jalan dengan mak sendiri”

District 9 is a refugee camp housing more than a million extra-terrestrial aliens that arrived at Johannesburg, of all places, some twenty years ago. Management of the camp, including the aliens’ welfare, was contracted out to a corporation called Multinational United (MNU). However, as a major defence contractor MNU is more interested in getting its hands on the aliens’ superior weapons technology, which is apparently useless in human hands.

District 9 was the most exciting science fiction movie I have seen since quite a while, and by far the smartest movie this season. The special effects by Weta were top-notch but not excessive so did not distract from the story. I would have liked to know more about how and why the aliens came. Though the movie was about apartheid, it seemed unbelievable that “we” knew so little about the aliens and their culture after all the years of coexistence and interaction. There were no stereotypes. Instead, the “prawns” were totally written off as pests.

Set in South Africa, it was also interesting to see iconic South American military hardware like the Oryx transport helicopter, Casspir personnel carrier, and CR-21 and NTW-20 assault and sniper rifles featured in the movie instead of the tired, generic American equipment we see far too often. The CR-21 in white stocks looked like toy guns, however. Why would anybody buy or make guns in white?

My mother enjoyed the movie too and didn’t sleep at all throughout the movie. She always sleeps during movies.

__________
CREDIT: All pictures from TriStar Pictures/Yahoo! Movies

Spent

(or Why I Haven’t Been Replying My Non-Work Emails)

Ah, only five weeks into the semester and it already feels like an eternity!

The semester turns out to be my toughest yet, largely due to the new course I am teaching. Although I took Money and Banking as a student, in my second year of undergraduate a decade ago, teaching it for the first time means I have to do quite some preparatory reading myself. However, we are on an accelerated schedule to complete the course by the semester break within a month from now instead of the end of the semester proper at the end of October. So I am constantly chasing the clock, barely catching a breath from teaching one topic to preparing for the next.

Making matters, well, more interesting, I’ve been assigned seminar rooms for my Principles of Macroeconomics classes as well. Seminar rooms are designed around the LCD projector and screen. All this while I’ve been teaching with just the board and marker pen, occasionally using the overhead projector, but now for every topic I have to spend additional time – time I do not have – preparing a PowerPoint presentation.

What all this means is that since the beginning of the semester five weeks ago I have been doing work at home during the evenings and weekends it’s exhausting. I practically haven’t read anything other than textbooks and instructor’s manuals since!

It doesn’t help too that the house is being renovated. While my parents have been planning the renovation for quite some time, the timing just cannot be worse. Half of the house is currently out of commission, including my bedroom, while the rest is in varying degrees covered in cement dust. I have either the living room or my sister’s bedroom to do work in, but when my parents watch the television I have no other choice but the retreat to the bedroom working sitting cross legged on the bed. And now my back is beginning to hurt. The contractor promised that I will get my bedroom-cum-home office back by Ramadan, which is in less than a week. I only hope that he keeps his promise.

I gave my Money and Banking class their mid-semester test more than a week ago but only got to start marking it last Friday. I thought I’d able to be finished with the marking this weekend but now it is simply not happening.

PFFT!

Please Mr. Postman

These are the CDs I have in my car:

1. Aerosmith – O, Yeah! Ultimate Aerosmith Hits
   
2. Bon Jovi – Keep the Faith
   
3. The Carpenters – Yesterday Once More: Greatest Hits 1969-1983
   
4. Coldplay – X&Y
   
5. Earth, Wind & Fire – The Ultimate Collection
   
6. Jon Bon Jovi – Destination Anywhere
   
7. Linkin Park – Minutes to Midnight
   
8. Natasha Bedingfield – NB
   
9. No Doubt – The Singles 1992-2003
   
10. Velvet Revolver – Libertad

They are all original, of course. I don’t listen to them much, however. At the moment, the one sitting inside the CD player is the Carpenters compilation; the second CD, I think, the one with Please Mr. Postman on it.

I don’t usually turn the radio on when driving to work in the morning because I find it distracting. I also prefer not having the radio on when there are others in the car too, because then there’ll be talking, and I don’t like the distraction of trying to listen to the conversation and the radio at the same time. So the radio/CD player only gets turned on when I’m driving home from work. Even then, half the time I’ll be plugged onto the Walkman phone instead.

So, what do they tell about me?

Double Parking

AARGH, headache!

Why do people double park?

1. There may not be enough parking spaces in the area. We’ll get back to this later.
   
   
2. They’re simply being selfish arrogant asses so in fashion nowadays. We can speculate ad nauseum on their deficient childhood nurturing etc and still get us nowhere so let’s skip it. No need to state the obvious, anyway.
   
   
3. They double park because they know they can get away with it. “Everybody else is doing it.,” they say. Nobody is going to give them a ticket or tow their car away. Even if they get a ticket they can simply ignore it and accumulate piles of traffic tickets with no worries at all. Nobody is going after them. “Just wait,” they say, “by year end there’ll be a sale, and we can settle all the tickets at huge discounts!”

So perhaps the real question is why not double park?

Damn us.

If traffic rules are rigorously enforced people won’t be able to get away with it. While they learn, local authorities can make a lot of money collecting fines. Ignore the complaints about insufficient parking spaces. Like roads, there just will never be enough parking spaces.

In the long run, however, local authorities can use accumulated fines to fund construction of more parking lots. At the same time, potential property buyers and tenants will demand more parking spaces. Existing areas with insufficient parking will be abandoned, so the owners will be forced to redevelop. So in the end there will be enough parking spaces everywhere and nobody will have a reason to double park anymore. Better yet, we’ll all drive less and take trains and buses instead.

And we’ll all live happily ever after.