From Matrix revolutions, the lyrics to Neodaemmerung (played during the big showdown between Smith and Neo) are actually taken from the Upanisads. The first verse:

asato my sad gamaya
tamaso my to jyotir gamaya
mrtyor mamrtam gamaya

From delusion lead me to truth
From darkness lead me to light
From death lead me to immortality.

etc....

Thats interesting, because the upanisads, Brhadaranyaka, Isa, Mundaka, Katha, and all the others, are the end of the Vedas, and is the source of Vedanta philosophy, aka science of self-knowledge. essentially the universe we experience is not real, and there is a higher truth to be perceived linked with divinity ... we are ignorant to our true nature and the goal of the self is an understanding of our true nature, and in that way, "free" ourselves, achieve a "higher state of consciousness". sounds very matrixy-y doesnt it. as I read this, i recall Plato's theory of forms, albeit somewhat different, its got the same idea of the illusion of our pereption, that what we perceive are merely shadows of what is real, what is perfect.

These are the most sacred text of hindhuism ..

found this quote:
"The Absolute Consciousness is the fundamental cause of the universe and everything in it. It is free and perfect, unlimited by time, space, and causation. The individual Consciousness or the Self which appears to be limited by time, space, and causation is also free and perfect. It has come from that Absolute Consciousness. When a competent aspirant learns this from a teacher and discriminates the Self from the non-self, he comes to know that he is fundamentally that Absolute Consciousness Itself—ever pure, free and perfect."

sounds very morpheus-ish, doesnt it? actually i remember in Queen of the Damned ie from the Anne Rice vampire chronicles, they used Vedanta as well, "Akasha", the mother and source of all vampires, is actually a vedanta word that refers to the source of all matter in the universe.

Katha Upanisad 6.7

   indriyebhyah param mano
   manasah sattvam uttamam
   sattvad adhi mahan atma
   mahato vyaktam uttamam

        Beyond the senses is the mind, and beyond the
        mind is reason, its gasoline. Beyond reason is
        the Spirit in man, and beyond this is the Spirit
        of the Universe, the evolver of all.

ok so tomorrow is new years eve .. and i'm trying to figure out what to do:

a) go to YS' place, at turkey and drink myself pissed all night
b) hang around here in klcc, since i am working tomorrow and probably will be working late.

b is tempting, since i do get VIP seats to the show from the office (unless they kick us out, which i doubt they will). plus the fact that it'll be just about impossible to leave KL aftyer 5 tomorrow. although someone pointed out that everyone will be coming into KL. but then again everyone like me would be trying to get out of KL.

on the other hand, leaving after the fireworks and all will be insane, so i'd have to hang around here until who knows what time.

and i'd also have to find people who'd hang around with me. unless i wanna usher in the new years alone (yeah rite)

options options options ..

oh yeah, i turned 24 yesterday. not very eventful considering no one had time for me (except Hanis, who was sweet enough to run down to alexis to get my cheesecake and have the telawi people surprise me with it at midnite, since their kitchen was closed or some shit like that :). you know who's disappeared again as usual .. not surprised at all, since she aint got no guy problems (hear that? you know who you are. you take me for granted and i have no expectations of you! all that 'best friend' 'good friend' crap .. all dandy when you've got problems and need company and ears to bitch to. but once things are good not even a whisper in the wind. this goes for you, all you else who call yourself friends. you who whisper empty promises of "i'll call you next week and we'll go to dinner". you who agrees to plans and cancels on the last minute, and don't even bother to pick up the phone for a hi how are you lets go for lunch. except when it suits you to do so, when you need and desire something so urgently that you make use of my good faith and nature. to you i refuse to be your lackey)

whatever. i'm not that good natured. i got myself Carolina Herrera 212 for men .. nice birthday present to myself. and i'm still deciding on what my mom's gonna get me. speakers? sports springs? electronics? clothes?

options options options ..

yesterday went to lunch with sabrina, she was like .. tell them its your birthday they might give ya free cake. that got me thinkin .. time to start cafe a'hopping and free birthday cake a'hunting

ok i'm hungry

Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to sammiee .. Happy birthday to me!

sitting here waiting for hs, we're going to ln's wedding. where is this girl, aren't we late or something?

whatever, too many weddings to keep up with. honestly, I don't get it, what's with all these people and getting married so fast? Its like, graduate college, get a job, get a husband/wife, have 6 kids. Some kind of default template for life or something

anyway .. Say LOTR 3 on Thursday .. So good .. So dammmnn gooddd!!! man, the battle at minas tirith .. Especially when the rohirim charged in .. soo goooddd! orgasmic!! but then there was all that gay hobbit cameraderie going on .. the number of times I though frodo was going to kiss sam .. or that merry and moppin or whatever that other fellow's name is. if you want cameraderie, check out legolas and gimli. good ole pat on the back, now thats cameraderie. the hobbits are just gay. that's why I think (SPOILER alert!) [frodo had to leave in the end with the elves .. cuz he couldnt take it that sam got married. it just tore him apart]

mental note to self, run spell-checker .. because for the life of me I can't spell cameraderie

tried to get tix again for sunday, but at 10 am the line at KLCC TGV was 6 miles long. after like 15 minutes of crawling I figured i'd better run back to the office before my boss wonders where I disappeared off to. I gotta get tix again, I gotta see minas tirith again.

went to a friend's friend's party yesterday .. it was alright, food was pretty decent. bar was very decent. and this guy kept going around with this pitcher full of some weird green thing, I swear the damn thing would've glowed in the dark. said it was vokda+bicardi+pineapple. or was it vodka+midori+pineapple. thats sounds more like a real drink. anyway, pretty good at first, but kinda overdosed on sugar. after the fourth cup, I think *I* was oversaturated in sugar

btw credit cards are evil. I got my new ikea credit card .. and now I have the urge to run out and shop like a madman. actually i'm doing that on sunday, gotta go xmas shopping. nice long list. and while i'm at it I should get something for myself too right ;)

man what a week. what a WEEK. and what happened o the weekend? its 5pm on sunday already?? and i'm sitting in the office trying to get some work done, and instead i'm listening to launch.com and bloggin' and surgin'

wait, not surgin' .. surfin'.

yesterday, after 5 hours of wandering around sg wang and low yat, i got myself a t610. actually i want this one samsung e700:

http://www.samsung.com/Products/MobilePhone/GSM/MobilePhone_GSM_SGH_E700_ac.htm

cool huh? looks reall sweet on the otuside .. but once you open it up its .. well .. its alright. but then again most flip phones are like that. and since i'm superficial when i need to be, i'll don't mind. now here's the catch, that's brand new, and it costs RM 2200 on average. i was like .. wtf are you insane? its not even bluetooth

so, after hours of deliberation, i settled on this one:

http://www.sonyericsson.com/my/spg.jsp?template=PS1&B=ie&PID=10055&LM=PSM_V&gal=105

half the price, plus after some bargaining i got about RM 300 trade in for my old 8250. man the price of that is really dropping .. i paid over 600 for it, and apparently it retails for only about 400+ now. So I paid 1030 total, got the Sony Ericsson, international set. They also have the AP set, thats like 300 bucks less .. but hey, I can't settle for that can I? gotta go for the real thing man!!!!

besides, i figured i could always go e700 next year if i wanted to , after the price drops. The only difference between the two is that the t610 is bluetooth and triband, the e700 isnt. its kinda like a blond that way, nice to look at but nothing of substance

ok corny jokes aside, now i'm all connected ... pc sync with ipaq, ipaq bluetooth with t610 .. woohooo!!!! now i need accessories. bluetooth handsfree (400+), desktop cradle and sync (RM ???)

went to I's open house today, food was homecooked and good .. mm. and she wants to hook me up with her friend .. hey i'm game, she seems cool. too bad i couldnt stay longer, needed to work on this report.

speakin of which, i should work on this report ...

oh oh LOTR next week!!!!

Koyanisquasti: "life out of balance"

am reading dan brown's da vinci code, really interesting, learning a lot about the history of christianity .. although most of it I already knew, (being an established atheist its my duty to know these things ;) historical evidence has shown that the current version of the bible and christianity are not entirely accurate. in fact the current version of it was really a result of charlamange's compilation back when he turned the roman empire into the holy roman empire, who's recompilation of the bible and selection of gospels for the new testament was specifically to promote the idea of the divinity of jesus and the role of women in the original sin, thus destroying centuries of religious ideology of the importance of the balance and equal importance of masculinity and femininity, centuries of worship and reverence to women and femininity and the source of life. until the moment of Council of Nicaea, Jesus was seen as a mortal prophet, bringing his message of humanity.

after all .. why should the act of Hieros Gamos, the natural sexual union between man and woman be viewed in shame? look where the lack of balance has brought us today, what Brown suggests as the "male ego [spending] two millennia running unchecked", resulting in "testosterone-fueled" wars and misogyny.

the fact is organized religion is about power. its about control. by way of suppression. and often in the pursuit of such power and control is the real goal of spiritual fulfillment often forgotten. heck, the term "organized religion" is an oxymoron, how could you put organization and structure on something as personal as religion.

imagine how the foundations of the church would shake, if it were popular knowledge that its version of history was indeed an inaccurate reinvention of history as a vessel for power. it would discredit its claims as the single path to reaching god. I say "popular knowledge" because, after all, what is truth but what is widespread perception?

its true what Napoleon said, "what is history, but a fable agreed upon"?

but this brings up an interesting point, what is "truth"? what is "real"? the fundamental question morpheus posed to neo in the first matrix. there's absolute truth, and then there's perceived truth .. and everything that we see or experience is merely perceived truth. everything we "see", "hear", "know" through our senses are filtered through our own preconceptions of what things are supposed to be.

how do I we know we "see" "blue" as the same thing? but then again does it matter?

therefore what is real? the world is full of data .. data is meaningless without interpretation. the screen that I see is really data on EM waves .. my mind interprets it as a computer screen. therefore, is "reality" meaningless? if perception is everything (flash that soda commercial, "image is nothing, thirst is everything"), if perception is "reality" per se, then if I were really hooked up to some machine and what I see is really a virtual environment pumped directly into my brain, is that so wrong then, assuming the conditions of that simulation provide me with the adequate rights to choice, comfort and sustenance?

just occurred to me that this sounds like what buddhists (or was it hundhus) say about the ultimate reality being "nothingness", and if you free yourself of attachments (mortal perceptions?), you will achieve this state of enlightenment, nothingness.

plato said that what we see are "shadows" of absolute, perfect forms. perhaps he was right after all

sorry, feeling a little contemplative today :)

i forgot ... i'm still in the process of deciding a url for this blog .. someone took my weltanschauung on blogger ...

finally got around to staring up the bogger again. although technically I should be reading more proposals (man, can they get any more dry and boring?) oh yeah i'm reading proposals for work for that thing i'm doing that i'm not supposed to mention (yeah yeah, i know, i'm not supposed to care what i say in my blog or who reads it .. heck I don't ... its just that NDA I signed a while back thats hovering in my mind :)

anyway, yesterday I noticed that my front license plate had fallen off .. heck only knows how long ago. now my poor car looks sorta pathetically bald on the front. gotta do my best to avoid any cops (especially road blocks) until tomorrow morning.

oh yeah .. i gotta remember to email di and nicole

i miss chicago. i miss the snow. this place, sunny as it is, is depressingly mundane. i feel like things are missing in my life .. things that this location can't provide me.

sucks doesnt it.