Recently, a few quite noteworthy people have passed away. I am not saying that all the other thousands who died over the past few weeks are not important but rather these few people that passed away recently struck a chord in my heart.

The first person who had an untimely demise is Cory Monteith. One of the lead actors of Glee. For a short time, I used to really like Glee, until I realised that the original songs were so much better than the glee-mix (Is that a thing?) and the songs got butchered and also I got bored with the constantly expanding story. But we are not here to talk about Glee, are we? We are going to talk about the recently deceased star, Cory.

According to the various news sources I have read, he died from a deadly combination of alcohol and heroin. When he passed away, people were really shocked and so was I, until I found out his cause of death. Don't call me cold-hearted but when I found out that he took his own life with drugs, whatever sliver of respect I had for him instantly diminished.

I used to admire his talent for singing (Despite butchering popular and classical songs) and his courage to pursue acting but taking drugs is a really bad way to go. From my sources, he even went to rehabilitation centers. Yet, he still overdoses. This disappoints me. Why is it that child stars tend to choose drugs over finding the true source of the problems, themselves.

Pressure can be one thing but pressure can be solved by looking within and finding the cause for your pressure and removing it. By taking drugs to ease suffering, it is like taking a bullet to the foot to cure a toothache. You solve nothing and instead, create another problem.

When I voiced out my opinion, I was surprised with the amount of fans he got, claiming that he was extremely inspirational and that I should respect him. Taking drugs and going to rehab does NOT make you inspirational and dying over very silly matters makes me have a hard time feeling any respect for him.

Furthermore, he, like all stars (Save for a few), does acting and music not only for his insatiable passion, but also his greed as acting is a career. Stars do not see fans as fans, they do not see fans as friends. They put on a guise to ensure that their "fans" will adore them. Their true view of their "fans" are numbers on a paycheck.

So, in conclusion, if you want to respect someone who passed away, you should respect someone who did something right in their life and actually inspired people. Which brings us onto our next dead celebrity, this time, it is a Youtube celebrity - Talia Castellano.

Talia Castellano was a youtube sensation as she gave make-up tutorials. She was quite young when she was diagnosed with cancer and with her remaining months of life, she pressed on with her dreams and inspired many people after appearing on The Ellen Show. She is one of the kinds of people I would respect as she decided to follow on with her passion despite the unfortunate circumstances. The circumstances were not created by herself and she had no control whatsoever.

She teaches me to continue living my life despite any obstacles that may come in my way. She is truly an inspiration to all. I truly hope that she had a lovely rebirth where she can be free from the torment that she suffered in this current life.

Despite concealing her face behind make-up, she still showed the world her beautiful heart and inspired many people to believe in themselves.

The final noteworthy dead person that passed away recently was one of the teachers in my school. Cikgu Rohaya. She passed away sadly at the age of 50 due to cancer.

I was only taught by her in Form 1 as she was having extra-classes after school. She was quite a good teacher despite being quite loud. She seemed to have a huge impact on the rest of my school as a lot of my schoolmates respect her, even if they do not approve of her teaching methods as she was extremely passionate when it came to ensuring the success of her students.

So, in conclusion, many people die every day. Our clock is always ticking. We must not assume that we will live forever and we must not assume that we will live long. Talia passed away when she was 13, Cory passed away when he was 34, Cikgu rohaya passed away at 50. We can die at any given time.

We must not waste our lives to trivial unnecessities. We should not waste our lives just enjoying ourselves. We should be spending our lives benefiting others. We should be holding the hands of people who never felt the warmth of love. We should be bowing our heads and showing respect to our seniors. We should be feeding those who do not have the ability to feed themselves. We must do all this before we die. Remember, the clock IS ticking. Tick tock, tick tock. Our life slowly crumbles away.

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Hello everyone, about two weeks ago, I went to see a film that was highly grossing in cinemas in Malaysia. The film was called Pacific Rim. 

Warning: The following review is my own personal opinion. My views may or may not be like yours, the readers. Do not be aggravated if I like or dislike certain parts of the film.

Pacific Rim is essentially an action movie with a ton of monsters. At first glance, it seems like a combination of Transformers, Iron Man, Halo and Japanese Monster movies. However, upon watching the film, I have discovered the film is more like the Mazinger series and Transformer series had a Michael Bay lovechild. 


The movie starts off with some monologue from the main character, Rayleigh, explaining that world first encountered the kaiju when he was 15 years old during the year 2013. How ominous. Then, he goes on to explain a little bit of the backstory of the premise of the film. The basic idea of the film is that Kaijus are to be killed by Jaegers that are piloted by two people who drift (Fuse memories). Before going into a timeskip of 7 years after the initial attack. 

Rayleigh is the pilot of Gypsy Danger, a jaeger (Kaiju-Killing Robotic Badass) with his brother. They go out to fight a Kaiju called Knifehead. It's body and name seemingly giving a nod to the Gamera monster, Guiron. Which I think is kind of cute. The monster kills Rayleigh's brother and Rayleigh murders the little bastard. 

Then, the movie takes us to another premise, which was the "Wall of Life", a governmental project that aims to build a giant wall to stop the Kaiju from invading and this project discontinues funding for the jaeger project. (I was thinking about Shingeki No Kyojin when they were building the wall)

Honestly, I find this hilariously stupid as governments (Despite being mentally retarded) should not invest so much money, time and lives into building a thin wall that will be destroyed in the next scene. This just makes the government look dumb as hell. 

So, the leader of the jaeger program, now funded privately by some Russians, seeks Rayleigh. Rayleigh of course joins the team and is sent to the Shatterdome. The place where the jaegers are kept. We are given a brief introduction of each Jaeger but I wish there would have been more. We are also introduced to the pilots. An asian triplet team, two russian badasses, a father and his scumbag son. Kind of an army, ain't it. 

So, after a little bit of a sub-plot with Rayleigh's co-pilot Mako being all emotional and screamy, we are brought into the first real Kaiju battle after the one in the beginning of the film. Two Kaiju appear and that shocks everybody, despite the calculations being present earlier in the film saying that a double event will happen sooner or later. 

The Kaiju attack and murder the Russians and the Asians. GO AMERICA! as the white man saves the day again with the Aussies barely surviving. 

Then, the plot does not evolve much as there is only a sub-plot where Newton, a kaiju-fanatic/scientist is drifting with a Kaiju brain and the effects that happen afterwards. 

The main plot ends up becoming nuke the rift in the Pacific Ocean, which they do, ending up with the death of Kaiju, for now. 

So, what did I think about this movie?

I actually thought it was pretty good. The film had a lot of decent action scenes and CGI that is rendered well that would fully immersify viewers. The explosions were a bit like something that Michael Bay's creation but it was done in a way that the explosions were pretty necessary. 

The main problem with the film however, is it's constant plot holes. I found a short list on the Internet so I don't have to type so much.

(Source: http://www.movieplotholes.com/pacific-rim.html)
Minor Plot Hole: So over all the years of knowing the inter-dimensional rift exists, no one has ever figured out how to send anything through to the other side until two scientists manage to techno-mind-meld with a Kaiju fetus and learn the rift only opens if you have Kaiju genetics with you. However, not only do the Shatterdome's communications and sensors still track Gipsy Danger when she falls through to the other side, but Raleigh's escape pod somehow makes it back through the rift alone.

Minor Plot Hole: So the Kaiju Leatherback sets off some kind of EMP that instantly knocks out all of the Shatterdome's electronics, communications, and even one of their super-expensive and super-high-tech Jaegers. But fortunately, the several dozen helicopters necessary to transport Gipsy Danger into battle are mysteriously unaffected.

Major Plot hole: So the world governments are retiring the Jaegers because they cost too much and the Kaiju are getting stronger and stronger, and instead their plan is to... build a huge-ass wall around the entire Pacific Ocean. Setting aside that this plan would almost certainly be way more ridiculously expensive than the Jaegers, how exactly is this a long-term solution? Are the world governments basically planning to just let the stronger and stronger Kaiju mass up in the Pacific and just hope their walls hold forever? Their plan is so stupid it almost feels like the movie's writers wanted to make it clear that Marshall Pentecost is the last competent person on the planet.

Plot contrivance: When a nuclear reactor melts down, it does not result in a nuclear explosion. Yes I know it’s a giant robot movie but nowhere in the premise of the movie is it clearly stated that nuclear reactions are different in Del Torro’s world. Hence – shut up.

Plot contrivance: Why pick up objects made of lesser metals to hit monsters with rather than punch them with your super rare-metal billion dollar alloyed fists? It’s like a 200 pounds muscle guy who decides to grab a bag of Cheetos and hit you with it as hard as he can instead of punching you directly in the face. Looks cool – still dumb.

Plot Contrivance: The beginning exposition makes it clear how important a close bond based on common memories is between the Jaeger pilots, and that this bond is extremely rare - so rare that having it is enough to overlook other obvious personal and professional flaws. The introduction to the original pilots reinforces this - pilot crews are brothers, triplets, father/son, and whatever the stereotypical scary Russians are. However, as soon as the plot requires Raleigh to have a new partner he apparently instantly forms an extremely rare instant life bond with Mako, who he knows nothing about except that she's hot. Plot hole, or subtle social commentary about gender politics? You decide.

Unaddressed Issue: To fight the Kaiju, humanity's best option was to build hugely expensive and resource-draining gigantic killer wrestling robots to beat them to death in hand-to-hand combat far off the coasts of major cities. Then, in the movie's ultimate fight, we also learn that apparently nuclear weapons are also pretty effective against level 4 Kaiju and lower. I mean, building gigantic super-robots is cool and everything, but why wouldn't the world's governments just nuke the hell out of the Kaiju as soon as they detected them in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Are they worried about pollution or something?

Also, the acting ain't exactly that good with it's multiple B-list actors and the sounds were a bit too loud for my personal taste.

BUT! The film's action sequences were done so well that I only noticed its flaws after watching the film. So, in conclusion, this film is not bad. 

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I also made a video reviews with some friends :D 

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A week ago, I went to Kechara Forest Retreat and I was in awe when I saw the amount of development present. The last time I visited KFR was quite a while back and I did not get to see the complete form of the Dukkar Apartments.

The Dukkar Apartments truly blossomed into a beautiful lotus. The first time I saw the empty plot of land, honestly, I did not expect such a beautiful building to arise. Then again, this is what should be expected of the fusion of hard work of Kecharians and the compassion and guidance of His Eminence Tsem Rinpoche.

So, it was 7 a.m. in the morning when I woke up that day. Sock Wan kindly picked Beatrix, Edward and I up to start a day of good and healthy labour. It was an hours journey as usual and Edward managed to keep me awake by talking with me about various animes but eventually I fell asleep halfway through the journey.

When we reached Bentong town, we went to a coffee shop near an abandoned house that was built in the year 1923. The coffee shop had amazing Char Kuey Teow, though it was a bit overcooked. The shop was quite crowded and I guess that this is because if you are in a restaurant in a small town, they will always be crowded.

After fueled up with Char Kuey Teow and coffee, we went to the KFR compound and started to help Ajai, our lovely groundskeeper with gardening work.

Firstly, we were moving some pots around to make things neater for transport into other areas of KFR. The pots were quite heavy and some required two people to carry while some only required one person to carry. After moving the pots around, we were to remove some plants from their green plastic bags into a small black plastic bag, so that they can be planted in the future.

After digging up dirt and putting it in the black plastic bags and placing the plants in them, we moved more plants around but this time, they were smaller ones. We started out by carrying them by hand but eventually, we realised that it would have been more efficient to use a wheelbarrow which we did.

A few hours of moving later, we finished most of the plants and we went for a quick water and toilet break before finishing off the remainder. When we were finishing off the remainder, we discovered two leeches. I normally hate the idea of vectors sucking blood out of me but ever since Outward Bound School, leeches have not creeped me out too much. One leech ended up on my glove, so I simply asked Edward to pluck it off my glove and thank goodness, it didn't bite him :P

When we moved all the pots in the nursery to it's allocated areas, we went for a quick lunch at another coffee shop. This time, I had Wantan Noodles without the wantan (Meat dumpling) or the charsiew (Pork). It was quite well done and was made rather quickly despite there being so many people at the shop.

After our quick lunch, we went to Dukkar Apartments to clean the railings and mop the floor. The railings were quite easy to wipe as they were not really dusty but the tables in the main dining area was quite dusty.

The tables in the dining and kitchen area resembled that of a cafe with an LED sign saying, "Be the Light." on the wall. Most of the tables had a little flower vase and a small plant on it. The kitchen was well equipped and has a water dispenser that dispenses water so cold that the Arctic Ocean would be jealous and after a hot day, a glass of cold water is what was definitely needed.

So, in a three hour timeframe, we managed to clean up Dukkar Apartments and after all that cleaning, I felt extremely tired.

But by being tired for others is a virtue. When you work very hard for the benefit of others, good karma and merits arise. When you do so much for others, the work does not seem to be work and is something that you would want to do as often as you can while the opportunity is given. So, a sweat-filled day is a good day when in a Dharmic community.

I hope those who read this post will be encouraged to go and volunteer at Kechara Forest Retreat!

http://retreat.kechara.com/

Love,
Sean

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