Author: kbgadmin

Categories
Knowledge

The 3 Cancers of the Mind

Jay Shetty, in his book, Think Like a Monk, describes the three cancers of the mind as

Comparing

Complaining

Criticizing

When something unwanted happens to us, we spend 1% thinking about how to solve it and 99% fuming about it. If only we could reverse that choice and spend 99% working towards a solution.

He goes on to explain how monks achieve happiness. They detach themselves from material and humans. What he means is that their self worth and satisfaction is not tied to a thing – while they may enjoy a ride in a new Mercedes, they have no wants for it. It’s not like when they get off the Mercedes, they will spend time thinking about the ride. They dont. For them, it was a just a ride. They enjoyed the moment as they rode it. But that’s it. They focus on the moment.

The same goes for people. They wont attach themselves to someone. They will accept anyone’s friendship. And when you leave, they will wish you well. It’s not that their cold hearted people. They just dont hold onto people. They understand that everyone of us are on our own paths.

Service is always the answer.
It fixes a bad day.
It tempers the burdens we bear.
Service helpsother people and helps us.
We dont expect anything in return, but what we get is the joy of service.

Jay Shetty
Categories
Travel Places

Convent Light Street School

A view of the Convent Light Street school in Penang. It is the oldest girls’ school in Southeast Asia, founded by French Catholic nuns in 1852. Read the school history here.

Convent Light Street School
Convent Light Street School, Penang, Malaysia

Categories
Travel Places

Komtar

One of the most significant landmarks in Penang is its tallest building, Komtar.

It is Penang’s tallest skyscraper and the eleventh-tallest building in Malaysia. KOMTAR is a Malay acronym for Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak, named after the second Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdul Razak. Construction started in 1974 and it was opened to the public 16 years later, 232 m high with 68 floors.

Its lower floors are retail spaces occupied by local boutiques and lots of stalls specialising in cell phone, camera and laptop repairs, while upstairs are office lots. The upper floors are home to the state governments office

The lower ground floor is home to a bus terminal with Rapid Penang bus operators that serve the entire Georgetown area. The mall has an outdoor strip, called Komtar Walk, connected to the adjacent Prangin Mall.

Komtar (tallest building in picture), Penang bridge (mid left)
Penang bridge on the horizon

What can do at Komtar? Try this.

Categories
Reflection

Happy New Year 2022

Happy New Year 2022

Wishing you and your loved ones a blessed 2022 ahead.

2021 was a recovery year from the infamous Covid virus.

While Covid was bad, Covid also taught humanity was it was like to be humans. We saw a great outpouring of love when people of all faiths started helping the needy with food and other essentials. And for once, the rich couldnt distance themselves from the disease – their wealth couldnt protect them outright although their wealth bought them the best treatment.

The head of an oil and gas company allegedly said that he comes to work daily and isnt worried about the risk it poses to his young, unvaccinated children at home. What he didnt realise with such a reckless statement was that if and when his kids get Covid, he can afford the best healthcare but his low level employees cant — they have to take their kids to the local general hospital and hope for the best.

We dont know how fortunate we are and we think our circumstances applies to everyone. But not everyone can afford the simple things that we can. And we should never forget that.

Use 2022 to build people up. Make some time to go and help another person. Money doesn’t solve everything. Some people just needs someone to listen to them. Some people need help. Just ask. Dont assume.

Happy new year to you!

Categories
Travel Places

Riding in Penang, Malaysia

I was parked outside Little India in Penang, Malaysia today and I was delighted to see how the youngsters travel these days.

Miniature Powered Bikes
Closer view of miniature bikes
A romantic bicycle ride among the busy lanes…
And what is Penang without its famous rickshaws…
Categories
Reflection

Merry Christmas

Christmas is the love within, not the external gifts.

Merry Christmas!

Categories
Knowledge Science

Hottest Planet in our Solar System

It’s not who you think it is.

First of all, do you know all the planets in our solar system?

The eight planets of the Solar System. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons user WP, under a c.c.-by-s.a. 3.0 license

You would not be wrong to think that Mercury would be the hottest. But it isnt. Venus is. But why?

Every planet in our solar system gets its heat from the sun. Without the sun, most planetary temperatures would equilibrate at -270°C. The further the planet is away from the sun, the cooler it is. This is true for most planets except for the second one.

Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, is hot. It’s 700 Kelvin or 427°C. But Venus, the second planet, is twice the distance from the sun as Mercury is but is a whopping  735 Kelvin or 462°C. Why?

The smart people ate NASA compared these two worlds and noticed:

  1. Mercury is much smaller than Venus,
  2. Mercury is about twice as close to the Sun as Venus,
  3. Mercury is much less reflective than Venus, and
  4. Mercury has no atmosphere, while Venus has a very thick atmosphere.

To summarise their excellent article, Mercury and Venus don’t just absorb light from the Sun; each planet then re-radiates that energy as heat back into space. For airless Mercury, all of that heat goes immediately back into space. But on Venus, the story is different. Each quantum of infrared radiation — the re-radiated heat — has got to get through that thick, thick atmosphere (Venus possess an atmosphere many times the thickness of Earth’s and its shrouded in terrifically thick layers of highly reflective cloud), which is difficult.

And that is why the hottest planet in our solar system is not the planet closest to our majestic sun.

As a side note, the image below is the temperature of planets in our solar system, courtesy of NASA.

Categories
Reflection

December – Month of Reflection

In all my years of working, I never had a month off to reflect on the year until this year.

What is so different about this year?

Well, with Covid, there is not much work out there and all of us have ample annual leaves, which we’re being asked to use up.

Fair enough. I need the time to unwind. My last holiday was 365 days ago.

2022 is going to be interesting. As I write this, the new Covid variant, Omicron, has decided to visit us. Will countries go into self lock down again?

Today I stumbled upon this quote by Henry David Thoreau:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,

and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined,

he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary;

new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him;

or old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favour in a more liberal sense,

and he will live with a license of a higher order of things.

– Henry David Thoreau

Cease worrying. Make plans for the future. Just remember that in the end, it’s God that makes the plans that we think we’ve made.

Categories
Technology

Divi Page Builder Doesn’t Work with W3 Total Cache

I had the toughest time today when my Divi page builder didn’t load up on Chrome, Firefox and Edge when I was trying to update this website. I tried turning off every setting on my WordPress but to no avail. The page just keeps trying and trying and trying to load up the page builder but it doesn’t work. It was only when I deactivated W3 Total Cache that everything worked like normal.

Lessons learned – disable all optimisation plugins during development.

Categories
Misc

Moving Homes

I dont remember if this is my third or fourth home. I am referring to my hosting provider. Changing hosting providers does take some work in getting the site back up again. Let’s see how promising this one is.

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