Sunday Morning

The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning

Lyrics

Sunday morning, praise the dawning
It's just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning, Sunday morning
It's just the wasted years so close behind
Watch out, the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call It's nothing at all
Sunday morning and I'm falling
I've got a feeling I don't want to know
Early dawning, Sunday morning
It's all the streets you crossed, not so long ago
Watch out, the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call It's nothing at all
Watch out, the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call It's nothing at all
Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning

Commentary :

It's no coincidence that I'm writing this post on one fine cheerful Sunday morning. Sunday Morning really is a simple song with simple meanings that anyone can understand and relate to easily. Listening to this, like I usually do whenever I'm sad or when it's Sunday (it's a habit of mine), will surely cheer you up and absolve you of whatever it is that's making your sad or angry. Sunday Morning is a song by The Velvet Underground, a 1960s experimental rock band. Not surprisingly, the tone and the melody of the song itself is composed of pseudo-psychedelic and hippy-like tunes, which is perhaps the reason why the song is extremely delightful to listen, especially when you're in a state of sorrow. This song is simply a masterpiece, and a very strange one at that, considering how simple its lyrics is.

Crossword Puzzle

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Natural Phenomena : Black Holes

A mighty void

Black holes are the cold remnants of former stars, so dense that no matter—not even light—is able to escape their powerful gravitational pull.

While most stars end up as white dwarfs or neutron stars, black holes are the last evolutionary stage in the lifetimes of enormous stars that had been at least 10 or 15 times as massive as our own sun.

When giant stars reach the final stages of their lives they often detonate in cataclysms known as supernovae. Such an explosion scatters most of a star into the void of space but leaves behind a large "cold" remnant on which fusion no longer takes place.

In younger stars, nuclear fusion creates energy and a constant outward pressure that exists in balance with the inward pull of gravity caused by the star's own mass. But in the dead remnants of a massive supernova, no force opposes gravity—so the star begins to collapse in upon itself.

With no force to check gravity, a budding black hole shrinks to zero volume—at which point it is infinitely dense. Even the light from such a star is unable to escape its immense gravitational pull. The star's own light becomes trapped in orbit, and the dark star becomes known as a black hole.

Black holes pull matter and even energy into themselves—but no more so than other stars or cosmic objects of similar mass. That means that a black hole with the mass of our own sun would not "suck" objects into it any more than our own sun does with its own gravitational pull.

Planets, light, and other matter must pass close to a black hole in order to be pulled into its grasp. When they reach a point of no return they are said to have entered the event horizon—the point from which any escape is impossible because it requires moving faster than the speed of light.

Small But Powerful

Black holes are small in size. A million-solar-mass hole, like that believed to be at the center of some galaxies, would have a radius of just about two million miles (three million kilometers)—only about four times the size of the sun. A black hole with a mass equal to that of the sun would have a two-mile (three-kilometer) radius.

Because they are so small, distant, and dark, black holes cannot be directly observed. Yet scientists have confirmed their long-held suspicions that they exist. This is typically done by measuring mass in a region of the sky and looking for areas of large, dark mass.

Many black holes exist in binary star systems. These holes may continually pull mass from their neighboring star, growing the black hole and shrinking the other star, until the black hole is large and the companion star has completely vanished.

Extremely large black holes may exist at the center of some galaxies—including our own Milky Way. These massive features may have the mass of 10 to 100 billion suns. They are similar to smaller black holes but grow to enormous size because there is so much matter in the center of the galaxy for them to add. Black holes can accrue limitless amounts of matter; they simply become even denser as their mass increases.

Black holes capture the public's imagination and feature prominently in extremely theoretical concepts like wormholes. These "tunnels" could allow rapid travel through space and time—but there is no evidence that they exist.

Source : http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/universe/black-holes-article/

Culinary.

NASI GORENG PATTAYA

Nasi Goreng Pattaya is a Malaysian delicacy that is universally available in almost every restaurants serving Malay cuisine. As someone that had lived in Malaysia for almost 12 years, it also happens to be my favorite food, even now. Sadly I haven't had a Nasi Goreng Pattaya for almost 3 years so the first thing I'm going to do when I return to Malaysia is to find a Malay restaurant there and have a plate of Nasi Goreng Pattaya served for me.

This might seem a bit weird for you, my dear reader because all it really is just your everyday fried rice wrapped in an omelette, sometimes covered in tomato sauce. Maybe it's just because I really love eggs so a combination of both fried rice and eggs would really make it irresistible for me. I'm not sure though, there's just something unique about it that distinguishes it from other types of fried rice. Maybe it represents the fact that I'm actually homesick and wishes to return home. I don't know, all I know is that I'm craving for this and I'd do anything to just have a spoonful of it in my mouth.

Holidays.

Yes, I know it's way too late for this. It's been almost 2 weeks since the holidays ended, but of course, better late than never. To Miss Wiwin that will perhaps be reading this tomorrow, I'm sorry that I've only posted this now. I've procrastinated a lot and my lazy, apathetic self has apparently got the best of me.

All is well now though and so in this post, as the title itself has suggested, I will be talking about my holiday experience, even though honestly there's actually no meaningful nor memorable holiday experience to speak about. For the sake of this post though, I'll do what I can to describe what I did during the holidays in a very (hopefully) interesting manner.

My daily routine during the holidays consists of me getting up at 4 am to perform my morning prayers, after which I'd go back to sleep and only wake up at 9. What I did for the rest of the day is fairly predictable for those who know me well. I spent hours and hours in front of my computer playing games, watching films, surfing the internet, and skyping and chatting with that someone :) till late midnight. As you can see yes, there's nothing important to talk about. Granted there were times where I did spend time with my family outside but they're all pretty cliche and insignificant so no I'm not going to talk about them here.

So, in this post I'll just talk about this one particular game that I've spent hours and even days playing during the holidays. It might bore you to death but for lack of anything to talk about, please bear with me.

EUROPA UNIVERSALIS IV

Yep, that's the game. Europa Universalis IV. In English, it would mean "Universal Europe 4". Weird name for a game, isn't it? That's what I also thought at first back then in 2008, when I discovered EU III in some random obscure gaming website. I was only 10 years old then but I was already fascinated with what the game provides, however complex and difficult to understand it may be. Europa Universalis is a real-time strategy game that gives you the ability to be the ruler of literally any state in any time period from the 14th century during the Middle Ages to the 19th century post-napoleonic era. Playing the game gives you almost infinite possibility, you can choose to be the tribal leader of the Shawnee tribe and change history by leading your fellow tribesmen to a somehow very unrealistic but very interesting possibility of discovering Europe and alter the path of history to one that only exists in your mind, or perhaps you can choose to be Napoleon himself in 1805 post-revolutionary France and finish what he had failed to succeed in achieving: Conquer Europe.

Those are all but very few of the many things you can do in the game. The game's central themes which are warfare, diplomacy, nation-making, colonization, trade etc. really fascinate me. I've always been fascinated with history, politics and economy in general so getting to play this game, which gives me the ability to imagine myself as this powerful statesman leading his country to greatness is something that has always kept me interested in this game for almost 8 years. During the holidays I spent hours playing as Prussia starting in around 1630. In just a few decades, with the use of both warfare and diplomacy (okay I did use cheats as well) I managed to alter history by conquering all the other German states and unify Germany as a single nation-state with me as emperor. I created the most powerful and modern army in the world, able to defeat any country that dares oppose my will. I reformed the bureaucracy and taxation with the help of my very apt and capable merchants to build a very powerful backed mostly by income gained from trade in the North Sea.

Paradox

A baby girl is mysteriously dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. “Jane” grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him, but just when things are looking up for Jane a series of disasters strikes: First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery doctors discover that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they most surgically convert “her” to a “him.” Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.

Reeling from these disasters, rejected from society, scorned by fate, “he” becomes a drunkard and a drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop’s Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he join the “time traveller corps.” Both of them enter a time machine and the bartender drops the drifter off in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan girl, who subsequently becomes pregnant.

The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops the baby off in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time traveller corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together and becomes respected and elderly member of the time traveller corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop’s Place in 1970.

Source : The Internet

Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall. A remnant of our dark past that has long since been gone. The main symbol of the divide between the so-called "Capitalist" and "Communist" worlds, a representation of the idea that even people who were once considered brothers of the same faith, culture and statehood, in this case, the people of Germany, could be separated by something that has constantly plagued us since the dawn of humanity, war.

First off, you will most surely be wondering why I'm writing about this particular structure, which aren't, whether in terms of structural beauty or function "amazing" and is in fact, on the contrary, might be considered as something that is very much the opposite of the notion of "beauty" or "amazingness" itself. Well, you're right, but it's not the structure itself that I'm going to mainly talk about. I am very much aware that the Berlin Wall, which was obviously only a series of ugly and bland walled fortifications made of nothing but concrete and barbed wire cannot at all be considered as something "amazing". It doesn't at all matter though, because as I've said I'm not going to talk about the building itself, much of what I'm going to say here is about the history of the Wall itself, the idea that it represents, and how peace, love and freedom finally prevailed and brought down this infamous icon of oppression and war. That, on the other hand, is indeed amazing.

A quote on found a section of the eastern side of the Berlin Wall.

Before moving on further, it's of course necessary to talk about the historical background which led to the construction of this Wall, and to understand that, let's first take a quick glimpse at what happened shortly after the bloodiest war in the history of mankind, WW II, ended. The political landscape of Europe was then rapidly changing. Countless regimes had fallen down due to the effect of war and had been replaced by newer ones, which aren't necessarily better. Control of Europe had essentially been divided between the two main powers in WW2, on one side there was the Soviet Union with its communist ideology, which then had control of most of Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. On the other side there was the USA/UK/France, who had the backing and support of most of Western Europe. This divide is often termed as the "Iron Curtain" which was coined by then Prime Minister of the UK, Winston Churchill. It is nowhere else other than Germany, where this artificial divide was most visible and apparent. In the aftermath of the war, control of Germany had essentially been divided into two, in the West there were the US/UK/France, and in the East, the Soviet Union took complete control of the area. The Western Powers also controlled the western part of Berlin which was located deep inside East Germany's territory.

An accurate map of Europe after the end of WW II.

Originally, Germany was to eventually be reunified again under a common flag and sovereign government, but as things unsurprisingly turned out, the Western Powers and Soviet Union became embroiled in a series of conflicts because of the fact that those two had a completely different and contradictive set of ideologies and beliefs which directly led to eventual hostility between those two powers. The Western Powers in particular favored a free market with minimal intervention from the government and full protection its citizens' individual rights while Soviet Union on the other hand preferred a system of centralized command economy with the government as the main actor in the country's economy and a political system which supported full control of the government upon the lives of its citizens. As a result of those hostilities Germany's wish to become one again seemed to be an unrealistic hope, and its people had to wait for decades before they can again consider themselves as part of a unified, sovereign country. Eventually, the part of Germany that was occupied by the Western Powers became a separate, sovereign country called the Federal Republic of Germany with its capital in Bonn in 1949 and was quickly followed with the formation of the German Democratic Republic with its capital in East Berlin by the portion of Germany occupied by the Soviet Union. The German Democratic Republic, although legally sovereign, was essentially a puppet country controlled from Moscow.

Germany divided.

It immediately became obvious, however, that life in East Germany were not as free nor prosperous as it was in the West. One-party control of the state apparatus in East Germany meant there was effectively no sort of political freedom at all and everyone was expected to remain silent and to not criticize the government however disastrous or harmful their policies and actions might be. This, coupled with the fact that the economy in East Germany was not as developed as it was in West Germany, caused hundreds of thousands of people to migrate to West Germany with hopes of getting a better quality of life than they did in their former country. From 1950 to 1953, it was estimated that 900,000 East Germans had crossed the border to settle in West Germany. The government of East Germany saw it necessary to put a halt to this as they had caused a massive brain drain and lack of manpower hugely critical for the development of the state. Thus, in the year 1953, the first border fences were erected. These border fences were hundreds of kilometers in length starting from the Baltic Coast to the southern border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. These massive border fences didn't fully manage to deter people to seek a better life in West Germany, however. Many people traveled to East Berlin and after that, cross the border into West Berlin as the border fences which were constructed elsewhere weren't available in Berlin for several reasons.

View of the border fence which was once part of the "Iron Curtain" - today.