Clashes

It's Friday. I still feel kind of crappy but I think I should be all good by next Tuesday at the latest.

I went for a quick check up yesterday. I'm quite surprised to learn that my cholesterol levels are normal. Very surprised considering how much I don't really care about things like diet, exercise etc. Same goes for glucose levels and blood pressure. I was expecting all those to be off the charts.

The only thing that was slightly off was my BMI. Normal BMI is 20 - 25. My BMI is 26.6. Slightly out of spec. That means if I lose at least 2Kg I would be in spec again.

It's a good thing I have a bike now. So now I'm thinking I should up the biking to a level that will push my weight down a little. Biking is fun. It's low impact and actually quite relaxing. Hopefully, next week I can con another one of my friends into buying a bike so that we can go biking in groups. All we need to do now is to build up stamina so that we can go on those long rides into the countryside. I'm looking forward to that.

Anyway, I have some other stuff to write about this evening.

Firstly, I've been reading about how the government is thinking about "registering" bloggers. The government also insists that it's not for the purpose of censorship.

Riiigghhht.

Like a lot of ideas coming from the government, this is a futile thing to do. How are they going to enforce it, should they go through with this? They can't. There's a million ways to get around this. Plus, most bloggers I know (like myself) host their blogs overseas. Some bloggers (like LJ users) filter their readers.

How are they going to know who registered and who didn't?

To me, this registration idea is a symptom of the generation gap and the clash between old and new. It's another example of the older generation acting out of fear of something that they don't/can't understand and worse, can't control.

Always with their defensive and protectionist ways. Instead of finding out why bloggers write what they write, they seek to discredit and attack them instead. Instead of explaining their points of view and countering "seditious" bloggers and their "lies", the government is practically telling them to shut up.

I guess as long as people in the government expect commoners to follow and do everything they say without question and as long as the government won't give the average citizen his due respect, shit like this will always happen and will never end.

Jeff Ooi wrote a good post about this that makes good reading. Whatever happens, I'm not "registering" and that is final.

Talking about clashes and similar things, I read another clash inducing story recently. Something about how men are to blame for all the women who aren't married. I can't find the original article anymore but I can link the one from Monsterblog.

Joking aside, what do you think? I think it's ridiculous to blame one gender for the state of the other. Really, really stupid.

One line of the article reads "Is there something wrong with the Malaysian male psyche that prevents them from marrying better-qualified women?" To be totally honest, I've not met a single man who would mind having a more accomplished wife/girlfriend. Not even one. In fact, snagging a wife/girlfriend who is "better" than yourself is quite a feat I would think. I think.

I'm still single. What do I know?

Now, it might be that it's only among my circle of friends? Is it? I hope for the sake of the male species that it's not true.

Actually, what I want to say has little to do with the article. My opinion is simple and obvious.

They're two sides to the story. Some guys may have a huge ego problem and can't tolerate being together with a woman who is "better" than him. Which is really, really stupid, I think. Some women prefer to stay single for whatever reasons like career and such. Or perhaps she is unwilling to settle and make do with the next random chump that shows up at her door step. I see nothing wrong with that.

For some other people, the problem may be that they have unrealistic expectations. They expect their prospective mate to be like a character from a soap opera. Some guys expect to have wives who can cook like chefs, look like supermodels, be smart and yet be meek all at the same time. Some women expect to have husbands who are tall, dark & handsome, rich, ambitious etc and expect them to only spend all his time with them. Obviously, we live in the real world so usually if you aren't like a soap character yourself, don't expect to snag another soap character. This goes for both men and women.

There are a million reasons for a person to stay single and who is anyone to say who's fault it is.

Now what I wanted to say was how ironic it is that opinions about relationships, which in its most basic form is about two people getting together, cause so much argument and recrimination.

Anytime I read stuff about say, the Nice Guy Syndrome or the merits of local men vs white men, the feedback would inevitably be reduced to a flame war about who's responsible for whose problems. In the end, no clear conclusion is made.

I guess it happens because:-

a) people are generally passionate and feel strongly about it and/or
b) some people have bad emotions and negative experiences that they need to express and share, so they vent by arguing about relationships.

I have to say I have been guilty of both in the past.

My conclusion? It's very hard to rationally talk about relationships because it means to a lot to most of us. But that's just my opinion...

PS. That blogger registration article received a lot of feedback. Not surprisingly, most people don't like the idea either.