Phantom Reborn

Cancer is a word which has been bugging me for many many years.

What do you feel when you first looking at the picture above? It certainly looks like a barren place, and oddly, a shadow of a somewhat slender lady is seen standing in the middle of this waste land.

This lady, as far as the poster is concerned, is metaphorically described as Iris Chang
, one of the bravest authors in the world. This movie astonished me so much, till I was trembling in the inside when I was watching this documentary cum movie, a produced records which revolve around the deadly massacre happened in Nanking, China, half a century ago in year 1937.

Iris was actually a successful writer who received many awards for her published books. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II is her second published book. I came to know about her a year ago when I was reading an article in the newspaper.

I could recall that I heard someone told me tiny bits of information about the shambles happened in Nanking moments ago, but I forgot who that was, and I also forgot how much details I could actually remember. This piece of article was like sparkling up my curiosity regarding this incident once again. After that, I kept telling myself to purchase this book one day and go through it all word by word for I was too fascinated by the description of the book, and also due to the death of the author, yes, Iris killed herself, and the reason why she died, hugely relates to the publication of this book. But then, I was running errands and focused on some other thing at that time. Consequently, I did not buy the book.

A sense of deja vu struck me out of a sudden. I bumped into the same issue all over again a few days ago, and I had the opportunity to actually watch the movie which was produced based on Iris' journey to Nanking, her records, as well as watching a number of heart-aching testimonials.

Iris had reminded the people in this world about the deadly incident which happened in Nanking. The world citizens recognize and knew all about how the Nazi had behaved toward the Jews, but not the Japanese in Nanking back then.

Due to certain circumstances, this piece of history has been kept well over the years, and for the sake of self reputation of Japan as well as the diplomatic ties between Japan and certain countries, this massacre has been wiped out from the history books of Japan.

Being an enthusiastic book writer, Iris went to Nanking, and did a series of interviews with the survivors of the massacre. Many of them were humiliated physically, and of course, all of them had lost their beloved family members during the infamous massacre which no man should ever face in their lives.

Iris seeked the truth, and was very determined in writing this book, to tell the people of the world about what had actually happened as part of the history. What really made me angry was how some of the government officers in Japan behaved. One of them, for example, was standing firm with his own stand, claiming that all the testimonials, all the diaries from the then Japanese army elites and members were merely fabrication, China was the one made it all up to put up a snare against them. I found that very incredible to believe in.

Iris' determination should be passed on to the nest generation, and of course, the upcoming generations to come. This piece of history cannot be wiped out from the memories of any man. Japan has to face it, feel remorse and mourn for the innocents, and admit what had really happened in the past. Not denying it for the sake of diplomatic ties or whatsoever.

Pope Benedict XVI had finally arrived at the Holy Land, urging people to reject hatred and live in peace. And I find that a very pleasant event, seeing Pope singing together with the Muslims, as well as along with the Jews, they made ode to peace in Nazareth even more meaningful.

Isn't religions should exactly behave naturally that way? Speaking about religions, we often boast that our country is a country where her people are free at their own wills in believing in whatever religion they find modest.

But what do we see, it's simply not true. Recent issues revealed that there is an inclination where some of our local Muslims begin to convert to another religion, especially Christianity. In fact, many people, when they reach certain age in their lives, they tend to start believing in the laws of Christianity, and I'm not really sure why is that happening. But as we all know, Muslims in our country are prohibited in converting from their original religions, but now that some people have started to alter, it creates riot unintentionally.

Christians, in another way... Well, some of whom I know, are quite radical as far as their ideology paradigms are concerned. Well, yes of course, the Holy Bible does tell us to spread the gospel to the every corner of the world, but what good it makes when you spread the words in forceful ways? Especially those who do not want to listen to you at all (or they could probably be those who yet in wanting to listen to you, just keep on praying, will ya?). Forceful persuasive speeches seem to be useless and time-wasting approaches, and to top it all, it renders more and more people mounting up hostilities, hatred towards Christianity; in the end, rifles, ammo, missles are coming out from their nests, visiting destinations with no rightful purposes. But to be frank, does Christians force people in believing in them in the very first place? No, it certainly not. Christians only spread the words to those who want to listen.

Freedom of religion... Respect each other regardless their religions. I really hope that everyone in this world could achieve what the phrase really means.

Have you ever wonder that, why, in our country, all the workers who clean up public toilets are females?

I understand very well, when females enters the private cubicles to do their own business, every single time, you would notice that all the toilet cleaners are females, but there would be no male toilet cleaners (duh, of course).

But if you really are a female reading this, do you know that for us males, when we came out from the cubicle and thought of going to the basins to wash our hands, we would often shocked by the fact that a female wearing a tudung standing in front of us, with the appearance where one of her hands holding on to a mop, and staring at us at the very moment when we were just about to zip up our trousers?

I remembered what happened when I first discovered a female toilet cleaner in a male toilet. I was just a few years old at that time. Naively, I screamed in agony when I saw that woman loitering around in the toilet. I thought she was one of those pervert female serial killer or something.

Thank God things have got a bit better these days, where I notice in some minority places, male toilet cleaners are on the rise now. But still, there are still many female male toilet cleaners (confusing term...) lurking out there.

Well, I just don't know why are we behaving this way every time we're on call. It just seems kinda strange whenever I see somebody else behaving such way when they're on the phone.

You know, although I had bought and had read a couple of books which tell the stories and the differences of the different genders, but I still did not catch the hang in understanding the oppostie gender very much as I expected.

There's still one thing to ponder, though... Does a female like it or get annoyed when the other significant half of theirs is trying to do something on behalf on them, like something which is errr.... seemingly dangerous to a female to handle in some way?

For instance, like what I have seen just a few minutes ago.. It happened to my parents. My mom was intended to shift the hot container which contained boiled water in it, but my dad, trying to be a brave father and of course, husband, was vying to lend a hand to my mother, but my dad's majestic plan had gone backfired. He himself was not able to overpower the heat instead.

And consequently, my mother seemed to act a little bit irritated. Ohhhh... all along, I thought when a girl's Mr. Right helps her on something, despite it could fail at some point, the heroine will still appreciate her man sincerely, but it does not appear to happen that way. Or maybe it does, perhaps it only exists before the many years of marriage?