In high-school, I joined the Catholic Student’s Society; a decision initially based on there being passageway to girls from other schools and churches. What started off as me being a casual attendee, ended up in my being the club’s music coordinator, then treasurer, and then much later on, the Inter-School Catholic Student Society’s Vice-Chairman; a whole other club that saw schools from across the Klang Valley get together in worship and all-round happy things.

The reason I’ve just told you all that was to paint for you the picture of my initial upbringing, and the way I went about religion before acquiring what I guess said religion sincerely wishes upon all its devotees: Freedom.

Then I started to question it all. “If God is real, prove it to me. Show me one strand of His existence and I’ll exalt everything he stands for”, I used to say. Typical responses would follow. “You’ve got to have faith”, “Religion is about letting go and believing”, “Just because you cannot see the air, doesn’t mean it isn’t there”.

So you see the validity of my initial religious rejections.

I left the School Societies for dead. Quit the church band; because the music was just terrible and of course refused to accommodate any of my four-minute guitar solos, and as soon as I did a little math on how much donations my church potentially acquired over just ONE single weekend and never saw spoils, lost the patience for Sunday Mass.

And that was the least of it. Seeing religious leaders at a Sunday Mass competing in a ‘Who can raise your hands higher in praising the Lord’ contest later at a pub chugging away the pints and womanizing everything that moved, struck a chord or sorts.

Then there was the politics. And no, I care for you enough to spare you this bit. So moving it along then.

It just didn’t add up to me. Why would an institution of all that was sacred, benevolent and correct, be so irrelevant, devious and wrong?

So I walked.

I told myself, ‘By religion or not, so long as you, Christopher Aaron, do what is right, you’ll be alright’.

Just a little less than 10 years have passed. And I must say, the world looks a little different to me from when it did 10 years ago. This is why Part Two of this post will spell the changes. This is why there’s a need for a Part Two. But not tonight. Sleep deprivation is a cruel mother I’ve yet dared to detest.

The air is so electrified with energy, you can smell it around everywhere you look. Everybody everywhere is buzzing about the significance of tonight for some reason or the other. Be it change, promise, ambition, reoccurrence, alcohol, you decide.

As for me, I’m sitting in front of a laptop at a desk which looks out nicely on to a sunset, listening to U2 – which for some reason takes me all the way back to my pre-teen era – and writing this. And not to forget, a glass of cheap wine for company.

As with most bits of my life, I’m not entirely sure how it’s come to this – I seem to be highly negligent of my blog by nature – but I’ve narrowed it down to two likely primary reasons. The first being that I’ve suddenly realised that come sometime in 2011, I would have spent 26 years of my life on earth, and that Joyce (a dear, dear friend of mine) made me do it.

That’s a heck of a long time isn’t it? 365 x 26 = a lot more memories, experiences, days, whatever, more than I can count, let alone remember.

In guess in essence, I fear ageing. I hate growing old. I turn into the Birthday Grinch every time November 26 comes around and just want it to be over as quickly as possible.

But that aside, I guess it’s about time I start making the days count. Having lived 25+ years already and done nothing remotely significant is not exactly as the initial plan would have it.

Maybe being struck with the disadvantage of not being able to walk or talk effectively in my first couple of years, and then not having the capacity or liberation by law to do all the things I wanted till I was 21 humbled my approach a little at first, but I’ve got nothing to stop me now.

I guess what I’m getting at is that, it’s time to nut up or shut up, as Woody Harrelson so eloquently put it. 2011, like every New Year, needs to be more than the last one that’s over in just a couple of hours.

So here’s a glass raised to the promise of things to come. No wait, the promise of things we’ll make come our way by our own limitless capacity. Be it by complementing fuel-cell production, curing poverty, having the balls to get out of a destructive relationship, making the person you love incomparably the happiest person in the world, or simply learning to play a musical instrument.

God knows I’ll be on a mission. Visor on, limiter off…

Who gave anyone the right over my ageing? Who dare govern me in such a way? Bastards. I want names! I’ll decide how old I’ll be from now on. – Chris Aaron, 5:34pm, December 31st, 2010.

Just over a month ago, Bugatti promptly responded with the Veyron Super Sport.

Justly, the Veyron smashed the American’s face in; doing 267mph; 11mph more than the then Bush administration could come up with at the time.

Personally, I never really got what all the fuss was about because the SS never really had the Veyron on anything to start with. So it did 3mph more than the original land speed record set by the Veyron, but that’s just a town’s capture compared to seizure of Europe that Bugatti boasts.

In no other car can you go from a show at The Palais Garnier to a salt flat drag strip without so much as a blip. You simply do not turn up to chauffeur a member of the Japanese Imperial Family looking like a ragamuffin with wheels on.

You arrive in style, with your Bugatti Veyron, fit to say, “Jesus, fancy a ride in my new wheels? It’s got Hermès leather interior, Burnmester sound system, electronically adjustable everything, satellite navigation, and should there be need, a thousand horsepower under the bonnet.”

Simply having the SS build something with a million horsepower, no panache, a prayer for handling and wishful thinking for comfort, all wrapped up in what looks like construction scaffolding doesn’t make you better.

Leaving the topic of the Bugatti Veyron the greatest car ever made behind – because it just is – I’m led nicely to what really felt like addressing today.

If you set out today to build say, a dog house, would you in your mind set out to build the best dog house you know and will learn to build? Or just a combination of what was not originally meant to be a roof, four and a half walls, and some paint that says, ‘Beethov’ above the entrance?

In doing so, you’ll know very well that Beethoven isn’t going to be impressed when he sets his eyes on this arrangement. And he’s going to notice a couple of things about you as soon as he’s handed the keys to his new place. 1. You’re a shit craftsman, 2. You don’t love him enough to try harder, 3. He’ll know never again to give you all his hard-earned puppy money in return for your services of any kind.

In knowing so, what was it that would’ve compelled you to make it like so in the first place?

This is, as I’ve come to realise, man’s greatest downfall yet. Why do we speak without conviction? Why do we pursue without ambition or commitment? Why do we attempt anything knowing that it won’t be as good as it really could be?

If you’re going to do anything at all, do it with everything you’ve got. Do it to your heart’s content. Doesn’t matter if you fail or it turns out to be less than less than perfect. At least you’ll know that Beethoven got the best house he could have gotten from you, and he’ll appreciate it.

And he’ll come back to you for the remodel he’ll need in his puppy kitchen because he knows you’ll put in the same effort you did on your last job, which pleased him because it was the best.

Equally, I’d pay two million Euros – if I had two million Euros – for a Bugatti Veyron because it is the best a road legal car can be at going really fast. I’d also give away the function of my left leg for a lifetime with Kate Beckinsale because she’s the best thing god’s ever given man.

Adversely, I hate Protons and Peroduas. I can’t help but sense that their products were conceived during a corporate brainstorming session where fat, greedy blokes designed on screwing over the nation for a couple of quick bucks. Absent of inspired genius, no divine intervention and certainly no desire of leaving a legacy behind via the production of one really great/ proper car.

So if giving it your all – be it for the creation of a dog house, writing a blog article or loving someone – results in yours and everyone else’s long-term all-round happiness, why is it that we continue to be complete halfwits and do shit jobs on every bit of roadwork, science project, government initiative and so on? Knowing very well that there’ll sooner or later be a sad puppy that no longer loves you nor trusts you with any more of his puppy money.

Now, I say fat because the lot of you reading this are most likely, and for the moment, people I personally know. People I’ve possibly encountered over the course of say, the year or so. Over an e-conversation with a friend just a day ago, we’d run into a terrible realization concerning the state of the nation’s physical well-being, and to put it simply, we’ve all gone fat.

Both of us came to agree that we’ve seen too large a number of people we’ve known from before, turn incredibly portly over the last couple of years. And considering that we’re still in our mid 20’s, the aforementioned must have taken place sometime during our college years.

Horizontally blessed, said friend had personally encountered no such thing. He’s one of the lucky ones I guess. The fatties have even come up with a name for this; they call him “High metabolic rate”.

I on the other hand was a real person, much like most other Malaysians, not so blessed; McDonald’s lunches were synonymous with a McDeluxe waist; vague exercise routines resulted in a similarly vague sex life. Such were the cards most chubs were dealt.

At this point, I can think of at least six different literary directions I could choose to continue; how fat the Malaysian public is becoming, how our recent horizontal waist exploits may be a sign of the end of an economic recession and what have you. But all this only sees me once again getting sucked into that same vacuum that compelled me to tell this girl I met on FaceSter that I worked for NASA, but only on freelance, because the Russians like to keep their best assets to themselves.

What I would rather have been on about sometime before I called everyone fat, is the capacity for man to speak before knowing what’s best said.

Like when you’re asked how your day was at the end of it, do you just go with the “Oh, it was alright” option? Or does your mind stop to think of all the things that happened in the day, then consciously deciding to answer with the specifics of how you were in heated debate with a colleague over the possibility of Robert Pattinson’s hair surviving a family of pygmy marmosets.

Not that it’s a bad thing to go with the automated response, but such is the state of our, or least my, intellect. Why is it that we do this? What first suggested that the rest of us should trace these steps? Is it a vicious cycle? How do stop it? How can we prevent the next person from calling someone else fat, thus possibly emotionally scaring said fatty for life, leaving him or her a spasm in his right eye every time he or she looks his or herself in the mirror?

Which is something I find myself doing battle with most these days. When to speak, when to laugh, when to shrug off silly comments. And I’m not talking about simple mannerisms, but just above that. The bit that makes you, you. The bit that defines your character. Are you the alpha? Or the joker? Or the background man?

Well, sucky bit is that I can answer none of the above posed questions. Instead, I’ve taken it upon myself to be about 30% more conscious of the things I say or do. That will in turn hopefully result in 30% more people I run in to get to look themselves in the mirror without so much as an eye-twitch. 30% more people have the confidence to look a girl in the eye and say, ‘Damn right, I’m worth your time’. 30% more people learn that they too can be like this 30% more of the time, and in turn result in their own 30%s.

I’m convinced that you, at one time or the other have had that same incessant voice in your head telling you to do all the things you don’t necessarily need to, but end up doing anyways.

For instance, waking up in the morning leaves me with a compelling desire to have a scratch around the gentlemen’s area. Finding bird excrement on my car makes me want to have the whole thing washed, only after having the assailant shot. And of course there’s the iron will of Zeus in me that aches to have a hysterical laugh at a friend who’s just tripped and fell down the stairs.

So you can somewhat imagine my shock surprise when I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and found that a 30Kg blob has somehow cohabitated with what used to be my mid-section. How could I have let this happen? The last time something like this happened it was almost 10 years ago and I made pretty damn sure to get rid of it hastily with a strict assault on the beast. But again? How could it have slipped my defenses?

The blob is a sneaky creature. It needs neither attention nor nurturing to nourish itself and find harbor.

The wake of this realization must also have something to do with how everyone has been on my tail recently about how Bob – as it’s affectionately been named – tends to take the lead before me everywhere I go, stealing somewhat the limelight of my fashionably late entrances.

Regardless, as the man I was raised to be, there was a problem at hand and something had to be done about it. So about three months ago, I began my campaign to evict Bob. I would run every Monday to Thursday after work for an hour, with the addition of some time with the weights on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and take the rest of the week off. On top of this, I’ve also made a conscious decision to stay off fizzy drinks, give up the burger and fries for a Subway sandwich on most days and of course, refrain from kicking back the pints when there’s really no occasion to do so.

Suffice to say, the results 3 months later have been pretty impressive. The only problem is that this time, Bob’s exile is taking a bit more effort than it used to. Simply because these days, I need a good stretch before I head out for a run. Not that it’s a problem or anything, but the realization that I didn’t need to stretch at all a couple of years ago, and do need a good warm up now puts the fear of aging in me.

What I am inevitably and have been painstakingly trying to deflect is the realization that time will be the death of me.

I fear growing old. I can’t stand to think that one day, all my ideas, thoughts and feelings, let alone my physical state, will be dated. And even if it isn’t hitting me all that hard just yet, god I’m going to hate when it does.

Apart from the already agreed upon new engine specifications for the 2013 season, – a measly 1.5 litre, four-cylinder turbo-charged engine – the FIA is still hell-bent on finding more ways in which Formula One can earn further merits of green-ism. This scares me a whole lot to be honest.

The battle to make Formula One a green sport was always going to be a case of the Irresistible Force Paradox wasn’t it? Where an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The nature of a Formula One car and its engineers is to be the best and the quickest it can be, while green-ism persists that they do it the other, slower way around. Imposing Draconian laws to force teams into submission would do next to nothing but destroy the sport, so what are we to do then?

One bit of brilliance as seen recently in the field of merit-earning green-ism is the reintroduction of KERS to the 2011 season. Although nothing has been confirmed just yet, teams have already begun tinkering with the idea of making KERS a cost-effective solution that everyone can garner to a benefit next year.

Personally, I like the KERS system. It recycles wasted power to produce even more power. Even Ferrari’s latest road-going concoction includes the system, the 2010 Ferrari 599 HY KERS. A mouthful to say the least, but Ferrari really did get the job of making a ‘green’ car done better than most didn’t they? Because unlike most other hybrid attempts that oddly end up being wimpy hatchbacks, Ferrari found yet another way to make the 599 go even faster. Which really should be the case with Formula One too.

I have complete faith in the FIA and Formula One teams to find us similar methods to the KERS initiative to paint Formula One greener. Basically, making the sport more environmentally friendly without slowing it down all that much. But what if they don’t? What if all we’re left with is a battery powered race car and races that wouldn’t end in under two hours because pitstops now require a man plugging cars into walls for 12 hours?

Fear not. Because in doing a little research, we may have ran into a couple of ideas that Formula One coats might find useful, if only we could shout that loud.

For instance, a single marathon of up to a thousand participants produces more carbon emissions than an entire Formula One season does. A Boeing 747 burns more fuel on a single flight from Japan to Europe than an entire Formula One season would. And here’s a quote from Chris Goodall, leading environmentalist and author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, who believes that driving to the shops is far better than walking, “The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes.”

With just this in mind, it’s already easy to imagine a long list of changes that can be better tailored to give the sport its green credentials without getting too many frizzy haired men upset.

What if we made the aircrafts used to transport Formula One teams and their luggage around more environmentally friendly, by say, plane-pooling? Personnel in one plane, cars and the other stuff in another bigger one?

What about turning all those huge trucks used to transport Formula One cars and their mobile garages into 100% plug-in vehicles which use no fuel at all. After all, with those trucks as slow as they already are, and its drivers requiring a good eight to 10 hour nap – enough time to have the batteries charged again -, it wouldn’t hurt too much, would it?

With the previous in mind, what about limiting the Formula One calendar to just destinations which can be reached by road instead of by plane? Asian countries may suffer, but given the situation we’ll be facing in a couple of years, I say better Formula One races in another country yet on your tele, than no Formula One at all.

The point I guess I’m trying to make here is that, there are many, many ways to get around making Formula One racing greener without destroying the spectacle. And I’m willing to bet that there are probably even more people than that who would be better qualified at thinking up these ideas.

Green decadent capitalist ideals like reducing engine revs from 19,000rpm’s to 10,000rpm’s to make cars less noisy and swapping the internal combustion engine for a couple of 6,000 batteries per car will completely destroy the sport as we know it.

Formula One is a sport of great significance. It generates wealth on a global scale, creates job opportunities, makes daily applicable advances in technology and gives us an all-round warm and fuzzy feeling inside, all whilst paving the way forward for yours and mine road-going vehicles towards being more cost and environmentally friendly. That in itself should be inspiration enough to not ruin it.

http://sport.malaysia.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4065519

But all isn’t well in hybrid land. The big concern over developing such fascinating things is that our world is still slowly dying, and with it its resources of which we use to sustain a happy life on earth. This is all fair and well but for some reason, I can’t help but question the means here. Popular culture will tell you that, yes, the world is dying and we need to do our part. But how much has popular culture ever known about anything anyways?

In the company of a couple of pints, I thought to myself, is the world really on the verge of its own extinction? Status quo dictates that when fossil fuels run out and the climate reaches a point of no return, yes, we’ll all die. But I think I know the world to be a little more resilient than that.

I know that we’ve survived some really bad times and yet come out on top of things as we only seem to know how. Terrorism, world wars, natural disasters, the mullet, we’ve survived it all.

I also know that apart from mankind’s aid, the world is very capable of healing itself better than any man knows how to. Oceans absorb greenhouse gasses faster than you can think, endangered species have an innate ability to reproduce and rebound, and the earth is very capable of creating its own ozone layer if and when it is needed.

And then there’s the Prius. One of man’s many last ditch efforts to save the earth.

Again, hybrids are fascinating things. The very way it functions and its promise is more or less the reason you or your friends might buy one. But I find all this a little deceiving and confusing. First of what they’ll tell you about Hybrid cars is that it runs on an electric motor – which of course is a good thing in these dark times.

“The gas engine on the Toyota Prius does not run at all when you are driving around town. This is what they tell you.”

This is what they tell you. But if you like me aren’t a maniacal motorist, you’d know that “around town” speeds rarely ever exceed 50 Km/h. So what happens after 51 Km/h?

The fact is that, there’s also a regular engine much like the one in a regular car. But why would anyone need two engines? Confused? Better not be, or you might end up with a Prius.

It has a petrol engine and an electronic motor because to drive using the electronic motor, you must first charge the batteries through the running of your regular petrol engine. Only then can you use the electronic motor, which happens to switch back to using its regular petrol engine at speeds higher than 51km/h or so, or when the batteries go flat again.

The highlight of the hybrid car is that it produces no worse than the air over a field of rapidly growing vegetation through its exhaust pipes at the cost of a whole lot less fuel. This I’m afraid, isn’t enough. Mainly because hybrid cars still need fuel to run, fuel that we’re rapidly running out of – another very questionable theory of which should be in discussion in the near future. Anyways…

The mechanics and promise of the Prius is usually the part we get taken away with because it sounds very much like the real deal. But it isn’t. It’s just silicone substitute for the real fix. It is very likely that the next real fix isn’t found in a dealership just yet, but can instead be found in places like your kitchen, a nearby river or lake, in the air we breathe and everywhere in between. This is hydrogen.

Hydrogen fuel cells, the next likely fuel source, isn’t the cheapest thing to mass produce just yet despite its abundance. But it also wasn’t the cheapest thing to send a man to the moon. It wasn’t the cheapest thing to split the atom, and god knows it wasn’t the cheapest or easiest thing to develop the new Ferrari 458 Italia or the new McLaren MP4-12c. It isn’t very likely that the fuel cell is going to be the worst or hardest thing we’ve done so far.

In developing such vehicles and its necessary fuel cells for mass usage, of course we’d also be depleting another of earth’s resources – water. Yes, but this might be a resource we could use a little less of. Here’s Alan Caruba’s explanation of this:

“The most active element of the atmosphere is the 95% of water vapor that forms a protective layer around the Earth.

“The science involved is fairly simple. Clouds have a warming effect because, in order for water vapor to condense back into water droplets, the water molecules must first re-emit the energy they absorbed to become vapor. That latent heat causes the local environment to feel warmer. It is this constant interchange that determines whether wherever you’re at right now is warmer or cooler”

The highlight of the hybrid car is then that it produces the same air over a field of rapidly growing vegetation through its exhausts at the cost of a whole lot less fuel. This I’m afraid, isn’t enough. Mainly because hybrid cars still need fuel to run. Fuel that we’re rapidly running out of – another very questionable theory of which should be in discussion in the near future.

Environment-friendlies will tell you that you should buy a hybrid because you’d be doing baby squirrels a favour in sustaining their habitats while Toyota will tell you to buy a Prius because they know you have money and that you’re gullible.

I’d personally rather stay and environment-acquaintance for the time being.

“In a 2002 National Geographic documentary titled “Snake killers: Honey badgers of the Kalahari”, a badger named Kleinman was documented stealing a meal out of a puff adder’s mouth and casually eating the meal in front of the hissing snake.

“After the meal, Kleinman began to hunt the puff adder, the species being one of the badger’s preferred venomous snakes. He managed to kill the snake and began eating it, but then collapsed on the dead snake as he had been bitten during the struggle.

“After about two hours he surprisingly awoke. Once his paralysis had subsided, the badger continued with his meal and then resumed his journey.”

I’ve never, ever, come across a piece of literature so agonizingly terrifying yet so brilliantly hilarious all at once. Honey Badgers gave garnered a new respect from me that’s for sure.

That aside, here’s a thought. I spent an evening over red wine with a lady friend who after a glass kept on insisting that life was too short and that we should make the most of it while we still could. And I, after waking up the next morning with a fork in my head for a headache, couldn’t agree to disagree any more.

Life isn’t all that short if we’re being honest. I can barely remember the last time I cut my hair, let alone what I had for dinner last night. I can’t remember what my favourite pants were a year ago and I seem to have lost any and all recollection of what my first date with a real person was like.

And in looking forward, the day’s end seems miles away while the working week an eternity.

Maybe all this entails a moldy memory of a person aging, but insight tells me that there’s a slight chance that some of these may have clicked with you as well. We just can’t remember that far back sometimes, well because it’s often too long ago.

Unless of course it’s of certain significance, like your wedding or the birth of your first child. You remember these things because you burn it into your skull that this happened on that date. Even still, some of us tend to forget, but that’s just because you’re possibly the penis-bearing sort.

The point I’m trying to poke at here is that life isn’t all that short. It’s quite sufficient actually. You’re born, you spend years doing absolutely nothing but playing in the sun or wherever’s fun. Then you go to school to have more fun, then college for completely, unrestricted fun, and then you go to work.

In hindsight however, life isn’t all that long either. It is long enough for one to enjoy an entire life spent forgetting every inch of what you recall and looking forward to your next memory to fill it with.

One theory is that, life’s only short when you’re caught up doing something that’s utterly useless to your existence. Like being in real-estate when all you really want to do is drive fast cars.

A second theory suggests that in being human, ‘enough’ is never enough. We’re fussy. We complain. We always want more. We’re unappreciative of what we’ve had and have and therefore left feeling like we didn’t have it at all. Greedy sons of bitches are what we are.

Personally, I believe life is long. Presumably, this means I get to do what I want. I’m a sports writer, particularly able in the field of Formula One and motoring in general. I wish to be a full-blown Formula One or motoring journalist one day. Maybe it’ll happen, and maybe it won’t. I hear Prime Ministers get paid pretty well in this country too.

The point I’m trying to make I guess is that time is precious yet plentiful. Do with it what you can while you can and maybe you’ll get by till the next Friday come around.