ACHAR!

Had some quality time at home today. Spent the bulk of the day helping out in the kitchen making achar. Man, it's really hard work. Cutting up the cumcumbers, carrots, cauliflowers and cabbage, peeling the onions and garlic, slicing the garlic, removing the seeds from the green chillies, taking them out to sun, changing the kitchen towels so that they can dry faster, flipping the vegetables around during sunning... Man! :) I had a good time with Jeki and Dad.

I have guests from australia in the house... a lovely couple with two beautiful daughters for 2 weeks! The lady is my mom's sister. Time to catch up. Hopefully I can open up and not be shy.

The bio ethics talk that I attended on thursaday (19th Jan) was on prenatal diagnosis. What struck me most from the bio-ethics talk is the concept of moral relativity. If I were to say that morals are relative, you may not believe me for the statement I had just made is relative. Hence, how can such a thing hold? Another thing which hit me is the concept of life. Are we as scientists going to promote a culture of Life or a culture of Death? How do you quantify a human life in an embryo? When does life start? Doesn't the point of human existence begin at fertilisation? Not because there is concrete proof that a zygote on day 1 of fertilisation shows signs of "humanness"... it is because who has the right to say when the embryo is actually a human being? When it develops a nervous system? When you can see its eyes? It is totally ambiguous. There is no concrete basis on which to state when an embryo moves from a 'pre-human' to a human being. Although a blastocyst may not seem human, all human beings on this earth started their beginnings from a bunch of actively dividing cells. If one respects humanity and the culture of Life, the zygote should be given its due respect as we know that the zygote will develop into a human being one day. Society today is aiming for perfection. However, are we aiming for perfection at the expense of everything else? We eliminate imperfect, but potential babies. Are we repeating the holocaust in a legal manner? I guess knowledge has the power to change things... may I as a student, strive hard to excel, so that my knowledge can be used to promote a culture of Life.

Okay, I'd better do some work now... tons of stuff to do!! >.<

Agape.