I apologize in advance for the incoherence and difficulty of following this entry. Blame it on an extremely screwy GP paper and Snakes on a Plane.

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They say that a "trial by fire" is the one determining process by which "the weak are weeded out", "only the fittest survive" and "the boys are separated from the men". The previous statement has concluded my paper 8 practice for the rest of the prelim period.

So how does one actually go about passing these trials of fire, and actually realising it when one is upon him? There are so many tests in so many different areas of life that any chef wanting to "Go Cajun" has the opportunity to be original. It could be when the biggest exams of your life are nigh, when the family is going through some troubling times, or when you need to keep from bursting our laughing while watching Snakes in a Plane. Which incidentally is one of those movies in the same "So bad it's laughable" vein as Mortal Kombat(the title that spawned bad Internet English before it was even created) and Street Fighter:The Movie. But never mind that.

My idea of a trial by fire would be being strapped with lap cheong(taiwanese sausages for the uninitiated) and being thrown into a pit of hungry dogs, or even worse, a plane full of snakes, in which case I'd have to cope with the pain from the snakebites as well as try not to die of laughter. Simple? Hell yes. Pretty? Heck no, but if all of us were pretty, then it would stop the supermodels from being so super, which is basically all they have going for them. Sounds like a plan to get rid of useless people, but what the heck.

Sadly, however, life isn't that simple ; Throwing someone into a plane with snakes does not automatically make him a stronger person, seeing as how snakes seem to bite people randomly on random places. Instead, our proverbial tests of life try us in different areas of our lives, and supposedly to live a full life we have to pass most, if not all, of them. Of course, some of these tests can be easily bypassed with a condition here and a little acting there, i.e NAPFA tests via being PES C, but that really isn't the point. Really.

The point is, these tests of life, more often than not, are simply little pieces to a bigger picture If you like a full picture in 2000 different colours, with obsolete concepts like romance, rivalry and politics thrown in, together with a tiny plane with snakes in the background, then yeah, go ahead, throw yourself at everything in sight, but don't come haunting me when you die of stress at the ripe old age of thirty.

Me? I like a pictures slightly discoloured at one end, vibrant at the other, to remind me that there are constantly two sides to every coin, two sides of every story, two snakes on every plane(which, incidentally, would be a really good terrorist idea, which means that I'm growing into my role as the shifty-eyed baddie in a Hong Kong mafia film.) A few missing pieces would be nice to, since it would give me a purpose in life.

Which would then bring me to the issue of how no one should be able to project the perfect picture of somebody else's life, simply because black and white areas of life are obliterated. While you're young, good and evil are relatively simple, clear cut concepts, much alike putting snakes in a plane and making a movie out of it. As one gets older, however, the only thing that remains clear is that nothing is really as clear as it seems. Superman and Batman are both good guys, but it's clear that they don't see eye-to-eye on methodology. Superman is the big, brawny fellow, crashing head-on into every villain he encounters, while Batman acknowledges that he isn't as strong as Superman, can't fly, doesn't have heat ray vision, doesn't look good in Red Spandex, so he has to resort to other methods to defeat his villains which Superman would've deemed unhonourable.

However, in a world where the highest awards are handed out to the people with the best works, rather than the people with the most original works, the ends sometimes do justify the means of going down the trod and beaten path. The whole "crisis on a constrained space/mode of transport"(Phone Booth, Speed) and "terrorised by animals"(Jurassic Park) angles have both been done to death already, but that doesn't stop Hollywood directors from mashing the two concepts together, sticking in a good actor and making a brainless action flick.

In addition to that, some people actually do want to be evil because of the perks that come with it; Kingpin and Lex Luthor were rich before anyone could do anything about it. Anakin's lines got cooler as he got closer and closer to the dark side ; Either it's the evil working, or he's a late bloomer. These villains were doing what they felt was right for them, they just saw less of a need to care for others.

In short, while it's nice to be unethical and yet original at times, one also has to acknowledge that if a path has been laid out by someone who has succeeded, going down the path can prove a less risky endeavor where passing the tests of life are concerned, as long as you know what your most important tests actually are and what it means to pass them.