"If... if I asked you out, will you go out with me?"
This... question has been floating about in my head. It's really nasty to be thinking this question when I'm seriously still at odds with myself. There seems to be a complicated mix of emotions/rationalisations that are in existence deep within my psyche. It's really back to the same old arguments, me being the_laptop and me being human-ish. It's so old that I don't even want to rehash them here again.
Jimmy made a completely accurate (and blunt) assessment of my situation.
"You're just afraid of failure."
In more ways than one, that is so true. I've clawed my way to so far (given my highly mediocre skill sets) that I can't afford to lose. Despite efforts to turn into a really well-rounded individual, I realised that I'm far from it. Being a "Jack-of-all-trades" means that there's no single skill that I can rely on to provide for myself in the future, hence the dedication to the study of computer science. Failure is simply not an option that I'm willing to explore, because time is already running short, and there's so much that needs to be done, catching up notwithstanding.
But of course, Jimmy's statement wasn't really directed at my career/specialisation choice. He asked me, in very blunt terms (and in Mandarin, so that the 90% of the people around didn't understand what he said) whether I wanted a girlfriend. That did two things to me. First, it threw me off as I felt that he was really getting a little to close to something deeply personal. Second, I felt instantly irritated with that question, and delivered an icy reply to the effect of "I don't give a flying fuck dude, and stay out of my personal affairs". Which prompted the statement above.
Let's face it. I might act as though I'm fine and dandy, and that life goes on, but deep inside me, all is still not well. There's this inexplicable feeling of sadness whenever I approach the topic of relationships with myself, it seems as though that there is a kind of auto-repulsion to the idea of having a relationship. My human side, on really bad and lonely days, will throw up an idea of possibly hooking up with one girl for a long term relationship. Then, whatever-the-other-side is called will just have and instant revulsion to the idea and start lobbing out all the arguments that I've been laying out for so long. And then my human side gets beaten up senseless and is forced into retreat once again.
Put in other terms, I've lost the ability to approach romantic love. I've no more courage to take the first step (with the likelihood of failure), no more courage to say what I truly mean, no more strength to speak up for what I feel for. In short, I'm turning into a wussy, a cowardly person who, less than a year ago, was willing to fight someone all the way just to prove a point. Now I just sit there and get beaten all over verbally over my ideas.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Paper pile...
It's almost two weeks into the spring semester, and I've gathered enough paper piles to rival the entire first half of the last semester. That's right, paper piles enough to rival the entire first half of the last semester. It's sad, it's amazing but it's true. Taking so many courses (most of them of the high-level abstract-level kind) is really draining. Suddenly, I don't have much time to do stuff that I really like. Ugh. Guess that this comes with the task of having to complete a 4-year course in 3-years.
In other news, my 500GB hard drive has arrived and is working wonderfully. It's nicely compact, tough, and fairly quiet, making it a great addition to the stable of tools that Edythe has. Hopefully, this hard drive can last for quite a while, otherwise I'm gonna be tempted to get another 500GB to make it a whopping 1TB of data storage capability.
I'm now in the stage where I'm like a Math major minoring in CS major. Everything that I do now is heavily abstracted mathematics. Not that I don't like it, but it's starting to take it's toil on me in terms of the way that I view my major. Already, I'm doing very little programming now, and I've totally given up on the ACM ICPC. I mean, I don't even want to participate anymore, having little/no energy.
Ugh, this is starting to turn into a rant. I'll stop now.
In other news, my 500GB hard drive has arrived and is working wonderfully. It's nicely compact, tough, and fairly quiet, making it a great addition to the stable of tools that Edythe has. Hopefully, this hard drive can last for quite a while, otherwise I'm gonna be tempted to get another 500GB to make it a whopping 1TB of data storage capability.
I'm now in the stage where I'm like a Math major minoring in CS major. Everything that I do now is heavily abstracted mathematics. Not that I don't like it, but it's starting to take it's toil on me in terms of the way that I view my major. Already, I'm doing very little programming now, and I've totally given up on the ACM ICPC. I mean, I don't even want to participate anymore, having little/no energy.
Ugh, this is starting to turn into a rant. I'll stop now.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
*contented sigh*
Oh well. I'm finally 22 years old. Not that it means anything, the day passed like any other, with homework coming as fast as furious as it was before.
My floor did an amazing job. Samira, the RA, and Jimmy pulled the people together (and grabbing Jon the housefellow too) and got two cakes and a couple of pizzas. One was a normal cake, while the other was a New York styled cheesecake. I'm like wow, even though I really don't know how to react. :-(
Needless to say, most of the gang was there, Phil, Abdul, Alonzo, Sam, Mo, Alison, Tim, Justin and of course Linda. I felt kinda awkward, I mean, usually I do stuff for people, rarely the other way round, so I didn't really know how to respond to the "surprise".
What a strange day... Now, if only I didn't have to do crazy Set Theory homework and could just bum around... hahaha, one cannot be too greedy, I guess.
So now, I've gotta factor in the cheesecake for my meals. No wonder I'm getting fatter and fatter. :-)
So yeah, I'm 22 now, on 22 Jan. I wonder what will tomorrow bring...
Oh, there were the usual Facebook greetings from people that I know. Hmm... I wonder if I should ask her out... but then I'm side-tracking already.
Hard drive space seems to be a problem again. Damn, I need to figure out how best to manage this... have just put in an order for a 500GB hard drive, which will be delivered within 6 days. Must resist from storing too much stuff... otherwise the next purchase will be a 1TB drive or something.
And I've changed the layout of the blogs. I mean, I loved the black and green colour scheme thing, but it was starting to get old. White, blue and black seem to be a decent combination, clean and makes the text stand out much better. Hence the change. Hopefully this will make me less moody.... ;-)
Argh. Gotta get back to homework now.
My floor did an amazing job. Samira, the RA, and Jimmy pulled the people together (and grabbing Jon the housefellow too) and got two cakes and a couple of pizzas. One was a normal cake, while the other was a New York styled cheesecake. I'm like wow, even though I really don't know how to react. :-(
Needless to say, most of the gang was there, Phil, Abdul, Alonzo, Sam, Mo, Alison, Tim, Justin and of course Linda. I felt kinda awkward, I mean, usually I do stuff for people, rarely the other way round, so I didn't really know how to respond to the "surprise".
What a strange day... Now, if only I didn't have to do crazy Set Theory homework and could just bum around... hahaha, one cannot be too greedy, I guess.
So now, I've gotta factor in the cheesecake for my meals. No wonder I'm getting fatter and fatter. :-)
So yeah, I'm 22 now, on 22 Jan. I wonder what will tomorrow bring...
Oh, there were the usual Facebook greetings from people that I know. Hmm... I wonder if I should ask her out... but then I'm side-tracking already.
Hard drive space seems to be a problem again. Damn, I need to figure out how best to manage this... have just put in an order for a 500GB hard drive, which will be delivered within 6 days. Must resist from storing too much stuff... otherwise the next purchase will be a 1TB drive or something.
And I've changed the layout of the blogs. I mean, I loved the black and green colour scheme thing, but it was starting to get old. White, blue and black seem to be a decent combination, clean and makes the text stand out much better. Hence the change. Hopefully this will make me less moody.... ;-)
Argh. Gotta get back to homework now.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Damn you MSN Live! Messenger
!@#$ I'm sick of the MSN Live! Messenger. It's crashed soooooooo bloody often that I've totally given up on it and reverted to good old fashioned MSN Messenger 7.5. And then I suddenly realised that I had missed out a lot from 7.5, like the compactness of the lists and relatively small footprint.
Why oh why did I upgrade to that other version in the first place?!
Why oh why did I upgrade to that other version in the first place?!
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Gosh, I've Lived For More Than 21 Years
It's amazing. I've actually lived past 21 years of my life without any serious (life-threatening) mishaps. It's been a rough year, considering all that has happened. I fallen in and out of love, fallen in and out of favour, fallen in and out of the elite.
Whatever the cause, the fact remains that I am still alive.
I guess all that moody and depressive nonsense that I've been putting up should be left well behind. Time to be the Mun Thye that I was meant to be.
Anyway, the first week of classes have more or less ended. Interesting week, I'd say. The course load for this semester is going to be really high, as I've overloaded an additional 9 more units compared to the de facto average. Among the courses that I'm taking, the three that stands out the most is 15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science, 21-301 Combinatorics and 21-229 Set Theory.
21-229 is an interesting course, in the sense that it is a purely theoretical construct. It's almost like learning a new programming language, with the introduction of ZFC and all the axioms and schemes that defines what a Set is. The level of abstraction was shocking initially (eg integers are just various sets defined according to the Existence of a Unique Empty Set and the Union Axiom), but after listening to the Professor's exposition, things became more and more clear. The hard part of this course seems to lie in the fact that everything in the course is about proving. Looks like I can retire my calculator from this course for this semester.
21-301 is interesting for a bunch of reasons. It's one of the first high-level courses that I'm taking, and it supposedly kills two birds with one stone by satisfying one requirement of my Computer Science major and one requirement of my Discrete Math/Logic minor (though I'd rather take a harder course 15-451 Algorithm Analysis to cover the CS requirement). The topic is particularly hard, but still fairly understandable, considering the fact that I've been playing with combinatorial objects for quite a while. The professor is not too bad, a little monotonic at times, but still fairly okay. From the list of topics that he gave us, it appears that it's going to be a really fun course of sorts.
15-251 can be considered one of the most random courses around. Its coverage is so big that it has no textbook assigned to it! Prof von Ahn is one of the "new age" professors, full of energy and wit, and very very demanding. Not that I don't like that, but if the first week is of any indication of what is to come, this course is probably going to be one of the most intensive courses that I've taken so far. A class effort assignment was assigned about 3 days before the semester started, and for the first assignment, we were to go on a "treasure hunt" of sorts, CS-style (meaning lots of Math, logic and google bashing). Up for grabs are 4 iPod shuffles for the winning team, and my team seems to have a decent chance at it. I'm hoping for the best in this. :-)
——
Kangyi dropped by from Wednesday to Friday to stay over while waiting for his dorm back at Brown to be open. I feel a little bad in the way I've hosted him; due to the timing, I couldn't take him around Pittsburgh to see the stuff (I had classes), moreover, due to my laziness, I didn't venture out of CMU to visit many places, so I guess I would have been a really lousy guide if I had taken him out. Anyway, he bunked over at my dorm because Mo and I had a spare bed, thanks to Aditya moving out to the frat house to stay. Kangyi was positively in awe when he saw my dorm, heheheh... I had to tell him time and again that my dorm was not one of the "normal" ones, in the sense that it is more of an apartment suite than a dorm outright. Lots of catching up were done, and I got Phil to take him (together with Linda, Eliot, Mo and I) on the Grand Tour of CMU.
Kangyi enjoyed himself thoroughly on the midnight "tour" of CMU. We travelled across the campus to all the eerie places and showed him around, and he was amazed at the extent of our knowledge of the place. He had a field day taking pictures of all the places. :-) He left early in the morning on Saturday, which I regret not waking up to send him off. :-(
——
In other news, I've gotten a new flapdoozy and a nice stainless steel mug, all from Megagear, the Megatokyo store. I've also almost busted my print limit by printing out drawing manuals to figure out how to draw properly. And I've found the palette for the COPiC Markers for use in my drawing programs. Hopefully I can draw something decent and put it up soon. Japanese learning speed has gone down by a lot, partially due to the large amount of events (and the overall instability of it all), and partially due to the arrival of my 笛子 and 箫.
So, yeah, lots of stuff happened for the last week, and there's more stuff to come by. Oh, I went ahead and stocked up my kitchen with edible stuff again. And it's almost 5am now, guess I should finish up the proof for 15-251's assignment and then crash out.
Whatever the cause, the fact remains that I am still alive.
I guess all that moody and depressive nonsense that I've been putting up should be left well behind. Time to be the Mun Thye that I was meant to be.
Anyway, the first week of classes have more or less ended. Interesting week, I'd say. The course load for this semester is going to be really high, as I've overloaded an additional 9 more units compared to the de facto average. Among the courses that I'm taking, the three that stands out the most is 15-251 Great Theoretical Ideas of Computer Science, 21-301 Combinatorics and 21-229 Set Theory.
21-229 is an interesting course, in the sense that it is a purely theoretical construct. It's almost like learning a new programming language, with the introduction of ZFC and all the axioms and schemes that defines what a Set is. The level of abstraction was shocking initially (eg integers are just various sets defined according to the Existence of a Unique Empty Set and the Union Axiom), but after listening to the Professor's exposition, things became more and more clear. The hard part of this course seems to lie in the fact that everything in the course is about proving. Looks like I can retire my calculator from this course for this semester.
21-301 is interesting for a bunch of reasons. It's one of the first high-level courses that I'm taking, and it supposedly kills two birds with one stone by satisfying one requirement of my Computer Science major and one requirement of my Discrete Math/Logic minor (though I'd rather take a harder course 15-451 Algorithm Analysis to cover the CS requirement). The topic is particularly hard, but still fairly understandable, considering the fact that I've been playing with combinatorial objects for quite a while. The professor is not too bad, a little monotonic at times, but still fairly okay. From the list of topics that he gave us, it appears that it's going to be a really fun course of sorts.
15-251 can be considered one of the most random courses around. Its coverage is so big that it has no textbook assigned to it! Prof von Ahn is one of the "new age" professors, full of energy and wit, and very very demanding. Not that I don't like that, but if the first week is of any indication of what is to come, this course is probably going to be one of the most intensive courses that I've taken so far. A class effort assignment was assigned about 3 days before the semester started, and for the first assignment, we were to go on a "treasure hunt" of sorts, CS-style (meaning lots of Math, logic and google bashing). Up for grabs are 4 iPod shuffles for the winning team, and my team seems to have a decent chance at it. I'm hoping for the best in this. :-)
——
Kangyi dropped by from Wednesday to Friday to stay over while waiting for his dorm back at Brown to be open. I feel a little bad in the way I've hosted him; due to the timing, I couldn't take him around Pittsburgh to see the stuff (I had classes), moreover, due to my laziness, I didn't venture out of CMU to visit many places, so I guess I would have been a really lousy guide if I had taken him out. Anyway, he bunked over at my dorm because Mo and I had a spare bed, thanks to Aditya moving out to the frat house to stay. Kangyi was positively in awe when he saw my dorm, heheheh... I had to tell him time and again that my dorm was not one of the "normal" ones, in the sense that it is more of an apartment suite than a dorm outright. Lots of catching up were done, and I got Phil to take him (together with Linda, Eliot, Mo and I) on the Grand Tour of CMU.
Kangyi enjoyed himself thoroughly on the midnight "tour" of CMU. We travelled across the campus to all the eerie places and showed him around, and he was amazed at the extent of our knowledge of the place. He had a field day taking pictures of all the places. :-) He left early in the morning on Saturday, which I regret not waking up to send him off. :-(
——
In other news, I've gotten a new flapdoozy and a nice stainless steel mug, all from Megagear, the Megatokyo store. I've also almost busted my print limit by printing out drawing manuals to figure out how to draw properly. And I've found the palette for the COPiC Markers for use in my drawing programs. Hopefully I can draw something decent and put it up soon. Japanese learning speed has gone down by a lot, partially due to the large amount of events (and the overall instability of it all), and partially due to the arrival of my 笛子 and 箫.
So, yeah, lots of stuff happened for the last week, and there's more stuff to come by. Oh, I went ahead and stocked up my kitchen with edible stuff again. And it's almost 5am now, guess I should finish up the proof for 15-251's assignment and then crash out.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Finally Snowing
After waiting for a whole month in December for the snow to arrive, it has finally done so. Check out what I found outside my window:
Yes, it has finally snowed. The weirdest thing was that it was still hot yesterday before I slept.
Argh, the damn Pittsburgh weather machine...
Yes, it has finally snowed. The weirdest thing was that it was still hot yesterday before I slept.
Argh, the damn Pittsburgh weather machine...
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Winter Break Ends
The Winter Break is almost done, and it's time to get back into the swing of things again. This coming Semsester is going to be one that is extraordinary, for even before the official start of the semester, we've already received our first set of homework. That's right, our first set of homework has been issued.
Check this out: http://15251.11.forumer.com/index.php
It's a collective effort by all in the course to get the secret message. I wonder how long this little exercise will take us.
Anyway, I've been up for the most time trying to help to put together the pieces of the puzzle. An interesting exercise, and makes me yearn for the good old times when I was in the competitive programming circuit. But, haha, I don't have that much free time as before to totally devote myself to competitive programming, so I'll just stick with what I can do at the moment.
Ah, so much to do, so little time to do them all. Seems to be a common theme nowadays among the things that I've been doing. Perhaps it is time to really sit down and think things through once more, just to ensure that I've not lost sight of my aims in life.
Ugh, I find it hard to pen down thoughts when so many things are happening at the same time. Perhaps another time I'll write more.
Check this out: http://15251.11.forumer.com/index.php
It's a collective effort by all in the course to get the secret message. I wonder how long this little exercise will take us.
Anyway, I've been up for the most time trying to help to put together the pieces of the puzzle. An interesting exercise, and makes me yearn for the good old times when I was in the competitive programming circuit. But, haha, I don't have that much free time as before to totally devote myself to competitive programming, so I'll just stick with what I can do at the moment.
Ah, so much to do, so little time to do them all. Seems to be a common theme nowadays among the things that I've been doing. Perhaps it is time to really sit down and think things through once more, just to ensure that I've not lost sight of my aims in life.
Ugh, I find it hard to pen down thoughts when so many things are happening at the same time. Perhaps another time I'll write more.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Onward into the Unknown
Life, as I've realised by now, is really a very fragile yet beautiful thing. It is a little like glass-blowing—if you blow and shape it while it's still hot, you can make wonderful shapes with it. Then when it cools a little, you can only adjust it slightly, and when it cools down completely, the shape is fixed, and an accidental drop will shatter the beautiful creation.
Life has changed by quite a fair bit for me for 2006. An unprecedented amount of major changes have occurred during this period, from the sudden change in management (and managing style) of my office when I was still in NS, to the harsh realisation of the strengths of the different relationships I have with my friends, to failed attempts at romance, to being in a faraway land seeking worth in myself. A few friends temporarily "lost", a few new friends gained; a perspective warped, a perspective changed; confusion of identity and meaning in life, clearer perspective of what and who I am supposed to be. 2006 can be said to be the year where I truly stepped into the global arena of full adult-hood, where I start to learn how to fend for myself of sorts.
Emotional scarring from romances that never was, apprehension of what the future brings—all these are but part of the aging process. What one never experiences, one never learns. Bearing the brunt of so many setbacks have made me a warrior of sorts, a little scarred after each encounter, but learning more and more of what works and what doesn't. I tried to remove my emotional self from me (honestly, I did especially after the episode in August); it didn't quite work the way that I thought it would be. An emotionless me is as good as a computer without power; there is no drive to do anything at all, as evidenced in the sudden drop in the number of writings that I've produced, and the failed attempt at NaNoWriMo. I learnt that I am still very much a human, "the_laptop" is just a moniker to a side of me—it is not me.
Another year passed, another year closer to death, another year of experience gained. Who knows what is lurking in the Unknown of the future? As the days silently count themselves down, I am resigned to my fate that I have, indeed, aged by yet another year. Time to make good use of whatever time I have left to make it all worthwhile. A life without emotions and meaning, is a life that is not human. Time to reconcile with my inner denial.
Onward into the Unknown we go~!
Life has changed by quite a fair bit for me for 2006. An unprecedented amount of major changes have occurred during this period, from the sudden change in management (and managing style) of my office when I was still in NS, to the harsh realisation of the strengths of the different relationships I have with my friends, to failed attempts at romance, to being in a faraway land seeking worth in myself. A few friends temporarily "lost", a few new friends gained; a perspective warped, a perspective changed; confusion of identity and meaning in life, clearer perspective of what and who I am supposed to be. 2006 can be said to be the year where I truly stepped into the global arena of full adult-hood, where I start to learn how to fend for myself of sorts.
Emotional scarring from romances that never was, apprehension of what the future brings—all these are but part of the aging process. What one never experiences, one never learns. Bearing the brunt of so many setbacks have made me a warrior of sorts, a little scarred after each encounter, but learning more and more of what works and what doesn't. I tried to remove my emotional self from me (honestly, I did especially after the episode in August); it didn't quite work the way that I thought it would be. An emotionless me is as good as a computer without power; there is no drive to do anything at all, as evidenced in the sudden drop in the number of writings that I've produced, and the failed attempt at NaNoWriMo. I learnt that I am still very much a human, "the_laptop" is just a moniker to a side of me—it is not me.
Another year passed, another year closer to death, another year of experience gained. Who knows what is lurking in the Unknown of the future? As the days silently count themselves down, I am resigned to my fate that I have, indeed, aged by yet another year. Time to make good use of whatever time I have left to make it all worthwhile. A life without emotions and meaning, is a life that is not human. Time to reconcile with my inner denial.
Onward into the Unknown we go~!
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