A Blog is more of a Soapbox than a Conversation

Just thought I'd say this: this blog is pretty public. Don't believe me? Try running google.com on any word that exists in this blog, chances are, one can find them returned as a searched item. I mean, I could limit who gets to read the blog(s), but I don't see any reason why I need to do that for; I figure that some people might find some of the things that I do interesting, and thus have no intent of just blocking everyone and allowing the hallowed few to actually access the blog.

A blog is more of a soapbox than a conversation. I mean, I have my fair share of bashings from various people on various blogs, but I don't really get completely upset at them as I know that the blog... is just a freedom of expression of what they want to say/do. As long as it is not defamatory in anyway, that is. Sometimes, if it is a little overboard, I might just enter a slightly-robust protest to the author, and then I'm done. If I'd like to engage someone in a conversation, I'd usually do so through instant messaging or by email.

This might come as an odd post from the perspective of the fact that I've been blogging for quite a while, but I felt it necessary to say this once again lest people start misconstruing the significance of my blog(s).

While it is true that my blog(s) reflect some aspect of my life (where else do I get new ideas from?), it is not wholly true that all the material in my blog(s) are completely reflective of my life. The same goes for most of other people's blogs; there are many things that we can talk about on blogs (like recent break-ups, interesting links found, new programs, some plans), there are other things that we don't usually do so (like the details of the break-up, links to pirated stuff, programs covered under trade secrets, plans involving corporate takeovers etc). The blog provides only a partial view of what the world of the blogger is living in, it is by no means the only and complete view of the world that the blogger lives in.

That said, do read things around here and there with sufficient skepticism.

被爱的女人

I picked up my mp3 player on the way home and switched it on. At this moment, this song started to play:

《被爱的女人》——李玟
在镜子前面　我是个被爱的女人
他站在门外　这个周末我可以依赖在他的胸怀
在情人面前　我还是单身的女人
爱若缺了缘份
我想我只能用情至深但不能太认真

为什么被爱　有时却觉得悲哀
为什么我还是害怕一个人醒来
为什么相爱　日子却依然空白
为什么你　走不到我的未来

让爱固定下来　我不会永远青春可爱
我的美丽要你的温柔帮我保留下来
让爱固定下来　我和你　不要不要分开
我不要爱一再一再彩排
我不是每次失恋后都能从新再来

为什么被爱　有时却觉得悲哀
为什么我还是害怕一个人醒来
为什么相爱　日子却依然空白
为什么你　走不到我的未来

让爱固定下来　我不会永远青春可爱
我的美丽要你的温柔帮我保留下来
让爱固定下来　我和你　不要不要分开
我不要爱一再一再彩排
我不是每次失恋后都能从新再来

The rendition that I was listening to was sung not by CoCo Lee, but by Kelly Poon, the female champion of the first Project SuperStar. As usual, here's a clip of a segment of the show that I found on youtube:



It's such a emotive song. Of course, it is about love; seems that that emotion is something that is on my mind these days. So, a rough translation/summary of the song lyrics goes along the lines of a female lamenting about how her love is so rocky with this dude, and that even though they were in love, she still felt some kind of emptiness in her life, and that she hopes that their love will stabilise soon, because she knows that she cannot always bounce back from each failed relationship.

Hmm... the content sounds familiar. If only my singing were to be as emotive as the way that Kelly did... it would be really amazing. Currently, my singing doesn't have that much harmonics in it—I can reach some high notes, but they don't really have that attractive quality about them; I think that it is to do with the timbre or something. Well, it might be impossible for me to actually achieve a high-pitched voice that actually sounds really good, but there's no harm trying.

Who knows, I might just be able to do it one day.

Cherry Cherry Lady

Found this cute 90's song:

Cherry Cherry Lady by Modern Talking

Oh, I can't explain
Every time it's the same
Oh I feel that it's real
Take my heart
I've been lonely to long
Oh, I can't be so strong
Take the chance for romance, take my heart
I need you so
There's no time I'll ever go

Cheri, cheri lady
Going through a motion
Love is where you find it
Listen to your heart
Cheri, cheri lady
Living in devotion
It's always like the first time
Let me take a part

Cheri, cheri lady
Like there's no tomorrow
Take my heart - don't lose it
Listen to your heart
Cheri, cheri lady
To know you is to love you
If you call me baby I'll be always yours

I get up - I get down
All my world turns around
Who is right ? Who is wrong ?
I don't know
I've got pain in my heart
Got a love in my soul
Easy come, but I think easy go
I need you so
Although times I move so slow

And here's the clip:


So cute a song. I think that there's a remix version with some additional vocals, but can't seem to put a finger or two on it. Maybe someone who knows can let me know?

High School Musical ftw

Something cute for now: High School Musical. They were showing this on the television today and I find it kind of cute. I think I'm missing musicals in general... perhaps I should watch some musicals when I return to CMU in the Fall.

Sometimes while pursuing one's dreams, it seems that it becomes easy to lose sight of the simpler pleasures in life...

foobar2000 v0.9.3.4

After using foobar v0.8.3 (special edition) for so long, I had to bid it adieu as it was starting to act up in really bad ways, no thanks to the large number of DLL files that are used to provide the whole chunk of functionality present in foobar v0.8.3. All the file tagging capabilities of the older version were screwed up, with totally no control on what kind of tags that I can put in the mp3 files. But now, with foobar 2000 v0.9.4.3, it seems that I can decide whether to use ID3 or APE tags. My cheap mp3 player cannot understand APE, so the older (whacked up) foobar can't seem to make it work properly. Now with the newer version, things are more streamlined and I think that they would work much better than before.

Alright, I'm getting back to angband for now.

Do nice guys really finish last?

Something to ponder about: do nice guys really finish last? And a more relevant question: am I a nice guy? And the natural link: do I then finish last if I am a nice guy?

I've always thought of myself as being a nice guy. I don't really like to pick fights with people, and generally behave myself, and not impose my will on others simply because I can. I do, however, impose my will on others only when I know for a fact that they'd be hurting themselves if I do not interfere. I usually treat folks with respect, unless they've done something despicable that they do not deserve any respect of any sorts.

The latest turmoil in my life seems to suggest that the world doesn't really like nice guys.

Perhaps it is time to rethink how I want to present myself to the world... the façade that everyone sees. Maybe I'm too good for my own good, maybe I should just succumb to the darkest side within me and let it spew forth its innate poison.

Or maybe I'm just over-thinking things again.

Sometimes, I feel that I'm getting too old too quickly, hereby missing out on all the fun that people of my age group usually have. Girls/women don't seem to overly excite me the way that they usually do on guys; I can attest to that through the many [really good-looking and smart] girls whom I am friends with. Alcohol doesn't have much allure to me either; I can drink beer and stuff but don't really like them as a normal beverage. I seem to derive much pleasure through talking, writing and exchanging ideas.

Sometimes, I wish that I were less of an intellectual and more of a "normal" base human, such that the satisfaction of primal urges are all that takes to make me happy. But I know that it cannot be the case anymore; I've progressed too deep into the intellectual pursuit to actually step down and act all base again. It is almost as though I have arrived at a pseudo-enlightenment process, where I start to see beyond what the meat mind has to offer.

Intellectual... probably the word that kills me off. Computer geek and intellectual; it seems that it was purely miraculous that I even managed to go out with Alice at all. While it still hurts some that she has broken-up with me, I know that perhaps it was destiny's way of telling us that it was not the right time. Two hearts were supposed to beat as one, but with one locked away in a lead box and the other beating on the lid desperately, it seemed that nothing good would ever come out of it. I'm not blaming anyone—it is easy to lay blame on people, but hard to really determine the cause and effect of the whole situation. I'm just resigned to the fact that it is over as quickly as it came, and am resigned to the fact that perhaps my destiny in this life is to not be able to find one who is my true love.

Fate and destiny... are they real, or are they just abstractions to better soothe many a broken-hearted fella? I have no way of telling. But what I do know is that beyond the realm that we live in, there is always that possibility that there exists some other plane of existence that we have no way of understanding or exploring. We are only mortals living out our short lives on this planet, and while we advance the knowledge of huamnkind at an exponential rate, our true understanding of things grows roughly linear.

My heart... whatever is left of my heart... is now cold. Cold with sadness, cold with pain, cold with what could have been, cold with what is to come. I think all the effort that I have taken to change myself to become more human is going to a waste if... if I let myself just die because of all these. I know I will eventually be strong enough to again have that stout heart that was me, but for now, I'm just one of the many cold and lonely intellectuals that plow this planet.

It is only at the wee hours of the morning that I actually can unlock some part of my hidden-away soul... and be somewhat true to myself, and to the people around me...

Maria!

Check out the OST for 200 lb Beauty. Do a search on youtube for the same material. Savour the wonderful rendition of the song Maria. The first time I actually saw the trailer, I wasn't really interested in it, until the clear vocals of "Maria! Ave Maria!" came on. Then I was hooked and wanted to see who was the singer. Then I found that it was 김아중 (Kim Ah Joong). She looks really cute and sexy in the film, but the most important thing is her clear vocals in the song.

I love songs with clear female vocals; they seem to just draw me to them like no other type of song. This is also a reason why I like Cherry Boom, Teresa Teng, 万芳, 张清芳, 齐豫 (try listening to 《欲水》 and you'll understand what I mean) and Emmy Rossum (Christine Daaé in the 2004 film version of The Phantom of the Opera). There's always something so mystical and pretty about their voices in the song that they sing. I'm a real sucker for such quality and style of tone.

*yawnz* I guess that's all for now. Suddenly realised that I can't really write an entire entry like this at one sitting; probably means I need to start grabbing coffee (since I haven't drunk a single cup yet).

Skimpy Clothing?

*stretches self* It's a long day out, and I'm finally back home. Spent most of the evening walking around Vivocity to kinda loosen myself out. And yes, I know that it is not a Friday, but I don't really care. Sometimes, walking in crowded places puts things into perspective, like you're only one out of the many people, there's always things going on even if your world is crashing and so on. The ambient noise also helps a little, considering the fact that my office is almost perpetually in silence due to the fact that it is... an office, d'oh.

Some cute things observed today: females seem to like to wear skimpy clothing over in this part of the world. And I kid you not; even if the whole friggin place is downright fscking cold, they still go round in spaghetti straps and hot pants and slippers. Yikes! Not that I actually notice them or anything; they're almost everywhere, so I'd be hard pressed to actually try avoiding them.

Apparently, the Wacom tablets are sold here in Singapore too. Unfortunately there seems to be a couple of catches: it's more expensive, and there is no mouse (compare the item at Amazon.com and Wacom Singapore). The same unit (USB-connected version) has a mouse for Amazon.com, while the Singapore one doesn't exist. Interesting that this is occurring... perhaps there's some hidden marketing ploy that I don't know about? I'm really tempted to get one of those ultra-portable clipboard-like tablets, so as to be able to write my notes from lectures and keep a digitised copy of the notes to transfer to machine. It's either that, or I get a low-cost scanner. The good thing about the scanner is perhaps the fact that I can have a much better quality than trying to guesstimate optimal light settings when taking photographs of the document that I want to save. Having even light settings means that it becomes really simple to downsample the image's colour depth thus shrinking file size, but still maintaining the high quality of the picture.

In other news, I totally love FL Studio 7! After reading half a tutorial and watching one-and-a-half training videos, I now know the development process of arranging a piece of music in FL Studio 7. And boy is the system powerful, couple that with the Lifetime Free Updates system, suddenly the money spent on it is well worth it. I mean, with the same amount of money spent on FL Studio, I can probably get like three quarters of Microsoft Windows Vista, yet I can keep on updating one while the other is doomed until the next major release, where I need to spend almost another bunch of hundreds to get the new system.

I'm really tempted to get one of those small form factor machines to set up as a rig back in CMU. They seem small enough for me to actually backpack the CPU around (add that to the mass of Edythe means that I need a much stronger backpack). Just a dream though... not really likely to be getting something like that. May end up building up a weird righ through salvaged mother boards, but then again, no one truly knows what I might end up doing. Setting up server rigs always sound interesting to me, especially since it means I can hack code to actually control the machine.

Alright, it's getting late. I'll be sleeping now. Hopefully, there's more interesting stuff to share tomorrow.

Ciao~

Want to Get Back To CMU!

I have this sudden strange yearning to get back to college. So, I've set up my desktop wallpaper to this instead:Isn't it pretty? I took this picture myself by placing my trusty Canon Digital IXUS 60 at a small angle in the grass field.

I love the way the whole thing composes, and I really can't wait to get back to Carnegie Mellon, with all the wonderful people, and nice weather.

Re-gearing for New Semester

Another day of work, and another step closer to returning to classes. Hmmm... as usual, the day is fairly routine, and most of the stuff that can happen are usually in my head, so there's nothing much to talk about there.

I'm starting to be able to identify myself strongly with the two characters Piro and Largo of MegaTokyo. I take emotional damage like Piro, but exhibit the geekiness and acceptance of physical damage like Largo. It is kinda odd to actually start viewing one's life like a comic strip, but I guess since art is an imitation of life, sometimes the lines cannot be drawn that clearly between what is real and what isn't, right?

I'm so tired now... almost wishing that I can just lie down and sleep for a long while just to recuperate my energies. I have no idea why this is so; I mean, I didn't do anything drastic enough that used so much energy that leaves me completely tired out like that. Maybe it is just the cumulative effects of the week, but I'm not too sure on that either.

Ding Ding is kind of sick now... I wonder if I had accidentally passed him some of the cold that I was having over the course of the week; if I really did, I'd love to apologise. He, Bilin and Chinghua were there to give me some manner of distraction to let me 散散心, which I think was the biggest contributor to me being less cranky than what I should have been. That and of course my old friend Xiaolu; it seems like it is much easier to seek out pillars of strength when one is in more familiar grounds.

Anyway, I think I might need some more therapeutic "meet-the-people" sessions, probably to remind myself that there are still people who care, and also be a good opportunity to meet up with old friends whom I've not met for quite a while. Heheheh... while I once commented that Nicole looks like an alcoholic with all her facebook pictures showing her holding some manner of beer/wine/alcholic drink, it appears that I'm slowly falling into that category myself. Well, I don't quite mean that I'm an addict to alcohol, but I now actively add alcohol as an alternative beverage wherever I go.

Meanwhile, I will also need to actually start practising my ML programming, my Basic Logic, my FL Studio skills, lilypond and flute/saxophone/clarinet. I think that my fingers are starting to show signs of revolt, considering the fact that they are really well used throughout the day, in the forms of writing programming code, then playing the flute (speed), playing the saxophone (strength), and then playing the clarinet (odd positioning). It wouldn't be surprising if I were to be hit with Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) if I'm not careful. I try to protect myself by doing lots of stretching, and taking breaks between each task. I strongly recommend those who actually need to operate such equipment to do the same too—RSI is not fun as it can and will definitely affect all those who need to rely on their fingers for their livelihood.

I should be relatively free in August, so folks who wish to meet up with me (either as a date, or as a general let's-catch-up-on-what-happened-in-our-lives-recently event), just contact me through the usual channels. In case of failure, try sending in comments (with your contacts of course)—the comments on this blog are all moderated and thus I get to see them way before the world does, so don't worry about getting spammed and stuff.

Okay, I think that's all I have to say for now.

Moving on...

It's Wednesday, halfway through the week, and things are starting to be much more palatable than 2 days ago. Am I still hurt? Yes, in a way. Am I still sad? Yes, in a way. Am I wallowing in self-pity? No. Not anymore. It is time to move on.

If I were to stop in my tracks each time something bad happens, where will I end up if not at the same place? It is not the end of the world until I draw my last breath and am declared clinically and legally dead. So, life must move on. Things like this occurs to everyone, not just me. Hence, there is no reason why I might want to wallow and start cursing and swearing on how the world is being unfair to me and so on.

In other news, I realise that I cannot stand the Nescafé-styled coffee. There is always this strange sour-ish after taste that spoils the rich flavour of the coffee bean. I'm not sure if this is innate to Nescafé, or if there is something wrong with the way that I taste things. Normal brewed coffee tastes so much better; I love the rich and strong aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Now I remember why I don't really like to drink the coffee that I have at home (it is Nescafé hahaha). Even the coffee-shop/hawker centre's coffee tastes much better.

lilypond is one amazing music annotation system. The way that things are structured just makes it fairly painless to typeset music scores using the usual staff notation. The only complaint that I have about this system is that (you guessed it) it cannot handle the generation of simplified notation scores. One possible thing that I can do is to write add-ons in Scheme to allow the automatic generation of the music score (annotated in standard form) into the simplified form. It shouldn't be too complicated, things like accents, crescendos, bar-lines are all the same in the two systems; the only thing that is different is the removal of the 5-line staff, and replacing all the notes and stems with numbers with the correct notation form. This should be fairly easy to pull off; need to check if the default font in lilypond can handle it or not. In fact, it is probably possible to hack lilypond such that it will generate the usual stuff necessary for simplified notation. Ooo... deep concept.

Meanwhile, I think I will hack some sound file analysers that will generate syntactically correct lilypond source files given some sound recording. This is going to be a really useful tool because as a musician, I often find it easier to actually play the tune on an instrument (particularly for improvisation) than to try to annotate it directly on paper. The last time I tried to write down the score for some pieces, I ended up using only the pentatonic scale instead of the diatonic scale or the chromatic scale. But these are minor projects compared to one that I think I must do: I need to record sound samples of some of the Chinese instruments so that I can loop them into virtual instruments in case I want to compose stuff in the spirit of Chinese orchestral music.

Meanwhile, I will try to see if I can figure out how to do remixes using FL Studio. It would be quite cool to try to let Teresa Teng sing to a beat... hmmm...

(Where Do I Begin) Love Story

I'm reverting to Teresa Teng's songs for now. One of the songs that she sang is a cover to this:

(Where Do I Begin) Love Story by Andy Williams

Where do I begin
To tell the story of how great a love can be
The sweet love story that is older than the sea
The simple truth about the love she brings to me
Where do I start

With her first hello
She gave new meaning to this empty world of mine
There'll never be another love, another time
She came into my life and made the living fine
She fills my heart

She fills my heart with very special things
With angels' songs, with wild imaginings
She fills my soul with so much love
That everywhere I go I'm never lonely
With you my love, who could be lonely
I reach for her hand—it's always there

How long does it last
Can love be measured by the hours in a day
I have no answers now but this much I can say
I know I'll need her till the stars all burn away
And she'll be there

It's sad, it's soft, it's kinda like how I felt.

Okay. I think I'll stop here. I've written more rants over the last 2 days than I planned.

I'm Just Tired...

I'm starting to feel very tired about this whole thing. I just want to... take a sleep, not worrying whether I will awake or not. It is just so mentally draining to handle all the vagaries of life; I've put in energy into all the things that I've done, a little bit of my soul, a little bit of myself into everything that I had pursued thus far. Each successive failure that strikes me is like a hard blow to my ego, a hard blow to my id, a hard blow to my essence. Already, the struggles of the first quarter of my life have already worn me thin, and yet now, I am still struggling to figure things out. I brood, I wonder, I think, I sunder. Things like that keep occurring to such a high frequency that it is not even remotely funny anymore.

And the sad thing is, I realised that I do not seem to know how to talk about my problems in real life to real people. I have to resort to such devices like the blog, the instant messengers and even the email in order to communicate with people. In the quest of being more human, I am suddenly faced with the possibility that instead of reaching my goal, I am moving ever further away from it.

I'm just so tired now. Again I ask myself, when will I be able to find someone who will love me for the way I am?

I Fall, and Pick Myself Up

I never thought of another way to love then to put my heart, my soul and myself into the relationship. I never believed in loving someone with only a fraction of my being, I never believed in entering a relationship anything less than wholeheartedly.

And because of all that, every rejection, every break-up, every goodbye, causes a tremendous amount of pain for me internally. I may seem all right on the outside, but no one truly knows the internal turmoil that I am in. Years of tacit meditation and observation has helped me slowly control the outbursts and limit their damage, but they still occur should the rational side of me fail.

Each time I fall, I stay on the ground dazed, looking up at the skies above and wondered why I fell. Then, with much difficulty, I slowly pick myself up again, dust myself, and carry on walking. It used to be much easier to do all that; I was younger, with more ideals and less worries about the world, and not to mention having the support of close friends. As time goes on, when people start drifting away and I start to find myself getting more and more alone in the world, I end up doing most of picking up myself. I obviously don't do a really good job alone, as seen by all the nonsense that I had to put up with just not too long ago.

At least now, I know how to find allies who can help give me that extra yank to pull me up to my feet. Despite all their help, despite the many falls that I had, despite the many times I picked myself up, I always have a single one word question that I never quite seem to be able to answer in totality: Why?

Purest of Pain

I think that this describes things fairly well now...

Purest of Pain by Son by Four

I'm sorry I didn't mean to call
but I couldn't fight it
I guess I was weak and couldn't even hide it
and so I surrender just to hear your voice
I know how many times I said I'm gonna to live with out you
and maybe someone else is standing there beside you
but there's something baby that you need to know
that deep inside me I feel like I'm dying
I have to see you it's all that I'm asking.
Vida, give me back my fantasies
the courage that I need to live
the air that I breathe
carino mio, my world becomes so empty
my day's are so cold and lonely
and each night I taste
the purest of pain.
I wish I could tell you I'm feeling better every day
that it didn't hurt me when you walked away
but to tell you the truth I can't find my way
and deep inside me I feel like I'm dying
I have to see you it's all that I'm asking.
Vida, give me back...

It was so... sudden.

How am I supposed to feel now?

I think I should stop here instead of posting more things... there are probably some things that I need to learn to withhold, and others that I should put up. A whole plethora of conflicting emotions. Me needs to sort out some things that are inside me. *sighs*

Holy crap.

This is a Misnomer

It is really strange, that work can be the healing salve for the broken hearted. A dream has ended, and another one is about to begin. Life seems to be made up of endless dreams, each one rudely transiting to the next. I wonder when will all these dreams finally become the reality that I seek, or will it all end up as being an endless maze of twisting and turning alternate realities that push me ever closer to the edge of what defines me to be me.

Am I still sane? I haven't a clue anymore; sanity seems to be among the last things that I actually know about now. With each passing day, it seems that I'm starting to just live it through like how a zombie runs through its life each day, without purpose or meaning.

At least I am still alive. Zombies are animated, but they do not live. I love, hence I live.

So some things weren't meant to be, but I guess what matters is not the permanence of it all, but the fact that once had a hold on it before. This is nicely summed up as 不在乎天长地久，只在乎曾经拥有。 As I said, a dream has ended, another one is about to begin, it is indeed time to move on; no sense wallowing my life away, eh?

I am contented, in a way, to know that I had loved and been loved. It is an inexplicable feeling, something that I think only those who had it before will understand. While I feel sad inside about the possiblities that didn't come true, I feel sort of happy that I managed to make some progress before it fell apart. Matters of the heart can be quite hard to contemplate and understand, for most of the time, they cannot be understood using pure rational thought. If love were rational, it would be composed of integer pai—lno I mean, if love were rational, then there won't be so many complications that arise in the world that are related to this little understood facet of life. There is a little more to this episode in my life than what I am letting out, but I don't think that it is necessary to say it here, just know that there is more than what I'm saying...

If one believes in the theory of karma, then it can be said that perhaps in this life, a karmic lesson that I might need to learn is how to love and how to be loved. It could be that in a previous life, I was one who could command as many lovers as possible and know not the true meaning of loving and being loved, and that in this life, some divine aspect decided it was time for me to learn of how love really operates. Of course, this is just one of the many ways of viewing things, it is definitely not the only way, but it can be one way of explaining certain things which our good old stalwart friend science cannot prove nor explain.

Speaking of karmic lessons, it seems that I could sense something bad was about to happen almost a full week before it was due. Remember the past entries up to yesterday? Apart from the social critique pieces that transformed into rants of sorts, there were also personal stuff and afflictions that were interspersed in between. Besides, I felt really rotten over the course of the whole week, another indicator perhaps that something bad was about to happen.

*sighs*

Life goes on, with or without you. Life will always have a way to go on. Since it was an amicable break-up with no hard feelings, I think I'll survive well enough for this one. And if you (the reader) decide to send me condolences or lines of "I'm sorry", save it hahahaha... It's not the end of the world, just the end of a dream.

I guess my sister is right. It is always better to have one more friend than losing one.

On another note, I'm starting to get used to the staff notation through the playing of flute pieces. The flute is excellent for this little exercise, since it is played exactly as it is written, unlike the saxophone and clarinet (which I will still play, but more as improvisational instruments than anything else) which use a transposed system so simple major keys end up looking really odd for those instruments. Currently am messing with something simple, El Condor Pasa in C Major and (Where Do I Begin) Love Story in F Major. Heheheheh... don't laugh at me man, one needs to start from somewhere. Damn, if I showed you what I can play with my 笛子, I figure you probably won't be laughing as hard as you would.

So, that's roughly what my life is at the moment, a little sad, a little wistful, a little bittersweet, a little forward looking, a little contemplative, and a little messed up. But hey, I'm still alive and am intent on keeping myself that way. What doesn't kill you, just makes you stronger.

At least, for now...

It has... ended.

It has... ended.

A dream that was so beautiful... has ended. The awakening has begun. It is time to move on.

I thank you for the happiest moment of my life thus far.

Maybe a rant later in the day... who knows?

Need Sleep Badly

I need sleep... badly. Lots of things are happening, and it seems that the week's trials and tribulations are a karmic representation of what is to come.

I need all the energy that I can gather to tide over this latest crisis.

Why must everything that I want in life be an epic battle before I can have it?

Population Problem

The past week was a fiasco. By "fiasco", I do mean complete and absolute failure. Lots of weird and bad things occurred, and today (being the end of the week), I'm actually feeling tired and irritated (complete with a splitting headache).

So there was a lot of coding to be done, and those were done, though not completed. The week itself saw a lot of strange events occurring online. Well, I made a few rants, shot a few people accidentally with caustic words among other things. I'm still sleep deprived, which is kinda weird in its own right; I have no clue why I am sleep deprived in the first place.

Anyway, no more stuff about me. More rants as I've just heard something interesting on a television programme on Channel NewsAsia, with regards to birth rates in Japan. Japan, as most of us know, is one of the fastest aging populations in the world. They are also among the most hardworking people, as characterised by the long hours that are put in by the working class. Most of the problems that Japan is facing now with regards to population is one that most of the developed nations (including Singapore) will eventually face.

An aging population is one where there is a larger proportion of people over the age of 60 as compared to the other people. Several factors contribute to this condition: the increase in the life expectancy at birth, a previous baby boom, and a subsequent fall in birth rates. Japan seems to have the factors outlined, as do some of the other developed countries. Population policies always seem to be at loggerheads at that of the economy; as the economy booms, more workers are needed for the sustenance, and the increase in the economy results in an increase in the cost of lifestyle, which completes the cycle by demanding that more workers be put into the workplace. With all these demands on the populace, it makes the idea of starting a family seemingly infeasible.

There are many things that are required in the starting of a family. Among the obvious monetary requirements, there are other "soft" issues that need to be tackled, for instance the nurturing of the child. Traditionally, children are often looked after by their own parents, with the mother staying at home almost full-time to ensure that her children gets nothing but the best love, care and concern from her. If, in the case of the existence of an extended family, it would be natural for the children to be cared by the entire extended family, especially since it was normal then for the whole extended family to be living under the same roof. With the rise of the "nuclear" family, such situations were slowly phased out, particularly in the developed world. The number of siblings that someone has now is much smaller than it was 50 years ago since the birth rate has been a steady decline over the years. Couple that with the nuclear family concept, what we have is not a huge cluster of extended family members, but rather many clusters of individually functioning family units.

And we know the story (since we practically grew up in it). Small family in a developed world means that both parents may need to be working just to be able to provide enough for the running of the household, which means that the child[ren] will need to have babysitting for the better part of the day, either by staying at a nanny's place or being sent to a child care centre. And this brings up a whole host of issues, from the lack of respect of the parents, to the over-reliance of the babysitter, to the gradual dissolution of the concept of a family.

Imagine a future, where couples meet, have children, and then deposit their children to some centre for the care of their children, probably state-controlled, but more likely to be privately run (considering the fact that capitalism will most likely be still in existence and in ample popularity). The parents will be a part of the greater economic machine, working all their lives to ensure their own survival, while their progeny undergoes a completely mechanised/methodological growing-up plan that was put together by the people who are in power. The children will spend 18 years of their lives in this incubation system, before they are released back into society to be a part of the economic engine that they were meant to be. Besides that, what else is a human for if not to power the economies of the world?

That scenario, is fast becoming a reality now. Already we are seeing parents resorting to the use of the said child care centres, and already we see child care centres turning into a systematic framework run by organisations which embrace the idea as a business opportunity. Already we are seeing the effects of the forefront batches of children who were largely taken care of by either their nannies or professional babysitters at the child care centres. Sadly, what I've observed does not seem to bode well for us. The younger children seem to be more insolent than before, always thinking that they are right (even when they might not be), and always making demands on things that they want.

Well, if all these "save the Earth" movements really want to make it successful, they are better off trying to educate the young than to stage massive concerts for a one-off high-return economic venture. The successes that we are seeking lies not the amount of pomp we can pull off, but the amount of humanity that we can teach to our children of the future.

b0r3d l33+ sp34k4g3

4n0+h3r d4y, 4n0+h3r d0ll4rz. y3z, im4 sp34k1ng in 1337 sp34k4g3 f0r t0d4y, s1mply b3c0z ima b0r3d. \/\/h1l3 i+ m4y s33m 34z33 t0 4ctu1lly +yp3 1n d1zz w4y, i+ izz n0t. +yp1ng l1k3 d1zz t4k3z a h4x0rr3d l0tz 0f t1m3 4nd 3n3r6y t0 4t+3|V|p+ t0 c1rcum\/3nt m4 n4tur4l ins+1nxz t0 typ3 1n pr0p3r 3n6r1zhizzle.

s0 n3w4yzz, th3r3 wuzz d1zz m33t1ng f0r d4 sch0l4rizzle; n d3y w4nt3d t0 m33t f04 KTV t0d4y. unf0r+un4t3l33, d3y s3+ i+ t0 b3 4t 2pm, wh1ch wuzz durin6 w0rk h0urizzle. d1dn'+ g0 of c0zz.

*shrugz* +1m3 t0 g3+ b4c|< t0 VV0rk... g3tt1ng t1r3d 0f typ1ng l1k3 d1zz...

ZZZZZzzzzz

Spam, Spam, Spam

Damn I hate spam. I've been swatting at spam for so long that anything that looks remotely like spam gets blasted to bits by me first before I even do anything else.

So, what makes me suspect something as being spam?

1. Weird names in From field—Names that I have never seen before or names that do not even resemble anyone that I know immediately raise alarm bells as being spam.


2. Weird names in To/CC field—If none of the To or CC fields contain my email address explicitly, all my alarm bells will ring very loudly; no one BCCs things to me on normal occasions.


3. Odd attachments—Most folks do not usually send me any form of attachments, simply because I'm like an old dinosaur who likes to respond to pure text emails.


4. Weird formatting of text—Most spam-like emails contain lots of weird formatting, for instance big text, odd text colouring, centred text and strange letter-like character replacement of texts not amounting to 1337 sp34k4g3.


5. Odd phraseology—Things that contain odd phraseology like "from the desk of so-and-so" or even "most esteemed whoever"; no one writes like that for all practical purposes.

Thus, when I see any of these signs appearing in any email, the first thing that comes to mind is "spam".

*sighs* And that was how I ended up wronging a completely innocent person.

Bleagh... I think that I'm a little too aggressive this week, from the rants to this. I think that it is time that I actually cool down a little more... maybe it is sign to go back to writing poems; at least those writings are less aggressive than the ones that I have been doing lately...

More on Slackware 12.0

As reported earlier, Slackware 12.0 was officially released, and that I have managed to get it nicely set up on Edythe, replacing the old Slackware 11.0 that I was running.

Now that Slackware 12.0 is using the newer Linux 2.6 kernel series, ACPI is innately supported by the kernel. Unfortunately, I mis-read the level of support—I thought that the ACPI is supported innately by the kernel, and thus spent lots of time trying to set up the whole thing such that my self-hacked el cheapo battery meter can run properly. Turns out that the kernel did support ACPI, not in situ but as a bunch of kernel modules. A few quick hacks later, I am proud to say that my ACPI is working wonderfully on Edythe now.

One notable change in software is the removal the the old Gaim software. Gaim was the old name of the cross-platform compatible multi-protocol instant messaging system; apparently, it was embroiled with a naming dispute with AIM particularly on the use of the acronym A-I-M within the name. The very last version of Gaim that was available for download before the name change was 2.0 beta, subsequently no further version of Gaim can be found. Pidgin however, is a most interesting successor to Gaim. While most of the interface are still the same (Pidgin is just an improved version of the old Gaim code), it appears to be less buggy, considering the fact that more development has probably been done on Pidgin than the 2.0 beta version of Gaim. In addition to the obvious improvements, Pidgin offers a nice text-mode interface to the program by ways of Finch. Now, Gaim had a text version called Gaim-text, but no one seems to know about it (leastways, not me). So everything seems to be more interesting now. Surprisingly, Ubuntu 7.04 doesn't seem to have a package installation for Pidgin. I say surprising because Ubuntu is based on the Debian packages, and the folks over at Debian are really bleeding edge with regards to the update of the experimental folder for the Debian distribution. So, it is weird that it is not yet available as a package for Ubuntu.

I've tried out the other windowing managers, and have still decided that fluxbox is still the most suitable for me. Amazingly spartan and completely utilitarian, with custom configuration possible through the editing of simple text files, instead of trying to plough through a whole big chunk of XML or even binary file.

Test drive on Slackware 12.0 is fairly uneventful. The Java SDK 6.0 for Linux installs and runs fairly smoothly, with no hiccups yet. I'm still too lazy to install Eclipse.org into the Linux parition on Edythe. There're a whole bunch of reasons, one of which is the size (I only have 10GB on the Linux platform for crying out loud), the configuration (getting Eclipse.org to display text small is not an easy task) and the necessity (I rarely need to hack Java code out in Linux except when I'm at work; programming in Linux usually means coding in C/C++/R/Forth/Prolog/LISP/SML). And since I already have a working JDK 6.0/Eclipse set up on my Windows XP platform (complete with the necessary small-text customisation), I don't see a need to duplicate efforts on another platform for the same thing.

Bottomline: I've managed to set up my Slackware to be in the form that I actually like. The only thing that I probably need to start figuring out is to activate the SCIM under X-Windows so that I can actually start typing non-latin based languages like Chinese or Japanese, and also the activation of the wireless internet access. Other than that, Edythe.Linux.Slackware is operational and ready for action.

Apologies for Rants

To all folks who drop by to have a look at what I've been saying, I apologise if the recent posts start to sound like rants. There have been things that I have meant to say, but never did have the chance to say it before; hence the opportunity now. Hopefully, in between the rants, you might be able to understand the point that I'm trying to put across, and perhaps come away with some new perspectives as compared to before.

I Dislike Stereotypes

I don't like stereotypes. No, I never did enjoy the idea of a stereotype. Does being a hardcore scientist imply that I cannot have affiliations with the metaphysical? Does being a computer scientist imply that I cannot be interested in human biology concepts? Does being a geek imply that I cannot be an accomplished musician in my own right? Does being a musician mean that I cannot be a writer as well?

What manner of nonsense is this?

Stereotypes are bad; they are bad because they force people to partition other people into distinct groups, where each group may be characterised by a generalised set of properties. For instance, one stereotype can be based on race, while another can be based along the lines of discipline. Thus the adage that "yellow people have slanted eyes" or even "computer scientists cannot write well". Of course, applying generalisations like that is purely nonsensical, since each and every one of us is an individual, and is thus subscribed to our own forms of idiosyncrasies that cannot be easily characterised by a whole set of very generalised traits.

I particularly detest stereotypes for a very good reason: I am a person who never did believe in staying in one field for too long. While I am very enthusiastic in developing a specialisation in the field of computer science, I never did intend to limit myself to only that field, in terms of knowledge seeking. Thus, it is to my chagrin that when I say that I am a Reiki practitioner that people actually turn around and stare at me with a queer eye and asking me if there was anything wrong with me.

Damnit people, I'm a human first and foremost. I may believe in the efficacy of science, but I also believe that science is not necessarily the answer to all our questions about the world. If science were the only explanation of the world, then try explaining the effects of accupuncture using science—I dare you. Explain the capabilities of accupuncture, the positive effects of accupuncture without resorting to explaining through the use of the meridiens and the concept of acupressure points. Science appeals to Occam's Razor, and yet when confronted with a seemingly simpler explanation which does not use too much of what is conventionally known as science, science falters and resorts to an overly complicated hand-waving to try to dismiss the claim as a quackery.

Before anyone tries to debunk me as being a naysayer stirring up a hornets' nest, let me remind all that science as we know it is an empirical science. Empirical means it is based on experimentation and such. Now, this does not exclude the possibility of other forms of sciences; in fact the whole field of theoretical science is one where direct experimentation is not likely to be possible as yet, and all the related theories and such are argued logically rather than experimented upon directly. What science cannot explain now, doesn't mean that it is impossible or not true; it just demonstrates the current limit of science. While I do not claim that science is worthless (it isn't), I do claim that science at its current state still has limitations, despite the fact that it can explain a lot of phenomena at this point in time.

Which brings me to my initial grouse. Why is it that when people talk to me, they expect only a person who is well en-armoured with science and science alone? Why do people give me that kind of a skeptical look when I say that I am involved in some metaphysical context? Why can't people realise that a human in the modern world is not one who is unavoidably bounded by technology and science alone? Why do people keep on applying senseless stereotypes on me?

For goodness sake, grow up. There is more to the world than what we think we can see or perceive. There are others who may seem to be inferior to us who are learned in the fields of science and technology, but they can be the very ones who can teach us something the science and technology alone cannot teach us. The intangible thing that other people can teach us, is something known as morals, ethics and the meaning of life.

So, do yourself a favour. Stop dissing people and putting them into stereotypes; be more open-minded and look at the world from the different perspectives that others can provide, before coming to a conclusion for yourself. Just because you might belong to a group of people who do not believe that something is true doesn't necessarily make that thing false; it could just mean that you have grown close-minded and are thus unwilling to start looking at things from a different perspective.

Fire the Grid

If you do not believe in metaphysics, and think that anything that is not provable by science does not exist, then do not read this post.

Remember Live Earth? I didn't watch it for several reasons; the first of which is that I'm not interested in a 24-hour long concert for the sake of saving the Earth. The irony is really strong here, in order to save the Earth, we end up using lots of electricity to rig up the entire worldwide broadcast, the various loud speaker systems add on to the noise pollution, and the people who went end up leaving litter behind after the partying is done.

Sure, it has attracted a lot of celebrities and political leaders. But what have they done? What can they do?

Well, here's something a little different. Fire the Grid is a global movement to fire the Grid, a collection of metaphysical energy lines that run all through the Earth, at the precise time of 17 July 2007, 1111hrs (UTC), with good "healing" energies that are present in each and every one of us. You might think of this as hokey, but I will first concede that as a hard scientist, there are things that even science is unable to fully explain. Regardless of race, religion and creed, we all live on this planet, and if people can gather together to participate in a huge and loud concert display for 24 hours, surely they can help in the firing of the Grid by channelling energy to the Earth for 1 hour at the specified time of 17 July 2007, 1111hrs (UTC).

While the website has a slant towards Judeo-Christianism, this is by no means a purely Judeo-Christian endeavour. Much of the West is dominated by this ideology, and it is thus the most natural form of which the people of the West will allude to when discussing things metaphysical. The whole concept of energy transferral and channelling can be found to be a concept that is prevalent in most cultures. So, if you can spare an hour of your life, you might want to help by following any of the four ways of firing the Grid.

And in case people start thinking that the_laptop has lost his mental faculties and have started to believe in quackery, I only have this to say: he who thinks he will know all is in fact one who knows nothing at all. I am a hard scientist; I believe in facts and proofs for things before I consider them to be axiomatically true. However, I am also a computer scientist, and I know that abstraction is one thing that can defy even the most well-thought of belief system that we can have. I do not profess to be all knowing, neither do I dare claim to be enlightened. I do not say that such energy-related matters do not exist; nor do I claim that they can be explained by science. I do not think that people who believe strongly in things that science cannot explain are fools or dangerous people; I think that those who believe blindly in harmful things that science cannot explain and yet try to promulgate them to the messes are the dangerous people. Most importantly, I am also a human being, a member of a great order that makes us human. If something as inane as channelling Reiki through meditation to the planet can help it a little, I do not see it of any harm to try.

If at any moment I seem to be all knowing, I apologise; that is not the intention. I am just hoping that people will see past the petty differences and look on deeper into something that might just contain that iota of truth that can change our lives. And I thank my Reiki master Doug for highlighting this event of Fire the Grid to me to participate in.

Let the power of Light prevail in our ailing Earth, and peace to all.

Reality

The concept of reality is one that I've been struggling for a while to get a good grasp of. Ever since the screening of The Matrix, the whole idea of reality and the existence of alternate realities have been haunting me. Throughout the ages, there have been a lot of debate among philosophers on the whole concept of Reality. The classic "am I a butterfly dreaming of a man, or am I a man dreaming of a butterfly" epitomises the whole issue of reality with regards to perception; is what we perceive really a reality, or is it just a hallucination that occurs while we are embedded in yet another reality?

Humankind has been obsessed with this concept for a very long time. Stories of the afterlife prevail in a lot of cultures; some of which include the concept of a dichotomy of purported afterlife locations that one may be. These purported locations are roughly divided along the lines of moral "goodness" and "badness" and are traditionally known as "heaven" and "hell" respectively. While the afterlife is a huge topic on its own, I will not attempt to take a deep look on that, trying instead to focus on what we are facing at the moment while we are still alive. I believe that once we have departed from this world, we will probably have no idea where we might end up, so it is probably more interesting to think about the current world that we live in than to worry about what happens when we leave—that topic will be left with the current religions and cultures of the world to determine.

Reality versus alternate reality—something that I can allude to fairly comfortably through my forays in the design of computer programming languages and artificial worlds simulated through the use of high level abstraction, as well as the complete reproduction of computation systems through the extensive use of virtualisation. In a way, a computer program living within the cosmos of the computer can be seen as a sentient being like us; it has some kind of programming which is executed within the framework of the particular level of virtualisation. So an Intel x86 binary image can be run on a Mac OS X interface through the use of virtualisation tools like VMWare and such. Why do I claim that the program can be sentient within the construct? The program's run is dependent on the information that we feed to it through the use of the computer system, and all that it can do is also related to the level of programming that was done on it. Computer programs can exhibit limited learning behaviours, and at several albeit low levels, they can demonstrate some sense of understanding. To us humans then, it is plausible that we are some kind of program that is being run in a huge hypercomputer-like construct, whose complexity and scale are completely unfathomable by our meat brains. This hypercomputer-like construct may be running very very slowly in terms of clock speed, but since we are within the system, we have no other inkling of time other than what the hypercomputer-like construct decides to demonstrate to us; this is no different from a computer program being able to determine its own run time based on the run time that the computer reports to it.

But why a hypercomputer-construct? Why not some other process? Well, that's because the hypercomputer-construct is the most scientific and complex model that we have now which can be used to explain some of the effects that we are experiencing. Given enough time, we can build faster and better computation machines to be able to do multi-level simulations. Consider the limited observation faculties of the human being. When we work on a wood craft, for example, we do not need to know if the air molecule on the far end of the room is rotating or not. Similarly, when we are using an electron microscope to observe the layers of a particular metal, we are not interested in the current cloud formations outside of the building that we are in. If the simulation is calibrated in such a way that only the level of detail required for a particular observer is actually rendered, we are looking at a potentially high factor speed-up.

Suppose to the contrary that we do not have such a multi-level approach to simulation then. Suppose it takes an inordinate amount of time to be able to process one delta time of the whole universe simulation (we can take this to be Planck time, if so desired). To us within the system, we do not experience any form of delay, since our time is controlled directly by the clock speed of the hypercomputer-like construct that is running the simulation. On the other hand, if some creature exists beyond our universe and is running the simulation, it might see the system taking a much longer "time" than us.

What does this all show anyway? Nothing much, except that there is always the possibility that this reality isn't the "real" reality. It also shows recursively that all realities cannot be conferred with any label as the "real" reality, since we can always recursively build another complex enough computation device to simulate the reality that we have in question. All these recursive definitions boggle the mind, yes, but that's based on the assumption that the laws of Physics are all that it takes to actually run the universe. If we find that there exists some phenomenon of nature of the universe that cannot be explained by the laws of Physics, this whole idea of a recursive computational devices simulating reality will probably be moot. But I digress.

Personally, I think that the concept of reality, or rather, the questioning of reality lies in the pool of unprovable questions. We, as being part of the system of reality, cannot easily prove or disprove that there exists some kind of a reality that is just beyond ours, and that it is simulating or at least running a "program" that represents our reality. This is of course based on the assumption that reality and the running of the universe can be axiomised by a set of laws, which may be infinite in number. If at any moment this is shown to be false, then the whole idea of simulation would not even be remotely valid, and all these talk is just falsehood.

So what is the baseline? My ideology now is simple; care not about whether reality exists. I know that I exist, and that I have this one life to live it. So, I will live this one life I have in meat world to the fullest of my ability, and let the philosophers of our generation do all the thinking that will not necessarily affect us.

Young Adult-hood

Looking back on the things that I've done so far (yes, it sounds vaguely familiar to a particular song that was fashionable in the 1990s), I realised that I have probably learnt a whole lot more new stuff in the last 8 months than I did for the last 8 years. And I am seriously not exaggerating.

Basically put, over the last 8 months, I have more or less completed my transformation from a teenager/kid to a young adult, with more responsibilities, more sensibilities, and more sensitivity, as well as a much different point of view. Remember a long time ago when I was saying things that I would never live past the age of 20? Well, in a sense, it was true; I never did live past the age of 20 with the kind of mentality that I originally had. But now, as I am picking my life up again from the broken pieces that came about during the last few months, I am starting to be much calmer than before, with a sense of humour that is much more interesting than the one that I originally had. I'm still a little whiney, but probably not as whiney as I was some time ago.

I'm pretty much a goal orientated person; it is really rare to be able to find me without a goal at any stage of my life. One reason why I had so many types of problems during the previous few months, was because my goals at that time were fairly undefined, which is really a sad thing, with all things considered. Not to mention the fact that during that time, I was in really trying times, having to deal with many weird emotional/mental/psychological issues, spanning from the sudden feeling of betrayal, to the feeling of absolute loneliness. My life was pretty much torn apart and put back together just to be torn apart again to be put back together; that pretty much sums up the aftermath of post age twenty.

Now of course, I have goals in my life. There is direction once again. Many have tried to dissuade me, by saying things like "if you don't expect, you won't be disappointed", or even "why bother planning at all?" In my worldview, planning is always a useful thing to be done, even if in the end the plan is completely awry. A good plan is one which charts out the potential directions that can be taken towards a goal or two; it is also flexible enough to be able to accommodate any sudden eventualities that might crop up during the course of execution of the plan. I always think that to approach anything without a plan is completely foolhardy—if you have the chance to do a little planning, it is often more useful than to blindly charge up and down the alleys just to find oneself getting stuck in some dead-end.

So, yes, I do not expect any more manic/depressive episodes to be occurring any time soon. Life is starting to become good, and it should be on its way to being better.

Quite a Week...

It's been quite a week, with some much things done, and so much more to do. As the days go on, I'm just feeling more and more tired; I guess I need to start sleeping earlier in order to catch up a little on the sleep that I've been missing.

Clarinet practice is going along fairly well; the fingering is hard, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of things. Saxophone practice is still okay; not faltering as much as I was before. Western flute was sent back to sifu for some repairs with regards to some leakage of the pads.

Finished project #2 at work. MWAHAHAhahahaha... that means that I can finally start on a third project and thus make this attachment a little more worthwhile that the last. Finite calculus looks fun, but seems to be based on a lot of very complicated rules which in turn are based on combinatorics. Maybe I can master this in time for useful applications later on.

Guess that's all I care to update for now. Am into several other projects, but I'm not sure when will these be able to see the light of day.

Cheerio~

Slackware 12.0 is Out!

Oh yes, finally! The amazing Slackware 12.0 is finally out! I've managed to download the DVD ISO over two days and have successfully installed it on Edythe. Everything runs really smoothly, and I will probably test drive this baby over a slightly longer period of time.

Here's a screen shot of my current favourite X Window Manager, fluxbox:Isn't it sweet?

fluxbox has a good mix of useability, lots of control and a wonderfully spartan interface, just the things that I need for my window manager. For my Slackware system, I used to start with the KDE, but then I found the interface too clunky for my taste. I still installed KDE into Edythe though, mainly to access the useful KOffice tools (even though I usually use LaTeX to get the job done). All these wonderful tasks can be set up through the very simple to customise menu file for fluxbox.

Slackware rocks my socks, for now. (=

Hiatus from Poems

This is a strange occurrence. Till date, I find that I best express myself through the wonderfully compact form of poems, yet suddenly I realise that when I sit down to write a verse, I end up staring really intently at the blank screen and have no clue whatsoever what to write about. The only word that seems applicable now is just "amazing".

Looking back on the 400+ verses that I wrote over the past few years (yes, 400+ verses spread between here and here), I seem to have discovered a pattern of sorts. It appears that I am at my most productive when I was in some kind of emotional turmoil, be it a crush, a rejection, despair, moroseness, euphoria, any form of emotional agitation will end up being some kind of poem being written and posted.

It will seem that the old adage of writers being tortured souls is somewhat true, at least for my case.

I might be a musician, but for a long time, I found that my musicianship skills were sub par, despite the fact that I have mastered most of the skills necessary for the correct playing of my instrument (which you may all recall, is the 笛子). It had nothing to do with my technique; it had everything to do with my state of mind. Apparently, I was not emotive enough in my rendering of the pieces, which of course resulted in a sub par performance as compared to someone who has less technical ability but has more emotional content in the presentation. Now, after being exposed to wonderfully emotive pieces like those sung by Teresa Teng and Sarah Chen, it would seem that my playing skills are no longer as mediocre as they were before, and it is quite true in fact.

The bottomline? Despite my claims that I am "not-quite-human", I am, after all, a human. A human mind in a human body living in a human society. I may strive to understand the machine, but in the end I need to realise that I am still a human, and the machine is a human construct, and that there is a serious need to understand myself before even attempting to understand the machine.

If you haven't realised by now, I'll state it really frankly—I'm in love. The woman I love, is one who loves me too. To say anything more here... will be indelicate. I am, as I stated, blissfully content with this. Emotionally, I am much more stable now than I was before. As such, writing highly emotive poems start to become harder and harder as the days go by, and until I find a new source of energy from which I can draw inspiration from, I will probably have a much lower level of activity with regards to writing poems (and the updating of this). Between having the ability to update my blog of poems and the chance to love (and be loved), the option is obvious—I'd rather not be able to write another poem than to be one who is forever tortured by the feeling of loneliness that stems from the constant lack of love.

It is with this mentality that I intend to take a hiatus from updating my blog of poems. Meanwhile, I will of course be working on other writing projects, for I am still a writer and musician before a computer programmer; these projects will be released when the time is ripe. To those who are loyal followers of my flagship blog, don't fret too much, it'll only be a while before I manage to find a new source of inspiration for a new breed of poems. The_Laptop Says will still be utilised whenever I have something to talk about, be it a rant, a social commentary or anything interesting that I have found, and the schedule for update is still as ad hoc as it was.

As long as I still draw a breath, I will never cease to write. The media may change, but I will still write whenever I can.