Crimbo Season

And so ends another Christmas, which to me, is just like any other day. Mostly.

I'm starting to get really apathetic towards most of the holidays that I am facing. To me, these holidays are just days in which I can spend on catching up on sleep, an enterprise that seems to be getting more and more relevant as time goes by, in spite of the various assurances that this would not be the case.

Perhaps my priorities are placed in the wrong places?

But yes, Christmas. Originally a celebration by the faithful for the birth of their saviour, it has been turned into the biggest mass consumerism event of the entire year. Yes, mass consumerism---the whole ``you should be getting gifts for, oh let's see... everyone?'' kind of perspective that retailers are trying to sell to the people. Bombarded with information that suggests that should one ``not get what one wants for Christmas means something is wrong'', people are subtly suggested to actually spend more during this time period than ever.

And it doesn't really take a genius to realise that.

Surprisingly, I find myself mildly affected by the entire scam perpetuated by the retailers into convincing us that we ought to get some things that we may not really need. But then again, it is likely because of a whole host of other reasons that make me spend just that bit more than usual. Not that I am complaining much (I am still complaining)---there's this intoxicating air that keeps pressuring the self unconsciously to just keep spending.

Anyway, enough of these mumbo jumbo. I need to head off and do more stuff that will relate to the future. Till next time, as always.

Awesomeness Day

You know how some days you just feel like crap, and some days you just feel completely awesome?

Well, today is one of those days. I am actually feeling awesome, even without having imbibed any caffeine (which I still ended up doing anyway just in case things go awry). It's a strange form of empowerment to feel awesome, especially during times where more often than not, one feels anything but.

But that said, it is likely to just be the calm before the storm, but let's just keep all the pessimistic thoughts at bay for now, right?

So another week is rapidly passing, and soon we will be in the year of 2011, where things are guaranteed to be much more complicated, among other things. But that's for another time for me to mumble about.

Anyway, I should best make use of this awesomeness and get even more work done.

Continuous Sleep

It's a Sunday.

What's so special about this day, you might wonder. Nothing really, except that I spent most of the day sleeping in, recovering from the sleep debt that I had incurred over the last few weeks.

It's a most strange thing though, to be sleeping for so many hours at a stretch. My mind feels as though it has been living in the dream world more often than in the real world, what with the whole experience of continuous dreaming. That's right, I actually have the ability to dream in a manner where each dream is continuous with the previous. There's also the ability to dream the same dream many times across time, where each time I get more and more control over what occurs, but I suppose that's a story for another time.

So anyway, continuous dreaming. I woke up this morning feeling rather woozy in the head---it might be that I have been running around fighting monsters just a little bit too much, or that gravity has been acting on my head in a direction that is too orthogonal to what it is used to for more than two-thirds of the day. But one thing is for certain though: I do feel a little more refreshed than before in spite of the wooziness.

Anyway, time for my sleep once more, and off to work I go in the morning.

Looking Back...

It is sort of a strange thing to realise that a year has passed on by once again. This is the second year that I am spending in Singapore after my undergraduate stint, and to a large degree it would seem to be the case that I have more or less fallen into the pattern of life here once again, this time from the perspective of the part-time student who doubles as a full-time researcher. Life is not great, but it is still manageable, with careful prioritisation of the activities that I might want to engage in considering the limited amount of time I have and the limited amount of energy I can bring about to get things done.

It's a truly strange season though, this time of the year. I believe that I was probably feeling something similar at this time of the year last year, but at a level that is probably a couple of magnitudes lower now than in the past, since, to be fair, I was in a rather heartbroken state last time, whereas for now, I'm just in a generally disaffected type of emotion. I'm slowly training myself to not worry about all the things that make me sad/depressed, but like always, the theory is often easier to come up with than the practical implementation of the ideas that surround the issue.

It is not that I have given up completely on love, but that I have come to the rather unsettling conclusion that it is not the right time now. The conclusion is unsettling because on the one hand I might actually try to convince myself that the whole business of love and relationships should not be pursued during this rather limited time period that I am facing, but on the other hand, my emotions seem to be doing anything but. No, I've not fallen in love with anyone just yet, having learnt my lesson about the pitfalls of ``falling'' in love, but there's always this missing feeling of some sort that is within me, as though all the activities that I have been engaged in are not doing anything that is helping me keep my mind away from all these things that keep creeping up on me. I'm not really sure how best to describe the entire circumstance, but this is probably the best way that I can say about things for now.

Life seems to always be a consistent uphill struggle for me, or at least, it seems to be the case. Most people are probably happy to get by with whatever job they could get their hands on with the degree/diploma that they might have, but somehow that doesn't seem to be the optimising function that I'm running on---again we find that I'm taking the path of most resistance, and in many ways, am suffering greatly from the choice. It's not so much that things are impossible to handle (that's simply untrue), but that there's just so much of it that everything adds up really quickly. Time commitment issues are among the worst---at this stage, I'm probably overcommitted in time by at least 40% over what I'm supposed to be working, and there is no such thing as an over-time pay that can be claimed. It's a very tiring thing to keep running forwards at full power all the time, losing sleep and other implements that may actually make the job easier in the long run. Am I just a whiney person on this regard? I wouldn't think so, because I have all the evidence to show otherwise.

*sigh*

I'm not exactly bitter over things now, but I'm really just disappointed with myself; I keep having the feeling that I am unable to put in my best in all the things that I have gotten involved with in one way or another, and that feeling of disappointment is probably more depressing than the fact that I am committing to nearly 140% of my 47-hour work week. Being disappointed in the self is much worse than anything else in the world for the simple reason that it impinges on a very fundamental aspect of the ego: the self-confidence.

Self-confidence is a self-reinforcing concept/property of every normal person. If you do something that you are confident of doing and succeed, your confidence in the matter will increase. Conversely, if you are not confident of doing something and you have failed, then your confidence would have shattered. But in the case where you just keep getting hit with failures to meet one's expectations, there will come a point in time where the self-confidence just keeps reeling back from the high levels of negative reinforcement that one was indeed incapable in some sense of the word.

I just hope that my self-confidence hasn't taken such a blow yet.

NaNoWriMo 2010! Official Winner!

54,206 words later, I am done. Proved to be a little harder than last year, because I had to compress all my writing in the first half of the month and I couldn't do much for the second half due to all the work commitments. As usual, grab the manuscript from my domain. I'll fill in more details here some time in the future when I have a little more time on my hands.

Rant

I suppose it has probably gotten to the time in life where one is starting to get more ``boring'' as a general rule of thumb, because I find that I have less and less interesting things that I really want to talk about over here, or even on my other blog. I'm a little less pensieve than before, partly because there's just so much that needs to be done that I have little time to be worrying about other things that might be affecting me, this being November and all. Oh and the fact that every day, in effect, I am mostly working on things alone, just me with my machines in my cubicle, wondering about why something wasn't working in the way that one would think ought to work, only to end the work day with a few queries still left in the mind that needs some more investigation once I reach home.

I have been told by many people about how they can read the various research papers on the buses and the other public transport---I'm not that super to be able to do that. One thing is that I am afflicted by motion sickness, so actually reading anything on any moving vehicle is probably going to cause more grief than anything else. Couple that with the fact that I absolutely adore annotating the text I'm reading, it means the the three hours that I use each day travelling to and fro work are effectively ``dead'' time that I cannot use to do all these readings.

Maybe it is a good thing for me, in a certain sense. Already I'm feeling the effects of being overworked---my mind has been drifting all over the place, sleep has been rather fitful, appetite has been low, irritability has gone up, and I'm seriously starting to look forward to the weekends. This cannot be a good thing considering all that had happened---I've always thought that I was a workaholic, yet now, when faced with the harsh realities of an effective over-commitment of time, it feels as though I'm not as I thought I once was; I was still human with silly human requirements after all. Like sleep and its friends.

I was assured back in my undergraduate years that once I was done with undergrad, life will not be any more hectic. Then, just like now, I knew that it was a lie; it is hardly the case that things will get better over time. If one were lucky, the status quo is maintained and there will hardly be anything that is sworth worrying about any more. But of course, the thing is that in real-life out of that of academia, work is never-ending---everything is ``in the book'' and while you might have access to your ``cheat sheets'' all the time, the fact that you need to consistently be applying all these ideas at least nine-and-a-half hours a day means that at the end of one work day, the sheer feeling of lackadaisicality is just hard ignore.

I supose there is no one else to blame but myself. In many ways, it might be the case that I have been thinking too highly about myself, always setting goals that are so high and hard that most people think that it is sheer folly to even consider, let alone trying to work towards them. Always a need to prove myself, always a need to show something. Maybe one day I will learn how to overcome this character flaw and figure out how to take things a little easier so as to leave myself with some time to actually do the whole ``be alive'' bit as opposed to being a cog in the entire machine.

I started on this post with hardly any true direction---I think this truly qualifies as a rant of some sort. Maybe some day I will get to look back on this, reflect on it, and then learn to laugh if off.

용서 못해 (I Cannot Forgive)

It seems that even I am not completely immune to what goes on in society. Anywhere, here's something I've been hooked on to for the last few days:A very catchy hook; can't resist. Also, the lyrics are rather saddening too...

Initial Capitalisation in Vim

To change the words to be of initial caps, first get to the beginning of the word, then type gUl. To continue for other words, just use w to get to the next word, and . to repeat the action.

Tip from here.

The Pariah

I am the Pariah, the Ishmael of the microcosm that I was once a member of. Amongst peers, I am peerless, not because of my irrefutable ability, but because I was a non-conformist. I yearn the closeness of a fellow human being, but abhor the vulnerabilities that come with the association. I wish to be loved, but have forgotten what is like to love. I am the abomination of humankind, the very essence of what it is to be an outcast.

Each time when I thought I was a part of a group, circumstances would always show otherwise. The world I live in is a constricting cube of norms, not all of them understandable, not all of them comprehensible. As the months turn into years, the more I live in this world, the more I wish I never lived.

Many a time, the will to live had deserted me, yet somehow I was denied the sweetness of death by factors all encompassing, as though it were my karmic retribution to be in constant suffering. Surrounded by the temptations of a thousand hedonistic practices, lured by the seduction of the evil twin sisters of the muse, I struggle past each day trying to be oblivious to all that is occurring around, with my steadfast holding of the small spark of determination that stems from my life quest of seeking knowledge.

But with each passing day, I find the winds of change increasing in intensity, and at times, that spark that I hold so dearly to seemed all but vanquished, raising my hopes that my piteous existence would be snuffed out once and for all, only to have them dashed like waves upon rocks, with the spark enfeebled but hardly dead. Oh woe it is to be living the life of the unliving!

My rational intellect was torn asunder from aeons past, through the three times of silliness I led myself into, the same three times where I exposed my heart and all to the cruelties that made the world. And thrice I exposed, thrice I did fall, hard each time, from the uncaring stabs from those I thought cared the most. A year of construction had commenced since the last defeat, and slowly but sadly, the fortress was built anew, with nary a thought for any save for myself.

Me. Myself. I!

The fortress that held the castle of the heart is now desolate of the once warm springs of love and emotion. In the throne of Eros now sits the Dark Lord who ruled the land of the unliving, poisoning the ventricles of the beating heart with spite and rage that burned the blood into a boiling mass of chaos. Gone are the compassion and empathy, gone are the feelings of comfort. Welcome to the despair, to the blackness, to the pure feeling of suffering. Such is the lot of my life.

As I sit here fulminating from the recesses of my soul, I wonder when will my karma of suffering finally end.

Dealing With Light Tarnish

If you have some metal stuff with light tarnish, consider using toothpaste as a light abrasive to bring back the shine.

Statistics for NaNoWriMo

Some useful tools for NaNoWriMo:

1. Use http://www.nanowrimo.org/NanowrimoUtils/NanowrimoGraph/yourid.png for a nice breakdown chart.
2. Link to http://www.nanowrimo.org/NanowrimoUtils/ProgressReport/yourid.html for the detailed numerical breakdown. See this for my own breakdown.

Material partially from here.

[Ed: Forget these links for now... there's something wrong with the hosting side on NaNoWriMo. Just use the standard widgets for everything.]

NaNoWriMo 2010

And so it begins again. Current working title is ``Towards Cacophony'' with a tentative genre of ``Young Adult & Youth''.

Track my progress over here (it's the same link as before).

Gurgle Burgle

I know this sounds clichéd, but time really does pass in a blink of an eye, especially when there are lots to be done. Work has been plentiful and is reaching the stage where it is actually beginning to be intellectually fulfilling, not that it wasn't so earlier, it's just that right about now, it does feel more fulfilling than before. In some senses, knowing the direction that I am taking does have a way of providing the self-confidence that I so desperately need.

But of course, at times I'm still highly hesitant and doubtful about what I am doing. Goes with the job I suppose. Life is full of unpredictable elements, and no matter how prepared one is, the best state that one can ever be is to be consoled by the fact that one has at one's disposal resources that one believes will cover the eventualities that one has thought of. The general lack of imagination of humankind in this regard often means that in spite of the very best planning and preparation, there is still a possibility of getting caught unawares.

Anyway, digressions again... I ought to remind myself to quit writing blog entries so late at night. True, the mind is most free from the normal confines of reality at this time, but at the same time, there is a distinct lack of coherence that is ever-present.

Let's try this again.
------
The last two weeks have had a strange effect on me. Ever since I had that stress fracture on my fibula from a rather overzealous and overambitious plan for running (what? that plan overzealous?), I have been mostly confined indoors. Hell, I've even had to stop my Aikido training for this month (and most likely the next also) so that the fracture will heal over.

Folks who seemingly cared for me have asked me time and time again to have it checked out by a doctor, but I know better than that. It's only a stress fracture, nothing too serious, and the best thing that I can do for it is to just rest it well. Casts are not going to be useful in this case at all, and there will be the whole expense associated with the diagnostics required to confirm what I already know from day eight onwards. Not that I find the concern annoying... I'm just not used to being cared for by folks that way.

So with two more evenings of the week freed up temporarily, I suddenly find myself with time that I can spend on introspection, which is at times a refreshing process. I like introspecting, it is sort of my way of getting some therapeutic effect through the whole ``thinking it through'' process. Of course, many of these thoughts are only for my consumption, and so I will not even allude to them here.

Okay, I've exhausted my words for the day. Next time.

Mucking with enumerate

To alter the starting number for any enumerate counter, use the following

\setcounter{enumi}{n-1}

where n is the starting number you want your list to show.

Note that there are enumi, enumii, enumiii and enumiv to handle the four-level nested enumerate environment.

Underlining Package for LaTeX

If you want to use underlining (standard or wavy) or strikethroughs in LaTeX, consider adding

\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}

to your LaTeX source file. This opens up the following useful commands:

Command	Description
\uline{foo}	Underlines foo
\uuline{foo}	Double underlines foo
\uwave{foo}	Underlines foo with a wavy line
\sout{foo}	Strikesout foo
\xout{foo}	Crosses out foo with `/'

And don't forget that you can use \emph{foo} to obtain an italicised version of foo.

These are preferable over \underline{foo} and {\em foo} because they can handle the edge cases of spanning multiple lines (for underlining) and the space correction after italicisation (for the emphasis component).

Self-Interest and Altruism

Once upon a time, when I was much younger and full of ideals, when I was mostly segregated from the rabblement that comprised individuals too haughty about their ways to listen to or even pay attention to someone who looked a little different from them, I believed in altruism. From the many levels of education that I was receiving in those days, my conviction towards altruism was strong, wilfully sacrificing myself should the situation arise if the overall benefits were to outweight the costs of self-sacrifice; in some ways, this is the very definition of utilitarianism since it weighs the value of the outcome given the cost of the action.

But as time went by, my disillusionment with the world grew, and slowly but surely, I found myself starting to believe less and less in altruism. In fact, I would say that the events that occurred scantly a year ago are probably what triggered my general lack of belief that altruism is a worthy goal to pursue, for the simple reason that people are not morally rational. I think I'm beginning to understand what the sages were trying to say when they proclaimed that each generation of society was on a spiral of destruction, with each successive generation falling ever lower compared to the last. And as an observer, I have started to see this occurring even as we speak. And the strange thing is, I can see myself as being a contributor to the entire fiasco.

Self-interest and altruism seem to be polar opposites of each other---it is hard to be acting in a way that is consistent with both self-interest and altruism. Granted, one may operate in a way that aligns most of one's self-interest with altruism, but in most cases, this is merely a facade. Altruism is an idealism that attempts to reconcile the actions of the leaders with the welfare of the people---it is a means of showing why a leader does what he/she does by putting the actions into a new light that it is somehow helping the greater good. But are the actions' intent really for the greater good, or is it a by-product of careful engineering on the presentation of the actions? That is one question that few would dare to answer, simply because the intent of any action can only be deduced, and the deduction is probabilistically true at best, since it is hard for anyone to actually understand the innate circumstance that governed the cause of action of any one person.

So is self-interest incompatible with altruism? That is a question that is plaguing me for the better part of the year. As I have noted earlier, I began with the thought that I would be willing to do anything for the greater good. But I have been shown that my assertions were not demonstrated in the real world, and slowly but surely I find myself working from the perspective of self-interest more than anything else. To a large degree then I find that self-interest is incompatible with altruism, since the intent from which the actions they spawn are polar opposites.

[Ed: This started out as a rant on Oct 03, but by now I have no idea where I wanted to go with it, so I'm just leaving this half-completed monstrosity online.]

Seriously, Your Kind Extinct Liao...

Mm. Just the right time to be writing things once more I suppose. But what shall I talk about today?

The thing about writing a personal blog such as this one under the kinds of NDA requirements that I have with regards to my job means that I can't really talk about the things that happen to me during the 12+ hours that I spend at my workplace, not unless I want the proverbial fine-toothed comb to be run over my posts each time I hit the ``publish'' button. As noted, this can be a substantial amount of time we are talking about here, and thus my posts tend to gravitate towards things that I do outside of work, which can be reduced to probably just a couple of paragraphs or so.

Thankfully, I don't run a blog that is so popular that I have to worry about readership rates and things like that. So at the very least, I have some level of freedom in what I want to talk about here and how I go about doing it, while, of course, observing some prudence in judiciously applying self-censorship to keep the hound dogs at bay.

But of course, what I have said so far is mostly drivel. Now for some fun stuff.

I injured my leg recently from being too gung-ho in the warm-up round for my 10km in 30+week campaign. On the one hand, the chiropractor (or was it the osteopath?) said it was just my bashing of my muscles without proper warm-up before running, but on the other hand, I have that nagging suspicion that a hairline fracture involving the fibula is at work, but lacking any X-rays and first hand information on how a hairline fracture feels like, I can't say more. Actually, on the topic of hairline fracture, I think I had suffered one before a long time ago when I was in secondary school, when I was still rather naive about the world and was being rather altruistic, but that's another story for another time.

Right, injured leg. Because of that, it was annoying to keep standing on it, and so I decided to not take the public transport home. That meant that I had to wait till at least 8pm before I could hail a cab, because of all the extra surcharges from using taxis during the peak period (I believe it is a surcharge of about 15% on top of the meter fare, which is just plain nasty when you need to commute from one end of the island to the next). And so I stayed back in office to clear up some stuff for tomorrow and counted down the time.

Again I think I'm saying a little too much without getting to the main point.

So I managed to get a cab, and told the driver my home address so that he can take me there. And, you know, being a cab driver and all, we had a conversation of sorts.

``Got a route you want to take?'' He asked.

``Not really. Pick any one that works for you. As long as I get back home, I'm fine,'' I replied.

``Eh, you should know the route better what. Just give me a route lah, not all drivers know how to get to the places that the customer want leh.''

``Well... start from Farrer Road then go via Upper Serangoon?''

``Okay.''

And then the conversation drifted towards claiming for cab fare.

``Wah, so late then you go home. Can claim right?'' He asked

``Should be, but I'm too lazy,'' I replied, a little tired from the day's work.

``Wah lau, you are crazy. Most people will want to claim when they leave past 8pm already.''

``Yeah, but I don't usually do this; only once in a long time. It's not that big a deal... just need to eat less for the next few days since I need to lose some weight after all.''

``Ooo ngia borh, you need to lose weight? Can claim don't want to claim? Sure or not... very rich is it?''

``Not really. Just find that the paperwork for claiming is just too much effort for something that I do only once in a long long while. Seriously, I need to lose some weight after all.''

``Man, people like you, extinct already!''

And of course the conversation went on and on for the thirty odd minutes ride back home. At one point though, he started talking about girls.

``So, you're not married right?''

``Nah... not married.''

``Then got girlfriend already?''

``Nope.''

``Wah! Singapore has so many more girls than guys, and you cannot find a girlfriend, a bit malu right?''

``Nah... it's their loss if they can't see me for who I am.''

``Wah lau, your kind really extinct man. You're what, thirty plus years old?''

``Huh? No way... I'm not even twenty-six yet!''

``Orh, no wonder. Your parents haven't nagged at you?''

``These kinds of things, they should know better. What's yours will be yours, what's not yours will never be yours even if you try to force the issue.''

``Seriously, your kind extinct liao...''

And that was the more interesting excerpts from the ride. I know that I mentioned something about cab driver conversations before, but I've not really caught up on that for quite a while as seen by the dates, and so here it is: a more interesting conversation.

Maybe that's why sometimes I'd rather take the cab than take the public transport...

Love Takes Time

Sometime I chanced upon:

Something a little different, but still from the wistful singer domain.

*sigh*

Run 10km After 30+ Weeks

Strange to be mumbling here once more I suppose, considering that I don't really have much to say in terms of what is going on in life now. Things are moving at a rather quiet but fast pace, and at times I do feel mildly overwhelmed. As usual, most of life revolves around this little thing called work, and thus fall into the ``I should probably not talk about them too much'' territory. On to other topics then.

What's new? So I have an idea. I wanted to train myself progressively so that I can consistently run 10km. And the time duration I set myself is about 30 weeks. That's right, I'm attempting to run 10km consistently within a time period that is slightly longer than half a year. I'm not sure if I can do it, for a variety of reasons, the foremost of which is that I am not exactly the fittest person to begin with, having sat out of physical education and physical training for the last 16+ years. But I have a simple programme, involving interval training and gradual distance increments scaled linealry (less aggressive) that will hopefully allow me to achieve my goal.

Of course the intensity cannot be too high. Recall that I'm still doing my usual twice a week sessions of Aikido. If I were to go on a more aggressive schedule, I'm sure that my muscles wouldn't be too pleased with that.

The goal is just to run 10km consistently---it is not to achieve a certain speed constraint that I would want for the run. I know that my mean running speed is notoriously bad (roughly 8.2km/h, which is about 2km/h slower than the usual speed that people use).

Hopefully I will be successful with this programme. Till next time...

Friday Night Musings?

The local time is Friday late night/Saturday early morning. The only person awake in the household is me alone.

Obviously it is a time for yet another rant about the world. And boy do I have a lot to rant about this time.

So in the last couple of weeks I probably met more people that I have met in the last couple of months, and read more books for recreational reading than in the last couple of months also. Actually saying ``books'' is kind of a misnomer, since I only read one book sporadically over the last couple of weeks. It was, strangely enough, a concise description of philosophy through the use of jokes.

Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar is a nice romp through the immensely complicated world of philosophy, one that I find myself returning to on vacation time and time again. Unlike most philosophy books, whose authors always take themselves too seriously, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar stays on the thin line between comedy and seriousness, using humour as a means of driving home a key understanding of the particular ideals that are associated with a particular branch of philosophy. It's an awesome book for a light read for those of us who can't separate our Heidegger and our Nietzsche, or get wholly existential about the lack thereof knowledge of the oft [mis-]quoted philosophers. I would love to take credit for discovering this book, but the truth is Joanne was the one who recommended it to me. A good read for those who want to have a sufficiently interesting yet pithy survey of philosophical thoughts up to the end of the twentieth century.

Urgh, I would write more, but I think I'm really drained for the day. So until next time.

Late Night Keyboard Mashing

I suppose it is a strange feeling when I start to review the visitor logs for the websites that are under my control. Most of the visitors here are from folks who were looking for lyrics of some sort here and there, while of course there are the loyal few who keep following the blogs to discover my hijinks in this life time.

And then there are the visitors from some weird SEO link farm.

Compared to nearly four years ago, this is a drastic drop in the level of interest in people in looking at the things that I am willing to share. I'm not complaining much, and in some sense, it could be a blessing in disguise given my overall direction towards an isolationist/misanthropic policy.

It is only during the few moments of weakness (like when I'm tired or for some reason unable to sustain the necessary neurotransmitter cocktail that promotes happiness) that I am suddenly reminded of my mortality and relative unimportance in the greater scheme of things, up to and including the operation of the world.

To the loyal few who keep coming back to check on what's going on in my fast-becoming uneventful life, I thank you and hopefully there will be a day that I can meet you in real life once more, if we have been separated for some period of time.

------

I began this blog a few years back as a means of letting out steam in the ways that poems cannot, and it has seen me survive what is possibly the five most confusing years of my life thus far. I suppose that it is still fulfilling its purpose even today, and for that I am really glad this was one of the bandwagons that I decided to hop on nearly half a decade ago.

This blog has seen me through my epic failures in life, some of my triumphs and successes, and importantly through the moments in life when I had serious doubts on many things.

For many people, they seek solace and wisdom through their religion, but for me, I find it most cathartic to just talk about it, either on paper on in a blog like this. It is not so much that I need advice---often that is not the intent when I hastily put together a blog post such as this one. Somehow, having the words appearing in clear on the screen has a certain formal feel to it, allowing an almost retrospective style of thinking through things as I re-read and review what I just wrote to have a sense of what I was going to say.

No, I'm not implying I'm wise. I'm just extolling a little on the virtues of keeping a blog like this one.

In other news, I was recently introduced to Girl Genius. I think it is an awesome comic, because of the premise that the story is set in, as well as the rather cool art work and storyline. As you would have realised from the long list of web comics on the right panel of this blog's main page, I am an avid follower of web comics. Web comics have a certain calming effect on me---the surrealism they exude sometimes are a constant reminder that life itself is not always that serious, and that we should all learn how to laugh about something, anything. Maybe this is a release of the repression that I had to go through when I was younger, raised through a rather strict discipline. But of course, that is merely an academic exercise that is not worth expositing upon.

On yet another rather tangential topic, my social circle is fast shrinking like the aftermath of an aged star collapsing into a black hole. Sure, the sphere itself is shrinking, but the density (and thus intensity) of those who remain are increasing a little so I think there's nothing terribly wrong with things.

But then again, it's not necessary to be popular with everyone, right?

Closure Snafu In Python

Python does not support closures. To use the value of a variable within a lambda expression, rebind the value to a locally defined variable. For instance

accept_set = set([1,2,3])
f = (lambda x, s=accept_set: x in s)
accept_set = set([4,5,6])
print filter(f,range(1,7))

will work as expected from a functional language (i.e. output [1, 2, 3]). But do it without that rebinding

accept_set = set([1,2,3])
f = (lambda x: x in accept_set)
accept_set = set([4,5,6])
print filter(f,range(1,7))

will yield [4, 5, 6] instead.

This is due to Python using pass by reference, and looking up values at run-time. Also, the lack of closures in general.

You Plebians...

It's really sad that even though my poetry blog was the first one I started, and the one that conveys my emotions and thoughts in the most succinct way, people seem to be more interested in hearing me rant like a maniac here.

1リットルの涙 always has a way of making me more sensitive to the essence of human nature. In short, it tends to make me more human in that short period of time that I would ever want to admit in real life. A tear-jerker? Perhaps, but being reminded that I am not the most unfortunate person on the planet has some way of comforting myself, that whatever comes my way cannot be as bad as what some people have to deal with on a daily basis.

Sigh.

I suppose I should stop now, it is late, and it will be a long day ahead.

iAmBack

Some time back, I mentioned the existence of an iPod Shuffle that I managed to get my hands on. gtkpod was working for it for a while, but it got too messy, because most of my music stuff is done on foobar2000, which is not really a Linux program.

Why foobar2000? Because it is awesome with a really small footprint, unobtrusive interface and the ability to play almost every existing audio format that we might want. Of course, it was annoying that I needed that iTunes program to talk to the iPod on Windows XP, and that's why my iPod shuffle has gone the way of the dodo, sitting in a corner gathering dust.

Until now.

foo_dop is a life-saver. Apart from the small snafu of requiring administrator access levels to do the hardware writing, it does a great job in syncing with the hardware from within foobar2000 itself. This means there is new life for my iPod Shuffle, as my running tool. Not because I like Apple products, but because it is sort of unobtrusive when one is running with little extraneous stuff. To be fair, the iPod Shuffle has a really small form factor, and is thus suitable for running with.

Heck, the built-in clip is just screaming to be used for running.

Now I have an excuse to run even longer, with more high tempo music to sustain me.

0.0000000143%

One out of nearly 7 billion people. One out of nearly 3.43 billion males. One out of nearly 5 million Singaporeans. One out of nearly 30 thousand researchers in Singapore. One out of nearly 1 thousand computer science researchers in Singapore. One out of a family of four.

One.

I am just one person on this planet. Just this one person, nothing more, and hopefully nothing less. I am no nobility, nor important person in most contexts; I do not come from a rich nor industrious family. Neither am I particularly famous on my own, be it in financial terms or in raw power or even charisma.

If we were to look even beyond that of this planet we call home, the insignificance is even more staggering. We are just one tiny planet among the multitude of star systems, which are the tiny make up of the galaxies and superclusters and everything else. The total known count of particles in the universe has been estimated to be the eightieth power of ten, while even a normal human has at most ten to the fourtieth power of particles.

One.

No matter how we look at things, the sheer insignificance of a single human start to make one wonder---is it all worth it? Are all the things that we do really worth it?

In many systems, the concept of optimisation seems to be the order of the day. Most dynamic systems will optimise themselves to reduce their potential functions to reach a certain sense of stability, even if the transitions themselves are chaotic in nature. As far as science goes, it is tacitly assumed that the long term outcome of any system will be that where the potential function governing the system is at its global optimal. In some sense, this is codified in the second law of thermodynamics---a system in maximum entropy is taken to be at the most globally optimal configuration, because any other configuration requires an expenditure of energy to do work against the ``nature'' of the system.

But the same cannot be said for human life. Empirically speaking, it would seem to be the case that humans are working against entropy and seeking things that are away from the global optimal configuration of their world. These can be seen from the continual battle between societies and nature, with the creation of artificial domiciles that reside in man-made oases amongst the natural greenery, where the original inhabitants of the land are all but wiped out to satiate the ever-growing lust of space and novelty by humankind.

One.

Perhaps that tirade against humanity in general is too abstract to be comprehended by the mere person, the single entity whose numbers self-organise into the juggernaut known as humanity. Let us try to look at this from a slightly different perspective, but with a similar sort of insight that we are looking for. There are many things that the single person is unwilling to do, for instance, losing a job, or even losing a loved one to either diseases or some catastrophe, man-made or otherwise. But in the larger context, be it in the context of a company or even a country, the concept of ``for the greater good'' keeps appearing as a dictum, and armed with that maxim, sacrifices by the individual have to be made. So, for a company's overall performance, it might be that a single person needs to be fired for incompetence, but to that person fired, it would appear to be ``unfair'' that he/she be axed from the work force like that. To the company, it is exercising a global optimisation option, to optimise the benefit of the larger group that comprise the company, but to the individual, he/she wants to optimise locally, for himself/herself so that he/she can still be a part of the whole, whether or not it is ultimately successful in the global configuration or not.

A similar inductive argument can be made from the level of companies with some other higher hierarchical sytem, with the company playing the old role of the individual and the higher level playing the old part of the company, and ad nauseum. What is the point of it all, you might ask.

Humans are inherently selfish.

This is where my self-doubt comes in. I see myself as a hard core computer scientist, in the sense that I believe strongly that theories of computation are at the core of everything that comprises the universe. I also believe that in many instances, it is often a good idea to operate such that we perform a global optimisation of the system as much as possible to better use the limited resources that we have.

Up to this point, things are mostly idealistic.

And then I look at myself. As noted right in the beginning, I am just a nobody. If I truly believed in my ideals that things ought to be done such as to optimise the global system, then a natural deduction would be that my existence is meaningless and thus is a consumption of resources that produces no useful output. Within the reasoning that I had set forth, I should be thusly removed from the system to better allow other more useful components to get the extra resources to be even more useful.

But by that reasoning, almost all of the other people need to be similarly eliminated because almost everyone else is not contributing to the overall system in a meaningful way. Clearly there is something wrong with that reasoning.

I suppose that part of the problem comes from the human's selfishness/survival instinct, and part of the problem comes from the fact that we are not wholly conversant of the form in which the universal potential function looks like at our granularity. Physicists assume that the laws of physics work exactly the same in spite of the frame of reference/location within the universe, but even they have big issues predicting things that get increasingly local, as can be seen by the current irreconciliation between quantum theories that govern the most local of reactions and relativity that governs the massive scale interactions. If the physicists, who are claimed to be the explainers of reality, cannot figure out the equations that fully describe our universe at all its resolution, then how do we lay people and people of power can claim that what we are doing is indeed ``optimal''?

There's another thing that bears mentioning. In many cases, the potential functions used to determine the state of a system have an asymptotic form---the functions are deemed correct only when given what is effectively a very very long time, infinite in most cases. Unfortunately, this does not translate readily into our local frame of reference, simply because our own existence is often not a very long time. Thus, it might even be logically sound to deduce that we will never truly know what the potential function is. Put in another way, there is no real way of telling what the global optimisation strategy ought to be, because we do not even have a proper model that can describe the system under study.

Put even more simply, we are all operating on a basis of mistakes ever since day one.

In a somewhat roundabout sense, this helps reconcile my doubts of self-worth. While it is true that in the larger scheme of things, I am completely worthless like other people, but if I am happy enough to restrict the domain of discourse, then no one can truly find fault with me for dictating my own terms for a potential function and thus optimise it the way I want.

In short, I think I have justified to myself that being selfish is alright and it is indeed a natural part of being a human. Altruism is a fad and has little to no evidence to support that it is indeed something worthy of pursuit.

But that said, it will take me many a year to undo all that altruistic thought patterns and habits that I have been socially programmed to do over the last two decades of my life. While not going into yet another extreme, I think that this is probably what I need right now to reinject a sense of purpose into what has been a decline into obsoleteness.

World, watch out. I am coming back with a vengeance.

長門 有希

And so I took the plunge.

I sunk in some cash to get a 長門 有希 figurine. I was deciding between Figma and Fraulein Revoltech, and the Revoltech seemed to have won the day.

No, I did not buy it from Japan; there's a nice dude selling them on eBay Singapore. I even managed to get two of her---one brand new in unopened box and one that was opened once that I can use for display.

But of course the question remains: why now? I suppose I just wanted to surround myself with things that make me happy. I have been a big fan of 長門 有希 when I first saw her in the anime 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱, or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Something about her stoic character, high intelligence and impossibly reliable ability to alter reality making me a really big fan of her. She is probably one of the deepest characters in the series, and her powerful sense of reasoning is one thing that I always look forward to when I was watching the anime.

Heh, I don't really have to repeat myself, for I have said something on this a long time ago. Alright, enough for now.

[Ed: And here she is, all geared up with her guitar to rock it out!]

National Day Parade...?

National day eh? I suppose I am around in Singapore during the times that August 9 comes around, and honestly, I've learnt to not take the National Day Parade (NDP) too seriously. The only segment in the NDP that I really enjoy a lot is the initial parade, with all the line-up of the uniformed personnel, and the whole guard-of-honour thing. That portion of the NDP feels more meaningful to me than all the other segments combined, which is usually the main ``meat'' of the show. Somehow seeing the uniformed personnel in formation feels more like a parade than a bunch of loosely connected mass-displays ever was.

Strangely this is something that is completely contradictory to what I used to like in the past---I used to find the parade portion boring and the mass displays portion more interesting. I suppose that tastes change over time, and probably when I was young, I didn't really understand the effort and meaning behind the parade drill, and of course the mass display segments were understandably more alluring due to their colourful combinations of sight and sound. Two-and-a-half years of national service later, I think I have learnt to appreciate what it means to have an armed force capable of providing contingents for a drill parade. There's this certain smugness that I feel each time I see the neat rows and columns of men and women in uniform---I think this shows solidarity of a nation much better than any other mass display can, but that's just my take.

As such, this year's viewing of the NDP over the television was no different from the others---I just watched the early segment of the drill parade and then tuned out to work on some other stuff that I need to do. Incidentally, the stuff I'm working on is related to work, so I shall not talk about that here.

After a year of procrastinating, I have finally procured a new bicycle to replace the boneshaker that I had since national service days. That machine was a second-hand wreck salvaged from Cash Converters a good seven plus years ago, and had undergone quite a bit of restoration works, and have survived at least 3 accidents that I know of. It's no longer that road worthy now (something about shot brakes, misaligned spokes and stuff like that), and so I have decided to get myself another machine that I can use to re-explore the neighbourhood once again, and to get some more exercise. And so I did.

Among the more important things that I did with it was to get it engraved and recorded in the database at the Police Centre as suggested in this circular. So I have a bike that is a little more protected against theft, which is always a good thing.

I never really liked running all that much. The lack of a view, the low stamina of mine, the relatively low speeds all make it a very boring and uncomfortable sport that is not fun. The one and only time that I could run more than 2.4km was when I plugged myself with some relatively high tempo music---I can understand why many runners need to have their music players with them before they can do any form of ``serious'' running.

Anyway, I think that I have digressed a lot by now. Have a happy national day.

Self-Inquiry to Sociability

So really, people terrify me to no end. I've been going on that path of knowledge discovery for so long that I haven't really figured out how best to interact with people not on a professional level. An irony considering the position that I am in, but it can hardly be a trait of mine if it didn't involve at least one contradiction, can it?

I suppose it is for that reason that I never really liked being in large crowds of people---it makes me feel very uncomfortable, sometimes even to the point where I have the sudden urge to be violent or to hide away and not be found. As I reviewd the past decisions that I have made and the things that I have experienced, I seem to have discovered one pattern: I barge into people's lives like the Kool-Aid Man barges into homes, often making people more than a little uncomfortable as I jar them out of their comfort zones rudely.

In retrospect, that's why my past relationships were failures too. Put simply, if I couldn't work out well in the normal social setting, why would it even work out for a more intimate one?

Unfortunately for myself, I'm not really that social in general---most times where I am social, I am on some kind of self-induced high/mania and have this odd pressing need to be extraverted, just like how that old MBTI test said.

But how then do I go about knowing more people on a more personal level?

August Cometh

August. A month that promises much more work than before as things start to kick into full swing with all the projects ramping up to their actual speeds. Since Saturday, I have gone mostly cold turkey with coffee, and am surviving on a slightly less potent source of caffeine, namely green tea. Actually that isn't the whole story either, since I also consume other more ``herbal'' concoctions like the flower teas (hibiscus, chrysanthemum and chamomile). Surprisingly, apart from the massive headache induced partially by a nasal infection and partially by the withdrawal symptoms, nothing much came from it.

So what's new right? That's the question that everyone likes to ask. Nothing much at the moment, perhaps some new thoughts from introspection. Firstly, recall the previous post (and the relyric). The more I listen to it, the more I am convinced that it is highly descriptive of my general situation with regards to the relationship front with females. I do suffer from thinking that I'm matured enough to handle a relationship, and at least in the earliest cases, I did declare a commitment to love to the girl whom I was dating. What a fool I was. At least I started to wise up a little, especially from the last one---I used an alternative L-word that was more accurate in describing my feelings, namely ``like'' instead of ``love''. And of course, I definitely have my moments where the strong emotional need was what that drove me towards initiating a relationship in the first place. This is amply evidenced even in the semi-public entries of this blog, so I shall spare my own embarassment of bringing up the instances here. So what do these all mean? My choice to stay out of things like that seems to be even more justified than before---I think I'm starting to understand what Cui meant by ``knowing what I like first'' or something like that. In spite of my humble boastings of knowing myself pretty well, I think that even I have some places that I'm currently incapable of exploring alone, and perhaps that temporarily taboo place is defining what it is that I like in general, from my career path, to the type of mate I am looking for. I suppose these deep and rather subjective portions are sufficiently alien to me that I am unconsciously fearful to tread and explore. This is where having access to a therapist would be useful, but this place being Singapore, if I did seek a counsellor to talk about these things, it would probably end up as being yet another attribute for people to add stigma to.

Self-exploration. I suppose that's why these days I'm a little more introspective than before, as I consciously and unconsciously dig deeper into my psyche to discover all these things that have never really surfaced before. Perhaps once I can figure out what these things are, I will be in a better shape to get involved in relationships again.

Secondly, I got a Dingoo A330, a portable gaming console that works by having a ton of emulators on it. It's a nifty device with a decent battery life of around 8 hours (reported). Helps keep those compiling/simulation times less boring and stressful.

I'd write more, but I'm really tired and it is really late and it is a work day tomorrow.

动不动就说爱我

Another new album set that I had, and I found this gem:(Can't find the version that I have.)

动不动就说爱我——百合二重唱

离别后也没有什么会让我更难过的理由
只不过很想让泪水 痛快一次的泛流
每个人都错 错在自己太成熟
轻易让爱上心头 ｢让爱上心头｣
动不动就说爱我 谁又量过爱多久
才能当作一生的承诺
留不留你又如何 一旦尘埃落地后
就让泪水洗清我伤口
是不是人都难免有感动得忘了我的时候
一颗心变得好脆弱 需要多情的温柔
每个人都错 错在自己无保留
轻易让爱上心头 ｢让爱上心头｣
动不动就说爱我 也不问我要什么
给一个捉不到的承诺
留不留你又如何 反正你还是要走
只盼望别踩痛我伤口

For the translation, check out the relyric I wrote here. The relyric attempts to capture the story/lesson that this song is trying to tell.

Perhaps this is the song that all the women I have dated want to sing to me.

Ech, Tuesday?

A bat of the eye, and suddenly it is Tuesday all over again. My sore calf muscles have mostly recovered from the 5.2km run that I took on a whim last Saturday night, and I have largely snuggled up against the new 1980s mando-pop CD set that I have bought off eBay Singapore.

I'm not sure about other people, but I find that when I live my life out, there are time periods that have a certain ``theme'' associated with them. For instance, some times there is the ``I'm a martial arts hero'' theme and I find my Aikido training producing really good results, with much better knowledge retention of the techniques and concepts. Some days, I find myself gravitating more to the ``I'm a musician'' theme, and then I keep playing the multitude of musical instruments that I have lying around. Yet there are other days that I feel like a philosopher and start thinking/writing about the things that I observe around me, mostly about how society is on the route of collapse, and how many of the perceived social norms are really lousy habits in disguise.

So what about these themes? They govern to a certain a degree the type of music that I listen to, which can span from ballads to progressive rock/death metal, to purely instrumental pieces featuring instruments from the West, East and more complicated lineages (like the Theremin). Well that's just one direction of the equivalence operator, since the choice of music itself can affect the ``theme'' that I am in that day.

Okay, I'm not sure if I'm making sense there, so I'll just stop. One itching eyeball is enough to drive me insane, and I think some sleep will probably help deal with it.

Maybe when I'm a little up to it, I will rant about some of the things that I have been thinking about for a while.

Yet Another Song Rediscovered

OMG. I've been looking for this song for a long time: never could remember the name.

牵引——邓妙华

如果我们俩从来不曾相恋
泪水不会占据我的眼
如果你的心还有一点牵挂
不会将我孤独的留下

我不愿回顾 因为在记忆深处
思念常刺痛我心灵
人生旅程 充满艰辛和坎坷
我需要你的双手牵引

The lyrics are short, but they are quite salient to how things can be in and out of a relationship. Lyrics courtesy www.inkui.com.

Time to really look into the 80s/90s music again.

Finite Simple Group of Order Two

Can't talk about Nerdcore without this classic:

Finite Simple Group of Order Two------The Klein Four Group

The path of love is never smooth
But mine's continuous for you
You're the upper bound in the chains of my heart
You're my Axiom of Choice, you know it's true

But lately our relation's not so well-defined
And I just can't function without you
I'll prove my proposition and I'm sure you'll find
We're a finite simple group of order two

I'm losing my identity
I'm getting tensor every day
And without loss of generality
I will assume that you feel the same way

Since every time I see you, you just quotient out
The faithful image that I map into
But when we're one-to-one you'll see what I'm about
'Cause we're a finite simple group of order two

Our equivalence was stable,
A principal love bundle sitting deep inside
But then you drove a wedge between our two-forms
Now everything is so complexified

When we first met, we simply connected
My heart was open but too dense
Our system was already directed
To have a finite limit, in some sense

I'm living in the kernel of a rank-one map
From my domain, its image looks so blue,
'Cause all I see are zeroes, it's a cruel trap
But we're a finite simple group of order two

I'm not the smoothest operator in my class,
But we're a mirror pair, me and you,
So let's apply forgetful functors to the past
And be a finite simple group, a finite simple group,
Let's be a finite simple group of order two
(Oughter: "Why not three?")

I've proved my proposition now, as you can see,
So let's both be associative and free
And by corollary, this shows you and I to be
Purely inseparable. Q. E. D.

Lyrics courtesy of sweetlyrics.com.

Where Are All The Girls?

Nerdcore! Man, I used to listen to these back in college. Now I feel like an old man. Blech!

Nostalgia

This used to be my favourite song. It still is, but it can be rather depressing, in spite of its up-tempo feel. Also note that since this song is from the 90s, the MTV and the music have almost nothing to do with each other...

Why------Tiggy

Na na na na, Na na na
Na na na na, Na na na
Na na na na, Na na na
Na na na na, Na na na

Standing beside you
wishing you'd always be close to me
And how can I tell you
every night I see you in my dreams

Believe me
don't be me
I would never let you go

Why, why do this have to be a fantasy
Let's make our love become reality
Oh, how I pray for that day to come
When we'll be joined together close as one
together close as one

I feel the passion
Burning deep inside my soul
And you're the solution
I know you'd catch me if I fall

Believe me,
don't be me
I would never let you go

(Why...) Why, why do this have to be a fantasy
Let's make our love become reality
Oh, how I pray for that day to come
When we'll be joined together close as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one

Don't be me, don't be me
I would never let you go

Why, why do this have to be a fantasy
Let's make our love become reality
Oh, how I pray for that day to come
When we'll be joined together close as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one (Na na na na, Na na na)
Together as one

Lyrics courtesy LetsSingIt.

Risible...

Chew on this (adapted from WordSmith.org's A.Word.A.Day newsletter):

risible, adjective

1. laughable; ludicrous
2. disposed to laugh
3. relating to laughter

From Latin risus, past participle of ridere (to laugh). Other words that share the same root are ridiculous, deride, rident, and riant.

Remember Ris Low? Coincidence in the choice of name? You decide...

Love is...

Not sure if I had put this one up before:Image from Three Panel Soul.

Soliloquy Deux

Strange what a good night's sleep can do. I suppose things are a little better in my head space after some decent sleep. But of course, that doesn't preclude me from rescinding from the choices I have made; though it does lend things a new light that I can probably use right now about how things should go. And I suppose I'm not able to see past the choice that I have made since I don't really understand it.

Time to do some mind-diving and introspection once more.

Soliloquy

Some things can be changed in a person, while there are a great many that cannot be. In my case, I suppose the whole misanthropic ideal is probably the most unchanging trait within me. I ventured out of my shell for quite a few years now, and somehow I find the experience not particularly exhilirating---getting out of one's shell makes one vulnerable.

And the last thing I want to be is to be vulnerable.

Weakness is one thing that I seem to refuse to acknowledge in any of its forms. It's probably a character flaw/trait, but I don't really care about it. So many things have come and gone; I used to trust in people, now I trust almost no one. It is not too hard a decision really, but some habits take a little bit of time to break. It is frustrating to always have to put on a mask that makes me more friendly than I really am---in many ways, I never really grew up. That child-like curiousity that I am so proud of is also the same trait that is causing my eventual downfall, as I never really progressed beyond what I had up to the age of eighteen or twenty.

Forever the immature one, right? I call bullshit.

That is just a perception, like everything else. And like every single kind of perception, it is alterable. Just because I maintain my curiousity doesn't mean that I have ``not grown up''; what it really means is that I have figured out how to meld the positive traits from the past with the ridiculous social mores that is in the present and future.

I'm just tired of people in general. It's tautologous---I think they don't understand me enough, so I don't share, and I don't share because they don't understand me enough. I have told many people that trying to ``know me'' is a rather dangerous and delicate procedure---that headspace of mine is fairly warped by this stage, and any attempt to try and make sense of what is going on is just leading one down the path of unadulterated insanity.

I am, as they might call it, a failed human. Failed in the physical sense, and now, failed in the mental sense. Put it even more bluntly, I'm fucked up in the head. Woo-wee. Do I enjoy being fucked up in the head? That's... hard to answer, because the concept of pleasure and pain is one that I have long learnt to not bother identifying, since either outcome is going to lead to an eventual discomfort that radiates throughout my very being.

If I were purely good or purely evil, obviously things would have been much easier, since there is literally a paragon that can serve as a guide to how one ought to behave. But of course, life with its tortuous roads is nothing like that, and I find myself perpetually stuck in that in-between place that causes the most grief and pain for everyone, including myself.

I don't know why I have this sudden... distaste of people. I used to have small bouts of it, but recently, this has become something more chronic. I can only venture a guess or two as to why the outcomes are so, but really, I'm just tired. Tired of the drama, tired of having to deal with people at the emotional level. Tired of being an actor; tired of being a spectator. Tired of taking charge, tired of merely following orders. Tired of being in the limelight, tired of being in the background.

I'm all messed up in the head.

No wonder people don't like me. No wonder relationships don't work out. No wonder I keep causing trouble for myself. No wonder my luck runs out. All these things are starting to make sense now, and I am seriously starting to consider taking really radical steps to just lobomotise away the messed up parts.

Unfortunately, science doesn't work that way and I find myself living through yet another day as a zombie whose brain had been enslaved by the very metaphysical entity of ``productive work''. It's a sad life really, having little to look forward to except to the glorious day when my body fails me once and for all and I die, peacefully or otherwise. Maybe death is the only true source of salvation for the likes of me, where the social barometers within ourselves are completely broken beyond repair.

And in spite of my time of need, I actively push everyone away, close or otherwise. Perhaps this is related to my concept of weakness---I don't want to appear weak. Or perhaps it is just me not knowing how to consult others for help, internally still paranoid at what people can do with the little information that they have on me.

Normalcy is among the last things for me I suppose. If I have to trade 10 years of life to one year of being an eccentric, I think with high probability I wouldn't mind doing that just to be someone who is cursorily unwilling to follow the mores of society for the sake of being a follower.

And once more, why do I say all these? Is there an overarching theme that I am trying to present? That is for all the aspiring psychoanalysts to decide. I'm out of here for now.

Failure?

And so ends another concert.

Last night was the second major public concert that my Chinese Orchestra and I put up that I was involved in (the previous one was chronicled here). There were little hijinks that occurred, almost everything went smoothly---all in all, it was a fairly sucessful performance.

It's a strange feeling though. I probably invited more people this time to turn up for the concert that the one in the past, and I suppose that the attrition rate is much lower this time round. The folks who did turn up seemed to enjoy the music, so I guess it wasn't that bad. In spite of the overall feel-good factor of the performance, I've not really managed to shake a certain hollow feeling that is within me.

And then it hit me---persona non grata. Three years of intermittent appearance at the orchestra had made me even more distant from the group that I had literally grown up with. That's where the hollowness comes from. I was there, but not there---just a surreal entity attached to an organically developed group that has since taken a life on its own. I was with the music, but I was not with the people. I feel more and more like That Guy, the one who just happens to be somewhat tolerated because he was useful, and not because he was cool to hang out with.

I don't know. I think I shouldn't really be upset about this, but then again, I feel like I have been a failure at life. A has-been. Sometimes when it is quiet and I'm nowhere near anyone, I start to think about all kinds of complicated thoughts and go all depressed and panicky. But I suppose that's how life is eh?

Looks like the road ahead is no different from the one I left behind when I left for my studies in the US... I have no idea where I'm going with this narrative, so I'm just going to stop here. Maybe next time...

For the Experience

So I think that there're a few things that I've slowly learnt over the past few weeks, and here are just some of my thoughts.

Firstly, Singaporeans have one common problem. The whole idea that doing something is ``for the experience''. I mean, that is plain ridiculous. Why is this canned response so popular here? Why can't we begin any endeavour with the mentality that we want to achieve a certain tangible goal other than just experience? It gets exasperating at times to hear people say things like that, particularly when they are being interviewed by the media. This is probably among the worst ``politically correct'' answers that one can give, because it demonstrates one crucial point: we do not seem to have that critical thinking element that is oh-so important in the world today. To not admit defeat and claim that it was ``a good experience'', we are molly-codling ourselves into a false sense of security, in that we think that we have not really failed in any sense. That is a classic example of evading the issue at hand. Note that this is different from saying something like ``yes I failed, but here are the other things that I have found out''---this other way of representation may appear cursory similar to the ``politically correct'' version, but the nuance demonstrated is far from being the same. In the former, there is an air of resignation, the demonstration of a lack of wherewithal to actually learn from what happened, while in the latter, the active voice shows a completely different picture. We should all strive towards a more critical form of thinking, and to actually learn from the experience, instead of saying some vague quasi-politically correct statement.

Secondly, problem-solvers cannot really stay in one place for too long. The rationale for this little assertion is straightforward---problem-solvers go where the problems are, and once the problems for a source dry up, they go on to another location to look for new ones to solve. Thus, staying at one place for too long is detrimental to the mental health of the problem-solver, whose mantra is to solve problems that they encounter, since the number of questions to be solved in a particular location is finite and will dry up eventually. This is of course a rather abstract and metaphorical allusion that doesn't sound rather grounded in reality, so here's a more explicit explanation of what I am really trying to say. I don't think I can settle down that easily, since at heart I'm a problem-solver---solving problems are what makes me feel happy. Okay, not happy, but at least sufficiently contented. Problem-solving as a hobby is a rather masochistic endeavour, since one is paradoxically expending a lot of energy at a task that one is supposed to be doing ``in leisure''. I find that throughout the years, only two things I don't really get sick of doing---making music and solving problems. That of course doesn't mean that I can do the same thing for a few hours (that's painful), but at the very least, I have more than a passing interest in such matters. People strive for material gains, while my wants are more complicated---I thrive on knowledge. That is my opiate for happiness (or at least, contentment) and life.

Lastly, something a little more light-hearted. I found my previous blog colour scheme too depressing (not as depressing as that green-on-black monstrosity I first started out with) and have jazzed it up a little with some of the new doodads that Blogger seems to have introduced. While I'm not completely impressed, there is a certain lighter feel to it, kind of uplifting in fact. Of course, I tuned the layout a little so that even on Edythe-EEE, the page looks fine. Overall I think things are not too bad now.

So what else am I working on? A lot of other projects, quite a few of the time-sappers are for work, while I have the usual pile of projects that I've always wanted to work a little on. Maybe I will get to work on all the stuff that I want to eventually. Meanwhile, work beckons.

Till next time.

GNU Screen Commands Redux

Some important commands for GNU Screen, the text-based output multiplexer:

To do this...	Do this...
Make a new session/reconnect old one	screen -U -dRR sessionname
Detach session	C-a d
Split horizontally	C-a S
Split vertically(!)	C-a |
Remove this split region	C-a X
Remove all but this split region	C-a Q
Jump to next split region	C-a Tab
New window	C-a c
List windows	C-a w
Copy mode/pause	C-a [

Filtered from here.

There are of course more comands that GNU Screen supports, but these are the few that I find to be most useful especially when working over a ssh link, since I can monitor several outputs at the same time. Bear in mind that due to the nature of multiplexing, having split screens/regions can cause a slow connection to appear a tad slower.

Argle Bargle

(Warning, highly biased and semi-nonsensical rant to follow.)

And so it is just about the time for the end of the first week that I am back in the office after a week's worth of leave taken, and I must say, I feel much more different now as compared to before. I feel somewhat energised, and things don't seem as painful as it once seem. My focus is returning, and I'm starting to realign my mind to the things that matter the most at this point in time, and this [un]surprisingly doesn't really include the concept of romance. I probably won't go as far as saying that I am no longer interested in romance, but the mere thought of getting involved in a romance at this point in time is somewhat distasteful.

In case you are still kind of oblivious about what is going on, Mint and I are no longer seeing each other that way.

Strangely, it is liberating, as I slowly relearn what made me tick all these years. That misanthropy that I was hiding all these years have finally manifested itself even more, and I am starting to re-erect all those mental and emotional barriers that I once had. Those battlements are in serious need of repair after having allowed myself to let people in only to get hurt in one way or another.

Meh.

Does this make me any less of a human? Perhaps, but really, I don't care. The old philosophy that no one will be there for me seems to hold even stronger than before, and thus I am re-realising that the only force that I can rely on is just me. People come, people go; even the best of friends may one day be put in an awkward position that renders them ineffectual, like how many of my friends have been over the past few years.

Reliance is weak. I admit that at one point or another, I have to rely on someone to help me, to guide me. But I think that the stubbornness/determination that has carried me through the years will come in handy once more, for at the end of the day, the degree of helplessness is highly dependent on the individual's mental state---think that you are weak, then you will be weak, likewise if you think that you are strong, you will be strong.

Is this a form of regression? That has been a question that has been bugging me for a while after all that had happened, from the past to the present, and at one point in my life, I seemed to have thought so, which was why I was always actively seeking an Other who will be there for me. And then I realise that in this generation, the whole concept of an Other is mostly moot. This is a loveless world---it had always been a loveless world. People gather together only if there's some form of incentive, be it economic or some other utilitarian purpose. There's a reason why arranged marriages of the past work---they work not because the couple involved truly ``loved'' each other, but that there was significant economic incentive for them to wed. Heck, this idea was explored even in my Introduction to Anthropology course back when I was still in CMU. Given the modern environment where self-sufficiency is not frowned upon but even strongly encouraged, it becomes even less of an incentive for any two people to get together for any long period of time. Just take a look at the high divorce rates for an anecdotal proof of the point that I am making here.

The once sacro-sanct notion of marriage is just an elaborate scam that people perpetuate in the name of face. Consider the expenses involved, both monetarily and emotionally, and you'll also see what I mean. The whole concept of bliss and happiness is yet another scam that people perpetuate to justify their actions. While I accede to the fact that there are some needs that cannot be met alone (sexual needs for instance), for almost everything else there's a way to deal with. If coupling or marriage were that important, then why in one of the world's oldest civilisations do they have the practice of having people wander the world to gain spirituality even after being married with children?

Scams, lies, shams. Very strong words used indeed, and I do not apologise for their use. I'm just jaded, jaded with human society, jaded at what is mostly a failed attempt at being someone I am not really meant to be. Bending over most of the time to please people, making myself miserable ever so often, trying to change myself all the fscking time---there has to be a point in time where things like that need to change.

That time is now.

While I have said that I'd swear off relationships each time a break-up occurs, I have never really kept my bargain of it, because I am innately human; I keep believing in this poison called ``hope''. Hope is a poison because it is an artificially optimistic perspective, and for a long time I have placed strong faith in it. A quarter of a century later, I have known better---my trust of ``hope'' drops exponentially each time I get a failure in the same thing that I am working on. Am I then claiming athat I am really going to swear off relationships forever? No, because then I'd be lying to myself. I am, however, even more nonchalant about how relationships pan out now, and will make good the promise to myself to not be too involved in it. If a nice girl comes along and we click somehow, maybe I will poke and prod a bit to see if things can progress; if it can't, too bad, move on, alone or not.

There is literally no incentive to be committed in a relationship from the beginning, because people are fickle and once they know that they have a certain power over you, you will end up being the one who is going to be completely hurt. And guess what, I'm sick of getting hurt already. I once said that the only way to love is to love completely because there's no other way to love since a lack of complete love means regret if things didn't work out. So naïve. Complete love has a bad-ass cousin called complete hurt, and that's what I keep submitting myself to. Time to protect myself.

I think my disillusionment with life is getting more complete than before, man one day I'm going to be a grumpy old man if I'm not careful. Anyway, that's about as much poison I will rant about for now. Time to get back to my happy little world of knowledge assimilation.

Total Eclipse of the Heart

This song is fairly odd till the last stanza, where it starts to make a little more sense...

Regex Sub-language Selection

To use grep to find things with spaces (or to have a generally more powerful Regex syntax akin to that of Perl or Python), use:

grep -P

as a part of the incantation.

Ho-hum

Feels funny to be writing here once more, not because I'm no longer comfortable with writing, but that between the last update and this one, many things have changed. Oh, and the fact that my left index finger has some nail issues which causes me to lose quite a fair bit of typing ability, but as usual I digress.

So anyway, I have been rather jaded/down for the last couple of months, partially due to the stresses of work, and partially due to the various stresses in life. And as each day passes, I'm slowly starting to realise that I am actually fairly decoupled from the material world, in the sense that I can live with really very little things that are available from the material condition. This slow understanding of my own condition comes as a part of my general evaluation of the direction with which my life is currently taking, from the three paths of work, personal and play. It is just that with all the work and stresses that I have been put into, I have little time to sit down and partake in a little introspection---the moments in time where I can really sit back and consider all things past and present and plan about the future, wondering about the greater significance of it all.

Needless to say, having a week's leave is something that is rather welcome at this point in time, as someone once said ``if you don't plan to take your leave, you never will take the leave because work is never-ending''. This is particularly pertinent given what has occurred just a few days back---my budding relationship with Mint has gone on a ``two steps forward one step back'' stint. I don't really want to talk about things here (that's what a diary is for), but I suppose it does put a lot of things into perspective to a large degree. Many questions were raised, and many more to be answered, and at the end of it all, only time and fate can tell what the future truly brings.

Enough of the depressing stuff though. Thinking about the past, present and future does have some interesting consequences, and it is for things like that I am glad I actually took that one week leave. Hell, I think I should have taken the leave a long time ago, and have I done that, I would probably be in a better shape than now. As I mull about the future from the present, I realise that slowly, the very fabric of reality itself is morphing, not always for the better, but certainly changing enough that it keeps things somewhat exciting.

Aikido. This is one of the couple of things that I am using to keep myself sane, and for the most part, I am really glad to have taken it up when I had the chance. Apart from the generally good workout it provides, there's also a strong understanding of what my body and mind are capable of as I try out the various manoeuvres that are available within the martial art. I've been living a mostly sedentary life for quite a long while, and thus having the opportunity to finally have the chance to work out my body is something that I truly cherish a lot.

So much for the random update for now.

Anachronism

The intimacy granted by a superiorly designed writing instrument is as pleasurable as the sweet love that two lovers make with each other. The ampleness of the barrel coupled with the softest of caresses needed for the nib to touch the paper to let the smoothest of ink to flow unimpeded is almost as sinful as the uninhibited emotions that the lovers share with each other in the purest of ways.

But sweet seductive imagery aside, after having my fountain pen for nearly a year since my graduation (a gift from my mum, who had asked me what I might want for graduation), I must say that I have really grown to appreciate how a fountain pen works. As noted in the epithet earlier, it is a real spiritual experience just to wield the pen between the thumb and forefinger, and to feel the gliding sensation of the nib on the surface. Of course, one of the outcomes from using a high quality fountain pen is that one would not really print letters but write them with a more cursive style---the very fluid style that just begs to be used with such a nice instrument. It is a pity that the modern day person is largely ignorant of the fountain pen. Disposable ball-point pens, gel-inked pens and the what not dominate the current writing landscape, and while I am not against their use, I still maintain that the fountain pen is such a wonderful writing instrument that one would forgo all these other writing tools just to have the comfort level that is afforded only by the fountain pen itself. I know I have.

But what is the aim of writing all this? It is not merely an exercise of typing English text out on a keyboard---there is of course a theme that I am alluding to here. This theme that I am subtly talking about refers to that of my anachronistic tendencies.

While in many ways I am a techie, computer science degree and all, at heart I am still one who cherishes the past that has occurred. Unlike those who follow that path, I do not like things about the past because I believe that the past is inexplicably timeless with an elegance that transcends all of reality---I'm still a rational realist after all. However, I do find that some of the artefacts that come from the past have a certain aesthetic about them that is sort of lost in the march of technology; it amazes me to end to learn that people of the past have reached dizzying heights of technology progress in spite of having techniques and materials that are much simpler than now. In many ways, my fascination with the anachronistic can be seen as a tribute to the ingenuity that our predecessors have to demonstrate to come up with workable ideas at a time that was devoid of all the progress that we have now.

Take the slide rule for example. The ability to compute traditionally annoying functions without having to keep too many things on one's head, all reduced to a short 10-inch form factor. Sure, the 10-inch netbook that is popular these days can probably do more, but slide rules are easily recreated technology (try to build your own netbook from scratch), and they run practically forever (the 8-hour battery life means absolutely nothing), and can compute things up to three significant figures of accuracy. The elegance of such anachronistic devices never cease to amaze me, and it is one of my life's goals to actually seek out and learn how do all these ``lost'' devices work and how they are made; perhaps some time in thei future, their need might arise again.

Duality (Part 2)

(First part begins here.)

So the last time I talked here I was referring to how the two seemingly contradictory maxims of what absence can do to a person with regards to the remembrance and camaraderie are both completely wrong due to the grayness in which the ``hard rules'' of the world apply to. That was, of course, made at a moment that was rather late at night (4am in the morning) and with the general realisation at that point in time that the people that I once knew from the past are just going to stay there where I last left them---in the past. It is not so much as a piece demanding strong scrutiny, but more of a piece that highlights the duality of reality that we sometimes fail to appreciate.

In many of life's happenings, we find that there are many instances where we ask ourselves if something that had happened to us was indeed ``bad'' and worry greatly about what might happen to us after that, i.e. the consequences of it all. Of course it is true that we will always have to deal with the consequences of our actions (it is only the privileged few that can get away from everything), but what occurs after that is something that is worth thinking about separately and away from the rather myopic perspective of mere cause and effect. The fallacy of it all is to assume that the single outcome of a single effect will be the only factor that will affect our affect and effect---what I mean is that we are always assuming that the one outcome that occurred will be the deciding factor that will change our moods and to change the series of consequences that we might have to deal with. The truth is often more complicated than it seems; while it sounds more rational to identify the root cause of a particular outcome, upon further thought, the conclusion that is drawn is often a little more different---the discovered ``root'' cause is mostly the straw that broke the camel's back. There is often an accumulation of factors that started off small and fairly insignificant, before snowballing into a monstrosity that one has to eventually fend off (and declare to be the root cause of it all). The astute person will often try to correct for all these small issues in the hope of averting certain disaster, or at least, certain predictable disaster.

Predictability. We assume in many cases that things are predictable, to a certain degree. Drop a ball from a height off the ground, and you expect the ball to fall downards to the ground. The very essence that defines science is based on the notion of falsifiability and predictability, or at least, the notion that we can tell with some level of confidence what an outcome might be given the starting conditions (or part thereof). Predictability is at times reassuring, but its dual is also true, namely that predictability can also be a very boring affair. Perhaps being a little unpredictable can lead to something that is more meaningful, for if you already knew the output of a computer program, would you still want to run the program? Put in another way, if you can fully predict your life, would you still want to live your life out then?

Why all these jumping about, one might ask. And I reply, why not? I'm attempting to demonstrate the duality of reality that permeates, and to suggest that perhaps by paying attention to its existence that we can finally learn the true meaning of happiness, which ought to be seen as the life path of the most moderate belief that one can summon. Only then will the dicta of common sense appeal most strongly to that of the rational mind.