I am a Rolling Stone [Gathering No Moss]

``A rolling stone gathers no moss.''

I suppose that's why I am the way I am now. While many might be happy with the lot of life they are given, I'm never one to accept my fate as is, always wanting to fight upwards and onwards, even if this means that I have to leave behind communities of people just to take on the next step of my journey. Maybe I'm more mercenary than I thought, maybe I'm more introverted than I care to actually confess to be; while I lament about how old friends no longer keep in touch with me because of how life turns out, sometimes I too forget how I drop contact with some of the people who are no longer that relevant to me.

Clearly I have been ruminating too much about things. That's hardly new, considering that I had not stepped out of the house for 2 days now. Unsecretly, the starting quote for this entry is also the reason why I am still not in a committed relationship---I still have unfinished business and cannot settle down just yet. Maybe I'm not as ambitious as those entrepreneurs with their start-ups, but I still have some goals in life that I need to achieve, and at this point, that seems much more compelling than the whole ``get settled down and have children'' bit. But who knows what the future might bring?

Okay, enough of random rambling. Back to work.

Inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011

Alright, the inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011. Unlike the previous two stories (A Slice of Life with a Twist of Lemon and Towards Cacophony) that formed a series on their own, this one is of a completely new flavour. The major difference here is that there is only one very obvious protagonist, as opposed to the two different people (Heng Kar and Kah Hao) of the previous novels. I have kept the first/third-person narrative styles like before, only to add some variety to the story, giving first-person perspectives on story parts that are less action based and third-person for the action-y stuff.

Anyway, here's the dramatis personae (wow it has been a while since I used that term) for Modern Office Warrior as gotten from my idea file:

Duo-zhuo

Duo-zhuo's the one true protagonist of this novel, and everything that we are talking about is about him in this story. There are still interleaving storylines at play here, but there is no separation between them with regards to what he is doing. The name ``Duo-zhuo'' was designed with a pun in mind; it shares an almost similar phonetic spelling for 多做, which is Mandarin for ``doing a lot''. I wanted to evoke this notion of how Duo-zhuo is doing a lot of things, yet not really having much of an outcome. His life story is pretty much the ``corporate warrior'', doing thinsg within the company and loathing how his psychotic boss keeps causing havoc for him. Of course, this story is about how he found an outlet for that to make life more bearable...

Jimmy Zhan

Not much of a main character, really. Jimmy is more of the ``adventure man'' that I wanted to introduce to give Duo-zhuo a reason to get his ass out of his office and dreary life and get out there to do stuff. And the stuff I've chosen for them to do is Geocaching.

Dan

Not much is known about Dan, since some time after the first third of the novel, he gets fired for doing some rather questionable things. Dan represents the overachieving recent graduate who will stop at nothing just to be the best that can be, from the best ``team player'' to the ``best performing employee''. Not necessarily a bad thing, but given the way things turned out, yeah.

FunnyBoy and FunnyGal

Minor role characters that feature in the first major Geocaching adventure, they are an amalgamation of a few real life geocaching people that I know. I put them there mostly to make the first Geocaching activity that Duo-zhuo takes part in less awkward.

And as usual, there are quite a few minor characters here and there that help advance the story and provide hooks that I will not go into detail.

As for locations, I drew inspiration of the layout of my old office for the corporate scenes, embellishing where necessary, while the outdoor stuff is based on several real-life locations that I had been to on some of the most crazy and insanely fun Geocaching trips that I had done. The whole ``oh no walk into mud'' theme features strongly in the second extended Geocaching adventure in the story because I found it funny to just put Duo-zhuo and Jimmy into situations that I hope to never have to deal with in Geocaching. Also, the extended adventure is completely fabricated---it is technically impossible to design such a Geocache within the current rule set for the real game.

So, why Modern Office Warrior, why isn't it some corporate work-centric story? I believe that ``warrior'' here is meant to evoke a more general feeling of taking on life and all the complications surrounding it, as opposed to ``fighting'' the bureaucracy that is within the corporate environment.

Alright, I think that's enough of an insight to the inspiration for this year's NaNoWriMo entry. I'm still not sure if I can or should do NaNoWriMo next year, but we will see how that goes.

Duo-decade December

It feels like a while since I wrote anything here, and so here I am now.

This month is strange, in the sense that in the beginning of the first half of the month, I was rather existential, wondering about a lot of things regarding why I was here and all the usual things that being existential entailed. Then when things seem Worst, a light shone upon the path that I should take, and now here I am, taking that path.

I think I'm starting to appreciate the type of freedom that I am getting, now that the ``honeymoon'' first semester is over, where, to my utter regret, I probably spent more time trying to get used to the place and notion that I was in graduate school as opposed to being in undergraduate classes. Now that that is over and done with, I can finally focus myself on the things that matter the most.

But enough of the depressing stuff! November was NaNoWriMo, and I think I'm a little obliged to shed some light on the inspiration behind this year's novel, which can be gotten from here, like where all the other novels are. I will do so in the next post just to not mar it with my own rantings.

This month marks the continuation of my geocaching adventure, and completed my first 5/5 cache (The Journal) with my caching buddy here johnayuen. That one was a little nasty; it took us three trips (including the one that he took nearly a year ago) and lots and lots of hiking to get through in order to get to the final location. I will probably put that tale up some time later, so keep your eyes peeled.

Meanwhile, let me write up the inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011 first. =P

Trapped

Funny how when I'm ``trapped'' in my apartment/room I actually have so much to talk about on my blogs. Actually, come to think of it, it isn't really funny but quite sad, and is probably systematic in terms of what it entails. It is not that I don't want to be in the office/lab to get stuff done---it's cold out, I'm running out of clothes because of a lack of laundry time and I have a nice set up at home that allows me to work from the relative comfort of the apartment. The only caveat is that I don't really get to exercise my vocal cords nor social skills, but it is a small price to pay compared to having to dress up and cycling in the cold towards the office/lab.

My place suffered a drop in power yesterday, which promptly knocked out Elyse since I didn't load a battery in her. Eileen worked fine only because her battery is always inside, so I can't do what I usually do with batteries---take them out so that they don't ``overcharge'' (note: lithium batteries cannot overcharge because of the protective circuitry in place). So now, as a type of UPS, I stuff Elyse with the bay battery when she's on. Weird that such a thing happens though.

With the shortening of the daylight hours and the relatively horrible positioning of the dinner table/work table with respect to the only light in the living room, I'm so glad I bought a desk lamp. Now I can actually be up and do things and hopefully make progress.

Anyway, sleepy time. Till the next rant.

粉雪

It has begun:

粉雪------レミオロメン

粉雪舞う季節はいつもすれ違い
人ごみに紛れても同じ空見てるのに
風に吹かれて似たように凍えるのに

僕は君のすべてなど知ってはいないだろう
それでも一億人から君を見つけたよ
根拠はないけど本気で思ってるんだ

些細な言い合いもなくて同じ時間を生きてなどいけない
素直になれないなら喜びも悲しみも空しいだけ

僕は君の心に耳を押し当てて
その声のする方へすっと深くまで
降りてゆきたいそこでもう一度会おう

分かり合いたいなんて
上辺を撫でていた（なでていた）のは僕のほう
君の悴んだ（かじかんだ）手も握り閉めることだけで繋がってたのに

粉雪ねえ永遠を前にあまりに脆く
ざらつくアスファルトの上染みになってゆくよ

粉雪ねえ時に頼りなく心は揺れる
それでも僕は君のこと守り続けたい

粉雪ねえ心まで白く染められたなら
２人の孤独を包んで空に返すから

Lyrics courtesy Anime Lyrics. And the translation:

Konayuki (Powder Snow)------Remioromen

Season of snow powder always come
Although we are mixed up with a mass of people
we are looking on the same sky
Blown by the wind, and we are chilled by it

I may not know everything about you
Nevertheless, I've found you among 100 million of people
There's no proof but I'm very serious of it

It's impossible to live in the same time with no single quarrel
If we can't be honest, happiness and sadness are just meaningless

If the snow powder may whiten deep to our heart
Could we both share our loneliness?

I would press my ear near to your heart
And go down deep into the place where I hear that voice and meet you once again

We want to understand each other
It's me who softly brush the surface
Just by tightly gripping your numb and cold hand
We are tied to each other

Snow powder is too fragile
In front of us, keep on leaving stains on the rough asphalt forever

Snow powder does not rely on time, moving our heart
Nevertheless, I'd still like to keep on protecting you

If the snow powder may whiten deep to our heart
It will cover both our loneliness and return it to the sky...

Translation courtesy Anime Lyrics.

You don't really need to know the translation to be affected by the meaning of the song. Feels a little apt in view of winter that has just arrived.

English Assessment...?

What a week of self-doubt. I can never understand why I am such a walking paradox---on the one hand I have a pretty good idea of what I want to accomplish, yet on the other hand I find myself seemingly faltering and failing at every opportunity. So awkward and weird.

At times I start wondering, am I really as smart and as hardworking as I think myself to be? Are the methods that I'm employing actually efficient enough to allow me to push forwards with minimal wastage? It almost feels as though I'm just trying to tread water at the edge of the abyss, which itself is quite deep to begin with. So contrary...

Anyway, something amusing. I went for an oral English assessment test recently as a part of my research group's effort to strengthen everyone's presentation and conversational skills. It has been a good long time since I took any sort of oral test like this (probably a decade by my estimate), so the thought of undergoing an oral English assessment just tickled me to no end. If you had known me before, you would know that I was among those who were particular about enunciation, never scoring less than an `A' for any oral examination. So, when I met up with the examiner and read a passage out loud for an exam for the first time in a decade, she was quite surprised at how well I sounded. Heheheh... we didn't really have to continue much after that, preferring to have a nice chat about some of the issues that non-native speakers of English face when confronted with the reality of using their second language to converse with American native-speakers. It was an interesting discussion, inconsequential of course since it reinforced what I already knew from my own dabblement in linguistics myself. If not for the fact that it was recorded, I would probably troll the examiner a little by starting with a faux non-native speaker accent before changing into something more appropriate in the most abrupt manner possible.

That's all the amusing stuff for this week. Winter has finally made her presence felt, with consistent sub-zero temperatures since Tuesday. There was a small snow shower sometime yesterday morning, but it thawed out when midday came along. My apartment thermostat is set to a not-so-toasty 60°F (around 15°C), but so far, the heater hasn't been triggered yet because the apparent ambient temperature is nearer 64°F (about 18°C), thanks to what I suspect is a much higher thermostat setting from my neighbours---thank you thermodynamic laws. Why set it at 60°F? Gas is expensive, with 1 unit costing nearly USD0.618, and last month, I used 16 units of it as compared to the 6 previously from the water heating. Besides, it feels more cosy throwing fleece blankets all over myself to stay warm than to heat the whole apartment up when I'm using only a really small part of it at any time---one doesn't need to heat the whole apartment to stay warm, one just needs to keep oneself warm to stay warm. I would set the thermostat lower to 50°F, but a circular suggested a minimum of 60°F to prevent pipes from freezing and breaking.

Okay, enough idle talk for now. There are things that I need to do. Till the next update I suppose.

And I Become Awesome Instead

Of course history's patterns are starting to reveal unto themselves once more. Maybe I'm too cynical, maybe it is an early onset of SAD, but whatever it is, I am somewhat rudely reminded about things that happened here and there.

Today was a nice day out, I met up with the Champaign-Urbana group of NaNoWriMo-ers for lunch at a nice TGIO party before heading for Jujitsu training for the belt test. Things like these always put me in a good mood.

Then of course contrasting this with waht I saw in the evening, when I looked at the pictures taken for the TGIO in Singapore for the NaNoWriMo-ers there, I get rudely reminded about some of the events that happened a few years back. And also the fleeting types of friendship that I seem to be good at cultivating.

In almost all of these cases, I have not really managed to maintain any form of long-lasting friendship with anyone. Somehow the ``out of sight, out of mind'' action is in place, in spite of the presence of technology that would, in theory, allow us to connect with others better.

So lonely walking down this path. I'm not really depressed about it yet, but sometimes when I stop to think about it, it does bear down on me a little. I wonder some times if I were some kind of rolling stone of sorts, always moving from place to place, finding new things, meeting new people, that I don't really ``gather any moss''---accumulating a core group of really close friends. Maybe this is part of growing up, maybe this is part of being a man (you know, the dangerous loner type). Or maybe I'm just plain doing something wrong. In any case, it is quite hard to tell, really.

Sometimes when I sit around alone in the empty room, I wonder if I have been making the right choices. Then I realise that it is not correctness of the choices that matter, it is how I roll that will make the difference between me being happy in my state against me being sad for no damn reason.

And so, I become Awesome instead.

Blankets and Slankets/Snuggies

Ah the cold. Having previously lived in Morewood Gardens the last time I was in the US, the internal temperature had always been kept at a toasty 75 degrees Fahrenheit (~23 degrees Celsius). Now that I'm living on my own, the cost of the heater is starting to sink in. At the current rate, the cost is roughly 0.618 per thermal unit, and for the last month, when the external temperature is keeping at around 0 to 10 degrees Celsius, I've kept the heater running and holding at around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius, it consumed 16 thermal units.

Hell, gas is more expensive than electricity here.

So I'm switching tactics here. Instead of relying on the gas heater, I'm just slapping on more blankets even for working at the desk. Saves gas because all I need to do is to keep myself warm and not heat up the damn room. There, problem solved! An added bonus is that the blankets are all soooo soft and comfy, so heheh good times.

Okay, enough senseless mumblings for now. Gotta get some other stuff done before I unwind due to it being Friday.

Free from NaNoWriMo

Ah. Now that the tyranny that is NaNoWriMo is finally done for me for this year, it is time to relieve a little stress from it all by bitching a little bit more about life here.

So, what has happened in November other than NaNoWriMo? Lots of things. I came to several realisations about my own nature, and have come to terms about some of these rather startling properties. Being the curious l'il reader you are, let me fill you in on some of these startling properties.

Many times in the past I had bemoaned the fact that I was a nice guy and that all the girls didn't like me because I was a nice guy and other random crap like that. Man, that was belly-aching, quite nauseating when I looked back upon what I had written. Here's the thing---upon reflection on who I truly am, I realised that I am no nice guy. No way, not by any degree. If anything, I'm quite bad actually, considering the things I have done, the things I have thought about, the things I have thought of doing, well you get the idea. And no, bad does not mean evil; as far as I'm concerned, there's a distinction. One can be bad and good or even nice and evil---I blame such semantic problems upon the overloading of the term ``good'' and ``bad''. But what I mean to say is that I'm a badass, one who does not take shit from others, willing to hold my ground and fight for the end, though usually I eschew the whole violence aspect and go into 後の先 mode, where I will react when something happens. I think this is what it means to find oneself when one is in one's twenties.

I think I value my independence and freedom a lot. It is not that I dislike human company (that is utter bullshit because I have tried going in isolation---I went quite mad), but that I am more comfortable with me running my own life away from distractions that are not effected by me. Living in an apartment alone with only my brain, my computer, the Internet and various books about seems to be enough to keep me happy---that's good enough for me, really. I crave intellectual stimulation, and most times, am a little more happy with taking part in things actively than to sit around in a passive way.

How do all these factor into this whole person that is me? So far, I don't have a complete answer yet, partly because it is late and I am in need of sleep (I've been up all day), and partly because I do not have an answer yet. Some say that going into research is a way of coming up with new ideas that can benefit mankind, I say that going deep into research has been a getting to know myself better exercise as I figure out the optimal way of expending my energy, effort and work habits to improve the overall efficiency in the way I think. That is the objective function I'm trying to optimise, and that will be the major goal of my life. Everything else is just to make sure my body stays fit enough to support my brain which does all the thinking I want to do.

Alright, I'm starting to ramble again. Also, Blogger is starting to act up, with random 503s appearing all over their website. I hope that it is not something completely terrible that will make me lose this writing. If it did make me lose stuff, I would be exceedingly annoyed.

Till next time.

NaNoWriMo 2011! Official Winner!

65,502 words later, I am done. Had a good momentum doing it this year though personally I think the story line might be a little bland. 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.

One Busted Knee, It Was Busted

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I realise that sometimes, it is not about how powerful a device you have, but how you actually use it.

I was thinking about this from several perspectives for a while now. Slide rules were of a different power class than electronic calculators, and lots of good work have come out of those (remember the space race? That was fought with slide rules). In a more modern context, ``older'' GPS receivers that still support all the most important functions of a GPS receiver (good satellite locking, accurate multi-lateral computations, good battery life) are still worth as much as any of the new-fangled versions of the same devices. All that colour mapping, touch screen nonsense, ability to wirelessly communicate with other GPS receivers are just flavourings over the basic functionality.

I had been debating internally for a while whether I should get a new GPS receiver with all the new-fangled stuff---larger memory is always a good thing, and coloured screens mean that I have better access to the additional information that may be conveyed by the colour. After walking through a medium-sized nature park for the Journal, bashing through weird terrain, climbing up steep gradient hills and sliding down others, losing my ear muffs and possibly over straining my right knee, I realise that my current Garmin eTrex Vista H is still as tough and as useful as it was when I first bought it. It kept its pace with the satellites above, it never lost track of where we were, it held its signal faithfully even under dense-ish tree cover. In short, it was a Damn Good Device.

After so many adventures with my eTrex Vista H, I feel kind of bad to even consider finding a replacement for it.

Anyway, yes. I went with a fellow geocacher-turning-fast-into-friend to tackle that 5/5 cache. Man, it was as hellish as doing any of the major jungle-bashing caches in Singapore, but it was a different kind of hell. At least in Singapore, the paths we took through the forest/jungle didn't involve climbing really steep gradient slopes and walking through streams/creeks. But yesterday when I was out doing that cache gethering all the clues (there were many of them... we don't even know how deep the rabbit-hole goes), I ended up climbing really steep hills with a full-pack, combat boots. They were so steep that I was effectively doing some weird mountain climbing movements---of course it didn't really help that I was heavier than my buddy and that I was carrying way more stuff than him. I thank my Jujitsu Sensei for all the Taiso that we have been doing---those crazy conditioning exercises we did built enough core strength for me that when I started slipping down the damn soft-ground slope, I could arrest the descent through pure core muscle. Heheheh... you've probably gotta try it out some time to understand exactly what I mean.

So, we hiked about the region for nearly 6 hours, stopping here and there for a break or two, and having lunch atop a rather odd hill. Lunch was a Big Mac and fries, the only ``fresh food'' that I knew would keep really well and still taste similar to when you first bought it without having to reheat the damn thing---draw your own conclusions there. Yet, in spite of all that crazy walking (covering at least 6 miles based on my GPS receiver's reckoning), we still didn't complete the cache. We're going to head back soon to finish the job; we think we are really close, but the failing light (shortened days of Winter) made the going quite suicidal. Also, since the place is forest-y, it's ideal to do it now as opposed to when the temperature is higher, since low temperatures mean that those pesky insects are knocked out cold, i.e. no ticks and mosquitoes. Oh and no poison ivy, of course, which is a great thing.

If this cache type is considered 5/5, maybe we can build something like that for Singapore. But the permanence of the field puzzles will be a major issue, considering that the façade of Singapore changes ever so often---what was a nice jungle trail now can become a tourist-wimp friendly board walk, and what could have been a cool jungle can become a new condominium. Quite scary actually.

Anyway, enough chit-chat. Time to do some meaningful work before finishing up the story for NaNoWriMo.

Piecewise Functions

Suppose that you are writing a piece-wise function in LaTeX. How do you go about doing it? The trick is to make use of the \begin{cases} ... \end{cases} environment within Math mode. This particular environment acts like a n-row by 2-column array generating a big `{' on the left side for the grouping of the piece-wise function parts. Since this environment acts like an array, don't forget to separate each column with `&' and end each line with `\\'.

Mumbles

To the few folks who still ardently follow this little blog of mine, I humbly apologise for the general lack of updates in a while. You see, this is the month of November, and traditionally (for the last two to three years at least) it is the time where I go on that suicide mission known as NaNoWriMo. Some of the more astute among you will probably ask the question that I sometimes ask myself: why? Why do I subject myself to such pain that is completely extra-curricular?

I suppose the answer to this question is the same as the one regarding why do I like training in martial arts, be it Aikido or Jujitsu, or even why I like playing my various woodwind instruments, or better yet why I am in graduate school. It all boils down to interest and love I think.

Once you hit the wrong side of twenty-five and realise that if this were the medieval ages, you would be nearly half-way through your life if you were lucky. Under such circumstances then it becomes a little more clear that we are always running a race against time. There're always new things to try, new things to do, and many many things to keep oneself occupied. But then there's always that time budget that one needs to be aware of. But of course, I'm starting to digress from what I was trying to say, namely because time is short, one should do all that one loves to make sure that the short time we have on this Earth is well used.

Time is a strange thing. When you were really young, you just couldn't wait to grow up and be one of those adults. Then once you get out of college/university and face the real world on your own for the first time without the seemingly invincible protection from your parents, you just wish at times that times were like they were before when you were merely a child. Oh and the whole nostalgic feeling about a simpler past---these things are starting to hit me now, considering that very soon I will hit my three-cubed birthday.

On a random note, I stumbled upon a nice list of common English errors, text file available here and the main page can be seen here. Should make an interesting supplemental reading.

Speaking of reading, I'm currently finding time to digest The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. I might write a review on this later on when I have the chance to digest it; should prove to be useful to those who would want to do Mathematics for fun and/or a living.

Okay, that's all that I can spare for now---need to reserve my word budget for my daily 2k for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.

EPS-ify Images with ImageMagick

I first talked about ImageMagick some time back here, but I think it is cool to talk about it once more.

So I'm currently using LaTeX as a means of keeping an electronic research journal. I like using LaTeX because of two advantages:

1. Everything is text, so I can make use of a version control system to track changes.
2. I have the full expression of equations and the what-not in the same manner as I would use to write actual papers, thus saving time.

(I might release the set of tools I've written to do this later.) But anyway, in spite of the great system I've worked out, there's this problem of including things like scanned drawings that I just don't want to spend time to vectorise using Inkscape (another great tool) only because it is only a rough drawing. LaTeX uses EPS files for graphics, and scanned stuff are usually not that. So what can we do?

Enter ImageMagick. Assume for the sake of demonstration our scanned file is image.png. Then the following commands will convert it to a [relatively small] EPS file:

1. convert -quality 75 image.png image.jpg
2. convert image.jpg eps3:image.eps

That's it. No need to have the GIMP or even Adobe Photoshop installed to do the conversion. The best part is, this set of commands achieves a nice compression for the final EPS file, which is great since a normal non-PS-level-3 image file is quite big.

That's enough technical talk for now.

NaNoWriMo 2011: Modern Office Warrior

Apparently I have a penchant of dealing myself really really hard hands and running with it. This comes from the decision to take part in this year's NaNoWriMo. Due to their site change, you can track my progress here instead. I'll update the widget counter when it is available.

It's going to be yet another slice-of-life with a little bit more action than the last two novels. I think I will take this opportunity to point out some uh interesting phenomena that I have observed while being in the work force for the last couple of years. Obviously this is fiction, so take everything that will be written as such.

Oops look at the time. Gotta get some work done here. Till next time.

L'il Kids

So let's see. I've been in the US since Aug 13, 2011, and for all practical purposes and intents, I haven't really been mingling with the local Singapore populace. I suppose being a graduate student means that one's priorities are different as compared to when one was still an undergraduate. That and the fact that as a graduate student, I have an office to spend the day in to get some thinking/research done, while as an undergraduate one was ``doomed'' to roaming the corridors and the campus in between classes, which helps in the whole ``socialise with your fellow students bit''.

I think it'll be really funny/awkward the day that I join the SSA's activities. Heheheheh... but I suppose I'm used to that. Must remember that I am geeky and that it is completely normal to treat the undergraduate folks as l'il kids who haven't seen the world. Yes, it is very evil, but fully justified, considering that I am a good 4 years older than most of them?

Anyway, enough of random ranting, back to work I go. I'm starting to love this...

NaNoWriMo 2011?

November is coming, and I'm still debating with myself whether I should take part in this year's NaNoWriMo, considering everything. I mean, I have Eiko with me now, and should serve as an incentive to help push things forward, but somehow I am scared that I might just run out of time to get all things that need to be done while doing NaNoWriMo.

Oh choices, choices.

I do have a story to tell for NaNoWriMo, but the caveat is that I have at least 2 to 3 other ``big'' writing assignments that need attention. So putting aside that one hour per day to write my 2000 words to hit the magical 50k words within the month sounds a little... painful. Anyway, I have around 5 to 6 days to make a decision. We'll see how this goes.

Broken symbol.ttf on Ubuntu

Having weird ``infinity'' symbols for bullets when opening some PDF on some flavour of Ubuntu? It turns out it has to do with a bug with the symbol.ttf font. Here's how to rectify it (as gotten from here).

1. If you don't have fontforge, install it first with

   sudo apt-get install fontforge

2. Open up symbol.ttf in fontforge. On my system, it is located at /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-symbol-replacement/symbol-replacement.ttf/symbol.ttf
3. In fontforge, apply Encoding->Force Encoding->Symbol, followed by Encoding->Macintosh Latin, and then File->Generate Fonts... (set to Truetype), ignoring warnings and save.
4. Remove the old symbol.ttf and copy the new version back into the same location, probably as root.
5. Run the following command:

   sudo fc-cache -v

At this point, the mapping of the glyphs for symbol.ttf should be correct and all the weird display bugs should be gone.

家

在美国的读书生涯中，我几乎从来没有特别想家的感觉。不过在这两个星期内，我不禁回想着家。或许是生活太复杂吧，还是最近的种种错则而导致我出现想家的念头。

家是个很奇怪的一个组织：当你和家人在一起时，有时会出现种种默察，而这会导致你觉得你的家人似乎在整你。不过，一旦你离开了家，不久后你就会产生想家的念头。可能是人生常情吧，每个人都需要有一种归属感，而家就是能产生个人归属感的一个东西。当你最需要人关怀的时候，你就会想起家。

或许在这深造的生活方式太紧张了吧，也可能是因为我最近又受了伤之类的，所以我会想起家。以前的我简直不把家的重要性放在眼里，如今我觉得除了家以外就再也没有设么重要的东西了。有个家的归属感的感觉最好。

好了，我累了，错别字好像有要重出江湖了。我看我因该去休息一下，这么一来我就有精力来挑战未来。

Funereal #2

Ahem.

I lay there within my half-opened casket, serene as a man can ever be. Right there next to my glass-covered top, my aged but still lovely wife weeps to herself. Oh the sorrow, the pain! Yet she maintains her dignified poise, melancholy notwithstanding. Comforting her with an arm around her shoulders is my eldest daughter, lovely, tall and dressed in the deepest black that one could think of. She has always been my pride and joy, for being first-born meant she was the child I held the longest and watched over the most. Her husband stands quietly near her---it is not his place to be in deep mourning; his role is mostly supportive. My other daughter flanks my wife on the other side, silently sobbing to herself; she's not as tough as my eldest, but still she has her strong moments, but now was not the time. My son stands in front of my portrait, his head bowed, face unsmiling, tearless, serious---I have brought him up well, it seems, for stoicness was one thing I thought every male should have about him, to never look emotional in front of others other than those close by.

The monk finally finishes the prayer that he was chanting to free my soul of my earthly shackles. Already I feel a little lighter. My wife's weeping intensified, and if I weren't already dead I would have leapt up to her and hold her and tell her once more how much I love her and don't really want to go. With a solemn bow, the monk steps away from his position and the pallbearers stepped up. The lead pallbearer gave a final bow to me, before closing the lid of my coffin. With a silent one-two, the pallbearers lift my casket upon their shoulders and walked solemnly into the antechamber behind the curtains. The small cortege behind me filed out of the main area and shuffled up to the viewing room on the second floor.

There, they got to see the funeral home workers lift up my casket and slowly bring it to the conveyor belt that fed into the gaping door of the furnace of the crematorium. My wife, stoically strong thus far, finally wails audibly, dignity be damned, while my daughters try their best to comfort her while stifling their own tears with little effect. Confronted with the final inevitability, even my son's eyes were tearing.

The funereal home workers gently pushed my casket onto the conveyer belt and stepped back, their heads bowed in respect. My casket rolls gently down the conveyer into the furnace, where I get consumed by the flames for the last time. While I know that I am dead, I leave knowing that my son and daughters will carry on with life, and that they will take care of my lover till the day comes that she joins me for true eternal bliss.

It's Saturday Already?

It's yet another Saturday morning, and again I'm sitting at my study desk next to the window, the only time that I can get decent illumination from this desk. That corneal abrasion episode took away a good chunk of my time as I shuttled to and fro doctors, instilled eyedrops like clockwork, worrying about how scary the final bill will be, worrying about how all these down time is affecting my already burgeoning workload.

It's not easy living life without support, especially a life where everything needs to be pre-planned and time-managed from start to end. In the bid to obtain a life where I have a slightly less mundane existence, I find myself in a life that requires inordinate amounts of self-discipline just to pull things off. Such is the irony of life. And just when I thought I could put all those years of self-discipline behind me too.

I think at this point, the one big thing I can say about the PhD programme is that it is one long struggle between doing things and finding enough time to deal with the whole life aspect of things. Life has a strange way of creeping up on you when you are not really noticing, and what happens after that is usually quite complicated, since in life, you have to deal with more than just yourself; there's always someone or something else in the equation that you need to look out for.

Okay, no real mood to wax lyrical. Need to get some stuff done so that I can... work on other stuff. Till next time.

Clean Bill of Health?

The nightmare of 2+ weeks is just reaching the end, and none too soon I might add.

A day-long travel out to Bloomington, Illinois is nothing to scoff at, considering that it is a 60-mile journey one-way from Champaign-Urbana. Factoring in the fear of the unknown meant that I added a generous buffer to the overall time that I was willing to spend out here in Bloomington before hopping on the long-haul bus back home.

That last 1%---finally there is some closure. The expert has spoken; there is no medical risk of the epithelial ingrowth colonising the entirety of my cornea, and that any procedure that would be done will be done so under my own comfort level. The gist of it is that the corneal flap has folded back slightly, and it is under the ophthamologist's opinion that it wouldn't post a problem unless I feel discomfort from it, i.e. things like having ridiculously dry eyes for extended periods of times, sudden change in astigmatism, or random feelings of foreign bodies within the eye itself. In short, that 1% isn't going to matter unless it is actually affecting me, then I can always go back to her to have her lift the flap and scrape of those epithelial cells, all under local anaesthesia of course.

Probably the best bit of news I have heard in a while.

Right now, I'm in no rush to get back into Jujitsu training---still need to alter my gi a little (damn thing is still too damn long in spite my ``best fit'' sizing). Also, while that 1% is declared medically insignificant, I want to give it just a little more time to recuperate, and until I can get hold of some of those protective goggles. Calling those things protective goggles is kind of strange, when in reality there are really spectacles with particularly sturdy frames. Might as well, considering that I have been thinking of updating my prescription for a while now for long-range work like driving. I asked the doctor if it were normal of me to not use my glasses when working on the computer, and her reply was that my eyes were lazy; since I was already myopic to begin with, the eye just refuses to use the eye muscles to accomodate for the nearer vision given the correction. This happens only because the level of myopia that I have now is sufficiently low that objects placed just at arm's length distance away just happens to be sitting within the comfort zone of my eyes' focal length. Well I suppose I'm going to keep doing this as I don't really see a need to fix anything---worst case I'll see if I can get a greatly reduced power for close range work, mostly to fight the astigmatism that can distort things.

I was feeling quite listless over the past fortnight, considering that I couldn't really do any of the physical activities stuff that I liked doing due to my corneal abrasion (Jujitsu and geocaching). But today, I think I had my share of venting out these frustrated energies through the long walk to and fro the ophthamologist's office from the long haul bus stop. The Google Maps' estimated distance for the route along the main roads was estimated to be around 2.4 miles, and I walked both directions, plus a mile here and there when I slipped off to pick up some geocaches along the way. All in all, I think I walked about 10 kilometres today, not counting the daily 7 kilometres of cycling I do to get to office and back. I bet I don't even get to clock such mileage back in Singapore heheheheh... yet I find myself willing to take walking as a valid mode of transport here. For fun, I used my GPSr to track how fast I was walking, and it turned out to be, on average, 3.7 miles per hour, which is roughly 5.9 kilometres per hour. Not super fast, but fast enough to make the time quoted for walking on Google Maps irrelevant.

And so, my Thursday is almost done, spent in a different town getting expert advice on my eyes because the town that I am based in had no such experts. Such is the strangeness of life. Now the only thing left to do for this episode is to wait for the medical bill and see just how much 20% of it really is, and then figure out how to pay for it without using up all of my allowances. I am hoping that the cost isn't too drastic, but I can't be sure only because no one seems to publish the consultation rate. According to Mangesh, my colleague/labmate, those rates are hardly published because they change according to the health insurance provider. Talk about stratified sampling for sales. I just hope that the part I need to pay is reasonable enough.

Alright, enough of ranting. I should probably start to walk towards the pick up point and wait for the bus. Hanging out in another university's student centre is a little weird and disconcerting, particularly when it's evening and there's no one about. I must be missing something here I suppose.

Till the next update.

But I'm Only a Student...

There are some days in my life that I wish I were dead or non-existent, and it seems that today is the day.

I went back to the optometrist today expecting good news. Well in some senses, I did, as the wound is healed at 99%. Except that 1%, that lousy last 1%. Something wrong with that 1%---it wasn't healing fast enough; that 1% was at the periphery of my corneal flap. Maybe some epithelial cells have made their way past the flap from the initial injury, causing it to possibly be the start of an ingrowth. Possibly. Prognosis is good though, but it means I have to go elsewhere to get this checked out by someone more qualified than what we are having at the local hospital/clinic.

Except this somewhere is a good hour's drive away. In the US, this means at least 60 miles, or around 97 kilometres. 97 kilometres. Bye bye busy day.

And of course, I have tons of things that are due this week. Thankfully, I've gotten enough of them done, so I'm left with one major item to clear, not counting this cross-country doctor's visit. And now I have to coordinate with a kind soul who will take half the day off to drive me all the way out there and back.

This is starting to be a really costly (opportunity cost) incident...

Corneal Conundrum

Break my arm and I can still work with the other one, albeit slowly.

Break my leg and I just limp about, working mostly unimpaired, though I probably need to watch my weight from lack of activity.

But bust my eye and my spirit is broken, having neither the will nor the ability to actually see what I'm doing and thus get things done in a smooth fashion.

That last statement is basically how I have been feeling for the last fortnight---the inability to see clearly is always annoying and makes it really difficult to concentrate. Indeed, calling humans visual creatures is a most apt description.

It is not that my right corneal abrasion isn't healing; it is doing better each day compared to the last. It is the fact that it is healing too slowly relative to the norm that is making my attending optometrist worried. Such is the complication that comes with a general predisposition towards inflammation, and the fact that my cornea itself has undergone some structural changes via LASIK.

Do I regret having LASIK done then? No, I don't. It just isn't safe to be traipsing all around the world with an effective eyesight that required -15.00 dioptres of correction. I think the expensive take-home lesson here is that I should be careful with what kinds of sports that I am doing. A year of Aikido didn't increase the risk of anything happening to my eye---most of the stuff we do involves mostly the hands and twisting the body into interesting positions so as to throw someone. But Jujitsu, it's different; the take downs are many and highly varied. I should be more careful with this sport than I did with Aikido, since the integrity of my cornea has been breached twice by now, and we all know that structural integrity takes a long time to recover, particularly for something that begins as fragile as the cornea.

Anyway, that's all the time I have for random ranting. Maybe another post will be up on Friday or something... I don't know. Currently having to juggle too many things at once means that I have little to no time to myself to do reflections and other ``personal development'' things like writing journal entries or even stories or poems.

Musings on a Saturday

In the office/lab on a Saturday morning---not my kind of weekend morning, but it suffices given the situation that I'm in. I'm kind of delayed by a few days of work this week because I had to deal with the pressing issue of a right corneal abrasion that I think I sustained from a rather vigorous training session on Monday evening.

It's funny how one doesn't really care about something before anything bad happens, and then when some strange occurrence happens, one is suddenly made aware of body parts, medical histories and physiologies that we never really paid much attention to.

Suffice to say, this condition is currently under medical supervision, and all that I can do is really to wait it out and let my body do its thing about healing the abrasion over. The medication provided is mostly prophylactic in nature, and in some senses to improve the conditions in which the wound has to encourage healing. This of course includes the properties of the reduction of the inflammatory response (via steroid eyedrops), and a general relaxation of the ``twitch'' muscles (via mydriasis and cycloplegia inducing eyedrops). Of course this leaves my right eye in a somewhat ``zombified'' state where I cannot really use it to focus on anything of importance, and this includes reading as well as other important near vision work like looking at the computer screen. Thankfully, my left eye is still doing a superb job in keeping my overall eyesight serviceable, and I am really grateful for the general adaptability of my body in general.

So, what's new in my world? Well, for some reason I find myself thinking about how life would be like to have a couple of sons or daughters about, living with them, growing up with them, and generally experiencing the joys and pains of fatherhood. It's a funny type of warm and fuzzy feeling---I have no idea how to explain this, maybe real-life fathers will know what I'm trying to convey here. Anyway, this bout of emotions and wishful thinking came about when I read this article by Regina Brett (same person who wrote the 45/50 life lessons column). It does seem like one is missing out on a lot of things in life when one does not settle down with a child or two (or more!). Some time back, my parents did mention how they never regretted having us children, even though it meant that my mum had to stop work and take care of us full-time---they never regretted it even though we were trying at times, me particularly due to my general abnormality of having skin that reacted to everything with inflammations. They never regretted it. They never regretted it.

It makes me cry when I think about what they said.

I suppose as I get older, my perspective shifts away from what I can do to improve my personal self towards something a little more... humanising, if there's a term for that. Like the random team-building events that I had gone through with various people from different stages of life, they placed family above everything else, while silly l'il me was still thinking big thoughts about meeting great people and being great in general.

When I was young, I knew about mortality, but didn't really care much about it, since when one was fourteen for instance, dying was among the last things that would come to mind. But as I grow older and reaching my one-third mark of my expected natural lifespan, the reality of mortality is starting to hit me very soon. It is hard to accept that my parents are growing old---in my eyes, they never seemed to have aged since twenty odd years ago when I was first sentient. Yet now as each day passes, I fear for their eventual infirmity, I fear for their eventual mortality. And then it makes me sad to realise that I'm probably not spending much time with them now that I'm ``all grown up'' and have a life to lead on my own. Yet when I am with them, it is hard to say anything else other than what we might usually say each day; too macho or too repressed as a culture, perhaps?

I suppose it's becoming easier and easier to understand what pains our parents went through the older we get, and it is only after some time of being away and pondering about the past and the future that makes one realise how important it is to love them now when they are still here with us.

A Bicycle Built for... Me

While on the one hand I'm really glad to have gotten my driver's licence in Singapore, I'm still tardying a little with regards to getting the state licence in Illinois. Well, I technically still have around 60 days to get it, but that's not a major problem---it's not a problem at all. Driving is of course a most useful skill, but the maintenance and usage of the car is something that needs to be taken into consideration. Considering that Champaign-Urbana is very friendly to cycling in general, I have taken up cycling as my primary mode of transport.

So I got myself outfitted for a bicycle, a hybrid one specifically. A hybrid bicycle is a cross between the gripping power of the rugged mountain bicycle and the light-weighted speed of the road bicycle; a nice mix of the rough and the smooth, the kind of bicycle that is well suited for urban travel. The one thing that feels different riding in the US is that I need to signal with my left hand. That is a little unnerving and disorienting because I'm too used to steering with my left hand and signalling with my right---this switch of hands just takes a little getting used to. And I have now grown to love the fact that my bicycle has a mirror attached to it to look behind without having to turn all the way around, though I still look over my shoulder to check my blind spots should I have to filter left to turn left.

I'm going to build up my stamina and power to make my bicycle a most useful mode of transport, building up to the point that I can easily cover 50+km in a single day (roughly 25km out, and 25km back). I think that will help my overall goal of being stronger when I return.

Okay, enough of the cycling talk---sleeping time.

Undoing Font Hiding in Windows

If you are on Windows 7, and after performing some update, suddenly realise that you cannot see any of your non-Latin characters in your applications when you once could, try this out. Use Win+F2 and type "C:\Windows\Fonts" and press enter. Under "Font settings", make sure that the option "Hide fonts based on language settings" is unchecked. Then, reboot. Things should work okay after that, if not well, erm, you're on your own.

Quick Evaluation

Phew, the first week of classes are finally done. I really wanted to write this entry a couple of days back, but somehow things always cropped up and I find myself having to abandon the various attempts on writing a decent entry here. Of course, I have Q10 handy for the ``just write'' type of writing that I seek, so this entry gets done that way.

The first thing that one notices when one is in graduate school is the notion that no one really gives a damn about what you do. No one gives a damn about what you do, be it your advisor, your fellow colleagues, or any one else. No one except yourself, of course. The curriculum is tailor-made for you, and you have to take charge (with the assistance of a committee of course) of what you want to/need to take in order to fulfill your academic course requirements. And then there is the whole issue of intellectual discovery---it is up to you and you alone to decide how you might want to run your research. Of course if you have a slightly more caring advisor, he/she will actually attempt to make sure that you do something along the way, but other than that, you are on your own. I sort of knew this was going to be the case prior to entering graduate school, but having witnessed it first hand makes the stories that I have heard more concrete and real.

Of course, this being the first week of the semester, things are progressing a little on the slow side, but things are not as slow as it seems. Okay, compared to CMU, things are sort of slow now (usually we would have the first round of homework assigned by the end of the week), but it is really hard to tell if this is going to be the pace that things will be running at; for all I know, this is merely the first week syndrome where things are deliberately released at a reduced pace just to ensure that any last-minute class enrolment won't lose out too much, though to be fair, it doesn't seem to be the culture here to have ``last-minute enrolments''---there doesn't seem to exist a wait list from which people can queue on while waiting to be enrolled into a class.

Living conditions-wise it has been pretty peaceful. My dorm space is really a one-room apartment on the southern outskirts of the main campus, so it tends to be much more tranquil here than say the residence halls where the undergraduates might be living in. There are of course pros and cons of this set up---it means that when I finally get myself completely at ease with this place, I will have an excellent distraction-free environment to get cracking, and not have to get into my office just to get work done. The main disadvantage is that because I live on the southern outskirts of the main campus, the daily commute to my office up in the computer science department building (Siebel Centre) can be pretty brutal. I have to take a bus up north every morning; the bus comes in 12-minute intervals between 0700hrs to 0800hrs, subsequently it runs on 20-minute intervals instead. It takes the bus around 13 to 17 minutes to arrive at the bus stop nearest to Siebel Centre, and from there, a 750-feet walk awaits me. For now, things are quite dandy because the weather is still conducive for walking, but I'm really not very sure how this is going to work out once winter sets in. And yes, I have switched to the imperial system (at least for distances) for now because the dimension of ``500 feet'' is a natural length for all the block distances that dot the landscape of the campus grounds.

The ``500 feet'' comment comes from the manner in which I have been navigating around the campus with---throughout the last fortnight or so I have been walking around with my Garmin eTrex GPS receiver in tow. It is pretty nifty the moment I got the Champaign-Urbana base map loaded into the device; by knowing which road intersections I have passed, and having a working memory of the local map made walking around campus relatively fuss-free. Considering the fact that I'm a graduate student who doesn't have the benefit of living in close quarters with other like-minded individuals, it is a really fast way to get the lay of the land on the back of my hand. I think I have geocaching to thank for this though---the months spent walking all over Singapore armed with nothing more than a GPS receiver and some local maps have indeed honed my geospatial reasoning skills, making navigation a much easier exercise than thought possible.

Anyway, not sure if I had said this in an earlier post (not checking only because I'm using Q10 to write up this entry), but the campus here feels very different. For one, since the department buildings are fairly far from each other, one is more likely to run into people in the same programme than anything else. This is different from CMU because, well, CMU's campus is so small that it is hard to not run into people from different schools. For two, because I keep running into the engineering/computer science folks, I do end up running into a lot of PRC students. It feels a little weird when one is in the US and end up hearing more mandarin spoken than english, but it is not something to be worried about I suppose; it is only when they start gathering in groups and being generally obnoxious that things start to get annoying, and even then that action is not limited to the PRC students alone. So far I've not managed to break into that little cocoon that many of them are stuck in, so I suppose I will have to take a little effort to make friends with some of them and see what things we can share and learn along the way.

Food here is still manageable---I have a full kitchen to work with. Well, almost full, since I have a refrigerator/freezer, an electric stove and oven, a saucepan and two different types of spatula. I just don't have enough of the other amenities required for cooking, like knives, cutting boards, flat plans, condiments and the like. And of course a microwave, the single most useful electrical appliance that one can have within an apartment, since it makes heating and reheating food stuffs that much easier. But all these things will have to come eventually when I start to see the need to actually cook, and when my allowance comes in; money is starting to get a little tight as I deal with the price of the text books that are needed for class and the overall need for survival through sustenance.

The bus system here is very good---there's at least one bus that will take one to anywhere that one might want to go on and off campus. More importantly, the bus system is quite efficient; there are different routes for the week day day time, week day evening and weekend. The routes are colour coded by the general service locations, and the numbers identify the route directly, with the weekend and evening versions having numbers ten times that of the usual week day day time ones. The general direction of the bus route is also encoded, so one can unambiguously state which bus it is they want to take, like the 120W Teal route or the 50E Green route. The buses also have an integrated system that tracks their movement, and the provided expected time of arrival at each bus stop is accurate to within five minutes, which is really useful. The buses are also handicap friendly since they can all ``kneel''---hydraulically lower the front of the bus so that the ramp can be deployed for those in need of them. All buses also have attached bicycle racks in front of them that can take up to two bicycles, which is a great thing to support cycling within the city. A pity that the Singapore transport system, in all its glory, don't even have such useful facilities without involving a lot of bureaucratic wrangling to get working. The bus schedule guide is also freely available on all buses, and that makes looking out for the various bus timings and locations that much easier for folks who don't have the Android phone application that polls the mass transit department's web site for such information.

So far I'm not really homesick yet, so I would think that things are going pretty smooth on my end. Many of my friends who live on the US east coast are terrified at the prospect of having to deal with Hurricane Irene that I do feel for their safely. Anyway, that's all I have for now, so till next time.

In UIUC

So, okay, while it may not be obvious at all here, I am actually in UIUC right now. That's right, my PhD journey has finally started officially, and I am now settling into my apartment and getting back the whole groove of studying once more. A PhD programme is different from that of the BSc---the whole purpose is to emerge from the programme being a much better researcher than what I once was, and to hone my skills in sniffing out and solving problems in acceptable manners. Class hasn't started yet, but I'm starting to feel the immense pressure upon myself. I think I'm mentally prepared for this, and given my current domicile location and office, I think it makes things easier to actually concentrate and get the work done.

So some people ask me here and there why did I want to go for a PhD programme instead of working my way up some corporate ladder and earning big bucks. I think the answer is simply that I like challenging myself. Yes, I'm a sucker for that kind of pain, and get easily bored by the mundane work that most people engage in. I may not have an overriding IQ, but I know that I can think up interesting and workable solutions when I put my mind to things. Of course, the flip side is that I need to work on the whole social aspect side of research and go around talking to people to learn more about what is going on, but that is a work in progress. I may not have what it takes to be a full-time academic in a university, but at the very least, I want to make that difference by contributing my know-how and ingenuity for the forces of good. Very idealistic, I know, but what is the world without some idealism? Besides, it's my neck on the line and not the rest of the people, so why should anyone else care?

Actually no one else cares, as a general rule of thumb. Those close to us might want to care, but there will come a point in time where the life paths have diverged so much that it becomes quite impossible to play catch up and care as much as one might want to. I suppose that's why people get into relationships with each other, each trying to find some middle ground with which they can share their need of love and to love with each other to unlock that hidden side of being human. I'm not gutsy enough to claim that I am past that stage now, but I think I'll manage without having this relationship business. Somehow the social side and the intellectual side grow at different rates, and there is always a time (and place) for everything. As a lady friend once said, men are like wine, for the older they get, the more desirable they become due to the appreciation of their value, whereas women just fade away as time goes by. Quite a sexist statement for sure, but I suppose that's how most of the world's population is wired up.

Ah, Champaign-Urbana. A lovely place even on the waning days of summer. My domicile is a pretty peaceful place: sheltered by trees, quiet neighbourhood, lovely chirping of the cicadas and crickets in the evening, the sound of children playing in the day time from the families that live in the same set of apartments as I. State university does have a much different perspective as compared to a private university (CMU is a private university)---the sense of anonymity is much higher, and due to that it is much easier to just get ``lost'' in the moment and not have to worry about people judging you or remembering what you had done. Of course, this also meant that the whole place is much bigger and really nasty for foot traversal (I clocked 18km of walking just to settle a few administrative procedures prior to getting my university ID which gave free bus rides), but I think eventually it will work out fine. I think what is important is to quickly get into the groove and hit the tarmac running.

Now, more so than ever, time is not on my side.

30 Days of Driving

Ah driving. It is a very liberating feeling to finally have the license to operate a motor vehicle. Having had my license about a month ago, I took the opportunity to rent a car for about a month to drive around and get used to the road experience. And this entry chronicles the sights, sounds and experiences that I had from that little foray.

Driving in Singapore is a rather mixed bag of emotions; more often than not, the primary dominating emotion is that of anger. That's right, it is anger; not mine, but that of the other drivers. Armed with probational plates as a part of the law regarding newly minted qualified driver license holders, it simultaneously becomes a safe way of indicating the inexperience of the driver as well as an invitation for the more aggressive drivers to ``bully'' the new driver through intimidation techniques. I wasn't really fazed by their intimidation attempts, though it is rather unnerving when an aggressive driver keeps tailgating the car that I was driving. The speed limits of the roads were not something that most people seem to adhere to---each time I was travelling at the speed limit, every other car seems to just speed off in front of me, with excess speeds ranging from 10km/h or more. In fact, many drivers who wre following behind my car got so frustrated that I wasn't busting the speed limit that they ended up tailgating me for a while before dodging off to the left or right in an attempt to overtake me.

Drivers aside, the roads of Singapore are not very forgiving either. Granted that there are few tricky intersections to worry about, there are still many oddities of the roads that make driving a less-than-desirable experience. Extreme heavy traffic is one classic example of this. The arterial roads of Singapore are often full of traffic during the peak hours, and the mean speed of such roads drop from the standard of 70km/h to something along the lines of 40km/h, assuming that it is merely a heavy traffic condition and not some traffic jam, in which case the mean speed can fall to as low as 20km/h, uphill.

But I suppose that the best way to go about driving in Singapore is to be really comfortable with oneself and to understand that not all drivers are law-abiding---the most important thing about driving is to avoid causing or being in an accident, and I suppose that if that is met, it will guarantee one's survival on the road. Of course the law just provides a more stringent measure of what safety means, and more often than not, it is a good idea to follow it. But of course one needs to be flexible and adapt to the circumstance.

SMS Musing #6

Earlier on Saturday, while waiting for some friends for geocaching:

The mere fact that there are multiple entries under this SMS musings tag should be an indication that I'm spending a lot of time waiting for people to arrive. What I mean is that the only reason why I write these entries is merely to pass the time a little faster during the wait, so that I don't get too bored to the point that I start to think too much nonsense.

Anyway, another day and I'll be flying. But an all nighter awaits me as I scramble to finish up that draft before I head off into the sunset. Flying off this time feels more serene than the last---it might be that I sort of know what to expect? But in spite of it all, there's still that little uncertainty over various things that are out of my direct control; I suppose I just need to hang in there and see what happens. As they say, it ain't the end till it is the end, and the end ain't here yet. The small setbacks just turn me ever stronger by helping me realise that one needs a certain level of thick-skinnedness to live well in the world.

SMS Musing #5

While waiting outside a building...

Sometimes one cannot help but feel helpless in the face of things, especially when it all seems ready to overwhelm oneself. There is just too many variables that we have no control over, yet somehow life must still go on. Even the few things that we seemingly have control over turns out to be mostly a sham. If all of us do not really have true power over our destinies, then what is it that moves everything forward?

Illusionary they may be, I suppose there is still some truth amid all the lies. We probably have more power over our destiny than we realise, though much less than what we would have liked. Perhaps that is what life truly is about---to discover just how far our control is over our destiny. Maybe this can explain away all that we are seeing.

SMS Musing #4

While at Zirca earlier today for an exhibition:

It is kinda strange to be sitting on the top floor of a club and penning this down as a heavy beat is going on from the dance floor below. I suppose it would be a little odd to claim that the music is putting me to sleep, but it is true. The only reason I'm even still awake is all thanks to ConnectBot on the Android, which allows me to connect via SSH to other boxes that have things to keep me occupied.

But then again, the whole club scene is something that I don't really dig into; I'm not into the whole shallow social thing that dominates this whole scene. But of course the question to ask is, why am I even here in the first place? Mostly as a support role for one of my sister's exhibits at the exhibition, and that's about it. I seriously doubt if anyone cares though, since I've pretty much ended up sitting up here on my own. More than 2 years since I've come out of my shell and I'm still sitting om the sidelines: what a great ``progress'' there.

Anyway, it is fast reaching the time for me to make a sneaky getaway, the only type of exit I'm willing to put up with---not a fan of being a centre of attraction. Makes me wonder how the hell I can square this with my kob requirements of establishing reputation and street cred.

This is getting a little too long for an SMS Musing, so I'm going to stop here now and make my getaway.

I suppose there ought to be a limit on how long an ``SMS Musing'' counts as its namesake.

SMS Musing #3

While waiting at the carpark of Venus Drive prior to a MacRitchie Reservoir Park hike/geocaching trip:

At the risk of jinxing myself, what was supposed to be an easy 25-minute drive became an hour of horror as I kept making one wrong turn after another to the point that it was fucktardly stupid. How the blazes did I screw up so badly in spite of having read the gorram map multiple times? I think I have sunk to a new low this time. This is really so stupid---I've just wasted everyone's precious time. I feel like a failure now.

Funereal #1

I'm starting a new series of articles labelled ``funereal''. It sounds morbid, but really it is one of those ``start with the end goal in sight'' kind of things. Each time an article is tagged with the ``funereal'' tag, it represents my vision of what happens at my funeral at that point in time. Might prove to be an interesting psychological experiment.

Ahem.

There was muted silence all about as the candles flickered in the night time breeze. I lie dead in that coffin out in the centre of the funeral parlour, surrounded by strangers. It's a hush-hush affair; there was no priest nor reverend nor any religious figure officiating the austere setting---I had lived my life with a much stronger belief towards empirical science than religious followings. Of course there would be no one else there that I know; I have broke contact with most of them a long long time ago, once they all started to get married and have children and thus need to care more about their families than some crockety old man who was still clinging on to the old ideals of geekiness.

The grandfather clock chimed and there was a rustling sound as the pallbearers shifted my coffin towards the cremation chamber. The strangers present muttered their own words of farewell to a man they hardly knew as my coffin enters the hop into the chamber itself. Within a few short minutes, I made it into the furnace and was cremated into an urnful of fine white ash.

As per my instructions, they took my urn of ashes and brought it out to sea, commending my remains forever into the ocean, to travel around the world in the ocean currents and to seek knowledge wherever I may be.

SMS Musing #2

While on the train, I just had that inclination to write something that occurred recently, and so here it is:

You would think that by now I would be used to the whole idea of going it alone, but I suppose I'm still human after all. These few days I have been interacting with one too many couples and it has a somewhat negative effect on me. I find myself a tad more anxious than usual, and somewhat more importantly, seemingly losing my ability to stay calm. I think I need to get back into the groove of not giving too much of a damn; must remember that when people are in a relationship, it has nothing to do with me, even if they choose to act all lovey dovey in front of me. That's the least that I can do for myself to do myself justice and avoid all these strange emotions. At the end of the day, those couples only have eyes for each other and don't really care about the people around them, no matter how close they are in friendship.

Tired?

Funny how things end up. Here I am about to embark on another leg of my life's journey, and instead of feeling excited, I feel tired.

Tired! For goodness sake, why am I feeling tired? This makes as much sense as the cow that refuses to eat grass, or the eagle that doesn't fly, or... well you get the idea.

Maybe it's the cubicle I'm in. It's too restrictive, too cramped. Or it could be the office environment, or that I don't really see a plausible and clear-cut shifting of one phase to the next---everything is an amorphous blob of blobbiness. Mostly likely the latter. I mean, even till now, nearly three days before I am at my last day, I'm still working on projects.

Maybe I'm no longer that great a workaholic as I think myself out to be. Perhaps that's a good thing.

I mean, I am liking the outdoors now. How much more strange/weird can it get?

Till the next rant.

Nivlek Conversation

Once more I find myself writing yet another blog entry on a late night session. There is clearly something different about the night as compared to the day that makes updating my own blog a little more intimate, even though I don't really do much editing in either case. But as usual, I digress a little.

I think that one thing that I'm starting to get used to is the flux of life. Life is non-static and full of twists and turns, some completely deterministic, while others completely unexpected. Slowly I find that the people I used to trust implicitly have now ``fallen off'' the trust model, while there are those whom I used to not trust have slowly entered into the hallowed ``inner circle''. But of course, the said ``inner circle'' itself has changed its nature by quite a fair bit, considering that I am mostly reclusive now, engaging people at the most superficial level that is required to maintain something that is meaningful yet at times impersonal enough.

It's not that I don't like to confide in people---it's just that sometimes such opportunities do not present themselves readily. It is much easier to find such people when one is younger, since the whole notion of political manipulation is something that is quite rare at that age group that finding someone willing to listen to and discuss one's problems makes as much sense as saying the sun rises from the East. But as time goes by, it becomes painfully obvious that such burden-free associations are far and few; the only group of people where this might still hold when one is of adulthood is likely to be that of the immediate family, with spouses falling in the gray area depending on the general state of the relationship.

Speaking of spouses and confidantes, I had a recent meet up with Nivlek and we had a helluva good time talking about the ``good old days'' (they were old, but they ain't good), the happenings now, and some future stuff. And I think we come to one simple conclusion about the whole get-a-girlfriend/wife-thing: people are taking things a little too seriously. Actually, I believe we are being nice, what we probably meant was that many people who are in relationships seem to fall a trap involving emotional abuse and manipulation. The idea of ``hen-peckedness'' and that somehow the woman being the lead in the relationship at around the time that marriage is considered somehow sounds completely wrong to me---it's a marriage for crying out loud, not a slavery bondage! Why do many women think that they are superior enough that their word is ``final'' when it comes to life after marriage? Isn't a marriage supposed to be a partnership where people be like true thinking adults and do things in ways that make the both of them happy and yet still have the desired outcome? Why then does marriage make things look so glum, like as though being married is some kind of restrictive burden?

Speaking of marriage and relationships I think I'm entering a new phase in my life. Back when I was younger, I find that I could not relate to my peers just because they were talking about things that didn't interest me enough, things that involve fashion, memes and other stylish things. I preferred talking to people who were older than me, simply because they had a more interesting and varied view on what life is, and can often discuss current affairs in ways that are more informative than whatever the press provides through their own analysis. But now, I'm starting to find it easier to talk to the younger folk instead of those older than me. I mean, I don't outright hate to talk to anyone older, but I've probably listened to their talk on getting married, buying their first flat, giving birth to their child and other really random talk of that nature one too many times to actually find it interesting. Yes, congratulations on reaching your next milestone, but that's just your own ``achievement''---pity the poor souls who have to listen to you gush about something that makes little sense to the young singles surrounding you. At least I can still get more decent conversations with the young'uns---I may not like some of their attitude, but among the black sheep there are still the few lily-white ones who give the whole generation a slightly better name, and those are the ones whom I genuinely enjoy the time we spent talking.

Change does not seem to faze me much anymore; I'm not sure if I had said it in any of the more recent posts, but it is a point that is worth repeating. I think this is a good attitude towards life, and gives me enough forward momentum to hurdle past obstacles that may stand in my way.

And on that note, I end this entry for the day.

Pondering About Life Once More

What if today you stopped and attempted to validate that your life was indeed worth living. What kind of conclusions would you draw?

So up to this point, I think that life for me, in general, has been worth living. At the very least, I can claim that I have loved and was loved, possess some non-trivial talents, and have a decent looking future-that-is-not-über-boring---pretty good deal, really. But of course, there are times where things seem to be at a natural low, where self-doubt comes in and makes things surprisingly difficult to accept and deal with.

I suppose that most people have their own unique take on life; that's what makes each of us different from each other. We might be in the general locality at some point with others, but what each person takes away from the scene in memory is often much different from everyone else in spite of having the same observations. There are some types of people that reinforce our positive self-image through interaction, and then there are those who are absolute downers. I think when Regina wrote her list of ``rules'' for life, she was bearing this in mind as a motivation for people.

I think I'm much more reticent nowadays as compared to the past. Much has changed over the last two years, and I think I have adapted to the changes in as best a way as I can. So far, no signs of self-deprecating self-worth issues are seen at levels that demand closer attention, but I'm still wary of myself spiralling out of control when the going gets tough. Maybe reticence is a good thing for me---it keeps my motor-mouth in check and saves me the effort of trying to conform, letting others come up with their own colourful ideas of who I might be in a way similar to an extended Rorschach Test.

Or it could be that I'm more isolated that reticence is fast becoming the norm for me. While I'm still not completely sociopathic, my empathy towards people in general are diminishing over time---more often than not I just don't feel the need to feel anything for many of the people Isee. While I do not treat people in a malicious way, I do not actively try to help them either, in stark contrast with the me of old who would sillily allow myself to take the hurt just to keep others safe. I'm no magnanimous fool now: while there are universal laws about the equality of people, but there is an overriding concept of the self that needs satiation.

m3h, I don't really have a clue what I'm trying to drive at on this midweek night. Suffice to say, whatever I had probably wanted to talk about have appeared by now, and it is with this pensieve and confused mood that I will leave you, the reader, behind till next time.

Fast Times Mon...

Man, what a week. You know that you are having the time of your life when you start to lose track of how time flies. And of course, by what I said, I don't mean just the fun stuff---I do mean the work stuff too.

Previous Saturday was grand, I went out with a couple of fellow geocachers to do a few geocaches in the middle of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve region. Man, that one was a blast, since the cache hides were well executed, and the places that we went to were really quite extraordinary in many ways. There was a thunderstorm that raged on at one point, but we took shelter at one of the many huts. It was quite safe in spite of the fact that one lightning/thunder struck really close to the hut itself.

Work was quite gruelling yet comfortable in some strange sense; there is a feeling of forward progress, and with some additional advice here and there from various people, I'm starting to be in control once more.

Then of course, there was Friday, the first Friday where I begin to clear all my leave. The morning was spent at the US Embassy for the visa application, while the evening was for rock climbing at SAFRA Yishun. I think I like the idea of rock climbing and the ``simpler version'' of bouldering. Yes, my forearms were pretty sore once I was done with the place, but from the beginning to the end, I found my climbing strategy evolve from ``where's the next hand hold?'' to ``hmm, I need to go right to avoid that jutting region''. Somehow rock climbing really makes you think about the choices that you want to make and balance it against what you are physically capable of i.e. you might want to vault over that ledge, but you just don't have enough strength to bring yourself to it. According to some of the better climbers (those with prior experience), it is more about technique than raw strength, which makes the whole sport a finesse-type one, something that I can live with, probably.

Saturday was a mad scramble doing the waypoints for a particular multi-cache, and I think I did fine in spite of all the other physical activities that I had taken part in. I think my physical condition is much better now than two years ago when I first returned from the US.

So anyway, as I was saying earlier, you know that you are having the time of your life when time passes really quickly, for as common sense says that when you are doing something you love, time feels really short but when you are doing something you hate, it takes an eternity. I think I'm glad that I have managed to find pleasure in the things that I am doing now and in the future---it does have a positive impact on myself whenever I think of it in this way.

Alright, enough rambling, till the next update. Hopefully I have something more... philosophical to talk about the next time as opposed to the sordid details of my life (which I'm sure is why people read this blog anyway).

Musings on a Saturday Night

Well, well, well, it is a Saturday night, and it's just me and Mr JD here chillaxin' in the summer heat.

*takes a sip*

Some might say that it is a terrible day to be drinking any form of hard liquor, but I'm known to make some rather irrational decisions from time to time as part of filling up my quota of ``erring to be human''.

*takes another sip*

On the way home today, I realised a sad truth---I can't actually will myself to cry. It just doesn't work; I get to within a hair's breadth of tearing up, but it stops short there, whether or not I'm listening to sappy lost-love music.

*takes another sip*

Too macho maybe? Who knows? But I suppose that I don't really have a good reason to need to cry; hell, even when I broke my bone those couple of times, even when I had that excruciating pain, all I did was to wince a little and then get up through force of will.

The only times I ever cried where when my grandma was incinerated after death and when some chick had broken up with me.

*takes another sip*

So maybe crying is not the way for me to relieve stress. That's a relief, in some ways---heheheh at least it asserts that I'm still ``macho'' enough. And no, I'm no ``Massive Compact Halo Object'', since I'm still mostly matter the last I checked.

*takes another sip*

I'm kinda going easy on the JD this time round, ever since that little experiment of the Ya Kun coffee went astray. It's probably a shot of JD on the rocks... I know, I know. I don't usually drink hard liquor on the rocks, but tonight's a special occasion to you know, not get too ridiculous from my relative sensitivity to both alcohol and caffeine due to reduction in use.

*takes another sip*

And yes, this is yet another one of those free-form auto-writing experiments ``live''. Yes, when I say that I took another sip, I meant that I had taken another sip of JD indeed. Talk about redudancy.

*takes another sip*

M3h. It's starting to taste like molten ice (it sounds hotter than it is, but trust me, molten ice is just water... really cold water). No need for strong fire tonight---I have the summer heat to thank for that. So I'm just asking for a light buzz of some sort to help me relax a little.

*crunches the ice with teeth*

Yep, that's the last of whatever was in my glass. And this post too, it seems.

Don't Invite Me To Any More Social Networks

You know something? It is really strange that people who don't talk to you for long periods of time are still somehow keeping track of you, if only in a cursory manner. But what annoys me the most is that these people will still happily click on that spammy ``invite all your friends'' link to add me to their social network.

Eh, why the hell do you add someone to your ``social network'' when you have not interacted with that person ``socially'' in a damn long time? Doesn't the whole concept of ``we are not talking with each other'' mean anything to you? Can't you just leave me the hell alone by not clicking on that spammy button to add me to what is effectively your bragging board?

Anyway, truth be told---I am really not into the whole social network thing. The only reason I even have a damn facebook account is because the current breed of people whom I have to work/play/live with don't seem to understand the concept of using email and want to do everything (from planning to wrap up) on facebook. Already I am a social misfit who partakes in little of the whole ``social life'' phenomena; if I still stay away from this facebook nonsense, I think I'd be in worser shape.

If facebook went belly up tomorrow morning, I wouldn't even drop a tear. It was, has been, and will be a meaningless thing to me.

By extension, I hate all the other social network sites, whether under the guise of it being ``for professionals only'' or not. If folks can recall, facebook used to be a ``for college students only'' thing---that was one of the main reasons that I convinced myself to sign up for an account on it to keep abreast of things that are happening on and around campus. But then it opened up to the rabblement and see what happens now.

I think I'm starting to sound like a grumpy old man now. Heheh.

------

It doesn't take an Einstein to realise that I'm starting to write new entries here on a slightly higher frequency. Yes, it is usually a sign that things are not going well in real life, but that aside, I think that being segregated from people everywhere has a strange way of making me want to write more. Writing is fun; writing is therapeutic. Writing has a way of allowing me to just sit there in an easy chair, and just hack away without a care in the world. But of course, writing because things are not going well is just different from writing fiction---between the two, I think I'm a little better at the former than the latter, since I don't usually have the wherewithal to actually start on any new pieces of fiction (read as: I don't have many stories I feel compelled to tell).

Anyway, it is obvious that I'm just deviating from the main topic of today's bitching. So, till the next time.

Aaaand the Caffeine is Gone

And I now have yet another reason to avoid imbibing too much caffeine and alcohol. I swear that my demeanour changes pretty drastically when either concoctions are taken beyond a certain level, and more often than not, it is one where I become more morose and maudlin. Well, it is not to say that my usual manner is very jovial (it isn't that jovial), but at least it is something that is passable as being vaguely humanish.

Anyway, caffeine quantity. Well, it was an experiment of sorts---I ordered the ``kopi gao upsized'' option from the Ya Kun shop downstairs of my office at around 0800hrs, and finished it by 0830hrs. A big mistake, it seems, since it made me much loopier than usual; I believe a more appropriate word is ``drugged''. But it had some good outcome of course---I managed to get past writing some really ugly looking Python code involving inspection, iterative tools and functional tools, all in the name of science (you monster). It was done to avoid having to write my own parser and grammar for my research---it looks a little ugly for a piece of Python code, but it is probably as clean as it gets given what it is intended to do.

So now, it's late at night, I'm still somewhat awake. Time to deal with some of the administrative mumbo-jumbo prior to entry into graduate school.

Till the next loopy time. =P

Huh..?

I think that my tolerance to caffeine is at an all time low. I'm actually pretty light-headed at the moment, considering that I had only taken about 200ml of strong coffee at around 8am in the morning, which is a good five hours ago. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, but it seems to have the same effect on me as alcohol, in the sense that my brain feels less grounded in reality and more ``up there'' with whatever there is.

Can this be considered as a type of drug-induced escapism? Granted, it is not something of an illegal nature (last I checked, caffeine isn't on that list of prohibited substances), yet it seems to give roughly the same euphoric/carefree effect that the ``usual'' recreational drugs give. Escapism---it seems that my life is fast becoming one that is largely based on this idea, with things that I do seemingly to avoid the drudgery, to avoid the discomfort, to avoid the overall fakeness of frienship and camaraderie.

Why so cynical, one might ask. I have no answer, no answer at all. Cynicism has always been a part of my nature; it is only at those unguarded moments that I permit myself to be less so and to exude a certain contentment with the world that seems baffling to some, including myself. Cynicism is what makes me me, and perhaps that is one reason why I am starting to develop ever stronger negative emotions towards people in general.

People. Hard to live without them, hard to live with them. I wondeer why this is so. Is what I'm experiencing a cry for help that I don't quite realise, or is it something that everyone goes through at one point or another in their lives? Questions, questions, questions, but no answers are forthcoming---to whom may I address all these questions to? Is religion an answer to these vexing questions about life, humans and reality, or is there a more rational perspective that requires little of the whole ``leap of faith'' assumption? More questions that I cannot seem to answer, and I hate questions that I have no answer to.

I think the caffeine is really affecting my brain now; I can't seem to figure out just what point am I making here---it appears that I'm just content typing and typing and letting those words out of my head as though they were part of some water hosereel whose tap had just been released. So many words, so little explanation and coherence---maybe that's what I am in real life; all theory and no coherence whatsoever. No wonder my life feels like an escapism fantasy as I live from one dream to the next in reality while discarding the real dreams that I have when I sleep, the ones that supposedly reflect my true innermost needs and wants.

Needs and wants. What is it I need, and what is it I want? Am I really as fearless as I think I am, or is there something that will make me tremble in my soul? Questions, questions and more questions, and none of the answers. No more support group from now on, it seems---all those people who were a part of my so-called support group have disappeared, each doing their own things, busy with their own sordid lives, and no one has time to listen to poor old me belly-ache and to offer alternative viewpoints and solutions. Some have diverged to the point that my mere presence is enough to cause a rather vitriolic response, warranted or not. I suppose I could just damn those people, but that would be unnecessarily cruel and irrational, would it be not?

I think that now, more than ever, I really need to start to become that island that no one wants to be. To be self-sufficient in thought, to be self-perpetuating, to be self-aware. If that turns me into some sociopath/psychopath, too bad---blame it on the society, our favourite whipping child for everything that is wrong. A pity that my upbringing makes it nearly impossible for me to cause any serious harm to others---I'm sure that it would be quite an interesting if not liberating experience, and all the harm that I can do is to think myself to death. So morbid... heheheh...

Of course, in times like this where my mind is not as it is (under the influence of caffeine here, for example), I start to wonder about some other questions that I have no answer to: am I really that hard to talk to/communicate/be with? This is of course a flipping of some of the questions around---instead of blaming society like every other human does, I start blaming myself. Maybe the people of the support group left because I have turned into something that is cantankerous and hard to talk to. Memories of situations where niceness is shot down come to mind---I don't want to think about it anymore. Let 'em all perish in a conflagaration---I should just be yet another selfish person on the planet.

*sigh*

Hate, hate, hate... what's there to like about me? Everyone seems to have some form of hatred for me, be it small or gigantic. I think I'm starting to hate myself a little too, for being that pushover sort of person. Sometimes I wish this were an ancient setting, where being a hermit is actually a realisable dream. Unfortunately, with the consistent lure of modern amenities (and my current training (curse you!)), that is just not so possible.

Maybe the answer lies in complete misanthropy, dealing with people only when it is the only way to deal with the matter on hand, and having a general despise of people in generaal. That actually sounds pretty cool, but again I blame my upbringing for not being able to pull this off nicely.

Why am I so contrary today?!