Frantic Friday

Some interesting things that went past my mind this morning:

• As one gets older and gets more integrated into society, the sense of individualism gets eroded as we start realising that there is a really large world out there after all. That's why family and friends are important---they remind you that you are still an individual in spite of the largeness of the world.
• Sleep and mood are highly correlated, without sleep, mood gets pretty negatively affected. Not very good for higher-order cognitive functions.
• There are many paths through life. There are many ways to walk through life. Which is my way? What is my objective function?
• No matter where you are, talk to people around you. Absorb the good advice, discard the bad, and laugh at the nonsensical.
• Self-inking stamp with my emblem has arrived! I've been wanting that for a long time now, and have finally gotten it. Cool.

Alright, enough of wasting time. Need to get things done, as always.

It may be Friday, but there is one more little hurdle to cross before I can get a little brief respite from it all. Till the next entry.

Burble Blurb

Funny isn't it? How when I'm away from Facebook I actually get to post just a little bit more over here in my own original soapbox. Hard to think what I was missing when I didn't hop on that bandwagon.

I had a good talk with my friend and comrade-at-arms today---his word gave me some new light on my current hard life. I wonder if what I am feeling now is for good or for worse, but really, there are enough fires to fight already without having to get into the pure hypotheticals.

Sleep truly is an important resource. Sure, I can code drunk and/or sleepy, but when I need to think... it doesn't work. At all. No way. Already I am feeling the ill-effects of being fairly sleep-deprived and not having enough of nature's anti-depressants running through my blood due to a lack of running and other physical activity.

*sigh*

I feel so tired. I should head home and get some sleep. Got a lot of things that need to be done, and I have to go do them.

The Poison of Some

Alright, now that it has been a few hours that I last talked about going on hiatus with respect to facebook, let me bring up some reasons why I think that this is a good idea, lest people start to think that I am going crazy and out to kill myself or something from the social isolation.

It is really not about an isolationist policy. The truth is, there are people who are just poison, and then there are those who are really supportive. I had always known that, and I'm starting to see more and more of such examples. I need the time to myself to consolidate things, to galvanise my own will against the ever changing and harsh world. I need to remind myself that the past happened, was there, and will not be here again.

In short, I have to move on and learn to be emotionally and intellectually independent.

The whole ``short messages lol'' syndrome that I am getting from Facebook et al is really reducing my ability to debate and to think. I started simple, by relying on email notifications from Facebook on things that were happening so that I didn't have to poll the place---it didn't work out because there were just too many things that were happening, with people updating their status on their happy marriages, awesome new jobs or sometimes bad things that happen to them. Then I eschewed that and decided to check in as and when I felt ``bored'' enough to do so---it ended up with me mindless refreshing the damn news feed every thirty seconds with hardly any updates on it.

I need to channel my obsession and compulsion into something more productive. Like actually learning how to think deeper, for example. Like asking questions and trying to answer them, for example. You know, like the very skills that a good researcher needs to have.

I used to think that I just needed a PhD for my job, to show that I didn't suck, to show that I had something in me. I had long dumped the idea that I would be a good researcher.

Well, fuck that. I want to be a damn good researcher. I have been pussy-footing for too much already, thinking about the ``normal'' life that I was missing, casting doubt on myself as to whether this was what I wanted every time I felt overwhelmed.

In short, I was being a coward. And I blame it on the poison that I have been inadvertently imbibing by hanging around too much on dem social networks.

When Facebook didn't exist, I was the stud. I spent time on my own, reading, thinking, having fun working out new stuff. Then Facebook came on, and I got suckered into the sordid drama that is associated with it. Naturally, productivity and my sanity went straight to hell and have been there for quite a while now.

Time to fight back. I keep saying that, but I need to make it a reality. My very sanity is dependent on it.

Thank you to my friends and acquaintances who counselled me to realise this fact in my life. I don't want to be in the state where I get kicked off the programme, only to realise how much I really wanted it, discovering that the only reason I failed was that I wasn't tenacious nor hungry enough to pursue it. I will ruminate such issues when I am dead and cremated, not now.

I will not bow down to pressure. I will face it the way I have done so for the last 20+ years of my life.

I am here because I chose to be here. I must never forget that.

Leaving Facebook Alone For a Month

Well, it's official. I'm trying a new experiment of social isolation once more, since it is obvious that I need to start figuring out how to live ``on my own'' as people start to drift further away and I start to find less and less support available.

I've deactivated my facebook account. And this time, I fully intend to keep it deactivated for at least a month.

I think that I am starting to lose any sense of focus and control given all these new-fangled ``social media'' nonsense, and it is really starting to get on my nerves. I mean, I am partly obsessive and compulsive, but such obsession and compulsion are clearly being misplaced on this always-update-and-attention-seeking aspect that is the social media. This has got to stop.

Not to mention that I'm also starting to find said social media a mass emotional masturbation scenario, where status updates are met with sympathisers but are missing a whole dimension of critical thought and help. I think I should learn to live in the real world a little bit more.

Of course, if anyone needs to contact me, there is always the email. Or through comments on any of my blogs---they are moderated, and if one explicitly states to not publish said comment, I will respect that wish, unless Blogger, under the horrendous change of interface and other machinations, screws it up.

Alright, enough of blurbing. Back to work.

Blog Writing?

Is blog writing no longer in vogue? It seems that the people whom I once knew were semi-prolific writers have either gone underground or gone away and have not been writing much at all. Is the art of the proverbial ``brain dump'' no longer that applicable in this time and age of short texts and fast ``status updates''?

While I like to use Facebook's status update function to do supposedly witty one-liners, I find once more that the rather short space there is very limiting for my general verbose nature. This is part of the reason why I even started this ranting blog in the first place, since the poetry one was deemed to be a bit too restricting in terms of allowing me to write whatever I want, however I want. But anyway, I think that I digress once more.

Sometimes I wonder if the current trend of brevity is a good thing for us all, whether our attention span is affected by all these rapid communication techniques that we have at our disposal. While I can't really speak for others, I feel that all these new-fangled social media mumbo-jumbo has affected the way that I think and act in many ways, not all of them good. I am starting to find it hard to construct well-reasoned arguments since all these new communications channels demand a much faster turnaround time. Actually, come to think of it, it is more than just communications---almost everything has its expected response time shortened and that annoys me to no end. I might write more about this some other time, but it is getting rather late here, so I shall stop right now.

Till next time.

My Dream-time Lover

Last night as I lay in bed, I dreamt of my lover. It was a strange dream that involved adventure and acrobatics, but it was one that made me wake up wondering if I would ever find her. As I sit here working on research-related things, a good 12 hours since the dream, I try to recall and write down what had happened within the dream itself.

She was there. Someone whom I was introduced to by someone whom I know, I think; I cannot quite remember. I don't even remember her face now---it has been so long, and I can't even tell if she had long or short hair. We met, I liked her, I found her interesting and cute. I think we met at some restaurant or something, and had a nice conversation---memory is fuzzy now, I swear I should have just written it down while it was still ``fresh'' in my mind. I found that I had a connection with her. She was the One, the person I had loved all my life but never knew who she ever was.

Then, I was on the ground floor of a building or something. There was a huge commotion---she was in an office somewhere up in the building. There was something wrong about, I knew I had to get her out of the place. I ran up the building as best as I could, and managed to get to her office. We embraced; I felt a little relieved. But it seemed that it wasn't quite over. We left the office, fast. I don't know what the commotion was about, but I knew we had to get away. Fast. Somehow I was carrying her on my shoulders and we were headed down the stairs of the building. The stairs---they were wide, circular, long. I ran as fast as I could down them to get to my motorcycle. Why I had one, I didn't know. We got there somehow, me feeling the adrenaline rush, she holding on to me close. We got on to the motorcycle, with me driving and she being the pillon rider. We charged out of the building.

Away from the building we went, past the many people around us. I felt at ease with her---I knew that whatever danger it was, it wasn't over yet. Not just yet. We went on along the roads, through the highway, out into the open. I cannot remember exactly what was it, but I suppose that was when I woke up.

Sometimes I wonder what my brain is trying to tell me. >.< When I awoke, I felt a sense of serenity, that kind of contentment that one feels when one is absolutely blissful.

Maybe I will get to see her again in my dreams or better yet, in my life.

``It Really Makes You Think™''

Time passes rapidly, especially when one is having fun. And in this case, I am of course referring to the stuff that I am working on.

Spring time is barely here, and my mood is already looking up in spite of the many things that caused it to go down in the first place. New friends are made, new connections emphasized, old ones less emphasized---life goes on. Spring brings a renewed type of vigour that is quite infectious, really. Good time to get things done, get things going, and staying alive.

A senior PhD student once said that ``in a PhD programme, you do a lot of thinking---not just about your research, but about everything in general''. I used to take that statement lightly, but now, I think that it holds quite a bit of wisdom in it. If we think of an athletic programme as a means of training the body to do things at a higher intensity while maintaining good efficiency, then the PhD programme is the exact same thing but for the mind. Like with athletics, once you have reached the intensity provided for by the programme, it changes the way you operate at a fundamental level, which leads to the whole business of thinking about everything in general. I think this is a very powerful message to take from this whole confusing apprenticeship that is the PhD programme, and is one that will serve me well in terms of keeping everything in perspective.

But anyway, apart from work, having some sort of balance is pretty important too, much to my amusement. I've since discovered that despite my self-proclamations of being a workaholic, I'm actually not that obsessive about work---obsessive enough to keep pushing, but not obsessive enough that I cannot put it down for a while to do something else.

Alright, I've lost the momentum for writing this entry. Maybe more will be forthcoming next time.

Thursday Mumble

T'is been a while, hasn't it? Long week, longer weekend... so much to do. I've hardly had much time to myself to figure out social issues to comment on here any more. But anyway, here I am once more, and let's see what I have in store?

So by a series of unhappy coincidences, it turns out that there is a non-trivial number of people that I know who are leaving their respective PhD programmes. It's kind of a sad thing to see them go, partly because of the comradeship I had with them as fellow PhD students, partly because they all have that world-weary look about them when they conveyed their final decision to leave the programme. It's quite sad actually, to see people leaving with that ``I'm really sick of this shit'' look about them; sometimes it makes me second guess myself about the choices that I have made in life thus far. But really, at the end of the day, everyone has their own goals in life, and just because some folks have decided that the PhD programme isn't for them doesn't mean that it isn't for me---that kind of thinking is the recipe of disaster. I'm pretty sure that there is a psychological term relating to that line of thought, but I can't seem to recall it for the moment.

This semester has been progressing like a really bad roller coaster ride. Taking courses has never been much of a problem for me, but if we compound that with the need to actually be cognitively attuned to do research, I realised that my ways of maxing out abilities for the classes just don't work that well. There's a difference between doing what is necessary to pass a class and actually having to do deep thought---the first one can be done mostly in a semi-conscious way only because the material is well-structured, which facilitates good absorption, but the second one can only be done in a fully conscious manner. Maintaining higher order thinking abilities is of paramount importance just to survive the PhD programme's research component, and to do that, I cannot be stressed out nor can I be running on little sleep. Talk about a picky situation. But enough of the depressing stuff.

Recently I relented and finally forked out some money to get an iPod Classic (160GiB). No, I have not changed my stance of disliking iTunes immensely due to the way it bowdlerises the music to fit into the ``grand'' architecture of things and how it tries to take over your computer, but I must agree that the build quality of an Apple product is pretty good, though a tad pricey. So why the plonking down of hard cash for this device then? One word: Rockbox. I've been eyeing the Rockbox project for quite a while already, and have planned to get one of 'em hard drive based iPods due to their large capacity. So when the latest release of Rockbox showed better than dismal support for the iPod Classic, I knew it was time to get one, and so I did. I'm really enjoying the much better quality of the music, since I no longer have to downsample anything just to fit them into a smaller capacity device. I might devote a post specially on how to Rockbox the iPod classic a little in the future when I have more time.

Till next time.