Again on Helping Others...

T'is funny you know, when someone does something for you when you are one of those people who are used to doing things for others. Especially if you are used to not being appreciated by those whom you help, those who think that it is somehow your duty to help them. It's a weird feeling indeed.

I used to like helping people. I think that I probably have visited this perspective a long time ago here, but to date, I cannot really remember if that was true. I said ``used to'' because these days I find that it is almost never in my interest to be helping anyone. It has gotten to the point where the whole affair can only be described as being rather sordid and meaningless, and at times, a complete waste of my time.

``Why the sudden bitterness?'' one might ask. It isn't so much of bitterness but a re-realisation that the world is still operating on a selfish principle, where everyone will do anything and everything under the motivations of self-interest, and if it so happens that it can benefit others as well, it just a little bit better and somewhat more morally justifiable. Sometimes I wonder just how naive I am, in spite of living for more than a quarter of a century by this point, that I keep forgetting all these little insights I glean about the sick underbelly of society.

The Radio...

Something absolutely random:I heard this song back in... 2001 I think when a group of Girl Guides were training some mass dance thing near where I was working on some homework. The hook of the chorus was too strong to forget, and now, 12+ years later I managed to find it.

Funny how memory works huh.

On Failures

Why is it that people like writing about success stories? What does one actually learn from a success story when it is a statistical anomaly than anything else, since each success is characterised by hundreds if not thousands of failures prior to it happening? Maybe it is because there is a certain sense of an ego, that talking about successes hides the fact that one had failed many more times than that one success would show. Maybe it is because of the notion of ``reputation'', where one's worth is only measured by the successes that one has as opposed to the number of lessons learnt from the failures that one made.

I think that for a long while now, I have been writing here from the perspective of the failure. I rarely write about successes---as I had said, they are too few statistically to be worth any useful information, and even in the cases where the success stories are well-written, tend to be ego-inflating pieces than anything that is actually lesson worthy. Why should I write about my success? Why should I read about so-and-so's success when I cannot learn anything useful from it? All I can learn from their success story is a particular configuration of factors that led to their success, factors that may be hard to replicate, or in the worst case, factors that become clichéd that one can no longer repeat the success for oneself. Think about the last time you've read about a success story; I'll just pick a random one, the rise of Facebook as an illustrative example. So okay, you learn about the formula of a ``social network'' that Facebook propounds, and then what happens? You see many people trying to copy and use the same formula as a way of creating their own social network, in a bid to mimic the success that Facebook had. Some will be successful, of course, but many will fail. But none will ever outshine that of the initial proponent---none will ever outdo the success that Facebook has.

What has this got to do with anything?

Think about how Science works. I used to have a romantic view on how Science was all about the advancement of human knowledge, and how scientists were working relentlessly towards new discoveries that can benefit all of us in one way or another. Then I got exposed to an aspect of the real process and didn't like what I find. It might be that the scientists are still conforming to my initial views on development and advancement, but what they have been publishing appears contrary to the principles of the scientific method. Again we find that only success stories are published; few if any of the failures actually make it into a journal or conference paper. It is quite sad [and hypocritical] really, since there is a lot of wasted work as everyone keeps repeating the same damn mistakes and failures only because those who had initially made them did not document them for the rest of the community to learn of. I think that this is what gets me more than anything else while I was still apprenticing to be a researcher, that so much time and effort is wasted on this. I value efficiency over many things, and to have to spend so much time failing is just too much to bear on my conscience. And that is one of the reasons why I gave up.

But back to something less heavy. Why all the talk about writing about failures then? Because I can write more here. I doubt anyone who is still reading my blog wants to hear of my successes only---for one there are few of those, and for two it makes me sounds like a much larger egomaniac than I really am (I'm not really an egomaniac). So I will write about failures and accept that I am still human, in spite of my chosen handle and other things. Maybe someone out there who chances upon my blog(s) can learn from my failures and be successful in their own right---it'll be nice to know if that has happened.

Rant out.

More Cool Gifts

So last evening I hung out with Corbin and Alisa because I was getting rather tired/bored of eating alone at home for dinner. They lived near to Siebel Centre, so it wasn't all that inconvenient to drop by and hang out. What amused/amazed me was that they actually got a surprise present for me for my birth anniversary. Check it out:

There are two pairs of Injinji toe-socks to go with my Five-Fingers (and huaraches, but really it is too bloody cold to be wearing those), and a long-sleeved technical shirt. I am positively delighted at this---this is going to make winter training less annoying and scary. Alisa made Japanese-styled fried chicken with spices and a nice tofu dish to go with rice, and we washed it all down with Guinness. I think that these days I'm starting to do less of Jack Daniels and more of Guinness; no idea why though. Maybe hard liquor isn't the thing for me any more?

But yeah, I don't really have much to update except for the shout-out to Corbin and Alisa for the wonderful birthday gift.

I'm a little behind in terms of training because of the weather conditions. For some reason, the weather for the past few days tended to be... awkward, to say the least. There were a few uncharacteristically warm [but windy] days which were followed by sub-zero temperatures with winds up to 5 m/s. In short, horrible weather. But with the gift, maybe I can do better for this week.

Till the next update.

Curry!

So, the first thing is that for some reason, Blogger fubared the width of the text area used to enter the blog entry, so I have no sense of how much I'm writing any more. I don't really like writing in a space where I cannot actually visually store the entire paragraph or extent of the paragraph in one place---it makes it really hard to see just what the heck I am writing. Feedback has been sent, but I suspect nothing will be done. But this unscheduled rant is not what I want to talk about today.

So some time back, I wrote that YT sent me a stack of instant curry mixes. A few days ago, I finally broke open one pack to make a pot of tasty chicken curry to share with my house mate John. We had got a pack of chicken thighs and russet potatoes during the weekend grocery run and I just followed the instruction and put the food together. There was a small snafu involving thick chicken thighs that are not so well-cooked, but it was easily rectified through some additional cooking time massaged with additional slits made into the meat of the thighs. And the end result was this:

It's one nice big pot of delicious curry! I ladled out a bowl of it for myself (John did the same for himself too), and here's how that looks like in bowl form.

Man, even as I am writing this, I'm starting to get hungry just looking at the pictures.

Anyway, notice the fork and spoon on the empty plate? Those are actually foldable cutlery that I got from the Mammoth Cave souvenir shop. Unlike my titanium spork, the foldable cutlety separates into combinations of more regular silverware, except for chopsticks. I usually eat stuff with my spork, but since I'm lazy when it comes to eating chicken thighs, I needed the fork and spoon combination to be wielded separately, which explains the change of choice of cutlery.

Alright, I'm going to grab an apple to satiate that hunger and then sleep. Till the next update.