Be Professional

Well, I was about to write a ranty piece on how discrimination is innate in human nature, and how we as an advanced society (as compared to the past anyway) just learn how to downplay that natural reaction just so we can get along with each other, but seeing these couple of videos made me decide to write something altogether different. First, watch the videos I have in mind:Notice that they are from the same group. No I have no affiliation with them.

The thing is, it is important to treat everyone with the same basic attitude, and to never be condescending. Just because it's the first time you meet someone doesn't mean that the first impression you get is the actual behaviour of the person. It is much better (some might even say professional) to keep an open mind, a neutral stance, and defer judgement till later. Just because she looks like a cute stereotypical ``nerdy'' girl doesn't mean that she isn't in the top class of her art. While the videos were made largely with pranking in mind, they do convey a much deeper lesson to the instructors involved, and it is exactly what I said earlier. The monkey brain in us will naturally condescend others perceived to be physically unintimidating, but the human brain in us must be disciplined enough to override that sentiment and apply the cold hard truth of logic, that sometimes that unassuming exterior hides something superior and thus more dangerous.

What the videos do not show is the other end of the spectrum, where people get all subservient and obsequious in the face of ``authority''. See this next video, which does:Again, it's the monkey brain at work. ``Oh it's a motorcade with important-looking people; I should be as nice as I can because there's someone important in it and important people do not like to get stopped.'' Again, it's a failure of professionalism, where the trained human brain does not triumph over the monkey brain within. Don't get me wrong, the ability to immediately sense authority and adjust one's role accordingly is a useful skill for survival, but when one has a job to do, that job's requirements overrule any of these instinctual habits, particularly when the instinctual habits contradict what the job requires.

Here's a slightly different example on that concept. Take your regular soldier. After filtering out all the fancy euphemisms, a soldier's roles can be reduced to two principles: to kill on demand, to follow orders even if it means their total annihilation. The first goes against our usual social notions of ``acceptable'' behaviour, and the second goes against our innate monkey brain notion of fight/flight. If you run off without following orders to hold the ground and be overrun, you're a deserter---it's unprofessional, and more importantly, it jeopardises other plans that aid in the larger scheme of things.

The crux of it all is merely this: if you are taking up a job, be it a professional driving instructor, martial arts trainer, security personnel, or a soldier, do your job according to what your profession requires and do not let your monkey brain take over. Modern society has little place for monkey brain thinking under the highly specialised job structure we have, but it is an unfortunate trend that is going on now. Much of the cop problems brought up in the US are due to police officers not being professional on their job.

Before we can evolve to the next phase of human society, I think we need to rethink and relook how to be professional all over again. Otherwise that twentieth century notion of ``division of labour'' is no longer applicable and we'll need to come up with something better.

Some Music-Related Mumbles

I have an old Nyquist project from my last semester at CMU that I've hosted on my domain for quite a while. Recently, someone emailed me about it to clarify some points of how the library works. Consider me... amused. I suppose it's a good thing that people are actually using stuff that I had put together, right?

On another note, as I was casually looking about dizi resources on the web, I realised that fingering charts are among the most often asked questions. I have probably the most complete fingering charts for the dizi, covering all the basic fingering for all the 5 traditional keys per dizi, and then some. But I suppose it's too complicated for most people, which is funny considering the amount of effort I had put into simplifying the whole shebang. The long and short of it is, the charts make it easy to figure out how to play the dizi chromatically, assuming that one has a decently built dizi to begin with.

I am partial to Ng Teck Seng's (NTS) dizi myself over Dong Xue Hua's (DXH). It's not that DXH makes bad dizi, but that NTS is just more accessible for me, considering that he is a friend of my sifu from back in the day. I prefer dizi that are nimble in response, bright in timbre, and projective in tone, and the NTS ones are excellent for my purposes. I have also spoken with NTS and know that his dizi are crafted with acoustic principles in mind---there is a lot of physics that goes behind each of the bamboo flutes. It makes each instrument very consistent, and that is a very important thing when playing in an orchestra with different genres of pieces to play. A good dizi should consistently be able to reach the equivalent of the high-E note (by concert flute/piccolo fingering---actual pitch is dependent on the native key of the dizi), with the ability to eke out the high-G on occasion as a transient note. All of the NTS dizi that I own have this ability, which goes to say how consistent the workmanship is.

Anyway, that aside, time for more random ranting.

The past week had been quite tiring. I spent a lot time reading up various documentation to gain a deeper insight into the design trade-offs for the various sub-systems that we are intending to put together for the new framework. On the not-work front, I've finished reading Illuminatus!, and am switching over to non-fiction for a while, refreshing my knowledge on economics once again. Once that is done, I think I'll read Hamlet before moving on to some Russian literature (translated of course).

I know that I don't really have much to say, but I suppose it's a good idea to pen some things down here every now and then. After all, should I fall off the net completely (or in a more morbid sense, off this reality), this is one of the few things that are left behind to show that yes I had existed once before.

Till the next update.