To say that an update is long overdue is to understate it by a whole order of magnitude or so. The past two weeks have been quite... hectic to say the least and is the main reason why I couldn't bring myself to write anything despite having the strong urge to do so.
And so, throughout this day itself, I will take whatever small nuggets of free time in between to compose this entry. It will be fragmentary at best and incoherent at worst, but hey, at least there's an entry here, right?
So, let's begin.
------
To start with, I started out with a false premise, that is, I made the claim that I would have pockets of free time throughout the day. It is clearly a false premise considering that I am typing this up at the not-so-early time of 1845hrs (or so). Work is moving along slowly, due to the rather different types of work load that I am facing now, but I am not complaining.
Chara came for a visit over the weekend, and we spent some time roaming about and just checking things out. Awesome food was had, and an even more awesome time was spent. All in all, it was a good but tiring weekend.
The various rehearsals for the two SG50-related projects are in full-swing. The last sectional rehearsal for the dizi choir occurred the previous weekend, and the latest rehearsal for my regular CO stuff just completed last Saturday, with another one coming up on Thursday. This means that I will need to forfeit yet another Aikido training lesson, but I think that it is a decent trade-off, considering that I'm not going for the latest grading exam for Aikido, while having two performances to deal with. T'is good.
I've started on a mini project of sorts to document the ranges and the notation of various Chinese orchestra instruments, and have started with the western orchestra ones for now as a form of infrastructure test. It is also an exercise in messing around with Javascript for the web browser, something that I have been eschewing for a long time. Why now then? It is always good to keep up-to-date on what is going on in the UI/UX land, even if I disagree with the overall trends (like using Javascript to write server applications).
What else is there to write at this point? Hmmm...
Maybe the bit of successfully completing the Bard's works? If you drop by my reading list, you will find that the entire ``Shakespeare Project'' section is gone. That's because I had finished reading all the works of Shakespeare. At this point, I'm focusing on Larry Niven's Ringworld series, though I am eschewing the Fleet of Worlds series (of which Niven is a co-author of) for now. Ringworld (and Ringworld's Engineers at this point) provide yet another style of ``hard'' sci-fi that is vastly different from say Dune or even the Ender series. Dune read too heavily as a philosophical piece, while Ender ended up being that way also. Perhaps Ringworld might end up that way, since it is actually hard to dissociate science from its effects, of which philosophy on the application of science plays a primary role in the definition.
Okay, I'm officially out of materials to write. Except maybe the observation that this entire entry was written on Eiko, of whom I've not really made much use of. I should really be writing more.
Till the next update then.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Monday, August 10, 2015
Bloody Long !@#$ Weekend
I probably should be grateful for the long weekend that is SIN city's golden jubilee celebration, but frankly, I feel anything but grateful.
If anything, I feel restless and completely pissed off, that such a long period of procrastination is allowed to manifest itself at all in the city where not working time beyond office hours is termed a sin.
The weekend has been too long, I think. Four whole days. Maybe it's because I have no one to actually go hang out with and do other stuff, or maybe because I am just irritated after barely recovering from a nasty bout of flu. Maybe it's because I'm staying in an apartment that is not air-conditioned, and am still living with my parents when my sister has just moved out completely to her new place with her husband. Or maybe it is the forced realisation of some manner of loneliness from rewatching K-On!, K-On!! and the K-On! movie, an affect that I naturally develop each time I watch anime like that. It reminds me of a kind of nostalgia that I never truly felt completely, having been mostly a sideline character at most of the clubs and societies that I had been a part of.
Camaraderie. I feel that of course, fleetingly at times, but never truly immersed in it. Maybe because there have been few places where I felt as though I truly belong, even from the very beginning. In spite of my seemingly gregarious nature, I'm more of a conflicted hermit.
Aiyah, it's frustrating to articulate just what is bothering the crap out of me.
Maybe it's the phoneyness of the whole jubilee celebration. Engineered, one might say if one were trying to keep in theme with the way how SIN city is run. The hilarious part is that despite being the person who lampoons this whole... PR stunt, I think I can safely say that I have taken part in more of such... activities as a performer than most people have as an audience. Maybe ``irony'' is the better word here, but I'm not in the mood to be pedantic today.
I wrote a micro-story yesterday, entitled Hold On To Your Love. Unsurprisingly, it is named after one of my favourite OSTs from K-On!, that you can hopefully watch here.That guitar... is to die for. A-hem. Anyway, I felt like I needed to vent something from the restlessness last night, and hence that particular micro-story.
I've also made yet another small progress through the William Russo book, by composing something a given pitch restriction. Maybe I'll work on the next exercise later this evening---composition with a rhythm restriction on C-major. Felt too irritated to work on that yesterday.
Today though... so much restlessness. I was tempted to head out to find a café to just sit down, have a cup of coffee and do some reading, work related and otherwise (am working through Othello). When lunch was done though, reality set in: it was nearly two in the afternoon. By the time I headed out, it would be time to return, not to mention the general impossibility to find a quiet place to sit around since most of the kids are taking over cafés and what-not for their studying needs. So I felt more irritation.
I couldn't/shouldn't play on my flutes and/or dizis though---my the lateral side of my thumbs'interphalangeal ligaments were starting to show some form of swelling that seemed consistent with calluses. I suspect it's because I've been playing too much of my 大G dizi---it weighs quite a bit more than what I usually play, and I have been giving it around two to three hours of practice on Friday and Saturday itself. I didn't want to introduce a new range of RSI, so am taking it easier.
That of course helped to add to my restlessness. My usual outlet of letting out such irritation is to wail away on whatever musical instrument I have my hands on. Since that is sort of not available, I just feel all the more annoyed.
At this point, I think I have run out of things to bitch about, and have diverged quite significantly in terms of the content, so I suppose I'll just stop here.
Till the next update.
If anything, I feel restless and completely pissed off, that such a long period of procrastination is allowed to manifest itself at all in the city where not working time beyond office hours is termed a sin.
The weekend has been too long, I think. Four whole days. Maybe it's because I have no one to actually go hang out with and do other stuff, or maybe because I am just irritated after barely recovering from a nasty bout of flu. Maybe it's because I'm staying in an apartment that is not air-conditioned, and am still living with my parents when my sister has just moved out completely to her new place with her husband. Or maybe it is the forced realisation of some manner of loneliness from rewatching K-On!, K-On!! and the K-On! movie, an affect that I naturally develop each time I watch anime like that. It reminds me of a kind of nostalgia that I never truly felt completely, having been mostly a sideline character at most of the clubs and societies that I had been a part of.
Camaraderie. I feel that of course, fleetingly at times, but never truly immersed in it. Maybe because there have been few places where I felt as though I truly belong, even from the very beginning. In spite of my seemingly gregarious nature, I'm more of a conflicted hermit.
Aiyah, it's frustrating to articulate just what is bothering the crap out of me.
Maybe it's the phoneyness of the whole jubilee celebration. Engineered, one might say if one were trying to keep in theme with the way how SIN city is run. The hilarious part is that despite being the person who lampoons this whole... PR stunt, I think I can safely say that I have taken part in more of such... activities as a performer than most people have as an audience. Maybe ``irony'' is the better word here, but I'm not in the mood to be pedantic today.
I wrote a micro-story yesterday, entitled Hold On To Your Love. Unsurprisingly, it is named after one of my favourite OSTs from K-On!, that you can hopefully watch here.That guitar... is to die for. A-hem. Anyway, I felt like I needed to vent something from the restlessness last night, and hence that particular micro-story.
I've also made yet another small progress through the William Russo book, by composing something a given pitch restriction. Maybe I'll work on the next exercise later this evening---composition with a rhythm restriction on C-major. Felt too irritated to work on that yesterday.
Today though... so much restlessness. I was tempted to head out to find a café to just sit down, have a cup of coffee and do some reading, work related and otherwise (am working through Othello). When lunch was done though, reality set in: it was nearly two in the afternoon. By the time I headed out, it would be time to return, not to mention the general impossibility to find a quiet place to sit around since most of the kids are taking over cafés and what-not for their studying needs. So I felt more irritation.
I couldn't/shouldn't play on my flutes and/or dizis though---my the lateral side of my thumbs'interphalangeal ligaments were starting to show some form of swelling that seemed consistent with calluses. I suspect it's because I've been playing too much of my 大G dizi---it weighs quite a bit more than what I usually play, and I have been giving it around two to three hours of practice on Friday and Saturday itself. I didn't want to introduce a new range of RSI, so am taking it easier.
That of course helped to add to my restlessness. My usual outlet of letting out such irritation is to wail away on whatever musical instrument I have my hands on. Since that is sort of not available, I just feel all the more annoyed.
At this point, I think I have run out of things to bitch about, and have diverged quite significantly in terms of the content, so I suppose I'll just stop here.
Till the next update.
Wednesday, August 05, 2015
Sickness and Keys
Let's be upfront -- this has been a trashy week.
I suffered from a horrible tension headache episode last week that escalated into a full-blown flu attack that knocked me off my feet hard enough that I had to take 2 days of sick leave just to sleep it off.
It's dumb. I really don't like falling sick. I'm sure most people feel the same way, except maybe for those who are looking for an excuse to just have an extended holiday of some sort. I'm not of the latter, because work has a way of quickly piling up when one does not move fast enough.
Already I am going to work another half-day more tomorrow just to cover for the time lost over the past couple of days. Looking forward to it in one sense, and not looking forward to it in another since I don't want my body to be further weakened, leading to something that is more chronic.
Anyway, rants aside, the rest had been fitful. The whether is too hot and humid, and as such, sleep came in bursts of no more than an hour. The coughing is just plain annoying, and nearly half the time it is an ``unproductive'' cough, i.e. there is no phlegm that is actually cleared from the throat. In other words, half the time I get this hacking cough that does little more than annoy the crap out of my throat.
Oh well.
Last Saturday was an interesting day. I went for two different rehearsals, one for the upcoming SG50 project that my sister suggested I join in, and the other being my regular CO stuff. The music for the other SG50 project is interesting -- the keys and the rhythms used are a little more contemporary than the concert time that is prevalent. The scores are also written in the prevailing trend of writing in an absolute scale without the melody line, i.e. like what one might expect from say a concert flute score. I can live with the latter though not happily -- since most of the time I'm called upon to cover the melody, and if that's not present it is obvious that there's nothing I can do. But this isn't the more annoying bit.
The writing of the music in an absolute scale is something that I don't really approve of, even though I know that it is definitely easier since one only needs to learn ``one'' set of fingerings. The issue here is not in execution but the overall music sensitivity of the musician -- it makes understanding the intervals of the music that much harder since the music is not written in the scale that the music is played. Here's an example of what I mean: suppose the notes are written in 1=G as 7♭ 1 2♯ 3 or something. Sure, it is easy to execute the notes, but it takes a little while to realise that it is actually in F-major (or D-minor, but we rarely name minor keys in CO music). This means that a certain set of dizi fingerings get ``lost'' in the outcome, and that it makes transposition that much nastier.
But it's just a minor quibble from a curmudgeon huh.
Anyway, it's late. I ought to sleep so I can wake up early and drive to work and clear out some of the stuff that snowballed over the past couple of days. Till the next update then.
I suffered from a horrible tension headache episode last week that escalated into a full-blown flu attack that knocked me off my feet hard enough that I had to take 2 days of sick leave just to sleep it off.
It's dumb. I really don't like falling sick. I'm sure most people feel the same way, except maybe for those who are looking for an excuse to just have an extended holiday of some sort. I'm not of the latter, because work has a way of quickly piling up when one does not move fast enough.
Already I am going to work another half-day more tomorrow just to cover for the time lost over the past couple of days. Looking forward to it in one sense, and not looking forward to it in another since I don't want my body to be further weakened, leading to something that is more chronic.
Anyway, rants aside, the rest had been fitful. The whether is too hot and humid, and as such, sleep came in bursts of no more than an hour. The coughing is just plain annoying, and nearly half the time it is an ``unproductive'' cough, i.e. there is no phlegm that is actually cleared from the throat. In other words, half the time I get this hacking cough that does little more than annoy the crap out of my throat.
Oh well.
Last Saturday was an interesting day. I went for two different rehearsals, one for the upcoming SG50 project that my sister suggested I join in, and the other being my regular CO stuff. The music for the other SG50 project is interesting -- the keys and the rhythms used are a little more contemporary than the concert time that is prevalent. The scores are also written in the prevailing trend of writing in an absolute scale without the melody line, i.e. like what one might expect from say a concert flute score. I can live with the latter though not happily -- since most of the time I'm called upon to cover the melody, and if that's not present it is obvious that there's nothing I can do. But this isn't the more annoying bit.
The writing of the music in an absolute scale is something that I don't really approve of, even though I know that it is definitely easier since one only needs to learn ``one'' set of fingerings. The issue here is not in execution but the overall music sensitivity of the musician -- it makes understanding the intervals of the music that much harder since the music is not written in the scale that the music is played. Here's an example of what I mean: suppose the notes are written in 1=G as 7♭ 1 2♯ 3 or something. Sure, it is easy to execute the notes, but it takes a little while to realise that it is actually in F-major (or D-minor, but we rarely name minor keys in CO music). This means that a certain set of dizi fingerings get ``lost'' in the outcome, and that it makes transposition that much nastier.
But it's just a minor quibble from a curmudgeon huh.
Anyway, it's late. I ought to sleep so I can wake up early and drive to work and clear out some of the stuff that snowballed over the past couple of days. Till the next update then.
Saturday, August 01, 2015
Delusions of... Normalcy
It's late and I should be asleep.
I know that SGDQ is running now, but it is late and I have two different rehearsals/practices tomorrow. Not to mention that I just recently ``recovered'' from my stupid tension headache.
But I had to write this piece. The topic had been floating in my head for the past week or so, and if I don't write about it now, it will become an obsession that will persist and end up with me engaging in weird compulsive behavior. So off I go.
Delusions. I think that as humans, we have a tendency to operate under our own set of delusions. Now, these delusions need not be of the more grandiose kind that one might be used to hearing about, but just random pieces of magical thinking that we tend to have to just allow the day to pass by quicker without having to fall into despair on realisation that in the cosmic scale of things, even human existence is meagre and meaningless.
I have my delusions of course. As do everyone else. Some of these delusions are rather overt -- everyone seems to believe that I have some kind of skill in some of the things I do when at best I'm merely mediocre. Some are covert, for instance the belief that one has power over the elements, or even to control/manipulate luck outside of the RNG.
Delusions are not as abnormal as they sound. I think it is part of the human condition. I thought back about the time when I was much younger, and realised that over time, ``growing up'' meant substituting the more fanciful delusions of my capabilities/worth with other delusions that do not superficially contradict the experience gained from observing the way the universe works. So, for example, instead of thinking that I have the capability of controlling weather, I now think that I have some kind of preternatural control over all things that use software programmable electronic circuits (aka ``computers'').
It's still consistent with the way one views other fellow humans -- delusions are part of the black-box package that comprises the brain and mind, and we don't usually need to care about the specifics of the delusion in order to function with the said people. The only times where it becomes necessary to have some partial understanding of another's delusions are when there is a need to create/maintain a stronger relationship bond other than mere acquaintance, i.e. when one needs to live with a person or when one is with an incompetent individual, with ``incompetent'' taking on the technical/legal meaning that the person is not wholly responsible for his/her actions due to youth or lack of maturity. In these cases, the partial understanding is needed to generate the kind of empathy that is often the bedrock of deep relationships.
Not all delusions are harmless though. Those that involve other people tend to be more harmful than those that live on silently within the person's mind. Projected emotions, assumptions are just two of the many different manifestations of harmful delusions that involve other people; they are harmful because they enforce the deluded individual's perspective on others who do not share the same, therefore leading to a lack of empathy, which leads to conflict. There are other personal delusions that can be termed harmful, but I am not of the opinion that it is in our place to explicitly point out to the person that his/her delusion is harmful to him/her, unless there is an exact situation where the said delusion is a direct contributory cause towards a life and death situation involving the person.
This means that state-mandated committing of people to asylums for acts that do not involve an immediate threat to anyone's life is something that I do not support in principle.
Given then that everyone has delusions and necessarily uses them to make everyday living less stressful, it becomes ludicrous when we start considering the notion of a ``normal'' psychology. As put by my abnormal psychology professor, a ``normal'' psychology (be it be population mode, median, mean metrics) is the most abnormal of all -- everyone is abnormal in some way, and all that matters is the degree of abnormality, and more importantly, how much it affects the quality of life. This means that it is much harder to prove that someone is ``sane'' instead of ``insane'', which provides a reason why I think that state-mandated committing of people to asylums is generally not a good idea.
But the purpose of this rant isn't to argue about what powers the state ought to/ought not to have; it is to point out that the world is delusional in general.
The important part is to know how to pick ``useful'' delusions so that we don't end up harming ourselves or others, while still staving away the void that is the rest of the universe.
In fact, it might be the case that matter itself is the biggest delusion of all, since most of the universe is made up of things that we cannot even start to characterise other than ``it is dark energy''.
I know that SGDQ is running now, but it is late and I have two different rehearsals/practices tomorrow. Not to mention that I just recently ``recovered'' from my stupid tension headache.
But I had to write this piece. The topic had been floating in my head for the past week or so, and if I don't write about it now, it will become an obsession that will persist and end up with me engaging in weird compulsive behavior. So off I go.
Delusions. I think that as humans, we have a tendency to operate under our own set of delusions. Now, these delusions need not be of the more grandiose kind that one might be used to hearing about, but just random pieces of magical thinking that we tend to have to just allow the day to pass by quicker without having to fall into despair on realisation that in the cosmic scale of things, even human existence is meagre and meaningless.
I have my delusions of course. As do everyone else. Some of these delusions are rather overt -- everyone seems to believe that I have some kind of skill in some of the things I do when at best I'm merely mediocre. Some are covert, for instance the belief that one has power over the elements, or even to control/manipulate luck outside of the RNG.
Delusions are not as abnormal as they sound. I think it is part of the human condition. I thought back about the time when I was much younger, and realised that over time, ``growing up'' meant substituting the more fanciful delusions of my capabilities/worth with other delusions that do not superficially contradict the experience gained from observing the way the universe works. So, for example, instead of thinking that I have the capability of controlling weather, I now think that I have some kind of preternatural control over all things that use software programmable electronic circuits (aka ``computers'').
It's still consistent with the way one views other fellow humans -- delusions are part of the black-box package that comprises the brain and mind, and we don't usually need to care about the specifics of the delusion in order to function with the said people. The only times where it becomes necessary to have some partial understanding of another's delusions are when there is a need to create/maintain a stronger relationship bond other than mere acquaintance, i.e. when one needs to live with a person or when one is with an incompetent individual, with ``incompetent'' taking on the technical/legal meaning that the person is not wholly responsible for his/her actions due to youth or lack of maturity. In these cases, the partial understanding is needed to generate the kind of empathy that is often the bedrock of deep relationships.
Not all delusions are harmless though. Those that involve other people tend to be more harmful than those that live on silently within the person's mind. Projected emotions, assumptions are just two of the many different manifestations of harmful delusions that involve other people; they are harmful because they enforce the deluded individual's perspective on others who do not share the same, therefore leading to a lack of empathy, which leads to conflict. There are other personal delusions that can be termed harmful, but I am not of the opinion that it is in our place to explicitly point out to the person that his/her delusion is harmful to him/her, unless there is an exact situation where the said delusion is a direct contributory cause towards a life and death situation involving the person.
This means that state-mandated committing of people to asylums for acts that do not involve an immediate threat to anyone's life is something that I do not support in principle.
Given then that everyone has delusions and necessarily uses them to make everyday living less stressful, it becomes ludicrous when we start considering the notion of a ``normal'' psychology. As put by my abnormal psychology professor, a ``normal'' psychology (be it be population mode, median, mean metrics) is the most abnormal of all -- everyone is abnormal in some way, and all that matters is the degree of abnormality, and more importantly, how much it affects the quality of life. This means that it is much harder to prove that someone is ``sane'' instead of ``insane'', which provides a reason why I think that state-mandated committing of people to asylums is generally not a good idea.
But the purpose of this rant isn't to argue about what powers the state ought to/ought not to have; it is to point out that the world is delusional in general.
The important part is to know how to pick ``useful'' delusions so that we don't end up harming ourselves or others, while still staving away the void that is the rest of the universe.
In fact, it might be the case that matter itself is the biggest delusion of all, since most of the universe is made up of things that we cannot even start to characterise other than ``it is dark energy''.
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