Circuit Breaker in All But Name

It's another long weekend, and I'm writing another post here. It is also nearing stupid o'clock, and boy does this remind me of the past.

It was nearly eleven years ago that I would be writing blog posts at stupid o'clock. How has time flown on by!

The circuit breaker was supposed to come to an end come June 01, but no one believed it for a moment---it already had one extension when it was supposed to be done by May 04, and given the current situation of triple-digit daily infections [that get the treatment of spin by deliberately conditioning the total daily numbers by the arbitrary distinction of ``citizens/PRs'' vs ``WP living in dormitories''], it was never likely going to be lifted come June 01, given the relatively conservative and reactionary nature in which Singapore is generally governed.

I didn't even bother to read up the minutae of the ``three-phase'' approach to re-opening things. Phase one is basically an extension to the circuit breaker in all but name, just like how the circuit breaker was basically a lock down in all but name.

As I've said before, 2020 is basically a bust. Everyone is just trying to survive, more so than before, and there really doesn't seem to be anything to look forward to, which is kind of a shame.

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In other news, it seems that the new version of Ghostscript 9.52 broke something in the ps2write device. Shell scripts that I had written which helped me shrink down PDF files through resampling and other knick-knacks that used to work on Ghostscript 9.27 [in Cygwin] failed competely with some awkward rangecheckerror on --restore--. I managed to isolate the problem down to how Ghostscript was trying to convert from PDF to Postscript, and was stuck there.

I think I'd have to come up with a test case to file it as a bug, but effort is needed. I do have another thing that I would like to do first though, and will probably focus on that.

That's about all I'd want to write for now.

To anyone who is reading this (including future me---hi!), take it easy. Life's hard, and sometimes shitty, but remember this---you're still alive. That counts for something. Just keep on trudging onward steadily, and God will lead the way.

You never walk alone.

Till the next update.

I'm Sorry For The Past, Chara

This year, now specifically, it feels like a major ``reset'' than anything else. Much of what had been taken for granted as the status quo have been nerfed or turned completely upside down with the ever-increasing spectre that is the novel coronavirus pandemic situation.

To me, this is especially true. I am steadily losing the excess mass that I have put on since I was twenty years old. I am again in that state before I had gone steady for five years---alone, but not exactly lonely. I have returned to the time in my life where my main companions were still my books (or reading in general), my writing, and my music.

Don't get me wrong; Chara is still on my mind. There is no easy way in which she will completely disappear from it, not now, not ever. But what she means to me will evolve, just like how how and what everyone means to me will evolve. I cannot deny the time that we had spent together as a couple---it is a part of the collective history of me that makes me who I am today. But I will promise myself that this entry is the last time in a while that I will mention her by name, not because I don't love her any more, but that it is important that I too need to dust myself and get up to go forward, just like how she wanted to go forward [on her journey with God] when she came to the decision near the start of this circuit breaker.

Looking at Tino, Stuffie, and Awa no longer generates the ``bitter'' part of the bittersweet memories---they only generate good vibes and a little nostalgia of a past.

I have to move on with the times. There are things that need to be done while other things are stalled.

I've started on my path of self-discovery, and more specifically, the discovery of my relationship with God. It is an important thing to me to do so---for too long I have been fighting and fighting and fighting to know what is next for me, and frankly after thirty five years, I am just too tired. This circuit breaker imposed isolation with a parting of ways with Chara is a good time for me to really do some soul-searching and learn more about myself in ways that past me would just brush away as immaterial.

Past me would be right by a sleight of hand on words---it is immaterial because it is something that cannot be objectively measured, or rather, something whose axioms cannot be objectively measured. When I am ``trapped'' at home due to the circuit breaker, there is nothing objective to ``measure''. And long time readers of this blog of mine would know that I never did well under such circumstances.

This time though, it is different. Instead of feeling all manner of fear, anxiety, and worry, I find myself with a surprising amount of peace in me. And it hardly involved anything that I used to partake in to improve my mood---running, geocaching, play more music, and the like. I feel a sense of liberation in me that cannot be easily put into words that convince---they can only be put into words of personal testimony that old me would simply listen politely, nod, and not give it too much thought.

Old me was a bastard in many ways. Always thinking he is in the right, always thinking that he has everything figured out, and that if one was not following what he was saying, they were wrong. Recent past me was less so---he lost some of his arrogance, but his personal confidence of mastering the material world was still too much to bear.

Present me thinks that part of why he and Chara parted ways was because recent past me heard but did not listen. Recent past me thought he could out think things, even though an older past me was starting to have doubts about just how many things he was able to out think given the increasingly chaotic world out there. Present me, understanding a bit more now about the concept of sin and the precepts of Jesus's teachings, also realised that recent past me had unintentionally declared himself as an agent of Satan to the daughter of God that he was going out with by declaring that he would help her with the material world. No wonder she had such a strong reaction when she had time to converse the Most High, leading to the surrendering of our relationship to God.

Past me definitely did not intend to sound like an agent of the tempter, but words still have power. For even past me acknowledged that ``while something may not be true, if enough people say it, at some point the truth of the thing matters no more, because enough people have believed it to be true that they react as though the thing were true, leading to all the associated effects''.

I do not know if Chara ever reads my blog entries since that day, and if she is reading it now, I want to say, I am sorry for what I had done. I was/am a sinner and did not know any better then, because I wasn't a believer and didn't understand the lens in which you were viewing reality. Your choice of a parting of ways was a righteous one, and I agree with you wholeheartedly now. I said I understood you at that point of the parting of ways, but now I understand. And I now know in my bones that God will show the right way for you, and He will show the right way for me.

V xabj gung gur fgbel bs gur eryngvbafuvc orgjrra Punen naq V vfa'g bire whfg lrg, ohg vg vf hc gb Tbq'f tenpr gb qrsvar jung vg vf ng gur gvzr gung cyrnfrf Uvz. I have no say in this, for I have given it to God.

That said, the nature of this blog still remains the same. It is still my megaphone into the void that is the Internet on my thoughts and observations. It is as the banner text unabashedly proclaims:

An eclectic mix of thoughts and views on life and life-at-large, and interesting observations both in real life and in cyberspace, as well as other sparks of inspiration. Take things here with a pinch of salt, for they might be truth, yet at the same time, they are less formal than they seem to be...

And that will be all I would want to write about for now.

Till the next update then.

To Thine Own Self Be True

I have been thinking for a while on how to write this post. But I suppose at the end of the day, I cannot be false to myself---I only know how to write the truth, and even then, in a straightforward way.

Chara decided to part ways with me.

That was the traumatic event that had happened to me about two weeks ago that I had been dancing about in my allusions in posts here. This is after all the other weird stuff that I had reported here about other aspects of life.

It's funny in a not-so-funny sort of way. Her decision to do so helped eclipse every other annoyance that I had been experiencing thus far; in view of what happened, everything else seemed to be so minor that I now look back and wonder why was I so pissy about them in the first place.

I have lost my dearest friend.

She doesn't want to communicate with me for now, the reasoning being that words may end up leading me on, and giving me false hope.

How long is ``for now'', and whether we get to be friends again, or even lovers once more, neither of us knows.

All I know is, I hurt inside. Badly.

It took me two weeks for this to sink in ``in my bones''. Funny enough, I knew it would sink in only nowish. And that's why I have chosen to take leave this upcoming Vesak weekend to make it long enough to really work it through my system. I'm still functional, in no danger of harming myself or anyone else, or even do things that I will regret in the future. I'm still on that crazy scheme of mine to lose excess mass using Singapore's BMI standard (see logical page 1, physical page 8) (or see this for the summary). The rationale is that it is a standard that is applicable for sedentary asians, and the last I checked, I am indeed sedentary now.

I talked about some aspects of ennui in December, and more recently in this entry in March. I think I may have found the missing link that joins the two ends of the unspoken questions. But first, a little bit of history.

The thing is, I've always been keeping an eye out for my mind and body. I read, I study, I ponder, and I experiment, so that I can understand the natural world as much as I can. Despite my shitty beginnings of really bad skin that made vigorous physical activity untenable under other people's control, I have been trying to keep my body in some kind of usable shape through the various attempts at swimming, at running, at cycling, at practising Aikido, and practising Aiki-jujutsu. Music-making exercises both my mind and body, and even parts of my soul, but other than that, my soul has been something that I have not really paid much attention to.

I had no reason to question how/why I was here, and I had no reason to think about what would happen after I died---I knew I would cease to exist, and it was okay, or so I thought.

But it was not okay. All my life, I had been struggling and fighting my way from one milestone to the next, losing both sleep and energy trying to plan ahead and think ahead. But how can I keep on planning ahead when there's no eventual pay-off other than ignominy from oblivion?

In short, I grew tired. Really tired of just thinking and thinking and trying to out-think so that I can literally carve my path through life, a path that does not lead to greatness but to literal oblivion.

Then I looked around me. Many struggle, but there was a select group around me that did not seem to suffer so bad. Why was it that they were always so sure of their place in the world despite it all being completely bonkers and giving every statistician the type of headache that never goes away?

In some ways, I've always known the answer, even though I never had the guts to acknowledge it. In a recent post, I would even say that it was prescient, even though I think now that the person I was referring to wasn't quite right. I quote the relevant paragraph here:

... The world, as a whole, is also getting more bonkers, and there are just so many things that could have gone wrong that have gone wrong. To what extent I can survive through that is something that I need to consider carefully. Of course this time, I am no longer travelling alone for the most part---I have an ally, a friend, a partner-in-crime, a fellow conspirator with which we can co-support each other through. This will definitely make things different in a good way...

No, it really isn't Chara. I don't need her, and she doesn't need me---we only walked together because we knew we were stronger together, because we complemented each other's weaknesses with our strengths, and it was something that we both had known before what happened two weeks ago. All that hurt I feel inside was just the sense of loss of my dearest friend, hopefully for now only.

But really, I have been mistaken.

I have always had an ally, a friend, a ``partner-in-crime''---it's just that... I had never had the guts to acknowledge His existence.

Until now.