Well well well... yet another New Year's Eve, this time for ye olde Chinese Lunar New Year. To many it's a day of the fabled reunion dinner, the time of great festivities and feasting, a time to temporarily set aside any differences to bring out the courtesies to avoid befouling the symbolic start of a new year.
To me, it's just Monday. And it's not even a half-day Monday as it was stated in the employees' handbook, because of the great fallback of ``exigencies of the job''. That last bit though... despite me making it sound as terrible as it is, isn't too bad particularly when I do get good cooperation to actually get the stuff done, making that OT sort of worth it.
But let's not talk about work---what happens at work ought to stay at work, unless it starts to affect my not-work.
Now to be fair, I did manage to get home in time for a simple meal with my parents a la ``reunion dinner'' style, so it isn't that bad. I just wished that I could have gotten home at the designated time instead of forfeiting it.
Ah well.
Anyway, I've started to clear the peninsula sand-dessert near my mob-farm in Minecraft. No reason why other than it seemed like a relaxing thing to do each day just to unwind after spending the whole day figuring work stuff out. Maybe I might spend a bit of tomorrow playing more of Serious Sam 3 to actually complete the game, but knowing me, it's likely to end up being yet another Minecraft event.
In other news, after 12+ years of being a regular on the ChaosForge forums, I've finally realised that it was time to go. I was effectively a global moderator guarding a cemetery against spam bots trying to find a foothold to peddle their brand of nonsense as the community has moved on to other third party platforms that have more pull, like Reddit, Discord, or even Steam. Even KK himself doesn't make any appearances in the forum for the most part---it was definitely clear that the community has moved on.
But I don't like those places. And since I cannot follow, and am sick of being the night watchman of a cemetery, I just drop out/off. I did send a farewell message to the old fogeys who were fellow night watchmen (including KK), but only God knows if they will ever see it.
There were lots of great memories I had with ChaosForge. The old DoomRL times, the play by forum (PBF) role-playing, the 3D renders of space marines doing Doom-y things, all the amusing and amazing ways to die in DoomRL... But the times have changed... hell, I have changed. KK's no longer running a labour of love any more---it's a revenue generating company with its own capital contributing shareholders that he needs to answer to now. I've always been, at best, a ``whale'' scale donator, or at worst, a bleedin' heart sucker. But no whale scale donator can ever beat the raw mass of actual capital. I'm not angry nor disappointed with his choice; I'm just sad that I hit the realisation that I can no longer follow along where he is going. I wish him all the best still, and will enjoy whatever creations that may come out from ChaosForge after Jupiter Hell---as the outsider that I have been in the past five years.
Why does it feel like I'm preparing for my own death or something...?
My life is exceedingly boring in general. I think I will stop here. Till the next update then.
Monday, January 31, 2022
Sunday, January 30, 2022
The Most Valuable Thing That You Possess
What is the most valuable thing that you possess?
To me, it is you, the you who is willing to spend time with me. Goods perish, money/assets depreciate, skill levels wax and wane as our minds/bodies reach their peak and then fade away with time.
But you, the you who is willing to spend time with me, that is the most valuable thing that you possess that cannot be replaced with anything else.
Time is something that cannot be easily banked---once that second is gone, it is gone with no way of recouping it. Sure, I did mention before how money is an accounting measure in which humans have devised as a means of ``banking'' time, but it's just not the same for the same reason why money supplies always need to have some form of inflation built in---future time is always more valuable than past time because the past has already occurred, while the future is always hopeful, with so much potential and non-deterministic outcomes that make it a crime to ascribe less value to as compared to the past.
And that's why commitments are treated as being valuable---it's the staking of the most valuable asset that one possesses on something that makes the action so valuable.
Speaking from a position of relative privilege, money can always be made in other ways ``easily''. But time, the time that you choose to spend with me, that can never be made back. For you to choose to spend time with me means that you have chosen to prioritise our relationship (platonic or otherwise) over all else, and to share that precious unrenewable possession of yours with me. What we end up with spending time together is to create that unique gift that is indestructible---the memory of the moment.
No one can take away that precious memory short of destroying all that is objectively what makes us ``us''.
To me, it is you, the you who is willing to spend time with me. Goods perish, money/assets depreciate, skill levels wax and wane as our minds/bodies reach their peak and then fade away with time.
But you, the you who is willing to spend time with me, that is the most valuable thing that you possess that cannot be replaced with anything else.
Time is something that cannot be easily banked---once that second is gone, it is gone with no way of recouping it. Sure, I did mention before how money is an accounting measure in which humans have devised as a means of ``banking'' time, but it's just not the same for the same reason why money supplies always need to have some form of inflation built in---future time is always more valuable than past time because the past has already occurred, while the future is always hopeful, with so much potential and non-deterministic outcomes that make it a crime to ascribe less value to as compared to the past.
And that's why commitments are treated as being valuable---it's the staking of the most valuable asset that one possesses on something that makes the action so valuable.
Speaking from a position of relative privilege, money can always be made in other ways ``easily''. But time, the time that you choose to spend with me, that can never be made back. For you to choose to spend time with me means that you have chosen to prioritise our relationship (platonic or otherwise) over all else, and to share that precious unrenewable possession of yours with me. What we end up with spending time together is to create that unique gift that is indestructible---the memory of the moment.
No one can take away that precious memory short of destroying all that is objectively what makes us ``us''.
Saturday, January 29, 2022
On Flute Stands...
In reference to a post on Flute Forum by someone who was seeking advice on making their own wooden flute stand for piccolo, concert flute, alto flute, and bass flute:
I'm in no position to dictate specifics that way, but here're my thoughts:
1. Ensure your dowel lengths extend past the foot joint tenon to relieve stress, especially for your alto and bass flutes. The longer the dowel lengths, the more stable you can hold your flute, but the more annoying it is to "load" the flutes on.
2. The diameter of your dowels should be close to the ID of the flute that it needs to hold to keep the flute's centre of mass centred over the axis of the dowel as possible to use the longitudinal strength of the tube to hold its weight as much as possible while vertical. In other words, don't have too much wiggle room built in -- just enough to slip the flute body on and off with some (but not complete) focus.
2. Whatever material is in contact with the inner tube of the flute should be softer than the material of the flute itself to avoid scratching the finish of the inner walls. You might need to consult some surface hardness scales for details on this. Geometry can help a little (i.e. tapering of the end that points upwards), but you need to take the whole centre of mass aspect (points 1 and 2) into account when you do that. From my observation, the main points of contact that you need to worry about are the upper edge of the dowel, and perhaps the lower edge. The rest of the body of the dowel does not really contact any point of the flute body at rest, and to really affect that would require a particular effort by the user to "scrape" the dowel.
3. The base of the dowel (where the end edge of the foot joint is supported) should dampen the inevitable drop when one releases the flute upon the dowel, i.e. make sure it is thick enough.
4. I don't think that moisture control is that big a deal, mostly because I don't think that the amount of moisture (from condensation) within the flutes is sufficient to swell your unsealed wood enough to get past the wiggle room. The metal flutes do not change their ID from humidity, while the wooden ones might. The range of the ambient humidity of where you use the pegs are probably the bigger issue for this.
5. This probably goes without saying, but do ensure that your base is sufficiently massive (either in absolute mass or in the amount of moments generated relative to the centre of masses of the mounted flutes) to support the protuding tubes of flutes to keep things in stable equilibrium. Since it sounds like you are intending to do a combination stand, this might not be as straightforward as it seems.
I'm sure someone else will have much more specific information, but I hope what I have here can help you.
Wednesday, January 26, 2022
The Demons Are Strong Tonight
The demons are strong tonight. I wonder if it is because of just my draining my brain juice from work, a lack of sleep, or listening to some pre 1980s English pop music that is of the melancholic/nostalgic sort.
Well, whatever it is, the demons are strong tonight. Let's hope I get through it safely.
Till the next update.
Well, whatever it is, the demons are strong tonight. Let's hope I get through it safely.
Till the next update.
Saturday, January 22, 2022
The Day That Isn't Really Mine
On this day some thirty nearly forty years ago, the grace of God and my mother's hardship allowed me to appear in this world.
I did not choose to be born. There are many things that I can make choices in subsequently, but being born just isn't one of them.
But that does not mean that I am not grateful for having been brought into this world.
Being born into the world is a great direct risk to the mother, and is, in general, a risk to my parents.
Because there is no way of knowing anything about the child. Only God knows what He has planned; the rest of us just hope for the best.
This day that people call MT's birthday, is not really dedicated to me---I think it inappropriate, for all I did was merely start to exist. The ones where this day should be dedicated to isn't me, but God and my mother, the former for His inscrutable plans, and the latter for well having me through her labour.
I think it took me more than three decades to realise this. And I am glad that I have realised this before my ability to be thankful to those who contributed to my creation is forever nerfed due to the mortal coil.
That is all. Till the next update.
I did not choose to be born. There are many things that I can make choices in subsequently, but being born just isn't one of them.
But that does not mean that I am not grateful for having been brought into this world.
Being born into the world is a great direct risk to the mother, and is, in general, a risk to my parents.
Because there is no way of knowing anything about the child. Only God knows what He has planned; the rest of us just hope for the best.
This day that people call MT's birthday, is not really dedicated to me---I think it inappropriate, for all I did was merely start to exist. The ones where this day should be dedicated to isn't me, but God and my mother, the former for His inscrutable plans, and the latter for well having me through her labour.
I think it took me more than three decades to realise this. And I am glad that I have realised this before my ability to be thankful to those who contributed to my creation is forever nerfed due to the mortal coil.
That is all. Till the next update.
Sunday, January 16, 2022
The First Stupid O'Clock of the Year
Well well well... it's stupid o'clock. Whatever should I do?
Ideally, I should go sleep. But as the season for feeling old rolls about, I cannot help but think about feeling old.
This year is special though. The time duration between regular New Year's, ulang tahunku, and 春节 is probably at its shortest of about a month between the earliest event and the latest event (citation needed). That makes the profound aging effect hit me a little harder than expected.
I'm not in anyway depressed, as far as I know. A little melancholous perhaps, but definitely not to the level where I am actively sulking. I mean, I am already considered a middle-aged man for all purposes and intents---give me another few years and I would soon be in the age demographic of the neither here nor there, the so-called 不惑之年.
Melancholy strikes me because I realise that in many ways, I'm kind of a failure for not accepting/following society's expectations. I was supposed to head on to get a PhD and return as some kind of research hero for SIN city, but at best I was just some weird software engineer who helped build a system that could never reach the full potential of scale and use because of where it was designed and built in---the constant posturing for ``strategic reasons'' was never fully backed by the resources and management oversight needed to truly bring the system up to fulfill its namesake.
Peers of my age group have already gotten married, with some of them having their second or even their third child. Yet here I am, having spent five years in a long term relationship with nothing left to show of it, and my heart numb enough from the experience that the phrase ``我心已打烊'' makes perfect sense, even though I truly haven't committed myself to the single life just yet.
For the confused, that video (assuming it remains up) is the earworm that has been stuck for nearly thirty years that I only managed to find today---《我心已打烊》 by 叶瑷菱. The lyrics, as obtained from MyMusic, is as follows:
A while ago, I had put away Twinkletoes, my emperor penguin plushie. I was at home, not on-site at the customer's place, and most definitely not under all kinds of unreasonable pressures both implicit and explicit that I needed Twinkletoes for that reassuring hug.
I found myself retrieving him from my wardrobe two days ago, and giving him a tight squeeze for a short while, before carefully putting him back.
Watching the first serious original song from the HololiveEN -Myth- crew also brought out more of those melancholous thoughts due to the heartfelt lyrics that encompassed the hopes of Myth through their ups and downs being the pioneer gamble of a Japanese technology-turned-entertainment company to break out of the typecast and head into the wider world.
I also found myself just thinking about various futures like the way the Myth crew did, but those thoughts never truly got far because of the fog of uncertainty partly due to the management-by-committee approach of handling the pandemic, and partly because the already present ills of society have finally showed up in their true form when the usual fig leaves are blown askew due to the very same pandemic itself.
I turned to my God, and He gave me some comfort. He is close, yet there is still a distance between He and I. I have comfort knowing that my far future is certain with the salvation that came about through Jesus, but my near future is less so. Each day is just a careful movement from one state to another, until I am exhausted and turn in for the night, just to repeat it all again the next day, if God is willing.
And that is why I merely have that melancholous feel, as opposed to an outright depressive episode. I have no expectations on what can/will happen on ulang tuhanku---like the New Year's, it's just another day that needs to be gone through. Is there anything in particular that I am looking forward to?
Sadly, not really---none of the things that used to spark joy are present any more.
Anyway, that's all I have for this instalment of stupid o'clock. Before I finally get some sleep, I'll just leave Jude 17-22 as my parting thought.
Peace.
Ideally, I should go sleep. But as the season for feeling old rolls about, I cannot help but think about feeling old.
This year is special though. The time duration between regular New Year's, ulang tahunku, and 春节 is probably at its shortest of about a month between the earliest event and the latest event (citation needed). That makes the profound aging effect hit me a little harder than expected.
I'm not in anyway depressed, as far as I know. A little melancholous perhaps, but definitely not to the level where I am actively sulking. I mean, I am already considered a middle-aged man for all purposes and intents---give me another few years and I would soon be in the age demographic of the neither here nor there, the so-called 不惑之年.
Melancholy strikes me because I realise that in many ways, I'm kind of a failure for not accepting/following society's expectations. I was supposed to head on to get a PhD and return as some kind of research hero for SIN city, but at best I was just some weird software engineer who helped build a system that could never reach the full potential of scale and use because of where it was designed and built in---the constant posturing for ``strategic reasons'' was never fully backed by the resources and management oversight needed to truly bring the system up to fulfill its namesake.
Peers of my age group have already gotten married, with some of them having their second or even their third child. Yet here I am, having spent five years in a long term relationship with nothing left to show of it, and my heart numb enough from the experience that the phrase ``我心已打烊'' makes perfect sense, even though I truly haven't committed myself to the single life just yet.
For the confused, that video (assuming it remains up) is the earworm that has been stuck for nearly thirty years that I only managed to find today---《我心已打烊》 by 叶瑷菱. The lyrics, as obtained from MyMusic, is as follows:
我曾有过那么一段It's by no means a comforting piece of music, but it does seem to capture that melancholous feel that I have.
背着阳光横过沙漠
只为了找寻爱神的梦幻
爱神的模样
我曾有过那么一段
踏着星河奔向穹苍
只为了逃避死神的追寻
死神的挑战
岁月带着微笑
又将春天吹干
而我只有茫茫然
无奈的回头望
挥别了梦幻挥别了忧伤
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊
A while ago, I had put away Twinkletoes, my emperor penguin plushie. I was at home, not on-site at the customer's place, and most definitely not under all kinds of unreasonable pressures both implicit and explicit that I needed Twinkletoes for that reassuring hug.
I found myself retrieving him from my wardrobe two days ago, and giving him a tight squeeze for a short while, before carefully putting him back.
Watching the first serious original song from the HololiveEN -Myth- crew also brought out more of those melancholous thoughts due to the heartfelt lyrics that encompassed the hopes of Myth through their ups and downs being the pioneer gamble of a Japanese technology-turned-entertainment company to break out of the typecast and head into the wider world.
I also found myself just thinking about various futures like the way the Myth crew did, but those thoughts never truly got far because of the fog of uncertainty partly due to the management-by-committee approach of handling the pandemic, and partly because the already present ills of society have finally showed up in their true form when the usual fig leaves are blown askew due to the very same pandemic itself.
I turned to my God, and He gave me some comfort. He is close, yet there is still a distance between He and I. I have comfort knowing that my far future is certain with the salvation that came about through Jesus, but my near future is less so. Each day is just a careful movement from one state to another, until I am exhausted and turn in for the night, just to repeat it all again the next day, if God is willing.
And that is why I merely have that melancholous feel, as opposed to an outright depressive episode. I have no expectations on what can/will happen on ulang tuhanku---like the New Year's, it's just another day that needs to be gone through. Is there anything in particular that I am looking forward to?
Sadly, not really---none of the things that used to spark joy are present any more.
Anyway, that's all I have for this instalment of stupid o'clock. Before I finally get some sleep, I'll just leave Jude 17-22 as my parting thought.
Peace.
Saturday, January 15, 2022
Well... A Fortnight Has Passed...
With the blink of an eye, the work week is over.
And that was the second week.
Working in a mostly empty office is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, silence except for the humming of the blowers whenever the air-conditioning decides to kick it up a notch means lots of concentration time. On the other hand, it kinda sucks that I am mostly just talking to myself, even during the ``down'' time in between handling units of work. It's a new team that I am working with, and it's nice to observe them and make small talk to learn more about each other's idiosyncracies, obviously not in a destructive sort of way.
My working title is finally confirmed after the many different versions that I had seen; that's also a good thing.
Reading is kicking back into gear, with my old plan of handling The Economist first going well. Considering that I now have about 2 hours of reading time from all the commutes (and perhaps another 30 min during the lunch break), that's ample to get through an issue---I take roughly 3--4 hours to handle one issue of The Economist.
One thing I've noted is just how fit most people seem to look even during my short walk to and fro from the office to the bus stop. Perhaps it is a case of them being nearly twenty years younger than me, or perhaps it is just their choice of attire---everyone was wearing either some kind of ``active wear'' sports clothes (think yoga gear, then think running gear; both sexes), or some kind of mid-riff baring barely there body-con clothes (for the females), you know, symbols of being youthful and by extension, fit. I'm glad that I am no longer at 80+ kg though, but that said, I still have another 10 kg to go to get to the regulation mass.
Ah well. I'll get there eventually.
I'm rediscovering eating places in Harbourfront Centre. They tend not to be as crowded as the ones in VivoCity nearby, and have a certain ``home-y'' kind of feel, like an old friend from a more quaint old time. So far I've eaten at Yoshinoya, Pastamania (for the pizza), Hitoyoshi Sushi, and Dunkin' Donuts. There is a ramen place that I would like to try, as well as a couple of other chain casual restaurants (including Pizza Hut, Elemen, and Crave).
Closer by at Seah Im, I'm pending the trying of some char kway teow, after having sampled quite a few of whatever's available in the evening spread across the fraction of stalls that were open.
------
I spent a little bit of time yesterday just building yet another rail extension in the nether, this time connecting my end portal station to my mob farm station. In many ways, my mob farm station is fast turning into a mini-hub, being the stop-over point for the second farthest station (the jungle biome, while the farthest station is the one waaaaaaay out in the quarantine zone for fighting the wither). A day or two ago, I ended up digging out yet another floor of my hill top base, effectively creating some kind of underground building complex. I just wonder how far I want to take it though... while the materials obtained is always welcome, I really should start thinking what I would like to do with all that space.
Maybe forcing an artificial village for trading purposes? It doesn't have to be 100% legit by bribing/dragging/kidnapping villages from the ``nearby'' village---that's where the semi-survival nature of this map comes into play; I will do enough of the grind work as long as it is fun, and when that stops getting fun while I still need to use that resource, I don't mind just conjuring something out of thin air using creative mode.
It's literally my own world that I play just for fun---no need to deliberately make my own life difficult here.
I guess that's about it for now. Till the next update, whenever it might be.
And that was the second week.
Working in a mostly empty office is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, silence except for the humming of the blowers whenever the air-conditioning decides to kick it up a notch means lots of concentration time. On the other hand, it kinda sucks that I am mostly just talking to myself, even during the ``down'' time in between handling units of work. It's a new team that I am working with, and it's nice to observe them and make small talk to learn more about each other's idiosyncracies, obviously not in a destructive sort of way.
My working title is finally confirmed after the many different versions that I had seen; that's also a good thing.
Reading is kicking back into gear, with my old plan of handling The Economist first going well. Considering that I now have about 2 hours of reading time from all the commutes (and perhaps another 30 min during the lunch break), that's ample to get through an issue---I take roughly 3--4 hours to handle one issue of The Economist.
One thing I've noted is just how fit most people seem to look even during my short walk to and fro from the office to the bus stop. Perhaps it is a case of them being nearly twenty years younger than me, or perhaps it is just their choice of attire---everyone was wearing either some kind of ``active wear'' sports clothes (think yoga gear, then think running gear; both sexes), or some kind of mid-riff baring barely there body-con clothes (for the females), you know, symbols of being youthful and by extension, fit. I'm glad that I am no longer at 80+ kg though, but that said, I still have another 10 kg to go to get to the regulation mass.
Ah well. I'll get there eventually.
I'm rediscovering eating places in Harbourfront Centre. They tend not to be as crowded as the ones in VivoCity nearby, and have a certain ``home-y'' kind of feel, like an old friend from a more quaint old time. So far I've eaten at Yoshinoya, Pastamania (for the pizza), Hitoyoshi Sushi, and Dunkin' Donuts. There is a ramen place that I would like to try, as well as a couple of other chain casual restaurants (including Pizza Hut, Elemen, and Crave).
Closer by at Seah Im, I'm pending the trying of some char kway teow, after having sampled quite a few of whatever's available in the evening spread across the fraction of stalls that were open.
------
I spent a little bit of time yesterday just building yet another rail extension in the nether, this time connecting my end portal station to my mob farm station. In many ways, my mob farm station is fast turning into a mini-hub, being the stop-over point for the second farthest station (the jungle biome, while the farthest station is the one waaaaaaay out in the quarantine zone for fighting the wither). A day or two ago, I ended up digging out yet another floor of my hill top base, effectively creating some kind of underground building complex. I just wonder how far I want to take it though... while the materials obtained is always welcome, I really should start thinking what I would like to do with all that space.
Maybe forcing an artificial village for trading purposes? It doesn't have to be 100% legit by bribing/dragging/kidnapping villages from the ``nearby'' village---that's where the semi-survival nature of this map comes into play; I will do enough of the grind work as long as it is fun, and when that stops getting fun while I still need to use that resource, I don't mind just conjuring something out of thin air using creative mode.
It's literally my own world that I play just for fun---no need to deliberately make my own life difficult here.
I guess that's about it for now. Till the next update, whenever it might be.
Sunday, January 09, 2022
And There Goes The First Week
I had originally wanted to write something about how the focus on stopping the objectification of women is misplaced because the reality of the matter has moved on to actually objectifying all human beings through the consistent slicing and dicing of the human experience in the form of various clustering/categorisation in a bid to attach attributes to the person in order to ``make sense'' of where this person ``stands'' on a variety of issues that relate to either politics or commerce, and that this particular denigration of human dignity is wide spread, under-reported, and seemingly tacitly accepted as part of the ``new'' social contract for existing these days.
But it felt like too much effort, because there was just so much that I need to deconstruct and explain just to ensure that I don't sound as though I am trivialising the also real issue of objectification of women through whataboutism.
So instead, let's just talk a little about the week that just passed.
It was an interesting start of my new tenure. Reporting to an office with a less-than-skeleton crew is a new-ish experience. The last place I worked at had a similar initial day, though for completely different reasons---instead of staff working from home due to a pandemic, it was due to how most people were stuck on-site to work in a tiny room due to contractual obligations.
While most people/places have a ``honeymoon period'' of a few days to get used to the new environment, I did not have much of that luxury. Lots of things were happening very quickly, and I had to start running as hard as I can just to keep up. Even at today, I'm not sure if I have actually caught up with everything that is needed for me to start working meaningfully at my responsibilities---but I'll just try to do what I can.
Mainly though, I'm doing my best to avoid unnecessary anxiety-causing situations. I am sincerely going to enforce the ``your lack of planning is not my emergency'' policy just to keep my sanity in check. Is this a case of insubordination then? I argue that it is not---seriously, if boundaries are not drawn clearly from the get-go, trying to set them again in the future is going to prove rather tough.
Talking about boundaries, I really dislike the mandatory installation of some app on my phone together with the installation of the TraceForever app when there is a perfectly working and acceptable alternative from the government involving the use of a token. The only good thing from it is that I have an alternate phone number that I can use with an associated ``burner'' phone for such intrusive requirements without compromising on the integrity/privacy of my own personal data on my personal phone.
For the confused, the reason for this is that depending on the policies of the IT department, devices that are linked in some way to the ``bring your own device'' policies may be subjected to destructive processes by the said IT department. The details of these policies are usually hidden deep within the security/use policies from the IT department, and even if the policies do not prescribe such remote destruction, all it takes is an incompetent operator from the IT department to nuke one's device from orbit. And the best part is that they can often take on indemnity using the guise of corporate data protection as their aegis. Sure one can always find some way to fight back, but it really is too late---one's personal stuff on one's personal phone is nuked already.
Thus, it's better to have a ``burner'' phone for such gray areas. Yes it set me back by nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, but I sleep well knowing that if they decide to nuke it, they can not overstep their authority.
Speaking of the ``burner'' phone, it's a Redmi 9A, not the A9 as initially indicated. I've managed to tune it to the point that it runs as well as the old Android One based Mi A2-lite that I was using before as the prior ``burner'' phone.
Also, for future reference, this is an important formula (from this documentation page):
I'll spend the rest of the day reading, I suppose.
Till the next update, the date of which I don't know. Ciao.
But it felt like too much effort, because there was just so much that I need to deconstruct and explain just to ensure that I don't sound as though I am trivialising the also real issue of objectification of women through whataboutism.
So instead, let's just talk a little about the week that just passed.
It was an interesting start of my new tenure. Reporting to an office with a less-than-skeleton crew is a new-ish experience. The last place I worked at had a similar initial day, though for completely different reasons---instead of staff working from home due to a pandemic, it was due to how most people were stuck on-site to work in a tiny room due to contractual obligations.
While most people/places have a ``honeymoon period'' of a few days to get used to the new environment, I did not have much of that luxury. Lots of things were happening very quickly, and I had to start running as hard as I can just to keep up. Even at today, I'm not sure if I have actually caught up with everything that is needed for me to start working meaningfully at my responsibilities---but I'll just try to do what I can.
Mainly though, I'm doing my best to avoid unnecessary anxiety-causing situations. I am sincerely going to enforce the ``your lack of planning is not my emergency'' policy just to keep my sanity in check. Is this a case of insubordination then? I argue that it is not---seriously, if boundaries are not drawn clearly from the get-go, trying to set them again in the future is going to prove rather tough.
Talking about boundaries, I really dislike the mandatory installation of some app on my phone together with the installation of the TraceForever app when there is a perfectly working and acceptable alternative from the government involving the use of a token. The only good thing from it is that I have an alternate phone number that I can use with an associated ``burner'' phone for such intrusive requirements without compromising on the integrity/privacy of my own personal data on my personal phone.
For the confused, the reason for this is that depending on the policies of the IT department, devices that are linked in some way to the ``bring your own device'' policies may be subjected to destructive processes by the said IT department. The details of these policies are usually hidden deep within the security/use policies from the IT department, and even if the policies do not prescribe such remote destruction, all it takes is an incompetent operator from the IT department to nuke one's device from orbit. And the best part is that they can often take on indemnity using the guise of corporate data protection as their aegis. Sure one can always find some way to fight back, but it really is too late---one's personal stuff on one's personal phone is nuked already.
Thus, it's better to have a ``burner'' phone for such gray areas. Yes it set me back by nearly one hundred and fifty dollars, but I sleep well knowing that if they decide to nuke it, they can not overstep their authority.
Speaking of the ``burner'' phone, it's a Redmi 9A, not the A9 as initially indicated. I've managed to tune it to the point that it runs as well as the old Android One based Mi A2-lite that I was using before as the prior ``burner'' phone.
Also, for future reference, this is an important formula (from this documentation page):
px = dp * (dpi / 160) ⇒ smallest_width = (160 * screen_width) / screen_dpiThat's all I think.
I'll spend the rest of the day reading, I suppose.
Till the next update, the date of which I don't know. Ciao.
Thursday, January 06, 2022
I Really Need to Remember to Set My Alarm When I Sleep
Okay, so I'm not out of three hundred dollars---it's roughly half of that.
I ponied up some spare change to grab myself a puny Redmi A9 for work-related shenanigans---it's puny because it only has 2 GiB of RAM. That anxiety-inducing Whatsapp aside, there are also ``mandatory'' apps that the organisation demands we install just to be on-site, otherwise they will actively disrupt our ability to work.
I already have an existing subsidiary phone line that would work well, and just spent the past hour or so setting things up.
I'm tired.
I think I will go sleep.
That's all for now. Tomorrow's Friday. Yay.
I ponied up some spare change to grab myself a puny Redmi A9 for work-related shenanigans---it's puny because it only has 2 GiB of RAM. That anxiety-inducing Whatsapp aside, there are also ``mandatory'' apps that the organisation demands we install just to be on-site, otherwise they will actively disrupt our ability to work.
I already have an existing subsidiary phone line that would work well, and just spent the past hour or so setting things up.
I'm tired.
I think I will go sleep.
That's all for now. Tomorrow's Friday. Yay.
Wednesday, January 05, 2022
It's Day Three and I'm Getting 'Nam Style Flashbacks
I'm getting some 'nam style flashbacks, all because someone I have not met before decided to add my personal cellphone number (how this person obtained it, I know not, since I did not go round telling people to call me/use my cellphone number to contact me) to one of the infamous ``Whatsapp groups for work-related collaborations'' despite us having at least four different communication channels already (not counting the two email addresses). Oh, and this is all before I even have a chance to know the full terms of the arrangement, having only been told vaguely about it near the end of the day.
I foresee message pings at all hours on everything that is ``urgent'' with no proper triage, confuddled requests for changes that come in ad hoc ways, no over-arching understanding of what it is that is needed, with everything piecewise hacked together without any form of documentation of the underlying process as well as the overall managing process. Everything is a favour, everything is needed yesterday, everything is urgent, and whatever I say eventually becomes irrelevant.
I accidentally drank too much coffee (in a relative to baseline sense) to the extent that I find my hunger suppressed, my ability to sleep at night impinged as I wrestled the bugs and enhancements on a code base that I barely knew/understood. Lunch break hour today was essentially gone, and I had just clocked ten hours like that.
Already I had skipped out on a meeting for ``brainstorming'' because of this ``urgent'' issue, a meeting that I need to make it back up in the morning and beyond. The head honcho had laid his expectations quite clear about that item.
I drew the line for the Whatsapp group add; I've marked the hill I am willing to die on. It looks like I'm going to be another three hundred dollars poorer as I survive another day to finally get a replacement phone to run that second line once more--that delay of a day is because the shop is only open at a time that I can only reach after work. Not that it will completely remove the anxiety, but at least I can safely shove it in the box at the end of the day and not develop unnecessary anxiety. Maybe.
Somehow I feel that quitting within the first week from anxiety isn't exactly a good thing, no matter how one looks at it.
Oh, and I still have a nice pile of orientation to do too. And still, I feel wakeful, possibly due to a combination of that anxiety and caffeine.
God help me.
I foresee message pings at all hours on everything that is ``urgent'' with no proper triage, confuddled requests for changes that come in ad hoc ways, no over-arching understanding of what it is that is needed, with everything piecewise hacked together without any form of documentation of the underlying process as well as the overall managing process. Everything is a favour, everything is needed yesterday, everything is urgent, and whatever I say eventually becomes irrelevant.
I accidentally drank too much coffee (in a relative to baseline sense) to the extent that I find my hunger suppressed, my ability to sleep at night impinged as I wrestled the bugs and enhancements on a code base that I barely knew/understood. Lunch break hour today was essentially gone, and I had just clocked ten hours like that.
Already I had skipped out on a meeting for ``brainstorming'' because of this ``urgent'' issue, a meeting that I need to make it back up in the morning and beyond. The head honcho had laid his expectations quite clear about that item.
I drew the line for the Whatsapp group add; I've marked the hill I am willing to die on. It looks like I'm going to be another three hundred dollars poorer as I survive another day to finally get a replacement phone to run that second line once more--that delay of a day is because the shop is only open at a time that I can only reach after work. Not that it will completely remove the anxiety, but at least I can safely shove it in the box at the end of the day and not develop unnecessary anxiety. Maybe.
Somehow I feel that quitting within the first week from anxiety isn't exactly a good thing, no matter how one looks at it.
Oh, and I still have a nice pile of orientation to do too. And still, I feel wakeful, possibly due to a combination of that anxiety and caffeine.
God help me.
Tuesday, January 04, 2022
Back to Work!
Alright, I'm not gonna lie, the momentum from entries nearly daily over my sabbatical year doesn't die completely like that---I still feel a little... compulsion to write something.
So I started work at my new place---it's located on the NUS campus even though it isn't really NUS related. It's close to the old I²R place where I worked at waaaaaaaaay back in 2006. After nearly twenty years though, they finally built a covered walkway for that flight of stairs up to the old building, which is nice.
This time though, I didn't go for the boots option: the bus-only route in the morning seems to work well. The same irritations that I mentioned so many years ago still hold---the field still exists, it still gets muddy, and there are still tons of uphill stairs to walk on.
Some things change, some things just seem not to.
The good news though is that I don't take the train in the morning to commute to work---I only take the train back at the end of the day, after which I just take the lazy way and use the concrete path to cross the road via the traffic lights, as opposed to the distance-optimised path. No real reason why I tend to do that either... maybe it's just being older and less wanting to ``optimise the shit'' out of everything?
First impressions of my new work place and role? Well, it'll pay the bills for sure. Thanks to the control measures of COVID-19, I ended up being the sole soul in the entire room that houses my section of the organisation, which means that it is really friggin' cold most of the time. I finally found where the water dispensers are, which means I can substitute my canister of coffee and bottle of water with a bring-once cup, spork, and instant coffee set up.
Role's sorta grounded with ``payin' the bills'' type of work, but has quite a bit of flexibility to expand/extend into other areas that are more research-y. It's too early to tell much though, mostly because I haven't really interacted much with the rest of the team just yet.
The pace that I seem to be going right now feels a little too hurried as compared to the pace that I am sensing---not sure if it's because I cannot actually see the folks to have a proper gauge, or if I have been too traumatised from the on-site work that I was doing at my previous place that default to running at beyond full-tilt, even though I'm literally new. It's okay---the faster I do the ``payin' the bills'' type of work, the more time I will have left to work on the research-y things.
Who knows... maybe something wonderful can come out of that.
And that's about it. I'm beat---I reckoned I've walked more over the past couple of days than I had in a typical week while on sabbatical, and this time, with the additional heavy load of lugging my own work equipment around (just like the bad old days while working on-site). About 1.1 km of walking split between walking to my first bus stop (450 m) and walking from the last bus stop to the building (550 m) in the morning commute, followed by about 1.7 km total on the trip back (550 m from my office to the first bus stop, 1.1 km).
Shit. And here I was, thinking that I was doing sub-2 km walks while I was really walking some 2.8 km a day just for commute alone. No wonder my legs are feeling beat up.
Well... as long as I'm not blistering, I think I'm fine. It can be a good aid to me to accelerate that weight loss that I started on back in late 2019 that got horrifically side-tracked during the work from home and subsequent sabbatical year from COVID-19 control measures.
Here's to reaching my target goal of 65 kg then!
So I started work at my new place---it's located on the NUS campus even though it isn't really NUS related. It's close to the old I²R place where I worked at waaaaaaaaay back in 2006. After nearly twenty years though, they finally built a covered walkway for that flight of stairs up to the old building, which is nice.
This time though, I didn't go for the boots option: the bus-only route in the morning seems to work well. The same irritations that I mentioned so many years ago still hold---the field still exists, it still gets muddy, and there are still tons of uphill stairs to walk on.
Some things change, some things just seem not to.
The good news though is that I don't take the train in the morning to commute to work---I only take the train back at the end of the day, after which I just take the lazy way and use the concrete path to cross the road via the traffic lights, as opposed to the distance-optimised path. No real reason why I tend to do that either... maybe it's just being older and less wanting to ``optimise the shit'' out of everything?
First impressions of my new work place and role? Well, it'll pay the bills for sure. Thanks to the control measures of COVID-19, I ended up being the sole soul in the entire room that houses my section of the organisation, which means that it is really friggin' cold most of the time. I finally found where the water dispensers are, which means I can substitute my canister of coffee and bottle of water with a bring-once cup, spork, and instant coffee set up.
Role's sorta grounded with ``payin' the bills'' type of work, but has quite a bit of flexibility to expand/extend into other areas that are more research-y. It's too early to tell much though, mostly because I haven't really interacted much with the rest of the team just yet.
The pace that I seem to be going right now feels a little too hurried as compared to the pace that I am sensing---not sure if it's because I cannot actually see the folks to have a proper gauge, or if I have been too traumatised from the on-site work that I was doing at my previous place that default to running at beyond full-tilt, even though I'm literally new. It's okay---the faster I do the ``payin' the bills'' type of work, the more time I will have left to work on the research-y things.
Who knows... maybe something wonderful can come out of that.
And that's about it. I'm beat---I reckoned I've walked more over the past couple of days than I had in a typical week while on sabbatical, and this time, with the additional heavy load of lugging my own work equipment around (just like the bad old days while working on-site). About 1.1 km of walking split between walking to my first bus stop (450 m) and walking from the last bus stop to the building (550 m) in the morning commute, followed by about 1.7 km total on the trip back (550 m from my office to the first bus stop, 1.1 km).
Shit. And here I was, thinking that I was doing sub-2 km walks while I was really walking some 2.8 km a day just for commute alone. No wonder my legs are feeling beat up.
Well... as long as I'm not blistering, I think I'm fine. It can be a good aid to me to accelerate that weight loss that I started on back in late 2019 that got horrifically side-tracked during the work from home and subsequent sabbatical year from COVID-19 control measures.
Here's to reaching my target goal of 65 kg then!
Sunday, January 02, 2022
...?
...
What, you're expecting a post for today? Fine, I'll oblige, but bear in mind that since my sabbatical is over and I'm officially starting work tomorrow, it will be increasingly/extremely unlikely that I will write as much or as often as I did last year.
I watched me some RoboCop today, the 1987 version. Damn it's graphic, and damn the story is dark. The practical effects really held up well, except for the stop motion work for the ED-209 scenes---I think that cannot be helped as it is one of those cognitive dissonances that come about when trying to map the much lower frame rate of stop motion techniques against the ``real'' frame rate from filming the rest of the action. I have no reason why I wanted to watch RoboCop... just had that inkling to.
I spent quite a bit of the day preparing my backpack for tomorrow's first day at work. It was an interesting set up to say the least. I think that I might have a little bit of excitement to start on a new job/journey.
Yay to improvements over blunt affect, perhaps?
Anyway... after hermitting at home for the past year, I finally did my first ART kit at home, ``just in case''. It was a boring-as-hell wait of 30 minutes to get a confirmed negative result: like most self-test kits, there was the control line and test result line. The instruction said to observe at the 15-minute mark, and added a remark that if there was no test result line, to wait till the 30-minute mark to see if it shows up, after which the kit is no longer giving meaningful results.
So if one is positive, the wait time is likely to be shorter than if the test is negative. Ah well...
I think that's about it for now. I don't have anything else that I care to talk about any more for the day, other than a comment that there was just so much rain as predicted by the meteorological station. In fact, rain's predicted for the next couple of weeks.
Here we go I suppose.
Till the next update. Not sure when. Eventually I will have to slow down/cease writing here; when much of the day is dominated by work, it is inevitable that work-related thoughts will dominate. And it usually is not a good idea to talk about work stuff in personal blogs like this, even though there is a big fat disclaimer at the bottom. It's not even about the non-disclosure agreements, just a general sense of professionalism.
Those keeping score will probably also realise that this month is my birth month, but be forewarned that it's likely to be boring quiet---my favourite sushi place is gone, I'm single, there's no rehearsals at the TGCO in the near future, and the omicron-variant of COVID-19 is kicking into high gear. I just don't know what is going to happen then.
Ciao for now.
What, you're expecting a post for today? Fine, I'll oblige, but bear in mind that since my sabbatical is over and I'm officially starting work tomorrow, it will be increasingly/extremely unlikely that I will write as much or as often as I did last year.
I watched me some RoboCop today, the 1987 version. Damn it's graphic, and damn the story is dark. The practical effects really held up well, except for the stop motion work for the ED-209 scenes---I think that cannot be helped as it is one of those cognitive dissonances that come about when trying to map the much lower frame rate of stop motion techniques against the ``real'' frame rate from filming the rest of the action. I have no reason why I wanted to watch RoboCop... just had that inkling to.
I spent quite a bit of the day preparing my backpack for tomorrow's first day at work. It was an interesting set up to say the least. I think that I might have a little bit of excitement to start on a new job/journey.
Yay to improvements over blunt affect, perhaps?
Anyway... after hermitting at home for the past year, I finally did my first ART kit at home, ``just in case''. It was a boring-as-hell wait of 30 minutes to get a confirmed negative result: like most self-test kits, there was the control line and test result line. The instruction said to observe at the 15-minute mark, and added a remark that if there was no test result line, to wait till the 30-minute mark to see if it shows up, after which the kit is no longer giving meaningful results.
So if one is positive, the wait time is likely to be shorter than if the test is negative. Ah well...
I think that's about it for now. I don't have anything else that I care to talk about any more for the day, other than a comment that there was just so much rain as predicted by the meteorological station. In fact, rain's predicted for the next couple of weeks.
Here we go I suppose.
Till the next update. Not sure when. Eventually I will have to slow down/cease writing here; when much of the day is dominated by work, it is inevitable that work-related thoughts will dominate. And it usually is not a good idea to talk about work stuff in personal blogs like this, even though there is a big fat disclaimer at the bottom. It's not even about the non-disclosure agreements, just a general sense of professionalism.
Those keeping score will probably also realise that this month is my birth month, but be forewarned that it's likely to be boring quiet---my favourite sushi place is gone, I'm single, there's no rehearsals at the TGCO in the near future, and the omicron-variant of COVID-19 is kicking into high gear. I just don't know what is going to happen then.
Ciao for now.
Saturday, January 01, 2022
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2021:
That's an average of 1.134 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.134 last year. While seemingly dramatic in the increase, I would file it under ``understood anomaly'' due to it occurring during the year in which I was on sabbatical.
So much has happened in 2021. For starters, I have read a stupid amount of books/articles, with the last item completed being The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, and the first item completed being They Spent 12 Years Solving a Puzzle. It Yielded the First COVID-19 Vaccines.. It was to be expected: reading has always been one of my core activities when not doing anything else that involves other people (or sleeping, for that matter). I love reading because it allows me to live more lives than the one that I have, and it is a relatively cheap way of obtaining more experience in general.
And in the middle of yet another year of the COVID-19 nonsense, it is a great way to save money and be safe as well, while not going absolutely insane.
As noted also in an earlier retrospective, I have also rediscovered behaviours and habits that had kept me alive before I started falling into the delusion that I was going to be some kind of family man with a stable income, a spouse, children, and all the other trappings that would make any government/capitalist salivate at the amount of labour capture. After all, the more debt a person has, the more that person is motivated to keep on working, and will continue to keep on working even if the environment is absolutely toxic to work in, because all that toxicity is apparently preferable to failing the dependents that one has? Such a nonsensical statement...
Now that all said, I still have not committed myself to a spouse-less life just yet---I don't think nor do I feel that I have enough information to make a decision. Childlessness is definitely high on the list---I cannot, in good conscience, bring in another life who never asked to be born into a world that is heading towards ruin. Let the more worthy/ignorant be the ones who take on this fecundity requirement---if I had more ambition, I would follow them considering that my history is considered unencumbered no thanks to things that had happened in the generation before me. Alas, I'm no ambitious fellow---I just want to contribute my bit to society to avoid being a bum, and then call it when the time comes.
But still, I don't think I'm ready to start another relationship with anyone just yet. Unrich and unattractive middle aged men like me are among the lowest priorities for people seeking a spouse, so I've got that going for me, which is fine.
Enough of looking backwards---I've done lots of that throughout my 2021 blog entries.
What I have not done much is looking ahead, and for good reason: the crystal ball is murky as hell here. SIN city as a whole has no obvious forward trajectory---there is nothing inspirational, nothing aspirational, and nothing good to look forward to, especially for the low/middle socio-economic class folks. COVID-19 is one major factor (it's a global pandemic for crying out loud), but it is what I would say merely the straw that breaks the camel's back. It unearthed the insecurities of SIN city in ways that are harder to keep under wraps, and exposes the many ugly hacks that are being used to prop things up that used to have a thriving-ish economy as a fig leaf cover. Tactical errors were definitely being made, but I will not go as far as to claim that strategic errors are made for the simple reason that I don't have enough information. The power play of the superpowers at the global scale are messing up the international order in ways that make keeping to an obvious strategy hard---I don't believe that it is in SIN city's interest to be seen as taking anyone's side other than our own, though that is often easier said than done given the massive partisanship that was developed over the past decade as personality cults start to become in vogue again.
It is almost as though everyone is trying to compete to see who can best distract their population away from the really tough problems that need decades to concerted effort to truly resolve them.
At a personal level, I'd like to take things a little simpler---just a day at a time. In many ways, I've already made that choice a decade ago when I decided to return to SIN city to serve out my bond instead of making a break for it to carve out my own path through the fabled Silicon Valley. Spite is a very powerful motivator to push oneself outside of one's comfort zone to achieve great and crazy things. But spite is not sustainable---I would end up killing myself. Inasmuch as I had all those weird suicide ideation stuff (and how I still find that life really isn't all that meaningful), killing myself because of unsustainable spite towards external factors feels a little... dumb.
And so I've told myself quietly that I would treat myself a little better and do things in a sustainable way so that when I die, it's not on other's terms but on my own. I don't need to get the latest luxury just to feel good about myself---the mere fact of existence should be its own reward, with everything else as a bonus.
That's probably the closest thing to a ``new year's resolution'' that I will write, I think.
2022 is probably going to still be a year of large amounts of personal introspection as I start to mull what kind of old age life I would live, assuming that I haven't tapped out before then.
- 15 poems posted here
- 393 essays/rants posted here
- 4 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 1 piece of compositions/rearrangements posted here
That's an average of 1.134 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.134 last year. While seemingly dramatic in the increase, I would file it under ``understood anomaly'' due to it occurring during the year in which I was on sabbatical.
So much has happened in 2021. For starters, I have read a stupid amount of books/articles, with the last item completed being The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, and the first item completed being They Spent 12 Years Solving a Puzzle. It Yielded the First COVID-19 Vaccines.. It was to be expected: reading has always been one of my core activities when not doing anything else that involves other people (or sleeping, for that matter). I love reading because it allows me to live more lives than the one that I have, and it is a relatively cheap way of obtaining more experience in general.
And in the middle of yet another year of the COVID-19 nonsense, it is a great way to save money and be safe as well, while not going absolutely insane.
As noted also in an earlier retrospective, I have also rediscovered behaviours and habits that had kept me alive before I started falling into the delusion that I was going to be some kind of family man with a stable income, a spouse, children, and all the other trappings that would make any government/capitalist salivate at the amount of labour capture. After all, the more debt a person has, the more that person is motivated to keep on working, and will continue to keep on working even if the environment is absolutely toxic to work in, because all that toxicity is apparently preferable to failing the dependents that one has? Such a nonsensical statement...
Now that all said, I still have not committed myself to a spouse-less life just yet---I don't think nor do I feel that I have enough information to make a decision. Childlessness is definitely high on the list---I cannot, in good conscience, bring in another life who never asked to be born into a world that is heading towards ruin. Let the more worthy/ignorant be the ones who take on this fecundity requirement---if I had more ambition, I would follow them considering that my history is considered unencumbered no thanks to things that had happened in the generation before me. Alas, I'm no ambitious fellow---I just want to contribute my bit to society to avoid being a bum, and then call it when the time comes.
But still, I don't think I'm ready to start another relationship with anyone just yet. Unrich and unattractive middle aged men like me are among the lowest priorities for people seeking a spouse, so I've got that going for me, which is fine.
Enough of looking backwards---I've done lots of that throughout my 2021 blog entries.
What I have not done much is looking ahead, and for good reason: the crystal ball is murky as hell here. SIN city as a whole has no obvious forward trajectory---there is nothing inspirational, nothing aspirational, and nothing good to look forward to, especially for the low/middle socio-economic class folks. COVID-19 is one major factor (it's a global pandemic for crying out loud), but it is what I would say merely the straw that breaks the camel's back. It unearthed the insecurities of SIN city in ways that are harder to keep under wraps, and exposes the many ugly hacks that are being used to prop things up that used to have a thriving-ish economy as a fig leaf cover. Tactical errors were definitely being made, but I will not go as far as to claim that strategic errors are made for the simple reason that I don't have enough information. The power play of the superpowers at the global scale are messing up the international order in ways that make keeping to an obvious strategy hard---I don't believe that it is in SIN city's interest to be seen as taking anyone's side other than our own, though that is often easier said than done given the massive partisanship that was developed over the past decade as personality cults start to become in vogue again.
It is almost as though everyone is trying to compete to see who can best distract their population away from the really tough problems that need decades to concerted effort to truly resolve them.
At a personal level, I'd like to take things a little simpler---just a day at a time. In many ways, I've already made that choice a decade ago when I decided to return to SIN city to serve out my bond instead of making a break for it to carve out my own path through the fabled Silicon Valley. Spite is a very powerful motivator to push oneself outside of one's comfort zone to achieve great and crazy things. But spite is not sustainable---I would end up killing myself. Inasmuch as I had all those weird suicide ideation stuff (and how I still find that life really isn't all that meaningful), killing myself because of unsustainable spite towards external factors feels a little... dumb.
And so I've told myself quietly that I would treat myself a little better and do things in a sustainable way so that when I die, it's not on other's terms but on my own. I don't need to get the latest luxury just to feel good about myself---the mere fact of existence should be its own reward, with everything else as a bonus.
That's probably the closest thing to a ``new year's resolution'' that I will write, I think.
2022 is probably going to still be a year of large amounts of personal introspection as I start to mull what kind of old age life I would live, assuming that I haven't tapped out before then.
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