4 Busy Day(s)

And so concludes another 4-day long weekend that is completely of my own devising through strategic deployment of paid time off on a Friday and a Monday.

What did I do over these four days?

Frankly, nothing much, which is completely as intended.

Looking back, I...

• Finished the third and final volume of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes series;
• Caught up on Hololive/Holostars EN folks;
• Chat with Brian and Wangki for a bit;
• Restarted rehearsals for TGCO;
• Restocked my medication;
• Ate a nice unagi meal at 鰻満;
• Tried the new tater-tots at McDonald's;
• Had century egg lean meat porridge from Sin Heng Kee Porridge;
• Bought a 70 cL bottle of Nikka Black Clear Whisky from Don Don Donki;
• Started to get used to playing concert G-major on my alto saxophone;
• Took said saxophone to WindWorks to fix a cork bumper that fell off near the G♯-key;
• Wrote a PDF generator that combined the NKJV summaries that I typed out with the ESV text into a single easy-to-refer-to 2-column compendium using my favourite Atkinson Hyperlegible font all typeset with LaTeX;
• Started laying out the foundation of the central castle within the walls of my Minecraft single player world;
• Tried out the Silent in Slay the Spire; and
• Curated a small part of my reading list.

It's definitely not a lot, but it is fulfilling in many ways.

The realisation that Calvin and Hobbes had its run ended about 3 years before I first heard of it in secondary school came as a shock. But then again, it did have a great run since 1985, and the whole late 80s to mid 90s feel was very strong and nostalgic in it. It ended at roughly the time when the Internet (that's with the capital `I') was starting to become a big thing, and I suppose it was just about right. I cannot think of how Calvin and Hobbes might succeed with its original formula with an increasing base of children and young adults who never really understood what it meant to have a childhood that did not involve electronic devices more personalised than the family television.

In fact, I would say that Hobbes would probably be forgotten rather quickly when the Calvin-equivalent had his first net-enabled phone/tablet. The story would have gone a completely different way, and it may not even be good, for much of the fun of Calvin and Hobbes lies in the ironic observations of a smart but isolated six-year-old with his tiger who may or may not be a figment of his imagination (there had always been evidence that worked either way). I wonder if Watterson stopped when he did when he realised what I have now realised, more than twenty years on.

The new whisky (notice the lack of an `e'---this is deliberate because that's why Nikka calls it) is deceptively smooth. It lacked the rough edges of the Suntory that I grabbed from the nearly 7-eleven that demanded it drunk on the rocks. It reminded me much of a VSOP, or even XO. An interesting whisky indeed. While researching for the proper URL to reference the whisky, I learnt that many Japanese distilleries have discontinued some of their longer aged whiskeys because of too much demand---the new batches of the old stuff seem to be coming out only from 2030 onwards.

I suppose that is something to look forward to?

Anyway, that's all for the planned breaks for now. The next one is on Dec 30---not sure why I took it because I'm too lazy to pull up the calendar, but I suppose it is just to have another 4-day long weekend?

That's about it for now. Till the next update then.

Dig It All Realisation---Done!

Ah... I've not seen the interior of Q10 for 3 days---the last time I used Q10 was to fill in the last 2.8k to my NaNoWriMo entry for 2022. Weighing in at 50127 words, Dig It All Realisation is a play on a break down of the word ``digitalisation''. Now, this should not be confused with ``digitisation''.

If we use what SAP says, the gist of their definitions can be understood as thus:

digitisation

Process of converting analogue data into digital form.

digitalisation

The processing of digitised using advanced information technologies to improve/change fundamental processes.

Hence the title break down of dig ([data] mining), it (quantification, i.e. making everything into an object, an ``it''), all (everything), and realisation (the combination of all the steps leading to a system).

And that's the basic story line behind this year's entry.

I would rate this year's attempt as being average---there was no point in time where I was particularly inspired to sprint harder than the usual 2k words per day, nor did it got so difficult that I could not come up with enough words to cover the day. A nice difficulty curve.

That's all I want to write about this on this off-day I took leave for no other reason than to have an off day. I've put it on my personal domain, so download and read it if you'd like.

Till the next update.

Mini Stupid O'Clock

O-kay, let's write a little something here that isn't NaNoWriMo.

I had wanted to write a spiel on ``Does the end justify the means?'' but my brain is starting to get woozy from the anti-histamines, so I need to change tact.

Welcome to pre-stupid o'clock, I suppose.

Last time I wrote here, we were talking about bad coping mechanisms, bad skin, and other bad thoughts.

You would be horribly deluded to believe that after two weeks, things have changed.

Skin is still bad, coping mechanisms are still bad (I'm still picking away at said skin... urgh), and thoughts are also still bad (not the point of suicidal, but definitely not in a completely ``safe'' positive space).

What happened?

Life... life happened. Not a specific grumble, just a general observation. In many other ways, I live a blessed life, but like all things involving life, what we gain in blessings in one area of life, we trade-off with something less blessed in this life.

Why? Because fuck you, that's why. Theologically, it's because God is in complete control, and being in complete control while also un-knowable means that while we may observe such inequities or even inequalities, we can never really judge if the observations are a net good or net bad, leastways not at the same time scales that God sees.

So putting it in the extreme case, to be dead on earth is probably a bad thing for most of us, while it is actually a good thing from God's perspective, especially if we have reconciled our relationship with Him---no more flesh body for you to sin in.

If we can define some state function per person that returns a real number measuring the amount of blessedness after taking in the current state of the person, then we can characterise a few interesting observations:

1. People tend to live peak to peak---they either remember most of the good stuff, most of the bad stuff, or more commonly, a mixture of the good stuff and bad stuff. Most people do not remember anything else that are not extrema in this function.
2. A cultish superstition occurs whenever these people start approaching an extrema---they will either keep some ritualistic activities to either bring in the good omens or to ward off the ill ones, or start slinging praises or condemnation at whichever god is to their fancy.
3. In expanding upon the cultish superstition, this is more related to the fact that people believe that whatever they do strongly influences the amount of blessedness or dastardliness, which is a roundabout way of saying ``justification by works, not faith''.

Now I'm not saying that we just lie down and let things happen because ``God is in control''---I'm saying that because we have free will, we should exercise whatever we can within our locus of control, but be ready to accept that there are interdependencies and other related things completely outside of our control.

The sooner one realises that, I suppose the better it is for one's mood.

Anyway, I'm less than 10k-words away from this year's NaNoWriMo entry. Insasmuch as I love NaNoWriMo, I feel that every story thus begun should end, and am looking forward to completing this novel by the end of the upcoming week. It'll be a soft grind, but it will be done. And then at that point, perhaps I will treat myself to some fancy sushi. Mmmm mmm!

And that's about it. A short entry. I can feel myself nodding off---it's time to go. Till the next update.

Compressed and Distressed

I know that writing here like this is wasted words, considering that it is NaNoWriMo now. But I suppose it is nice to write something not relating to work nor my NaNoWriMo entry ever so often.

The end of the year is fast coming upon us. Even as I write, we are already passed the first week (i.e. seven days) of the month, and by the end of this week, the first third would have been gone. And then December will arrive, and 2023 will begin it all anew again.

This upcoming season is much more compressed than usual. Work-wise, things are heating up in strange ways. We are trying to hire, so interview season is in. Some other stuff is also increasing in activity as folks are in a rush to expend the tranch of funding, and it impacts me through the quasi-official support of a tool that these folks use.

Then there's the actual holiday season. Christmas, New Year, and Chinese New Year are all happening within a tight 33-day window. Not to mention the loss of my birthday throughout the messed mass of holidays---perhaps it is the first (and only?) year that I ``age'' only twice in one year as opposed to thrice?

Perhaps that's why I am in some form of distress, and it does show. My skin's getting worse, obviously. I find myself scraping away at various parts of my skin almost compulsively to the point of breaking skin and what-not.

It's terrible.

With shit skin and even shittier coping mechanisms like that, the last thing I feel is that of being desirable, let alone to be desired. Perhaps at the end of the day, this is truly what will make me decide to commit towards a no-spouse route, as opposed to ``only'' a no-children route. Ain't wanna be in a relationship to be ``taken care of'' by someone else.

Also, it isn't easy to be ``loved'' by someone with such shitty skin. As they say, those who look attractive win at life, and those who don't need to make do with wealth or power. And since I have little of the two, it's better to just live through this life quietly and then move on.

A rant? A cry for help? You decide; or not---it matters little.

Till the next update.