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.

Doing Better Than Last Reported

I will make this quick because I am about to start a new [work] day.

I am doing better than when I last reported. This is despite other more traumatic changes in my life. If you want details, please contact me through other means, and perhaps I can share bits and pieces with you---I am still in the transition phase, and there are many things that are still going to take me some time to get to grips with.

In other news, the ``COVID-19 Circuit Breaker'' period in Singapore has been extended. This means that instead of releasing everyone back into general circulation on May 04, it has been extended to Jun 01 instead.

What that means for me, I don't know. What that means for the economy, I also don't know.

What that means for society, I really don't know.

On another note, I am still on exile from Facebook. All the COVID-19 business and their associated wild reactions, and heavy heavy bad news from the US are flooding my newsfeed so much that I simply cannot take it any more. I recently logged in to take care of some other business, and have seen more of the same that I was trying to avoid.

So, please, contact me through other means if necessary.

In other news, I've also given up my resistance against using Whatsapp. Sure, the behaviour of that app after 8+ years is definitely more understood now, but I am still leery. However, like many things in life, it is about seeking the right balance. In the past, I could make do without it, but now, with the extension of the ``circuit breaker'' and other traumatic changes in my life, the equation has changed.

And that's all for now. Till the next update.

Look, I'm Not Doing Well, Okay?

It's been almost a month since the last update. What might be new now?

Well, thanks to really bad behaviours of society in general, we are now in a lockdown in all but name. Those of us who can work from home are now demanded to work from home by law, and the only times that we are allowed to leave our primary dwelling is to purchase necessities like food. Oh, there's the whole talk about allowing us to go out and exercise, but I think that's a loophole that is going to be closed soon thanks to all the clueless people who decide to have a ``one last party'' before the city quasi-quarantine measures kick in.

Fools. The only people that they are going to hurt are just themselves.

Anyway, I will not spare another thought for those cretins. I already have much on my mind.

I'm not doing that well.

V'ir abg sryg guvf yriry bs shax fvapr gur qnex qnlf bs zl nggrzcgvat gb qb n CuQ. Ng yrnfg gura (naq orsber), V pbhyq trg uryc eryngviryl rnfvyl. Vebavpnyyl, vg vf jura V nz urer va zl ubzr pvgl gung V pnaabg trg uryc gung rnfvyl.

Naq rira vs V qvq trg uryc, jbhyq V or noyr gb ernyyl fgneg cvrpvat gur guvatf gung ner va zl urnq naq pnhfvat zr hagbyq nzbhagf bs haarprffnel cnva?

Orvat sbeprq gb jbex ng ubzr qbrf abg uryc znggref. V nz pbasvarq gb dhnegref, fgnevat ng zl jbex yncgbc fperra sbe nyzbfg rirel qnl bs gur jrrx---fher gurer vf ab bssvpvny cbyvpl gung bar zhfg jbex bire choyvp ubyvqnlf be gur jrrxraq, ohg V guvax gung gurer ner vzcyvpngvbaf gung bar bhtug gb qb fb. V fgvyy trg rznvyf bire choyvp ubyvqnlf/jrrxraqf, naq V'z fgvyy trggvat vafgnag zrffntrf eryngvat gb jbex bire gubfr crevbqf, naq ng nyy gvzrf bs gur qnl.

Fher, V'ir orra gbyq gung V fubhyq yrnea gb vtaber gurz bhgfvqr bs bssvpr ubhef. Ohg vg'f uneq gb qb fb, bxnl? V qba'g yvxr gb yrnir guvatf ylvat nebhaq gung arrqf gb or qbvat orpnhfr vg vfa'g arng! Va gur raq, qrfcvgr tvira n 40-ubhe jbex-jrrx ol qrsvavgvba, V abeznyyl raq hc jbexvat ng 20% bire gvzr ba nirentr, cre jrrx, pybpxrq.

``Url ZG, lbh'er abg obea lrfgreqnl... guvf vf gur abez va gur erny jbeyq! Lbh'er yhpxl gung lbh bayl unq gb jbex 20% bire gvzr! Va zl vaqhfgel, vg vf gur abez gb jbex sbhegrra ubhe qnlf! Lbhe chal avar gb gra ubhe qnlf vf abguvat, fb whfg fhpx vg hc, ohggrephc!''

Jryy... shpx lbh vs gung'f jung lbh guvax. V unir guvatf gung V jnag gb qb bhgfvqr jbex, naq abj V'z gbb gverq gb qb gurz nsgre jbexvat. Jura V jbex k ubhef, V shpxvat jbex gubfr k ubhef. V qba'g trg gb fvg nebhaq naq gjvqqyr zl guhzof jnvgvat sbe gvzr gb cnff---V ohea rirel fvatyr oenva pryy svthevat bhg jung arrqf gb or qbar qhevat gung gvzr. V raq gur qnl, rkunhfgrq.

V pna'g jbex sbhegrra ubhe qnlf. Uryy, V pna'g rira jbex gra ubhe qnlf. V'yy tb penml.

Gung'f ebhtuyl jung vf unccravat abj. V nz tbvat penml.

V nz ungvat zlfrys zber rnpu qnl. V ungr zlfrys sbe orvat fhpu n pbzcyrk crefba jvgu jnagf naq arrqf gung tb orlbaq jung n wbo pna cebivqr. V ungr zlfrys sbe abg orvat gur zrpunavzbgeba gung V gubhtug V jnf.

Shpx lbh, shpx zr, ZG.

------

In different news, I've finally finished up the accompaniment concept for Ruminative Thoughts for Concert Flute. I had written the main melody and theme for a long time, but was stalled on the accompaniment. I am really not into writing accompaniment with full scale harmony and counterpoint---partly because I wasn't really trained in it, relying on mostly my ears to tell me if it works or not, and partly because that's the part that takes the most time to set up, possibly due to the former reason. So insted of writing the ``full'' accompaniment for the piece, I ended up with some basic concepts, leaving space for a more enterprising individual (or even future me) to fill in the blanks.

I still have another piece, Cantabile in F♯ Minor for Concert Flute and Piano that is also done pending accompaniment, but this time, it is in collaboration with GY, and he hasn't really passed me his take on the piano part yet. Since this COVID-19 became a bigger thing, it had been hard to link up with him to get things moving along.

Currently I'm in the middle of preparing the conductor's score for the latest dizi solo that I had played, 《山村迎亲人》. I'm doing this again because we had some changes with the score since the performance, and that we had brought in some low brass and low woodwinds to help us, thus changing the original orchestration.

Maybe after that I will start working on one of the older concepts that currently don't have any names. I usually number my pieces based on when I came up with the concept, not when I have completed them. Perhaps this will make the numbering scheme more easy to understand.

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In a final sort of update, I'm staying clear of Facebook for now. There has been too much news, both bad and nonsensical, about the COVID-19 situation. As I had said in the earlier part of this blog post that I'm not doing well, and seeing all these negative things are really not helping me. The last thing that I wrote on my ``wall'' (I still hate that term, by the way) is that I am feeling dejected (not depressed!), and am in no danger of killing myself or anyone.

Those conditions still hold. I am still dejected, and am still in no danger of killing myself or anyone. I would also add that I am in no danger of hurting myself either, though I cannot confirm if I do end up hurting anyone else.

I don't even know why I keep writing here any more. Blogs are so passé---maybe only Brian still reads this. If so, hi Brian---I know I promised that I will talk to you at some point, but I don't have the balls nor the organisation to do so. So, sorry for the moment. Same for roticv.

And same for Chara. I feel bad because I think she keeps thinking that somehow she is a big cause for what I am feeling, but it really isn't. She feels bad that I'm in this situation and that she doesn't know how to help make it better. I feel bad that I am making her feel bad etc. But I doubt she is reading this either, and if she is, I'll say it again: sorry love, please give me some time to figure out just what is wrong in my head.

Well, that's enough for now. Till the next update.

Le Téléphone Reste Éteint, Citoyen

After a series of false starts, I've started to reinitialise my original plan with respect to work---I am no longer going to look at my work phone nor work laptop on hours outside of work.

It was something that I had done all the time in the past implicitly. Firstly, I did not have a work laptop for the larger of my two big engagements with my old organisation (I've always preferred working on desktops for both the power:cost ratio and the obviously easy segregation of work and non-work); and secondly, I have never used my cellphone for work purposes (because there was a physical work phone that was tied to me in the office). If there was a need to be contactable out of office hours for quasi-emergency reasons, I would reroute the office phone number to my own cellphone as needed, otherwise it was strictly left alone. Finally, much of the work was done among colleagues who were physically in the office almost all the time, which meant that there was no need for any sort of always-on-call nature of instant messaging.

All three conditions had been shattered from the first day at my new work place. I was issued a work laptop only (no desktop), had no office phone (had to supply my own cellphone for work uses, but thankfully due to an unintentional acceptance of upselling from a Singtel representative, I had an additional line leeching off my own personal number for use), and had to rely on a lot of instant messaging due to having colleagues spread around the globe (a situation further exacerbated by the recent pandemic of the COVID-2019).

I am not grousing that those conditions were shattered. I am grousing that those three conditions were all that kept me from turning into a complete workaholic. And for the first few months, that was exactly what had happened to me---I was working almost non-stop, responding obsessively to every instant message that came by, powering up my laptop to work on things over the weekends, responding to queries and replies after office hours due to some of my colleagues' very different operating hours (they just sleep very late and wake up not-early). True, there was never an official directive that a ``9-9-6'' or even ``24×7''/``24/7'' operation requirement was expected of me, but since there were no checks and balances otherwise, I felt compelled to keep working like that.

It affected me negatively. Sleep was nearly impossible---all the thoughts about work was always swirling in my mind. And I am a person that cannot operate without enough sleep---it physically hurts my brain, cognitive abilities, and general mood. It reminded me of the time when I was still idealistic and in pursuit of my PhD, right up to the point before I decided it was not the lifestyle for me---monomania was definitely required, and that only the hungry/desperate/suicidal would be allowed to ``pass''. I tried it and failed; I didn't have that one-tracked obsession that would allow me to do the same thing day in, day out, without driving myself (suici|homi|geno)-cidal. In a lame way of describing it, my life has too many interesting things for me to look into to just limit myself to only one thing. Sure I loved programming, I liked machine learning, data mining, information extraction and integration. But I also liked writing stories, reading/learning knowledge from different fields, playing/composing music, geocaching, cycling, practising jujutsu, you know, living life other than just doing work.

Maybe I'm soft. Maybe I'm useless. If I'm the latter, maybe the company will decide so and fire me---I am starting to convince myself that perhaps it is not my place to decide what my true worth is to a company other than to let the company decide for itself.

So I've decided to take a stand, with Chara metaphorically staring daggers at me and forcing me to realise just the kind of self-destruction route I've been on. The work phone and laptop stays off after office hours. They stay off during the weekend.

This is the first weekend I am doing this, and already, on a Sunday early afternoon, I am feeling all kinds of uneasiness and anxiety. Will what I am working on/with require desperately require the input from me that completely precludes positive progress had I not looked into it over the last 60+ hours by the time Monday nine o'clock arrives?

I don't know. I will only find out when I wake up on Monday morning and power up my phone. While it is not a good idea to work longer than my official end working hours, no one has said that I cannot start the day earlier to ensure alignment of my schedule with that of Chara's. In some ways, it is probably less damaging, only if I can figure out my sleep schedule properly. I think it is less of the hours and more of how long it takes to calm the mind down at the end of the day so that proper rest may be obtained. But this will forever be a work in progress until something more concrete is determined.

It is at times like this that I sometimes (not always!) wish that I were a more boring type of person, the kind that lives to work, not have hobbies, and not having to think so much about things. It is not often though, because I've lived this particular life for too long already---I like the myriad of hobbies I do. If I'm lucky, I'd get around 3.1 billion seconds to live, of which I've already used 1.1 billion seconds. There really isn't that much time left to live out a full life.

Things will always work out, eventually. That's what being alive is all about---we think, and we work our way around any and all problems. I should really learn to keep my mind open more, and not let the vagaries of localised temporary setbacks throw me off balance.

Nothing Seems Fun Any More

Clearly this is not written at the silly time that you are seeing for this post.

Have you ever had one of those days where you metaphorically look at yourself in the mirror, wonder why the hell you are doing all that you are doing, what it is all for, and then coming to a realisation that nothing that you do seems fun and that you just want to end it all because it felt like it was probably preferable to what can be nicely described as a meaningless life of ennui?

Yeah, it felt like one of those days today. Why? How the hell would I know?

Nothing seems fun any more. I wake up, I get dressed, I get my ass to work, I work, I take my lunch break time to read, I get back to work, I drink lots of coffee, I leave the office, I meet up with Chara, I go home, I read, I sleep; then rinse and repeat. On weekends, I wake up, I get dressed, I do something ``fun'' (read, watch the VODs for the latest speedrun marathon or from some of my favourite Youtubers, play dizi/flute/saxophone, write/transcribe music), I go for rehearsal, I go home, I sleep.

Maybe it's the lack of a pay-off. Lots of things done, but the pay-off always seem so far away. I was looking forward to going for the International Low Flutes Festival in Urayasu Japan with Chara this year, but thanks to the rise of the pre-pandemic levels of the COVID-2019 event, the event has been postponed till next year (a slightly fancier way of saying ``cancelled for this year but we will skip the crazy planning and re-use the original plans for next year''). We have since replaced it with something different and local, and I am looking forward to that, but I cannot deny a certain level of being bummed out.

I was supposed to meet up with some of my old colleagues/friends for an evening of beer and talking cock, but well, it's been ``postponed indefinitely`` also due to the COVID-2019 event.

I can go on and on, but why bother? I'm just going to make myself feel worse. In fact, I don't know why I am even writing this entry in the first place. Oh right, just as a means of documenting a transient period in life.

No, I'm in no danger of offing myself, at least not in a direct sort of way. I do feel this compulsion to just work so hard that I collapse or something though... I suspect this is just a side effect of just wanting to reach the state of drowning myself so hard that I don't need to think any more.

Thinking is just making me more and more depressed over time. The world is not a nice place.

Till the next update. Hopefully things are less stupid by then.

Anniversary Update

Well well well... what can I say? It's that time of the year again, where the confluence of all the natural (and semi-natural) markings of the passing of an integer increment of years has come.

It is right smack in the middle of Chinese New Year now. The situation this year is more dire than usual, because there is a new spread of a new viral disease that found itself starting from within Wuhan, China. While not directly affecting me personally, it has, in many ways, dampened down the over festivities by the Chinese nationals who are making their way back home for the holidays. Locally, while the scare isn't as strong as that of SARS back in 2003, it still casts a certain background dampener on things. I guess it also does not help that the Chinese New Year this year is happening so damn early, having shown up in the middle of the last third of January. Folks were barely recovering from the massive commercial festivities that is Christmas, and now they are scampering to mark time for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

But the main purpose of this post isn't to talk about the Chinese Lunar New Year---it is more to reference my own personal anniversary of living on this planet.

At this point in my life, I think I have officially transitioned from ``young adult'' to ``early middle age''. Seems like it was only yesterday that I was just happily graduating from Carnegie Mellon University with a sinking feeling in my stomach because my QPA did not meet the 3.8 quota that was demanded of by my funding organisation (it was slightly more than a decade ago). It's also nearly fifteen years since my first existential crisis in my early twenties, where I was wondering if I could even live past thirty given the odds that were stacked against me (I had bad skin, I was socially under-developed, and I always felt that I was never quite good enough at whatever I was doing). Naturally I had lived past all that by now, and oh boy, what a crazy ride it was over the last decade!

So many things came and went. Each time when I was confronted with something that seemed impossible, I somehow managed to make my way out of it, not damageless, but often with enough luck to get away with damage that I can [eventually] recover from. Each step of the way, I fell, I got up, I got bruised, I healed, and I tried again.

I think that's just how life works, and I am thankful that past me never did fall into the dangerous spiral where the only way onwards was just tapping out of life completely.

Now that I am in ``early middle age'', priorities have altered again. I am no longer filled with the wild abandon of positivity that youth has, and am instead armed with that kind of suspicious eye on overly-optimistic view on things in general. I can also feel that my mind is ``slowing down'' more in some sense, more so than the first detection of the ``slowing down'' back when I was around twenty-two or so. I cannot tell if this is part of the aging process, or is it part of the fact that the past decade has seen the air quality of Singapore going down woefully, from an old average of less than 30 PPM (PM-10/2.5) to less than 50 PPM (PM-10/2.5), for every friggin' day. Some scientific studies have shown that starving the brain of good air has a tendency of fouling up its processes, but to what extent that is a real effect on me versus my own nocebo effect is something that I do not know.

Anyway, I'm ranting again.

Well, for this year, I think that it is time to do a little regroup to plan for the future, more so than any of the other years that I have lived for. My living situation is starting to go on a different path than the ``happy-go-lucky single'', and with that comes more responsibilities, financial and otherwise. That I had to leave my old job with the old organisation due to the ever-increasing impossibility of being allowed to actually do my work is not helpful in the least, since it takes away a good anchor point in my life. 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, and is something that will make us stronger in the years to come.

That's about all the ranting I care to do here for now. There are other things that I could be writing about, but with my real-life dead-tree diary in existence, those things are relegated to the one physical copy that is kept in close possession.

After all, what's on the Internet stays there forever. With the type of media climate we have now, why should we keep things that are that ephemeral in a place that is basically a forever-archive?

Till the next update.

Quick Summary

So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2019:

1. 2 poems posted here
2. 8 essays/rants posted here
3. 0 prose/stories posted here
4. 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
5. 3 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
   

And thus the grand total here is 14 articles, up from the 12 articles in 2018.

That's an average of 0.038 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.033 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.

2019 was a mixed bag. On the one hand, I think I've hit a new high with what I can do on my 笛子 and concert flute, and Chara and I have never been closer than where we were at in 2019 when she has finally rebased herself in Singapore. On the other hand, anti-work management at my old work place forced me to make the hard decision to leave it and head out to the great unknown, where I am now working for a medium enterprise, in the middle of a project that was started on a wrong foot and that we are trying to salvage as best as we can. It is a difficult position, to say the least, because I'm used to starting on a good foot, winning the initiative and then just running ahead with it, and never allowing myself to fall behind. This project is the very anti-thesis of how I would normally be running it, and there are many times where I feel that perhaps I am not doing good enough.

An emergent issue came up in my health that can hopefully be resolved with a minor surgery, and that has finally moved along, after getting stalled at the Polyclinic referral stage due to weirdness in their processes in reaching out to patients.

2020 is going to be a tough year. Geo-politically, things are likely to get even weirder with all the big players starting to flex their muscles really hard. Apart from that, at a personal level, there are many other things that are happening that I do not necessarily have control over. I cannot even see past the March 2020 horizon for some reason---that is how myopic I feel at times.

Ah well. As I keep saying to myself, life goes on.

Life

Life is both hard and weird.

Life, in a reductionist sense, is the accumulation of billions of years of chemical processes that manage to interact with each other in a way that allows a package to be created that contains them. Life can be as small as a single cell, to as large as a multi-cellular organism, or it can be extrapolated into the larger view of the ecosystem as a whole.

Life is not guaranteed. If we let life be defined as the set of sets of chemical processes that create a package that is in some ways self-propagating and capable of having a well-defined border of what is itself and the outside, then we find that there are many viable such sets of chemical processes, which explains the diversity of life as a whole. But as I said, life is not guaranteed---some form of life can arise eventually, but a specific instance of a specific life has an infinitesimal chance of appearing.

Why all the verbiage? It is the end of the year, and like always, I get a little more introspective and in some senses, retrospective as well. The contemplation of what I had done over the past ten years to get to where I am now has made me mull over what it means to be ``alive''. I used to believe that I would die at the end of twenty-one years old, and in many ways, I did die then. The cells that make up by current body are not likely to be the same cells some fourteen or so years ago, and the experiences that I had undergone since then have also changed the harder-to-pinpoint parts of me as well.

But to make it more to the point, the verbiage on life is the start of my beginning understanding of the world, in that each of the specific people that we meet in our lives are themselves specific forms of life that, short of a better word, underwent a miracle or two (or more) just to be where they are. And it is because of that type of infinitesimal existential probability of that specific person existing at this specific time and interacting rather specifically with me makes me start to appreciate people (as a whole) much more than I ever did.

I am not turning into a saint or a buddha by any degree, but at some fundamental level, I am starting to ``feel in my bones'' some of the truths that some of the sages have been trying to tell us over the ages, no matter their creed or belief. Existentially, there is no reason for any one of us to be here, not because of fatalism or nihilism, but because if we were to attempt to ascribe a reason for existence, we start running into the attribution problem of to whom this reason is meant for. That is an unanswerable question. It is more of the case that we are here, therefore we exist, and from there, we try to discover our own reason and meaning of existence for ourselves.

I used to have dreams. I liked codes, inventing, and thinking, and was drawn rather deeply into the whole sneaky aspect of espionage. I used to have a solid core of morals (I still do, but things were more black and white to me then, as compared to now), and I used to be someone who was willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of the society.

Then somewhere in between, reality hit me hard and I started to lose those vagueish qualitative dreams. I went with the flow, riding out the probability waves as best as I could, each time trying to position myself in ways that would minimise the type of damage that could be inflicted upon myself. I was never truly ambitious, but I was definitely competitive. If I could see a reason as to why I needed to be competitive, I would go in whole heartedly.

Today, I look back at myself and am a little concerned. I don't have much dreams any more.

It is not that I do not have any dreams---that would be a patent lie---but I do not have those ``big'' dreams any more. Come to think of it, I never really had ``big'' dreams ever, just really small qualitative ones involving a state of being than being in a state. Wordplay aside, I mean that my dreams involved me positioning myself in life such that I would not suffer at the very least, and have a type of contentedness at the very most, where ``not suffer'' and ``have contentedness'' were the extent of my dreams, as opposed to the quantitative ones some folks might have (e.g. ``be married with children by thirty two'', ``reach my first million by thirty'', ``own my company by twenty-five'').

Each day was a blessing if I could wake up, move about, do paid honest work, hang out with people I like, partake in my hobbies, before finally going back to sleep. That's about it for me. It feels as though I have reached the peak of the modern day peasant.

I am bringing this up because I realised that over the past year, I had more overtly started to care more about the people around me. These people aren't necessarily friends nor family, they are just people I meet often when I walk about. I don't know who they are other than how they look and what they are doing when I see them, I don't know anything else about them. But I take the effort to at least acknowledge their existence, to assure them that yes, they had won the infinitesimal probability of existing as a life form, and that they are.

I think it is because of two things. The first is the positive influence of Chara, who does these things by a second-nature that is likely forever alien to me. The second is that I know how it feels to be treated like one does not exist. It is a nasty feeling; while it is often important that one knows how to self-substantiate one's existence before seeking external validation (i.e. ``love thyself before asking others to love thee''), sometimes one is just so angry at oneself that one does not readily see that one's existence is miraculous and should be cherished instead of wallowing down the path of eventual self-destruction. It is in those circumstances that having an external validation can make the difference between gritting one's teeth to soldier on out of the pit, or to go down the path of no return.

It isn't much, but we are all we have for each other. If we don't look out for the people around us, who will?

Life is already hard and weird enough, why do we want to make it even harder for ourselves then?

Existential

Existential.

That's the general type of feeling I get at the end of the year.

In the past, I would often end up wallowing a little in the kind of self-pity thanks to the triple whammy of aging thrice---once through the end of the Gregorian year, once more through my birthday, and yet a third time through that of the Chinese lunar new year.

I don't self-pity any more. There is nothing to pity myself about---my bad skin has significantly become less bad over the years, my old issues of wanting to love and being loved are no longer an issue now, and my usual refrain about how friends often ended up being further apart is no longer that big a deal.

But ever so often, I still get bouts of what I might politely call an existential dread.

This year, it is heightened by a few things that can at best be called coincidental.

Work has gotten to the point where I vacillate between feeling in control of the situation and being completely overwhelmed. It's simultaneously bad and not that bad, and I really cannot decide which of the two states it is in. Regardless of how I feel, the proverbial show must still go on, and things need to be done and delivered, and so that is that; everything else is mostly an academic exercise of wielding and parrying off of power/authority with different types of power/authority.

My hobby time has gone a little weird---I feel a little weary from having been played for a chum every now and then, and the gradual realisation that if I want to go even farther, I may need to take a different tack on things.

My reading time has gotten even weirder still; having finally finished reading 《厚黑学》 recently, I had started on Little Women, which I am now regretting a little, because it has such strong emotive content that it is doing nothing towards resolving my innate existential confuddlement. It also did not help that I had finished the manga Battle Angel Alita, which itself is a type of existential exploration of what it means to seek meaning of oneself.

Vg vf ng gvzrf yvxr gurfr gung V rail gubfr jub unir n fgebat snvgu va gur oryvrs gung fbzrbar be fbzrguvat bs gerzraqbhf cbjre bhg bs gurve xra vf ybbxvat bhg sbe gurz. Juvyr gur rkcynangvba bs cbffvoyr pnhfr naq rssrpg pna or dhvgr uneq gb whfgvsl jvgubhg oryvrivat va gur fnzr nkvbzf, gung gurfr crbcyr pna frrx fgeratgu sebz n fbhepr gung vf fvzhygnarbhfyl sebz jvgubhg naq sebz jvguva vf n fvtug gb orubyq, rfcrpvnyyl jura gur bhgpbzrf ner, sbe ynpx bs n orggre grez, zvenphybhf. Va znal jnlf, jurgure be abg fbzrguvat unf qverpg pnhfr naq rssrpg vf vzzngrevny gb gurz; gurve fgebat oryvrs unf perngrq gur ernyvgl gung gurl jrer ybbxvat sbe. Nz V raivbhf bs gurz? N yvggyr, ohg vg vf gur xvaq bs ``yrnc bs snvgu'' gung bar zhfg xabj ``va bar'f obarf'' orsber vg znxrf nal frafr.

Existential.

It all goes back to that word. This year had been quite awkward, and I am not quite sure what to expect for the year to come. But one can always hope, and perhaps as the days of 2020 make their way known, the existential dread that I feel will ebb away temporarily, only to make itself known once more nearer the end of the next year.

Marching Onwards...

Heh. I didn't write for most of the year, and suddenly as the year draws to a close, you see me have entries in here.

Naturally, life is getting more exciting. Not necessarily good of course---I'm pretty sure that I had mentioned more than once in this blog that when things go smooth, there is almost no reason to be writing blog entries.

So clearly, things aren't going smooth. But how badly are they going then?

------

It's funny how often the phrase ``be careful what you wish for'' gets thrown about. To those who never really understood what this truly meant, better to learn it soon. To those who know what this truly meant, you will know what I mean. In my previous organisation, the management issues were to the point where us engineers were basically sitting around waiting for things to be assigned so that we can do them---the projects were drying up because of management issues, and that our time was fast being co-opted towards fulfilling more and more useless management ``memos'' and ``reports'' for unknown reasons. I was essentially paid to sit around and do things that had little to do with what my skills were, and I was getting antsy.

Obviously the thing I wanted the most was to get my hands dirty to actually like make something.

And I got my wish. More than my wish, actually. So I'm now working around 72 hours a week on a 45-hour week pay, losing sleep, hair, and my sanity. I don't think my brain is getting enough down time to regenerate, and it is not a fun thought, because it means that over time, I would get sloppier, and productivity would take a hit. To be fair, it is exercising the ``making'' part of me, but more of the ``run till you fall, then continue to crawl'' sort than the ``think about things and come up with something innovative and impactful'' sort.

But as they say, it is in times of trials and tribulations that one builds character and learns of who one's friends are. So I'm taking it all in stride. It's not a complaint, just an observation and a note here that when I look back from the future, I would be able to decide if I should be laughing at my naivity, or to nod at the sagacity of past me.

My friends around me aren't having that great a time too---they have their own trials to grit through. 2019 hasn't exactly been a great year for many of us, but that's just how things go I suppose.

Whelp. Enough of belly-aching. Time to grit on.

Till the next update.

NaNoWriMo 2019 & Concert Aftermath

This year's NaNoWriMo is finally done, and even then, it feels like a bust.

I originally had the idea of having several (haha) storylines of characters interacting with each other, but ended up with what I wrote because of two big reasons:

1. That required sufficient planning and time;
2. I didn't have enough planning and time due to project from work and preparing for the concert.

So, all in all, a Bad Situation for the type of story I was writing.

I am not really super pleased with the result, but a win is a win, and I will take it. This is probably the slowest and most boring NaNoWriMo that I have done in all my eleven years for the following reasons:

1. The new web site is atrociously designed -- it was appealing to the ``modern'' aesthetic of quirky in the moment conversations as compared to the thread-based forums of old;
2. Write-ins were minimal because of scheduling issues, and even if they were held, I'd have to miss most of them due to my Saturdays being burnt from all the other different things I have going this month;
3. All my writing buddies from the old days are basically non-existent due to incomplete data migration from the web site, removing one source of inspiration to write more and write harder;
4. There is no official word count validator this year due to oversight in the redesign process of the web site(!)

For the previous ten years, I'd always chip in a little each time I take part in NaNoWriMo, but this year, I'm protesting against the awful changes by not donating anything. Petty, I know, but well... sometimes we have to take the actions we have to just to make a point.

But enough of NaNoWriMo for now -- let's hope next year is better.

------

The concert last Saturday was a smashing success, given all the weirdness that we had found ourselves in from an administrative and logistics perspective. Ding, GY + father, and YT came down to support, and from the various feedback from both they and other friends of friends, the overall sound effect from the Chinese Orchestra was well received. It was the first time we were bringing in some heavy bass line support from brasswind friends with trombone, bass trombone, and saxophone, boosting our usually bass-poor section.

No need to talk about bringing in the alto and bass flutes because that was something that I had been doing forever anyway; but that said, it was a good thing that Chara and her friends came by to help. It made the sound all that much richer, and when coupled with the rearrangements of slightly more modern folk/pop music, gave a very lovely mixture that would be hard to beat with a more traditional line up.

Next year is an exciting year for the Chinese Orchestra -- we would be preparing for our 30th anniversary concert. Planning should begin now, and the brasswind folks have said that they were happy to come back and play with us for this one, provided we gave them enough time to work on the scores. That part was a little messy this time round, because I could not directly support due to all the other things I have been working on, both for and not for the concert -- much of the transposition work was undertaken by Chara, who was also undergoing lots of stress at work herself. I am appreciative of her help, and acknowledge that if she had not helped take care of this aspect, I think the concert would not go as well as it did, and the brasswind friends would probably have a less fun experience than they had this time round.

Okay, enough of writing. I am so sick of writing now, especially having just completed this year's 'orrific installment NaNoWriMo. Till the next update then!

TGCO Performance 2019!

This year's NaNoWriMo promises to be a drama-fest, and that's not because of what I am intending to write.

The web site itself, the lifeblood for the whole NaNoWriMo movement, underwent a series of rather drastic changes for whatever reason that I cannot immediately comprehend. The interface is much slower than before, and is very clunky, with an extremely steep learning curve. It tries to be more social media-esque, but did not migrate the associated ``writing buddies'' data from the old system, leaving one's profile completely devoid of any connection with anyone whatsoever.

I honestly don't know what they were thinking.

Web site weirdness aside, this period of this year, I am stuck in the middle of two other major events that will suck out the life of me. One's work related, and the other is related to my hobby. That which is work related, we will not talk about it. That which is hobby related, I will mention it.

For those old friends who are still reading my blogs, it's that time again where I am performing with my Chinese Orchestra from Teck Ghee Community Club. We are performing on Nov 16 this year, from 1930hrs to 2100hrs, at the newly reopened and renovated Teck Ghee Community Club hall.

The OnePA web site has an entry for our performance, including ticket price.

It's a different type of concert for various reasons, but the most obvious one is that it features some low brass and low woodwinds of the western concert band tradition for some our pieces, thanks to a few of our friends who were interested in playing something different. While we aren't really fielding super massive pieces that night, we hope that the selection we have provides a more cosy and community feel, a sort of ``welcome home'' vibe as we inaugurate our return to the community club's building after those two years of renovations.

------

Colds have a way of knocking me off my feet that defies common explanation. While the nasal blockage/discharge cycle is something that I can get used to, the feverish and somewhat delirious state is something that I can never work with, almost literally. It makes the mind foggy and very lethargic, limiting the storage capacity to the point that after reading through one part of a system, I would find myself forgetting it almost immediately. Then there's that dull throbbing headache that permeates through---unshakeable except perhaps with a few extra hours of solid sleep that is not drug-induced.

Nasty nasty stuff.

I know it's a cold and not the flu mostly because I did not go completely delirious with an unstoppable fever. Nevertheless, it sucked a good deal out of me, and during this rather trying period, it becomes even more important that I keep my health in a good state.

Too many people are relying critically on me. I cannot afford to fall right now.

But already I think I've said too much. Till the next update then.

Fun Employed

I'm working elsewhere now.

After two or so months of being funemployed, I am finally fun employed, though I am technically still within the period of my probation. Unless something utterly catastrophic happens, I am likely to pass my probation and be a permanent addition to the company.

I look back upon the path that got me to where I am, and I am amazed at the number of happy coincidences that have occurred just so that I am here where I am. Happy coincidences---that's the phrase I have chosen to describe what I had observed. I am sure that had things turned out differently, I would say the same about the path that had taken me there---after all, when one's expectations are generalised to maximise an overall mean metric, the number of states that fall in the ``good'' outcome category is significantly larger than having a very specific expectation.

I could have gone elsewhere should I choose to pursue it, but I have chosen not to. Many might think me mad for not choosing the ``obviously'' better route that guarantees a larger compensation package. But a fat pay cheque is not my primary objective after all. Inasmuch as I had said many times in the past that I was basically a loner, the reality of it all is that I still crave company among my people. Going elsewhere would make me a transplant, a leaf in the wind with no roots, a culture mendicant who is forced to re-enculturate oneself with the new place, losing a substantial amount of one's cultural character all in the name of assimilation.

I don't think I can do that. I have inadvertently sunk my roots deep without my realising. That which I derive the most pleasure and happiness from are the things that I cannot find elsewhere.

Maybe this closes some doors. That's fine---I'm past the age where I expect a boundless future. I'm old enough that next year the government has to acknowledge that I am an old geezer who ought to qualify on his own merits a subsidy and a chance at bidding for his own tiny apartment without necessarily having to find a spouse. But even with an infinite number of doors, the length of my personal path and choices have always been finite; so with the closing of some doors, maybe it isn't that bad after all.

------

In different news, I'm finally fed up enough with having to lug 90kg of ass around to want to do something about it. Considering that my physical ``training'' is basically nil at this point, it seems the right time to use a strong caloric deficit to drag that 90kg down to something more in tune with an ``acceptable'' mass of sub-65kg (using a value of <23 kg/m² as the guide), with a waist measurement of sub-35in (<90cm). The manner I am pulling this off is to run off only one meal a day, currently chosen to be dinner, and chug water at a rate of no more than 1 litre/hr. The last time I tried this was a failure because the calorie deficit was too steep for my body to keep up---I was doing aikijujutsu twice a week, which burnt a lot more energy than my sedentary lifestyle now. It ended me blacking out in the middle of training.

To prevent death through steady loss of essential micronutrients through such a poor diet schema, I am also taking a multivitamin daily.

So far, so good. But we'll really see the effects of such change in a few months' time. After all, it took me thirty over years to become a 90kg lardass.

Till the next update then.

I Quit My Job

It has been quite a while since I last wrote anything here. But this refrain has been rather clichéd of late.

After nearly 14 years of association with I²R, I have finally resigned, and am serving out my month of notice of termination with them till the beginning of June.

It is a bittersweet moment. Much of my early adult working life was spent with the Institute, and the people I met there were smart and very technology oriented, the kind of things that I was very interested in (I still am). But things have progressed to the point where it was no longer tenable to be working there. My bond being done at least eighteen months ago meant that if there was ever a good time to leave, it was now.

I leave behind whatever is left of a team that I had spent a productive six or so years with. I made new friends among peers who were much closer to my age group than the last few times I was at the Institute. We bonded over an increasingly difficult environment that did not seem like it was going to get better any time soon.

I am not intending to write all that I want to say about the whole situation here---if you can meet me in meat space and want to talk about it, I would be happy to discuss it with you. Probably. HR already had a stab at it with me, and I gave the poor HR representative a whole bag of stories that will likely to be filed away under the ``delinquent employee---do not bother'' pile.

The main purpose of this post is to mark another milestone in my life.

Some of the people who know about this have asked the same question: ``Where are you headed next?'' My answer to them is a single ``nowhere''. I think I need a little break from it all so as to rethink and recalibrate my perspectives, especially since I am no longer contract bound to continue working or pay a hefty penalty. Part of the time off is to seriously think about where I am heading, ``career''-wise. In this time and age of pervasive slicing and dicing as practised by HR management, the ``career'' as a coherent track of work skill/ability development is no longer in vogue; the coherence is deconstructed to work with what is effectively a so-called gig-based economy where individuals whore out their individual abilities for paltry pay as companies claim yet another successful way of saving training costs while still maintaining their base line.

I have a few side projects that need completing. Despite talking about it potentially being done more than a year and a half ago, this time I am actually much closer to completion, prose-wise with respect to content. What is left is the sourcing and creating of necessary diagrams, illustrations, and photographs to fill in the existing placeholders. I have a concert coming up with my Chinese orchestra in November, and will need to practise a little more on refining my solo. I also have new impetus to improve upon my concert flute playing skills, and have a couple of pieces that I need to finally complete the writing of.

Oh, and I need to finally sort out my belongings in preparation for the inevitable move to a new place once we have figured out where and what exactly we are going to live in.

And I think that is roughly it for this update. Till the next time I suppose.

Quick Summary

So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2018:

1. 1 poem posted here
2. 6 essays/rants posted here
3. 0 prose/stories posted here
4. 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
5. 4 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
   

And thus the grand total here is 12 articles, down from the 16 articles in 2017.

That's an average of 0.033 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.044 last year. It's horrifically low, but it is, as I mentioned before, a natural progression as life starts to fall into a discernible pattern.

2018 was more of an amplified version of 2017 in many ways. But among it came a few bright rays of sunshine that made the year a bearable one. I think that I have levelled up on my concert flute playing at a much greater rate than before, and that my general 笛子 playing skills have also improved quite a bit from the cross-training that came about from playing on the concert flute. I spent less time working on writing new music, mostly because the situation at my Chinese Orchestra isn't as dire as before due to having a ``full-time'' conductor being present, but used that time that was released to understand more on musical acoustics of instruments, particularly of the flute/笛子 family.

This post is likely to be the latest quick summary type post that I have put up, and I feel a little bad. The truth here really is that it is no longer as fun to write on Blogger than before, with the mostly unalterable width of the text area of the post body itself, and the massive number of hoops to leap through just to write something on it. My meat-space diary has seen more action than here, and I have little doubts that it will continue to be the case in time to come.

2019 is a year that is likely to see big changes in my life, so here's to dealing with it all and emerging at the end of it a more improved version of myself.

This blog is by no means an abandoned one!

Edit: True to form, when I hit ``publish'', Blogger fucked up the paragraphing of this post, thus necessitating an edit to unfuck it. Good grief!

My Anger

I've been quietly festering over the past couple of years over how the world has been changing, and at this point, I can no longer stay silent.

First though, a caveat: I design and build computer systems to achieve specific data management/business processes to inject intelligence into the data and actuation that can be controlled by such systems. That particular perspective is the source of my inherent bias in what I am going to say next.

The chief problem with the world today is that everyone seems to be too damn focused with the outcome that they do not stop to think carefully about how they are achieving the outcome. It is a problem because human institutions and systems are largely evolved through trial and error (i.e. mostly reactive) instead of being ``well designed'' on the get-go, mostly because of nearly a century of devolving power to more democratic (or in some cases, socialistic) processes.

This means that precedent plays an outsized role in governing how the systems evolved. Each time something happens, and is successful, it becomes a new precedent that the vox populi use as evidence of its legitimacy. This means that if some ethically/morally sketchy steps are taken just to reach a desired outcome, those ethically/morally sketchy steps are now part of the herd memory as precedents to be trotted out in the eventual uprising demanding a change of the system, no matter who next is in power.

That last emphasis is of utmost importance. The means in which an outcome is achieved is the demonstration of a tool, and while who is in power can change at the whim of an election or revolution, tools tend to outlast everyone. This means that if one is happy with a law that bans discussion of topics that the Other Side loves, that same law, should the Other Side come to power, can also be used against the original side who become the minority.

Thus, in trying to right a wrong, one ends up with a future where the same manner in which the wrong was righted can be used against one.

This is why I get angry at how the world has changed. We are supposedly more knowledgeable than the past, we are supposedly more developed than the past, and we are supposedly more integrated as a whole than the past, ergo we ought to be cognisant of the ramifications should we choose one particular course of action over another. Instead, we are seeing all the tribal loyalties playing themselves out the way feudal systems had been doing for the few hundred years before capitalism and globalisation swept those antiquated systems away, and more importantly, we are seeing each tribe yelling out ethically indefensible actions to be taken against the Other Side. And this is not even a case of the well-educated versus the less educated---such problems cut across the entire education strata, which makes it all the more likely that the primary cause is the type of underlying primal tribal instinct that we would have thought that we had out-evolved by now.

Apparently, we were wrong. All the ``enlightenment'' we had thus far seems to be part of a passing fad, of a glorious golden age that has since passed. I really fear for the future.

NaNoWriMo 2018

Yes, it's time for NaNoWriMo once again. I'm sorry that I didn't say anything earlier---just too many things to think about and work on to the point that it was not easy to just bring myself around to writing anything about writing anything.

This is year 10 for me, and may this novel be a fun one! As always, my progress can be tracked in the widget on the side.

June?

It is June once again. There is usually nothing fantastic about June other than the increased amount of ``summer rain'' and perhaps the start of the natural hotter season in SIN city.

The keyword here is of course, ``usually''.

It's hardly usual around here these days. More changes are afoot, and I cannot tell if they are for the better or for the worse. The metaphorical ground I'm standing on is anything but firm---though it is definitely a little more firm than just a couple of months ago when the rules of the game changed and I, in my somewhat desperate bid to not get thrown out of it, decided that enough was enough, and planted my foot down and declared that it was my new anchor point. That has been working relatively well, I might add, and it has become yet another useful life principle that I am adding to my list.

But back to changes. The team at work has shrunk---two folks have left for greener pastures, their reasons being their own since I did not want to pry. From the larger perspective, the general dynamics of the entire working environment has changed quite drastically compared to two years ago, and it is increasingly hard to see how the changes are aiding in increasing productivity; mind you, I am referring to the overall work culture and not anything that is highly localised. That is as much as I would want to talk about for work.

I'd like to write more music, but am currently in a type of funk, partly because work has been sapping much of my energy, leaving me with little left to do anything else that is creative in nature. Or it could be me trying to do something different---instead of developing my own melody, I am trying to adapt an existing one, giving it just enough changes that it is obviously not just a rearrangement.

The books I have been reading have been too technical in nature for too long---reading up on Ada 2012, the Quran, and an in-depth musicology look at traditional Chinese music all at once is just too much, especially since work got into a higher drive for the past couple of months. That's why I ended up with many other diversive reading, the latest of which is the Cult Trilogy (more commonly known as the ``Metro'' trilogy) by Dmitry Glukhovsky, a post-nuclear war story of survival within the metro system in Moscow.

And strangely enough, that series has a lot in common with Adventure Time, being that it is also about a post-nuclear war story of survival of a world so mutated and evolved that almost nothing of the old life is left. I would say that was when Adventure Time turn from a fun romp into a somewhat deeper and darker story that reminds me of Happy Tree Friends, though the darkness isn't as crass.

I think that's all I intend to talk about for now. Till the next update then.