Alright, so the end of the week is drawing near, and I am in the midst of moving all the crazy end-of-semester projects to their hopefully joyful conclusion. I have no idea what is wrong with this ``new'' blogger interface---the entire interface feels quite lethargic. I can't tell if it is Firefox acting up due to the random AJAX-y things that this user interface is using, or if the whole machine is slowed down because I'm running one rather CPU-intensive computation in the background while not running the discrete graphics card.
Anyway, the last time I wrote was on how Sunday was passing me by. What I didn't say was that I think I had yet another corneal abrasion from Saturday. No, it's not from training that's for sure---I have those protective goggles, and no thumb ever went into my eye. What I think happened was that my eyes were too dry, and then I rubbed them, inadvertently causing yet another abrasion. Talk about bad things occurring more than once.
The difference this time of course is that it's probably pretty small. I only had very mild photophobia when I was looking out of my window into the environment outside on Sunday, and there was mild inflammation all about the sclera, but that was it. It wasn't unbearable---I still went out and did the stuff I had to do, even doing an interval-based run on Sunday itself. My vision was a bit wonky, but as at today, things have returned to normal. After that last incident, I think I know what to expect with regards to such an injury, and really, since this is so small, waiting it out was the best thing I could do. I just cannot afford to lose time for yet another meaningless set of daily trips to the local hospital that required me to make a trip to the next city for a second opinion at the end of it all.
This week and the next are going to be rather hellish, and I hope that things will turn out alright for me. Meanwhile, sleep beckons---I need it just to stay functional.
Till the next update.
Friday, April 20, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Sunday Passes By...
With a blink of an eye, another weekend has passed my by once more.
Somehow being confined in the house, I feel quite differently. It has been a month or so since my buddy left the PhD programme, and I have more or less started to figure out different coping mechanisms for myself. I've been running more, reading more, and generally speaking, talking to myself a whole lot more.
I suppose I really don't dig into the ``solitary person'' thing all that well.
The end-of-semester crunch is upon me, and already I am looking at a rather long list of things that needs to be done. I have no idea how I am going to manage it, but I suppose that everything will be done somehow. No, I'm not interested in scoring all As for my classes---I just want to do enough to meet the department requirement so that I have time to look at other more relevant things related to my research. The three classes of this semester are killer, each with their own major projects. Sometimes I just feel like throwing in the towel. But of course, I often catch myself early enough to tell my depressing brain to shut-it and take active steps to move things along.
I'm starting to understand the feelings that some of my other friends who have left the PhD programme. It wasn't so much that the research is boring, it's the drudgery to fill up the paperwork and work on one's research that makes one develop a distaste of it all. Studies already take at least 40 hours a week, on a full course load, while research takes another 44+ hours a week. In short, it's like doing two full-time jobs at once (no, a full-time job is not 80 hours---do not believe the words of employers who are trying to undercut the labour to squeeze every ounce of ``productivity''). It's pretty easy to do it when one's young, but as age catches up and the real world's effects start to manifest themselves (translation: watching other people doing ``normal'' things and seem successful/happy), there will be a growing sense of self-doubt about whether all these additional hard work over and above the Bachelor's degree is ever worth it.
I know it is worthed it, in my case. But classes are just so... annoying. They get in the way. But they need to be done anyway...
Well, enough belly-aching for now. Till the next update.
Somehow being confined in the house, I feel quite differently. It has been a month or so since my buddy left the PhD programme, and I have more or less started to figure out different coping mechanisms for myself. I've been running more, reading more, and generally speaking, talking to myself a whole lot more.
I suppose I really don't dig into the ``solitary person'' thing all that well.
The end-of-semester crunch is upon me, and already I am looking at a rather long list of things that needs to be done. I have no idea how I am going to manage it, but I suppose that everything will be done somehow. No, I'm not interested in scoring all As for my classes---I just want to do enough to meet the department requirement so that I have time to look at other more relevant things related to my research. The three classes of this semester are killer, each with their own major projects. Sometimes I just feel like throwing in the towel. But of course, I often catch myself early enough to tell my depressing brain to shut-it and take active steps to move things along.
I'm starting to understand the feelings that some of my other friends who have left the PhD programme. It wasn't so much that the research is boring, it's the drudgery to fill up the paperwork and work on one's research that makes one develop a distaste of it all. Studies already take at least 40 hours a week, on a full course load, while research takes another 44+ hours a week. In short, it's like doing two full-time jobs at once (no, a full-time job is not 80 hours---do not believe the words of employers who are trying to undercut the labour to squeeze every ounce of ``productivity''). It's pretty easy to do it when one's young, but as age catches up and the real world's effects start to manifest themselves (translation: watching other people doing ``normal'' things and seem successful/happy), there will be a growing sense of self-doubt about whether all these additional hard work over and above the Bachelor's degree is ever worth it.
I know it is worthed it, in my case. But classes are just so... annoying. They get in the way. But they need to be done anyway...
Well, enough belly-aching for now. Till the next update.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Pompous Buffoon?
Am I a pompous buffoon? Sometimes I ask myself that question, particularly at times where I sit quietly and do a little introspection (so hard to find time to do that nowadays). I find that I know quite a lot of interesting things, but unfortunately, that rigour aspect of things are a little lacking, for really, research is not a measure of what or how much you know, but the lineage of the information that you've got. That's the whole onus behind ``the chain of proof/evidence'' that is prevalent in Science.
But anyway, why the question of a pompous buffoon? Pomposity is that know-it-all attitude that one can display, and a buffoon is mostly a stupid person. Maybe I am a pompous buffoon at times, secure in my knowledge and wanting to demonstrate to people that they are wrong at one point or another. Or perhaps I am, as always, being rather existential about things once again. But do these matter? Not to anyone no---no one really cares about what my internal state is. Actually, that's not quite true. Most people will not really care about what my internal state is, only my closest family and friends are interested in that. For that, I am thankful; I suppose that's what it means to be a human. To have the support and care of those who love you, to those who are related to you by choice or by blood. Maybe that's the purest kind of love that one can ever hope for in this life.
But yes, pompous buffoons. I can't really stand them. Especially when they are patently wrong, and refuse to see reason. The cocky way that they push their perspective, thinking that they are always right, without actually realising that they may, in fact, be wrong, even when those said parts are pointed out by many time and time again. Very annoying bunch of people. I hope to never be like a pompous buffoon, for the sake of others and more importantly, for the sake of myself.
Well, that's enough of a rant. Gotta think more, and wonder about how to survive this semester with little lasting psychological damage. Till the next update.
But anyway, why the question of a pompous buffoon? Pomposity is that know-it-all attitude that one can display, and a buffoon is mostly a stupid person. Maybe I am a pompous buffoon at times, secure in my knowledge and wanting to demonstrate to people that they are wrong at one point or another. Or perhaps I am, as always, being rather existential about things once again. But do these matter? Not to anyone no---no one really cares about what my internal state is. Actually, that's not quite true. Most people will not really care about what my internal state is, only my closest family and friends are interested in that. For that, I am thankful; I suppose that's what it means to be a human. To have the support and care of those who love you, to those who are related to you by choice or by blood. Maybe that's the purest kind of love that one can ever hope for in this life.
But yes, pompous buffoons. I can't really stand them. Especially when they are patently wrong, and refuse to see reason. The cocky way that they push their perspective, thinking that they are always right, without actually realising that they may, in fact, be wrong, even when those said parts are pointed out by many time and time again. Very annoying bunch of people. I hope to never be like a pompous buffoon, for the sake of others and more importantly, for the sake of myself.
Well, that's enough of a rant. Gotta think more, and wonder about how to survive this semester with little lasting psychological damage. Till the next update.
Monday, April 09, 2012
I'm A Comin' Home [In June]
I'm comin' home for a visit in the middle of June! I'm so excited for some reason---I'm not sure if it's just relief that I can finally see familiar faces and share time with people I know and love more, or is it just a desperate need for a change of pace [again].
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to post details here---folks who follow my blog(s) should email me (or drop a comment on this post) to let me know when you guys want to meet up. I'm sure we can arrange something! =)
Anyway, among the two-ish semesters I have been here, this semester is proving to be the more gruelling of the two. I can handle ridiculous amounts of homework, but what I cannot handle are the need to write 3 survey papers, deal with 5 projects all within the same time frame. They sap time in very different ways, and this can be pretty darn annoying, to say the least. It requires my brain to be split into 5 different ways, and frankly, I am doubting my ability to do it, in spite of the faith and confidence that many have for me (thank you). I am, of course, trying my best to adapt, but who knows really what the outcome will be.
Just keep on doing until this semester is over and then I have renewed energy for my research once more, instead of getting bogged down by the thousand-and-one different things.
On another note, I ran 9.31km in around 57:35 yesterday by going around the Champaign side of campus and including parts of the Urbana residences. I didn't realise that I had the capacity to run that distance---the longest that I had run till then was about 6km or so, already a wonderous feat as far as I'm concerned, considering that I never did run all that often. I think I'm starting to like running a lot, and the completion of that 9.31km route was partly because I had a good hydration plan. Remember that Energy Belt I talked about in an earlier post? Yep, I used that and made sure that as I ran, I kept topping up my fluids to stay hydrated and maintain sufficient levels of sodium ions.
Alright, the day has just begun for me, and there are a few things I am adamant of completing before the day is done to make progress. Till the next update.
For obvious reasons, I'm not going to post details here---folks who follow my blog(s) should email me (or drop a comment on this post) to let me know when you guys want to meet up. I'm sure we can arrange something! =)
Anyway, among the two-ish semesters I have been here, this semester is proving to be the more gruelling of the two. I can handle ridiculous amounts of homework, but what I cannot handle are the need to write 3 survey papers, deal with 5 projects all within the same time frame. They sap time in very different ways, and this can be pretty darn annoying, to say the least. It requires my brain to be split into 5 different ways, and frankly, I am doubting my ability to do it, in spite of the faith and confidence that many have for me (thank you). I am, of course, trying my best to adapt, but who knows really what the outcome will be.
Just keep on doing until this semester is over and then I have renewed energy for my research once more, instead of getting bogged down by the thousand-and-one different things.
On another note, I ran 9.31km in around 57:35 yesterday by going around the Champaign side of campus and including parts of the Urbana residences. I didn't realise that I had the capacity to run that distance---the longest that I had run till then was about 6km or so, already a wonderous feat as far as I'm concerned, considering that I never did run all that often. I think I'm starting to like running a lot, and the completion of that 9.31km route was partly because I had a good hydration plan. Remember that Energy Belt I talked about in an earlier post? Yep, I used that and made sure that as I ran, I kept topping up my fluids to stay hydrated and maintain sufficient levels of sodium ions.
Alright, the day has just begun for me, and there are a few things I am adamant of completing before the day is done to make progress. Till the next update.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
What Have I Missed? Nothing
It has been a week since I disabled my Facebook account [temporarily]. Much to my surprise, I didn't really miss much. Life moved on, at a frantic pace of course for I am still a graduate student, and I still had contact with the people who mattered (that'd be my friends). I talk to people in the flesh, converse with them via email and IM, basically doing the things that I did prior to 2006 just when Facebook was starting to take over the world by storm.
Frankly, I think I can live this lifestyle. One without the interference of some odd social network thing like Facebook. Or LinkedIn. Or any of the hundreds of Friendster knock-offs (does anyone still remember Friendster?).
I'm not a technological Luddite---far from it considering everything. It's just that this ``always on, always connected'' lifestyle is really starting to burn into time that I once had to do things I liked, be it reading new material, sampling new games, writing or just going out for a meal. Sure, it seems harmless at first, but being a computer scientist also means that there is this obsession streak present. It is mild of course, almost all computer scientists or intellectuals have an obsession streak about them, but when these obsessions are effected as unproductive compulsions like using Facebook, it disrupts our general ability to do things. I mean, I'd rather have a compulsion of reading than to follow all the 500 or so Facebook ``friends''. At least all that reading will pay off in the end when I have the time to left my brain sort out what I have read and to distill the important parts while discarding the useless.
That's the problem. The lack of down-time, the lack of ``me'' time. That's what's different now when I compare it to the past. I don't realise how much I miss these times of introspection till I have decided to kill off all these useless compulsions one by one. No wonder I always feel drained.
One invaluable lesson that I am starting to learn is to take things in stride. Taking things in stride doesn't mean slackness---it means to take what it is dished out with a good measure of perspective. It means to not get so caught up with one part of life that I neglect the others. One potentially apocryphal quote by the Dalai Lama sums it up the best. When asked what surprised him the most, the Dalai Lama purported replied
But enough of arm chair philosophizing---I'm sure people are more interested in some of the ``juicier'' aspects of my life. (=
I've gotten one of those Energy Belt thingies that give you a small pouch for the important stuff, and small bottles that can store electrolyte drinks (poor man's version: tap water + half teaspoon of salt), all hanging snuggly around the waist. Why one of these thingies? Well, I hate having to carry keys or anything in the pockets of my bermudas for running because getting ass-slapped by the damn thing is just annoying. Plus, as I start to increase my overall running distance, I will have to start taking hydration seriously, especially since summer is about to arrive. I got mine from Meijer for about ten dollars cheaper, which is awesome if you ask me.
Recently, I made a self-inking rubber stamp of my emblem. That profile picture that is available on the side bar of this blog, or that icon on the address bar? Yes, that's my emblem. I got it done at Simon's Stamps. All I had to do was to upload the image file and they sorted it all out. Workmanship is wonderful and it arrived fairly quickly too.
I've been seeing an athletic trainer these days with regards to the ginky deep muscle on the outer left side of my left calve muscle (I'm not going to use precise anatomical-speak here because I don't really know how to call it, but I think it might actually be the Fibularis Brevis, some stabiliser muscle that controls eversion of the foot). The exercises that she prescribed were rather weird, but they do help with the overall condition. The next session is going to be interesting, because she will be checking out my [nearly] barefoot running gait and seeing if it can be fixed to reduce all these weird lower limb problems.
Alright, enough babble for now. Need to have an early night. I've been rather sleep-deprived for the week. Till the next update.
Frankly, I think I can live this lifestyle. One without the interference of some odd social network thing like Facebook. Or LinkedIn. Or any of the hundreds of Friendster knock-offs (does anyone still remember Friendster?).
I'm not a technological Luddite---far from it considering everything. It's just that this ``always on, always connected'' lifestyle is really starting to burn into time that I once had to do things I liked, be it reading new material, sampling new games, writing or just going out for a meal. Sure, it seems harmless at first, but being a computer scientist also means that there is this obsession streak present. It is mild of course, almost all computer scientists or intellectuals have an obsession streak about them, but when these obsessions are effected as unproductive compulsions like using Facebook, it disrupts our general ability to do things. I mean, I'd rather have a compulsion of reading than to follow all the 500 or so Facebook ``friends''. At least all that reading will pay off in the end when I have the time to left my brain sort out what I have read and to distill the important parts while discarding the useless.
That's the problem. The lack of down-time, the lack of ``me'' time. That's what's different now when I compare it to the past. I don't realise how much I miss these times of introspection till I have decided to kill off all these useless compulsions one by one. No wonder I always feel drained.
One invaluable lesson that I am starting to learn is to take things in stride. Taking things in stride doesn't mean slackness---it means to take what it is dished out with a good measure of perspective. It means to not get so caught up with one part of life that I neglect the others. One potentially apocryphal quote by the Dalai Lama sums it up the best. When asked what surprised him the most, the Dalai Lama purported replied
``Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived.''It probably doesn't matter if the holy man actually said this, but I think that it summarises the perspective of life quite well. Referring back to Regina Brett's 45 (or 50) life lessons, it's really about asking oneself this: ``Will it matter in five years?''
But enough of arm chair philosophizing---I'm sure people are more interested in some of the ``juicier'' aspects of my life. (=
I've gotten one of those Energy Belt thingies that give you a small pouch for the important stuff, and small bottles that can store electrolyte drinks (poor man's version: tap water + half teaspoon of salt), all hanging snuggly around the waist. Why one of these thingies? Well, I hate having to carry keys or anything in the pockets of my bermudas for running because getting ass-slapped by the damn thing is just annoying. Plus, as I start to increase my overall running distance, I will have to start taking hydration seriously, especially since summer is about to arrive. I got mine from Meijer for about ten dollars cheaper, which is awesome if you ask me.
Recently, I made a self-inking rubber stamp of my emblem. That profile picture that is available on the side bar of this blog, or that icon on the address bar? Yes, that's my emblem. I got it done at Simon's Stamps. All I had to do was to upload the image file and they sorted it all out. Workmanship is wonderful and it arrived fairly quickly too.
I've been seeing an athletic trainer these days with regards to the ginky deep muscle on the outer left side of my left calve muscle (I'm not going to use precise anatomical-speak here because I don't really know how to call it, but I think it might actually be the Fibularis Brevis, some stabiliser muscle that controls eversion of the foot). The exercises that she prescribed were rather weird, but they do help with the overall condition. The next session is going to be interesting, because she will be checking out my [nearly] barefoot running gait and seeing if it can be fixed to reduce all these weird lower limb problems.
Alright, enough babble for now. Need to have an early night. I've been rather sleep-deprived for the week. Till the next update.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
April Already? Damn!
Ah, the variability of the perception of time. It is strange how when one is really busy working or having fun that times seems to be so short, yet when we start looking back on the things that happened, it seemed oh so long ago even when it was just merely a week that had passed. And when we look ahead into the future, even when there is a month or two before things are due there's always this sense of dread that there just isn't enough time to get things done.
Such is the way of life that I am having now, I suppose. The passing of time is getting harder and harder to gauge, and because of that, I need to constantly remind myself about the real-time that I am experiencing through the use of various chronometers. The one that Ida gave me for my birthday a good three years ago has finally broken down for good---the analogue component wasn't working any more, and for that particular watch, it was the analogue motion that I found the most useful, possibly because it was much larger than the digital component. So now I just rely on my trusty Timex watch that I can sit nicely like a small desk clock to stare at it as the seconds count by.
April huh. That was pretty fast. Just a moment ago I could have sworn that it was still March. The weather is starting to show signs of returning to its ``normal'' schedule of a slow-rise towards spring weather. It's too hot for me to wear my jacket, and too windy/chilly still to run about in just T-shirts and jeans, and so I broke out my usual interim wear of scarf and half-finger gloves. I think it makes me look a little fruity, but hey, it is comfortable and so I'm not really complaining much.
Soon, this month will pass us by once again and yet another round of frantic movements to finish up this semester and to look forward to a summer of undisturbed research.
On another note, I've been using the new interface for blogger for the past week, well roughly starting at the time that I announced my one month hiatus from Facebook, and I must say that I still don't really like it. Unlike say the Gmail interface, there is no option to ``compactify'' things to make it take up less whitespace. Damn these Web 2.0 design mumbo-jumbo---sometimes all we want is just raw data, not some fancy space-eating nonsense. Anyway, apart from that, the text editing box now is also quite horrid---it scales according to how wide your browser window is. Now I no longer have a good sense of how much I'm writing since the damn window that I am writing all my entries in are just so variable in width!
Why do software companies like to dick around with their interfaces when it was clearly working alright before?
Such is the way of life that I am having now, I suppose. The passing of time is getting harder and harder to gauge, and because of that, I need to constantly remind myself about the real-time that I am experiencing through the use of various chronometers. The one that Ida gave me for my birthday a good three years ago has finally broken down for good---the analogue component wasn't working any more, and for that particular watch, it was the analogue motion that I found the most useful, possibly because it was much larger than the digital component. So now I just rely on my trusty Timex watch that I can sit nicely like a small desk clock to stare at it as the seconds count by.
April huh. That was pretty fast. Just a moment ago I could have sworn that it was still March. The weather is starting to show signs of returning to its ``normal'' schedule of a slow-rise towards spring weather. It's too hot for me to wear my jacket, and too windy/chilly still to run about in just T-shirts and jeans, and so I broke out my usual interim wear of scarf and half-finger gloves. I think it makes me look a little fruity, but hey, it is comfortable and so I'm not really complaining much.
Soon, this month will pass us by once again and yet another round of frantic movements to finish up this semester and to look forward to a summer of undisturbed research.
On another note, I've been using the new interface for blogger for the past week, well roughly starting at the time that I announced my one month hiatus from Facebook, and I must say that I still don't really like it. Unlike say the Gmail interface, there is no option to ``compactify'' things to make it take up less whitespace. Damn these Web 2.0 design mumbo-jumbo---sometimes all we want is just raw data, not some fancy space-eating nonsense. Anyway, apart from that, the text editing box now is also quite horrid---it scales according to how wide your browser window is. Now I no longer have a good sense of how much I'm writing since the damn window that I am writing all my entries in are just so variable in width!
Why do software companies like to dick around with their interfaces when it was clearly working alright before?
Friday, March 30, 2012
Frantic Friday
Some interesting things that went past my mind this morning:
It may be Friday, but there is one more little hurdle to cross before I can get a little brief respite from it all. Till the next entry.
- As one gets older and gets more integrated into society, the sense of individualism gets eroded as we start realising that there is a really large world out there after all. That's why family and friends are important---they remind you that you are still an individual in spite of the largeness of the world.
- Sleep and mood are highly correlated, without sleep, mood gets pretty negatively affected. Not very good for higher-order cognitive functions.
- There are many paths through life. There are many ways to walk through life. Which is my way? What is my objective function?
- No matter where you are, talk to people around you. Absorb the good advice, discard the bad, and laugh at the nonsensical.
- Self-inking stamp with my emblem has arrived! I've been wanting that for a long time now, and have finally gotten it. Cool.
It may be Friday, but there is one more little hurdle to cross before I can get a little brief respite from it all. Till the next entry.
Burble Blurb
Funny isn't it? How when I'm away from Facebook I actually get to post just a little bit more over here in my own original soapbox. Hard to think what I was missing when I didn't hop on that bandwagon.
I had a good talk with my friend and comrade-at-arms today---his word gave me some new light on my current hard life. I wonder if what I am feeling now is for good or for worse, but really, there are enough fires to fight already without having to get into the pure hypotheticals.
Sleep truly is an important resource. Sure, I can code drunk and/or sleepy, but when I need to think... it doesn't work. At all. No way. Already I am feeling the ill-effects of being fairly sleep-deprived and not having enough of nature's anti-depressants running through my blood due to a lack of running and other physical activity.
*sigh*
I feel so tired. I should head home and get some sleep. Got a lot of things that need to be done, and I have to go do them.
I had a good talk with my friend and comrade-at-arms today---his word gave me some new light on my current hard life. I wonder if what I am feeling now is for good or for worse, but really, there are enough fires to fight already without having to get into the pure hypotheticals.
Sleep truly is an important resource. Sure, I can code drunk and/or sleepy, but when I need to think... it doesn't work. At all. No way. Already I am feeling the ill-effects of being fairly sleep-deprived and not having enough of nature's anti-depressants running through my blood due to a lack of running and other physical activity.
*sigh*
I feel so tired. I should head home and get some sleep. Got a lot of things that need to be done, and I have to go do them.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
The Poison of Some
Alright, now that it has been a few hours that I last talked about going on hiatus with respect to facebook, let me bring up some reasons why I think that this is a good idea, lest people start to think that I am going crazy and out to kill myself or something from the social isolation.
It is really not about an isolationist policy. The truth is, there are people who are just poison, and then there are those who are really supportive. I had always known that, and I'm starting to see more and more of such examples. I need the time to myself to consolidate things, to galvanise my own will against the ever changing and harsh world. I need to remind myself that the past happened, was there, and will not be here again.
In short, I have to move on and learn to be emotionally and intellectually independent.
The whole ``short messages lol'' syndrome that I am getting from Facebook et al is really reducing my ability to debate and to think. I started simple, by relying on email notifications from Facebook on things that were happening so that I didn't have to poll the place---it didn't work out because there were just too many things that were happening, with people updating their status on their happy marriages, awesome new jobs or sometimes bad things that happen to them. Then I eschewed that and decided to check in as and when I felt ``bored'' enough to do so---it ended up with me mindless refreshing the damn news feed every thirty seconds with hardly any updates on it.
I need to channel my obsession and compulsion into something more productive. Like actually learning how to think deeper, for example. Like asking questions and trying to answer them, for example. You know, like the very skills that a good researcher needs to have.
I used to think that I just needed a PhD for my job, to show that I didn't suck, to show that I had something in me. I had long dumped the idea that I would be a good researcher.
Well, fuck that. I want to be a damn good researcher. I have been pussy-footing for too much already, thinking about the ``normal'' life that I was missing, casting doubt on myself as to whether this was what I wanted every time I felt overwhelmed.
In short, I was being a coward. And I blame it on the poison that I have been inadvertently imbibing by hanging around too much on dem social networks.
When Facebook didn't exist, I was the stud. I spent time on my own, reading, thinking, having fun working out new stuff. Then Facebook came on, and I got suckered into the sordid drama that is associated with it. Naturally, productivity and my sanity went straight to hell and have been there for quite a while now.
Time to fight back. I keep saying that, but I need to make it a reality. My very sanity is dependent on it.
Thank you to my friends and acquaintances who counselled me to realise this fact in my life. I don't want to be in the state where I get kicked off the programme, only to realise how much I really wanted it, discovering that the only reason I failed was that I wasn't tenacious nor hungry enough to pursue it. I will ruminate such issues when I am dead and cremated, not now.
I will not bow down to pressure. I will face it the way I have done so for the last 20+ years of my life.
I am here because I chose to be here. I must never forget that.
It is really not about an isolationist policy. The truth is, there are people who are just poison, and then there are those who are really supportive. I had always known that, and I'm starting to see more and more of such examples. I need the time to myself to consolidate things, to galvanise my own will against the ever changing and harsh world. I need to remind myself that the past happened, was there, and will not be here again.
In short, I have to move on and learn to be emotionally and intellectually independent.
The whole ``short messages lol'' syndrome that I am getting from Facebook et al is really reducing my ability to debate and to think. I started simple, by relying on email notifications from Facebook on things that were happening so that I didn't have to poll the place---it didn't work out because there were just too many things that were happening, with people updating their status on their happy marriages, awesome new jobs or sometimes bad things that happen to them. Then I eschewed that and decided to check in as and when I felt ``bored'' enough to do so---it ended up with me mindless refreshing the damn news feed every thirty seconds with hardly any updates on it.
I need to channel my obsession and compulsion into something more productive. Like actually learning how to think deeper, for example. Like asking questions and trying to answer them, for example. You know, like the very skills that a good researcher needs to have.
I used to think that I just needed a PhD for my job, to show that I didn't suck, to show that I had something in me. I had long dumped the idea that I would be a good researcher.
Well, fuck that. I want to be a damn good researcher. I have been pussy-footing for too much already, thinking about the ``normal'' life that I was missing, casting doubt on myself as to whether this was what I wanted every time I felt overwhelmed.
In short, I was being a coward. And I blame it on the poison that I have been inadvertently imbibing by hanging around too much on dem social networks.
When Facebook didn't exist, I was the stud. I spent time on my own, reading, thinking, having fun working out new stuff. Then Facebook came on, and I got suckered into the sordid drama that is associated with it. Naturally, productivity and my sanity went straight to hell and have been there for quite a while now.
Time to fight back. I keep saying that, but I need to make it a reality. My very sanity is dependent on it.
Thank you to my friends and acquaintances who counselled me to realise this fact in my life. I don't want to be in the state where I get kicked off the programme, only to realise how much I really wanted it, discovering that the only reason I failed was that I wasn't tenacious nor hungry enough to pursue it. I will ruminate such issues when I am dead and cremated, not now.
I will not bow down to pressure. I will face it the way I have done so for the last 20+ years of my life.
I am here because I chose to be here. I must never forget that.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Leaving Facebook Alone For a Month
Well, it's official. I'm trying a new experiment of social isolation once more, since it is obvious that I need to start figuring out how to live ``on my own'' as people start to drift further away and I start to find less and less support available.
I've deactivated my facebook account. And this time, I fully intend to keep it deactivated for at least a month.
I think that I am starting to lose any sense of focus and control given all these new-fangled ``social media'' nonsense, and it is really starting to get on my nerves. I mean, I am partly obsessive and compulsive, but such obsession and compulsion are clearly being misplaced on this always-update-and-attention-seeking aspect that is the social media. This has got to stop.
Not to mention that I'm also starting to find said social media a mass emotional masturbation scenario, where status updates are met with sympathisers but are missing a whole dimension of critical thought and help. I think I should learn to live in the real world a little bit more.
Of course, if anyone needs to contact me, there is always the email. Or through comments on any of my blogs---they are moderated, and if one explicitly states to not publish said comment, I will respect that wish, unless Blogger, under the horrendous change of interface and other machinations, screws it up.
Alright, enough of blurbing. Back to work.
I've deactivated my facebook account. And this time, I fully intend to keep it deactivated for at least a month.
I think that I am starting to lose any sense of focus and control given all these new-fangled ``social media'' nonsense, and it is really starting to get on my nerves. I mean, I am partly obsessive and compulsive, but such obsession and compulsion are clearly being misplaced on this always-update-and-attention-seeking aspect that is the social media. This has got to stop.
Not to mention that I'm also starting to find said social media a mass emotional masturbation scenario, where status updates are met with sympathisers but are missing a whole dimension of critical thought and help. I think I should learn to live in the real world a little bit more.
Of course, if anyone needs to contact me, there is always the email. Or through comments on any of my blogs---they are moderated, and if one explicitly states to not publish said comment, I will respect that wish, unless Blogger, under the horrendous change of interface and other machinations, screws it up.
Alright, enough of blurbing. Back to work.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Blog Writing?
Is blog writing no longer in vogue? It seems that the people whom I once knew were semi-prolific writers have either gone underground or gone away and have not been writing much at all. Is the art of the proverbial ``brain dump'' no longer that applicable in this time and age of short texts and fast ``status updates''?
While I like to use Facebook's status update function to do supposedly witty one-liners, I find once more that the rather short space there is very limiting for my general verbose nature. This is part of the reason why I even started this ranting blog in the first place, since the poetry one was deemed to be a bit too restricting in terms of allowing me to write whatever I want, however I want. But anyway, I think that I digress once more.
Sometimes I wonder if the current trend of brevity is a good thing for us all, whether our attention span is affected by all these rapid communication techniques that we have at our disposal. While I can't really speak for others, I feel that all these new-fangled social media mumbo-jumbo has affected the way that I think and act in many ways, not all of them good. I am starting to find it hard to construct well-reasoned arguments since all these new communications channels demand a much faster turnaround time. Actually, come to think of it, it is more than just communications---almost everything has its expected response time shortened and that annoys me to no end. I might write more about this some other time, but it is getting rather late here, so I shall stop right now.
Till next time.
While I like to use Facebook's status update function to do supposedly witty one-liners, I find once more that the rather short space there is very limiting for my general verbose nature. This is part of the reason why I even started this ranting blog in the first place, since the poetry one was deemed to be a bit too restricting in terms of allowing me to write whatever I want, however I want. But anyway, I think that I digress once more.
Sometimes I wonder if the current trend of brevity is a good thing for us all, whether our attention span is affected by all these rapid communication techniques that we have at our disposal. While I can't really speak for others, I feel that all these new-fangled social media mumbo-jumbo has affected the way that I think and act in many ways, not all of them good. I am starting to find it hard to construct well-reasoned arguments since all these new communications channels demand a much faster turnaround time. Actually, come to think of it, it is more than just communications---almost everything has its expected response time shortened and that annoys me to no end. I might write more about this some other time, but it is getting rather late here, so I shall stop right now.
Till next time.
My Dream-time Lover
Last night as I lay in bed, I dreamt of my lover. It was a strange dream that involved adventure and acrobatics, but it was one that made me wake up wondering if I would ever find her. As I sit here working on research-related things, a good 12 hours since the dream, I try to recall and write down what had happened within the dream itself.
She was there. Someone whom I was introduced to by someone whom I know, I think; I cannot quite remember. I don't even remember her face now---it has been so long, and I can't even tell if she had long or short hair. We met, I liked her, I found her interesting and cute. I think we met at some restaurant or something, and had a nice conversation---memory is fuzzy now, I swear I should have just written it down while it was still ``fresh'' in my mind. I found that I had a connection with her. She was the One, the person I had loved all my life but never knew who she ever was.
Then, I was on the ground floor of a building or something. There was a huge commotion---she was in an office somewhere up in the building. There was something wrong about, I knew I had to get her out of the place. I ran up the building as best as I could, and managed to get to her office. We embraced; I felt a little relieved. But it seemed that it wasn't quite over. We left the office, fast. I don't know what the commotion was about, but I knew we had to get away. Fast. Somehow I was carrying her on my shoulders and we were headed down the stairs of the building. The stairs---they were wide, circular, long. I ran as fast as I could down them to get to my motorcycle. Why I had one, I didn't know. We got there somehow, me feeling the adrenaline rush, she holding on to me close. We got on to the motorcycle, with me driving and she being the pillon rider. We charged out of the building.
Away from the building we went, past the many people around us. I felt at ease with her---I knew that whatever danger it was, it wasn't over yet. Not just yet. We went on along the roads, through the highway, out into the open. I cannot remember exactly what was it, but I suppose that was when I woke up.
Sometimes I wonder what my brain is trying to tell me. >.< When I awoke, I felt a sense of serenity, that kind of contentment that one feels when one is absolutely blissful.
Maybe I will get to see her again in my dreams or better yet, in my life.
She was there. Someone whom I was introduced to by someone whom I know, I think; I cannot quite remember. I don't even remember her face now---it has been so long, and I can't even tell if she had long or short hair. We met, I liked her, I found her interesting and cute. I think we met at some restaurant or something, and had a nice conversation---memory is fuzzy now, I swear I should have just written it down while it was still ``fresh'' in my mind. I found that I had a connection with her. She was the One, the person I had loved all my life but never knew who she ever was.
Then, I was on the ground floor of a building or something. There was a huge commotion---she was in an office somewhere up in the building. There was something wrong about, I knew I had to get her out of the place. I ran up the building as best as I could, and managed to get to her office. We embraced; I felt a little relieved. But it seemed that it wasn't quite over. We left the office, fast. I don't know what the commotion was about, but I knew we had to get away. Fast. Somehow I was carrying her on my shoulders and we were headed down the stairs of the building. The stairs---they were wide, circular, long. I ran as fast as I could down them to get to my motorcycle. Why I had one, I didn't know. We got there somehow, me feeling the adrenaline rush, she holding on to me close. We got on to the motorcycle, with me driving and she being the pillon rider. We charged out of the building.
Away from the building we went, past the many people around us. I felt at ease with her---I knew that whatever danger it was, it wasn't over yet. Not just yet. We went on along the roads, through the highway, out into the open. I cannot remember exactly what was it, but I suppose that was when I woke up.
Sometimes I wonder what my brain is trying to tell me. >.< When I awoke, I felt a sense of serenity, that kind of contentment that one feels when one is absolutely blissful.
Maybe I will get to see her again in my dreams or better yet, in my life.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
``It Really Makes You Think™''
Time passes rapidly, especially when one is having fun. And in this case, I am of course referring to the stuff that I am working on.
Spring time is barely here, and my mood is already looking up in spite of the many things that caused it to go down in the first place. New friends are made, new connections emphasized, old ones less emphasized---life goes on. Spring brings a renewed type of vigour that is quite infectious, really. Good time to get things done, get things going, and staying alive.
A senior PhD student once said that ``in a PhD programme, you do a lot of thinking---not just about your research, but about everything in general''. I used to take that statement lightly, but now, I think that it holds quite a bit of wisdom in it. If we think of an athletic programme as a means of training the body to do things at a higher intensity while maintaining good efficiency, then the PhD programme is the exact same thing but for the mind. Like with athletics, once you have reached the intensity provided for by the programme, it changes the way you operate at a fundamental level, which leads to the whole business of thinking about everything in general. I think this is a very powerful message to take from this whole confusing apprenticeship that is the PhD programme, and is one that will serve me well in terms of keeping everything in perspective.
But anyway, apart from work, having some sort of balance is pretty important too, much to my amusement. I've since discovered that despite my self-proclamations of being a workaholic, I'm actually not that obsessive about work---obsessive enough to keep pushing, but not obsessive enough that I cannot put it down for a while to do something else.
Alright, I've lost the momentum for writing this entry. Maybe more will be forthcoming next time.
Spring time is barely here, and my mood is already looking up in spite of the many things that caused it to go down in the first place. New friends are made, new connections emphasized, old ones less emphasized---life goes on. Spring brings a renewed type of vigour that is quite infectious, really. Good time to get things done, get things going, and staying alive.
A senior PhD student once said that ``in a PhD programme, you do a lot of thinking---not just about your research, but about everything in general''. I used to take that statement lightly, but now, I think that it holds quite a bit of wisdom in it. If we think of an athletic programme as a means of training the body to do things at a higher intensity while maintaining good efficiency, then the PhD programme is the exact same thing but for the mind. Like with athletics, once you have reached the intensity provided for by the programme, it changes the way you operate at a fundamental level, which leads to the whole business of thinking about everything in general. I think this is a very powerful message to take from this whole confusing apprenticeship that is the PhD programme, and is one that will serve me well in terms of keeping everything in perspective.
But anyway, apart from work, having some sort of balance is pretty important too, much to my amusement. I've since discovered that despite my self-proclamations of being a workaholic, I'm actually not that obsessive about work---obsessive enough to keep pushing, but not obsessive enough that I cannot put it down for a while to do something else.
Alright, I've lost the momentum for writing this entry. Maybe more will be forthcoming next time.
Friday, March 09, 2012
Thursday Mumble
T'is been a while, hasn't it? Long week, longer weekend... so much to do. I've hardly had much time to myself to figure out social issues to comment on here any more. But anyway, here I am once more, and let's see what I have in store?
So by a series of unhappy coincidences, it turns out that there is a non-trivial number of people that I know who are leaving their respective PhD programmes. It's kind of a sad thing to see them go, partly because of the comradeship I had with them as fellow PhD students, partly because they all have that world-weary look about them when they conveyed their final decision to leave the programme. It's quite sad actually, to see people leaving with that ``I'm really sick of this shit'' look about them; sometimes it makes me second guess myself about the choices that I have made in life thus far. But really, at the end of the day, everyone has their own goals in life, and just because some folks have decided that the PhD programme isn't for them doesn't mean that it isn't for me---that kind of thinking is the recipe of disaster. I'm pretty sure that there is a psychological term relating to that line of thought, but I can't seem to recall it for the moment.
This semester has been progressing like a really bad roller coaster ride. Taking courses has never been much of a problem for me, but if we compound that with the need to actually be cognitively attuned to do research, I realised that my ways of maxing out abilities for the classes just don't work that well. There's a difference between doing what is necessary to pass a class and actually having to do deep thought---the first one can be done mostly in a semi-conscious way only because the material is well-structured, which facilitates good absorption, but the second one can only be done in a fully conscious manner. Maintaining higher order thinking abilities is of paramount importance just to survive the PhD programme's research component, and to do that, I cannot be stressed out nor can I be running on little sleep. Talk about a picky situation. But enough of the depressing stuff.
Recently I relented and finally forked out some money to get an iPod Classic (160GiB). No, I have not changed my stance of disliking iTunes immensely due to the way it bowdlerises the music to fit into the ``grand'' architecture of things and how it tries to take over your computer, but I must agree that the build quality of an Apple product is pretty good, though a tad pricey. So why the plonking down of hard cash for this device then? One word: Rockbox. I've been eyeing the Rockbox project for quite a while already, and have planned to get one of 'em hard drive based iPods due to their large capacity. So when the latest release of Rockbox showed better than dismal support for the iPod Classic, I knew it was time to get one, and so I did. I'm really enjoying the much better quality of the music, since I no longer have to downsample anything just to fit them into a smaller capacity device. I might devote a post specially on how to Rockbox the iPod classic a little in the future when I have more time.
Till next time.
So by a series of unhappy coincidences, it turns out that there is a non-trivial number of people that I know who are leaving their respective PhD programmes. It's kind of a sad thing to see them go, partly because of the comradeship I had with them as fellow PhD students, partly because they all have that world-weary look about them when they conveyed their final decision to leave the programme. It's quite sad actually, to see people leaving with that ``I'm really sick of this shit'' look about them; sometimes it makes me second guess myself about the choices that I have made in life thus far. But really, at the end of the day, everyone has their own goals in life, and just because some folks have decided that the PhD programme isn't for them doesn't mean that it isn't for me---that kind of thinking is the recipe of disaster. I'm pretty sure that there is a psychological term relating to that line of thought, but I can't seem to recall it for the moment.
This semester has been progressing like a really bad roller coaster ride. Taking courses has never been much of a problem for me, but if we compound that with the need to actually be cognitively attuned to do research, I realised that my ways of maxing out abilities for the classes just don't work that well. There's a difference between doing what is necessary to pass a class and actually having to do deep thought---the first one can be done mostly in a semi-conscious way only because the material is well-structured, which facilitates good absorption, but the second one can only be done in a fully conscious manner. Maintaining higher order thinking abilities is of paramount importance just to survive the PhD programme's research component, and to do that, I cannot be stressed out nor can I be running on little sleep. Talk about a picky situation. But enough of the depressing stuff.
Recently I relented and finally forked out some money to get an iPod Classic (160GiB). No, I have not changed my stance of disliking iTunes immensely due to the way it bowdlerises the music to fit into the ``grand'' architecture of things and how it tries to take over your computer, but I must agree that the build quality of an Apple product is pretty good, though a tad pricey. So why the plonking down of hard cash for this device then? One word: Rockbox. I've been eyeing the Rockbox project for quite a while already, and have planned to get one of 'em hard drive based iPods due to their large capacity. So when the latest release of Rockbox showed better than dismal support for the iPod Classic, I knew it was time to get one, and so I did. I'm really enjoying the much better quality of the music, since I no longer have to downsample anything just to fit them into a smaller capacity device. I might devote a post specially on how to Rockbox the iPod classic a little in the future when I have more time.
Till next time.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
8 days have passed?!
Wow. One blink of an eye, and... another week has passed. I'm not really sure if this is a good thing or bad, but damn time passes quickly.
Anyway, some quick ``bullets'' because I'm too lazy to write a full post today:
Till next time.
Anyway, some quick ``bullets'' because I'm too lazy to write a full post today:
- I've experimentally confirmed that I definitely need 7 hours of sleep at the very least to maintain cognitive abilities beyond mere ``programming''.
- I can actually run fast---I just need to push myself more.
- There are several things that I need to adjust ``in my head'' before I can truly shine; I just hope it doesn't take too long to get these adjustments in.
- In spite of trying to be a hermit, it turns out that I'm much more susceptible to company than I dare to admit.
- Peanuts are awesome snack food.
Till next time.
Friday, February 10, 2012
又是一篇无聊的文章
你好。不，我不打算完全用中文来编写这些博客文章。说来也有点奇怪，最近总觉得中文比英文更有亲切感，仿佛是多年不见的老朋友似的。想当年因为某某中文老师的因素而对此语言残生恐惧，我觉得有点遗憾。可能是我开始老了，有点儿成熟了，所以会对母语残生新一轮的兴趣。
当然，我人在美国，能用中文的机会也不多。即使周围的中国籍学生都很多，我其实不大爱在公共场合里里用中文来沟通。我不知道这是否是自己害怕被歧视的反应，或者是别的因素而导致的。其实我也不管这么多，多学个语言往往是个好事。
可能有些中国籍同学无意中发现我这微薄的博客，看了这几篇文章，会因为我的用词不当与简单的表达方式而笑破大牙。对这些读者，我只能说请见谅小弟我超烂的中文水准。
罗嗦了老半天，该会去干活儿了。后会有期。
当然，我人在美国，能用中文的机会也不多。即使周围的中国籍学生都很多，我其实不大爱在公共场合里里用中文来沟通。我不知道这是否是自己害怕被歧视的反应，或者是别的因素而导致的。其实我也不管这么多，多学个语言往往是个好事。
可能有些中国籍同学无意中发现我这微薄的博客，看了这几篇文章，会因为我的用词不当与简单的表达方式而笑破大牙。对这些读者，我只能说请见谅小弟我超烂的中文水准。
罗嗦了老半天，该会去干活儿了。后会有期。
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Every Breath You Take
Ah, something a little different.
Every Breath You Take------The PoliceLyrics courtesy AZLyrics.com.
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you
Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
O can't you see
You belong to me
How my poor heart aches with every step you take
Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you
Since you've gone I been lost without a trace
I dream at night I can only see your face
I look around but it's you I can't replace
I feel so cold and I long for your embrace
I keep crying baby, baby please
Every move you make
Every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you
Funereal #3
Ahem.
In a dark corner of the room, I lay there in a cheap plywood coffin that some kind soul finally decided to donate. It was a strange place to be, the hidden corner of the crematorium where the destitute dead were temporarily kept before being cremated during the off-hours of the crematorium by the State in one last act of kindness to its citizens. But I suppose it cannot be helped, considering everything. While I was still alive, it was always an uphill battle trying to be what I was to be. But that incident not too long ago, it just took away all that I had. My name, my reputation, my money, my family, my life. But it is all moot now; I am already dead, and just waiting to be finally returned, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
嘿
嘿。最近心情总是不太好，感觉上好像少了些什么。或许是压力，也可能是天气，或者是二月的关系，每天醒来的我总是有点无精打采。有时我怀疑自己可能患上了忧郁症之类的怪病，但由于自尊关系的缘故，我不敢找个专家来诊断是否真的患上了什么怪心理病。
研究工作其实是蛮好玩的，不过不知道是自己太顽固或愚蠢，每当开会时都会觉得自己好像做得不够似的。当然开会的结果谁也能够想象的出来。可能是因为工作了太久了，被赚钱的诱惑给迷上了，头脑也变得笨拙了，也就因此导致这样的结局。
嘿。
再难也得熬下去。路是我选的，再难走也得走下去。若是失败，至少能给自己一个交代。但失败从来不在我的想象范围之内：这经历只能成功，不许失败。
读者，若您是信仰什么宗教的话，请为我祈祷，让我风风光光的走出一个春天来。
研究工作其实是蛮好玩的，不过不知道是自己太顽固或愚蠢，每当开会时都会觉得自己好像做得不够似的。当然开会的结果谁也能够想象的出来。可能是因为工作了太久了，被赚钱的诱惑给迷上了，头脑也变得笨拙了，也就因此导致这样的结局。
嘿。
再难也得熬下去。路是我选的，再难走也得走下去。若是失败，至少能给自己一个交代。但失败从来不在我的想象范围之内：这经历只能成功，不许失败。
读者，若您是信仰什么宗教的话，请为我祈祷，让我风风光光的走出一个春天来。
Monday, February 06, 2012
Oh?
You know how people keep telling you that life is meaningful and that you should always cherish it as much as you can and all that feel-good stuff?
Sometimes it is really hard to remember that. Really, it is hard.
I have a confession to make.
Gurer'f n ernfba jul V'z nyjnlf fb qrcerffrq, fb fpnerq, fb svyyrq jvgu nakvrgl. Ab, vg'f abg orpnhfr V'z vapbzcrgrag. V uvtuyl qbhog gung V nz gung hfryrff jura vg pbzrf gb erfrnepu, ohg ernyyl, gurer ner whfg fb znal... fvtaf gung znxr zr srry qrcerffrq. Vs lbh'q xabj zr, lbh'yy haqrefgnaq gung V nz n zvk bs gjb znva glcrf bs raretl, obgu vagebirefvba naq rkgenirefvba (ZOGV zrnavatf orvat hfrq urer). Bs gur gjb, V unir n fyvtugyl zber graqrapl gbjneqf rkgenirefvba, fb V yvxr pbzcnal, ohg abg gb gur cbvag gung gurer'f n uhtr pebjq---V pnaabg gnxr gung bar ng nyy.
Naljnl, onpx gb zl nakvrgvrf. V xrrc frrvat znal guvatf nf fvtaf---bar ol bar gur crbcyr gung V xabj ner tvivat zr gung ``lrnu qbvat tenq fpubby vf whfg gbb zhpu sbe zr; V pna'g gnxr gnxvat lrg nabgure pynff'' be gung gurl ner univat gebhoyrf qrnyvat jvgu gurve fhcreivfbef naq gur yvxr; vg trgf gb zr. Vg ernyyl qbrf trg gb zr. V xabj gung jung unccraf gb bguref unir abguvat gb qb jvgu zr, ohg vg vf uneq gb funxr bss gung qvfpbzsbeg. Ernyyl. Naq gung'f bar bs gur ernfbaf jul V xrrc srryvat engure qrcerffrq naq nakvbhf.
Vg'f dhvgr onq npghnyyl, abg greev-onq, ohg fgvyy onq abarguryrff. Abjnqnlf, ncneg sebz fyrrcvat, rngvat (naq bayl orpnhfr V'z whfg gbb uhatel), tbvat gb pynffrf, ehaavat/genvavat va whwvgfh, nyzbfg nyy gur erznvavat gvzr vf fcrag ba erfrnepu. Naq vg sehfgengrf naq fpnerf zr rnpu gvzr V jnyx vagb bar bs gur guerr zrrgvatf rnpu jrrx srryvat nf gubhtu V unq qbar nofbyhgryl abguvat jura gur erirefr vf gehr. V ab ybatre fbpvnyvfr (abg gung V qvq zhpu gb ortva jvgu), naq gur byq ``jbnu V fubhyq trg n tveysevraq be V'yy or sberire nybar'' abafrafr gung cynthrq zr zbfg bs zl haqretenq lrnef unf fcnerq zr pbzcyrgryl abj. Fher, gurer ner n srj avpr tveyf jubz V'q yvxr gb unat bhg zber bsgra, ohg gurl vagrerfg zr bayl gung gurl ner avpr tveyf gung V'q yvxr gb unat bhg jvgu---gur vqrn bs qngvat arire ernyyl pebffrq zl zvaq.
Gnyx nobhg n pbzcyrgryl fperjrq hc yvsr.
V qba'g trg gb cynl zl syhgr gung zhpu gurfr qnlf. Gur svatref ner fgnegvat gb or n yvggyr fgvss, ohg gunaxshyyl V unir gb glcr fb zhpu naljnl gung gurl qba'g ernyyl ybfr gurve qrkgrevgl. Gur rzobhpuer vf fgvyy ubyqvat, ohg nyernql V srry sng-yvccrq. Lrg V fgvyy fbyqvre ba. V yvxr jung V'z qbvat, V whfg arrq gb xabj ubj gb qb vg orggre, be ng yrnfg, pbzzhavpngr vg orggre. Xabjyrqtr gung vf va gur urnq vf hfryrff nf n fpvragvfg orpnhfr ab bar pna inyvqngr jung lbh ner guvaxvat.
V'ir nfxrq zlfrys guvf dhrfgvba znal gvzrf. Jul vf vg V qrpvqrq gb trg vagb guvf cebtenzzr? Jul vf vg V nyjnlf jnyx vagb n jrrxyl zrrgvat gb trg zl nff xvpxrq, bayl gb cvpx zlfrys hc fbzrubj naq gel ntnva sbe lrg nabgure nff xvpxvat gur arkg jrrx? Jul? Jul obgure ng nyy? Lrf, vg trgf nyy qrcerffvat gurer.
Ng svefg V gubhtug nobhg vg va gur frafr bs zr abg jnagvat gb qb gur zhaqnar. Gung fgvyy znxrf frafr, ernyyl, ohg vg vf abg rabhtu. Gura V ernyvfrq nf V ernq naq gevrq gb frr gur cnggreaf naq gur geraqf gung V npghnyyl yvxrq qbvat guvf. V whfg qvqa'g xabj gur cebcre fxvyyf gb fubj jung V unir orra qbvat nyy jrrx orpnhfr jryy, V onfvpnyyl xvyyrq zlfrys va grezf bs gvzr ol orvat fb jbeevrq naq sbphfrq nobhg fubjvat fbzr qrygn-punatr npebff gur guerr qvssrerag zrrgvatf npebff gur jrrx gung V xrcg chggvat hc unys-nffrq fghss ng rnpu zrrgvat. Gnyx nobhg fghcvqvgl. Gung onfvpnyyl zrnag V unq bayl sbhe qnlf gb guvax nobhg guvatf orsber V senagvpnyyl chg hc unys-nffrq svefg-qensg fyvqrf gung V qvqa'g znantr gb ybbx guebhtu naq nygre nppbeqvatyl, guhf yrnqvat gb gur nff-xvpxvat. Guvf jnf gehr sbe gur jubyr gvzr gung V nz abj jbexvat njnl sebz rirelbar.
That's quite a lot for one confession, but hey, I'm not counting. I guess I feel a little better for putting this out here to the few people who actually still drop by to read what I have to say, not counting those from that weird spam site (yes you, I know who you are), and those folks who came by from searching for ``hanging stick figure'' on image search (you guys are sick).
Anyway, till next time I suppose.
Sometimes it is really hard to remember that. Really, it is hard.
I have a confession to make.
Gurer'f n ernfba jul V'z nyjnlf fb qrcerffrq, fb fpnerq, fb svyyrq jvgu nakvrgl. Ab, vg'f abg orpnhfr V'z vapbzcrgrag. V uvtuyl qbhog gung V nz gung hfryrff jura vg pbzrf gb erfrnepu, ohg ernyyl, gurer ner whfg fb znal... fvtaf gung znxr zr srry qrcerffrq. Vs lbh'q xabj zr, lbh'yy haqrefgnaq gung V nz n zvk bs gjb znva glcrf bs raretl, obgu vagebirefvba naq rkgenirefvba (ZOGV zrnavatf orvat hfrq urer). Bs gur gjb, V unir n fyvtugyl zber graqrapl gbjneqf rkgenirefvba, fb V yvxr pbzcnal, ohg abg gb gur cbvag gung gurer'f n uhtr pebjq---V pnaabg gnxr gung bar ng nyy.
Naljnl, onpx gb zl nakvrgvrf. V xrrc frrvat znal guvatf nf fvtaf---bar ol bar gur crbcyr gung V xabj ner tvivat zr gung ``lrnu qbvat tenq fpubby vf whfg gbb zhpu sbe zr; V pna'g gnxr gnxvat lrg nabgure pynff'' be gung gurl ner univat gebhoyrf qrnyvat jvgu gurve fhcreivfbef naq gur yvxr; vg trgf gb zr. Vg ernyyl qbrf trg gb zr. V xabj gung jung unccraf gb bguref unir abguvat gb qb jvgu zr, ohg vg vf uneq gb funxr bss gung qvfpbzsbeg. Ernyyl. Naq gung'f bar bs gur ernfbaf jul V xrrc srryvat engure qrcerffrq naq nakvbhf.
Vg'f dhvgr onq npghnyyl, abg greev-onq, ohg fgvyy onq abarguryrff. Abjnqnlf, ncneg sebz fyrrcvat, rngvat (naq bayl orpnhfr V'z whfg gbb uhatel), tbvat gb pynffrf, ehaavat/genvavat va whwvgfh, nyzbfg nyy gur erznvavat gvzr vf fcrag ba erfrnepu. Naq vg sehfgengrf naq fpnerf zr rnpu gvzr V jnyx vagb bar bs gur guerr zrrgvatf rnpu jrrx srryvat nf gubhtu V unq qbar nofbyhgryl abguvat jura gur erirefr vf gehr. V ab ybatre fbpvnyvfr (abg gung V qvq zhpu gb ortva jvgu), naq gur byq ``jbnu V fubhyq trg n tveysevraq be V'yy or sberire nybar'' abafrafr gung cynthrq zr zbfg bs zl haqretenq lrnef unf fcnerq zr pbzcyrgryl abj. Fher, gurer ner n srj avpr tveyf jubz V'q yvxr gb unat bhg zber bsgra, ohg gurl vagrerfg zr bayl gung gurl ner avpr tveyf gung V'q yvxr gb unat bhg jvgu---gur vqrn bs qngvat arire ernyyl pebffrq zl zvaq.
Gnyx nobhg n pbzcyrgryl fperjrq hc yvsr.
V qba'g trg gb cynl zl syhgr gung zhpu gurfr qnlf. Gur svatref ner fgnegvat gb or n yvggyr fgvss, ohg gunaxshyyl V unir gb glcr fb zhpu naljnl gung gurl qba'g ernyyl ybfr gurve qrkgrevgl. Gur rzobhpuer vf fgvyy ubyqvat, ohg nyernql V srry sng-yvccrq. Lrg V fgvyy fbyqvre ba. V yvxr jung V'z qbvat, V whfg arrq gb xabj ubj gb qb vg orggre, be ng yrnfg, pbzzhavpngr vg orggre. Xabjyrqtr gung vf va gur urnq vf hfryrff nf n fpvragvfg orpnhfr ab bar pna inyvqngr jung lbh ner guvaxvat.
V'ir nfxrq zlfrys guvf dhrfgvba znal gvzrf. Jul vf vg V qrpvqrq gb trg vagb guvf cebtenzzr? Jul vf vg V nyjnlf jnyx vagb n jrrxyl zrrgvat gb trg zl nff xvpxrq, bayl gb cvpx zlfrys hc fbzrubj naq gel ntnva sbe lrg nabgure nff xvpxvat gur arkg jrrx? Jul? Jul obgure ng nyy? Lrf, vg trgf nyy qrcerffvat gurer.
Ng svefg V gubhtug nobhg vg va gur frafr bs zr abg jnagvat gb qb gur zhaqnar. Gung fgvyy znxrf frafr, ernyyl, ohg vg vf abg rabhtu. Gura V ernyvfrq nf V ernq naq gevrq gb frr gur cnggreaf naq gur geraqf gung V npghnyyl yvxrq qbvat guvf. V whfg qvqa'g xabj gur cebcre fxvyyf gb fubj jung V unir orra qbvat nyy jrrx orpnhfr jryy, V onfvpnyyl xvyyrq zlfrys va grezf bs gvzr ol orvat fb jbeevrq naq sbphfrq nobhg fubjvat fbzr qrygn-punatr npebff gur guerr qvssrerag zrrgvatf npebff gur jrrx gung V xrcg chggvat hc unys-nffrq fghss ng rnpu zrrgvat. Gnyx nobhg fghcvqvgl. Gung onfvpnyyl zrnag V unq bayl sbhe qnlf gb guvax nobhg guvatf orsber V senagvpnyyl chg hc unys-nffrq svefg-qensg fyvqrf gung V qvqa'g znantr gb ybbx guebhtu naq nygre nppbeqvatyl, guhf yrnqvat gb gur nff-xvpxvat. Guvf jnf gehr sbe gur jubyr gvzr gung V nz abj jbexvat njnl sebz rirelbar.
That's quite a lot for one confession, but hey, I'm not counting. I guess I feel a little better for putting this out here to the few people who actually still drop by to read what I have to say, not counting those from that weird spam site (yes you, I know who you are), and those folks who came by from searching for ``hanging stick figure'' on image search (you guys are sick).
Anyway, till next time I suppose.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
February Fantasy
Hello February, you have arrived rather quickly this year. I wonder why.
Will you treat me fine? Will you treat me well? Will you be kind enough to let me survive and succeed?
Or will you let me down?
Will you treat me fine? Will you treat me well? Will you be kind enough to let me survive and succeed?
Or will you let me down?
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
33 Day Look-back
I know that this entry is definitely too late compared to the usual time that I put this up, but bear with me. This time period has been quite difficult. The year that just past me was one that was fraught with many difficult decisions that needed to be made, and really, I am still in many ways trying to get to come to grips with all that I have to deal with.
But as always, I think that I have diverged greatly from the intention of this post. This was supposed to be a celebration, not a rant, and so here it is.
Just a couple of days ago was yet another birthday anniversary of mine. It was a decent day where I allowed myself to take a little break for once and just do things that I liked doing as a way of pampering myself. I mean, I'm not really that big a fan of drawing a huge bunch of attention towards myself on a day like that, but really, sometimes it was just a nice thing to treat oneself to some of the simpler pleasures in life. I played a little flute in the morning, messing about with some Chinese New Year-themed pieces all from memory before settling down with a nice Korean-styled spicy instant noodles. John grabbed me for some light geocaching in the early afternoon before we joined up with 3 of my other good friends over here in UIUC for a special dinner over at Mandarin Wok.
The funny thing about it all is that my birthday happened to co-occur with the Chinese New Year's eve celebration, and thus it was, in many ways, a dual celebration of sorts. Unlike the time when I was back in CMU, I'm not really that close to the local chapter of the Singapore Students' Association, which meant that if they had some kind of reunion dinner event, I wasn't really in the know for it. Taking matters into my own hands of course, I just organised a strange one for myself.
I think that overall, it was a nicely organised dinner, even though I wasn't really the kind of guy who hosted events like this on any extended manner. We splurged a little, ordering nice foods like braised sea cucumber and even fresh steamed sea bass, a rarity for this part of the world considering that we are really fairly landlocked here in Champaign-Urbana.
So, what are my thoughts about having reached yet another milestone in life? Not much, really. I'll be happy to just obtain my license to research and move on to doing great things with it, and at the same time, attempt to live and love life while it still lasts. Funny how I don't really have that much expectation now; I wonder if I'm just getting a little too old that my cynicism was starting to get in the way.
YT actually sent me an early birthday gift some time back, thinly hidden with the excuse of using my size estimate for a ``friend who was roughly the same size''. It was a T-shirt from Cafepress with an 8-bit compass and the cute epithet of ``old school GPS''. That was pretty awesome.
RX had gotten me Batman: Arkham's Asylum over Steam for my birthday. In the first incarnation of this post, I've almost forgotten to write about it here! Arkham's Asylum is a fun game, and I managed to put a couple of hours into it, but well, time is starting to go a little crazy here, so the next playthrough will be a while.
As for my traditional gift to myself, I got myself a nice nyan cat perler. Why a nyan cat perler of all things? Mostly because it is cute and lively looking. I put up the perler on the wall directly in front of me at home, and it serves as a nice colourful motivation to help me relax a little, acting in many ways like the role that the soy bean plushie that my other sister gave me on my previous birthday.
All in all, the celebrations were of a more tight and simple setting, just the way that I like it. Never was really a fan of elaborate procedures and stuff, so the get-together and the gifts of YT and myself were a good enough conclusion to the one day in this year that I can really and honestly take a day off just because I can.
But as always, I think that I have diverged greatly from the intention of this post. This was supposed to be a celebration, not a rant, and so here it is.
Just a couple of days ago was yet another birthday anniversary of mine. It was a decent day where I allowed myself to take a little break for once and just do things that I liked doing as a way of pampering myself. I mean, I'm not really that big a fan of drawing a huge bunch of attention towards myself on a day like that, but really, sometimes it was just a nice thing to treat oneself to some of the simpler pleasures in life. I played a little flute in the morning, messing about with some Chinese New Year-themed pieces all from memory before settling down with a nice Korean-styled spicy instant noodles. John grabbed me for some light geocaching in the early afternoon before we joined up with 3 of my other good friends over here in UIUC for a special dinner over at Mandarin Wok.
The funny thing about it all is that my birthday happened to co-occur with the Chinese New Year's eve celebration, and thus it was, in many ways, a dual celebration of sorts. Unlike the time when I was back in CMU, I'm not really that close to the local chapter of the Singapore Students' Association, which meant that if they had some kind of reunion dinner event, I wasn't really in the know for it. Taking matters into my own hands of course, I just organised a strange one for myself.
I think that overall, it was a nicely organised dinner, even though I wasn't really the kind of guy who hosted events like this on any extended manner. We splurged a little, ordering nice foods like braised sea cucumber and even fresh steamed sea bass, a rarity for this part of the world considering that we are really fairly landlocked here in Champaign-Urbana.
So, what are my thoughts about having reached yet another milestone in life? Not much, really. I'll be happy to just obtain my license to research and move on to doing great things with it, and at the same time, attempt to live and love life while it still lasts. Funny how I don't really have that much expectation now; I wonder if I'm just getting a little too old that my cynicism was starting to get in the way.
YT actually sent me an early birthday gift some time back, thinly hidden with the excuse of using my size estimate for a ``friend who was roughly the same size''. It was a T-shirt from Cafepress with an 8-bit compass and the cute epithet of ``old school GPS''. That was pretty awesome.
RX had gotten me Batman: Arkham's Asylum over Steam for my birthday. In the first incarnation of this post, I've almost forgotten to write about it here! Arkham's Asylum is a fun game, and I managed to put a couple of hours into it, but well, time is starting to go a little crazy here, so the next playthrough will be a while.
As for my traditional gift to myself, I got myself a nice nyan cat perler. Why a nyan cat perler of all things? Mostly because it is cute and lively looking. I put up the perler on the wall directly in front of me at home, and it serves as a nice colourful motivation to help me relax a little, acting in many ways like the role that the soy bean plushie that my other sister gave me on my previous birthday.
All in all, the celebrations were of a more tight and simple setting, just the way that I like it. Never was really a fan of elaborate procedures and stuff, so the get-together and the gifts of YT and myself were a good enough conclusion to the one day in this year that I can really and honestly take a day off just because I can.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Fading into the Darkness
I think... that time has never been on my side. I have known this for a while now, but I think I have been living in denial for a little too long. Running, hiding, trying to escape the inevitable.
The time to confront it is now.
The time for change... is now.
It's time to discard that fake-happy side of me and sink back to that morose persona that had served me pretty well for quite a long time, until that weird day that I decided that I was better off being happy.
If ignorance truly is bliss, then let me be as melancholic as possible so that I remain un-ignorant. It is when we realise that we don't know anything, have a looming deadline to get things done, and the realisation that life will never ever be the same again that we step out of that safe zone and get things done.
In view of what I just said, it means that my overall web presence is going to shrink significantly. No, I'm not suicidal, I'm not going crazy [yet]. I think that I have to forgo what is effectively a normal life to succeed at this---there is no other way.
Wish me luck and skill, and hopefully I will prevail.
To the few who still care about me, keep in touch with email. That ancient technology works wonders since it allows a batch processing and doesn't demand any instantaneous response, qualities that I think are most apt at this point. Hell, even leaving a comment or two on my blog entries will work too, since their existence is made known to me via email anyway.
Alright, enough of drivel. Time to hit the grindstone. Hard.
No pain, no gain.
The time to confront it is now.
The time for change... is now.
It's time to discard that fake-happy side of me and sink back to that morose persona that had served me pretty well for quite a long time, until that weird day that I decided that I was better off being happy.
If ignorance truly is bliss, then let me be as melancholic as possible so that I remain un-ignorant. It is when we realise that we don't know anything, have a looming deadline to get things done, and the realisation that life will never ever be the same again that we step out of that safe zone and get things done.
In view of what I just said, it means that my overall web presence is going to shrink significantly. No, I'm not suicidal, I'm not going crazy [yet]. I think that I have to forgo what is effectively a normal life to succeed at this---there is no other way.
Wish me luck and skill, and hopefully I will prevail.
To the few who still care about me, keep in touch with email. That ancient technology works wonders since it allows a batch processing and doesn't demand any instantaneous response, qualities that I think are most apt at this point. Hell, even leaving a comment or two on my blog entries will work too, since their existence is made known to me via email anyway.
Alright, enough of drivel. Time to hit the grindstone. Hard.
No pain, no gain.
Monday, January 02, 2012
Pre-sleep Rambles
Alright, now that I am feeling sufficiently light-headed from reaching that partially awake/asleep state, it is time for another round of automatic writing where I end up ranting whatever that comes to mind without actually trying to preprocess of censor it [much].
It has been a strange fortnight. Even though there are no classes, there's always research to be done, where I spent my time reading up papers, trying to think, writing down my thoughts on the papers, writing down thoughts on what I have seen, wondering about the problem we are solving, wondering about its relevance, wondering about how I can get some tangible results as opposed to a lot of theoretical idea slinging, wondering if I have been working too hard but not smart enough, wondering about my own abilities as a research apprentice. So many ponderings, it is no wonder that I end up in this semi-zombified state where I just sleep late, wake up early, and am generally having a helluva screwed up sleep schedule, among other things.
Geocaching has been fun, cathartic in fact, more so since there hasn't been any jujitsu training for a while due to the horrible hours of the gyms that we go to to train in, and partly because, well, this being the US, the time period from Dec 23 to Jan 02 are traditionally time periods where people would go for their extended holidays or something. Geocaching allows me to get some of the rather limited sunlight, and of course, makes me use all those muscles, from my core down to the calf muscles from all the hiking and climbing that inevitably comes with these.
It's kinda odd to realise that in another two weeks, the next semester would have begun, and the entire rat race cycle will begin all over again. I am uncertain if... well I zoned out there and lost the train of thought. This probably shoes how sleep-deprived I am feeling heheh.
Alright, enough of the autowriting---it's starting to make less sense now that my cognition of the events are clearly starting to be dissociate from the general sleepiness I am experiencing.
It has been a strange fortnight. Even though there are no classes, there's always research to be done, where I spent my time reading up papers, trying to think, writing down my thoughts on the papers, writing down thoughts on what I have seen, wondering about the problem we are solving, wondering about its relevance, wondering about how I can get some tangible results as opposed to a lot of theoretical idea slinging, wondering if I have been working too hard but not smart enough, wondering about my own abilities as a research apprentice. So many ponderings, it is no wonder that I end up in this semi-zombified state where I just sleep late, wake up early, and am generally having a helluva screwed up sleep schedule, among other things.
Geocaching has been fun, cathartic in fact, more so since there hasn't been any jujitsu training for a while due to the horrible hours of the gyms that we go to to train in, and partly because, well, this being the US, the time period from Dec 23 to Jan 02 are traditionally time periods where people would go for their extended holidays or something. Geocaching allows me to get some of the rather limited sunlight, and of course, makes me use all those muscles, from my core down to the calf muscles from all the hiking and climbing that inevitably comes with these.
It's kinda odd to realise that in another two weeks, the next semester would have begun, and the entire rat race cycle will begin all over again. I am uncertain if... well I zoned out there and lost the train of thought. This probably shoes how sleep-deprived I am feeling heheh.
Alright, enough of the autowriting---it's starting to make less sense now that my cognition of the events are clearly starting to be dissociate from the general sleepiness I am experiencing.
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2011:
That's an average of 0.43 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.59 last year. Again, we see a general downward trend in the amount of leisurely writing I do, partly because I have been writing so much daily for my work/studies. Every day I write anything from 400 to 1000 words about the research work that I am doing, and really, at the end of it all, I just don't feel the need nor energy to write even more things.
Compared to last year, I have almost no emotional roller coasters. Things that had happened in the past stay in the past without any further ramifications, and I have been so work-oriented that I have almost no time to mull about all those odd and interesting relationship issues.
I don't interact with a whole bunch of people any more; mostly interacting with the few who are actively involved in geocaching, aikido/jujitsu, and more recently, the NaNoWriMo crowd in Champaign-Urbana. 2011 is a bumper crop year for Geocaching for me, having gotten a grand total of 300 finds by the last day of 2011, which is quite cool, considering that I had never thought of going for more than a couple of caches every few months. I suppose one of the best things that I had done was to introduce YT to geocaching, and to get involved with a small local group of new-ish geocachers. So many adventures all over Singapore, and in the last few months, all over the cities of Champaign-Urbana, Normal-Bloomington and Peoria. I think geocaching is more therapeutic on my psyche than anything else that I had done, partly because it required me to go out there and take a walk/hike through interesting terrain.
2011 was also a rather tumultous time for me, when my general jadedness was starting to feature a little too strongly, almost completely masking what was essentially the me I fondly remembered before all the cynicism got to me back in 2009 and reduced me to a husk of ``dumb adult-hood''. I have been too disillusioned for a little too long that I have started to lose heart. Well, like all things in life, it will change, and in this case, the change is now. Hopefully this change from ``dumb adult-hood'' back to ``inventor fun!'' will be fast enough that nothing terrible will happen. I really don't want to lose this rather hard-earned fight that I have been doing for the last couple of years.
Something rather random though... over the last three days (including today), I had visited at least three different cemeteries in the day time. I've never really walked through a cemetery much, let alone three, but all in the name of geocaching I suppose. Anyway, those cemeteries invoked a strong sense of respect in me---there lay many of those who walked the earth ealier than I. I never knew how their lives were, but what I know is that the world today, for better or worse, was consequent of their actions, directly or not. It reminds me in some sense that whatever I do now will affect the world, for better or worse, directly or not. A very sombering thought. And of my own mortality---life is really short, can't really waste it over trivialities.
I think I've side tracked much from my original intent of this post. Maybe next time.
Anyway, onwards through 2012, a better year than the last.
- 70 poems posted here
- 79 essays/rants posted here
- 6 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
That's an average of 0.43 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.59 last year. Again, we see a general downward trend in the amount of leisurely writing I do, partly because I have been writing so much daily for my work/studies. Every day I write anything from 400 to 1000 words about the research work that I am doing, and really, at the end of it all, I just don't feel the need nor energy to write even more things.
Compared to last year, I have almost no emotional roller coasters. Things that had happened in the past stay in the past without any further ramifications, and I have been so work-oriented that I have almost no time to mull about all those odd and interesting relationship issues.
I don't interact with a whole bunch of people any more; mostly interacting with the few who are actively involved in geocaching, aikido/jujitsu, and more recently, the NaNoWriMo crowd in Champaign-Urbana. 2011 is a bumper crop year for Geocaching for me, having gotten a grand total of 300 finds by the last day of 2011, which is quite cool, considering that I had never thought of going for more than a couple of caches every few months. I suppose one of the best things that I had done was to introduce YT to geocaching, and to get involved with a small local group of new-ish geocachers. So many adventures all over Singapore, and in the last few months, all over the cities of Champaign-Urbana, Normal-Bloomington and Peoria. I think geocaching is more therapeutic on my psyche than anything else that I had done, partly because it required me to go out there and take a walk/hike through interesting terrain.
2011 was also a rather tumultous time for me, when my general jadedness was starting to feature a little too strongly, almost completely masking what was essentially the me I fondly remembered before all the cynicism got to me back in 2009 and reduced me to a husk of ``dumb adult-hood''. I have been too disillusioned for a little too long that I have started to lose heart. Well, like all things in life, it will change, and in this case, the change is now. Hopefully this change from ``dumb adult-hood'' back to ``inventor fun!'' will be fast enough that nothing terrible will happen. I really don't want to lose this rather hard-earned fight that I have been doing for the last couple of years.
Something rather random though... over the last three days (including today), I had visited at least three different cemeteries in the day time. I've never really walked through a cemetery much, let alone three, but all in the name of geocaching I suppose. Anyway, those cemeteries invoked a strong sense of respect in me---there lay many of those who walked the earth ealier than I. I never knew how their lives were, but what I know is that the world today, for better or worse, was consequent of their actions, directly or not. It reminds me in some sense that whatever I do now will affect the world, for better or worse, directly or not. A very sombering thought. And of my own mortality---life is really short, can't really waste it over trivialities.
I think I've side tracked much from my original intent of this post. Maybe next time.
Anyway, onwards through 2012, a better year than the last.
Friday, December 23, 2011
I am a Rolling Stone [Gathering No Moss]
``A rolling stone gathers no moss.''
I suppose that's why I am the way I am now. While many might be happy with the lot of life they are given, I'm never one to accept my fate as is, always wanting to fight upwards and onwards, even if this means that I have to leave behind communities of people just to take on the next step of my journey. Maybe I'm more mercenary than I thought, maybe I'm more introverted than I care to actually confess to be; while I lament about how old friends no longer keep in touch with me because of how life turns out, sometimes I too forget how I drop contact with some of the people who are no longer that relevant to me.
Clearly I have been ruminating too much about things. That's hardly new, considering that I had not stepped out of the house for 2 days now. Unsecretly, the starting quote for this entry is also the reason why I am still not in a committed relationship---I still have unfinished business and cannot settle down just yet. Maybe I'm not as ambitious as those entrepreneurs with their start-ups, but I still have some goals in life that I need to achieve, and at this point, that seems much more compelling than the whole ``get settled down and have children'' bit. But who knows what the future might bring?
Okay, enough of random rambling. Back to work.
I suppose that's why I am the way I am now. While many might be happy with the lot of life they are given, I'm never one to accept my fate as is, always wanting to fight upwards and onwards, even if this means that I have to leave behind communities of people just to take on the next step of my journey. Maybe I'm more mercenary than I thought, maybe I'm more introverted than I care to actually confess to be; while I lament about how old friends no longer keep in touch with me because of how life turns out, sometimes I too forget how I drop contact with some of the people who are no longer that relevant to me.
Clearly I have been ruminating too much about things. That's hardly new, considering that I had not stepped out of the house for 2 days now. Unsecretly, the starting quote for this entry is also the reason why I am still not in a committed relationship---I still have unfinished business and cannot settle down just yet. Maybe I'm not as ambitious as those entrepreneurs with their start-ups, but I still have some goals in life that I need to achieve, and at this point, that seems much more compelling than the whole ``get settled down and have children'' bit. But who knows what the future might bring?
Okay, enough of random rambling. Back to work.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011
Alright, the inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011. Unlike the previous two stories (A Slice of Life with a Twist of Lemon and Towards Cacophony) that formed a series on their own, this one is of a completely new flavour. The major difference here is that there is only one very obvious protagonist, as opposed to the two different people (Heng Kar and Kah Hao) of the previous novels. I have kept the first/third-person narrative styles like before, only to add some variety to the story, giving first-person perspectives on story parts that are less action based and third-person for the action-y stuff.
Anyway, here's the dramatis personae (wow it has been a while since I used that term) for Modern Office Warrior as gotten from my idea file:
As for locations, I drew inspiration of the layout of my old office for the corporate scenes, embellishing where necessary, while the outdoor stuff is based on several real-life locations that I had been to on some of the most crazy and insanely fun Geocaching trips that I had done. The whole ``oh no walk into mud'' theme features strongly in the second extended Geocaching adventure in the story because I found it funny to just put Duo-zhuo and Jimmy into situations that I hope to never have to deal with in Geocaching. Also, the extended adventure is completely fabricated---it is technically impossible to design such a Geocache within the current rule set for the real game.
So, why Modern Office Warrior, why isn't it some corporate work-centric story? I believe that ``warrior'' here is meant to evoke a more general feeling of taking on life and all the complications surrounding it, as opposed to ``fighting'' the bureaucracy that is within the corporate environment.
Alright, I think that's enough of an insight to the inspiration for this year's NaNoWriMo entry. I'm still not sure if I can or should do NaNoWriMo next year, but we will see how that goes.
Anyway, here's the dramatis personae (wow it has been a while since I used that term) for Modern Office Warrior as gotten from my idea file:
- Duo-zhuo
- Duo-zhuo's the one true protagonist of this novel, and everything that we are talking about is about him in this story. There are still interleaving storylines at play here, but there is no separation between them with regards to what he is doing. The name ``Duo-zhuo'' was designed with a pun in mind; it shares an almost similar phonetic spelling for 多做, which is Mandarin for ``doing a lot''. I wanted to evoke this notion of how Duo-zhuo is doing a lot of things, yet not really having much of an outcome. His life story is pretty much the ``corporate warrior'', doing thinsg within the company and loathing how his psychotic boss keeps causing havoc for him. Of course, this story is about how he found an outlet for that to make life more bearable...
- Jimmy Zhan
- Not much of a main character, really. Jimmy is more of the ``adventure man'' that I wanted to introduce to give Duo-zhuo a reason to get his ass out of his office and dreary life and get out there to do stuff. And the stuff I've chosen for them to do is Geocaching.
- Dan
- Not much is known about Dan, since some time after the first third of the novel, he gets fired for doing some rather questionable things. Dan represents the overachieving recent graduate who will stop at nothing just to be the best that can be, from the best ``team player'' to the ``best performing employee''. Not necessarily a bad thing, but given the way things turned out, yeah.
- FunnyBoy and FunnyGal
- Minor role characters that feature in the first major Geocaching adventure, they are an amalgamation of a few real life geocaching people that I know. I put them there mostly to make the first Geocaching activity that Duo-zhuo takes part in less awkward.
As for locations, I drew inspiration of the layout of my old office for the corporate scenes, embellishing where necessary, while the outdoor stuff is based on several real-life locations that I had been to on some of the most crazy and insanely fun Geocaching trips that I had done. The whole ``oh no walk into mud'' theme features strongly in the second extended Geocaching adventure in the story because I found it funny to just put Duo-zhuo and Jimmy into situations that I hope to never have to deal with in Geocaching. Also, the extended adventure is completely fabricated---it is technically impossible to design such a Geocache within the current rule set for the real game.
So, why Modern Office Warrior, why isn't it some corporate work-centric story? I believe that ``warrior'' here is meant to evoke a more general feeling of taking on life and all the complications surrounding it, as opposed to ``fighting'' the bureaucracy that is within the corporate environment.
Alright, I think that's enough of an insight to the inspiration for this year's NaNoWriMo entry. I'm still not sure if I can or should do NaNoWriMo next year, but we will see how that goes.
Duo-decade December
It feels like a while since I wrote anything here, and so here I am now.
This month is strange, in the sense that in the beginning of the first half of the month, I was rather existential, wondering about a lot of things regarding why I was here and all the usual things that being existential entailed. Then when things seem Worst, a light shone upon the path that I should take, and now here I am, taking that path.
I think I'm starting to appreciate the type of freedom that I am getting, now that the ``honeymoon'' first semester is over, where, to my utter regret, I probably spent more time trying to get used to the place and notion that I was in graduate school as opposed to being in undergraduate classes. Now that that is over and done with, I can finally focus myself on the things that matter the most.
But enough of the depressing stuff! November was NaNoWriMo, and I think I'm a little obliged to shed some light on the inspiration behind this year's novel, which can be gotten from here, like where all the other novels are. I will do so in the next post just to not mar it with my own rantings.
This month marks the continuation of my geocaching adventure, and completed my first 5/5 cache (The Journal) with my caching buddy here johnayuen. That one was a little nasty; it took us three trips (including the one that he took nearly a year ago) and lots and lots of hiking to get through in order to get to the final location. I will probably put that tale up some time later, so keep your eyes peeled.
Meanwhile, let me write up the inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011 first. =P
This month is strange, in the sense that in the beginning of the first half of the month, I was rather existential, wondering about a lot of things regarding why I was here and all the usual things that being existential entailed. Then when things seem Worst, a light shone upon the path that I should take, and now here I am, taking that path.
I think I'm starting to appreciate the type of freedom that I am getting, now that the ``honeymoon'' first semester is over, where, to my utter regret, I probably spent more time trying to get used to the place and notion that I was in graduate school as opposed to being in undergraduate classes. Now that that is over and done with, I can finally focus myself on the things that matter the most.
But enough of the depressing stuff! November was NaNoWriMo, and I think I'm a little obliged to shed some light on the inspiration behind this year's novel, which can be gotten from here, like where all the other novels are. I will do so in the next post just to not mar it with my own rantings.
This month marks the continuation of my geocaching adventure, and completed my first 5/5 cache (The Journal) with my caching buddy here johnayuen. That one was a little nasty; it took us three trips (including the one that he took nearly a year ago) and lots and lots of hiking to get through in order to get to the final location. I will probably put that tale up some time later, so keep your eyes peeled.
Meanwhile, let me write up the inspiration for NaNoWriMo 2011 first. =P
Monday, December 12, 2011
Trapped
Funny how when I'm ``trapped'' in my apartment/room I actually have so much to talk about on my blogs. Actually, come to think of it, it isn't really funny but quite sad, and is probably systematic in terms of what it entails. It is not that I don't want to be in the office/lab to get stuff done---it's cold out, I'm running out of clothes because of a lack of laundry time and I have a nice set up at home that allows me to work from the relative comfort of the apartment. The only caveat is that I don't really get to exercise my vocal cords nor social skills, but it is a small price to pay compared to having to dress up and cycling in the cold towards the office/lab.
My place suffered a drop in power yesterday, which promptly knocked out Elyse since I didn't load a battery in her. Eileen worked fine only because her battery is always inside, so I can't do what I usually do with batteries---take them out so that they don't ``overcharge'' (note: lithium batteries cannot overcharge because of the protective circuitry in place). So now, as a type of UPS, I stuff Elyse with the bay battery when she's on. Weird that such a thing happens though.
With the shortening of the daylight hours and the relatively horrible positioning of the dinner table/work table with respect to the only light in the living room, I'm so glad I bought a desk lamp. Now I can actually be up and do things and hopefully make progress.
Anyway, sleepy time. Till the next rant.
My place suffered a drop in power yesterday, which promptly knocked out Elyse since I didn't load a battery in her. Eileen worked fine only because her battery is always inside, so I can't do what I usually do with batteries---take them out so that they don't ``overcharge'' (note: lithium batteries cannot overcharge because of the protective circuitry in place). So now, as a type of UPS, I stuff Elyse with the bay battery when she's on. Weird that such a thing happens though.
With the shortening of the daylight hours and the relatively horrible positioning of the dinner table/work table with respect to the only light in the living room, I'm so glad I bought a desk lamp. Now I can actually be up and do things and hopefully make progress.
Anyway, sleepy time. Till the next rant.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
粉雪
It has begun:
You don't really need to know the translation to be affected by the meaning of the song. Feels a little apt in view of winter that has just arrived.
粉雪------レミオロメンLyrics courtesy Anime Lyrics. And the translation:
粉雪舞う季節はいつもすれ違い
人ごみに紛れても同じ空見てるのに
風に吹かれて似たように凍えるのに
僕は君のすべてなど知ってはいないだろう
それでも一億人から君を見つけたよ
根拠はないけど本気で思ってるんだ
些細な言い合いもなくて同じ時間を生きてなどいけない
素直になれないなら喜びも悲しみも空しいだけ
僕は君の心に耳を押し当てて
その声のする方へすっと深くまで
降りてゆきたいそこでもう一度会おう
分かり合いたいなんて
上辺を撫でていた（なでていた）のは僕のほう
君の悴んだ（かじかんだ）手も握り閉めることだけで繋がってたのに
粉雪ねえ永遠を前にあまりに脆く
ざらつくアスファルトの上染みになってゆくよ
粉雪ねえ時に頼りなく心は揺れる
それでも僕は君のこと守り続けたい
粉雪ねえ心まで白く染められたなら
２人の孤独を包んで空に返すから
Konayuki (Powder Snow)------RemioromenTranslation courtesy Anime Lyrics.
Season of snow powder always come
Although we are mixed up with a mass of people
we are looking on the same sky
Blown by the wind, and we are chilled by it
I may not know everything about you
Nevertheless, I've found you among 100 million of people
There's no proof but I'm very serious of it
It's impossible to live in the same time with no single quarrel
If we can't be honest, happiness and sadness are just meaningless
If the snow powder may whiten deep to our heart
Could we both share our loneliness?
I would press my ear near to your heart
And go down deep into the place where I hear that voice and meet you once again
We want to understand each other
It's me who softly brush the surface
Just by tightly gripping your numb and cold hand
We are tied to each other
Snow powder is too fragile
In front of us, keep on leaving stains on the rough asphalt forever
Snow powder does not rely on time, moving our heart
Nevertheless, I'd still like to keep on protecting you
If the snow powder may whiten deep to our heart
It will cover both our loneliness and return it to the sky...
You don't really need to know the translation to be affected by the meaning of the song. Feels a little apt in view of winter that has just arrived.
English Assessment...?
What a week of self-doubt. I can never understand why I am such a walking paradox---on the one hand I have a pretty good idea of what I want to accomplish, yet on the other hand I find myself seemingly faltering and failing at every opportunity. So awkward and weird.
At times I start wondering, am I really as smart and as hardworking as I think myself to be? Are the methods that I'm employing actually efficient enough to allow me to push forwards with minimal wastage? It almost feels as though I'm just trying to tread water at the edge of the abyss, which itself is quite deep to begin with. So contrary...
Anyway, something amusing. I went for an oral English assessment test recently as a part of my research group's effort to strengthen everyone's presentation and conversational skills. It has been a good long time since I took any sort of oral test like this (probably a decade by my estimate), so the thought of undergoing an oral English assessment just tickled me to no end. If you had known me before, you would know that I was among those who were particular about enunciation, never scoring less than an `A' for any oral examination. So, when I met up with the examiner and read a passage out loud for an exam for the first time in a decade, she was quite surprised at how well I sounded. Heheheh... we didn't really have to continue much after that, preferring to have a nice chat about some of the issues that non-native speakers of English face when confronted with the reality of using their second language to converse with American native-speakers. It was an interesting discussion, inconsequential of course since it reinforced what I already knew from my own dabblement in linguistics myself. If not for the fact that it was recorded, I would probably troll the examiner a little by starting with a faux non-native speaker accent before changing into something more appropriate in the most abrupt manner possible.
That's all the amusing stuff for this week. Winter has finally made her presence felt, with consistent sub-zero temperatures since Tuesday. There was a small snow shower sometime yesterday morning, but it thawed out when midday came along. My apartment thermostat is set to a not-so-toasty 60°F (around 15°C), but so far, the heater hasn't been triggered yet because the apparent ambient temperature is nearer 64°F (about 18°C), thanks to what I suspect is a much higher thermostat setting from my neighbours---thank you thermodynamic laws. Why set it at 60°F? Gas is expensive, with 1 unit costing nearly USD0.618, and last month, I used 16 units of it as compared to the 6 previously from the water heating. Besides, it feels more cosy throwing fleece blankets all over myself to stay warm than to heat the whole apartment up when I'm using only a really small part of it at any time---one doesn't need to heat the whole apartment to stay warm, one just needs to keep oneself warm to stay warm. I would set the thermostat lower to 50°F, but a circular suggested a minimum of 60°F to prevent pipes from freezing and breaking.
Okay, enough idle talk for now. There are things that I need to do. Till the next update I suppose.
At times I start wondering, am I really as smart and as hardworking as I think myself to be? Are the methods that I'm employing actually efficient enough to allow me to push forwards with minimal wastage? It almost feels as though I'm just trying to tread water at the edge of the abyss, which itself is quite deep to begin with. So contrary...
Anyway, something amusing. I went for an oral English assessment test recently as a part of my research group's effort to strengthen everyone's presentation and conversational skills. It has been a good long time since I took any sort of oral test like this (probably a decade by my estimate), so the thought of undergoing an oral English assessment just tickled me to no end. If you had known me before, you would know that I was among those who were particular about enunciation, never scoring less than an `A' for any oral examination. So, when I met up with the examiner and read a passage out loud for an exam for the first time in a decade, she was quite surprised at how well I sounded. Heheheh... we didn't really have to continue much after that, preferring to have a nice chat about some of the issues that non-native speakers of English face when confronted with the reality of using their second language to converse with American native-speakers. It was an interesting discussion, inconsequential of course since it reinforced what I already knew from my own dabblement in linguistics myself. If not for the fact that it was recorded, I would probably troll the examiner a little by starting with a faux non-native speaker accent before changing into something more appropriate in the most abrupt manner possible.
That's all the amusing stuff for this week. Winter has finally made her presence felt, with consistent sub-zero temperatures since Tuesday. There was a small snow shower sometime yesterday morning, but it thawed out when midday came along. My apartment thermostat is set to a not-so-toasty 60°F (around 15°C), but so far, the heater hasn't been triggered yet because the apparent ambient temperature is nearer 64°F (about 18°C), thanks to what I suspect is a much higher thermostat setting from my neighbours---thank you thermodynamic laws. Why set it at 60°F? Gas is expensive, with 1 unit costing nearly USD0.618, and last month, I used 16 units of it as compared to the 6 previously from the water heating. Besides, it feels more cosy throwing fleece blankets all over myself to stay warm than to heat the whole apartment up when I'm using only a really small part of it at any time---one doesn't need to heat the whole apartment to stay warm, one just needs to keep oneself warm to stay warm. I would set the thermostat lower to 50°F, but a circular suggested a minimum of 60°F to prevent pipes from freezing and breaking.
Okay, enough idle talk for now. There are things that I need to do. Till the next update I suppose.
Sunday, December 04, 2011
And I Become Awesome Instead
Of course history's patterns are starting to reveal unto themselves once more. Maybe I'm too cynical, maybe it is an early onset of SAD, but whatever it is, I am somewhat rudely reminded about things that happened here and there.
Today was a nice day out, I met up with the Champaign-Urbana group of NaNoWriMo-ers for lunch at a nice TGIO party before heading for Jujitsu training for the belt test. Things like these always put me in a good mood.
Then of course contrasting this with waht I saw in the evening, when I looked at the pictures taken for the TGIO in Singapore for the NaNoWriMo-ers there, I get rudely reminded about some of the events that happened a few years back. And also the fleeting types of friendship that I seem to be good at cultivating.
In almost all of these cases, I have not really managed to maintain any form of long-lasting friendship with anyone. Somehow the ``out of sight, out of mind'' action is in place, in spite of the presence of technology that would, in theory, allow us to connect with others better.
So lonely walking down this path. I'm not really depressed about it yet, but sometimes when I stop to think about it, it does bear down on me a little. I wonder some times if I were some kind of rolling stone of sorts, always moving from place to place, finding new things, meeting new people, that I don't really ``gather any moss''---accumulating a core group of really close friends. Maybe this is part of growing up, maybe this is part of being a man (you know, the dangerous loner type). Or maybe I'm just plain doing something wrong. In any case, it is quite hard to tell, really.
Sometimes when I sit around alone in the empty room, I wonder if I have been making the right choices. Then I realise that it is not correctness of the choices that matter, it is how I roll that will make the difference between me being happy in my state against me being sad for no damn reason.
And so, I become Awesome instead.
Today was a nice day out, I met up with the Champaign-Urbana group of NaNoWriMo-ers for lunch at a nice TGIO party before heading for Jujitsu training for the belt test. Things like these always put me in a good mood.
Then of course contrasting this with waht I saw in the evening, when I looked at the pictures taken for the TGIO in Singapore for the NaNoWriMo-ers there, I get rudely reminded about some of the events that happened a few years back. And also the fleeting types of friendship that I seem to be good at cultivating.
In almost all of these cases, I have not really managed to maintain any form of long-lasting friendship with anyone. Somehow the ``out of sight, out of mind'' action is in place, in spite of the presence of technology that would, in theory, allow us to connect with others better.
So lonely walking down this path. I'm not really depressed about it yet, but sometimes when I stop to think about it, it does bear down on me a little. I wonder some times if I were some kind of rolling stone of sorts, always moving from place to place, finding new things, meeting new people, that I don't really ``gather any moss''---accumulating a core group of really close friends. Maybe this is part of growing up, maybe this is part of being a man (you know, the dangerous loner type). Or maybe I'm just plain doing something wrong. In any case, it is quite hard to tell, really.
Sometimes when I sit around alone in the empty room, I wonder if I have been making the right choices. Then I realise that it is not correctness of the choices that matter, it is how I roll that will make the difference between me being happy in my state against me being sad for no damn reason.
And so, I become Awesome instead.
Friday, December 02, 2011
Blankets and Slankets/Snuggies
Ah the cold. Having previously lived in Morewood Gardens the last time I was in the US, the internal temperature had always been kept at a toasty 75 degrees Fahrenheit (~23 degrees Celsius). Now that I'm living on my own, the cost of the heater is starting to sink in. At the current rate, the cost is roughly 0.618 per thermal unit, and for the last month, when the external temperature is keeping at around 0 to 10 degrees Celsius, I've kept the heater running and holding at around 20 to 22 degrees Celsius, it consumed 16 thermal units.
Hell, gas is more expensive than electricity here.
So I'm switching tactics here. Instead of relying on the gas heater, I'm just slapping on more blankets even for working at the desk. Saves gas because all I need to do is to keep myself warm and not heat up the damn room. There, problem solved! An added bonus is that the blankets are all soooo soft and comfy, so heheh good times.
Okay, enough senseless mumblings for now. Gotta get some other stuff done before I unwind due to it being Friday.
Hell, gas is more expensive than electricity here.
So I'm switching tactics here. Instead of relying on the gas heater, I'm just slapping on more blankets even for working at the desk. Saves gas because all I need to do is to keep myself warm and not heat up the damn room. There, problem solved! An added bonus is that the blankets are all soooo soft and comfy, so heheh good times.
Okay, enough senseless mumblings for now. Gotta get some other stuff done before I unwind due to it being Friday.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Free from NaNoWriMo
Ah. Now that the tyranny that is NaNoWriMo is finally done for me for this year, it is time to relieve a little stress from it all by bitching a little bit more about life here.
So, what has happened in November other than NaNoWriMo? Lots of things. I came to several realisations about my own nature, and have come to terms about some of these rather startling properties. Being the curious l'il reader you are, let me fill you in on some of these startling properties.
Many times in the past I had bemoaned the fact that I was a nice guy and that all the girls didn't like me because I was a nice guy and other random crap like that. Man, that was belly-aching, quite nauseating when I looked back upon what I had written. Here's the thing---upon reflection on who I truly am, I realised that I am no nice guy. No way, not by any degree. If anything, I'm quite bad actually, considering the things I have done, the things I have thought about, the things I have thought of doing, well you get the idea. And no, bad does not mean evil; as far as I'm concerned, there's a distinction. One can be bad and good or even nice and evil---I blame such semantic problems upon the overloading of the term ``good'' and ``bad''. But what I mean to say is that I'm a badass, one who does not take shit from others, willing to hold my ground and fight for the end, though usually I eschew the whole violence aspect and go into 後の先 mode, where I will react when something happens. I think this is what it means to find oneself when one is in one's twenties.
I think I value my independence and freedom a lot. It is not that I dislike human company (that is utter bullshit because I have tried going in isolation---I went quite mad), but that I am more comfortable with me running my own life away from distractions that are not effected by me. Living in an apartment alone with only my brain, my computer, the Internet and various books about seems to be enough to keep me happy---that's good enough for me, really. I crave intellectual stimulation, and most times, am a little more happy with taking part in things actively than to sit around in a passive way.
How do all these factor into this whole person that is me? So far, I don't have a complete answer yet, partly because it is late and I am in need of sleep (I've been up all day), and partly because I do not have an answer yet. Some say that going into research is a way of coming up with new ideas that can benefit mankind, I say that going deep into research has been a getting to know myself better exercise as I figure out the optimal way of expending my energy, effort and work habits to improve the overall efficiency in the way I think. That is the objective function I'm trying to optimise, and that will be the major goal of my life. Everything else is just to make sure my body stays fit enough to support my brain which does all the thinking I want to do.
Alright, I'm starting to ramble again. Also, Blogger is starting to act up, with random 503s appearing all over their website. I hope that it is not something completely terrible that will make me lose this writing. If it did make me lose stuff, I would be exceedingly annoyed.
Till next time.
So, what has happened in November other than NaNoWriMo? Lots of things. I came to several realisations about my own nature, and have come to terms about some of these rather startling properties. Being the curious l'il reader you are, let me fill you in on some of these startling properties.
Many times in the past I had bemoaned the fact that I was a nice guy and that all the girls didn't like me because I was a nice guy and other random crap like that. Man, that was belly-aching, quite nauseating when I looked back upon what I had written. Here's the thing---upon reflection on who I truly am, I realised that I am no nice guy. No way, not by any degree. If anything, I'm quite bad actually, considering the things I have done, the things I have thought about, the things I have thought of doing, well you get the idea. And no, bad does not mean evil; as far as I'm concerned, there's a distinction. One can be bad and good or even nice and evil---I blame such semantic problems upon the overloading of the term ``good'' and ``bad''. But what I mean to say is that I'm a badass, one who does not take shit from others, willing to hold my ground and fight for the end, though usually I eschew the whole violence aspect and go into 後の先 mode, where I will react when something happens. I think this is what it means to find oneself when one is in one's twenties.
I think I value my independence and freedom a lot. It is not that I dislike human company (that is utter bullshit because I have tried going in isolation---I went quite mad), but that I am more comfortable with me running my own life away from distractions that are not effected by me. Living in an apartment alone with only my brain, my computer, the Internet and various books about seems to be enough to keep me happy---that's good enough for me, really. I crave intellectual stimulation, and most times, am a little more happy with taking part in things actively than to sit around in a passive way.
How do all these factor into this whole person that is me? So far, I don't have a complete answer yet, partly because it is late and I am in need of sleep (I've been up all day), and partly because I do not have an answer yet. Some say that going into research is a way of coming up with new ideas that can benefit mankind, I say that going deep into research has been a getting to know myself better exercise as I figure out the optimal way of expending my energy, effort and work habits to improve the overall efficiency in the way I think. That is the objective function I'm trying to optimise, and that will be the major goal of my life. Everything else is just to make sure my body stays fit enough to support my brain which does all the thinking I want to do.
Alright, I'm starting to ramble again. Also, Blogger is starting to act up, with random 503s appearing all over their website. I hope that it is not something completely terrible that will make me lose this writing. If it did make me lose stuff, I would be exceedingly annoyed.
Till next time.
NaNoWriMo 2011! Official Winner!
65,502 words later, I am done. Had a good momentum doing it this year though personally I think the story line might be a little bland.
As usual, grab the manuscript from my domain. I'll fill in more details here some time in the future when I have a little more time on my hands.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
One Busted Knee, It Was Busted
At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I realise that sometimes, it is not about how powerful a device you have, but how you actually use it.
I was thinking about this from several perspectives for a while now. Slide rules were of a different power class than electronic calculators, and lots of good work have come out of those (remember the space race? That was fought with slide rules). In a more modern context, ``older'' GPS receivers that still support all the most important functions of a GPS receiver (good satellite locking, accurate multi-lateral computations, good battery life) are still worth as much as any of the new-fangled versions of the same devices. All that colour mapping, touch screen nonsense, ability to wirelessly communicate with other GPS receivers are just flavourings over the basic functionality.
I had been debating internally for a while whether I should get a new GPS receiver with all the new-fangled stuff---larger memory is always a good thing, and coloured screens mean that I have better access to the additional information that may be conveyed by the colour. After walking through a medium-sized nature park for the Journal, bashing through weird terrain, climbing up steep gradient hills and sliding down others, losing my ear muffs and possibly over straining my right knee, I realise that my current Garmin eTrex Vista H is still as tough and as useful as it was when I first bought it. It kept its pace with the satellites above, it never lost track of where we were, it held its signal faithfully even under dense-ish tree cover. In short, it was a Damn Good Device.
After so many adventures with my eTrex Vista H, I feel kind of bad to even consider finding a replacement for it.
Anyway, yes. I went with a fellow geocacher-turning-fast-into-friend to tackle that 5/5 cache. Man, it was as hellish as doing any of the major jungle-bashing caches in Singapore, but it was a different kind of hell. At least in Singapore, the paths we took through the forest/jungle didn't involve climbing really steep gradient slopes and walking through streams/creeks. But yesterday when I was out doing that cache gethering all the clues (there were many of them... we don't even know how deep the rabbit-hole goes), I ended up climbing really steep hills with a full-pack, combat boots. They were so steep that I was effectively doing some weird mountain climbing movements---of course it didn't really help that I was heavier than my buddy and that I was carrying way more stuff than him. I thank my Jujitsu Sensei for all the Taiso that we have been doing---those crazy conditioning exercises we did built enough core strength for me that when I started slipping down the damn soft-ground slope, I could arrest the descent through pure core muscle. Heheheh... you've probably gotta try it out some time to understand exactly what I mean.
So, we hiked about the region for nearly 6 hours, stopping here and there for a break or two, and having lunch atop a rather odd hill. Lunch was a Big Mac and fries, the only ``fresh food'' that I knew would keep really well and still taste similar to when you first bought it without having to reheat the damn thing---draw your own conclusions there. Yet, in spite of all that crazy walking (covering at least 6 miles based on my GPS receiver's reckoning), we still didn't complete the cache. We're going to head back soon to finish the job; we think we are really close, but the failing light (shortened days of Winter) made the going quite suicidal. Also, since the place is forest-y, it's ideal to do it now as opposed to when the temperature is higher, since low temperatures mean that those pesky insects are knocked out cold, i.e. no ticks and mosquitoes. Oh and no poison ivy, of course, which is a great thing.
If this cache type is considered 5/5, maybe we can build something like that for Singapore. But the permanence of the field puzzles will be a major issue, considering that the façade of Singapore changes ever so often---what was a nice jungle trail now can become a tourist-wimp friendly board walk, and what could have been a cool jungle can become a new condominium. Quite scary actually.
Anyway, enough chit-chat. Time to do some meaningful work before finishing up the story for NaNoWriMo.
I was thinking about this from several perspectives for a while now. Slide rules were of a different power class than electronic calculators, and lots of good work have come out of those (remember the space race? That was fought with slide rules). In a more modern context, ``older'' GPS receivers that still support all the most important functions of a GPS receiver (good satellite locking, accurate multi-lateral computations, good battery life) are still worth as much as any of the new-fangled versions of the same devices. All that colour mapping, touch screen nonsense, ability to wirelessly communicate with other GPS receivers are just flavourings over the basic functionality.
I had been debating internally for a while whether I should get a new GPS receiver with all the new-fangled stuff---larger memory is always a good thing, and coloured screens mean that I have better access to the additional information that may be conveyed by the colour. After walking through a medium-sized nature park for the Journal, bashing through weird terrain, climbing up steep gradient hills and sliding down others, losing my ear muffs and possibly over straining my right knee, I realise that my current Garmin eTrex Vista H is still as tough and as useful as it was when I first bought it. It kept its pace with the satellites above, it never lost track of where we were, it held its signal faithfully even under dense-ish tree cover. In short, it was a Damn Good Device.
After so many adventures with my eTrex Vista H, I feel kind of bad to even consider finding a replacement for it.
Anyway, yes. I went with a fellow geocacher-turning-fast-into-friend to tackle that 5/5 cache. Man, it was as hellish as doing any of the major jungle-bashing caches in Singapore, but it was a different kind of hell. At least in Singapore, the paths we took through the forest/jungle didn't involve climbing really steep gradient slopes and walking through streams/creeks. But yesterday when I was out doing that cache gethering all the clues (there were many of them... we don't even know how deep the rabbit-hole goes), I ended up climbing really steep hills with a full-pack, combat boots. They were so steep that I was effectively doing some weird mountain climbing movements---of course it didn't really help that I was heavier than my buddy and that I was carrying way more stuff than him. I thank my Jujitsu Sensei for all the Taiso that we have been doing---those crazy conditioning exercises we did built enough core strength for me that when I started slipping down the damn soft-ground slope, I could arrest the descent through pure core muscle. Heheheh... you've probably gotta try it out some time to understand exactly what I mean.
So, we hiked about the region for nearly 6 hours, stopping here and there for a break or two, and having lunch atop a rather odd hill. Lunch was a Big Mac and fries, the only ``fresh food'' that I knew would keep really well and still taste similar to when you first bought it without having to reheat the damn thing---draw your own conclusions there. Yet, in spite of all that crazy walking (covering at least 6 miles based on my GPS receiver's reckoning), we still didn't complete the cache. We're going to head back soon to finish the job; we think we are really close, but the failing light (shortened days of Winter) made the going quite suicidal. Also, since the place is forest-y, it's ideal to do it now as opposed to when the temperature is higher, since low temperatures mean that those pesky insects are knocked out cold, i.e. no ticks and mosquitoes. Oh and no poison ivy, of course, which is a great thing.
If this cache type is considered 5/5, maybe we can build something like that for Singapore. But the permanence of the field puzzles will be a major issue, considering that the façade of Singapore changes ever so often---what was a nice jungle trail now can become a tourist-wimp friendly board walk, and what could have been a cool jungle can become a new condominium. Quite scary actually.
Anyway, enough chit-chat. Time to do some meaningful work before finishing up the story for NaNoWriMo.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Piecewise Functions
Suppose that you are writing a piece-wise function in LaTeX. How do you go about doing it? The trick is to make use of the
\begin{cases} ... \end{cases} environment within Math mode. This particular environment acts like a n-row by 2-column array generating a big `{' on the left side for the grouping of the piece-wise function parts. Since this environment acts like an array, don't forget to separate each column with `&' and end each line with `\\'.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Mumbles
To the few folks who still ardently follow this little blog of mine, I humbly apologise for the general lack of updates in a while. You see, this is the month of November, and traditionally (for the last two to three years at least) it is the time where I go on that suicide mission known as NaNoWriMo. Some of the more astute among you will probably ask the question that I sometimes ask myself: why? Why do I subject myself to such pain that is completely extra-curricular?
I suppose the answer to this question is the same as the one regarding why do I like training in martial arts, be it Aikido or Jujitsu, or even why I like playing my various woodwind instruments, or better yet why I am in graduate school. It all boils down to interest and love I think.
Once you hit the wrong side of twenty-five and realise that if this were the medieval ages, you would be nearly half-way through your life if you were lucky. Under such circumstances then it becomes a little more clear that we are always running a race against time. There're always new things to try, new things to do, and many many things to keep oneself occupied. But then there's always that time budget that one needs to be aware of. But of course, I'm starting to digress from what I was trying to say, namely because time is short, one should do all that one loves to make sure that the short time we have on this Earth is well used.
Time is a strange thing. When you were really young, you just couldn't wait to grow up and be one of those adults. Then once you get out of college/university and face the real world on your own for the first time without the seemingly invincible protection from your parents, you just wish at times that times were like they were before when you were merely a child. Oh and the whole nostalgic feeling about a simpler past---these things are starting to hit me now, considering that very soon I will hit my three-cubed birthday.
On a random note, I stumbled upon a nice list of common English errors, text file available here and the main page can be seen here. Should make an interesting supplemental reading.
Speaking of reading, I'm currently finding time to digest The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. I might write a review on this later on when I have the chance to digest it; should prove to be useful to those who would want to do Mathematics for fun and/or a living.
Okay, that's all that I can spare for now---need to reserve my word budget for my daily 2k for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.
I suppose the answer to this question is the same as the one regarding why do I like training in martial arts, be it Aikido or Jujitsu, or even why I like playing my various woodwind instruments, or better yet why I am in graduate school. It all boils down to interest and love I think.
Once you hit the wrong side of twenty-five and realise that if this were the medieval ages, you would be nearly half-way through your life if you were lucky. Under such circumstances then it becomes a little more clear that we are always running a race against time. There're always new things to try, new things to do, and many many things to keep oneself occupied. But then there's always that time budget that one needs to be aware of. But of course, I'm starting to digress from what I was trying to say, namely because time is short, one should do all that one loves to make sure that the short time we have on this Earth is well used.
Time is a strange thing. When you were really young, you just couldn't wait to grow up and be one of those adults. Then once you get out of college/university and face the real world on your own for the first time without the seemingly invincible protection from your parents, you just wish at times that times were like they were before when you were merely a child. Oh and the whole nostalgic feeling about a simpler past---these things are starting to hit me now, considering that very soon I will hit my three-cubed birthday.
On a random note, I stumbled upon a nice list of common English errors, text file available here and the main page can be seen here. Should make an interesting supplemental reading.
Speaking of reading, I'm currently finding time to digest The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. I might write a review on this later on when I have the chance to digest it; should prove to be useful to those who would want to do Mathematics for fun and/or a living.
Okay, that's all that I can spare for now---need to reserve my word budget for my daily 2k for NaNoWriMo. Till the next update.
Friday, November 11, 2011
EPS-ify Images with ImageMagick
I first talked about ImageMagick some time back here, but I think it is cool to talk about it once more.
So I'm currently using LaTeX as a means of keeping an electronic research journal. I like using LaTeX because of two advantages:
Enter ImageMagick. Assume for the sake of demonstration our scanned file is image.png. Then the following commands will convert it to a [relatively small] EPS file:
That's enough technical talk for now.
So I'm currently using LaTeX as a means of keeping an electronic research journal. I like using LaTeX because of two advantages:
- Everything is text, so I can make use of a version control system to track changes.
- I have the full expression of equations and the what-not in the same manner as I would use to write actual papers, thus saving time.
Enter ImageMagick. Assume for the sake of demonstration our scanned file is image.png. Then the following commands will convert it to a [relatively small] EPS file:
convert -quality 75 image.png image.jpgconvert image.jpg eps3:image.eps
That's enough technical talk for now.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
NaNoWriMo 2011: Modern Office Warrior
Apparently I have a penchant of dealing myself really really hard hands and running with it. This comes from the decision to take part in this year's NaNoWriMo. Due to their site change, you can track my progress here instead. I'll update the widget counter when it is available.
It's going to be yet another slice-of-life with a little bit more action than the last two novels. I think I will take this opportunity to point out some uh interesting phenomena that I have observed while being in the work force for the last couple of years. Obviously this is fiction, so take everything that will be written as such.
Oops look at the time. Gotta get some work done here. Till next time.
It's going to be yet another slice-of-life with a little bit more action than the last two novels. I think I will take this opportunity to point out some uh interesting phenomena that I have observed while being in the work force for the last couple of years. Obviously this is fiction, so take everything that will be written as such.
Oops look at the time. Gotta get some work done here. Till next time.
Friday, October 28, 2011
L'il Kids
So let's see. I've been in the US since Aug 13, 2011, and for all practical purposes and intents, I haven't really been mingling with the local Singapore populace. I suppose being a graduate student means that one's priorities are different as compared to when one was still an undergraduate. That and the fact that as a graduate student, I have an office to spend the day in to get some thinking/research done, while as an undergraduate one was ``doomed'' to roaming the corridors and the campus in between classes, which helps in the whole ``socialise with your fellow students bit''.
I think it'll be really funny/awkward the day that I join the SSA's activities. Heheheheh... but I suppose I'm used to that. Must remember that I am geeky and that it is completely normal to treat the undergraduate folks as l'il kids who haven't seen the world. Yes, it is very evil, but fully justified, considering that I am a good 4 years older than most of them?
Anyway, enough of random ranting, back to work I go. I'm starting to love this...
I think it'll be really funny/awkward the day that I join the SSA's activities. Heheheheh... but I suppose I'm used to that. Must remember that I am geeky and that it is completely normal to treat the undergraduate folks as l'il kids who haven't seen the world. Yes, it is very evil, but fully justified, considering that I am a good 4 years older than most of them?
Anyway, enough of random ranting, back to work I go. I'm starting to love this...
Monday, October 24, 2011
NaNoWriMo 2011?
November is coming, and I'm still debating with myself whether I should take part in this year's NaNoWriMo, considering everything. I mean, I have Eiko with me now, and should serve as an incentive to help push things forward, but somehow I am scared that I might just run out of time to get all things that need to be done while doing NaNoWriMo.
Oh choices, choices.
I do have a story to tell for NaNoWriMo, but the caveat is that I have at least 2 to 3 other ``big'' writing assignments that need attention. So putting aside that one hour per day to write my 2000 words to hit the magical 50k words within the month sounds a little... painful. Anyway, I have around 5 to 6 days to make a decision. We'll see how this goes.
Oh choices, choices.
I do have a story to tell for NaNoWriMo, but the caveat is that I have at least 2 to 3 other ``big'' writing assignments that need attention. So putting aside that one hour per day to write my 2000 words to hit the magical 50k words within the month sounds a little... painful. Anyway, I have around 5 to 6 days to make a decision. We'll see how this goes.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Broken symbol.ttf on Ubuntu
Having weird ``infinity'' symbols for bullets when opening some PDF on some flavour of Ubuntu? It turns out it has to do with a bug with the symbol.ttf font. Here's how to rectify it (as gotten from here).
- If you don't have fontforge, install it first with
sudo apt-get install fontforge
- Open up symbol.ttf in fontforge. On my system, it is located at /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-symbol-replacement/symbol-replacement.ttf/symbol.ttf
- In fontforge, apply Encoding->Force Encoding->Symbol, followed by Encoding->Macintosh Latin, and then File->Generate Fonts... (set to Truetype), ignoring warnings and save.
- Remove the old symbol.ttf and copy the new version back into the same location, probably as root.
- Run the following command:
sudo fc-cache -v
Sunday, October 09, 2011
家
在美国的读书生涯中，我几乎从来没有特别想家的感觉。不过在这两个星期内，我不禁回想着家。或许是生活太复杂吧，还是最近的种种错则而导致我出现想家的念头。
家是个很奇怪的一个组织：当你和家人在一起时，有时会出现种种默察，而这会导致你觉得你的家人似乎在整你。不过，一旦你离开了家，不久后你就会产生想家的念头。可能是人生常情吧，每个人都需要有一种归属感，而家就是能产生个人归属感的一个东西。当你最需要人关怀的时候，你就会想起家。
或许在这深造的生活方式太紧张了吧，也可能是因为我最近又受了伤之类的，所以我会想起家。以前的我简直不把家的重要性放在眼里，如今我觉得除了家以外就再也没有设么重要的东西了。有个家的归属感的感觉最好。
好了，我累了，错别字好像有要重出江湖了。我看我因该去休息一下，这么一来我就有精力来挑战未来。
家是个很奇怪的一个组织：当你和家人在一起时，有时会出现种种默察，而这会导致你觉得你的家人似乎在整你。不过，一旦你离开了家，不久后你就会产生想家的念头。可能是人生常情吧，每个人都需要有一种归属感，而家就是能产生个人归属感的一个东西。当你最需要人关怀的时候，你就会想起家。
或许在这深造的生活方式太紧张了吧，也可能是因为我最近又受了伤之类的，所以我会想起家。以前的我简直不把家的重要性放在眼里，如今我觉得除了家以外就再也没有设么重要的东西了。有个家的归属感的感觉最好。
好了，我累了，错别字好像有要重出江湖了。我看我因该去休息一下，这么一来我就有精力来挑战未来。
Funereal #2
Ahem.
I lay there within my half-opened casket, serene as a man can ever be. Right there next to my glass-covered top, my aged but still lovely wife weeps to herself. Oh the sorrow, the pain! Yet she maintains her dignified poise, melancholy notwithstanding. Comforting her with an arm around her shoulders is my eldest daughter, lovely, tall and dressed in the deepest black that one could think of. She has always been my pride and joy, for being first-born meant she was the child I held the longest and watched over the most. Her husband stands quietly near her---it is not his place to be in deep mourning; his role is mostly supportive. My other daughter flanks my wife on the other side, silently sobbing to herself; she's not as tough as my eldest, but still she has her strong moments, but now was not the time. My son stands in front of my portrait, his head bowed, face unsmiling, tearless, serious---I have brought him up well, it seems, for stoicness was one thing I thought every male should have about him, to never look emotional in front of others other than those close by.
The monk finally finishes the prayer that he was chanting to free my soul of my earthly shackles. Already I feel a little lighter. My wife's weeping intensified, and if I weren't already dead I would have leapt up to her and hold her and tell her once more how much I love her and don't really want to go. With a solemn bow, the monk steps away from his position and the pallbearers stepped up. The lead pallbearer gave a final bow to me, before closing the lid of my coffin. With a silent one-two, the pallbearers lift my casket upon their shoulders and walked solemnly into the antechamber behind the curtains. The small cortege behind me filed out of the main area and shuffled up to the viewing room on the second floor.
There, they got to see the funeral home workers lift up my casket and slowly bring it to the conveyor belt that fed into the gaping door of the furnace of the crematorium. My wife, stoically strong thus far, finally wails audibly, dignity be damned, while my daughters try their best to comfort her while stifling their own tears with little effect. Confronted with the final inevitability, even my son's eyes were tearing.
The funereal home workers gently pushed my casket onto the conveyer belt and stepped back, their heads bowed in respect. My casket rolls gently down the conveyer into the furnace, where I get consumed by the flames for the last time. While I know that I am dead, I leave knowing that my son and daughters will carry on with life, and that they will take care of my lover till the day comes that she joins me for true eternal bliss.
Saturday, October 08, 2011
It's Saturday Already?
It's yet another Saturday morning, and again I'm sitting at my study desk next to the window, the only time that I can get decent illumination from this desk. That corneal abrasion episode took away a good chunk of my time as I shuttled to and fro doctors, instilled eyedrops like clockwork, worrying about how scary the final bill will be, worrying about how all these down time is affecting my already burgeoning workload.
It's not easy living life without support, especially a life where everything needs to be pre-planned and time-managed from start to end. In the bid to obtain a life where I have a slightly less mundane existence, I find myself in a life that requires inordinate amounts of self-discipline just to pull things off. Such is the irony of life. And just when I thought I could put all those years of self-discipline behind me too.
I think at this point, the one big thing I can say about the PhD programme is that it is one long struggle between doing things and finding enough time to deal with the whole life aspect of things. Life has a strange way of creeping up on you when you are not really noticing, and what happens after that is usually quite complicated, since in life, you have to deal with more than just yourself; there's always someone or something else in the equation that you need to look out for.
Okay, no real mood to wax lyrical. Need to get some stuff done so that I can... work on other stuff. Till next time.
It's not easy living life without support, especially a life where everything needs to be pre-planned and time-managed from start to end. In the bid to obtain a life where I have a slightly less mundane existence, I find myself in a life that requires inordinate amounts of self-discipline just to pull things off. Such is the irony of life. And just when I thought I could put all those years of self-discipline behind me too.
I think at this point, the one big thing I can say about the PhD programme is that it is one long struggle between doing things and finding enough time to deal with the whole life aspect of things. Life has a strange way of creeping up on you when you are not really noticing, and what happens after that is usually quite complicated, since in life, you have to deal with more than just yourself; there's always someone or something else in the equation that you need to look out for.
Okay, no real mood to wax lyrical. Need to get some stuff done so that I can... work on other stuff. Till next time.
Friday, October 07, 2011
Clean Bill of Health?
The nightmare of 2+ weeks is just reaching the end, and none too soon I might add.
A day-long travel out to Bloomington, Illinois is nothing to scoff at, considering that it is a 60-mile journey one-way from Champaign-Urbana. Factoring in the fear of the unknown meant that I added a generous buffer to the overall time that I was willing to spend out here in Bloomington before hopping on the long-haul bus back home.
That last 1%---finally there is some closure. The expert has spoken; there is no medical risk of the epithelial ingrowth colonising the entirety of my cornea, and that any procedure that would be done will be done so under my own comfort level. The gist of it is that the corneal flap has folded back slightly, and it is under the ophthamologist's opinion that it wouldn't post a problem unless I feel discomfort from it, i.e. things like having ridiculously dry eyes for extended periods of times, sudden change in astigmatism, or random feelings of foreign bodies within the eye itself. In short, that 1% isn't going to matter unless it is actually affecting me, then I can always go back to her to have her lift the flap and scrape of those epithelial cells, all under local anaesthesia of course.
Probably the best bit of news I have heard in a while.
Right now, I'm in no rush to get back into Jujitsu training---still need to alter my gi a little (damn thing is still too damn long in spite my ``best fit'' sizing). Also, while that 1% is declared medically insignificant, I want to give it just a little more time to recuperate, and until I can get hold of some of those protective goggles. Calling those things protective goggles is kind of strange, when in reality there are really spectacles with particularly sturdy frames. Might as well, considering that I have been thinking of updating my prescription for a while now for long-range work like driving. I asked the doctor if it were normal of me to not use my glasses when working on the computer, and her reply was that my eyes were lazy; since I was already myopic to begin with, the eye just refuses to use the eye muscles to accomodate for the nearer vision given the correction. This happens only because the level of myopia that I have now is sufficiently low that objects placed just at arm's length distance away just happens to be sitting within the comfort zone of my eyes' focal length. Well I suppose I'm going to keep doing this as I don't really see a need to fix anything---worst case I'll see if I can get a greatly reduced power for close range work, mostly to fight the astigmatism that can distort things.
I was feeling quite listless over the past fortnight, considering that I couldn't really do any of the physical activities stuff that I liked doing due to my corneal abrasion (Jujitsu and geocaching). But today, I think I had my share of venting out these frustrated energies through the long walk to and fro the ophthamologist's office from the long haul bus stop. The Google Maps' estimated distance for the route along the main roads was estimated to be around 2.4 miles, and I walked both directions, plus a mile here and there when I slipped off to pick up some geocaches along the way. All in all, I think I walked about 10 kilometres today, not counting the daily 7 kilometres of cycling I do to get to office and back. I bet I don't even get to clock such mileage back in Singapore heheheheh... yet I find myself willing to take walking as a valid mode of transport here. For fun, I used my GPSr to track how fast I was walking, and it turned out to be, on average, 3.7 miles per hour, which is roughly 5.9 kilometres per hour. Not super fast, but fast enough to make the time quoted for walking on Google Maps irrelevant.
And so, my Thursday is almost done, spent in a different town getting expert advice on my eyes because the town that I am based in had no such experts. Such is the strangeness of life. Now the only thing left to do for this episode is to wait for the medical bill and see just how much 20% of it really is, and then figure out how to pay for it without using up all of my allowances. I am hoping that the cost isn't too drastic, but I can't be sure only because no one seems to publish the consultation rate. According to Mangesh, my colleague/labmate, those rates are hardly published because they change according to the health insurance provider. Talk about stratified sampling for sales. I just hope that the part I need to pay is reasonable enough.
Alright, enough of ranting. I should probably start to walk towards the pick up point and wait for the bus. Hanging out in another university's student centre is a little weird and disconcerting, particularly when it's evening and there's no one about. I must be missing something here I suppose.
Till the next update.
A day-long travel out to Bloomington, Illinois is nothing to scoff at, considering that it is a 60-mile journey one-way from Champaign-Urbana. Factoring in the fear of the unknown meant that I added a generous buffer to the overall time that I was willing to spend out here in Bloomington before hopping on the long-haul bus back home.
That last 1%---finally there is some closure. The expert has spoken; there is no medical risk of the epithelial ingrowth colonising the entirety of my cornea, and that any procedure that would be done will be done so under my own comfort level. The gist of it is that the corneal flap has folded back slightly, and it is under the ophthamologist's opinion that it wouldn't post a problem unless I feel discomfort from it, i.e. things like having ridiculously dry eyes for extended periods of times, sudden change in astigmatism, or random feelings of foreign bodies within the eye itself. In short, that 1% isn't going to matter unless it is actually affecting me, then I can always go back to her to have her lift the flap and scrape of those epithelial cells, all under local anaesthesia of course.
Probably the best bit of news I have heard in a while.
Right now, I'm in no rush to get back into Jujitsu training---still need to alter my gi a little (damn thing is still too damn long in spite my ``best fit'' sizing). Also, while that 1% is declared medically insignificant, I want to give it just a little more time to recuperate, and until I can get hold of some of those protective goggles. Calling those things protective goggles is kind of strange, when in reality there are really spectacles with particularly sturdy frames. Might as well, considering that I have been thinking of updating my prescription for a while now for long-range work like driving. I asked the doctor if it were normal of me to not use my glasses when working on the computer, and her reply was that my eyes were lazy; since I was already myopic to begin with, the eye just refuses to use the eye muscles to accomodate for the nearer vision given the correction. This happens only because the level of myopia that I have now is sufficiently low that objects placed just at arm's length distance away just happens to be sitting within the comfort zone of my eyes' focal length. Well I suppose I'm going to keep doing this as I don't really see a need to fix anything---worst case I'll see if I can get a greatly reduced power for close range work, mostly to fight the astigmatism that can distort things.
I was feeling quite listless over the past fortnight, considering that I couldn't really do any of the physical activities stuff that I liked doing due to my corneal abrasion (Jujitsu and geocaching). But today, I think I had my share of venting out these frustrated energies through the long walk to and fro the ophthamologist's office from the long haul bus stop. The Google Maps' estimated distance for the route along the main roads was estimated to be around 2.4 miles, and I walked both directions, plus a mile here and there when I slipped off to pick up some geocaches along the way. All in all, I think I walked about 10 kilometres today, not counting the daily 7 kilometres of cycling I do to get to office and back. I bet I don't even get to clock such mileage back in Singapore heheheheh... yet I find myself willing to take walking as a valid mode of transport here. For fun, I used my GPSr to track how fast I was walking, and it turned out to be, on average, 3.7 miles per hour, which is roughly 5.9 kilometres per hour. Not super fast, but fast enough to make the time quoted for walking on Google Maps irrelevant.
And so, my Thursday is almost done, spent in a different town getting expert advice on my eyes because the town that I am based in had no such experts. Such is the strangeness of life. Now the only thing left to do for this episode is to wait for the medical bill and see just how much 20% of it really is, and then figure out how to pay for it without using up all of my allowances. I am hoping that the cost isn't too drastic, but I can't be sure only because no one seems to publish the consultation rate. According to Mangesh, my colleague/labmate, those rates are hardly published because they change according to the health insurance provider. Talk about stratified sampling for sales. I just hope that the part I need to pay is reasonable enough.
Alright, enough of ranting. I should probably start to walk towards the pick up point and wait for the bus. Hanging out in another university's student centre is a little weird and disconcerting, particularly when it's evening and there's no one about. I must be missing something here I suppose.
Till the next update.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
But I'm Only a Student...
There are some days in my life that I wish I were dead or non-existent, and it seems that today is the day.
I went back to the optometrist today expecting good news. Well in some senses, I did, as the wound is healed at 99%. Except that 1%, that lousy last 1%. Something wrong with that 1%---it wasn't healing fast enough; that 1% was at the periphery of my corneal flap. Maybe some epithelial cells have made their way past the flap from the initial injury, causing it to possibly be the start of an ingrowth. Possibly. Prognosis is good though, but it means I have to go elsewhere to get this checked out by someone more qualified than what we are having at the local hospital/clinic.
Except this somewhere is a good hour's drive away. In the US, this means at least 60 miles, or around 97 kilometres. 97 kilometres. Bye bye busy day.
And of course, I have tons of things that are due this week. Thankfully, I've gotten enough of them done, so I'm left with one major item to clear, not counting this cross-country doctor's visit. And now I have to coordinate with a kind soul who will take half the day off to drive me all the way out there and back.
This is starting to be a really costly (opportunity cost) incident...
I went back to the optometrist today expecting good news. Well in some senses, I did, as the wound is healed at 99%. Except that 1%, that lousy last 1%. Something wrong with that 1%---it wasn't healing fast enough; that 1% was at the periphery of my corneal flap. Maybe some epithelial cells have made their way past the flap from the initial injury, causing it to possibly be the start of an ingrowth. Possibly. Prognosis is good though, but it means I have to go elsewhere to get this checked out by someone more qualified than what we are having at the local hospital/clinic.
Except this somewhere is a good hour's drive away. In the US, this means at least 60 miles, or around 97 kilometres. 97 kilometres. Bye bye busy day.
And of course, I have tons of things that are due this week. Thankfully, I've gotten enough of them done, so I'm left with one major item to clear, not counting this cross-country doctor's visit. And now I have to coordinate with a kind soul who will take half the day off to drive me all the way out there and back.
This is starting to be a really costly (opportunity cost) incident...
Monday, October 03, 2011
Corneal Conundrum
Break my arm and I can still work with the other one, albeit slowly.
Break my leg and I just limp about, working mostly unimpaired, though I probably need to watch my weight from lack of activity.
But bust my eye and my spirit is broken, having neither the will nor the ability to actually see what I'm doing and thus get things done in a smooth fashion.
That last statement is basically how I have been feeling for the last fortnight---the inability to see clearly is always annoying and makes it really difficult to concentrate. Indeed, calling humans visual creatures is a most apt description.
It is not that my right corneal abrasion isn't healing; it is doing better each day compared to the last. It is the fact that it is healing too slowly relative to the norm that is making my attending optometrist worried. Such is the complication that comes with a general predisposition towards inflammation, and the fact that my cornea itself has undergone some structural changes via LASIK.
Do I regret having LASIK done then? No, I don't. It just isn't safe to be traipsing all around the world with an effective eyesight that required -15.00 dioptres of correction. I think the expensive take-home lesson here is that I should be careful with what kinds of sports that I am doing. A year of Aikido didn't increase the risk of anything happening to my eye---most of the stuff we do involves mostly the hands and twisting the body into interesting positions so as to throw someone. But Jujitsu, it's different; the take downs are many and highly varied. I should be more careful with this sport than I did with Aikido, since the integrity of my cornea has been breached twice by now, and we all know that structural integrity takes a long time to recover, particularly for something that begins as fragile as the cornea.
Anyway, that's all the time I have for random ranting. Maybe another post will be up on Friday or something... I don't know. Currently having to juggle too many things at once means that I have little to no time to myself to do reflections and other ``personal development'' things like writing journal entries or even stories or poems.
Break my leg and I just limp about, working mostly unimpaired, though I probably need to watch my weight from lack of activity.
But bust my eye and my spirit is broken, having neither the will nor the ability to actually see what I'm doing and thus get things done in a smooth fashion.
That last statement is basically how I have been feeling for the last fortnight---the inability to see clearly is always annoying and makes it really difficult to concentrate. Indeed, calling humans visual creatures is a most apt description.
It is not that my right corneal abrasion isn't healing; it is doing better each day compared to the last. It is the fact that it is healing too slowly relative to the norm that is making my attending optometrist worried. Such is the complication that comes with a general predisposition towards inflammation, and the fact that my cornea itself has undergone some structural changes via LASIK.
Do I regret having LASIK done then? No, I don't. It just isn't safe to be traipsing all around the world with an effective eyesight that required -15.00 dioptres of correction. I think the expensive take-home lesson here is that I should be careful with what kinds of sports that I am doing. A year of Aikido didn't increase the risk of anything happening to my eye---most of the stuff we do involves mostly the hands and twisting the body into interesting positions so as to throw someone. But Jujitsu, it's different; the take downs are many and highly varied. I should be more careful with this sport than I did with Aikido, since the integrity of my cornea has been breached twice by now, and we all know that structural integrity takes a long time to recover, particularly for something that begins as fragile as the cornea.
Anyway, that's all the time I have for random ranting. Maybe another post will be up on Friday or something... I don't know. Currently having to juggle too many things at once means that I have little to no time to myself to do reflections and other ``personal development'' things like writing journal entries or even stories or poems.
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