There always exist a tetchy tension between book-knowledge and experience-knowledge, and in many ways, this tension has gotten increasingly worse over the years.
The experience-knowledge proponents assert the claim that no book-knowledge will ever be sufficient, and that the only worthy knowledge is that of experience-knowledge. And because of that, proponents of this ideology who are also employers are more likely to want to hire people who have been in the field for years over someone who has freshly graduated from some institute of higher learning.
For those who are non-employers, it means that they cast shade on anything that they (or people that they know) personally did not experience. This is part of the reason why misinformation and disinformation are becoming endemic problems in the modern hyper-connected era---what constitutes as ``people that they know'' have been largely increased through the virtual communities, with people ascribing a closer relationship among strangers than they would normally do so in meat space only because they seem to be emotionally close over a very narrow range of domains.
I think this extreme is not right.
The other extreme is no better; academics and experts throwing shade at individual experiences, concluding that those experiences are nonsensical because they are not ``subjected to a rigorous scrutiny through well-defined methods''. That level of hubris contributes to the overall disconnect between the experts and the layperson. The implicit claim here is that the only valid/truthful knowledge is that of book-knowledge, and that experience-knowledge that is not codified into book-knowledge is not knowledge at all.
That extreme is not right either.
I like to see things from a different perspective. Experience-knowledge is the source of all types of human knowledge---it has existed before the invention of the written language and is a cornerstone of human civilisation. But experience-knowledge is not scalable, since it requires a ``direct transmission'' from one experience-knowledge holder to a neophyte. This method of transmission is thus highly limited by geographical and cultural boundaries.
Book-knowledge is the accumulation and summarisation of various types of experience-knowledge into a pithy form. It contains all that is necessary to bootstrap a neophyte into the right frame of mind that is learnt from experience-knowledge, but is not sufficient in that there are sufficient nuances that would benefit from an experience-knowledge holder. This aspect holds even for really abstract knowledge domains that deal purely with ideas, like mathematics or even philosophy---merely reading the book-knowledge is insufficient to develop a level of understanding that can be termed as intuitive, or embedded deeply enough that the reader of the book-knowledge has incorporated the book-knowledge into his/her experience-knowledge.
So I agree in part to the experience-knowledge proponents that book-knowledge is insufficient, but I disagree completely that the only worthy knowledge is that of experience-knowledge.
Another angle to look at this is to consider what type of knowledge is encoded in both book-knowledge and experience-knowledge.
Most times, for the sake of brevity, book-knowledge stores only positive examples, a technical term that simply states that ``only positive assertions are recorded''. Thus, on a book about cats (for example), we will see attributes that are present in cats recorded in this book, with the omission of attributes that are absent in cats---this is because the set of attributes that are related to that of a cat is supposedly finite compared to that of the set of attributes that are unrelated to that of a cat.
However, experience-knowledge does not have such a restriction. In many cases, I would say that experience-knowledge has the strong potential of storing more negative examples than positive ones. Continuing upon the ``book of cats'' analogy, the experience-knowledge will contain some attributes that are present in cats, but will also contain many attributes that are absent in cats.
To expand upon the employer analogy I brought up earlier, it means that, paradoxically, it is more important to determine the types of negative examples that the candidate possesses in his/her experience-knowledge instead of just the positive examples to determine his/her suitability. Of course, there is a bit more to that---it is necessary to determine the types of negative examples that the candidate's experience-knowledge contains, but it is also important to see what the candidate has learnt from that. Negative examples are useless unless one learns something of importance from it---a person who has experienced nothing but failures is as suspicious as one who has experienced nothing but successes. When one experiences all failures/successes, it is likely that he/she does not actually have a good diversification of experience-knowledge, which means that he/she is not as strong a candidate since he/she probably has little chance to learn the type of nuances that book-knowledge fail to capture. In other words, a person with experience-knowledge of either all failures or all successes is no different from one who has only book-knowledge.
So yes, while [good representation in] experience-knowledge makes one a superior specimen of a person, book-knowledge is a great way to bypass the scaling problem of learning by providing a good enough summary of good rules of thumb to bootstrap the reader. To claim that one type of knowledge is dominant over the other kind is the type of extreme rule of thumb that is nice because of the lack of a cognitive load, but is feckless.
That's all I have for today. Till the next update.
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Sabbatical Begins
What a week!
I have finally completed the last bunch of paperwork that is necessary for my out-processing, and now I am officially out of the company.
I wanted to say that I was also ``out of a job'', but it did not feel right because I still had things that I needed to do, with the only caveat that they did not pay in terms of money. So perhaps the best way of saying it is that I am also ``out of a paying job''.
Okay, now I am officially out of the company, and thus out of a paying job.
Do I fear the future? No, not really. God is with me, and I am learning to be with Him, to trust Him, to fear Him, and to be guided by Him. In a future of chaos and thus uncertainty, knowing that God is the anchorpoint is of great solace. It is the font from which all possibilities pour out of, and it is thus the single greatest source of all. He is the Certainty.
There can be no wrong to live a life that God approves. And that is what this entire sabbatical is supposed to achieve.
To some, I will sound arrogant. While people are trying to apply for jobs frantically into the so-called ICT industry, I just made an exit with seemingly no other jobs lined up ahead of me---the action reeks of hubris. Perhaps it really is hubris, but it is what God has laid upon my heart, and thus, it has to be obeyed.
There are also more earthly-reasons for it, but they involve laying out some rather serious allegations (with associated evidence) that this blog is not the right forum for it. Let's just say that I am not the first to have left the company, and am not likely to be the last [within the window of a year] if certain things do not change, and leave it as that.
I think that's all I would like to write today. Till the next update!
I have finally completed the last bunch of paperwork that is necessary for my out-processing, and now I am officially out of the company.
I wanted to say that I was also ``out of a job'', but it did not feel right because I still had things that I needed to do, with the only caveat that they did not pay in terms of money. So perhaps the best way of saying it is that I am also ``out of a paying job''.
Okay, now I am officially out of the company, and thus out of a paying job.
Do I fear the future? No, not really. God is with me, and I am learning to be with Him, to trust Him, to fear Him, and to be guided by Him. In a future of chaos and thus uncertainty, knowing that God is the anchorpoint is of great solace. It is the font from which all possibilities pour out of, and it is thus the single greatest source of all. He is the Certainty.
There can be no wrong to live a life that God approves. And that is what this entire sabbatical is supposed to achieve.
To some, I will sound arrogant. While people are trying to apply for jobs frantically into the so-called ICT industry, I just made an exit with seemingly no other jobs lined up ahead of me---the action reeks of hubris. Perhaps it really is hubris, but it is what God has laid upon my heart, and thus, it has to be obeyed.
There are also more earthly-reasons for it, but they involve laying out some rather serious allegations (with associated evidence) that this blog is not the right forum for it. Let's just say that I am not the first to have left the company, and am not likely to be the last [within the window of a year] if certain things do not change, and leave it as that.
I think that's all I would like to write today. Till the next update!
Monday, January 11, 2021
``Career'' is a Misnomer
The weekend just passed was a particularly long one that is an even more accurate rendering of the sabbatical to come.
I had taken leave from Thursday till Monday (i.e. today) inclusive, and it was definitely a very different feeling to be waking up with little to no dread on what it was that I needed to do at work to justify the eight hours of pay that I was to be given for that day at the end of the month. I also did not have to face the other type of dread of having too much of something disagreeable to work on, wondering if the twenty-four hours of a day was sufficient for me to complete all that needs to be completed.
Why should the working life be oscillating between these two extremes with nothing in between is a mystery that needs to be solved at some point. For me, the solution is simple: re-think what it is that I want with my life.
``Career'' is a misnomer. The more I think about it, the more I am forced to acknowledge that the concept of a career is misplaced. At the risk of sounding like a supporter of communism, the idea of a ``career'' seems to be the capitalistic way of ensuring that people are forever stuck within the capitalistic system of work through the dangling of rewards in the form of a more important sounding title, with the dangling of supposedly increased monetary compensation [that is steadily eroded these days as the corporation becomes increasingly top heavy].
``Here! Work harder, like 9-9-6, so that you can earn that salary that will be the envy of your peers! 40-hour work weeks are for chumps---you must have the passion and work over and beyond the 40 hours [that I am paying you] so that you can improve yourself to take yourself higher into your career! Everyone should know how to manage---managing is the epitome of success [because only chumps and eggheads will try to maintain technical excellence]. Everyone should be well-rounded in all aspects of infocomm technology---be ready to handle devops, cloud deployment/management, back-end development, front-end development, customer requirement analysis to be a great engineer [so that I don't have to hire the 5 other people needed, and can justify why I am only paying you 40 hours while you are working 80]. App making is easy! See that kid? He already published his 20-million-dollar app while he is only nine years old!''
What is a career? Why does everyone seem to believe that it must always be vertical in nature, and that if one does not become a leader/manager, then one is not good enough? This is the type of industry that I am currently caught in, where the knowledge workers are getting heavily exploited by the business people who do not see knowledge workers as semi-creative value-adding people, but as expendable labour to churn out the type of low-value widgets that manufacturing had perfected more than ten years ago.
It is a race to the bottom. A somewhat creative field that is now heavily promoted in a way to artificially increase supply, so that the competition for the demand is raised to the point that companies can lower the price point while simultaneously appealing to ``passion'' as the magic bullet to squeeze out more labour hours.
I think that working as a so-called knowledge worker is worse than working as a so-called blue collar worker. At least the latter group has labour laws and unions on their side to protect them from the most egregious forms of exploitation.
Also, at least the tasks that are done by the blue collar workers can be intuitively understood by those business types who make the decisions. The level of misunderstanding of what machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence can do among the business types shock me beyond what I can imagine. ``Oh let's just use AI for this! Let's use machine learning for this! Let's toss in a blockchain!'' Why? How would it help? What is the business case that requires such technologies?
``But that's a technical detail---you tell me if it can be done!''
It's akin to asking can one use the word ``nictitate'' inside the business prospectus. ``I don't care---`nictitate' is the new hotness, and I want it to be inside our business plan. I don't know how to fit it in, but it's just a technical detail, so you technical folks figure out how to put in the word `nictitate' into the business plan. And have it ready for roll out within one month, mmmkay?''
As workers, we are all disposable---this is something that I have accepted. But to be disposable due to the incompetence of those who are making decisions is not an easy to stomach outcome. I think eventually more will see the world for what it is rather than through the rose-tinted glasses that have been promulgated through the various mouthpieces.
``But MT, if you don't like the status quo, you can always change it! So why aren't you changing it?''
I am. That is why I am on a sabbatical. To really sit down, to think, to pray, and to figure out what is really important in my life. I am not trying to change the world---the world can go sort itself out since I have no sphere of influence over it. But I do have a sphere of influence and responsibility on what I think, do, and whom I influence, and so I will do what I can within those fields.
It is the only way forward.
I had taken leave from Thursday till Monday (i.e. today) inclusive, and it was definitely a very different feeling to be waking up with little to no dread on what it was that I needed to do at work to justify the eight hours of pay that I was to be given for that day at the end of the month. I also did not have to face the other type of dread of having too much of something disagreeable to work on, wondering if the twenty-four hours of a day was sufficient for me to complete all that needs to be completed.
Why should the working life be oscillating between these two extremes with nothing in between is a mystery that needs to be solved at some point. For me, the solution is simple: re-think what it is that I want with my life.
``Career'' is a misnomer. The more I think about it, the more I am forced to acknowledge that the concept of a career is misplaced. At the risk of sounding like a supporter of communism, the idea of a ``career'' seems to be the capitalistic way of ensuring that people are forever stuck within the capitalistic system of work through the dangling of rewards in the form of a more important sounding title, with the dangling of supposedly increased monetary compensation [that is steadily eroded these days as the corporation becomes increasingly top heavy].
``Here! Work harder, like 9-9-6, so that you can earn that salary that will be the envy of your peers! 40-hour work weeks are for chumps---you must have the passion and work over and beyond the 40 hours [that I am paying you] so that you can improve yourself to take yourself higher into your career! Everyone should know how to manage---managing is the epitome of success [because only chumps and eggheads will try to maintain technical excellence]. Everyone should be well-rounded in all aspects of infocomm technology---be ready to handle devops, cloud deployment/management, back-end development, front-end development, customer requirement analysis to be a great engineer [so that I don't have to hire the 5 other people needed, and can justify why I am only paying you 40 hours while you are working 80]. App making is easy! See that kid? He already published his 20-million-dollar app while he is only nine years old!''
What is a career? Why does everyone seem to believe that it must always be vertical in nature, and that if one does not become a leader/manager, then one is not good enough? This is the type of industry that I am currently caught in, where the knowledge workers are getting heavily exploited by the business people who do not see knowledge workers as semi-creative value-adding people, but as expendable labour to churn out the type of low-value widgets that manufacturing had perfected more than ten years ago.
It is a race to the bottom. A somewhat creative field that is now heavily promoted in a way to artificially increase supply, so that the competition for the demand is raised to the point that companies can lower the price point while simultaneously appealing to ``passion'' as the magic bullet to squeeze out more labour hours.
I think that working as a so-called knowledge worker is worse than working as a so-called blue collar worker. At least the latter group has labour laws and unions on their side to protect them from the most egregious forms of exploitation.
Also, at least the tasks that are done by the blue collar workers can be intuitively understood by those business types who make the decisions. The level of misunderstanding of what machine learning, data mining, and artificial intelligence can do among the business types shock me beyond what I can imagine. ``Oh let's just use AI for this! Let's use machine learning for this! Let's toss in a blockchain!'' Why? How would it help? What is the business case that requires such technologies?
``But that's a technical detail---you tell me if it can be done!''
It's akin to asking can one use the word ``nictitate'' inside the business prospectus. ``I don't care---`nictitate' is the new hotness, and I want it to be inside our business plan. I don't know how to fit it in, but it's just a technical detail, so you technical folks figure out how to put in the word `nictitate' into the business plan. And have it ready for roll out within one month, mmmkay?''
As workers, we are all disposable---this is something that I have accepted. But to be disposable due to the incompetence of those who are making decisions is not an easy to stomach outcome. I think eventually more will see the world for what it is rather than through the rose-tinted glasses that have been promulgated through the various mouthpieces.
``But MT, if you don't like the status quo, you can always change it! So why aren't you changing it?''
I am. That is why I am on a sabbatical. To really sit down, to think, to pray, and to figure out what is really important in my life. I am not trying to change the world---the world can go sort itself out since I have no sphere of influence over it. But I do have a sphere of influence and responsibility on what I think, do, and whom I influence, and so I will do what I can within those fields.
It is the only way forward.
Thursday, January 07, 2021
``Contempt'' is the Reason
- contempt
- the feeling that a person or a thing is worthless or beneath consideration
``Contempt'' is the word that I have found to best describe the bad vibes that I had felt. Contempt---the feeling that I was worthless or beneath consideration. In other words, the sense of not being valued.
Ah, but what is value?
- value
- the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something
In other words, the feeling of contempt that I had felt is not universal, but is dependent on the context in which I had existed in. And thus, to not feel the contempt (whether of the self or of someone else) requires a change of the context.
Naq fb V pna abj unir n fvzcyr bar-jbeq engvbany rkcynangvba bs jul Tbq ynvq vg hcba zl urneg gb yrnir zl wbo abj, rira jura V qb abg unir nal bgure wbo yvarq hc. Vg whfg jnfa'g urnygul gb or va na raivebazrag jurer V jnf uryq va pbagrzcg.
Naq fb V pna er-pbagrkghnyvfr [ntnva] jul gur ynfg eryngvbafuvc raqrq gur jnl vg qvq---gur bgure cnegl unq frra zr va pbagrzcg, juvpu rkcynvarq gur fhofrdhrag crefban aba tengn nfcrpg.
Why the sudden epiphany on ``contempt''? I blame it on reading this entry in a thread---and the answers started to click together.
With an acknowledgement of what had transpired comes a path towards future enlightenment on how to proceed. Future-me, this is for you: find a path where you will not be treated in contempt. I will try not to die before you are ready, that is all that I can offer you. Trust in God, for He is your rock and anchor.
After all, what we do, and where we go to do it, are all part of the grand plan of the Creator---things happen according to His will and His will alone.
And that's all I have for today. Till the next update.
Monday, January 04, 2021
What a Weekend
What a weekend.
A preview of what is to come during my upcoming sabbatical/re-alignment journey, where my wakefulness is controlled by the diurnal cycle instead of the need to be heading to the office.
It is not too bad, actually. I am surprised that my priority wasn't to be playing computer games, but to do reading of all sorts. Don't get me wrong, I still play some video games in between, but they are more of the quick sort instead of a multi-decade-hour extravaganza. More Jupiter Hell and less Halo.
The bookshelf at home has undergone another small round of re-organisation. I have read quite a few of the books that I had set up to be in easy reach, and as such, it was time to shift things around so that other books that I would want to read are actually made easily available. I think it is a good time to explore other aspects of knowledge (and by extension, my interests) during this period of reflection and re-alignment.
As to what they may be, I think I will eventually talk about them here.
And AGDQ 2021 is now live. That is always a plus.
That's all I have for now. Till the next update, I suppose.
A preview of what is to come during my upcoming sabbatical/re-alignment journey, where my wakefulness is controlled by the diurnal cycle instead of the need to be heading to the office.
It is not too bad, actually. I am surprised that my priority wasn't to be playing computer games, but to do reading of all sorts. Don't get me wrong, I still play some video games in between, but they are more of the quick sort instead of a multi-decade-hour extravaganza. More Jupiter Hell and less Halo.
The bookshelf at home has undergone another small round of re-organisation. I have read quite a few of the books that I had set up to be in easy reach, and as such, it was time to shift things around so that other books that I would want to read are actually made easily available. I think it is a good time to explore other aspects of knowledge (and by extension, my interests) during this period of reflection and re-alignment.
As to what they may be, I think I will eventually talk about them here.
And AGDQ 2021 is now live. That is always a plus.
That's all I have for now. Till the next update, I suppose.
Friday, January 01, 2021
Quick Summary
So, a quick summary of what I had written in 2020:
That's an average of 0.134 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.038 last year. Considering all that had happened to me, I would call this a rather dramatic increase. That natural progression that I talked about as life started to fall into a discernible pattern had been badly disrupted.
In stark contrast to 2019, after hitting the new high with what I can do on my 笛子 and concert flute, and the increased closeness that Chara and I had after she had rebased herself in Singapore, I found myself unable to perform with my instruments for most of the year, and my heart shattered into a thousand pieces when she broke up with me. If there was anything to blame, it would be that of the winds of change from COVID-19 that robbed almost everyone of their sense of normality, a little like the random restarts that one would perform on an optimisation problem after applying the Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm.
After about sixteen months of working at the medium enterprise, I have decided to call it quits to re-centre myself and to work through what is meaningful for me.
The emergent health issue that I had referred to at the start of 2020 had been resolved---thank God for that. And coincidentally, I became the trailblazer to assist in handling other emergent health issues in the family; the experience that I gained through my own ordeal served as a good source of information for the rest of my family who ended up taking turns with their own emergent health issues.
As I am writing this summary, I found my past self rather prescient. Here is the relevant chunk:
And I suppose that is the one good thing that came out of the dumpster fire that was 2020, and that is I have found salvation by acknowledging that Jesus Christ is my personal saviour, and that the Bible is the inerrant word of God Himself. When everything changes, God Himself does not. Which brings me back to the last big thing that I was talking about in an earlier paragraph---I had quit my job. Everyone that had learnt about it expressed confusion, and they all asked the same question: why did I do so?
The answer is the same: it is time for me to go. Specifically, God has laid it upon my heart to know that it is time for me to leave this job. It was not a decision that was made in haste, nor was it made in anger. It was one that was conceived in faith, supported with hard rational evidence, and calculated to happen when it did with a little serendipity from the Lord. While there were obviously going to be systematic issues that contributed to ``pushing'' me out, there was also an overall sense that there was still a mission that I needed to do that could not be done where I was. There are some who think me as being foolhardy for leaving without having a job lined up, but I begged to differ---there was no point staying for the money if the heart was no longer into it. The things that I was doing at work felt increasingly meaningless, both in terms of my training/interest, and in terms of matching the actual vision/impact.
In short, I was not doing something that would glorify God. And it is a no-no. Let whoever reads what I had written here draw their own conclusions---it is a retrospective, not an argumentative essay meant to sway any views.
With the ending of that long relationship with Chara, I no longer feel comfortable with beginning another one---I don't know if this will change, and if it will, when it will change. My meaning of life prior to 2020 was to raise a family and live in bliss with my spouse; now that is over, and with it, the meaning is lost. Work never had any meaning more than just putting food on the table.
So what is next for me? I honestly do not know, and that's why I had to quit when I did. To take time off to re-think about things, to pray to God to show a path that He would want me to follow, so that I can follow it, achieving glory for God through the talents and opportunities that He has set me up for.
2021 will be a pivot point for my life. Years on, I would look back upon this year and either stroke my chin meaningfully, or slap my forehead in exasperation. I cannot see anything beyond the March 2021 horizon again, so I suppose there is something large that will be happening then. I don't know what it will be, but I know that God is there, and that my life is in His hands. He is my rock and anchor, and my faith is built upon that rock.
He will not deny me of the ultimate salvation, but He may still allow me to suffer if it is of His will to do so.
Amen.
- 7 poems posted here
- 35 essays/rants posted here
- 3 prose/stories posted here
- 1 NaNoWriMo winning entry available here
- 3 pieces of compositions/rearrangements posted here
That's an average of 0.134 pieces of writing a day, compared to 0.038 last year. Considering all that had happened to me, I would call this a rather dramatic increase. That natural progression that I talked about as life started to fall into a discernible pattern had been badly disrupted.
In stark contrast to 2019, after hitting the new high with what I can do on my 笛子 and concert flute, and the increased closeness that Chara and I had after she had rebased herself in Singapore, I found myself unable to perform with my instruments for most of the year, and my heart shattered into a thousand pieces when she broke up with me. If there was anything to blame, it would be that of the winds of change from COVID-19 that robbed almost everyone of their sense of normality, a little like the random restarts that one would perform on an optimisation problem after applying the Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm.
After about sixteen months of working at the medium enterprise, I have decided to call it quits to re-centre myself and to work through what is meaningful for me.
The emergent health issue that I had referred to at the start of 2020 had been resolved---thank God for that. And coincidentally, I became the trailblazer to assist in handling other emergent health issues in the family; the experience that I gained through my own ordeal served as a good source of information for the rest of my family who ended up taking turns with their own emergent health issues.
As I am writing this summary, I found my past self rather prescient. Here is the relevant chunk:
2020 is going to be a tough year. ... Apart from that, at a personal level, there are many other things that are happening that I do not necessarily have control over. I cannot even see past the March 2020 horizon for some reason---that is how myopic I feel at times.Only God knew that I would prophesy for myself like that.
And I suppose that is the one good thing that came out of the dumpster fire that was 2020, and that is I have found salvation by acknowledging that Jesus Christ is my personal saviour, and that the Bible is the inerrant word of God Himself. When everything changes, God Himself does not. Which brings me back to the last big thing that I was talking about in an earlier paragraph---I had quit my job. Everyone that had learnt about it expressed confusion, and they all asked the same question: why did I do so?
The answer is the same: it is time for me to go. Specifically, God has laid it upon my heart to know that it is time for me to leave this job. It was not a decision that was made in haste, nor was it made in anger. It was one that was conceived in faith, supported with hard rational evidence, and calculated to happen when it did with a little serendipity from the Lord. While there were obviously going to be systematic issues that contributed to ``pushing'' me out, there was also an overall sense that there was still a mission that I needed to do that could not be done where I was. There are some who think me as being foolhardy for leaving without having a job lined up, but I begged to differ---there was no point staying for the money if the heart was no longer into it. The things that I was doing at work felt increasingly meaningless, both in terms of my training/interest, and in terms of matching the actual vision/impact.
In short, I was not doing something that would glorify God. And it is a no-no. Let whoever reads what I had written here draw their own conclusions---it is a retrospective, not an argumentative essay meant to sway any views.
With the ending of that long relationship with Chara, I no longer feel comfortable with beginning another one---I don't know if this will change, and if it will, when it will change. My meaning of life prior to 2020 was to raise a family and live in bliss with my spouse; now that is over, and with it, the meaning is lost. Work never had any meaning more than just putting food on the table.
So what is next for me? I honestly do not know, and that's why I had to quit when I did. To take time off to re-think about things, to pray to God to show a path that He would want me to follow, so that I can follow it, achieving glory for God through the talents and opportunities that He has set me up for.
2021 will be a pivot point for my life. Years on, I would look back upon this year and either stroke my chin meaningfully, or slap my forehead in exasperation. I cannot see anything beyond the March 2021 horizon again, so I suppose there is something large that will be happening then. I don't know what it will be, but I know that God is there, and that my life is in His hands. He is my rock and anchor, and my faith is built upon that rock.
He will not deny me of the ultimate salvation, but He may still allow me to suffer if it is of His will to do so.
Amen.
Sunday, December 27, 2020
End Stretch of 2020
We are now on the end stretch of 2020.
This post will not be a full retrospective---I have a tendency to do that nearer the start of the next year as part of the usual statistics information on writing.
Very many things have gone in and out of my head, as well as my heart. Losses are aplenty, but gains are not too few either. Overall, it is hard to say if there is an overall gain or an overall loss.
But does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Do I really need to keep a solid accounting of the so-called gains and losses on my own? I don't think so.
I think we'll leave the retrospective till when it is supposed to be out, and just switch gears to things that are less depressing.
------
I have started on the Modesty Blaise comic series. I was introduced to this from a throwaway line from ashens, a long time Youtuber whose claim to fame is the sardonic humour displayed from reviewing various things on his infamous brown couch. The art style is on the realistic side, and follows the 3-panel format for each week. Naturally, the series had completed by now, but the serialised strips have been gathered into their own stories, and so the reading was relatively rapid.
It averages about30 or so strips 30 or so ``pages'' or about 120 strips of 3 panels per story, so about 100-ish panels per story arc, if the first 30 or so of the 99 stories are of any indication.
I like Modesty Blaise. It reminded me of the old adventure type comics like Tarzan, instead of the more common ``a gag a week'' type comics that are out there. The stories are old school, the art work is great given that it was monochrome, and it definitely entertains. I think there were a couple of movies made, but they were flops---I don't think that I am going to watch them though. Something about how the comic format does not quite translate well into the ``standard'' format of a 100-minute film; to pull it off successfully will either require a long enough caper (which definitely involves new writing), or some kind of better way of stringing a few story arcs together, which is hard because they often had one or two months of time interspersed among them implicitly, which could probably affect the pacing of the film.
All in all, still a cool comic, and I hope that I can finish it all before 2020 comes to an end. It is probably one of the few good things that came out of this dumpster fire of a year.
------
I have recently read David Copperfield in the original as written by Charles Dickens, and I must say that it was definitely more impactful than the heavily abridged version that I had read some twenty plus summers ago. That abridged version was part of a series of classics that had a small squarish shape in it. It had the rough story line for sure, but what was missing was a lot of the atmosphere and inner dialogue in the original that made it the masterpiece it was.
There were times in the book where it had made me weep. I am unsure if it is because of the circumstance [of this year in general], or that the writing was just that good---I will leave it to the reader of this blog post to decide for themselves.
Bildungsroman---it seems like I cannot escape this genre. I don't feel bad about it, but am just merely making an observation.
------
Not so recently, I had finally read two comics from a series that I had been looking for for years ever since I read the first one---it was a cross-over comic of Doraemon and Sun Wukong. The title of the first was 机器猫小叮当西游记（上）：《大战红孩儿》, and it was later on that I learnt that the second title was 机器猫小叮当西游记（下）：《女儿国之游》. It was by sheer happenstance that I came across these two titles---a friend was doing his spring cleaning and talking about his Doraemon comic collection when I was lamenting about not knowing how the story went after reading the first title of this 2-part series, when he promptly snapped a picture of both books and asked me if these were what I was looking for. Amazed, I replied in the affirmative and borrowed them both from him.
The stories of the first book was still as I had remembered them (that's good---it shows that I didn't hallucinate it), but I was a little disappointed with the stories of the second book. First of all, it ended on a cliff-hanger, since there was no resolution in anyway---there was no indication that the group successfully picked up the Tripitaka scriptures, nor was there any indication that 大雄 (Noby in official media, but I'm used to calling him by the Chinese name) nor Doraemon ever quit their journey to the west and head back to their own timeline/world. Secondly, when I was trying to find the provenance of the story to update my read list, I kept running into problems---none of the official lists and compendia were listing any of these two titles. It was infuriating.
I was starting to suspect that while the books are real (I can slam my head into them and give myself a concussion), they could have been some form of bootlegged fan fiction piece, which would explain the two things that I was pointing out. The third thing was that the entire crew of doraemon was not present in the story---only the three boys were there, despite having 宜靜 (靜香, Shizuka, or Sue) on the cover.
Anyway, I liked the cross-over a lot, but felt a little disappointed at the cliff-hanger. I cannot even say that it was tainted by nostalgia, but more like being affected by expectations.
------
I suppose that's all I have to today's entry. And with that, I end at around 1000 words. Till the next one.
This post will not be a full retrospective---I have a tendency to do that nearer the start of the next year as part of the usual statistics information on writing.
Very many things have gone in and out of my head, as well as my heart. Losses are aplenty, but gains are not too few either. Overall, it is hard to say if there is an overall gain or an overall loss.
But does it really matter in the grand scheme of things? Do I really need to keep a solid accounting of the so-called gains and losses on my own? I don't think so.
I think we'll leave the retrospective till when it is supposed to be out, and just switch gears to things that are less depressing.
------
I have started on the Modesty Blaise comic series. I was introduced to this from a throwaway line from ashens, a long time Youtuber whose claim to fame is the sardonic humour displayed from reviewing various things on his infamous brown couch. The art style is on the realistic side, and follows the 3-panel format for each week. Naturally, the series had completed by now, but the serialised strips have been gathered into their own stories, and so the reading was relatively rapid.
It averages about
I like Modesty Blaise. It reminded me of the old adventure type comics like Tarzan, instead of the more common ``a gag a week'' type comics that are out there. The stories are old school, the art work is great given that it was monochrome, and it definitely entertains. I think there were a couple of movies made, but they were flops---I don't think that I am going to watch them though. Something about how the comic format does not quite translate well into the ``standard'' format of a 100-minute film; to pull it off successfully will either require a long enough caper (which definitely involves new writing), or some kind of better way of stringing a few story arcs together, which is hard because they often had one or two months of time interspersed among them implicitly, which could probably affect the pacing of the film.
All in all, still a cool comic, and I hope that I can finish it all before 2020 comes to an end. It is probably one of the few good things that came out of this dumpster fire of a year.
------
I have recently read David Copperfield in the original as written by Charles Dickens, and I must say that it was definitely more impactful than the heavily abridged version that I had read some twenty plus summers ago. That abridged version was part of a series of classics that had a small squarish shape in it. It had the rough story line for sure, but what was missing was a lot of the atmosphere and inner dialogue in the original that made it the masterpiece it was.
There were times in the book where it had made me weep. I am unsure if it is because of the circumstance [of this year in general], or that the writing was just that good---I will leave it to the reader of this blog post to decide for themselves.
Bildungsroman---it seems like I cannot escape this genre. I don't feel bad about it, but am just merely making an observation.
------
Not so recently, I had finally read two comics from a series that I had been looking for for years ever since I read the first one---it was a cross-over comic of Doraemon and Sun Wukong. The title of the first was 机器猫小叮当西游记（上）：《大战红孩儿》, and it was later on that I learnt that the second title was 机器猫小叮当西游记（下）：《女儿国之游》. It was by sheer happenstance that I came across these two titles---a friend was doing his spring cleaning and talking about his Doraemon comic collection when I was lamenting about not knowing how the story went after reading the first title of this 2-part series, when he promptly snapped a picture of both books and asked me if these were what I was looking for. Amazed, I replied in the affirmative and borrowed them both from him.
The stories of the first book was still as I had remembered them (that's good---it shows that I didn't hallucinate it), but I was a little disappointed with the stories of the second book. First of all, it ended on a cliff-hanger, since there was no resolution in anyway---there was no indication that the group successfully picked up the Tripitaka scriptures, nor was there any indication that 大雄 (Noby in official media, but I'm used to calling him by the Chinese name) nor Doraemon ever quit their journey to the west and head back to their own timeline/world. Secondly, when I was trying to find the provenance of the story to update my read list, I kept running into problems---none of the official lists and compendia were listing any of these two titles. It was infuriating.
I was starting to suspect that while the books are real (I can slam my head into them and give myself a concussion), they could have been some form of bootlegged fan fiction piece, which would explain the two things that I was pointing out. The third thing was that the entire crew of doraemon was not present in the story---only the three boys were there, despite having 宜靜 (靜香, Shizuka, or Sue) on the cover.
Anyway, I liked the cross-over a lot, but felt a little disappointed at the cliff-hanger. I cannot even say that it was tainted by nostalgia, but more like being affected by expectations.
------
I suppose that's all I have to today's entry. And with that, I end at around 1000 words. Till the next one.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Life is Strange
Life is strange.
I began this year with great hopes on a lot of things. I was at a job that I didn't hate, knowing that if I put in the time and effort to help the company to grind through the deliverables, I would be allowed to get into my element to do what I was hired to do. I was in love with a wonderful woman, and we were slowly making our way towards a life together as man and wife. My community Chinese Orchestra is going on thirty years strong, and we're about to go for our anniversary performance this year in November. The future, as they say in a clichéd way, was bright.
Then tragedy in the form of COVID-19 struck.
The grind at my job got worse in many different ways, the woman I was in love with decided finally that there was no future with me since our paths in life were clearly diverging, and rehearsals for my Chinese Orchestra are basically stopped.
What a fuck up.
There is some light amid the darkness, like always. I found Jesus, and had accepted him as my personal saviour. I am leaving my job, figuring out that it was not worth the sacrifices that I was putting in. Not the kind of redemption arc that I was looking for, but at this point, I would take almost anything that isn't a net negative.
In retrospect, it seems like some kind of upheaval happens every twelve years or so in my life. Supernatural interference or coincidence, I leave you to decide. But twelve years is roughly the breakpoint for each decade of life, give or take some fudge factors.
As I near the end of my thirty-sixth year of existence, I have started to ask myself, what was it I wanted, and who am I.
No matter how I wanted to swing it, there is no denying that I am middle-aged at this point. Without screwing up too much, I'll probably live till at least seventy, after which it is up to how much money I have. My parents aren't likely to live beyond twenty years, so I have that going for me too.
What was it I wanted, and who am I?
Some have said that I have accomplished a lot. Truly, what is it I have accomplished? Gotten a Masters in Computer Science? Please, it was course-based, and hardly worth mentioning considering that I don't think I learnt more than what I had already known---it was mostly a paper gathering exercise to satisfy those who command capital, just like every other activity those of us who can only trade our labour (mental or menial) for some capital to re-new ourselves and continue to pay the upkeep cost of living in modern society.
I want to say, all I want now is just to be with the Lord, because there really isn't anything meaningful left to do in this life, but that would be a sin. Theologically, my life has been ransomed by Jesus through the cross, and so I am not allowed to just die like this without doing anything to bring glory to the name of God. Pragmatically, there is perhaps some use for me and my so-called qualities---it is just a case of finding the right fit. Despite all efforts to be as knowledgeable as I can be, the world in infocomm tech is always run by greedy capitalists---it is never enough. Oh you know machine learning? That's cool, but ah, you don't have certification in cloud stuff, so you are useless. Oh you can program in Java? That's cool, but really we are looking for someone in NodeJS. Oh you know algorithms? That's cool, but can you also do UI/UX design? No? Oh too bad.
What the holy hell is that supposed to mean? Is all that I have learnt throughout my twenty years of experience in computer science reduced to only whether I can follow the trends of the last five years?
I'm just... tired.
Tired of all this bullshit from the world of infocomm tech.
It is never enough.
You can have deep knowledge of something that people need, but they will always find some way of demeaning you by comparing you against what you don't have.
Oh, you are trained in artificial intelligence concepts? Cool cool... but ah, it seems you are not PMI certified. Yes yes I know our job description didn't put that in, but you know, it's understood, right? So many coders out there (by the way, did you know that we need more coders? hint hint wink wink), but we really need coders who can do UI/UX, database design, embedded system, mobile apps, cloud service management, customer management, and agile, because we want to have an end-to-end product in three months.
It is never enough.
Never mind that I have programmed in more than twenty different types of languages by syntax, semantics, and paradigms. Never mind that I can pick up the latest trending framework within a month. Never mind that I don't mind working hard in the beginning to get up to speed without any form of training just to help move things along so that I can finally do what I was hired to do. As long as I don't fit the ``code monkey'' stereotype, I don't count.
Only in the world of infocomm tech that one is expected to take courses and update one's knowledge on one's own dime and time. Want to get certified in cloud? Oh, please go take the AWS courses on your own time---you must take leave to go for seminars and take your exams. By the way, you are expected to get the certification for your job---if you don't get it by the end of your probation, well, we may need to re-evaluate your fit. Oh dear, you took AWS? Apparently we are going to use Azure now, so your certification isn't enough any more---please be a certified Azure engineer so that you can work with us.
It is never enough.
Infocomm tech needs better managers, especially with respect to software and things relating to software. Just because the artefact created cannot literally hurt one physically when mashed into one's head doesn't make it any easier---it actually makes things harder. Because unlike hardware, software does not have innate physics to control what can or cannot be done. The design and building of software requires a lot of thought to ensure that the physics (i.e. world-level constraints that restrict what can be done the way the laws of regular physics limit energies and power in the real world) is present and correct. If I build a circuit board with certain parameters, I know full well that if I exceed those parameters, there is a high chance I will break the circuit completely, and it will fail. But if I do that to software with incomplete physics, the software will still go on its merry way, leading to a breakage in some obscure future that no one can easily predict.
Agile as a concept is good---it is better to reach clearly defined checkpoints, testing and failing bad concepts early, and to keep progressing. Agile as some prescribed ritual is terrible. Agile as some prescribed ritual with cover-your-ass documentation requirements that come with a normal waterfall model is downright sacrilegious.
But what was it I wanted, and who am I?
I don't know fully right now. And that's why I need to take a break and re-think things. Many things, actually.
God doesn't draw one out of something, but draws one into something. I have a vague sense of what it is, but it will take time for the pieces to fall into place to provide a good direction for me to follow.
After all, what turns out in the end isn't of my will, but His. I have the power of choice, but in the grand scheme of things, He is still in control.
And when He tells me it is time to go, I cannot disobey. Amen.
I began this year with great hopes on a lot of things. I was at a job that I didn't hate, knowing that if I put in the time and effort to help the company to grind through the deliverables, I would be allowed to get into my element to do what I was hired to do. I was in love with a wonderful woman, and we were slowly making our way towards a life together as man and wife. My community Chinese Orchestra is going on thirty years strong, and we're about to go for our anniversary performance this year in November. The future, as they say in a clichéd way, was bright.
Then tragedy in the form of COVID-19 struck.
The grind at my job got worse in many different ways, the woman I was in love with decided finally that there was no future with me since our paths in life were clearly diverging, and rehearsals for my Chinese Orchestra are basically stopped.
What a fuck up.
There is some light amid the darkness, like always. I found Jesus, and had accepted him as my personal saviour. I am leaving my job, figuring out that it was not worth the sacrifices that I was putting in. Not the kind of redemption arc that I was looking for, but at this point, I would take almost anything that isn't a net negative.
In retrospect, it seems like some kind of upheaval happens every twelve years or so in my life. Supernatural interference or coincidence, I leave you to decide. But twelve years is roughly the breakpoint for each decade of life, give or take some fudge factors.
As I near the end of my thirty-sixth year of existence, I have started to ask myself, what was it I wanted, and who am I.
No matter how I wanted to swing it, there is no denying that I am middle-aged at this point. Without screwing up too much, I'll probably live till at least seventy, after which it is up to how much money I have. My parents aren't likely to live beyond twenty years, so I have that going for me too.
What was it I wanted, and who am I?
Some have said that I have accomplished a lot. Truly, what is it I have accomplished? Gotten a Masters in Computer Science? Please, it was course-based, and hardly worth mentioning considering that I don't think I learnt more than what I had already known---it was mostly a paper gathering exercise to satisfy those who command capital, just like every other activity those of us who can only trade our labour (mental or menial) for some capital to re-new ourselves and continue to pay the upkeep cost of living in modern society.
I want to say, all I want now is just to be with the Lord, because there really isn't anything meaningful left to do in this life, but that would be a sin. Theologically, my life has been ransomed by Jesus through the cross, and so I am not allowed to just die like this without doing anything to bring glory to the name of God. Pragmatically, there is perhaps some use for me and my so-called qualities---it is just a case of finding the right fit. Despite all efforts to be as knowledgeable as I can be, the world in infocomm tech is always run by greedy capitalists---it is never enough. Oh you know machine learning? That's cool, but ah, you don't have certification in cloud stuff, so you are useless. Oh you can program in Java? That's cool, but really we are looking for someone in NodeJS. Oh you know algorithms? That's cool, but can you also do UI/UX design? No? Oh too bad.
What the holy hell is that supposed to mean? Is all that I have learnt throughout my twenty years of experience in computer science reduced to only whether I can follow the trends of the last five years?
I'm just... tired.
Tired of all this bullshit from the world of infocomm tech.
It is never enough.
You can have deep knowledge of something that people need, but they will always find some way of demeaning you by comparing you against what you don't have.
Oh, you are trained in artificial intelligence concepts? Cool cool... but ah, it seems you are not PMI certified. Yes yes I know our job description didn't put that in, but you know, it's understood, right? So many coders out there (by the way, did you know that we need more coders? hint hint wink wink), but we really need coders who can do UI/UX, database design, embedded system, mobile apps, cloud service management, customer management, and agile, because we want to have an end-to-end product in three months.
It is never enough.
Never mind that I have programmed in more than twenty different types of languages by syntax, semantics, and paradigms. Never mind that I can pick up the latest trending framework within a month. Never mind that I don't mind working hard in the beginning to get up to speed without any form of training just to help move things along so that I can finally do what I was hired to do. As long as I don't fit the ``code monkey'' stereotype, I don't count.
Only in the world of infocomm tech that one is expected to take courses and update one's knowledge on one's own dime and time. Want to get certified in cloud? Oh, please go take the AWS courses on your own time---you must take leave to go for seminars and take your exams. By the way, you are expected to get the certification for your job---if you don't get it by the end of your probation, well, we may need to re-evaluate your fit. Oh dear, you took AWS? Apparently we are going to use Azure now, so your certification isn't enough any more---please be a certified Azure engineer so that you can work with us.
It is never enough.
Infocomm tech needs better managers, especially with respect to software and things relating to software. Just because the artefact created cannot literally hurt one physically when mashed into one's head doesn't make it any easier---it actually makes things harder. Because unlike hardware, software does not have innate physics to control what can or cannot be done. The design and building of software requires a lot of thought to ensure that the physics (i.e. world-level constraints that restrict what can be done the way the laws of regular physics limit energies and power in the real world) is present and correct. If I build a circuit board with certain parameters, I know full well that if I exceed those parameters, there is a high chance I will break the circuit completely, and it will fail. But if I do that to software with incomplete physics, the software will still go on its merry way, leading to a breakage in some obscure future that no one can easily predict.
Agile as a concept is good---it is better to reach clearly defined checkpoints, testing and failing bad concepts early, and to keep progressing. Agile as some prescribed ritual is terrible. Agile as some prescribed ritual with cover-your-ass documentation requirements that come with a normal waterfall model is downright sacrilegious.
But what was it I wanted, and who am I?
I don't know fully right now. And that's why I need to take a break and re-think things. Many things, actually.
God doesn't draw one out of something, but draws one into something. I have a vague sense of what it is, but it will take time for the pieces to fall into place to provide a good direction for me to follow.
After all, what turns out in the end isn't of my will, but His. I have the power of choice, but in the grand scheme of things, He is still in control.
And when He tells me it is time to go, I cannot disobey. Amen.
Sunday, December 06, 2020
T'is December
It's a Sunday. The first Sunday of the month of December.
What do I feel? I would want to say, I feel almost nothing.
It's just another day now, considering that I am no longer in a relationship with another person. I spend time nerding out, reading mostly, and then doing some other things that are more geeky/nerdy in nature.
Like playing my 笛子, or flute, or even the 埙, which was a gift to me from HY about a year and change ago, with the request that I record myself playing a piece for her.
I am still working on that. I think I should have something ready before 2021 swings by, and if I were late, it would not extend to beyond January, when I have a couple of leave days around my birthday to do things that I enjoy doing, away from work-related things.
The past few weekends were filled with the meeting up of various people. This weekend, it's a quite a quiet one. Just sitting at home, resting as much as it is possible given all the stresses that are upon me, self-inflicted or otherwise.
NaNoWriMo had come and gone, and I am back to what I would call the new usual.
It was as though I had never been involved in a significant relationship with someone for five years.
It is actually pretty scary how those five years just felt like a glitch in the matrix that seemed to have been rectified the moment the circuit breaker came about.
Is this really the fate of one who claims to be ``a man with hardly a past''?
------
Life isn't so bad. I still have a job; in this time and age, I suppose that is the single most important thing. Job satisfaction, personal mental/physical health and the like are definitely secondary to just being able to pay the bills. And boy are there many bills to pay these days.
Bitterness isn't a good thing to feel. So I need to learn to not feel that way. It can be hard at times, but it is important to remember that the Lord is with me, and that I can entrust Him with my fears, and He will deliver me from them, somehow.
Hey, even if it means I get called back to be with the Lord, so be it.
As I am nearing my next integer year of existence, and being in this state where I am no longer in a serious relationship, I have been starting to question myself more and more seriously again about whether I am better off alone, corporally.
Maybe being alone, at least for now, will give me a chance to dream once again. I seem to have lost that ability to dream for quite a while, and that was before I was involved in that last serious relationship, so let's be honest and not play the blame game here.
But what is there to dream about? The world is really messed up... are there really any dreams left that are worth pursuing?
...or is serving the Lord totally and absolutely, eschewing all other forms of human institutions the only way forward?
These definitely require quite a bit of meditation and praying to ``get right''.
------
In other news, I have slowly reduced the amount of liquor that I have in my stash. The latest one to be consumed completely is the Bacardi 151 that I had purchased back in December 2014. That was when I decided to make the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which included Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, Jameson, and Bacardi 151. I can no longer make that drink because I have finished up all the liquor that go into it.
These days I just drink beer about once a month after a particularly long day of work with too many meetings at the bar near my office, Georges @ TS. Of course, I don't just drink beer... I also eat some (heh, more like too much) food, and do a lot of reading. It's just like when I would occasionally head down to Brotzeit @ VivoCity back in the day just to drink beer and read, except it is much closer. Georges @ TS being a small [franchise] bar meant that eventually the staff there knew me better, and there was always something to talk about every now and then as I take breaks between the reading.
Alcohol consumption is tricky, considering that I need to balance the amount of liver damage that I am willing to sustain, considering that Paracetamol is still the premier way of controlling tension headaches, but that drug does a real number on the liver, as does alcohol. Those two cannot mix, and I think that I thread a very fine line of permanent damage with the twenty-four-hour spacing that I set up.
But what's there to do? It's not like I can keep inviting friends out to chat and pass the time---I only have that many friends, and meeting them super often will only wear out my welcome.
Well, hello again books, my old companions from the dark dark times of secondary school. It seems like it's you and I all over again, almost as though nothing has changed in the twenty years in between.
Okay, when I start getting all maudlin with no other content is a sign that I have written enough for now. So, till the next update then.
What do I feel? I would want to say, I feel almost nothing.
It's just another day now, considering that I am no longer in a relationship with another person. I spend time nerding out, reading mostly, and then doing some other things that are more geeky/nerdy in nature.
Like playing my 笛子, or flute, or even the 埙, which was a gift to me from HY about a year and change ago, with the request that I record myself playing a piece for her.
I am still working on that. I think I should have something ready before 2021 swings by, and if I were late, it would not extend to beyond January, when I have a couple of leave days around my birthday to do things that I enjoy doing, away from work-related things.
The past few weekends were filled with the meeting up of various people. This weekend, it's a quite a quiet one. Just sitting at home, resting as much as it is possible given all the stresses that are upon me, self-inflicted or otherwise.
NaNoWriMo had come and gone, and I am back to what I would call the new usual.
It was as though I had never been involved in a significant relationship with someone for five years.
It is actually pretty scary how those five years just felt like a glitch in the matrix that seemed to have been rectified the moment the circuit breaker came about.
Is this really the fate of one who claims to be ``a man with hardly a past''?
------
Life isn't so bad. I still have a job; in this time and age, I suppose that is the single most important thing. Job satisfaction, personal mental/physical health and the like are definitely secondary to just being able to pay the bills. And boy are there many bills to pay these days.
Bitterness isn't a good thing to feel. So I need to learn to not feel that way. It can be hard at times, but it is important to remember that the Lord is with me, and that I can entrust Him with my fears, and He will deliver me from them, somehow.
Hey, even if it means I get called back to be with the Lord, so be it.
As I am nearing my next integer year of existence, and being in this state where I am no longer in a serious relationship, I have been starting to question myself more and more seriously again about whether I am better off alone, corporally.
Maybe being alone, at least for now, will give me a chance to dream once again. I seem to have lost that ability to dream for quite a while, and that was before I was involved in that last serious relationship, so let's be honest and not play the blame game here.
But what is there to dream about? The world is really messed up... are there really any dreams left that are worth pursuing?
...or is serving the Lord totally and absolutely, eschewing all other forms of human institutions the only way forward?
These definitely require quite a bit of meditation and praying to ``get right''.
------
In other news, I have slowly reduced the amount of liquor that I have in my stash. The latest one to be consumed completely is the Bacardi 151 that I had purchased back in December 2014. That was when I decided to make the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which included Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, Jameson, and Bacardi 151. I can no longer make that drink because I have finished up all the liquor that go into it.
These days I just drink beer about once a month after a particularly long day of work with too many meetings at the bar near my office, Georges @ TS. Of course, I don't just drink beer... I also eat some (heh, more like too much) food, and do a lot of reading. It's just like when I would occasionally head down to Brotzeit @ VivoCity back in the day just to drink beer and read, except it is much closer. Georges @ TS being a small [franchise] bar meant that eventually the staff there knew me better, and there was always something to talk about every now and then as I take breaks between the reading.
Alcohol consumption is tricky, considering that I need to balance the amount of liver damage that I am willing to sustain, considering that Paracetamol is still the premier way of controlling tension headaches, but that drug does a real number on the liver, as does alcohol. Those two cannot mix, and I think that I thread a very fine line of permanent damage with the twenty-four-hour spacing that I set up.
But what's there to do? It's not like I can keep inviting friends out to chat and pass the time---I only have that many friends, and meeting them super often will only wear out my welcome.
Well, hello again books, my old companions from the dark dark times of secondary school. It seems like it's you and I all over again, almost as though nothing has changed in the twenty years in between.
Okay, when I start getting all maudlin with no other content is a sign that I have written enough for now. So, till the next update then.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
I ATEN'T DED YET
About a month of silence. A little worrying in some ways, given the recent trend of posts and the subject matter in them.
But I have a valid excuse: honest! I was working on my NaNoWriMo 2020 entry. And it had been a rather weird month. For one, my usual writing time was no longer that of the lunch hour, but at stupid o'clock in the morning before work (it's more like 0630hrs to 0745hrs, so not really stupid o'clock). For two, I have not been having enough sleep for several weeks now, often turning in at around midnight, and waking up nearer 0530hrs.
Why? I don't know. I suspect dis-stress. I only claim that conclusion because I would often be nursing a tension headache from around 0900hrs till whenever I stopped work at the end of the day. I was really wired, and I am not referring to the amount of coffee that I was drinking. Before, I had been downing like four or five mugs of that thing before noon, but I had since cut it back down till like two or three at the most.
No change---the headaches still came. I've just learnt to live with it. I don't think any amount of sick leave or medication will help me deal with it. There were some fundamental things that needed to be addressed, and as long as they weren't going to be addressed, I would continue to have these headaches.
Anyway, back to waking up at stupid o'clock in the morning. One moment I would be dreaming, and the next moment, my brain would be running at full steam, jerking me wide awake. I dragged myself up only through the sheer power of will and prayer, praying to God and thanking Him that he had allowed me to live another day (I wasn't dead yet), and praying that He would bless me with wisdom to get through the day.
He hasn't disappointed me so far, and I have no reason to believe that He would disappoint me ever.
And at the end of the day, I just give a little prayer to God, thanking Him for the day that had gone, and asked Him to grant me good rest so that perhaps I would awake again the next day with renewed vigour to do what I do to bring glory to His name.
But all that aside, this year's NaNoWriMo entry is named The Lost Year, and is a real-life inspired fictionalised re-telling of all the nonsense that had gone on in my life for this year. In a meta sort of way, I had talked about it in the novel itself. Allow me to bring it up here to avoid having to re-think how to present it:
Consider it a catharsis for myself as a new chapter begins once again.
Oh, the not-so-new website is still as bad as before, but I suppose we just need to make do with what we are given---it is not as though they are going to fix it anyway, considering that it has been a year already, and nothing has changed.
------
In other news, I'm back to doing a lot of reading once more. Part of the reason is to re-saturate my brain with knowledge as I keep it soaked deep with the wisdom from the Bible, and the other part of the reason is to fill in the apparent copious amount of free time that come about from not having another person whom I need to spend time with, considering that I am single now. It's funny how quickly I got over things this time round, not ``got over'' in the sense that I am ready to date again, but ``got over'' in the sense that I was not drowning myself in alcohol or any of that sort of nonsense the last time something serious was seriously marred that way.
I am either getting more jaded, or just have found better coping mechanisms. It is hard to tell.
Knowing that God is there and is with me helps keep the darkest thoughts at bay, but there is still a sense of hollowness that is not easily filled in. It is not spiritual hollowness---that has been filled with the lovingkindness of Christ---but some kind of physical/interactive hollowness that drove me away from my original thoughts of slugging it out alone some fifteen years ago, and into the experimenting with being in intimate relationships with people. I suppose as one gets older, the concept of ``No man is an island'' will hit harder and harder until one of four things happen: I eventually settle it by having a spouse and starting my family (no matter what size); or I eventually settle it by having a robust community network of friends (regular or church family---it doesn't matter); or I eventually settle it by being overly engrossed in some kind of mission/vision that it did not matter to me any more; or I eventually settle it by being dead corporeally.
I still think that Ecclesiastes 3:1--8 is applicable. God will guide the way when I choose to listen to Him. I'm not as spiritually endowed the way some other believers are, but I believe that He knows the best way to get His message to me, and I have seen some of the ways that he is doing that. I just need to listen, and obey. So far nothing He has told me to do has gone against what is essentially my nature, and for that I am grateful, as it is a personal validation that God is indeed who He is.
Alright, that's all I want to write here for today. It's just a quick note to show that I'm not dead yet (thankfully perhaps). A semi-regular update will happen from now on, since there isn't a NaNoWriMo to absorb all the writing that I can do.
Till the next update then.
But I have a valid excuse: honest! I was working on my NaNoWriMo 2020 entry. And it had been a rather weird month. For one, my usual writing time was no longer that of the lunch hour, but at stupid o'clock in the morning before work (it's more like 0630hrs to 0745hrs, so not really stupid o'clock). For two, I have not been having enough sleep for several weeks now, often turning in at around midnight, and waking up nearer 0530hrs.
Why? I don't know. I suspect dis-stress. I only claim that conclusion because I would often be nursing a tension headache from around 0900hrs till whenever I stopped work at the end of the day. I was really wired, and I am not referring to the amount of coffee that I was drinking. Before, I had been downing like four or five mugs of that thing before noon, but I had since cut it back down till like two or three at the most.
No change---the headaches still came. I've just learnt to live with it. I don't think any amount of sick leave or medication will help me deal with it. There were some fundamental things that needed to be addressed, and as long as they weren't going to be addressed, I would continue to have these headaches.
Anyway, back to waking up at stupid o'clock in the morning. One moment I would be dreaming, and the next moment, my brain would be running at full steam, jerking me wide awake. I dragged myself up only through the sheer power of will and prayer, praying to God and thanking Him that he had allowed me to live another day (I wasn't dead yet), and praying that He would bless me with wisdom to get through the day.
He hasn't disappointed me so far, and I have no reason to believe that He would disappoint me ever.
And at the end of the day, I just give a little prayer to God, thanking Him for the day that had gone, and asked Him to grant me good rest so that perhaps I would awake again the next day with renewed vigour to do what I do to bring glory to His name.
But all that aside, this year's NaNoWriMo entry is named The Lost Year, and is a real-life inspired fictionalised re-telling of all the nonsense that had gone on in my life for this year. In a meta sort of way, I had talked about it in the novel itself. Allow me to bring it up here to avoid having to re-think how to present it:
I had a rough plan of the story structure for this year's entry for NaNoWriMo---I had observed that the whole year had basically been shot down to hell for whatever reason, and that just trying to keep track of what had been happening in real life was already more dramatic than any form of fiction that I could come up with; this year was just that bad. There was of course the obvious relationship status change on my end, and my discovery and acceptance of Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, but there were also other bad things that had been happening, like the wild fires in Australia, the droughts in Africa, the overly severe hurricane season within the month, and of course, the once in a lifetime experience of living through a true blue pandemic during the era of technological supremacy guided by the most mal-organised of the natural world hegemon, the United States of America. With that in mind, the structure for this year's novel entry was straightforward---set up twelve months' worth of stories and events into individual chapters, and divide out the fifty thousand evenly among them, leading to roughly forty one hundred and sixty seven or so words per chapter. Given my usual rate of about two thousand words per hour, and limiting myself to an hour of writing a day (given my rather punishing work schedule for now), the numbers worked out to about twenty four days total time of writing, well within the range of the duration provided.And that was how this year's entry was completed.
That of course was the basic plan. And so for the twenty or so days, I would diligently put in my two thousand or so words per day, completing one chapter roughly every couple of days. The more I wrote, the more amused I was seeing that I could actually find enough odd or bad events that had occurred to fill up the spaces---for what it was worth though, since it was fiction I took the liberty to alter the source event information in ways that I felt was more conducive to story telling, shifting time periods a little, changing the names of the guilty and innocent, and using inspired events to create fictional ones. Calling this novel ``The Lost Year'' was starting to prove prophetic---it was the lost year for me and world because it was the year where almost all of our plans were rudely stopped and forced to be reconsidered anew, as though there was no progress whatsover throughout the year. In fact, in some ways, it could even be thought of as the world undergoing a regression instead of a progression instead.
It was definitely a sobering thought.
Consider it a catharsis for myself as a new chapter begins once again.
Oh, the not-so-new website is still as bad as before, but I suppose we just need to make do with what we are given---it is not as though they are going to fix it anyway, considering that it has been a year already, and nothing has changed.
------
In other news, I'm back to doing a lot of reading once more. Part of the reason is to re-saturate my brain with knowledge as I keep it soaked deep with the wisdom from the Bible, and the other part of the reason is to fill in the apparent copious amount of free time that come about from not having another person whom I need to spend time with, considering that I am single now. It's funny how quickly I got over things this time round, not ``got over'' in the sense that I am ready to date again, but ``got over'' in the sense that I was not drowning myself in alcohol or any of that sort of nonsense the last time something serious was seriously marred that way.
I am either getting more jaded, or just have found better coping mechanisms. It is hard to tell.
Knowing that God is there and is with me helps keep the darkest thoughts at bay, but there is still a sense of hollowness that is not easily filled in. It is not spiritual hollowness---that has been filled with the lovingkindness of Christ---but some kind of physical/interactive hollowness that drove me away from my original thoughts of slugging it out alone some fifteen years ago, and into the experimenting with being in intimate relationships with people. I suppose as one gets older, the concept of ``No man is an island'' will hit harder and harder until one of four things happen: I eventually settle it by having a spouse and starting my family (no matter what size); or I eventually settle it by having a robust community network of friends (regular or church family---it doesn't matter); or I eventually settle it by being overly engrossed in some kind of mission/vision that it did not matter to me any more; or I eventually settle it by being dead corporeally.
I still think that Ecclesiastes 3:1--8 is applicable. God will guide the way when I choose to listen to Him. I'm not as spiritually endowed the way some other believers are, but I believe that He knows the best way to get His message to me, and I have seen some of the ways that he is doing that. I just need to listen, and obey. So far nothing He has told me to do has gone against what is essentially my nature, and for that I am grateful, as it is a personal validation that God is indeed who He is.
Alright, that's all I want to write here for today. It's just a quick note to show that I'm not dead yet (thankfully perhaps). A semi-regular update will happen from now on, since there isn't a NaNoWriMo to absorb all the writing that I can do.
Till the next update then.
Sunday, October 18, 2020
Busted Shoulder and Other Adventures
I seriously am not intending of making it a regular thing of writing an entry about once a week. But for now, it seems like it is going to be this way for a while.
I have a busted up right shoulder. It's basically a sprain on one of the anterior ligaments---it's going to take about six weeks for it to be fully recovered, assuming that I do the right thing and not aggravate it. This means that I can't do any of the usual morning exercises from now till roughly the end of NaNoWriMo. This is what happens when I use bad mechanics to move masses around (15kg on the first in an awkward ``up shrugged'' shoulder angle, 20kg ×2 for the water cooler refills). It makes typing on the laptop rather difficult, since the normal typing angle has my arms extended forwards.
I was given some strong NSAIDs in addition to a mild oral steroid dose to reduce the inflammation to reduce the pain and aggravation on the ligament through all the movements. It's definitely much better now, despite not being on any of the meds for the last two days or so. I just need to remember to not load up my arm with weights.
In other news, after more than a year, I can finally start cycling to and fro the office again. It had always been one of my wishes when I started work at the new place, but the time was never opportune---within a couple of weeks of first arriving and settling in, I was ``shipped off'' off-site to work on a project that was... problematic for six months or so, before the whole COVID-19 pandemic kicked in with us having to work from home due to the ``circuit breaker''. After the so-called Phase Two kicked in, I was told to return to work at the office, but my original assigned space was no longer mine to use, and ended up being a nomad, which made stowing away a foldable bicycle in the office a tough thing to do.
It was only recently that we had our office space sorted out that I could finally bring out my bicycle to cycle. And it has definitely helped my mood a lot. In place of the exercises that I did in the morning, I know replaced it with semi-cardio from the daily trip to and fro the office. I am amused that my legs could really take a beating---the round trip was about 8 miles, but every now and then I would throw in a 12-mile ``north east riverine loop'' run.
Because of one such move on Friday, I am pleased to announce that my Eddington Number for cycling is at E15.
I wondered if the cycling was something that was safe for my upper arms or not... so far it seems like that are no adverse side effects. I had obtained a better lifting handle for moving my bicycle about with my left (i.e. off) hand, and have been mindful in not using bad mechanics. The steering on my bicycle is very light, and thus there was little need to jerk my handle bars much.
------
I mentioned how cycling was improving my mood. That is a fact. I think the rush from the physical activity was acting as an anti-depressant the way running would be done by me in the past when I was studying in the US to act as an anti-depressant. Already I feel significantly less affected by intrusive thoughts---when the body is adequately tired out through the physical activity, there just seems to be less energy left for the mind to come up with random, unnecessary, and downright bizarre ideation. It is also perhaps a side effect of just time and God doing their things in helping me to heal, which is a hilarious observation considering the massive amounts of changes that I am forced to seriously deal with in general.
But those are thoughts for a different medium, like something that is on paper. You know, like a paper journal.
I recently found out about ElectroBOOM, a cool Youtube dude who talks about electrical and electronics engineering in a way that is not unlike old school Mythbusters or even (haha) Brainiac. The content is really cool, the presentation is a good mix of funny accent, physical humour, and self-deprecative aphorisms all rolled into one. I really recommend giving his Youtube channel a watch to learn something. He does plug his sponsors in his videos, but they are often done in a tasteful way that makes it clear that it is a plug, while still maintaining some kind of continuity with respect to the content of the video that he was making.
------
October is almost done, just another 12+ days more to go. And with that, the self-imposed hermitting is likely to end temporarily as we transit into the annual National Novel Writing Month of November. I am probably ready to meet up with people again when next month rolls around, but as always, it's all about the circumstances. It is not that I have everything figured out already---I don't---but that I suppose it is time to just reconnect with people who claimed to be my friends once again.
I have lost my best friend already, and I think that losing even more friends, best or otherwise, really isn't going to be good for my future mental health.
In some ways, I don't think that I have fully resolved the issues that are in my head. In many ways, I think I have just put them aside in the vault that used to be called ``MT's feelings'', the same place that all my feelings have resided in since before I turned twenty. I'm not sure why I opened up that vault when I was twenty-one, and right now, I'm not sure if I want to keep it open still. Only God will know what I ought to do with it, but for now, I'm just putting things away where they cannot harm me.
Jesus Christ is my personal saviour, and in many senses of the word, my life is no longer mine to dictate but His to control.
Maybe I am going to end up becoming even more insufferable. Initially, I was hard to tolerate because I was just so... cerebral about everything. Throw in now the born-again discovery of personal salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, would it just be the case that my destiny is to be one who will forever be apart from the rest of the world?
Is that... a good thing?
I have a busted up right shoulder. It's basically a sprain on one of the anterior ligaments---it's going to take about six weeks for it to be fully recovered, assuming that I do the right thing and not aggravate it. This means that I can't do any of the usual morning exercises from now till roughly the end of NaNoWriMo. This is what happens when I use bad mechanics to move masses around (15kg on the first in an awkward ``up shrugged'' shoulder angle, 20kg ×2 for the water cooler refills). It makes typing on the laptop rather difficult, since the normal typing angle has my arms extended forwards.
I was given some strong NSAIDs in addition to a mild oral steroid dose to reduce the inflammation to reduce the pain and aggravation on the ligament through all the movements. It's definitely much better now, despite not being on any of the meds for the last two days or so. I just need to remember to not load up my arm with weights.
In other news, after more than a year, I can finally start cycling to and fro the office again. It had always been one of my wishes when I started work at the new place, but the time was never opportune---within a couple of weeks of first arriving and settling in, I was ``shipped off'' off-site to work on a project that was... problematic for six months or so, before the whole COVID-19 pandemic kicked in with us having to work from home due to the ``circuit breaker''. After the so-called Phase Two kicked in, I was told to return to work at the office, but my original assigned space was no longer mine to use, and ended up being a nomad, which made stowing away a foldable bicycle in the office a tough thing to do.
It was only recently that we had our office space sorted out that I could finally bring out my bicycle to cycle. And it has definitely helped my mood a lot. In place of the exercises that I did in the morning, I know replaced it with semi-cardio from the daily trip to and fro the office. I am amused that my legs could really take a beating---the round trip was about 8 miles, but every now and then I would throw in a 12-mile ``north east riverine loop'' run.
Because of one such move on Friday, I am pleased to announce that my Eddington Number for cycling is at E15.
I wondered if the cycling was something that was safe for my upper arms or not... so far it seems like that are no adverse side effects. I had obtained a better lifting handle for moving my bicycle about with my left (i.e. off) hand, and have been mindful in not using bad mechanics. The steering on my bicycle is very light, and thus there was little need to jerk my handle bars much.
------
I mentioned how cycling was improving my mood. That is a fact. I think the rush from the physical activity was acting as an anti-depressant the way running would be done by me in the past when I was studying in the US to act as an anti-depressant. Already I feel significantly less affected by intrusive thoughts---when the body is adequately tired out through the physical activity, there just seems to be less energy left for the mind to come up with random, unnecessary, and downright bizarre ideation. It is also perhaps a side effect of just time and God doing their things in helping me to heal, which is a hilarious observation considering the massive amounts of changes that I am forced to seriously deal with in general.
But those are thoughts for a different medium, like something that is on paper. You know, like a paper journal.
I recently found out about ElectroBOOM, a cool Youtube dude who talks about electrical and electronics engineering in a way that is not unlike old school Mythbusters or even (haha) Brainiac. The content is really cool, the presentation is a good mix of funny accent, physical humour, and self-deprecative aphorisms all rolled into one. I really recommend giving his Youtube channel a watch to learn something. He does plug his sponsors in his videos, but they are often done in a tasteful way that makes it clear that it is a plug, while still maintaining some kind of continuity with respect to the content of the video that he was making.
------
October is almost done, just another 12+ days more to go. And with that, the self-imposed hermitting is likely to end temporarily as we transit into the annual National Novel Writing Month of November. I am probably ready to meet up with people again when next month rolls around, but as always, it's all about the circumstances. It is not that I have everything figured out already---I don't---but that I suppose it is time to just reconnect with people who claimed to be my friends once again.
I have lost my best friend already, and I think that losing even more friends, best or otherwise, really isn't going to be good for my future mental health.
In some ways, I don't think that I have fully resolved the issues that are in my head. In many ways, I think I have just put them aside in the vault that used to be called ``MT's feelings'', the same place that all my feelings have resided in since before I turned twenty. I'm not sure why I opened up that vault when I was twenty-one, and right now, I'm not sure if I want to keep it open still. Only God will know what I ought to do with it, but for now, I'm just putting things away where they cannot harm me.
Jesus Christ is my personal saviour, and in many senses of the word, my life is no longer mine to dictate but His to control.
Maybe I am going to end up becoming even more insufferable. Initially, I was hard to tolerate because I was just so... cerebral about everything. Throw in now the born-again discovery of personal salvation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, would it just be the case that my destiny is to be one who will forever be apart from the rest of the world?
Is that... a good thing?
Sunday, October 11, 2020
Doom Eternal and Dizi Research
The traditional witching hour has struck once again, and I feel compelled to fill in the void with a little bit of verbiage.
The Monday passed, I took a day of leave. Doesn't matter what the original plan was, but it evolved into a type of R&R for myself so that I don't get completely burnt out. What happened in the end was that I took the opportunity to run a few errands. Some of the errands included sending my bicycle off for servicing (the seat post was sliding a little too often for my taste), and purchasing replacement cup cushions for my over-the-ear headphones.
Those on their own aren't worthy of any major exposition. I just want to share that B-spokes offers damn good service. Very responsive, and very good workmanship. Maybe this is relevant to some of the readers of my blog.
I've also finished reading the Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd Edition) book by Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig. A good refresher in many ways, though the contents may be a bit dated at this point. But anything at this stage is better than just sitting there and vegetating away my training as I do work that is nearly orthogonal to what I have been trained in for about 40% of my life.
------
In other less depressing news, I found out an interesting dizi fingering combination for the elusive low instrument B-C trill. In more traditional terms, when we are using 筒音作5̣, the 3-4 trill is notoriously non-existent. Most ways of treating it are to just play it as 3-4♯ instead, that is, by raising the left index finger and putting it down (assuming orthodox stance). Much of the dizi repertoire assumes this type of trill, based on the principle that trills are to be counted by alternation along the instrument hole design, as opposed to that of the scale used as in ye olde western music concept.
If we were to play 3-4 trill (or instrument B-C trill) normally, it would involve some complex acrobatics for the left hand, alternating between 6 and 54 (using the usual dizi hole numbering strategy). It's horrific.
The inspiration came when I was looking at the 4-5 trill (instrument C-D trill). It involved an alternation of 5421 and 54321, i.e. merely moving the right index finger. I messed with 542 and 5432, and heard a sound whose pitch was a tad sharper than instrument B. So I lowered it a smidgen by half-covering 1, and voila---I got a working instrument B-C trill just like that. This has the advantage of not having to flatten the instrument C pitch through lipping 5432. Works best for extended trills---if it is of a short enough duration, I suppose that alternating between 542 and 5432 is somewhat workable.
Naturally, I've reworked the tremolo fingering chart to reflect this finding.
------
Work-wise, let's just say that things are getting more depressing in a different way. I'm not going to talk much more about it right now---there will be the right time and right place to say more; the time is not now.
I've gotten back to playing Doom Eternal on Eileen-II, in a bid to actually complete the game. I've started to get used to the so-called ``alpha rotation'' mechanism---it involves firing and then immediately switching among the three big single-shot conventional weapons of the Super Shotgun (SSG), the Ballista, and the Rocket Launcher using the mouse wheel.
The original ``alpha rotation'' was a technique for maximised DPS from Doom 2016, and it was done with the Gauss Cannon instead of the Ballista, and often combined with the glitch for ``instant Siege mode''. I first heard/saw it during the speedruns for the original Doom 2016. The key idea here is to use fast weapon switching [via the mousewheel] to interrupt the reloading animation for each of these weapons.
I cannot do the complete rotation now---I'm often just doing SSG↔Ballista. Sometimes I manage to do the SSG→Ballista→SSG→Rocket Launcher→SSG rotation. The main reason why I don't often bring the Rocket Launcher into rotation is that it is still my first play through, and I don't know where the enemy spawns are, and so having a weapon whose AOE can damage myself badly when fired point-blank really isn't that good of an idea.
But the ``alpha rotation'' definitely made the late-game for Doom Eternal that much more manageable. Previously, I would probably just run around with the SSG and maybe throwing in some Chaingun fun to help thin out the horde.
------
Anyway, I think that's about it for this entry. I need to take a shower, and then go turn in for the night.
Till the next update then.
Edit: Made a mistake. The weapon that I used in my interpretation of the ``alpha rotation'' is ``Ballista''---the ``Arbalest'' is the mod that is used for charging to fire a single over-powered shot, sort of like siege mode for the Gauss cannon.
The Monday passed, I took a day of leave. Doesn't matter what the original plan was, but it evolved into a type of R&R for myself so that I don't get completely burnt out. What happened in the end was that I took the opportunity to run a few errands. Some of the errands included sending my bicycle off for servicing (the seat post was sliding a little too often for my taste), and purchasing replacement cup cushions for my over-the-ear headphones.
Those on their own aren't worthy of any major exposition. I just want to share that B-spokes offers damn good service. Very responsive, and very good workmanship. Maybe this is relevant to some of the readers of my blog.
I've also finished reading the Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd Edition) book by Stuart Russell & Peter Norvig. A good refresher in many ways, though the contents may be a bit dated at this point. But anything at this stage is better than just sitting there and vegetating away my training as I do work that is nearly orthogonal to what I have been trained in for about 40% of my life.
------
In other less depressing news, I found out an interesting dizi fingering combination for the elusive low instrument B-C trill. In more traditional terms, when we are using 筒音作5̣, the 3-4 trill is notoriously non-existent. Most ways of treating it are to just play it as 3-4♯ instead, that is, by raising the left index finger and putting it down (assuming orthodox stance). Much of the dizi repertoire assumes this type of trill, based on the principle that trills are to be counted by alternation along the instrument hole design, as opposed to that of the scale used as in ye olde western music concept.
If we were to play 3-4 trill (or instrument B-C trill) normally, it would involve some complex acrobatics for the left hand, alternating between 6 and 54 (using the usual dizi hole numbering strategy). It's horrific.
The inspiration came when I was looking at the 4-5 trill (instrument C-D trill). It involved an alternation of 5421 and 54321, i.e. merely moving the right index finger. I messed with 542 and 5432, and heard a sound whose pitch was a tad sharper than instrument B. So I lowered it a smidgen by half-covering 1, and voila---I got a working instrument B-C trill just like that. This has the advantage of not having to flatten the instrument C pitch through lipping 5432. Works best for extended trills---if it is of a short enough duration, I suppose that alternating between 542 and 5432 is somewhat workable.
Naturally, I've reworked the tremolo fingering chart to reflect this finding.
------
Work-wise, let's just say that things are getting more depressing in a different way. I'm not going to talk much more about it right now---there will be the right time and right place to say more; the time is not now.
I've gotten back to playing Doom Eternal on Eileen-II, in a bid to actually complete the game. I've started to get used to the so-called ``alpha rotation'' mechanism---it involves firing and then immediately switching among the three big single-shot conventional weapons of the Super Shotgun (SSG), the Ballista, and the Rocket Launcher using the mouse wheel.
The original ``alpha rotation'' was a technique for maximised DPS from Doom 2016, and it was done with the Gauss Cannon instead of the Ballista, and often combined with the glitch for ``instant Siege mode''. I first heard/saw it during the speedruns for the original Doom 2016. The key idea here is to use fast weapon switching [via the mousewheel] to interrupt the reloading animation for each of these weapons.
I cannot do the complete rotation now---I'm often just doing SSG↔Ballista. Sometimes I manage to do the SSG→Ballista→SSG→Rocket Launcher→SSG rotation. The main reason why I don't often bring the Rocket Launcher into rotation is that it is still my first play through, and I don't know where the enemy spawns are, and so having a weapon whose AOE can damage myself badly when fired point-blank really isn't that good of an idea.
But the ``alpha rotation'' definitely made the late-game for Doom Eternal that much more manageable. Previously, I would probably just run around with the SSG and maybe throwing in some Chaingun fun to help thin out the horde.
------
Anyway, I think that's about it for this entry. I need to take a shower, and then go turn in for the night.
Till the next update then.
Edit: Made a mistake. The weapon that I used in my interpretation of the ``alpha rotation'' is ``Ballista''---the ``Arbalest'' is the mod that is used for charging to fire a single over-powered shot, sort of like siege mode for the Gauss cannon.
Saturday, October 03, 2020
Each Day I Wake Up, I Thank the Lord
``Praise to the Lord! I thank You for providing me with another day in this world to do what I can with the talents You gave me that I honed through Your guidance. Amen.''
That is how I start my mornings these days, the moment I wake up proper. It's my way of reminding myself that I am not allowed to just die---my work for the Lord on this planet isn't quite done yet. If it is my time to go, He'd just take me like that, and I wouldn't be the wiser.
So each day that I can wake up, is a day of blessing, no matter what comes by. Work is happening still, and thanks to recent developments in the space of my industry, schedules are messed up all over again in different and more fascinating ways, and I find myself being torn in all directions once more.
I believe that amid the madness, there is a grander plan being set in motion that I am not fully aware of yet. With that solidly in mind, I just grit my teeth, pray for wisdom, strength, and patience, and go through the day. Things will need to be handled, I will handle them, and they somehow work out alright. Really, when the Lord is in charge, there is little that I need to worry about.
------
Nothing truly bad has happened---I'm writing here only as a sort of inertia. I have already been writing here once a week, I might as well keep on writing. It at least acts as indirect proof that I have been keeping with my word of not offing myself.
I'll stop here for now. Till the next update.
That is how I start my mornings these days, the moment I wake up proper. It's my way of reminding myself that I am not allowed to just die---my work for the Lord on this planet isn't quite done yet. If it is my time to go, He'd just take me like that, and I wouldn't be the wiser.
So each day that I can wake up, is a day of blessing, no matter what comes by. Work is happening still, and thanks to recent developments in the space of my industry, schedules are messed up all over again in different and more fascinating ways, and I find myself being torn in all directions once more.
I believe that amid the madness, there is a grander plan being set in motion that I am not fully aware of yet. With that solidly in mind, I just grit my teeth, pray for wisdom, strength, and patience, and go through the day. Things will need to be handled, I will handle them, and they somehow work out alright. Really, when the Lord is in charge, there is little that I need to worry about.
------
Nothing truly bad has happened---I'm writing here only as a sort of inertia. I have already been writing here once a week, I might as well keep on writing. It at least acts as indirect proof that I have been keeping with my word of not offing myself.
I'll stop here for now. Till the next update.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
SCP Tome 4 Down the Hatch!
Nothing too depressing today. It should be considered a good thing, I hope.
I've finally finished SCP Foundation Tome 4 of the SCP Foundation e-books (2017-02-01 dump). That just leaves some 8 more tomes to go. At the rate I am going, it seems like it will take me nearly 8 more years before I can finish reading this complete set.
It's okay. It's mostly a guilty pleasure anyway. Kind of my go-to for something light and easy to read when I am not in the mood for something super heavy like a text book/thesis, or something of middling weight like a paper, or something light like some bestseller-type novel.
My current reading list is a little biased towards clearing out the larger sized e-books, and some of the larger paper books that have been lying around for quite a while. Naturally, that link is going to show something rather different if this entry is read on a date that is not temporally close to when this blog entry has gone out.
On the topic of reading still, my copy of An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens In A Strange Land by William Stringfellow has arrived as well. I will likely start on it soon-ish.
------
This week has been awkward. I am doing more management/coordination work than programming---not sure how to feel about that. It is a thing I suppose, and nothing more. We'll just see what God has in mind. After all, I did not amass knowledge just so that I can sit there and vegetate---I'm pretty sure He has a good reason why I am who I am.
Just need to wait and see, praying to God along the way so as to learn of what His will is.
I don't really have anything else I would like to write here [in public]. The key thing was to document my milestone of finishing another SCP Foundation Tome, that's all.
Till the next update. Hopefully things are as mundane as they are now. Maybe I can slowly move back towards almost not writing any entries in here---it is almost always an inverse relationship between the amount of writing I do here and the level of happiness that I am at.
I've finally finished SCP Foundation Tome 4 of the SCP Foundation e-books (2017-02-01 dump). That just leaves some 8 more tomes to go. At the rate I am going, it seems like it will take me nearly 8 more years before I can finish reading this complete set.
It's okay. It's mostly a guilty pleasure anyway. Kind of my go-to for something light and easy to read when I am not in the mood for something super heavy like a text book/thesis, or something of middling weight like a paper, or something light like some bestseller-type novel.
My current reading list is a little biased towards clearing out the larger sized e-books, and some of the larger paper books that have been lying around for quite a while. Naturally, that link is going to show something rather different if this entry is read on a date that is not temporally close to when this blog entry has gone out.
On the topic of reading still, my copy of An Ethic for Christians & Other Aliens In A Strange Land by William Stringfellow has arrived as well. I will likely start on it soon-ish.
------
This week has been awkward. I am doing more management/coordination work than programming---not sure how to feel about that. It is a thing I suppose, and nothing more. We'll just see what God has in mind. After all, I did not amass knowledge just so that I can sit there and vegetate---I'm pretty sure He has a good reason why I am who I am.
Just need to wait and see, praying to God along the way so as to learn of what His will is.
I don't really have anything else I would like to write here [in public]. The key thing was to document my milestone of finishing another SCP Foundation Tome, that's all.
Till the next update. Hopefully things are as mundane as they are now. Maybe I can slowly move back towards almost not writing any entries in here---it is almost always an inverse relationship between the amount of writing I do here and the level of happiness that I am at.
Sunday, September 20, 2020
2/3 Through September
Welcome to ``yet more intrusive thoughts documentation''.
Today's set of intrusive thoughts involve the idea of being incognito. Suicide ideation reared its ugly head once more.
Once more, I want to emphasise that this is just a documentation of intrusive thoughts. I am in no way going to act on them.
Anyway this time, it was coupling it with the idea of being incognito. So something like, travel out to somewhere where no one knows who I am, and then just dying out there. Aokigahara comes to mind. Might be considered a great place for what the intrusive thought intends, since it combines several fun activities (travelling to Japan, hiking in a forested area) before the final end itself. Seems to fit the general mood I am feeling now, the compulsion to repulse people from my past, or what I have termed politely as ``hermitting it up''.
Bar guvat lbh'ir abgvprq ol abj vf gung gur yvggyr cnary ba gur evtug vf abj zvffvat gur ``Sevraqf/Npdhnvagnaprf'' one jvgu yvaxf gb bgure oybtf. Ncneg sebz ure, gurer vf ab bar ryfr ernyyl hcqngvat gurve oybtf nal zber. Naq V guvax fur unf svavfurq hc gur ynfg guvatf gung fur pna qb gb phg zr bhg bs ure yvsr. V nz abg oyvaq abe fghcvq---V rkgraqrq n sevraqyl punaary gb erznva nf cyngbavp sevraqf jvgu ure, ohg V xrrc trggvat ernpgvbaf gung fgngr jvgu vapernfvat ubfgvyvgl gung V nz rssrpgviryl crefban aba tengn, fubeg bs orvat gbyq cbvag oynax jvgu pehqr ynathntr gb ``shpx bss''. V pna gnxr n uvag; V'z abg jnagrq naljurer va ure yvsr ntnva. Zrffntr erprvirq ybhq naq pyrne. Gur cngu fur pubfr unf ab zber eryngvba jvgu jung V nz pheeragyl ba, rira vs fur naq V ner fgvyy cynlvat gur fnzr vafgehzragf nf Nznaqn fhppvapgyl chg onpx va gur ortvaavat jura V svefg zrg ure. V'z ab ybatre rira n sevraq; V trg gung. V jvfu ure nyy gur orfg.
Back to the topic of ``hermitting it up''. I think I might have overdone the meeting up with people bit---I am feeling rather distressed, or enervated. Things that spout out of my mouth seem to be misunderstood, offensive, or even strongly committing faux pas. During the run up to each meet up, I feel really energised and happy, because it is about meeting up with an old friend in meat space after so long of being cooped up. Then during the meet up, things seem to go smooth. Then after that, I realise that the ``smoothness'' I felt was all bullshit and I had probably pissed them off.
That's why I chickened out of an online hangout meeting with roticv and YT. That's also why I didn't feel ready when Ding asked me if I wanted to hang out with him and CH. I don't think I can handle it. I just don't think so.
I don't think that the world has a net positive with me in it. Maybe even God will snicker a little when He tries to find a use for someone like me---I wouldn't know; I just pray that He will grant me the wisdom and strength to be ready to receive from Him what my life's goal is. I am just thankful that despite the falling apart of the old social structures that sustained me, I am slowly being made a part of a new one. I don't know if I have pissed them off yet, but they seem to be welcoming still.
I just hope that I don't screw it up.
------
What else is there for me to write here, now? Life is just a cycle of waking up, thanking the Lord for giving me another day of wakefulness, reading and learning from the Scripture, then going about the work day trying to make sense of the chaos that comes from a world that is currently in turmoil from all kinds of nonsense. Then at the end of the day, I break for food, thanking the Lord for giving me access to food before eating, then take the bus home to do more reading of whatever is on my reading list, do some lessons on duolingo, then turn in for the night.
I'm not expecting people to understand me any more. Heck, I'm not even expecting the people I call/called friends to understand me either---they are all on different legs of their lives, most of them have their own families to run, and the last thing I think they need is to have someone whining about how shitty that person's life is despite having a place to stay, a job, and skills that are apparently considered ``hard skills'' in this time and age. ``But MT, aren't you projecting yourself a little too much here? Maybe they are trying to reach out to you to give you the space you might need to bitch about things---have you stopped to consider that?'' Yeah, perhaps I have. Makes me so pathetic right, big grown-ass man with all these feelings that he cannot man-up and stuff it down a chute that he needs people to take pity on him and call him out for a hang out so that he doesn't wallow in his own shitty emotions.
If I knew what it was I wanted, it would have been easier. But for now, I just don't. And talking to people isn't something that I think I want to engage in just yet.
It'll be soooooooo much easier if I were dead. But alas, me being dead now does absolutely nothing to help with advancing the gospel, so it'll have to be on hold for now. It'll happen when it's supposed to happen, so I don't have to worry about advancing it.
------
In other news, the dead-tree version of Instead of Death by William Stringfellow has finally arrived by post. It was a book that was recommended by Brian---I think I might just start reading it. I was a little surprised to find that it was a thin number---I was expecting something like a 300+ page tome of sorts. I have no reason why I would think so, but it was something.
I have also created a new on-line tool that replicated the old Blogger behaviour. In the old behaviour, one could just type and embed some HTML tags as needed, without having to explicitly chuck in some paragraph-tags to delimit the paragraphs. I liked that system because it made the blog flow so much easier---it felt more like writing a blog entry as opposed to coding a blog entry. It was an option that could be enabled in the old Blogger. But thanks to the latest update that was forced upon us, I was stuck with either ``pure'' HTML mode where I had to tag every thing, or in ``pure'' composer mode where I was supposed to work like it was some word processor. There was none of the hybridised behaviour that I was looking for, and it annoyed me.
I write blog entries to get stuff out of my head as fast as possible. Had I wanted to code up an HTML page, I'd just do it in my personal domain.
Perhaps there's still an option like that hiding about---if there is, I haven't seen it. Hence that silly little tool.
Okay, I think I've said as much as I cared to this time. Till the next update, I suppose.
Today's set of intrusive thoughts involve the idea of being incognito. Suicide ideation reared its ugly head once more.
Once more, I want to emphasise that this is just a documentation of intrusive thoughts. I am in no way going to act on them.
Anyway this time, it was coupling it with the idea of being incognito. So something like, travel out to somewhere where no one knows who I am, and then just dying out there. Aokigahara comes to mind. Might be considered a great place for what the intrusive thought intends, since it combines several fun activities (travelling to Japan, hiking in a forested area) before the final end itself. Seems to fit the general mood I am feeling now, the compulsion to repulse people from my past, or what I have termed politely as ``hermitting it up''.
Bar guvat lbh'ir abgvprq ol abj vf gung gur yvggyr cnary ba gur evtug vf abj zvffvat gur ``Sevraqf/Npdhnvagnaprf'' one jvgu yvaxf gb bgure oybtf. Ncneg sebz ure, gurer vf ab bar ryfr ernyyl hcqngvat gurve oybtf nal zber. Naq V guvax fur unf svavfurq hc gur ynfg guvatf gung fur pna qb gb phg zr bhg bs ure yvsr. V nz abg oyvaq abe fghcvq---V rkgraqrq n sevraqyl punaary gb erznva nf cyngbavp sevraqf jvgu ure, ohg V xrrc trggvat ernpgvbaf gung fgngr jvgu vapernfvat ubfgvyvgl gung V nz rssrpgviryl crefban aba tengn, fubeg bs orvat gbyq cbvag oynax jvgu pehqr ynathntr gb ``shpx bss''. V pna gnxr n uvag; V'z abg jnagrq naljurer va ure yvsr ntnva. Zrffntr erprvirq ybhq naq pyrne. Gur cngu fur pubfr unf ab zber eryngvba jvgu jung V nz pheeragyl ba, rira vs fur naq V ner fgvyy cynlvat gur fnzr vafgehzragf nf Nznaqn fhppvapgyl chg onpx va gur ortvaavat jura V svefg zrg ure. V'z ab ybatre rira n sevraq; V trg gung. V jvfu ure nyy gur orfg.
Back to the topic of ``hermitting it up''. I think I might have overdone the meeting up with people bit---I am feeling rather distressed, or enervated. Things that spout out of my mouth seem to be misunderstood, offensive, or even strongly committing faux pas. During the run up to each meet up, I feel really energised and happy, because it is about meeting up with an old friend in meat space after so long of being cooped up. Then during the meet up, things seem to go smooth. Then after that, I realise that the ``smoothness'' I felt was all bullshit and I had probably pissed them off.
That's why I chickened out of an online hangout meeting with roticv and YT. That's also why I didn't feel ready when Ding asked me if I wanted to hang out with him and CH. I don't think I can handle it. I just don't think so.
I don't think that the world has a net positive with me in it. Maybe even God will snicker a little when He tries to find a use for someone like me---I wouldn't know; I just pray that He will grant me the wisdom and strength to be ready to receive from Him what my life's goal is. I am just thankful that despite the falling apart of the old social structures that sustained me, I am slowly being made a part of a new one. I don't know if I have pissed them off yet, but they seem to be welcoming still.
I just hope that I don't screw it up.
------
What else is there for me to write here, now? Life is just a cycle of waking up, thanking the Lord for giving me another day of wakefulness, reading and learning from the Scripture, then going about the work day trying to make sense of the chaos that comes from a world that is currently in turmoil from all kinds of nonsense. Then at the end of the day, I break for food, thanking the Lord for giving me access to food before eating, then take the bus home to do more reading of whatever is on my reading list, do some lessons on duolingo, then turn in for the night.
I'm not expecting people to understand me any more. Heck, I'm not even expecting the people I call/called friends to understand me either---they are all on different legs of their lives, most of them have their own families to run, and the last thing I think they need is to have someone whining about how shitty that person's life is despite having a place to stay, a job, and skills that are apparently considered ``hard skills'' in this time and age. ``But MT, aren't you projecting yourself a little too much here? Maybe they are trying to reach out to you to give you the space you might need to bitch about things---have you stopped to consider that?'' Yeah, perhaps I have. Makes me so pathetic right, big grown-ass man with all these feelings that he cannot man-up and stuff it down a chute that he needs people to take pity on him and call him out for a hang out so that he doesn't wallow in his own shitty emotions.
If I knew what it was I wanted, it would have been easier. But for now, I just don't. And talking to people isn't something that I think I want to engage in just yet.
It'll be soooooooo much easier if I were dead. But alas, me being dead now does absolutely nothing to help with advancing the gospel, so it'll have to be on hold for now. It'll happen when it's supposed to happen, so I don't have to worry about advancing it.
------
In other news, the dead-tree version of Instead of Death by William Stringfellow has finally arrived by post. It was a book that was recommended by Brian---I think I might just start reading it. I was a little surprised to find that it was a thin number---I was expecting something like a 300+ page tome of sorts. I have no reason why I would think so, but it was something.
I have also created a new on-line tool that replicated the old Blogger behaviour. In the old behaviour, one could just type and embed some HTML tags as needed, without having to explicitly chuck in some paragraph-tags to delimit the paragraphs. I liked that system because it made the blog flow so much easier---it felt more like writing a blog entry as opposed to coding a blog entry. It was an option that could be enabled in the old Blogger. But thanks to the latest update that was forced upon us, I was stuck with either ``pure'' HTML mode where I had to tag every thing, or in ``pure'' composer mode where I was supposed to work like it was some word processor. There was none of the hybridised behaviour that I was looking for, and it annoyed me.
I write blog entries to get stuff out of my head as fast as possible. Had I wanted to code up an HTML page, I'd just do it in my personal domain.
Perhaps there's still an option like that hiding about---if there is, I haven't seen it. Hence that silly little tool.
Okay, I think I've said as much as I cared to this time. Till the next update, I suppose.
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Winding Things Up
Peace be upon you, me, and all of us in these strange times.
The winding up of a relationship is always fraught with many emotional upheavals. Those who have not undergone it do not understand---those who have will know what I mean. I am, of course, talking about serious relationships, the kind that was very likely to end up with the intention of starting a family kind.
There are moments where I would feel like I was completely at peace. Then there will be be moments where I feel the worst form of depression, whether triggered by something that I saw and therefore associated-thought to, or just an intrusive thought. I know it is normal to feel this way. I did spend five years with her, trying to make her a part of my life.
Now in retrospect, I was wondering if she ever did try to make me a part of hers. And my honest answer is... I don't think so.
Slowly. It takes time to get myself back into a position where I am sane again. I think part of why it hurts as bad as it does during the moments when it got bad was because of the external validation that during the times that I was with her, I was visibly happier.
So, did it mean that when I was no longer with her, I would be visibly less happy? I don't know the answer to that.
I recently had my first sharing session with my care group. There was a certain sense of warmth that I had missed. It was weird to be among a group of people where I was not the most learned nor the most experienced. It was actually exhilarating in a good way. Yes, the care group was mostly of married couples, but it didn't feel weird. We shared about the things that were deserving of praise for God, we also shared about the hardships that we were undergoing that needed prayers and support from each other. And when the consolidated list of prayer requests and thanksgiving came out, I was a little heartened to find that the sender helpfully put my jumbled descriptions of how I was feeling into the much more condensed line of ``suffered from bad relationship breakup recently'', and that my prayer request was that of ``pray for healing from this relationship, moving on''.
I was touched. So concise, and poignant. So, so, true.
I think it unearthed a deep feeling that I knew was there but haven't really had the will to really confront it. The relationship break-up was bad, and I didn't really acknowledge it much. Was it as bad as the time Ida dumped me? I think it is a matter of degree---the intensity of that break-up was high due to it being the second serious relationship. The intensity of this one was not as high at its peak, but it was something that took a long time to drag out. So I suppose the ``area-under-curve'' interpretation will say that this one is indeed worse than the other.
From a different perspective, this care group has basically extended my list of responsibilities to stave off the rationalising and acknowledgement of the suicide ideation. Because now I'm less of an island.
The irony is that I think I'm just going to hermit it up these days. I don't know why. Just feel like it's the right thing to do. Maybe I had overdone the ``reconnect with folks'' bit recently, causing a kind of burn out effect on myself. Or maybe I'm decompensating. Unless I start talking with a counsellor/therapist, there really isn't a good way to know.
I did have a random intrusive thought recently. It involved just quitting my job, and applying to be a security guard or even a janitor. Why? Who knows... I sure don't---they were intrusive thoughts after all. Most times I feel that all the studying (and side reading) I've done doesn't seem to justify what I am doing and/or my sense of worth---why this is the case, I honestly do not know.
Maybe I should go check in with a counsellor/therapist. Maybe.
Or maybe I should just go for a long scenic view cycle, just to literally 散散心. I've not done that in quite a while.
People ask where is God during this COVID-19. I say that God has always been here with us. This is the best time to really discover who we really are, and for us to learn how to live a life that is praiseworthy of God.
I think that's all for now. Till the next update.
The winding up of a relationship is always fraught with many emotional upheavals. Those who have not undergone it do not understand---those who have will know what I mean. I am, of course, talking about serious relationships, the kind that was very likely to end up with the intention of starting a family kind.
There are moments where I would feel like I was completely at peace. Then there will be be moments where I feel the worst form of depression, whether triggered by something that I saw and therefore associated-thought to, or just an intrusive thought. I know it is normal to feel this way. I did spend five years with her, trying to make her a part of my life.
Now in retrospect, I was wondering if she ever did try to make me a part of hers. And my honest answer is... I don't think so.
Slowly. It takes time to get myself back into a position where I am sane again. I think part of why it hurts as bad as it does during the moments when it got bad was because of the external validation that during the times that I was with her, I was visibly happier.
So, did it mean that when I was no longer with her, I would be visibly less happy? I don't know the answer to that.
I recently had my first sharing session with my care group. There was a certain sense of warmth that I had missed. It was weird to be among a group of people where I was not the most learned nor the most experienced. It was actually exhilarating in a good way. Yes, the care group was mostly of married couples, but it didn't feel weird. We shared about the things that were deserving of praise for God, we also shared about the hardships that we were undergoing that needed prayers and support from each other. And when the consolidated list of prayer requests and thanksgiving came out, I was a little heartened to find that the sender helpfully put my jumbled descriptions of how I was feeling into the much more condensed line of ``suffered from bad relationship breakup recently'', and that my prayer request was that of ``pray for healing from this relationship, moving on''.
I was touched. So concise, and poignant. So, so, true.
I think it unearthed a deep feeling that I knew was there but haven't really had the will to really confront it. The relationship break-up was bad, and I didn't really acknowledge it much. Was it as bad as the time Ida dumped me? I think it is a matter of degree---the intensity of that break-up was high due to it being the second serious relationship. The intensity of this one was not as high at its peak, but it was something that took a long time to drag out. So I suppose the ``area-under-curve'' interpretation will say that this one is indeed worse than the other.
From a different perspective, this care group has basically extended my list of responsibilities to stave off the rationalising and acknowledgement of the suicide ideation. Because now I'm less of an island.
The irony is that I think I'm just going to hermit it up these days. I don't know why. Just feel like it's the right thing to do. Maybe I had overdone the ``reconnect with folks'' bit recently, causing a kind of burn out effect on myself. Or maybe I'm decompensating. Unless I start talking with a counsellor/therapist, there really isn't a good way to know.
I did have a random intrusive thought recently. It involved just quitting my job, and applying to be a security guard or even a janitor. Why? Who knows... I sure don't---they were intrusive thoughts after all. Most times I feel that all the studying (and side reading) I've done doesn't seem to justify what I am doing and/or my sense of worth---why this is the case, I honestly do not know.
Maybe I should go check in with a counsellor/therapist. Maybe.
Or maybe I should just go for a long scenic view cycle, just to literally 散散心. I've not done that in quite a while.
People ask where is God during this COVID-19. I say that God has always been here with us. This is the best time to really discover who we really are, and for us to learn how to live a life that is praiseworthy of God.
I think that's all for now. Till the next update.
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Talking About Sax
I could write an entry of dealing with random intrusive thoughts, but I'm not going to. I think I already have enough entries on that for now. So for today, I'm just going to write about the recent pick up of my new tenor saxophone.
I finally picked up my ordered Wongful Tenor Saxophone from WindWorks Singapore.
The Wongful Tenor Saxophone is an amazingly fun instrument. I'm not as good a saxophonist as I am a concert flutist (which isn't as good as my dizi playing, which I still think isn't really good anyway). The sound is very even and mellow, responding really well with the Selmer S90 180 mouthpiece that I had. For a causal saxophone player like me, I could easily hit the lows and highs at low dynamics levels, and they were still in tune. Amazing---I would totally recommend this make of a saxophone to anyone who wants to play it. And mind you, the one that I have is not some professional version---it is their lowest grade instrument. In the hands of an excellent player, it is likely to sound even more magical. Windworks Singapore is the dealer for the Wongful brand in Singapore, and Mr Yap is amazingly knowledgeable on saxphones. I think that anyone who wants a good horn without breaking the bank should really talk with Mr Yap to try out Wongful.
I like the saxophone. The dizi is my most expressive instrument, but it is an instrument that I am most likely to be playing pieces that were written by others. The concert flute is my second most expressive instrument, and is really my primary compositional tool with respect to melodies because of the versatility (chromaticity) and range (3 octaves). The saxophone is a funny instrument for me. I think the role that it plays in my music making is still ill-defined for now---on the one hand it satisfies that inner ``rock-out'' feel that I want due to its timbre crossing between that of regular woodwind and brass, and on the other hand its range is much closer to that of the dizi than that of the concert flute (i.e. less than 3 octaves), making it a little less flexible as a compositional tool.
So I end up using the saxophone as a way of playing pop tunes more enjoyably than with the concert flute. I suppose it is also a side effect of observing that jazz music as played on the saxophone tends to be of that nature too.
Another interesting fact about the saxophone is that they are among the lowest wind instruments that I have. The soprano saxophone is akin to the alto flute (less the concert G3 note which, really, no one plays often), while the alto saxophone is closer to the bass flute (no concert C3, and therefore closer in style to dizi or Irish flute than flute). The tenor saxophone is thus like that of the contra-alto flute (no concert G2 note).
If I ever got a baritone saxophone, it would cover the range of the contrabass flute comfortably, especially if it has a low [instrument] A key. Which also means that it covers the cello range, and is definitely more powerful than the contrabass flute.
Hmmm...
But it won't be any time soon. I've run out of budget for any more new instruments in the near future. My income has basically been reduced to earlier than 2015 levels due to many reasons, and therefore I need to live back to the standard of living of that era, which unfortunately does not include having enough budget for extra instruments.
Well, I think that's about it for now. I've got some more reading to do before bed time today. Recreational reading, if one would believe the nonsense I spout.
Till the next update.
I finally picked up my ordered Wongful Tenor Saxophone from WindWorks Singapore.
The Wongful Tenor Saxophone is an amazingly fun instrument. I'm not as good a saxophonist as I am a concert flutist (which isn't as good as my dizi playing, which I still think isn't really good anyway). The sound is very even and mellow, responding really well with the Selmer S90 180 mouthpiece that I had. For a causal saxophone player like me, I could easily hit the lows and highs at low dynamics levels, and they were still in tune. Amazing---I would totally recommend this make of a saxophone to anyone who wants to play it. And mind you, the one that I have is not some professional version---it is their lowest grade instrument. In the hands of an excellent player, it is likely to sound even more magical. Windworks Singapore is the dealer for the Wongful brand in Singapore, and Mr Yap is amazingly knowledgeable on saxphones. I think that anyone who wants a good horn without breaking the bank should really talk with Mr Yap to try out Wongful.
I like the saxophone. The dizi is my most expressive instrument, but it is an instrument that I am most likely to be playing pieces that were written by others. The concert flute is my second most expressive instrument, and is really my primary compositional tool with respect to melodies because of the versatility (chromaticity) and range (3 octaves). The saxophone is a funny instrument for me. I think the role that it plays in my music making is still ill-defined for now---on the one hand it satisfies that inner ``rock-out'' feel that I want due to its timbre crossing between that of regular woodwind and brass, and on the other hand its range is much closer to that of the dizi than that of the concert flute (i.e. less than 3 octaves), making it a little less flexible as a compositional tool.
So I end up using the saxophone as a way of playing pop tunes more enjoyably than with the concert flute. I suppose it is also a side effect of observing that jazz music as played on the saxophone tends to be of that nature too.
Another interesting fact about the saxophone is that they are among the lowest wind instruments that I have. The soprano saxophone is akin to the alto flute (less the concert G3 note which, really, no one plays often), while the alto saxophone is closer to the bass flute (no concert C3, and therefore closer in style to dizi or Irish flute than flute). The tenor saxophone is thus like that of the contra-alto flute (no concert G2 note).
If I ever got a baritone saxophone, it would cover the range of the contrabass flute comfortably, especially if it has a low [instrument] A key. Which also means that it covers the cello range, and is definitely more powerful than the contrabass flute.
Hmmm...
But it won't be any time soon. I've run out of budget for any more new instruments in the near future. My income has basically been reduced to earlier than 2015 levels due to many reasons, and therefore I need to live back to the standard of living of that era, which unfortunately does not include having enough budget for extra instruments.
Well, I think that's about it for now. I've got some more reading to do before bed time today. Recreational reading, if one would believe the nonsense I spout.
Till the next update.
Monday, September 07, 2020
《羞答答的玫瑰静悄悄的开》
Another day another entry.
``Why?'' You may ask.
``Documenting intrusive thoughts,'' is my answer.
The last time I talked about intrusive thoughts, they involved suicide ideation. Thankfully, those have more or less gone away, to be replaced with something somewhat different.
It involves selling away or getting rid of all of my music instruments, basically more or less permanently quitting making music. I mean, the whole purpose of making music for me was to have some form of relaxation away from the world.
But the world has robbed me of that pleasure. Combine that with all the heavier and heavier politics I have to slowly start to deal with, making music feels more of a chore than fun.
It's a seductive intrusive thought, a very perverse one too, if I stop to give it more attention. There was also this other really extreme one---since I'm not getting married any time soon, and with each passing year going to seal my fate as a permanent bachelor, there really is no point keeping all the money that I have been saving to start a life with a significant other. Maybe I'll just do a meaningless spending of it on a platinum flute to play for a while before I off myself, or just donate it all away.
Yeah it's fucked up. You don't have to tell me that.
In case you were a sadist and thought that I would action on those intrusive thoughts, well too bad. I'm not too far gone yet to realise their nature and arrest them. I thank the Lord for the wisdom to see that.
But on a somewhat more sombre note, I really do feel like I want to isolate and hermit up. There really isn't anything to look forward to any more... I wasn't kidding when I said that if I were to be called home to the Lord now, I wouldn't mind. Only problem is that I still have an intern to supervise, so I'll at least hold on till after he is done with his internship---no point traumatising him unnecessarily. I had contemplated setting up a new web page (tentatively called ``death-clock'') that tracked when was the earliest I could off myself given my conditions. But it wasn't going to be a good idea anyway, since I had to wait till at least both my parents had passed, which honestly, isn't likely to happen in the next ten years.
So, I have to live till at least forty-five years old.
I honestly don't know what to make of that.
Anyway, I have a couple of social events to attend to this week, but after that, I think I'll just go hide away.
No one needs to deal with a basket case like me.
------
In other news, I finally found another earworm.
The title is 《羞答答的玫瑰静悄悄的开》, sung by 孟庭苇. Seriously, the phrases used were no where near common, no wonder it took me so long to actually find it. I only succeeded due to using midomi and have a somewhat decent pitch in singing, and having the luck to have the song indexed.
------
That's all for today. Hopefully I don't have more things to clear from my mind. It is really depressing.
``Why?'' You may ask.
``Documenting intrusive thoughts,'' is my answer.
The last time I talked about intrusive thoughts, they involved suicide ideation. Thankfully, those have more or less gone away, to be replaced with something somewhat different.
It involves selling away or getting rid of all of my music instruments, basically more or less permanently quitting making music. I mean, the whole purpose of making music for me was to have some form of relaxation away from the world.
But the world has robbed me of that pleasure. Combine that with all the heavier and heavier politics I have to slowly start to deal with, making music feels more of a chore than fun.
It's a seductive intrusive thought, a very perverse one too, if I stop to give it more attention. There was also this other really extreme one---since I'm not getting married any time soon, and with each passing year going to seal my fate as a permanent bachelor, there really is no point keeping all the money that I have been saving to start a life with a significant other. Maybe I'll just do a meaningless spending of it on a platinum flute to play for a while before I off myself, or just donate it all away.
Yeah it's fucked up. You don't have to tell me that.
In case you were a sadist and thought that I would action on those intrusive thoughts, well too bad. I'm not too far gone yet to realise their nature and arrest them. I thank the Lord for the wisdom to see that.
But on a somewhat more sombre note, I really do feel like I want to isolate and hermit up. There really isn't anything to look forward to any more... I wasn't kidding when I said that if I were to be called home to the Lord now, I wouldn't mind. Only problem is that I still have an intern to supervise, so I'll at least hold on till after he is done with his internship---no point traumatising him unnecessarily. I had contemplated setting up a new web page (tentatively called ``death-clock'') that tracked when was the earliest I could off myself given my conditions. But it wasn't going to be a good idea anyway, since I had to wait till at least both my parents had passed, which honestly, isn't likely to happen in the next ten years.
So, I have to live till at least forty-five years old.
I honestly don't know what to make of that.
Anyway, I have a couple of social events to attend to this week, but after that, I think I'll just go hide away.
No one needs to deal with a basket case like me.
------
In other news, I finally found another earworm.
The title is 《羞答答的玫瑰静悄悄的开》, sung by 孟庭苇. Seriously, the phrases used were no where near common, no wonder it took me so long to actually find it. I only succeeded due to using midomi and have a somewhat decent pitch in singing, and having the luck to have the song indexed.
------
That's all for today. Hopefully I don't have more things to clear from my mind. It is really depressing.
Sunday, September 06, 2020
I Feel
Well hello hello. Another piece of writing within ``a day''. Unexpected, ain't it?
I feel. That's something that I can say unequivocally now. I think I have much more empathy now than I have had a long time ago.
Or rather, I have relearnt how it is to have great empathy once again, having had that burnt out of me some twenty-two years ago when I was in a bad place.
But before I go all nostalgia, allow me to share the triggering event for this piece of writing. I finally got to meet up with some more church folk (while respecting the safe distancing rules!), and what some of them were experiencing hit me in ways that I would never have thought to be possible. I understood what she meant when she said that despite the advancedness of her cancer, she was ready to let the Lord lead the way. I understood that feeling of peace, a type of hopefulness in spite of the apparent hopelessness.
And I looked at my pissant nearly self-inflicted reactions to the most recently failed relationship, and I feel pathetic. I'm not in a life and death circumstance, despite how my heart feels---at least I know that tomorrow will not be snatched away from me as readily as in her case. Yet she wasn't going all ``woe be to me'' and being depressed about it---she trusted in the Lord to lead her along the way, and to carry her burdens. This is not to say that my feelings are invalid---it's just that it is important that I put things into perspective.
To be fair, I am and have been putting things into perspective. So yes, I do have some aspects of suicidal ideation, but they remain only as intrusive thoughts that will not be acted upon, because despite all the pangs of sadness that hit me, a deeper part of me knows that there is light ahead, that it is not the end, that it is merely an end.
It is rather hard to explain this, but if you are reading all the recent entries and feeling rather alarmed about it all, please don't be. I really am in a safe place, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
I found my rock, and will be fine. There's a time for everything, after all, and the Lord knows when it is the best time for certain things for me.
Like how today was the right day to be hearing her story and testimony, despite me having not known her before today, and really not contributing much to the conversation, and she being all apologetic about it all.
I see today as the start of a new set of relationships that I will be making with a group of people whom I am going to be living with for the rest of my life, and in many ways, I am looking forward to it. In many ways, my life has gone rather stagnant, and there are certain aspects of it that can be improved through this newer direction.
Okay, present-ness aside, time to tell a story about the Bad Old Days where I had my empathy burned the heck out of me.
When I was young (think younger than twelve years old), I used to be a much more empathetic person. Yes, I was still a nerd (you can't get rid of the nerdiness), but I was happy to help people, or in the Christian context, to serve. But when I reached my teens and was in secondary school, the change of environment was drastic. You see, I was from a neighbourhood primary school, where everyone was mostly just trying to do their thing---yes, we tried not to fail our examinations and what-not, but it wasn't a place that practised any form of elitism because there was simply no reason to. Secondary school was different, for one it was a ``prestigious school'' (no irony, it is really among the top ranked secondary schools of the day), and for two it was something akin to the ``aristocratic Chinese school''. I'm calling it ``aristocratic Chinese school'' only because the feeder schools to the place were largely elite primary schools (whatever that means), and those who ended up there had their established cliques as a result. And they were of the stereotypical conservative Chinese mentality---clannish to a fault, and never tolerating anything that isn't conforming.
For a neighbourhood primary school kid, who didn't buy into clannish behaviour, it was a culture shock. It didn't help that I had bad skin. But anyway, along the way, all these ``beat downs'' from the culture made it such that by the time I was done with secondary school, the last thing I wanted to be doing was to help people without any expectation of returns, i.e. out went the altruism that I had back in the day. One incident that stood out really strongly in my mind was one afternoon when I heard that a classmate didn't have enough money to take the bus, and I ran down a slope to pass him some that I had, but didn't stop in time, smashing my forearm against the metal railing, thus fracturing it. Said classmate didn't even thank me, and he didn't even cared that I fractured my arm.
I took the bus to the hospital on my own to have it looked at and placed in a cast.
I don't think I'm bitter now. It's just a story about the time when I started to learn about how the world works. It was just one story out of a slow increase of many, and it slowly became something that just gnawed at me for so long that I developed a new perspective---to be ``an equal opportunity hater of people in general'' because people, as a whole, are dicks.
To be fair, it is not that I didn't learn how to feel. I did learn how to feel---it can be seen through my steady improvement in how I interpreted music as I was playing on my 笛子---it's just that along the way, I learnt how to just repress the general empathetic feeling I had. Because it was something that people would take one to be a sucker for and just abuse the crap out of it.
The astute reader might be asking me now, why bring this up now?
Because one of the cutting reasons on why she chose to broke up with me was the apparent dissimilarity of values, as claimed by a third party, and as acknowledged by her as one of the reasons to let it all go. I could feel anger at the third party for causing a schism, unintentionally perhaps, I could also feel maligned that she didn't even try to see that I was finding some middle ground to work things out with her, but I'm not going to.
Because it isn't productive. I cannot change how they thought/think, and how they felt/feel. But I can change how I react to things, since I am in control of my own emotions.
At the risk of sounding vindictive, let them say and believe what they want. I just want to move on and not look back at the things that made me feel all sorts of bad. Everyone makes mistakes---it is not my place to judge them. God will sort it all out at the end, not me.
It's cathartic to just write these down here. Anyway, that's all for now.
Till the next update.
I feel. That's something that I can say unequivocally now. I think I have much more empathy now than I have had a long time ago.
Or rather, I have relearnt how it is to have great empathy once again, having had that burnt out of me some twenty-two years ago when I was in a bad place.
But before I go all nostalgia, allow me to share the triggering event for this piece of writing. I finally got to meet up with some more church folk (while respecting the safe distancing rules!), and what some of them were experiencing hit me in ways that I would never have thought to be possible. I understood what she meant when she said that despite the advancedness of her cancer, she was ready to let the Lord lead the way. I understood that feeling of peace, a type of hopefulness in spite of the apparent hopelessness.
And I looked at my pissant nearly self-inflicted reactions to the most recently failed relationship, and I feel pathetic. I'm not in a life and death circumstance, despite how my heart feels---at least I know that tomorrow will not be snatched away from me as readily as in her case. Yet she wasn't going all ``woe be to me'' and being depressed about it---she trusted in the Lord to lead her along the way, and to carry her burdens. This is not to say that my feelings are invalid---it's just that it is important that I put things into perspective.
To be fair, I am and have been putting things into perspective. So yes, I do have some aspects of suicidal ideation, but they remain only as intrusive thoughts that will not be acted upon, because despite all the pangs of sadness that hit me, a deeper part of me knows that there is light ahead, that it is not the end, that it is merely an end.
It is rather hard to explain this, but if you are reading all the recent entries and feeling rather alarmed about it all, please don't be. I really am in a safe place, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
I found my rock, and will be fine. There's a time for everything, after all, and the Lord knows when it is the best time for certain things for me.
Like how today was the right day to be hearing her story and testimony, despite me having not known her before today, and really not contributing much to the conversation, and she being all apologetic about it all.
I see today as the start of a new set of relationships that I will be making with a group of people whom I am going to be living with for the rest of my life, and in many ways, I am looking forward to it. In many ways, my life has gone rather stagnant, and there are certain aspects of it that can be improved through this newer direction.
Okay, present-ness aside, time to tell a story about the Bad Old Days where I had my empathy burned the heck out of me.
When I was young (think younger than twelve years old), I used to be a much more empathetic person. Yes, I was still a nerd (you can't get rid of the nerdiness), but I was happy to help people, or in the Christian context, to serve. But when I reached my teens and was in secondary school, the change of environment was drastic. You see, I was from a neighbourhood primary school, where everyone was mostly just trying to do their thing---yes, we tried not to fail our examinations and what-not, but it wasn't a place that practised any form of elitism because there was simply no reason to. Secondary school was different, for one it was a ``prestigious school'' (no irony, it is really among the top ranked secondary schools of the day), and for two it was something akin to the ``aristocratic Chinese school''. I'm calling it ``aristocratic Chinese school'' only because the feeder schools to the place were largely elite primary schools (whatever that means), and those who ended up there had their established cliques as a result. And they were of the stereotypical conservative Chinese mentality---clannish to a fault, and never tolerating anything that isn't conforming.
For a neighbourhood primary school kid, who didn't buy into clannish behaviour, it was a culture shock. It didn't help that I had bad skin. But anyway, along the way, all these ``beat downs'' from the culture made it such that by the time I was done with secondary school, the last thing I wanted to be doing was to help people without any expectation of returns, i.e. out went the altruism that I had back in the day. One incident that stood out really strongly in my mind was one afternoon when I heard that a classmate didn't have enough money to take the bus, and I ran down a slope to pass him some that I had, but didn't stop in time, smashing my forearm against the metal railing, thus fracturing it. Said classmate didn't even thank me, and he didn't even cared that I fractured my arm.
I took the bus to the hospital on my own to have it looked at and placed in a cast.
I don't think I'm bitter now. It's just a story about the time when I started to learn about how the world works. It was just one story out of a slow increase of many, and it slowly became something that just gnawed at me for so long that I developed a new perspective---to be ``an equal opportunity hater of people in general'' because people, as a whole, are dicks.
To be fair, it is not that I didn't learn how to feel. I did learn how to feel---it can be seen through my steady improvement in how I interpreted music as I was playing on my 笛子---it's just that along the way, I learnt how to just repress the general empathetic feeling I had. Because it was something that people would take one to be a sucker for and just abuse the crap out of it.
The astute reader might be asking me now, why bring this up now?
Because one of the cutting reasons on why she chose to broke up with me was the apparent dissimilarity of values, as claimed by a third party, and as acknowledged by her as one of the reasons to let it all go. I could feel anger at the third party for causing a schism, unintentionally perhaps, I could also feel maligned that she didn't even try to see that I was finding some middle ground to work things out with her, but I'm not going to.
Because it isn't productive. I cannot change how they thought/think, and how they felt/feel. But I can change how I react to things, since I am in control of my own emotions.
At the risk of sounding vindictive, let them say and believe what they want. I just want to move on and not look back at the things that made me feel all sorts of bad. Everyone makes mistakes---it is not my place to judge them. God will sort it all out at the end, not me.
It's cathartic to just write these down here. Anyway, that's all for now.
Till the next update.
Saturday, September 05, 2020
And Then the ``New Blogger'' Made It Worse
Welcome once again to stupid o'clock, the traditional time in which I end up ranting for a solid while in that half-awake and half-asleep state of mind that is best described as ``ill-present''.
The last time I wrote something here, I talked about suicide ideation. As expected, after writing it all out here, I've not had an intrusive thought about it since then.
But to be fair, that was roughly two days ago. It's funny---I could've sworn it was longer ago then ``just'' two days.
In other news, I've added a bit more work to my read list. The first big thing that I did was to put in each of the three completed SCP Foundation tomes that I have read into the read list instead of waiting for the entire 2017-02-01 dump is completed. The two big reasons are that each of these tomes have around 500 articles, and it takes forever to go through them, so I will roughly have to wait for nearly twelve years before I can move the whole SCP Foundation project reading materials to the read list.
The other little bit of thing that I've enhanced was to keep track of how many items I have read, and estimating the average number of items that I have read from the cut-off where ``more meticulous records'' were kept. It's funny; I knew that I read a lot, but after this script was added to the page, I realised just how much was equivalent to ``a lot''. As at this point of writing, the script estimated around 725 items read per year by me. That number feels about right---reading roughly 2 items a day does feel like the right amount of effort that I have been doing.
------
Asking God questions is an interesting process. I don't think I've cultivated the level of astuteness to converse with Him directly (I think He tells me things through the coincidences of things that happen to me), but from what I heard, He seems fond of answering one of three possible answers: ``yes'', ``no'', and ``wait''. Of the three, the first two have closure and are easy to work with---it is ``wait'' that is tough.
Like now. My shattered sense of self is just sitting there on the ground in their miserable fragments. I asked God what's to happen to me, and the reply I got was basically ``wait''. And so, I wait, though as I said, this is the most uncertain and therefore the one that is most likely have the largest increase of suffering.
Okay, I can feel the forces of wakefulness being overwhelmed by the combined might of going past stupid o'clock and the anti-histamine chlorpheniramine.
All I wanted to do was to assure whoever is still reading this that yes, I had some suicide ideation, and no, I am not going to take any steps to fulfil the said ideation. I think it is better to just wait for now, and be in awe of God, and fear Him to glorify His might.
Okay, good night then.
Thursday, September 03, 2020
On Suicide Ideation
At the risk of triggering reflex actions, I will first begin by saying that I am still safe and am still in a safe place.
Now, with that said, let me talk about suicide ideation.
I have been having random thoughts about that for the past few months. I think that they are intrusive---I did not begin the day thinking to myself ``ah, what if I would die today by my own hand''---they just appear in my mind just like that. And to be fair, it isn't even the kind of ``I wish I were dead'' types of thoughts---they get really specific.
For instance, death by [drop] hanging either over the accessible parts of the Nicoll Highway or out in the middle of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve levels of specific. Hanging because of a broken neck is the fastest way to go, and that there are nicely prepared tables to ensure a clean break in the neck, which is many times better than the really awful way of asphyxiation.
Heck, I don't even have to go shopping for a rope---just re-use the toggle rope that I have lying around already. And if somehow I survive the attempt, the ensuing fall will finish the job. Or you know, just ensure that the height and the rope length are long enough to ensure decapitation, a 100% guaranteed death.
But they are just thoughts. It's not even a case of ``mostly just thoughts''---they are just thoughts. It's not that I have something to live for---I honestly don't at this point seeing that my life has basically been brought to a standstill in almost all aspects---but that it feels a little too weak-willed to just end it like that.
If I'm going to die prematurely and by my own hand, it will at least be after both my parents have passed on. And when that day comes, I will also need to check if I have anything still that I am responsible for.
Or if I lose agency of my self, as in, I reach the point where I cannot mentally even identify myself as myself any more---that's the day to die prematurely.
Consider this a pre-emptive advance directive unless otherwise superseded in future documents.
At this point, I'm just annoyed that these thoughts are creeping up on me like that. I suppose my work on this earth isn't quite done yet, otherwise the Lord would not have let me have the wisdom to realise that the thoughts were intrusive, to arrest them before they got out of hand, and put them out here so that the acknowledgement of their presence provides me with a better frame of reference to strongly refute the temptations that they bring.
The problem remains: what am I on this earth for? I don't know if I am ready enough to face the consequences of the answer to that question, and that is why I have not asked the Lord for one in prayer just yet.
These days, I just vacillate between random pangs of sadness and general numbness. My brain is usually in a fog, but when the situation arises, it does get back into its razor sharpness. Studying God's word helps to bring myself towards a different understanding, but at the same time, I am slowly finding my ego slipping away, as though I am slowly becoming a husk of some sort.
I want to scream and shout, but I don't know why. Some friends have offered to lend a listening ear, but I don't know what to say to them. Some times I just want to repeatedly slam my head into a hard surface, but I don't have the heart to break something through such silly actions on my part. I feel like I may need to take a break, but when I do, I end up being listless and just whiling the time away doing nearly nothing. Some days I'm super lucid, understanding many things with a clarity that I cannot begin to describe, but most days I'm just letting the time flow on by, almost literally just waiting to be called home to be with the Lord.
I write all these here with only a vague sense of why---whether I live or die, I suppose it is useful to at least try to pen down all these nonsense that is going through my head. Even if it doesn't benefit me, hopefully someone out there who stumbles upon this will learn that they are not alone. All I can say is, I'm sorry I don't have any solutions---all I have are just the complaints about how things just suck.
Before I turn in for the day, just observe that this entry came on in less than three days. And yes, things aren't going so well back in MT's head.
Before anyone gets all panicky, I want to reassure you, the reader, that I am still safe and am still in a safe place.
I seriously owe future-me a chance to live up to what he is supposed to be doing, and to do that, present-me needs to steward this body, brain, and soul well, and not die prematurely. I just hope that future-me knows what he needs to do, because present-me has no fucking clue.
Future-me, when you look back at present-me, please think back about the dark times, and how I tried to keep it together for you to shine. Remember me, okay?
Now, with that said, let me talk about suicide ideation.
I have been having random thoughts about that for the past few months. I think that they are intrusive---I did not begin the day thinking to myself ``ah, what if I would die today by my own hand''---they just appear in my mind just like that. And to be fair, it isn't even the kind of ``I wish I were dead'' types of thoughts---they get really specific.
For instance, death by [drop] hanging either over the accessible parts of the Nicoll Highway or out in the middle of the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve levels of specific. Hanging because of a broken neck is the fastest way to go, and that there are nicely prepared tables to ensure a clean break in the neck, which is many times better than the really awful way of asphyxiation.
Heck, I don't even have to go shopping for a rope---just re-use the toggle rope that I have lying around already. And if somehow I survive the attempt, the ensuing fall will finish the job. Or you know, just ensure that the height and the rope length are long enough to ensure decapitation, a 100% guaranteed death.
But they are just thoughts. It's not even a case of ``mostly just thoughts''---they are just thoughts. It's not that I have something to live for---I honestly don't at this point seeing that my life has basically been brought to a standstill in almost all aspects---but that it feels a little too weak-willed to just end it like that.
If I'm going to die prematurely and by my own hand, it will at least be after both my parents have passed on. And when that day comes, I will also need to check if I have anything still that I am responsible for.
Or if I lose agency of my self, as in, I reach the point where I cannot mentally even identify myself as myself any more---that's the day to die prematurely.
Consider this a pre-emptive advance directive unless otherwise superseded in future documents.
At this point, I'm just annoyed that these thoughts are creeping up on me like that. I suppose my work on this earth isn't quite done yet, otherwise the Lord would not have let me have the wisdom to realise that the thoughts were intrusive, to arrest them before they got out of hand, and put them out here so that the acknowledgement of their presence provides me with a better frame of reference to strongly refute the temptations that they bring.
The problem remains: what am I on this earth for? I don't know if I am ready enough to face the consequences of the answer to that question, and that is why I have not asked the Lord for one in prayer just yet.
These days, I just vacillate between random pangs of sadness and general numbness. My brain is usually in a fog, but when the situation arises, it does get back into its razor sharpness. Studying God's word helps to bring myself towards a different understanding, but at the same time, I am slowly finding my ego slipping away, as though I am slowly becoming a husk of some sort.
I want to scream and shout, but I don't know why. Some friends have offered to lend a listening ear, but I don't know what to say to them. Some times I just want to repeatedly slam my head into a hard surface, but I don't have the heart to break something through such silly actions on my part. I feel like I may need to take a break, but when I do, I end up being listless and just whiling the time away doing nearly nothing. Some days I'm super lucid, understanding many things with a clarity that I cannot begin to describe, but most days I'm just letting the time flow on by, almost literally just waiting to be called home to be with the Lord.
I write all these here with only a vague sense of why---whether I live or die, I suppose it is useful to at least try to pen down all these nonsense that is going through my head. Even if it doesn't benefit me, hopefully someone out there who stumbles upon this will learn that they are not alone. All I can say is, I'm sorry I don't have any solutions---all I have are just the complaints about how things just suck.
Before I turn in for the day, just observe that this entry came on in less than three days. And yes, things aren't going so well back in MT's head.
Before anyone gets all panicky, I want to reassure you, the reader, that I am still safe and am still in a safe place.
I seriously owe future-me a chance to live up to what he is supposed to be doing, and to do that, present-me needs to steward this body, brain, and soul well, and not die prematurely. I just hope that future-me knows what he needs to do, because present-me has no fucking clue.
Future-me, when you look back at present-me, please think back about the dark times, and how I tried to keep it together for you to shine. Remember me, okay?
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