Adventures in 20 Days

Twenty days have passed since the last entry here, and while I don't know who is really following this blog, I think I might owe my hidden audience an update or two ever so often.

Much can occur in twenty days, and it is of no difference now. Over the last twenty days, I have done the following (in no particular order):

• Met up with the ``new generation'' geocachers at an event
• Bought a new 箫 and 笛子
• Found a long lost geocache that was stumping the usual finders
• Got a first to find on a puzzle cache for my geocache centurial find
• Got assaulted by red ants on bare skin
• Walked through a mini tunnel near a drain that runs through a building
• Walked along a mossy rock-infested shoreline towards cliffs at low tide
• Learnt more about dog breeds than I had cared to find out
• Bashed through two jungles in Singapore and breaking lock combinations of the logs of the geocache
• Got stung by something unknown
• Performed light ``field surgery'' to remove a thorn splinter in my thumb
• Made some break through in work
• Got spanners thrown at me for my studies

No wonder it felt much longer than that.

I think I believe more in myself now than ever. I think I no longer harbour a strong need to have someone who is there for me; I think that I am starting to understand what it means to be a strong individual. It's funny to think that I need such a long time to finally realise what many folks have understood for a long time. In any case, it is a nice reprieve from all the unhappiness that I have been having over the last few years over this; while it is a little contrary to my overall being (a normal thing, considering that I'm a man of walking contradictions), it is still a sound proposition to myself. There is really no need to be reliant on a special other when one is strong enough. And thanks to the amazing powers of gender roles in society, it becomes much easier to convince myself that I am on the right course.

Of course, the true acid test of whether my mettle is stronger is when the time comes and I fly off for my next round of studies. Isolation has a strange way of amplifying all sorts of latent negative emotions that are absent when one has a support network of friends.

Taste of Failure...

What is the taste of failure? Is it completely bitter, or does it taste of forlornness as well? Is there any other thing that ``tastes'' worse than failure? Does anyone know?

Failure is something that most people strive to avoid, just because it is the representation of a lack of an achievement, and that it is also the manifestation of the supposed inability. Such a notion is so ingrained in the psyche that for the most part, everyone views failure in disdain.

But the truth is often more stranger than perception. While failure gives the most disgusting feeling of dread to almost everyone as a general rule of thumb and is almost universally scorned. the fact remains that failure is the only way that society as a whole progresses. Allow me to further illustrate this point.

The entire advancement of science as a knowledge system is based wholly on that of failure---each time a theory fails on a particular case, a new theory has to be concocted that will ``fix'' the broken theory. But if a theory has always been successful thus far, there is no guarantee that it is actually correct, since scientific theories are based largely on the principle of empiricism than induction as in mathematics; just because the theory works for the last large number of trials does not necessary mean that it will be simultaneously successful for the next trial, though we will, without loss of generality, assume from past verifications that it is still ``correct'' as far as we can tell for the foreseeable future.

So from the individual's perspective, failure is among the most distasteful of positions to be in, yet paradoxically, for the global good, we find that it is of an utmost necessity. This is not the first time we are seeing this phenomenon---I have talked about this some time ago regarding the optimisation problem, where the global optimum does not necessarily mean that every single individual comprising the group under study will benefit.

But of course, no one really wants to taste failure...

Blizzard Downloader Workaround

If you have any problems with downloading any of the digital download versions of Blizzard Entertainment's games, try to use Internet Explorer for a change instead of Firefox.

Middle Ear Infection Sucks

I swear that I'm not that moody a person, and that each time I choose to update this by writing an article or two, it's only because I have something nasty to get out of my mind so that it can recover. Oh, and I swear that being half-deaf is the most annoying thing that one can feel.

And why is it that I'm now half-deaf? All thanks to the middle ear infection that I have had to deal with over the last week or so. It is pretty annoying, to say the least, having to deal with an infection that is invisible yet always makes its presence known through the general bunged-upness of the ear. And in my ``good'' ear too---there is no justice in the world, it seems. Anyway, yes, I've been dealing with the infection over the last week, drifting in and out of consciousness from the higher fevers that I had to deal with, and dealing with the ridiculous amount of foul-smelling and foul-tasting phlegm and mucus, the latter of which I learnt only a few days ago when I started to feel a bit better and found that my taste buds were no longer numbed up.

Damn thing was a sickly green goo that tasted most foul. Could have sworn it was the pus from the middle ear that was forcefully drained by me via the Eustachian tube---it was in a ridiculous amount of quantity too. Very vile experience that I hope never to repeat.

Well today is almost a week after I first started on the course of antibiotics, and I feel mostly fine. The fever had broke a couple of days back, the cough is much reduced, and the ridiculously foul-smelling/tasting discharge is also reduced. But there is still this damn tinnitus in my ear that is driving me crazy and that whole bunged up feeling still hasn't gone away completely.

A worthy question to ask is why do I even have this lousy infection in the first place? There is only one answer to this: a weakened constitution due to stress.

Stress. Stress is the cause of my downfall.

Sometimes I hate myself, hate myself for being so... strongly work-minded. Always thinking about how to do more in a better/efficient/cost-saving manner. Always pushing myself more and more, convincing myself that there is always work to be done, and that I should be a conscientious worker who is mindful of his overall productivity. And that's why I even returned to work on some projects even when I was on leave the last time, simply because they were not worked on often enough due to the sorry fact that I've been committed almost 140% of my work week's time.

And thanks to that, I fell ill. Twice. It's just that this time, it's a fairly serious one that will probably have long-term ramifications that I need to take care of.

Thankfully, this week I am on leave. Final-fucking-ly, I might add, though it probably came about two weeks too late---had I taken a break two weeks earlier, I'd probably not be so stressed to the point that an infection would break out and take me out for a week. But we all have perfect hindsight, and this is no exception.

One thing's for certain though, I'm not going to give a rat's ass about work for this whole week I'm on leave. I think I deserve at least this privilege considering everything that is said and done. Time to make sure that the ``leave'' I take is put to good use in recharging my batteries so that I don't go down like a house of cards in a gale. Everyone will thank me for that, I'm sure.

Thinking While Procrastinating

So, instead of working on my slides for a presentation that is due some time in the morning of tomorrow, I find myself thinking about really random things as I try to focus my thoughts on the order of presentation that I am striving to attain. And among all the random things that come to mind from being part sleep-deprived and part sick is this simple question: why am I always attracted to the ``weird'' girls, and not those that are, you know, more ``normal'' within the Singapore context?

It has been a suspicion of mine that I am somewhat gender blind, in the sense that I don't really seem to have an obsessive attraction to ``girly-girls'', or females who demonstrate typical ``female'' behaviour. While I know that I am attracted to the female aesthetic (i.e. the ``looks like female'' criterion), it is not always the case that I am attracted to a personality that seems to evoke the kinds of typical macho emotions. Put in a more simple way, I seem to have an attraction to females who look female, but have a personality that is on the strong side, to the point sometimes that if one were to transplant that personality into a male body, the resulting mix can be easily identified as a true blue male.

This observation is of course based on the fragmented reflections that I have been having with regards to this particular aspect of my life. The sad truth about this type of attraction is this, such females are usually fiercely independent and are thus less likely to be involved in a relationship. So unless I can find a female who is ``fiercely independent yet doesn't mind the company'' or if I can alter the kinds of taste I have, getting settled down with that special someone is just not going to happen.

Killing Me Softly with This Work

Okay, so this is a mostly unplanned entry (not that the other entries are any more planned), but I suppose I just feel like talking random things today.

I think as a whole I'm just getting very very tired about a lot of things. Everything seems to be coming in large droves, and at times, it does feel a little overwhelming, though it hasn't gotten to the point that I feel like crying for help yet. Perhaps I'm stronger than I thought I was, or maybe I'm just too much of a nut case to realise just how much pressure I really am under.

In times of great pressure, I am slowly finding that keeping to myself makes a whole lot of difference to the whole mechanics, partly because there is little time wastage in having to deal with people. With those precious minutes saved in dealing with people, I can actually start to apply the time to myself from a much better position, since I alone can dictate how the time should be spent on what activity, and not have to play ``nice'' and follow the crowd, which, more often than not, display a general lack of discipline with regards to how time is used.

Of course, being alone in most regards does strange things to the mind. You become more paranoid about things that happen around you, and you start to think of things that shouldn't have appeared in your mind at all---some might call this a delusion, and I am not about to debate on that. Delusional or not, I think I'm starting to feel the effects of having worked non-stop for six months.

Six months with hardly a break.

Six months.

To be precise, it is probably longer, since the last time I went on a week's leave, it was spent working on yet another work-related project. No wonder I'm fast going insane and weirder than usual.

*sigh*

Anyway, this time I've decided to get another week off for myself just to unwind and relax. It's just so hard to pick a week among the myriad of weeks to take time off for myself---there's always this meeting here, some deadline there, and everyone wants a bit of you everywhere you look. But I suppose enough is enough, and I probably need the break badly---I can't keep going on like this, or there won't be a me left very soon.

Maybe I will write more next time. For now, I suppose this little expulsion should suffice.

Happy Pi Day!

Oh, and happy Pi day!

Neverwinter Nights 2 Texture Bug

To work around the bug where all you can see are shadows and the ``sky'' in Neverwinter Nights 2, use ` to get to the console, and then type the following:

debugmode 1
sky 0
debugmode 0

This will switch off the sky box rendering and allow the normal textures to show. Don't worry, you don't really miss much by removing the sky box.

Late Night Musing

So today as I sat in front of Eileen, my new portable gaming rig, a thought came to mind---just what was it that drives people to do the crazy things that they do ever so often, and more importantly, why they sometimes end up turning away from the very thing that gave them the biggest pleasure in the first place to work on something that is, comparatively speaking, more mundane?

Of course, this thought came about through a few triggers. The biggest one was the story of Annabel Chong, which, if you haven't known by now, is about the infamous Singapore pornographic arts actress who did a massive gang bang film back in the day. She has since returned to a more mundane existence, stating for the record that ``Annabel Chong is dead, and in her place is the evil doppelganger''. But of course, sensational as this story is, there are more mundane stories that I have of the people around me that fall in roughly the same category of people who went through a massively crazy period before falling back into a mundane existence.

I suppose there are a few ways of looking at this phenomenon. One way that I found to be rather interesting is the perspective that everything that we do has a certain notion of a ``finite limit''---meaning there is only a finite amount of energies that we can devote to a certain task, and once this energy is gone, it will never return. In some senses, this is a rather accurate if unscientific way of thinking about things. It actually is an idea that is loosely paraphrased from an Aikido practitioner's saying of ``we only have a limited number of breakfalls that we can do in our life-time, so we should make good use of it''. But to the main point: we can sustain only a finite amount of interest in something, before the brain gets bored with the enterprise and moves on to something else. This means that for any activity that we may do that is not theoretically essential (like breathing, sleeping or eating for instance), we can only sustain a finite amount of interest and corresponding energy into the matter before we start to lose complete interest in it in the manner of a ``burn-out''.

Empirically speaking, it does seem like a sound perception---do too many of the things you like and it will end up being something that you hate. The question then is not whether this principle is correct in practice (we are taking it so a priori), but whether we can work around the principle to achieve an effect that appears to contradict the given notion.

Let me provide an example to illustrate this point. Suppose I am learning a new skill, say driving. Without loss of generality, we will assume that, based on the above-mentioned principle, I will have n hours of interest in driving for the entirety of my lifetime. These n hours are taken to be absolute---they assume that if I did nothing but drive, I would spend only n hours of them on driving in this life-time. There are two rather extreme ways of seeing this: I can choose to drive only a few hours in a week and end up stretching the perception of time to about n divided by the number of hours per week to claim an interest counted in weeks, or I can just keep driving during the 16+ hours that I am awake and claim differently. Both methods consume all the n hours eventually, but which is the better allocation of time?

To most people, it would actually make more sense to ``spread out'' the time, partly due to the fact that it is likely to be impossible to be working on the skill/activity non-stop, but partly because the activity needs to be stopped intermittently just to maintain some level of interest for the practitioner. Back to the Annabel story quoted above---why did she quit her glamorous job of being a pornographic actress to go into web development? Maybe she got sick of all the sex---one tends to have more intercourse when one is a pornographic actress I suppose, or maybe she is just sick of all the attention (for some loose definition of ``amount of attention one wants in a life time''). Either way, it got her thinking and snapping out of the crazy zone and moving on to something more mundane.

When I saw that story, I got really concerned, because I can see myself ending up like her, and no, I don't mean ending up as a gang-bang porn star. What I mean is that I can see myself ending up in the crazy zone doing really apeshit crazy stuff, and then suddenly quitting it all to do something more mundane. Actually, among many of my friends both past and present, it would appear that they are in a similar danger themselves of getting stuck accidentally in the crazy zone. Now, the problem is not the getting stuck in the crazy zone part (you're too crazy to realise it, but woe to those around you), but that the eventual ``crash'' out of the crazy zone will mean that you will never go back to that activity again. I can see how Annabel might have some distaste with her ``crazy zone'' life---that explains why she decided to kill off that personality. And in the case of my own circumstances, I can see myself foregoing research completely should I end up being in the crazy zone for research. That is one thing that I hope never to do, simply because I cannot just live with the mundane---it bores my mind to death and I end up vegetating and becoming exactly like the kinds of ignorant people that I have sworn that I will never be.

And that's why I try to maintain a healthy list of activities to keep me occupied. Previously, I call these activities the different ``facets'' of myself, but now I think they are merely activities that I, the central Ego, choose to do on my own time. There is a sense of consolidation of my fragmented psyche (a product over the last half a decade, I might add), with the general understanding that I need to keep all the activities sufficiently interesting so that I can keep things moving on well into old age and eventually towards my death.

It is not true that if one does not dedicate 100% of one's waking hours to the task that one is not passionate enough---there is a difference between passion and sustainable passion. Basing on the principle stated above, raw passion is like falling very deeply in love with someone, kissing/hugging/holding hands and doing all kinds of lovey dovey stuff in every possible mushy way---sure it's fun and invigorating, but what happens when one runs out of ideas on how to impress? Is it still love/passion? Sustainable passion, it seems, is something that comes in controlled waves---the fire is there, but it is not a bright explosion in the sky but the soft burning embers of a kindling flame, slowly but surely consuming both fuel and oxygen. A sustainable reaction may take longer on the get go, but it will definitely outlast anything that starts quickly and without foundation.

And that of course, brings us back to the sore topic that seems to plague me ever since I started writing in a semi-public manner---relationships, or specifically, romantic relationships. So the last part in the saga saw me getting pretty hurt from quite a few angles, and then deciding that I wasn't really ready for a relationship now, even though I seemed to be more ``experienced'' having gone through a couple of iterations or so. In a way, that position still holds, but based on the observations that I'm having, I am actually swinging further outfield on the whole let's-not-even-get-involved camp. You see, there is really little reason to be involved in a relationship that leads to marriage. I don't mind the companionship and all the other perks from a relationship, but marriage as a concept is something that is starting to make less and less sense the more we proceed through the social advancement.

I believe that I have argued about the purpose of marriage in another entry, but I am too lazy to look for it. I shall restate the argument here again: marriage is about the strategic union of economic or political powers---there is really little else to the matter. And since everyone is more or less more independent now than before, we find that the dependence factor that is prevalent in marriage is getting eroded away. The proof of this direction of change can be seen in the rising divorce rates in all the countries that have divorce as a legal cop-out from a ``failed'' marriage---if marriage were really something desirable, why then are the divorce rates on the rise? Are the married people learning something that they didn't know when they were still single?

Anyway, it is already getting late here as I write this entry, and given that I'm running some horrid cold from being up too late over a few nights, I think it is best if I retired to bed for now. But before I go, I leave behind this question for pondering:

Must the bulk of a country's population growth come from procreation of the ``natural citizens'' or should a country be thankful of population growth from any source?

Silence of the Laptop

You know it is wonky when I start to write in such a hurried manner at this time of the night on a week day evening.

``Drained'' probably doesn't quite start to explain the general affect that I am feeling these days. Over the past two to three weeks, I have started on an isolationist quest of sorts, removing myself steadily away from most of the semi-coerced social interactions. It is quite an interesting experiment, really. In the beginning, there was the entire feeling of discomfort, as though I had removed a large part of where my energies come from. But as time went by, I slowly cultivated that introvertedness within me that has been in hiding for a long while as I acted out the life that I was supposed to be leading, what with the whole extraversion nonsense.

Yet in the last three weeks or so, I've started to comprehend a new form of peace and quiet of the mind, where all I think of are work, geocaching, grad school and Aikido. The old distractions that seemed to plague me from the past seems to be rather subdued internally, and from that springs forth a new resolve that powers the introversion within.

Don't get me wrong, I've not really converted into a completely introverted character---that is just too impossible because I'm not some one dimensional person. What has really happened is that I have finally begun creating that bit of space for myself where I can start to actually calm down and examine cause and effect safe from the prying eyes and minds of the outsiders. While not as strong as the voices in my head before, there is at least a cognizance of what truly lies within my psyche from the perspective of my conscious mind.

It's a hard phenomenon to explain, really, partly because I lack the necessary processes and vocabulary to explain it. But the key aspect of it all is the restful nature that I'm feeling. Yes, I may be working longer hours than before, having reduced the ``lunch hour'' into something that is no longer than twenty minutes, but I seem to feel a little less stressed out, now that I have a little more control over myself.

Once upon a time, I used to not care too much about what others thought. Then I was taught to ``socialise'' and be more aware of the emotions of others. And now, having seen what kind of nonsense I had to put up with using that attitude, I have moderated that to something that is a little more cold than before, yet without a complete alienation of the people---they can still talk to me, but only if it is related to something that is required.

I think I'm finally starting to understand the concept of keeping my mouth shut, and speaking only when necessary.

Holding one's tongue takes discipline, the discipline to realise that there is no need to comment on everything that people say, the discipline to realise that there is no need to share knowledge that is not solicited, the discipline to realise that people are always, by nature, manipulative. But like many things in life, it starts off being hard, and as time progresses, becomes unexpectedly easier. And in this regard, being a weirdo does have its advantages after all.

Till next time.

对深夜的问

情为何物？人与人之间，非需要情不可？父子与母子情又如何解释？

人间为何那么多苦？人为何不知足？好人为何无好报？

我心为何打烊？爱为何不长久？结了婚为何又闹分离？爱情难道无法长久永恒？

天为何戏弄百姓？世界政治为何那么零乱？天灾又为什么有增加的趋势？

我为什么孤独一身而过？钱真得那么重要吗？我为何整天觉得自己笨手笨脚的？

我为什么又哭了？男人真的不可以落泪吗？

我是否疯了……

Mercy

I have been debating about writing this entry for quite a while now, but I suppose the feeling innate me to write something has prevailed after all. And so, a depressing entry awaits you, the intrepid reader (no more of that ``blogder'' nonsense).

This world has no such thing as mercy. The very essence of mercy is a human created concept, just like the ideas of justice and generosity. If the natural law were to be taken at its full implication, that if we are willing to sacrifice the anthropic principle for just a moment, then it is clear that in the ``natural world'', there is really no such thing as mercy.

Reality is often a very cruel place. ``Might is right'' is a concept that is universally upheld, even in the modern societies that pride themselves on their generally strong concepts of civil rights and fairness. The only difference of course lies in the very definition of what ``might'' means in the context. In the past, even before the rise of human civilisation, ``might'' translates to being the strongest, the fastest or the wittiest; now, it translates to meaning whoever has the stronger economical, political and ethical stands, in general descending order of importance.

Then what is mercy? Mercy can be seen as an escape mechanism that the lesser privileged can use to get out of the general ``might is right'' principle. The idea is that by appealling to ``mercy'', the weak/conquered can elicit a positive response from the strong/conqueror, and can thus obtain an overall positive outcome for themselves, i.e. the ability to get away from whatever they were stuck in. Unfortunately, in the modern world where people are sticklers for rules and the such, mercy may only be appealled to, but not necessarily given.

There is no mercy in this world.

望天

I tried looking for this version of the song online, but the best I had was by a different singer.His version is very different from what ​蔡辛娟 sang---I prefer her version better since there's that strong wistful feel that he seems to be lacking. The lyrics themselves are meaningful on their own too, something that seems quite ripe for the season.

《望天》⁠⁠——​蔡辛娟

那是我的多情
也是我的痴情
天晓得分离的苦
加在我的身上
是想你时的甜
是想你时的甜
你怨你变 我恋我颠
天知道终日的思念
化在云端难牵连
你怨你变 我恋我颠
天知道这样的思念
可是风筝断了线
哪儿是你的世界
该如何走进你的心田
为何看不到
我的山川我的岁月我的天
我的山川我的岁月我的天
哪儿是你的世界
该如何走进你的心田
为何看不到
我的山川我的岁月我的天
我的山川我的岁月我的天
那是我的多情
也是我的痴情
天晓得分离的苦
加在我的身上
是想你时的甜
是想你时的甜
你怨你变 我恋我颠
天知道终日的思念
化在云端难牵连
你怨你变 我恋我颠
天知道这样的思念
可是风筝断了线
哪儿是你的世界
该如何走进你的心田
为何看不到
我的山川我的岁月我的天
我的山川我的岁月我的天
哪儿是你的世界
该如何走进你的心田
为何看不到
我的山川我的岁月我的天
我的山川我的岁月我的天
哪儿是你的世界
该如何走进你的心田
为何看不到
我的山川我的岁月我的天
我的山川我的岁月我的天
哪儿是你的世界
该如何走进你的心田
为何看不到
我的山川我的岁月我的天
我的山川我的岁月我的天

Lyrics courtesy of www.kuwo.cn.

Memories

As I said, the only friend you can rely on is yourself, and in this case, your memories.

《他的名字叫回忆》⁠—​⁠—​千百惠

我有一个好伙伴
他的名字叫回忆
他是一个诚挚不变的朋友
不管黎明到黄昏
或是黑夜到白昼
常会为我捕捉往日的快乐
他是如此的执着
他是这样关心我
始终住在我心深处的角落
不论我走到哪里
他就跟我到哪里
让我一点也不觉得寂寞
每当别的朋友都离去
他却会自愿留在我身边
给我安慰填补我空虚
他是我最好的朋友回忆

Lyrics courtesy www.inkui.com.

Fealty

Today, another thought struck me: fealty... feverish fervour for foolishness?

While it is an obvious alliteration, the ideas that come from its utterence is something that I have been pondering about for quite a while. ``Fealty'', to the uninitiated, is the idea of loyalty or faithfulness, while ``feverish fervour'' refers to the concept of being in a state of near blind support, without the inkling of doubt whatsoever. And ``foolishness'' of course refers to this entire concept as being something that is not really meaningful nor particularly rational by most counts.

So why the sudden alliterative mood? I was thinking a little about some of the things that I had been through, and it seems to me that many of the problems that I face consists of the problems with fealty, or rather, the idea of divided fealty---conflicting sources of loyalty that interplay with each other and tear the individual asunder with the issues on which choices are considered the most correct given the circumstances. Let's take some non-politically sensitive example to illustrate this point: suppose I like a particular peson, yet I still have some remnant emotions from the last relationship that didn't just go away. Is it considered being unloyal to my feelings to accept the new person?

Or for a more politically charged version, if you are working for a company, do you entrust your entire working ability towards getting your job done, or do you be loyal to your own beliefs and ensure that you do things in a more ``sustainable'' manner, at the cost of some supposed lost efficiency?

These are hard questions to answer, and it seems that many of the problems I face in life fall roughly into this category. I have been brought up from a young age to be mindful of the global optimum case---thinking from the perspective of the greater good, which may, at times, mean that one sacrifices the self to advance society in general. Once upon a time, when someone asked me if I were willing to die if a thousand could live, I would have no hesitation.

Now I have second thoughts.

I'm not sure if this is related to the development of my misanthropic tendencies from having realised that many people in the world are just plain dumb. From the principle of the greater good then, it casts a doubt as to whether one thousand supposedly dumb people are worth the sacrifice of one able-bodied person---I believe this is a question that has no simple answer. Thus, the fealty to the populace under such an extremist view seems to suggest that it is merely foolishness on the part of the person who is intending to make the sacrifice.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating that we all work towards a completely anarchist perspective where everyone is selfish. What I'm saying is that the idea of fealty itself needs more justification from the logos perspective, and that it is not always to the benefit of the self (nor of society) that people have blind fealty. An obvious case is with the recent highlighting of the extremists; no one can deny their fealty to their cause, be it religious or philosophical. But everyone can clearly see that in pursuing their fervour, they have left large swathes of society in shambles, and that cannot be a good thing.

Anyway, I think I've mumbled enough about this for now. Till the next random thought.

Why I Sleep Less Than Seven Hours Daily

And today I remember why I didn't really like sleeping seven hours.

Dreaming, in a certain sense, is a most wonderful thing to be had. It allows one to explore the subconscious, to experience things that do not occur that easily (if at all!) in real life, all with the innate safety of it being merely a figment of one's imagination.

It is also a great source of false hope, disappointment, and general malcontentment with life when one realises what one's life could be.

I have slept roughly seven hours on two separate occasions over the weekend, and in each time, I wake up the next day feeling shaken.

It's not so much as it involved supernatural spirits---I'm used to seeing that in my dreams, and usually I'm aware enough of the fact that I'm dreaming that I can will things to happen the way I want, but that it involved something that strikes a chord within myself.

You see, in each of the dreams, there was a girl involved, and each time, it ended with me being in tears.

I was dreaming that I had fallen in love with an arabian girl in my first night. Now almost two days later, I cannot really remember much, but suffice to say, it got me confused when I started thinking about the practicalities of the matter, like how she and I were supposed to be living together, with her entrenched strongly in her religion, and me not wanting to sacrifice my mostly independent mind to follow a religion [Ed: Read between the lines to understand what I'm talking about here.]. That prompted me to look up the said information when I woke up (the hell), and I found that it was impossible for her to leave her religion behind, not unless she wants to undergo the penalty of death.

Talking about taking a dream seriously.

In the next dream, the one that I just had nearly two hours ago, it seemed to be a conflated version of the the world of Pittsburgh I left behind and something that spawned out of Tekka Market. I was a tech-wiz in the dream, having some ability that I am currently unable to recall. Anyway, I ended up living with a bunch of people in the same apartment of sorts on the ground floor or something, and in the end, we all decided to leave it, for some reason. One of the girls who lived with us was my love interest in the dream, and we decided to head out together. Somehow it got to me taking her to visit my grandmother, who was some psychic located on the second floor of a shopping centre that seemed to follow the ambience of the local Tekka Market while having a layout similar to that of the Mall Atrium in Dead Centre of Left4Dead 2. Anyway, we went there after walking past some shophouses, including one which was a dojo for Aikido, and once we got there, she got really scared. It turns out that she could see spirits, and my grandmother's shop (paradoxically located one floor above the alteration shop below it with no other way up than from the stairs within the lower shop) was full of the spirits. In fact, it was so full that the floor space outside of the alteration shop itself was full of spirits. The girl got very scared, and we left, and then she left me. I found myself returning to this part of town that looked like a mix between something from Left4Dead 2 and Pittsburgh, with me walking about partly in the wilderness and partly within the town itself, at one point even boarding a bus like the one's I've seen in Pittsburgh, and sleeping in it. There was also a strange ship building exercise that wanted to build some boat doing some important stuff using some environmentally friendly process.

Of course I couldn't make head nor tail of what my dreams were talking about, since it is now two hours after I had awaken, which made it neigh impossible to remember correctly. Strangely though, each of these dreams involved me being romantically attached to some female, even though it were only for a short period of time. And when I woke up, I immediately thought of Mint for some reason, and that prompted me to wonder out loud on that infernal stalker tool: ``Is a relationship less real if it only lasted for that short period of time?''

So, is a relationship less real if it only lasted for that short period of time? Apparently from my perspective, that is hardly true---I'm still thinking about Mint, even though I'm pretty certain she isn't thinking about me. Sometimes, when I'm not paying attention, I find myself drifting in thought to Ida, though to be fair, it was more of fond memories than a strong sense of let's-get-back-togetherness. I suppose that thinking about the people you had known in a significant way in the past is part and parcel of being human, but sometimes it does get a little unnerving considering everything.

And that's the real reason why I don't like to sleep for long. I don't want to remember the dreams that present me an alternative reality that can be, at times, more real than the one I'm currently in, tempting me to just end this reality to seek the hopes and dreams that the other one raises.

The Tirade of the Twenty-Six

If you see this post, it means that I have aged by a year. Note that I have written this post about 2 days earlier, since I'm foreseeing that the things that I need to deal with over the next two days will probably preclude me from actually having the time to write an entry.

So, 26 years have passed since I first came to this planet. It can be said as a miracle, in a certain sense, due to the circumstances surrounding my eventual appearance on this earth. Then of course, there's the whole chunk of thing called life that I had to deal with, including having to fight off all those derogatory comments from the many strangers who think it is their god-given right to pinpoint and criticise things that they have little understanding about.

I suppose it is due to these largely negative experiences that I have learnt to not give a rat's ass to what people say, particularly when they trigger those warning flags that almost unambiguously label them as douchebags. But then again, based on my upbringing, I have somehow cultivated that philanthropic nature, so I end up in the most paradoxical position of a misanthropic humanist.

But why am I wasting precious writing time here bitching about those people? Let's talk about more happy things, since this is an anniversary in celebration of my birth.

I've long gotten myself a gift for my birthday; I just didn't think it appropriate to talk about it any earlier. It is probably the most expensive thing I have gotten myself, and the more I use it, the more I find it worth my while. I've gone ahead and gotten myself an Altus-Azumi concert flute (model number AZ3000). It's a lovely flute, whose headjoint and body are made of 95.8% ``Britannia'' silver, and whose lip plate and key work are made of 92.4% ``Sterling'' silver. The sound of my AZ3000 is really sweet---she reaches the high pitches without cracking, and it just sounds brighter than the budget flutes that I have been playing thus far. Of course she comes in French style (i.e. open holed), with a B-foot, offset G, split-E mechanism and gizmo key---these are all the very basic that I look for in a concert flute. The responsiveness of my AZ3000 is phenomenal; it has gotten to the point that I would just play sixteenth notes at high speed just to mess around with the quick reaction of the flute. I love instruments that are this nimble, since the numbleness provides the unparallelled ability to convery very subtle emotional cues via ornamentation---if the instrument is sluggish, then the ornamentation will not be easily articulated and thus the whole sound will be rather muddy and have a distinct lack of crispness and freshness that is so important. I expect the AZ3000 to serve me well in the years to come---a good concert flute (much like a good 笛子) can last for a very, very long time with good care and use. For anyone who is interested in getting one (and you happen to be in Singapore), contact The Flute Studio---they are the official distributors of the Altus-Azumi flute series.

Apart from the ``official'' gift that I got myself, I went into a splurge of some sort and bought other useful and semi-useful stuff. There's a student piccolo that I got (the Prelude PC710 Piccolo, a sub-company of the Conn-Selmer group) just to mess around with. Contrary to popular belief, I found that the piccolo was remarkably easy to play in tune, with a deviation of about 5 to 10 cents when playing to A4=442Hz. I attribute this to the fact that the 梆笛 is of a similar range as the piccolo, and that the necessary embouchre and lung power has already been trained for a long time, which makes it much easier for me than for someone who has been playing the concert flute all the while (the embouchre on the concert flute is much looser than that of the piccolo). In fact, I think it is for the same reason that I don't find the upper register of the concert flute that tough as compared to other concert flute players.

Remember Eirian? Well, some things have happened since I got her slightly more than 2 years back. First off, her e-ink display was starting to lose contrast, possibly due to aging/wear and tear. Secondly, the company that built her (iRex Technologies), is no longer doing the consumer business due to the delay caused by the FCC in certifying the DR800---iRex missed the holiday season and went belly-up due to cashflow problems (one story link can be found here). Talking about tough luck. Having said that, I found that the e-reader is something that I cannot seem to live without since it can fuel my bookworm nature without having to lug the associated kilogrammes worth of actual dead tree offerings. And I scouted about for Eirian's replacement. The iPad was obviously out of the equation; apart from the high price point, the display that it uses is hardly suitable for ``all terrain'' reading. Thankfully, Amazon had the Kindle DX, which satisfied the three conditions of an excellent e-reader: good contrast, large screen and long battery life. One click and some time later, I am the proud owner of Eirian II, a worthy successor of Eirian. Eirian II is not without her faults of course, but I think those faults are pretty minor considering everything else that she has. I will not go into a long narrative about the pros and cons of using a Kindle DX---I think that's what review sites are for.

Anyway, enough talk about the stuff I spent money on. Time to talk about more mundane issues. I think for this upcoming year (year 27, if you have been counting and/or not get sidetracked by what I have been saying thus far) I will be focusing even more deeply into myself. I'm already getting sick of having to deal with people as a whole, and I have found that I am losing what I know about myself---it is going to be a major year to remake myself for the next decade or so. Much has happened, as always, and I think that my current policy of isolationism is a sound one, since it gives me the space that I need to look deeper into myself and understand the forces that drive me to do what I do. Distractions of all sorts have to be culled away mercilessly---that is the law of the land, and is probably the best way to ensure that I have the most efficient way of handling things as possible. I'm not saying that I am abandoning my friends and going solo all the way, but that I will remove all those people who have either a negative or no impact on me from my life just to reduce the overall complexity. If I claim that I am in love with my mind, and that I am as misanthropic as I claim to be, then it would not matter if I excise the useless people that surround me.

Cold-hearted? Ruthless? I don't care. It's my life and my choice---if others can excise me from their lives when I prove to be ``not useful anymore'', why can't I do the same? I am still human after all, not some saint of some sort. I don't have to be popular with everyone---I just need to count when I need to count, other than that, why do I even bother wasting any effort? It is time to pull out that utilitarian hat that I have kept away for a while and to put it on, letting my rational side rule supreme once more.

J'ai besoin d'être plus grave et la conquête du monde à ma façon.

Oh, and happy birthday to me! =D

随风而逝

Something by Regina Zeng again:

随风而逝——曾庆瑜

走过春和冬 雨和风 花开和花落
我已经尝到这人生的痛
究竟要追求什么 能偿还什么
这一切我还在迷惑

梦已经太多 不可说 也不愿承诺
我终于看出你心里的忧
纵然有再多失落 不让泪滑落
让记忆陪自己去过

如今随风而逝 随风而逝
岁月 它编织着曲曲折折的梦
随风而逝 随风而逝
我又何需频频回首

梦已经太多 不可说 也不愿承诺
我终于看出你心里的忧
纵然有再多失落 不让泪滑落
让记忆随自己去过

如今随风而逝 随风而逝
岁月 它编织着曲曲折折的梦
随风而逝 随风而逝
我又何需频频回首

如今随风而逝 随风而逝
岁月 它编织着曲曲折折的梦
随风而逝 随风而逝
我又何需频频回首

我又何需频频回首

另一种回想

又是另一年的开始，而我自己也不知道前途如何。2010年的过去是充满着悲伤伤感的事件，而我又对2011年的期望也不是说很大。今天的我，心事重重，仿佛有解不开的心结。

不，我不是又有了感情上的问题——这是我已经下定决心不要去理睬它；凡是随缘吧。记得我曾经说过，“不在乎天长地久，只在乎曾经拥有”，但日子久了我才发现这是一个自欺欺人的谎言。这句话的含义，根本就和我的个人处事态度完全不符合，尤其是对于用情之类的事务。如果这句话为真，那么我又为何为以前所交过的女朋友而伤心掉泪，念念不忘呢？

我总觉得自己是属于用情比较深的人，也就因如此现在的我对爱情之类的东西都尽量的疏远些。这不是因为我害怕又受到伤害，而是因为我发现自己的心还没有到能够为一个人付出一切的痴心作风；换句话说，我本身认为自己对“爱情”的认识不够深。以前的我可能认为自己已成熟了，可以学上如何爱一个人了，但是现在的我发现事实是刚好相反的。也就这样，我对爱也不怀多大的希望。

事业上，我也有一些保留，因为最近实在是发生了太多能够打击我心情的事件。我其实是很想在这里发挥一下，但总认为这是个不大好的策略；或许以后我会有胆量把这些适于心情兜出来。说着说着，我也开始累了。我看今晚就写到此为止——可能以后我会在对这个题目在写一番。

Cruel?

As I was thinking about the various conversations over lunch/dinner yesterday that I had with some of my colleagues, a curious thing came to mind: what does it mean to be cruel? Put in another way, what does ``cruelty'' actually entail?

Pulling up a dictionary, I found the following definitions:

cruel

1. Causing pain or suffering
2. Having or showing a sadistic disregard for the pain or suffering of others

Okay, so to be cruel is to cause pain and suffering and clearly this is something that we should strive to avoid because we are all morally upright individuals, right? Right? Not to mention the fact also that we should not have any sadistic disregard for the pain and suffering of others.

Somehow it sounded a bit hollow to me. In the conversations that we had yesterday, there was reference to some of the rather cruel ways in which some people treat animals. No, I don't mean things like crushing cats or any of those completely useless nonsensical actions that some individual does for kicks and laughs, I am referring to a systematic and calculated treatment of animals. I say ``treatment'' instead of ``maltreatment'' because this is where I think the line blurs---there is a conflict of interest between looking out for the welfare of animals and looking out for the welfare of humans.

In many organisations that look towards the whole issue of animal cruelty, the general trend is to be selective about the battles that they fight; they will go for the ``high profile'' cases (those that make the most media impact) over anything that is ``low brow'', they will fight those who cannot defend themselves. Why do I make such allegations? It is a known fact that money is the chief levelling factor in the world, regardless of what one may be doing. In many cases of conflict, the side which has more money (and therefore more resources) will be the one who will win in the long run; money is just a more liquid form of asset and resources, and thus in a game of attrition (which is what all these battles are about anyway), they can always hold out the longest. But how does this sit with the assertion I made earlier about the conflict of interest between looking after animal welfare versus human welfare?

We have many people. We have nearly seven billion people on this planet. Less than a fifth of these people are living in wholly artificial environments that we call ``cities''. These city dwellers need to be fed, entertained and the like, and due to their ridiculous density, become a lucrative source of revenue for folks eking out a living. Now, foodwise there is an incentive for the food producers to capitalise heavily on this market, i.e. looking after the welfare of the humans. Because of this, we find that in many cases, conditions for animals bred for food (in captivity of course) suffer what we call ``cruel treatment''---it is a sacrifice of the animal's welfare for the welfare of that of the human (the producer earns money, and someone out there gets to eat their chicken). There is almost no compelling reason for the food producers to do otherwise, particularly if the alternative actions result in them using more resources for lesser yield.

And then there are some people who decry the whole idea of consuming animals. ``Eat only vegetables!'' they say, ``it is good for you!''. But as usual, they just turn a blind eye to the fact that eating meat is a valid type of natural food source; the standard argument against their rallying call is that if we humans were supposed to subsist on only vegetables, why would we have canine teeth, and more importantly, why would our appendix (the organ responsible for digesting cellulose) would become vestigial over generations?

Barring that, the tactics used by these groups are also at times very questionable; there is a strong malodour of hypocrisy. It is partly because of the myopic vision of these groups in advancing only their agenda, and partly because they have not realised that the support that allows living in the city have become so intertwined and connected that it becomes truly impossible to just isolate one small region which seemingly has problems and attack that one region only without respect to everything else. For example, there will be some groups who would be championing the humane treatment of dolphins and the like, but will conveniently forget the fact that people are eating fish everyday (fish is, in some cultures, not considered to be meat; it figures).

But back to the issue of being cruel. Economics has a lesson or two to tell us: supply and demand are interrelated concepts; where there is a large demand, supply will increase accordingly to meet up with demand, and if there is excess supply, suppliers will slash prices to make it more appealling to consumers, which will increase demand. Therefore, the only surefire way of tackling all these cruelty acts is to destroy the entire market: heckling only the suppliers or only the consumers will produce exactly no effect, the market itself needs to be destroyed so as to completely destroy the entire feedback cycle of supply and demand. But of course, once a group realises this and takes action in this direction, it will be labelled as ``anti-capitalism'' or worse, like ``anarchist''. And then nothing good will come out of it.