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.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
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?
Monday, August 31, 2020
It Would Have Been a Triumphant Day
See, today would have been a triumphant day.
About a year ago today I came to the conclusion that I was sick and tired of dragging my fat ass around, and so decided to spend effort to change my lifestyle to actually lose weight. I had a copy of The Hacker's Diet by John Walker for a while, and read it. The key ideas for weight loss (and subsequent control) are:
He uses pounds, I use kilograms---the principle is still the same.
My original goal was to drop below 75kg first. That's a good 10kg or so less than the starting mass of around 85kg (84.2kg at the point of first measurement, but a variation of ±1kg is not unheard of). As you can tell from the screenshot, I've hit that goal by around December. The trick for me was to do ``one meal a day'' (OMAD). There were two reasons for OMAD:
I went for surgery in January to settle an emerging problem (circumcision to tackle phimosis, if you have to know), but didn't stop my regime of OMAD. Recovery time was nearly a month, but it was all right.
The Hacker's Diet did talk about a daily 15-minute exercise component based loosely off the Royal Canadian Air Force's 5BX (RCAF 5BX). I didn't start on it till April, because that was when I guesstimated that I would have lost enough mass for the exercise to be somewhat meaningful. I had worked on the RCAF 5BX plan before, but it was, as Walker put it, rather confusing. More importantly, since it wasn't done with weight loss progressing at the same time, it also meant that I was stressing my body out more than expected with all the excess weight.
After that, I started to more seriously consider my goals. I know that the Body Mass Index (BMI) isn't exactly the best of benchmarks, but I thought it adequate for my needs because it was mainly for the sedentary individual. Last I checked, I have been sedentary for a long time. The small hiccup here was that the ``standard'' numbers for BMI were less correct for the smaller build of the typical South East Asian person, and so I resorted to using the Singapore standard for BMI instead.
Those numbers (and their associated masses given my puny height of 1.67m) are indicated in the screenshot as well. The more astute would notice that there are two numbers next to the one labelled ``Latest Wt''. The smaller number is the number of kilograms to the low-moderate risk border of 23 (64.1kg), while the larger number is the number of kilograms to the mid-point of the low-moderate risk border of between 18.5 and 23 (works out to around 57.9kg).
The next milestone to me was to dip below 70kg, something that I reached at around April---I took that opportunity to finally tailor some new pants since my old ones were really too large for me to even look remotely presentable. Incidentally, that was also when the ``circuit breaker'' began, and when she broke up with me via letter. At that point, I kinda started giving up a little as the bummedness came in (dare I call it depression?), eating coated peas and almonds with anchovies as snacks. The lowest trend mass I ever reached so far was just 67.1kg (with spot masses nearer 66kg), but it could not last. Part of the OMAD strategy hinged on being sufficiently distracted to not let the hunger pangs bother me (remember it was psychological), but with all the lock down and aftermath from the break-up, there was just too little to distract me from it.
And now, today, at the twelfth month, I'm at 69.9kg, just 0.1kg shy of the last big milestone I hit.
I have new resolve to get back into OMAD to drop the mass down to the next milestone, which is dipping to lower than 65kg. I'd probably either have to alter my dress shirts, or tailor new ones---I'm more inclined to do the former if I can help it, because I remember them being more pricey than the pants. Besides, I think it would probably be easier to adjust the shirts (reduce the waist line while keeping everything else), but I will only know when I bring it down to the tailor for suggestions.
I said earlier that today would have been a triumphant day. It would have been triumphant because I was making myself healthier and more presentable for my future married life. But that isn't happening, at least not with her, and that has bummed me out.
In a way, my slow and careful triumph over excessive mass is basically meaningless for the moment. A pity.
But Jesus did mention that He would raise a new temple from the razed one in three days; the temple He spoke of was the place where the Holy Spirit resides, and in this case, it is exactly this body that I am carefully reshaping to ensure that the risk of cardio-related issues due to excessive mass is heavily reduced. So perhaps there is some meaning after all.
I don't care how selfish I sound now. On those days when I throw away those rose-tinted nostalgia-ridden glasses for whatever reason (like today), I feel like I've been played out, and it annoys me. Don't get me wrong, there were many many good memories, just as there were many many good and fun plans for the future. I forgive, I truly do, but I'm no Christ---it still pains and annoys me that it took five years to end up like this. Five years of opening up myself, of thinking about our future with great happiness and anticipation. Five bloody years, to have everything ended in five days. I'm happy for her that she finally figured out what she wanted, and I am exceedingly glad for her that after being broken, she is finally made whole once more to right her relationship with Him.
But... what about me?
I'm still broken, am I not? Who would want me now? Can I even live with myself now? Do I even want me now?
My Heavenly Father, forgive me for feeling like this. To err is human, to forgive, divine. I forgive, but I still feel broken in ways that I don't know if I will ever be put back together in a way that is still acceptable by someone. I pray to You for guidance, for wisdom, and for strength to get through my days---I know not what else to pray for other than these generic platitudes. Part of me says to pray for death so I can go away from this world and have eternal life with You, but I don't even know if that is what I want, or if that is Your Will, or is it just the deeply repressed sinful nature in me seeking the easy way out. I study Your word every day---each time I read them and try to understand what they mean, I have an inner peace. I sleep well at night, dreamless and restful. But sometimes deep within the peace, an uneasy and undefinable stirring bubbles beneath, a feeling that I do not know nor understand. My Heavenly Father, I am troubled in ways that I do not understand; may the Holy Spirit intercede on my behalf to tell you what is it that my heart and soul needs. Into thy hands I entrust myself, for it is your will, not mine.
Amen.
About a year ago today I came to the conclusion that I was sick and tired of dragging my fat ass around, and so decided to spend effort to change my lifestyle to actually lose weight. I had a copy of The Hacker's Diet by John Walker for a while, and read it. The key ideas for weight loss (and subsequent control) are:
- Recalibrate the body's feedback system;
- Alter the lifestyle to keep the feedback system;
- Ensure that the feedback system is sensitive enough to detect changes, but not sensitive enough to ``over-react'';
- Much of the variation in body mass is water, so choosing the correct feedback system is crucial.
He uses pounds, I use kilograms---the principle is still the same.
My original goal was to drop below 75kg first. That's a good 10kg or so less than the starting mass of around 85kg (84.2kg at the point of first measurement, but a variation of ±1kg is not unheard of). As you can tell from the screenshot, I've hit that goal by around December. The trick for me was to do ``one meal a day'' (OMAD). There were two reasons for OMAD:
- The realisation that the hunger pangs I felt were more psychological than physiological (i.e. I wasn't keeling over from ``low blood sugar''); and
- It was far easier to just have OMAD having anything I wanted for that meal than to calorie count like an OCD sufferer.
I went for surgery in January to settle an emerging problem (circumcision to tackle phimosis, if you have to know), but didn't stop my regime of OMAD. Recovery time was nearly a month, but it was all right.
The Hacker's Diet did talk about a daily 15-minute exercise component based loosely off the Royal Canadian Air Force's 5BX (RCAF 5BX). I didn't start on it till April, because that was when I guesstimated that I would have lost enough mass for the exercise to be somewhat meaningful. I had worked on the RCAF 5BX plan before, but it was, as Walker put it, rather confusing. More importantly, since it wasn't done with weight loss progressing at the same time, it also meant that I was stressing my body out more than expected with all the excess weight.
After that, I started to more seriously consider my goals. I know that the Body Mass Index (BMI) isn't exactly the best of benchmarks, but I thought it adequate for my needs because it was mainly for the sedentary individual. Last I checked, I have been sedentary for a long time. The small hiccup here was that the ``standard'' numbers for BMI were less correct for the smaller build of the typical South East Asian person, and so I resorted to using the Singapore standard for BMI instead.
Those numbers (and their associated masses given my puny height of 1.67m) are indicated in the screenshot as well. The more astute would notice that there are two numbers next to the one labelled ``Latest Wt''. The smaller number is the number of kilograms to the low-moderate risk border of 23 (64.1kg), while the larger number is the number of kilograms to the mid-point of the low-moderate risk border of between 18.5 and 23 (works out to around 57.9kg).
The next milestone to me was to dip below 70kg, something that I reached at around April---I took that opportunity to finally tailor some new pants since my old ones were really too large for me to even look remotely presentable. Incidentally, that was also when the ``circuit breaker'' began, and when she broke up with me via letter. At that point, I kinda started giving up a little as the bummedness came in (dare I call it depression?), eating coated peas and almonds with anchovies as snacks. The lowest trend mass I ever reached so far was just 67.1kg (with spot masses nearer 66kg), but it could not last. Part of the OMAD strategy hinged on being sufficiently distracted to not let the hunger pangs bother me (remember it was psychological), but with all the lock down and aftermath from the break-up, there was just too little to distract me from it.
And now, today, at the twelfth month, I'm at 69.9kg, just 0.1kg shy of the last big milestone I hit.
I have new resolve to get back into OMAD to drop the mass down to the next milestone, which is dipping to lower than 65kg. I'd probably either have to alter my dress shirts, or tailor new ones---I'm more inclined to do the former if I can help it, because I remember them being more pricey than the pants. Besides, I think it would probably be easier to adjust the shirts (reduce the waist line while keeping everything else), but I will only know when I bring it down to the tailor for suggestions.
I said earlier that today would have been a triumphant day. It would have been triumphant because I was making myself healthier and more presentable for my future married life. But that isn't happening, at least not with her, and that has bummed me out.
In a way, my slow and careful triumph over excessive mass is basically meaningless for the moment. A pity.
But Jesus did mention that He would raise a new temple from the razed one in three days; the temple He spoke of was the place where the Holy Spirit resides, and in this case, it is exactly this body that I am carefully reshaping to ensure that the risk of cardio-related issues due to excessive mass is heavily reduced. So perhaps there is some meaning after all.
I don't care how selfish I sound now. On those days when I throw away those rose-tinted nostalgia-ridden glasses for whatever reason (like today), I feel like I've been played out, and it annoys me. Don't get me wrong, there were many many good memories, just as there were many many good and fun plans for the future. I forgive, I truly do, but I'm no Christ---it still pains and annoys me that it took five years to end up like this. Five years of opening up myself, of thinking about our future with great happiness and anticipation. Five bloody years, to have everything ended in five days. I'm happy for her that she finally figured out what she wanted, and I am exceedingly glad for her that after being broken, she is finally made whole once more to right her relationship with Him.
But... what about me?
I'm still broken, am I not? Who would want me now? Can I even live with myself now? Do I even want me now?
My Heavenly Father, forgive me for feeling like this. To err is human, to forgive, divine. I forgive, but I still feel broken in ways that I don't know if I will ever be put back together in a way that is still acceptable by someone. I pray to You for guidance, for wisdom, and for strength to get through my days---I know not what else to pray for other than these generic platitudes. Part of me says to pray for death so I can go away from this world and have eternal life with You, but I don't even know if that is what I want, or if that is Your Will, or is it just the deeply repressed sinful nature in me seeking the easy way out. I study Your word every day---each time I read them and try to understand what they mean, I have an inner peace. I sleep well at night, dreamless and restful. But sometimes deep within the peace, an uneasy and undefinable stirring bubbles beneath, a feeling that I do not know nor understand. My Heavenly Father, I am troubled in ways that I do not understand; may the Holy Spirit intercede on my behalf to tell you what is it that my heart and soul needs. Into thy hands I entrust myself, for it is your will, not mine.
Amen.
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Trooping Along
Heh, this is starting to become a thing, ain't it? Roughly a post a week, give or take a couple of days.
It's cathartic. I cannot claim to completely enjoy it, but it is definitely something that allows me to banish thoughts away from my mind, keeping it less cluttered and thus less headache-inducing.
It also fulfils the secondary aspect of keeping those who want to keep abreast of my happenings updated, without having to undergo the rather awkwardly ``intense'' discussion process that is talking with me directly.
Anyway, August is almost gone. We are down to the last quarter of 2020 to go. At the risk of really jinxing it, I cannot see how much worse it can get.
Wait, the US elections are happening in November. Never mind, let me take back what I said about how I cannot see how much worse it can get. Because I have this feeling that the worse is yet to come.
I pray for the safety of my friends who are living in the US right now. May the Lord bless and protect them through these tough and troubling times.
The last time I wrote something here, I mentioned how Cui was telling me what it was that I was grieving---it was about a future that was lost, the plans that were trashed due to the circumstances and the actions. After ugly crying and then mulling over it for the whole week, I completely agree with her. Already new plans are forming in my head---I know that I am now a believer, but it is my nature to plan ahead. What I am learning is to reconcile my planning through the agency of my free will against the sovereign will of God. It's less about a contradiction that needs resolution and more of a deeper understanding of what it is that God wills of us.
Besides, while in the end only God's sovereign plan matters, it is still important for me to be ready for whatever comes, otherwise I would be doing myself and God a disservice---after all, He had made me with the particular nature I have for His purposes. And as the recent reading on Romans 12:3--8 shows, there is no right/wrong in terms of what nature we have, as long as we have the fear of God within us, since it is through a body of believers that a perfect community may be formed from the contributions of each of our talents.
For now though, the plan is very simple. No more zero days. It's not so much that I had been wallowing so bad that I get zero days, but more like I need to keep on moving so that I don't fall behind long enough to start the wallowing process, a bit of a Red Queen situation too, come to think of it. I know that at some fundamental level, I am somewhat bummed out by all the things that have happened in the past four months, but I just do not know how deep that level of bummed-out-ness is. And frankly, I really don't want to find out.
So I just keep trooping along, doing my best to not look back at the bad things.
Scripture reading and bible study is great and all, but in between all that, I still need to do myself a solid. I can't be off on my next adventure if I keep on getting stuck on thinking about the adventure that I could not complete well. That's the part where my own personal plans come in---no more zero days and just keep on moving.
As to where I move on to, that will be up to the Lord. I'm not even going to bother thinking about whether I will be a bachelor forever or if I will miraculously get married within the next five years---now is not the right time for that. I am just glad that I can keep the connections with the friends that I had made along the way of these thirty-five long years, and maybe make new ones as I progress through the remaining half of my life.
Nothing else to add to this entry for now, and so, I will just stop here. Perhaps I will update again in a week.
It's cathartic. I cannot claim to completely enjoy it, but it is definitely something that allows me to banish thoughts away from my mind, keeping it less cluttered and thus less headache-inducing.
It also fulfils the secondary aspect of keeping those who want to keep abreast of my happenings updated, without having to undergo the rather awkwardly ``intense'' discussion process that is talking with me directly.
Anyway, August is almost gone. We are down to the last quarter of 2020 to go. At the risk of really jinxing it, I cannot see how much worse it can get.
Wait, the US elections are happening in November. Never mind, let me take back what I said about how I cannot see how much worse it can get. Because I have this feeling that the worse is yet to come.
I pray for the safety of my friends who are living in the US right now. May the Lord bless and protect them through these tough and troubling times.
The last time I wrote something here, I mentioned how Cui was telling me what it was that I was grieving---it was about a future that was lost, the plans that were trashed due to the circumstances and the actions. After ugly crying and then mulling over it for the whole week, I completely agree with her. Already new plans are forming in my head---I know that I am now a believer, but it is my nature to plan ahead. What I am learning is to reconcile my planning through the agency of my free will against the sovereign will of God. It's less about a contradiction that needs resolution and more of a deeper understanding of what it is that God wills of us.
Besides, while in the end only God's sovereign plan matters, it is still important for me to be ready for whatever comes, otherwise I would be doing myself and God a disservice---after all, He had made me with the particular nature I have for His purposes. And as the recent reading on Romans 12:3--8 shows, there is no right/wrong in terms of what nature we have, as long as we have the fear of God within us, since it is through a body of believers that a perfect community may be formed from the contributions of each of our talents.
For now though, the plan is very simple. No more zero days. It's not so much that I had been wallowing so bad that I get zero days, but more like I need to keep on moving so that I don't fall behind long enough to start the wallowing process, a bit of a Red Queen situation too, come to think of it. I know that at some fundamental level, I am somewhat bummed out by all the things that have happened in the past four months, but I just do not know how deep that level of bummed-out-ness is. And frankly, I really don't want to find out.
So I just keep trooping along, doing my best to not look back at the bad things.
Scripture reading and bible study is great and all, but in between all that, I still need to do myself a solid. I can't be off on my next adventure if I keep on getting stuck on thinking about the adventure that I could not complete well. That's the part where my own personal plans come in---no more zero days and just keep on moving.
As to where I move on to, that will be up to the Lord. I'm not even going to bother thinking about whether I will be a bachelor forever or if I will miraculously get married within the next five years---now is not the right time for that. I am just glad that I can keep the connections with the friends that I had made along the way of these thirty-five long years, and maybe make new ones as I progress through the remaining half of my life.
Nothing else to add to this entry for now, and so, I will just stop here. Perhaps I will update again in a week.
Monday, August 24, 2020
A Time to Grieve
It's always hard having to take apart what was once built together with loving care and rebuild. It is not my nature to swing a sledgehammer to break something apart just to build it back. In fact, it is more of my nature to carefully put something together only after having put in some thought into how it might look like, taking into account the extent of the perimeters while doing the build so that in the end, if there are changes needed, the final built product will still be malleable enough within the perimeters.
You know, what they call the ``engineering mindset''. We plan, we build. We do not leave things to chance if we have means to control it. For things we cannot control, we try to estimate the range of possibilities so that we have contingencies for as large a proportion of them as possible---for everything else that we cannot estimate, we combine them into a number explaining the amount of catastrophic risk.
God is the master engineer. He creates, He builds, He shapes, He moulds. But He is eternal, so His sense of what risk/contingencies entails are completely alien to us mortals with a very severely limited life span.
For things of one's life that involves decisions that may affect others, it is important to consult God and to listen to His word. It is best to consult Him early, so that the path to His will is filled with potentially less suffering for all.
It is unfortunate that the romantic relationship I had was not of God's will. I don't blame anyone---what's there to blame? We miss 100% of all the shots we don't take after all, and even though it was five years (one seventh of my life thus far), it was five years of joy, good memories, lessons learnt, and discovery---I became a better person after it all. I do not regret it for a bit, though I do feel sad. Cui told me to take the time to grieve---I asked her a little confusedly, what was it I was grieving for?
But I don't want to grieve, not like this. I want to celebrate it in joy. The joy of having known this relationship, the joy of helping a fellow pilgrim to learn of what it is God has for her, the joy of my realisation that there is eternal peace in the salvation from Jesus Christ at the end of my days. With the eternal future secured, I am safe to pursue what it is God has planned out for my life, through the talents He gave me, through the people I meet, and through the places I am at.
I still love her---I always will. But I love all those whom I call friends as well. Throughout my thirty odd years in life, it is only the last ten to twelve of which I started learning on how to really deal with inter-relationships of a romantic sort. My bad skin of the past haunted me, making it nearly impossible to cultivate any sort of understanding of romantic love---but it did teach me a lot of cultivating friendship love.
But before I get there, I need to grieve. I don't want to, but I need to---that's the difference. God is great and all, leading with wonderful guides to the goodness in His Word, but in the end, I'm still in a mortal body. The mind understands, but the heart is a laggard, and the soul is nascent and doesn't yet know how to lead the way. I am glad I finally met up with her face-to-face on Saturday just to talk, and get the clarity of where our relationship stood that I had prayed to God about.
Conflicted feelings are basically what I have now. I had kept it together for the most part for the past four months of circuit breaking, but I didn't really have a chance to heal, not with the types of uncertainties that I was still entertaining in my mind. With the clarity now, healing and transformation can finally begin in my heart, mind, and soul.
Till the next update, I suppose.
You know, what they call the ``engineering mindset''. We plan, we build. We do not leave things to chance if we have means to control it. For things we cannot control, we try to estimate the range of possibilities so that we have contingencies for as large a proportion of them as possible---for everything else that we cannot estimate, we combine them into a number explaining the amount of catastrophic risk.
God is the master engineer. He creates, He builds, He shapes, He moulds. But He is eternal, so His sense of what risk/contingencies entails are completely alien to us mortals with a very severely limited life span.
For things of one's life that involves decisions that may affect others, it is important to consult God and to listen to His word. It is best to consult Him early, so that the path to His will is filled with potentially less suffering for all.
It is unfortunate that the romantic relationship I had was not of God's will. I don't blame anyone---what's there to blame? We miss 100% of all the shots we don't take after all, and even though it was five years (one seventh of my life thus far), it was five years of joy, good memories, lessons learnt, and discovery---I became a better person after it all. I do not regret it for a bit, though I do feel sad. Cui told me to take the time to grieve---I asked her a little confusedly, what was it I was grieving for?
``Grieving for the future you were hoping for, the plans you had. So it's more of having to set new plans, new things to mark your life. To give you some meaning and guidance in this otherwise confusing world.''So, so true. Thank you Cui.
But I don't want to grieve, not like this. I want to celebrate it in joy. The joy of having known this relationship, the joy of helping a fellow pilgrim to learn of what it is God has for her, the joy of my realisation that there is eternal peace in the salvation from Jesus Christ at the end of my days. With the eternal future secured, I am safe to pursue what it is God has planned out for my life, through the talents He gave me, through the people I meet, and through the places I am at.
I still love her---I always will. But I love all those whom I call friends as well. Throughout my thirty odd years in life, it is only the last ten to twelve of which I started learning on how to really deal with inter-relationships of a romantic sort. My bad skin of the past haunted me, making it nearly impossible to cultivate any sort of understanding of romantic love---but it did teach me a lot of cultivating friendship love.
But before I get there, I need to grieve. I don't want to, but I need to---that's the difference. God is great and all, leading with wonderful guides to the goodness in His Word, but in the end, I'm still in a mortal body. The mind understands, but the heart is a laggard, and the soul is nascent and doesn't yet know how to lead the way. I am glad I finally met up with her face-to-face on Saturday just to talk, and get the clarity of where our relationship stood that I had prayed to God about.
Conflicted feelings are basically what I have now. I had kept it together for the most part for the past four months of circuit breaking, but I didn't really have a chance to heal, not with the types of uncertainties that I was still entertaining in my mind. With the clarity now, healing and transformation can finally begin in my heart, mind, and soul.
Till the next update, I suppose.
Saturday, August 15, 2020
Resignation
The problem with me isn't with my stars---things that far cannot affect me after all, even if superstring theory holds.
It's that I'm an easy-to-read book.
It's not that I have no guile, but rather, I choose not to live a life where I am always cunning about what I do and what I think. I choose not to live such a life because it does not benefit me nor anyone in any way---it is not the right thing to do.
I say what I mean, and mean what I say.
I may choose when I want to say some thing, but I don't usually back down from saying it, especially when I am convinced that it is the right thing to say.
It was an epiphany from many years ago when I started to slowly meld all the different social groups together. So, instead of seeing MT-the-bleh, for different values of bleh depending on the particular social group, there is just MT the_laptop---the same person no matter what social group I happen to be in. Did it cause me grief? Yes, during that period where people are confused as to how best to deal with me. But in the long term, it helped let me be who I am.
Back to me being an easy-to-read book. It also means that it is easy to exploit me, to hurt me, and perhaps to ruin me if that's what the person so inclines.
Does it matter to me? Not any more I suppose.
I'm not destined for great things, be it earthly or godly.
I was not born into a rich or powerful family, I may have earned a government scholarship, but it was something that I did not fully exploit to gain unbelievable amounts of leverage climbing the corporate/civil service ladder. I'm good enough at what I do to not starve, and have no ambition of excelling so hard that I am the best in my field, and therefore according to most reckoning, am basically close to being useless without being completely useless.
I was not born into a Christian family, none of my parents are even Christian, am a new believer and I doubt that I will ever be skilled enough to be a pastor, or go on missionary trips to save the unbelievers---things that are highly valued among the godly. My talents as given by God through the careful opportunities as granted by His grace lie elsewhere, and how it can help advance the gospel is something that only time and His grace will tell. As at now, I just see myself as one of the many simple disciples of the Son of Man.
So yes, not destined for great things, be it earthly or godly.
All I have is just me. Plain old me, as unique as uniqueness can be given the 108 billion or so people to have ever lived on earth. That's all there is. That I am alive is a testimony to God's greatness---His grace allows for the existence of a useless dust mote like me to live, a dust mote that has no big dreams, no big promises to God or anyone, and no big ambition.
In some ways, I'm just glad I am alive; not happy, not content---just glad. And if I'm called to be with the Father, hey, it's okay. If it's my time to go, it's my time. I only hope that by the time that it is my time, I am relieved of responsibilities that I have in ways that will not harm the people around me; I'm not even praying for an easy passing. I just don't want to leave behind a lousy memory, even if it is going to be one that dies out within a generation. It doesn't matter if I'm remembered after death anyway---dust motes don't get remembered by anyone except for God, who will always know His own.
In the end, if the me that is present is good enough for someone to be a spouse with in this life time, it is God's will. If the me that is present is not good enough for anyone to be a spouse with in this life time, it is still God's will. In either case, I am still an easy-to-read book---I'm too old and serious to be playing silly games anyway; what-you-see-is-all-there-is. If anything is meant to be, it will be---no amount of human intervention and cunning on my end can change the outcome.
And since I've accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour and the Lord as my God, I will respect that acceptance and accept whatever it is that He has set up for me. Call it the blessing or the curse of being a believer---they are both the same thing anyway in this case. I get eternal life anyway, so no loss for me.
Amen.
It's that I'm an easy-to-read book.
It's not that I have no guile, but rather, I choose not to live a life where I am always cunning about what I do and what I think. I choose not to live such a life because it does not benefit me nor anyone in any way---it is not the right thing to do.
I say what I mean, and mean what I say.
I may choose when I want to say some thing, but I don't usually back down from saying it, especially when I am convinced that it is the right thing to say.
It was an epiphany from many years ago when I started to slowly meld all the different social groups together. So, instead of seeing MT-the-bleh, for different values of bleh depending on the particular social group, there is just MT the_laptop---the same person no matter what social group I happen to be in. Did it cause me grief? Yes, during that period where people are confused as to how best to deal with me. But in the long term, it helped let me be who I am.
Back to me being an easy-to-read book. It also means that it is easy to exploit me, to hurt me, and perhaps to ruin me if that's what the person so inclines.
Does it matter to me? Not any more I suppose.
I'm not destined for great things, be it earthly or godly.
I was not born into a rich or powerful family, I may have earned a government scholarship, but it was something that I did not fully exploit to gain unbelievable amounts of leverage climbing the corporate/civil service ladder. I'm good enough at what I do to not starve, and have no ambition of excelling so hard that I am the best in my field, and therefore according to most reckoning, am basically close to being useless without being completely useless.
I was not born into a Christian family, none of my parents are even Christian, am a new believer and I doubt that I will ever be skilled enough to be a pastor, or go on missionary trips to save the unbelievers---things that are highly valued among the godly. My talents as given by God through the careful opportunities as granted by His grace lie elsewhere, and how it can help advance the gospel is something that only time and His grace will tell. As at now, I just see myself as one of the many simple disciples of the Son of Man.
So yes, not destined for great things, be it earthly or godly.
All I have is just me. Plain old me, as unique as uniqueness can be given the 108 billion or so people to have ever lived on earth. That's all there is. That I am alive is a testimony to God's greatness---His grace allows for the existence of a useless dust mote like me to live, a dust mote that has no big dreams, no big promises to God or anyone, and no big ambition.
In some ways, I'm just glad I am alive; not happy, not content---just glad. And if I'm called to be with the Father, hey, it's okay. If it's my time to go, it's my time. I only hope that by the time that it is my time, I am relieved of responsibilities that I have in ways that will not harm the people around me; I'm not even praying for an easy passing. I just don't want to leave behind a lousy memory, even if it is going to be one that dies out within a generation. It doesn't matter if I'm remembered after death anyway---dust motes don't get remembered by anyone except for God, who will always know His own.
In the end, if the me that is present is good enough for someone to be a spouse with in this life time, it is God's will. If the me that is present is not good enough for anyone to be a spouse with in this life time, it is still God's will. In either case, I am still an easy-to-read book---I'm too old and serious to be playing silly games anyway; what-you-see-is-all-there-is. If anything is meant to be, it will be---no amount of human intervention and cunning on my end can change the outcome.
And since I've accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour and the Lord as my God, I will respect that acceptance and accept whatever it is that He has set up for me. Call it the blessing or the curse of being a believer---they are both the same thing anyway in this case. I get eternal life anyway, so no loss for me.
Amen.
Saturday, August 08, 2020
I'm Tired
I'm tired.
I'm really tired of all the negativity that is happening in the world today.
I'm tired of the selfishness that everyone demonstrates, forgetting that it was the effort of society as a whole that enables their selfishness to be conducted without major repercussions to themselves. This includes the nonsense that is anti-science, anti-thought, anti-empathy, cancel culture, the five hundred different acronyms from identity politics, the two hundred different ways of virtue signalling, the ``me me me'' logic of social media, surveillance capitalism, and all the chilling effects that these come with.
It's not just something that comes from the US, in case folks are thinking that that's all I'm thinking about. It is really a general trend that comes with the hyper-connectedness of societies.
The current pandemic woes are a great way to bring to the foreground all that is wrong in ways that are louder than before. There are those who believe that they are making a change with their belligerent shouting, but failing to realise that with the precedents that they set with their ``the ends justify the means'' approach, it is just one revolution away before they end up on the receiving end of their tools.
If all of us were still in the bad old days of having to worry about when we can next put food on the table, all these ``first world problems'' would not occur. No, I am not advocating going back to the bad old days---we have advanced quite far, though we have indeed fallen a lot too. But overall, I still believe that we have progressed just a bit more than we had fallen.
Of course, whatever I say here is absolutely useless. I am no ``influencer''---I suppose only five people in the world are actual some kind of regular reader of what I write here---but it is one of those situations where I have no mouth, but I must scream. Scream I shall, indeed.
The theme for today's rant is ``why am I still alive''. No, it's not a suicide note---I don't believe in committing suicide in the conventional sense of myself taking myself out. If it is my time to go, it is my time---God will take me when it is my time; I do not have to hasten the process. If suicide were truly an option that I was seriously considering, it would not be the ignoble kind where I kill myself---I would rather make use of the last moments of my life to do things that no one would/could possibly do without being able to walk away from it alive. That's the kind of death that is most worthy, because it is a death that comes from doing something meaningful. It is the type of death that only the kamikaze of WWII understood.
But I digress. I'm not intending to die. Not just yet. Not before my time.
The normal answer is usually ``but I have so much to live for; I'm not ready to die!'' To me, I don't think that is true. I have been ready to die for quite a while really---I have very few regrets in my life, to my surprise. I used to think that when my life is over, it is done---there is nothing beyond it. That is the Christian notion of a fate worse than oblivion, a state where God literally turns His face away from one. I will say that I didn't really fear that state much---I was ready to be made unexisting anyway---but now that I've become a follower of Jesus, I am glad that I am at least saved in the sense that even after death, I still exist, and in a state that is perfect as it was God's intention.
That's a good thing.
But that aside, what I'm trying to say is, death didn't scare me that much. It scares me a bit less now with the assurance that Jesus has saved me, so it's all good. However, this doesn't mean that I'm going to roll over and die now. Allow me to back-track a little to add some coherence---I am starting to find my rant a little hard to follow, even for myself.
I don't have much to live for. I don't have big dreams. What is keeping me going on each day is just the remembrance of the responsibilities that I have. So it's less of me having things to live for and more of causing some bad trouble for people should I fail to live that keeps me living.
Is this Christ-like? I don't know---I'm still a neophyte in His ways. As far as I know, Jesus' life was totally ordered by God, just like everyone else's. But unlike everyone else's, His life, death, and resurrection was meant to fulfill the cosmic plan that God had to redeem His chosen. The reason of existence of his believers are to spread the gospel to redeem more of humankind from sin to be on the good graces of God.
There really isn't any other reason for existing.
KK did remind me of one thing though: I should remember to never take things to extremes. I thank him deeply from the bottom of my heart for his reminder. I don't really like to take things to extreme, but I suppose my attitude of not wanting to half-ass things does make it seem extreme at times.
But Jesus was a radical, was he not? Weren't we all taught to be as radical as he was, challenging the letter of the law with the intent of the law, to draw strength and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit instead of trying to ``muscle'' our way through with the at-best misguided intentions without the consultation of the Holy Spirit?
Well, I think I'm going to stop here. Too much thoughts of these sort does strange things to my already not-super-happy state.
------
In other news, I've finally had the opportunity to get some replacement jeans. My old jeans, especially after the massive weight loss over the past 8 months or so, are way too frayed and too lose to keep on wearing comfortably. The replacement jeans I have bought fit me better; their only drawback was that the length was a bit too long, but the alteration step seems straightforward enough that I would probably do something about it over this upcoming long weekend.
I'll probably have to adjust my wardrobe a bit more soon---need to cycle in a different set of clothes, and cycle out those that don't fit as well. But that may be for another day.
Till the next update, I suppose. Maybe I will have less depressing things to write about (haha... what a joke).
I'm really tired of all the negativity that is happening in the world today.
I'm tired of the selfishness that everyone demonstrates, forgetting that it was the effort of society as a whole that enables their selfishness to be conducted without major repercussions to themselves. This includes the nonsense that is anti-science, anti-thought, anti-empathy, cancel culture, the five hundred different acronyms from identity politics, the two hundred different ways of virtue signalling, the ``me me me'' logic of social media, surveillance capitalism, and all the chilling effects that these come with.
It's not just something that comes from the US, in case folks are thinking that that's all I'm thinking about. It is really a general trend that comes with the hyper-connectedness of societies.
The current pandemic woes are a great way to bring to the foreground all that is wrong in ways that are louder than before. There are those who believe that they are making a change with their belligerent shouting, but failing to realise that with the precedents that they set with their ``the ends justify the means'' approach, it is just one revolution away before they end up on the receiving end of their tools.
If all of us were still in the bad old days of having to worry about when we can next put food on the table, all these ``first world problems'' would not occur. No, I am not advocating going back to the bad old days---we have advanced quite far, though we have indeed fallen a lot too. But overall, I still believe that we have progressed just a bit more than we had fallen.
Of course, whatever I say here is absolutely useless. I am no ``influencer''---I suppose only five people in the world are actual some kind of regular reader of what I write here---but it is one of those situations where I have no mouth, but I must scream. Scream I shall, indeed.
The theme for today's rant is ``why am I still alive''. No, it's not a suicide note---I don't believe in committing suicide in the conventional sense of myself taking myself out. If it is my time to go, it is my time---God will take me when it is my time; I do not have to hasten the process. If suicide were truly an option that I was seriously considering, it would not be the ignoble kind where I kill myself---I would rather make use of the last moments of my life to do things that no one would/could possibly do without being able to walk away from it alive. That's the kind of death that is most worthy, because it is a death that comes from doing something meaningful. It is the type of death that only the kamikaze of WWII understood.
But I digress. I'm not intending to die. Not just yet. Not before my time.
The normal answer is usually ``but I have so much to live for; I'm not ready to die!'' To me, I don't think that is true. I have been ready to die for quite a while really---I have very few regrets in my life, to my surprise. I used to think that when my life is over, it is done---there is nothing beyond it. That is the Christian notion of a fate worse than oblivion, a state where God literally turns His face away from one. I will say that I didn't really fear that state much---I was ready to be made unexisting anyway---but now that I've become a follower of Jesus, I am glad that I am at least saved in the sense that even after death, I still exist, and in a state that is perfect as it was God's intention.
That's a good thing.
But that aside, what I'm trying to say is, death didn't scare me that much. It scares me a bit less now with the assurance that Jesus has saved me, so it's all good. However, this doesn't mean that I'm going to roll over and die now. Allow me to back-track a little to add some coherence---I am starting to find my rant a little hard to follow, even for myself.
I don't have much to live for. I don't have big dreams. What is keeping me going on each day is just the remembrance of the responsibilities that I have. So it's less of me having things to live for and more of causing some bad trouble for people should I fail to live that keeps me living.
Is this Christ-like? I don't know---I'm still a neophyte in His ways. As far as I know, Jesus' life was totally ordered by God, just like everyone else's. But unlike everyone else's, His life, death, and resurrection was meant to fulfill the cosmic plan that God had to redeem His chosen. The reason of existence of his believers are to spread the gospel to redeem more of humankind from sin to be on the good graces of God.
There really isn't any other reason for existing.
KK did remind me of one thing though: I should remember to never take things to extremes. I thank him deeply from the bottom of my heart for his reminder. I don't really like to take things to extreme, but I suppose my attitude of not wanting to half-ass things does make it seem extreme at times.
But Jesus was a radical, was he not? Weren't we all taught to be as radical as he was, challenging the letter of the law with the intent of the law, to draw strength and divine inspiration through the Holy Spirit instead of trying to ``muscle'' our way through with the at-best misguided intentions without the consultation of the Holy Spirit?
Well, I think I'm going to stop here. Too much thoughts of these sort does strange things to my already not-super-happy state.
------
In other news, I've finally had the opportunity to get some replacement jeans. My old jeans, especially after the massive weight loss over the past 8 months or so, are way too frayed and too lose to keep on wearing comfortably. The replacement jeans I have bought fit me better; their only drawback was that the length was a bit too long, but the alteration step seems straightforward enough that I would probably do something about it over this upcoming long weekend.
I'll probably have to adjust my wardrobe a bit more soon---need to cycle in a different set of clothes, and cycle out those that don't fit as well. But that may be for another day.
Till the next update, I suppose. Maybe I will have less depressing things to write about (haha... what a joke).
Sunday, August 02, 2020
I Didn't Feel Like Writing Anything
I didn't feel like writing anything. Because it felt like too much effort. To be fair, I actually did start on something yesterday involving Ecclesiastes 3:1--8, but I couldn't follow through. It was the same reason when I decided to take down my own thoughts involving my journey through martial arts---until I have reached the proverbial ``black belt'' (i.e. to be in a position where I can comfortably say that I have mastered the basics), it just didn't feel right to be talking much about something I didn't fully understand the full implications of yet.
And that's also why it took me so long before I decided to write up on my dizi materials. I have played the dizi long enough that I feel comfortable sharing what I had learnt, because I knew that I had the experience to back it all up.
Talking about Scripture when I am barely a neophyte in the ways of Christ is the most hubristic thing that I can think of. Actually, I'm not even sure that when the day comes where I am conversant with the Word, whether I would even express my thoughts on it here. Such is the level of sensitivity of a knowledge that I cannot easily put into a form that avoids the fundamental notion of faith.
------
So, if I didn't feel like writing anything, what am I doing here then? Mostly it is a way to test the typing comfort of Eileen-II's keyboard. There are some quirks here and there with the placement of the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Del/Ins keys, but that will always be a problem for all laptops. At least this one doesn't have the separate number-pad---I dislike laptops having that because it completely screws up the alignment of the keyboard itself. As a matter of practicality, the keyboard proper is ``centred'' with that of the screen, but when there is a numpad, the regular typing area is completely skewed to the left, which stinks. In the early days of using a full keyboard, I've developed the habit of realigning it such that the general typing area is aligned with the centre of my body, which itself is aligned to where I would like to look at the screen, which is usually dead centre.
Well, that's about as much as I would want to write for now.
Till the next update, I suppose.
And that's also why it took me so long before I decided to write up on my dizi materials. I have played the dizi long enough that I feel comfortable sharing what I had learnt, because I knew that I had the experience to back it all up.
Talking about Scripture when I am barely a neophyte in the ways of Christ is the most hubristic thing that I can think of. Actually, I'm not even sure that when the day comes where I am conversant with the Word, whether I would even express my thoughts on it here. Such is the level of sensitivity of a knowledge that I cannot easily put into a form that avoids the fundamental notion of faith.
------
So, if I didn't feel like writing anything, what am I doing here then? Mostly it is a way to test the typing comfort of Eileen-II's keyboard. There are some quirks here and there with the placement of the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Del/Ins keys, but that will always be a problem for all laptops. At least this one doesn't have the separate number-pad---I dislike laptops having that because it completely screws up the alignment of the keyboard itself. As a matter of practicality, the keyboard proper is ``centred'' with that of the screen, but when there is a numpad, the regular typing area is completely skewed to the left, which stinks. In the early days of using a full keyboard, I've developed the habit of realigning it such that the general typing area is aligned with the centre of my body, which itself is aligned to where I would like to look at the screen, which is usually dead centre.
Well, that's about as much as I would want to write for now.
Till the next update, I suppose.
Saturday, July 25, 2020
Eileen-II and Other Stories
To say that the past week-and-a-half is a roller coaster is a bit of a cliché, but it is an unfortunate consequence of my lack of imagination in the use of the English language. Let's see what I can say here today.
I've bought a new 22-inch 16:9 monitor from Dell (P2219H) that can swivel, and is primarily set up to be vertical in nature. No name for this device, though it can technically be called ``Eirian-V'' since its role is similar to the Eirian series of devices---but I'm not going to. The problem I was facing was the reading of certain PDF forms of e-books that had the two-column layout. On a normal screen, no matter what resolution and dimension, if we keep it in the usual landscape format, each column ends up taking up at most one quarter of the screen by width. It is basically unreadable. What I needed was something that had more physical dimension in the height department. I could get a tablet like Eirian-III, but I didn't want to have to lug it around with my hands just to read the document---I have grown used to the smaller form factor. Eirian-IV has superior pitch density, but even then, it can be a challenge to read really tiny text that was supposed to be ``normal sized'' in a more traditional A4/letter sized setting. And so, the monitor was obtained.
Edythe-III is still hale and hearty, but her 3-year warranty is almost up. And if the behaviour of Edythe-II was of any indication, it was clear that I needed to get a replacement soonish. At the same time, Elysie-II was starting to become a little... unstable, partly because of age, partly because of hardware (old school spindle HDD), partly because of software (Windows 7), and partly because of circumstance (it was hard/impossible to head out to the venerable Sim Lim Square to source for parts, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging and stores closing left and right). So I decided to spend a little more than what I had originally saved for and get a new iteration of Eileen, now known as Eileen-II.
So, what's Eileen-II?
She's an Alienware m15 R3, with an Intel i7-10750H processor (6-core, 12MB cache, up to 5.1GHz with Turbo Boost), 32GB DDR4 RAM at 2666MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB DDR6 discrete graphics card. Her screen is 15.6" (1920×1080) with a refresh rate of 144Hz, and her storage is a 1TB SSD.
Her specs are on par with Elysie-II in many ways, except for a slightly better parallelisation capability with 50% more cores and a faster secondary storage, and a much more portable form factor (laptop vs desktop). She's pretty portable for a stronk person like me, but I think I may actually need to use the provided carrier bag instead of whatever I had---she is a little larger than the 13" laptops that I have.
For a portable machine running the specs like the beast that is Elysie-II, Eileen-II runs surprisingly cool. Let's hope this continues.
------
On more different matters, it had been quite trying for the past week-and-a-half. Work had some extra certification thing that needed to be done to address a tender, and I was tasked to get it with a colleague. The whole process was a little harrowing, partly because the item that we were getting certification on wasn't exactly directly aligned with my interests/area of work/domain of expertise per se, and partly because of the super shortened duration we had to actually prepare for it, even though we managed the expectations of that to have two attempts instead of the one that was originally envisioned. Then there was the need to book a time slot to actually take the certification exam---it had to be online proctored, and the only time slot that fit the original planned schedule was at six in the morning (or any time between three and six in the morning in roughly fifteen-minute intervals). Thankfully it is now over; well it had been over since the Wednesday just passed. I passed by the grace of God---the score I had was exactly the one needed to pass, no more and no less. Just to be clear, this was one of those exams that the passing grade was a ``high'' percentage that was not fifty percent.
The Friday before, I had a near breakdown. I don't know why---suddenly I felt completely useless for some reason. I felt as though I would just fade away if I didn't pay attention to myself. I think I was just overwhelmed with the stress of not willfully failing that certification exam, and the combined stresses of a general lack of coping mechanisms (no Chinese Orchestra rehearsals, no meet ups with friends, no more confidante in general) with additional social stresses (what is the new norm for me now that I am a believer, am without a wife-to-be-candidate, basically having my life rewritten to the past) meant that I just sort of lost sense of where I was. I mean, yes, I'm a believer now, I know God is with me because I've chosen to walk with Him in my life, but I'm still a neophyte in the ways of Christ, and more importantly, I'm still a mortal.
Given all that I felt, I did something pretty uncharacteristic; I posted a plea for reassurance on my ``wall'' in Facebook.
I am really heartened by the responses that came in. Friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances started coming out of the wood work to send me private messages, asking my well-being, and giving me really positive encouragement that I had indeed impacted their lives in a positive way during the times when we were walking closer together than now.
I teared up. I tear up still. I wasn't expecting all that love and concern to come in like that. Don't ask me why---I don't know. I've never really had these kinds of feelings before.
It definitely helped ground me back into reality. That I was, and am here.
------
On yet another note, I've also bought some Oval-8 finger splits by 3-point products. They are for my two pinky fingers---they have a mild form of swan neck deformity. They only show up when I need to be playing the dizi or when I'm going for the pinky-notes of the right hand (instrument C♯, C, B), in which case it is bad. Most of the time I don't have to actually ``stretch'' my fingers, but under those circumstances highlighted, I have to, and it is a problem. The Oval-8 finger splits block the middle joint from bending backwards, which allows me to safely stretch out the pinky without jamming the joint up. It is super useful. I first learnt of them at the Flute Forum on Facebook, and bought mine from Fu Kang, a Singapore company.
And that's about it for now. Till the next update I suppose.
I've bought a new 22-inch 16:9 monitor from Dell (P2219H) that can swivel, and is primarily set up to be vertical in nature. No name for this device, though it can technically be called ``Eirian-V'' since its role is similar to the Eirian series of devices---but I'm not going to. The problem I was facing was the reading of certain PDF forms of e-books that had the two-column layout. On a normal screen, no matter what resolution and dimension, if we keep it in the usual landscape format, each column ends up taking up at most one quarter of the screen by width. It is basically unreadable. What I needed was something that had more physical dimension in the height department. I could get a tablet like Eirian-III, but I didn't want to have to lug it around with my hands just to read the document---I have grown used to the smaller form factor. Eirian-IV has superior pitch density, but even then, it can be a challenge to read really tiny text that was supposed to be ``normal sized'' in a more traditional A4/letter sized setting. And so, the monitor was obtained.
Edythe-III is still hale and hearty, but her 3-year warranty is almost up. And if the behaviour of Edythe-II was of any indication, it was clear that I needed to get a replacement soonish. At the same time, Elysie-II was starting to become a little... unstable, partly because of age, partly because of hardware (old school spindle HDD), partly because of software (Windows 7), and partly because of circumstance (it was hard/impossible to head out to the venerable Sim Lim Square to source for parts, with the COVID-19 pandemic raging and stores closing left and right). So I decided to spend a little more than what I had originally saved for and get a new iteration of Eileen, now known as Eileen-II.
So, what's Eileen-II?
She's an Alienware m15 R3, with an Intel i7-10750H processor (6-core, 12MB cache, up to 5.1GHz with Turbo Boost), 32GB DDR4 RAM at 2666MHz, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB DDR6 discrete graphics card. Her screen is 15.6" (1920×1080) with a refresh rate of 144Hz, and her storage is a 1TB SSD.
Her specs are on par with Elysie-II in many ways, except for a slightly better parallelisation capability with 50% more cores and a faster secondary storage, and a much more portable form factor (laptop vs desktop). She's pretty portable for a stronk person like me, but I think I may actually need to use the provided carrier bag instead of whatever I had---she is a little larger than the 13" laptops that I have.
For a portable machine running the specs like the beast that is Elysie-II, Eileen-II runs surprisingly cool. Let's hope this continues.
------
On more different matters, it had been quite trying for the past week-and-a-half. Work had some extra certification thing that needed to be done to address a tender, and I was tasked to get it with a colleague. The whole process was a little harrowing, partly because the item that we were getting certification on wasn't exactly directly aligned with my interests/area of work/domain of expertise per se, and partly because of the super shortened duration we had to actually prepare for it, even though we managed the expectations of that to have two attempts instead of the one that was originally envisioned. Then there was the need to book a time slot to actually take the certification exam---it had to be online proctored, and the only time slot that fit the original planned schedule was at six in the morning (or any time between three and six in the morning in roughly fifteen-minute intervals). Thankfully it is now over; well it had been over since the Wednesday just passed. I passed by the grace of God---the score I had was exactly the one needed to pass, no more and no less. Just to be clear, this was one of those exams that the passing grade was a ``high'' percentage that was not fifty percent.
The Friday before, I had a near breakdown. I don't know why---suddenly I felt completely useless for some reason. I felt as though I would just fade away if I didn't pay attention to myself. I think I was just overwhelmed with the stress of not willfully failing that certification exam, and the combined stresses of a general lack of coping mechanisms (no Chinese Orchestra rehearsals, no meet ups with friends, no more confidante in general) with additional social stresses (what is the new norm for me now that I am a believer, am without a wife-to-be-candidate, basically having my life rewritten to the past) meant that I just sort of lost sense of where I was. I mean, yes, I'm a believer now, I know God is with me because I've chosen to walk with Him in my life, but I'm still a neophyte in the ways of Christ, and more importantly, I'm still a mortal.
Given all that I felt, I did something pretty uncharacteristic; I posted a plea for reassurance on my ``wall'' in Facebook.
I am really heartened by the responses that came in. Friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances started coming out of the wood work to send me private messages, asking my well-being, and giving me really positive encouragement that I had indeed impacted their lives in a positive way during the times when we were walking closer together than now.
I teared up. I tear up still. I wasn't expecting all that love and concern to come in like that. Don't ask me why---I don't know. I've never really had these kinds of feelings before.
It definitely helped ground me back into reality. That I was, and am here.
------
On yet another note, I've also bought some Oval-8 finger splits by 3-point products. They are for my two pinky fingers---they have a mild form of swan neck deformity. They only show up when I need to be playing the dizi or when I'm going for the pinky-notes of the right hand (instrument C♯, C, B), in which case it is bad. Most of the time I don't have to actually ``stretch'' my fingers, but under those circumstances highlighted, I have to, and it is a problem. The Oval-8 finger splits block the middle joint from bending backwards, which allows me to safely stretch out the pinky without jamming the joint up. It is super useful. I first learnt of them at the Flute Forum on Facebook, and bought mine from Fu Kang, a Singapore company.
And that's about it for now. Till the next update I suppose.
Sunday, July 05, 2020
``Rightness is a Dynamic Process, not a Static Declaration"
``Rightness is a [dynamic] process, not a [static] declaration.''
This is is a working hypothesis that I have right now.
I am saying this because I think we are now in the age where the so-called ``optics'' of the statements are more important than the actual understanding and conclusions that are drawn by the person involved.
There are two parts in the inherent problem: one is the bullshit reaction that is currently known as ``cancel culture'', and the other is the equally bullshit reaction of ``virtue signalling''. Whatever part applies, it ends up with the same outcome---people either parroting the catchphrases of the day in an echo chamber, or more likely, practise self-censorship out of fear of their own lives in the face of near-total ostracisation of the various segments of society that they believe to be operating in.
From the previous paragraph, you can easily tell what my thoughts are with respect to these two really toxic types of reactions; yes, I think they are bullshit. No one other than Jesus can claim to be perfect and make no mistakes whatsover in their past---the reason for that is multifold:
That is bullshit. More importantly, ``cancel culture'' commits the cardinal sin of attempting to conveniently forget about the historical context, and therefore making it easier to repeat the same stupid mistakes in the future as we start to forget what the lessons then that had been learnt from blood.
The other bullshit is ``virtue signalling''. Look, I get it---we all want to appear to be wise, correct and right in this age of extreme hyper-survelliance culture. But ``virtue signalling'' is an actual sin, because it only shows a veneer of being aware of the [social] issues of the day, and demonstrating a superficial attempt at righting the perceived wrongs, but without actually having a significant impact at all at dealing with the underlying root cause. Take the whole brouhaha regarding the attempts at renaming ``blacklist/whitelist'' as well as ``master/slave''. I am well aware that words have power, but words also have context to be taken into account. The context here is a technical one, and forms a jargon that is well understood; how does a technical term used in a technical domain reinforce oppression is something I cannot easily understand, especially when the proposed terms to rename to often make things more obscure. At that point, why bother with English words then? Almost any English word can be offensive to someone---taken to its logical extreme, shouldn't we just rename every single technical term to a mechanically generated one comprising a Hungarian-notation inspired sigil for the semantic identity followed by some fixed number of digits to ensure that we offend exactly no one?
Isn't it also the fault of the person who takes offense to think about why he/she is taking offense over something that wasn't meant by the author to cause offense in the first place?
It is similar in problem to the whole ``community conduct'' fiasco---there has been many an open source project that, in some socio-political virtual signalling context, decide to come up with a code of conduct that had very strong [American politics flavoured] social justice overtures that are at best irrelevant to the code at hand. Someone on /. mentioned before that if someone demands a new code of conduct for an open source community and summarily refuses to use the ACM Code of Ethics, it should raise as many red flags as much as possible that what was at stake was not about decency but about pushing some kind of political agenda.
But all that aside, back to my working hypothesis.
I think that everyone has the right to change their views with respect to new information that come in, and that they be allowed to exercise that right. Only God has perfect information at all times (which is funny because ``time'' may not mean to God the way it means to us); the rest of us are operating on a very strongly Bayesian-type world that we have to take in evidence to modify our a priori assumptions to produce an a posteriori effect, i.e. to change our mind. Only God and His prophets can declare an unassailable static truth---the rest of us will have to slowly make our way there through the dynamic process of gathering information via observation, then altering our perspective based on the weighing of the evidence against our intuition, and doing this iteratively.
``Cancel culture'' and ``virtue signalling'' are not helping us along these lines, because they basically demand that all of us act with the omniscience that only God possesses.
And that is why for this blog, I have this very important disclaimer since the beginning:
If I was wrong in the past, and I learnt about it in the future, you bet your ass that I will acknowledge the mistake in the future, but I will not alter the past to act as though I was right. I think that is the single most dishonest thing that I can do.
This is is a working hypothesis that I have right now.
I am saying this because I think we are now in the age where the so-called ``optics'' of the statements are more important than the actual understanding and conclusions that are drawn by the person involved.
There are two parts in the inherent problem: one is the bullshit reaction that is currently known as ``cancel culture'', and the other is the equally bullshit reaction of ``virtue signalling''. Whatever part applies, it ends up with the same outcome---people either parroting the catchphrases of the day in an echo chamber, or more likely, practise self-censorship out of fear of their own lives in the face of near-total ostracisation of the various segments of society that they believe to be operating in.
From the previous paragraph, you can easily tell what my thoughts are with respect to these two really toxic types of reactions; yes, I think they are bullshit. No one other than Jesus can claim to be perfect and make no mistakes whatsover in their past---the reason for that is multifold:
- They did not know any better then as a person;
- The social context was different then, making the actions then acceptable but may not be acceptable now;
- Even if they knew better and their specific social context didn't enforce the currently unacceptable behaviour as acceptable, they could've made mistakes that they have since learnt from.
That is bullshit. More importantly, ``cancel culture'' commits the cardinal sin of attempting to conveniently forget about the historical context, and therefore making it easier to repeat the same stupid mistakes in the future as we start to forget what the lessons then that had been learnt from blood.
The other bullshit is ``virtue signalling''. Look, I get it---we all want to appear to be wise, correct and right in this age of extreme hyper-survelliance culture. But ``virtue signalling'' is an actual sin, because it only shows a veneer of being aware of the [social] issues of the day, and demonstrating a superficial attempt at righting the perceived wrongs, but without actually having a significant impact at all at dealing with the underlying root cause. Take the whole brouhaha regarding the attempts at renaming ``blacklist/whitelist'' as well as ``master/slave''. I am well aware that words have power, but words also have context to be taken into account. The context here is a technical one, and forms a jargon that is well understood; how does a technical term used in a technical domain reinforce oppression is something I cannot easily understand, especially when the proposed terms to rename to often make things more obscure. At that point, why bother with English words then? Almost any English word can be offensive to someone---taken to its logical extreme, shouldn't we just rename every single technical term to a mechanically generated one comprising a Hungarian-notation inspired sigil for the semantic identity followed by some fixed number of digits to ensure that we offend exactly no one?
Isn't it also the fault of the person who takes offense to think about why he/she is taking offense over something that wasn't meant by the author to cause offense in the first place?
It is similar in problem to the whole ``community conduct'' fiasco---there has been many an open source project that, in some socio-political virtual signalling context, decide to come up with a code of conduct that had very strong [American politics flavoured] social justice overtures that are at best irrelevant to the code at hand. Someone on /. mentioned before that if someone demands a new code of conduct for an open source community and summarily refuses to use the ACM Code of Ethics, it should raise as many red flags as much as possible that what was at stake was not about decency but about pushing some kind of political agenda.
But all that aside, back to my working hypothesis.
I think that everyone has the right to change their views with respect to new information that come in, and that they be allowed to exercise that right. Only God has perfect information at all times (which is funny because ``time'' may not mean to God the way it means to us); the rest of us are operating on a very strongly Bayesian-type world that we have to take in evidence to modify our a priori assumptions to produce an a posteriori effect, i.e. to change our mind. Only God and His prophets can declare an unassailable static truth---the rest of us will have to slowly make our way there through the dynamic process of gathering information via observation, then altering our perspective based on the weighing of the evidence against our intuition, and doing this iteratively.
``Cancel culture'' and ``virtue signalling'' are not helping us along these lines, because they basically demand that all of us act with the omniscience that only God possesses.
And that is why for this blog, I have this very important disclaimer since the beginning:
All views expressed in this blog are #1 mine and mine alone unless otherwise indicated and #2 are consistent only at the time of publication of the particular entry. Specifically, do not take my views as the views of the general populace, and do not attempt to chastise me for taking a different stance from before. However, if you realise that there are factual errors, do not hesitate to inform me through the comment box---comments are moderated and if you would like me to not publish your comment, you can say so from within the posted comment.I represent no one other than myself on this blog; I state my own views from my own perspective, tempered with what I know at the point in which I wrote the entry.
If I was wrong in the past, and I learnt about it in the future, you bet your ass that I will acknowledge the mistake in the future, but I will not alter the past to act as though I was right. I think that is the single most dishonest thing that I can do.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
``Phase Two'' and Eventual Return to Some Semblance of Normalcy
Well, well, well... I suppose it is time to do a little bit of writing here again.
We are now in the so-called ``phase two'' of the ``circuit breaker'', a lock-down/shelter-in-place in all but name. In Phase Two, the supposed restrictions that were put in place to keep people from leaving their domicile for anything but the most pressing of essential needs have been loosened a little, allowing a very restricted amount of socialising (up to five people in a group, all respecting ``social distancing'' rules of course) despite making it clear that there shouldn't be any [unnecessary] socialising.
Do I have any comments about this? Sure, but they are mostly along the lines of ``just because it can be done doesn't mean it ought to be done''. And so with that in mind, I am personally still going to stay at home for as much as it is possible until things are more under control.
The magic thing I am looking out for is the so-called ``community case count'' for the week after Jul 10---that is roughly two weeks after the transition into phase two, and a week of monitoring the trend will also take into account the increased number of potential exposures from the students who are supposed to be returning to school from yesterday onwards.
Only if these numbers are on the low side that I will be more comfortable restarting my social activities, and even then, it will be at a very low gear for some necessary meet ups that need to occur. It will happen when it will happen, and I am not really fretting about the inability to plan for them---this whole year is absolute garbage in terms of planning anyways, so another month of waiting and non-planning isn't going to affect things more than it already has.
Oh, and there's apparently a General Election being held, with the Nomination Day concluding today, having all 93 seats of parliament being contested, and the actual voting day itself on Jul 10.
Do I have any comments on that? Not really, other than it being important to pay attention to what the party members who are contesting in one's ward or GRC saying and claiming to say, and to make one's own damn mind about whom they think can best represent their interests in parliament. While the party as a whole may provide the type of over-arching narrative/policy that is of national interest, it is still the individual members of parliament that are supposed to represent us---we live in a republic, and we vote for our own representatives to stand for us as members of parliament to fight for our interests. Singapore is small enough that there is often little impedence mismatch between what we citizens want and what is good for the country's development, and so, whoever is going to vote should just make up their own mind.
------
I have been thinking over the past couple of months about life in general, the Scripture, and my own perspective on how things work. Ding told me to go read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which I completed recently (am currently embarking on the sequel of sorts, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow). I can see the allure of the historic-anthropological perspective in which Harari uses to write his exposition, but don't see it as being contradictory to what Scripture is saying. What I mean is, sure, maybe the bible is indeed a myth created and written by humankind during the time when they didn't know any better, and maybe humankind was a by-product of four billion years of evolutionary processes that we can only explain in a sort of statistical sort of way; the real question is, do these really explain away the existence of God Himself? Who's to say that the setting up of four billion years of evolutionary processes was not the work of God? God is, by definition, unknowable by us, so what seems to be impossible by us through proof (hello computational theory and oracles!) may mean only that we are limited in our imagination.
Why do we need to assume that God needed to take the most direct and simple route to get something (like having His Word written down) done? Occam's Razor is just a heuristic to aid us combat the curse of dimensionality that comes with complexity---because it is important that whatever hypothesis we come up with can be communicated to a third person and then convince that said person, in time that doesn't last longer than our mortal life span. But faith and belief is very individual---you can choose to believe, or you can choose not to. Whether you are objectively right or wrong is a non-question.
God's relationship with humankind, through Jesus, is of a personal kind, and with that, a lot of it is therefore bound by one's experience and perception. Is it the scientific way then? Of course not---because experience and perception are not things that are falsifiable and replicable, the cornerstones for the scientific method. While it is important to go round spreading the good news [that one is saved through Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection], it is also important to remember that like all relationships, it can only be entered willingly, and not be forced. So it's okay if someone doesn't want to believe that Jesus died for their sins, it's also okay if someone believes that they don't have sin. They are still humans, just not God's children, that's all.
``But MT, there are so many different schools of thoughts/religions out there, why do you think that God is and the bible is the authoritative Word of God?'' There will never be a satisfactory answer to that question, because God's relationship with humankind, through Jesus, is of a personal kind. It is right and true for me, but is it right and true for you is something that only you can answer.
And that's about as much theology I am willing to indulge. I'm pretty sure that it is possible to poke holes in my arguments here, but I won't even bother providing responses to those if they come---I'm merely thinking and doing something that I personally believe in, with zero intention of attempting to convince someone, therefore ``it doesn't harm anyone and it works for me'' principles hold.
Till the next update, perhaps.
We are now in the so-called ``phase two'' of the ``circuit breaker'', a lock-down/shelter-in-place in all but name. In Phase Two, the supposed restrictions that were put in place to keep people from leaving their domicile for anything but the most pressing of essential needs have been loosened a little, allowing a very restricted amount of socialising (up to five people in a group, all respecting ``social distancing'' rules of course) despite making it clear that there shouldn't be any [unnecessary] socialising.
Do I have any comments about this? Sure, but they are mostly along the lines of ``just because it can be done doesn't mean it ought to be done''. And so with that in mind, I am personally still going to stay at home for as much as it is possible until things are more under control.
The magic thing I am looking out for is the so-called ``community case count'' for the week after Jul 10---that is roughly two weeks after the transition into phase two, and a week of monitoring the trend will also take into account the increased number of potential exposures from the students who are supposed to be returning to school from yesterday onwards.
Only if these numbers are on the low side that I will be more comfortable restarting my social activities, and even then, it will be at a very low gear for some necessary meet ups that need to occur. It will happen when it will happen, and I am not really fretting about the inability to plan for them---this whole year is absolute garbage in terms of planning anyways, so another month of waiting and non-planning isn't going to affect things more than it already has.
Oh, and there's apparently a General Election being held, with the Nomination Day concluding today, having all 93 seats of parliament being contested, and the actual voting day itself on Jul 10.
Do I have any comments on that? Not really, other than it being important to pay attention to what the party members who are contesting in one's ward or GRC saying and claiming to say, and to make one's own damn mind about whom they think can best represent their interests in parliament. While the party as a whole may provide the type of over-arching narrative/policy that is of national interest, it is still the individual members of parliament that are supposed to represent us---we live in a republic, and we vote for our own representatives to stand for us as members of parliament to fight for our interests. Singapore is small enough that there is often little impedence mismatch between what we citizens want and what is good for the country's development, and so, whoever is going to vote should just make up their own mind.
------
I have been thinking over the past couple of months about life in general, the Scripture, and my own perspective on how things work. Ding told me to go read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which I completed recently (am currently embarking on the sequel of sorts, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow). I can see the allure of the historic-anthropological perspective in which Harari uses to write his exposition, but don't see it as being contradictory to what Scripture is saying. What I mean is, sure, maybe the bible is indeed a myth created and written by humankind during the time when they didn't know any better, and maybe humankind was a by-product of four billion years of evolutionary processes that we can only explain in a sort of statistical sort of way; the real question is, do these really explain away the existence of God Himself? Who's to say that the setting up of four billion years of evolutionary processes was not the work of God? God is, by definition, unknowable by us, so what seems to be impossible by us through proof (hello computational theory and oracles!) may mean only that we are limited in our imagination.
Why do we need to assume that God needed to take the most direct and simple route to get something (like having His Word written down) done? Occam's Razor is just a heuristic to aid us combat the curse of dimensionality that comes with complexity---because it is important that whatever hypothesis we come up with can be communicated to a third person and then convince that said person, in time that doesn't last longer than our mortal life span. But faith and belief is very individual---you can choose to believe, or you can choose not to. Whether you are objectively right or wrong is a non-question.
God's relationship with humankind, through Jesus, is of a personal kind, and with that, a lot of it is therefore bound by one's experience and perception. Is it the scientific way then? Of course not---because experience and perception are not things that are falsifiable and replicable, the cornerstones for the scientific method. While it is important to go round spreading the good news [that one is saved through Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection], it is also important to remember that like all relationships, it can only be entered willingly, and not be forced. So it's okay if someone doesn't want to believe that Jesus died for their sins, it's also okay if someone believes that they don't have sin. They are still humans, just not God's children, that's all.
``But MT, there are so many different schools of thoughts/religions out there, why do you think that God is and the bible is the authoritative Word of God?'' There will never be a satisfactory answer to that question, because God's relationship with humankind, through Jesus, is of a personal kind. It is right and true for me, but is it right and true for you is something that only you can answer.
And that's about as much theology I am willing to indulge. I'm pretty sure that it is possible to poke holes in my arguments here, but I won't even bother providing responses to those if they come---I'm merely thinking and doing something that I personally believe in, with zero intention of attempting to convince someone, therefore ``it doesn't harm anyone and it works for me'' principles hold.
Till the next update, perhaps.
Sunday, June 14, 2020
Talking Past Each Other
I had wanted to write a post earlier, but didn't really have any material to do so.
Then I hung out on the 'net for a bit more, and I remembered what it was that I wanted to write about---the violent attempt at selectively changing/erasing history to force it to match the current trends of what is considered socio-politically acceptable.
On the one hand, I can understand why people can get very angry at the historical monuments that were built in the past to commemorate the events/people that had oppressed them. They have every right to get angry, especially when the supposed improvements in relations between the formerly oppressed and former oppressors seemed to have regressed in recent times.
On the other hand, I do not think that tearing down such monuments in a violent way is going to do anything to help right the wrongs, neither is it productive to vandalise such monuments. To me, the act of the oppressed tearing down the historical monuments of their oppressors is no different in consequence as the oppressors tearing down any form of rememberance of the oppressed---in either case, history is effectively erased. This means that whatever lesson it was that was supposed to have learnt gets lost, which is arguably a worse effect. The oppressed should not want to be forgotten of the past where they were oppressed; the oppressors needed to remember that there was a time where they had done the oppressing, and had since learnt how not to be like that.
It's about the revenge cycle. If there is no attempt by either side to forgive the past, then the revenge cycle will just keep perpetuating, and no one will be the wiser from it. Wars that were meant to end all wars will return, and the philosophies that were demonstrated as being inherently evil/wrong will have the opportunity to return under the disguise of ``righting the destruction of history''.
When people are talking/shouting past each other, can any resolution ever be reached? I think not. But to get both sides to talk to each other requires a certain level of calmness that is really hard to come by in this time and age of ``fake news'', egotistical ``leaders'' who have no care about the nation, and the age of ``managing the right optics''.
I suppose all thoughts that humanity has matured after fighting two world wars is just a pipe dream.
I don't have an answer, just the lamentation.
Till the next update.
Then I hung out on the 'net for a bit more, and I remembered what it was that I wanted to write about---the violent attempt at selectively changing/erasing history to force it to match the current trends of what is considered socio-politically acceptable.
On the one hand, I can understand why people can get very angry at the historical monuments that were built in the past to commemorate the events/people that had oppressed them. They have every right to get angry, especially when the supposed improvements in relations between the formerly oppressed and former oppressors seemed to have regressed in recent times.
On the other hand, I do not think that tearing down such monuments in a violent way is going to do anything to help right the wrongs, neither is it productive to vandalise such monuments. To me, the act of the oppressed tearing down the historical monuments of their oppressors is no different in consequence as the oppressors tearing down any form of rememberance of the oppressed---in either case, history is effectively erased. This means that whatever lesson it was that was supposed to have learnt gets lost, which is arguably a worse effect. The oppressed should not want to be forgotten of the past where they were oppressed; the oppressors needed to remember that there was a time where they had done the oppressing, and had since learnt how not to be like that.
It's about the revenge cycle. If there is no attempt by either side to forgive the past, then the revenge cycle will just keep perpetuating, and no one will be the wiser from it. Wars that were meant to end all wars will return, and the philosophies that were demonstrated as being inherently evil/wrong will have the opportunity to return under the disguise of ``righting the destruction of history''.
When people are talking/shouting past each other, can any resolution ever be reached? I think not. But to get both sides to talk to each other requires a certain level of calmness that is really hard to come by in this time and age of ``fake news'', egotistical ``leaders'' who have no care about the nation, and the age of ``managing the right optics''.
I suppose all thoughts that humanity has matured after fighting two world wars is just a pipe dream.
I don't have an answer, just the lamentation.
Till the next update.
Saturday, June 06, 2020
I Tire of The World
I tire of the world.
I think it has been an emotion that has been seething within me for the past decade or so. Before I launch into my rant on why I tire of the world, let me preface it with this comment first:
The key problem in the world today is two-fold:
That humanity as a whole is sectarian should not be a surprise to anyone who is used to looking at human history. There were only three main situations where such overt discrimination were set aside among individual groups of people:
I claim that humanity has gotten more sectarian now because those three situations are getting quickly ignored by people as being applicable. There are few ``enemies of the world/humanity'' than in the past, making people feel safer to be isolated with their in-groups instead of continuously engaging with their out-groups to maintain their existence; many developed countries have been developed for so long that they have forgotten the long supply chains that bind them to the development of the rest of the world, believing that if they had gone into isolationism (or nativism, to use the trending term now), they would come out ahead; many developed or nearly-developed countries are also benefitting from the world-scale ease of sharing of knowledge through the Internet that they start believing that any previously thought of hegemonic superiority of some other group's technological/economical power is no longer at play now, and with that, start embarking on a journey of overtly challenging the former hegemon.
Are those three observations that many people make correct? Personally, I don't think so. While Heinlein might say that only insects specialise, the fact is that our modern societies have an over reliance of technology-based goods and services that was woven tightly together for over two hundred years. And by ``technology-based goods'', I'm not even talking about computer/information technology, but am referring to things as fundamental as agriculture, and tool manufacturing. Every piece of technology has a supply chain of related technologies behind them, and there are many of these just to support the modern human. Even in the case of developing countries where these things don't seem relevant, they will need basic food, power, shelter, and information infrastructures just so that they can advance into larger and larger groups.
And yes, that is my criteria for advancement of humanity. That the better we are at cooperating, the higher the level of progress. Because it is within the concept of massive cooperation that we can build upon each other's work to achieve higher levels of effectiveness in improving our lives. And life improvement means to do more ``work'' with less ``effort'' so that we can really start living our lives beyond that of mere work.
But back to the point. I think that we are at a very dangerous crossroads for humanity in general, with these errorneous judgements on our supposed individual [group's] strengths and the apparent lack of weaknesses. And it is not being helped by the second big factor, which is the reinforcement of global-scale echo chambers via hyperconnectedness.
To claim that hyperconnectedness creates and maintains global-scale echo chambers isn't wholly correct. There are three parts of this story:
Part one is something to do with human nature and not the actual communication/information network topology. It takes a certain type of nature to be willing to explore outside of one's comfort zone---this is true even in circumstances like these where there is no need to physically put oneself in danger. One can be quite anonymous on the 'net; usually there is no need to be ``registered'' just to read what others have to say, and it used to be the case where interactions could be relatively pseudonymous, before the concept of the ``social media'' came into play. With the rise of ``social media'', it takes even less effort to head out into the wild ``digital unknown'' to look around.
The unfortunate thing that has been demonstrated over the past decade is that even with a lot of things out there in the Internet, people are still more comfortable with things that they know. For example, maybe I discovered something cool about arbology, but in the end, I am more likely to spend time interacting/reading stuff on computer science than that. Now replace these neutral ``knowledge'' materials with something more socio-political, and we'll start to get the start of the echo chambers that we are seeing now.
Multiply that by the ``platform providers'' who discreetly set up algorithms that show more of the same to people who use their platform and rely on it to provide the ``latest news from things they are interested in'', we get the echo chamber of today.
That's bad because it is a regression from the tolerance that had formed in the Age of Exploration. Then we have irresponsible ``leaders'' who use these echo chambers to further their own agenda through all the echoing and make tolerance itself a bad word.
And then we get the increase in the sectarian nature of humanity all over again.
If you think I'm just talking about the US now, you're not quite right. It is not just the US right now. It is almost impossible these days to do anything without triggering off the self-righteous ``my-way-or-the-highway'' types. There is 2×2 comic of two people and a donkey, and a whole bunch of third party criticisms on whatever the people were doing with the donkey (it can be easily found with the terms I give).
If I write a novel, someone will say ``this is a cis-male written piece of novel---it is too anthro-centric and does not explore the non-binary nature of gender issues''. If I write a piece of music for the flute, someone can say ``this is cultural misappropriation---as a Chinese ethnic person, he should not be misappropriating European culture as it is disrespectful''. If I write a social commentary with evidence backing it up, someone will add ``his points cannot be taken to be valid because he is not intersectional with the group he is talking about---he needs to check his majority privilege as only those who are in the in-group are allowed to provide commentary''.
The previous paragraph is hypothetical for me personally---I'm not high profile nor controversial enough to be a target of such things. But seeing post after post, day after day of people saying things of that nature is draining on my so-called ``faith in humanity''.
``But MT,'' you might say, ``that ain't the whole world.'' And you'd be right, that ain't the whole world. However, perception can be reality some times, and that's what's getting me down.
And that, my friends, is why I turned to scripture and to God. This world isn't good enough for me any more---not that it was to begin with. And I've been shown a different way.
I think it has been an emotion that has been seething within me for the past decade or so. Before I launch into my rant on why I tire of the world, let me preface it with this comment first:
I know that some of the struggles that I am going to mention here are real to the people who are involved, I acknowledge that your struggle exists. But me talking about my own struggles does not invalidate your struggles---if you cannot see that and have a strong weird sense of a ``if you are not with me you are therefore against me' mentality, then I recommend you go away and read something else somewhere and leave me alone.With that out of the way, here we go.
The key problem in the world today is two-fold:
- Humanity has gotten more sectarian in nature; and
- Hyperconnectedness has caused massive ``echo chambers'' that limit horizons, further contributing to the vicious cycle.
That humanity as a whole is sectarian should not be a surprise to anyone who is used to looking at human history. There were only three main situations where such overt discrimination were set aside among individual groups of people:
- Existential threat from a third group of people who could be stopped/annihilated only through an alliance of the two (or more) groups of people who were formally discriminative of each other;
- Commerce in the form of trade with excess resources a group has for resources that the group needs;
- Hegemonic superiority of the other group either through sheer numbers or the use of technological/economical power.
I claim that humanity has gotten more sectarian now because those three situations are getting quickly ignored by people as being applicable. There are few ``enemies of the world/humanity'' than in the past, making people feel safer to be isolated with their in-groups instead of continuously engaging with their out-groups to maintain their existence; many developed countries have been developed for so long that they have forgotten the long supply chains that bind them to the development of the rest of the world, believing that if they had gone into isolationism (or nativism, to use the trending term now), they would come out ahead; many developed or nearly-developed countries are also benefitting from the world-scale ease of sharing of knowledge through the Internet that they start believing that any previously thought of hegemonic superiority of some other group's technological/economical power is no longer at play now, and with that, start embarking on a journey of overtly challenging the former hegemon.
Are those three observations that many people make correct? Personally, I don't think so. While Heinlein might say that only insects specialise, the fact is that our modern societies have an over reliance of technology-based goods and services that was woven tightly together for over two hundred years. And by ``technology-based goods'', I'm not even talking about computer/information technology, but am referring to things as fundamental as agriculture, and tool manufacturing. Every piece of technology has a supply chain of related technologies behind them, and there are many of these just to support the modern human. Even in the case of developing countries where these things don't seem relevant, they will need basic food, power, shelter, and information infrastructures just so that they can advance into larger and larger groups.
And yes, that is my criteria for advancement of humanity. That the better we are at cooperating, the higher the level of progress. Because it is within the concept of massive cooperation that we can build upon each other's work to achieve higher levels of effectiveness in improving our lives. And life improvement means to do more ``work'' with less ``effort'' so that we can really start living our lives beyond that of mere work.
But back to the point. I think that we are at a very dangerous crossroads for humanity in general, with these errorneous judgements on our supposed individual [group's] strengths and the apparent lack of weaknesses. And it is not being helped by the second big factor, which is the reinforcement of global-scale echo chambers via hyperconnectedness.
To claim that hyperconnectedness creates and maintains global-scale echo chambers isn't wholly correct. There are three parts of this story:
- Hyperconnectedness increases fatigue and dilution of interest;
- To combat such fatigue and interest dilution, people drift more towards what they know instead of exploring;
- Companies that provide such hyperconnectedness further encourage people to gather into fewer ``niched'' groups to maintain minimal [high] levels of activity to stay relevant [and improve potential revenue through advertising].
Part one is something to do with human nature and not the actual communication/information network topology. It takes a certain type of nature to be willing to explore outside of one's comfort zone---this is true even in circumstances like these where there is no need to physically put oneself in danger. One can be quite anonymous on the 'net; usually there is no need to be ``registered'' just to read what others have to say, and it used to be the case where interactions could be relatively pseudonymous, before the concept of the ``social media'' came into play. With the rise of ``social media'', it takes even less effort to head out into the wild ``digital unknown'' to look around.
The unfortunate thing that has been demonstrated over the past decade is that even with a lot of things out there in the Internet, people are still more comfortable with things that they know. For example, maybe I discovered something cool about arbology, but in the end, I am more likely to spend time interacting/reading stuff on computer science than that. Now replace these neutral ``knowledge'' materials with something more socio-political, and we'll start to get the start of the echo chambers that we are seeing now.
Multiply that by the ``platform providers'' who discreetly set up algorithms that show more of the same to people who use their platform and rely on it to provide the ``latest news from things they are interested in'', we get the echo chamber of today.
That's bad because it is a regression from the tolerance that had formed in the Age of Exploration. Then we have irresponsible ``leaders'' who use these echo chambers to further their own agenda through all the echoing and make tolerance itself a bad word.
And then we get the increase in the sectarian nature of humanity all over again.
If you think I'm just talking about the US now, you're not quite right. It is not just the US right now. It is almost impossible these days to do anything without triggering off the self-righteous ``my-way-or-the-highway'' types. There is 2×2 comic of two people and a donkey, and a whole bunch of third party criticisms on whatever the people were doing with the donkey (it can be easily found with the terms I give).
If I write a novel, someone will say ``this is a cis-male written piece of novel---it is too anthro-centric and does not explore the non-binary nature of gender issues''. If I write a piece of music for the flute, someone can say ``this is cultural misappropriation---as a Chinese ethnic person, he should not be misappropriating European culture as it is disrespectful''. If I write a social commentary with evidence backing it up, someone will add ``his points cannot be taken to be valid because he is not intersectional with the group he is talking about---he needs to check his majority privilege as only those who are in the in-group are allowed to provide commentary''.
The previous paragraph is hypothetical for me personally---I'm not high profile nor controversial enough to be a target of such things. But seeing post after post, day after day of people saying things of that nature is draining on my so-called ``faith in humanity''.
``But MT,'' you might say, ``that ain't the whole world.'' And you'd be right, that ain't the whole world. However, perception can be reality some times, and that's what's getting me down.
And that, my friends, is why I turned to scripture and to God. This world isn't good enough for me any more---not that it was to begin with. And I've been shown a different way.
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Circuit Breaker in All But Name
It's another long weekend, and I'm writing another post here. It is also nearing stupid o'clock, and boy does this remind me of the past.
It was nearly eleven years ago that I would be writing blog posts at stupid o'clock. How has time flown on by!
The circuit breaker was supposed to come to an end come June 01, but no one believed it for a moment---it already had one extension when it was supposed to be done by May 04, and given the current situation of triple-digit daily infections [that get the treatment of spin by deliberately conditioning the total daily numbers by the arbitrary distinction of ``citizens/PRs'' vs ``WP living in dormitories''], it was never likely going to be lifted come June 01, given the relatively conservative and reactionary nature in which Singapore is generally governed.
I didn't even bother to read up the minutae of the ``three-phase'' approach to re-opening things. Phase one is basically an extension to the circuit breaker in all but name, just like how the circuit breaker was basically a lock down in all but name.
As I've said before, 2020 is basically a bust. Everyone is just trying to survive, more so than before, and there really doesn't seem to be anything to look forward to, which is kind of a shame.
------
In other news, it seems that the new version of Ghostscript 9.52 broke something in the
I think I'd have to come up with a test case to file it as a bug, but effort is needed. I do have another thing that I would like to do first though, and will probably focus on that.
That's about all I'd want to write for now.
To anyone who is reading this (including future me---hi!), take it easy. Life's hard, and sometimes shitty, but remember this---you're still alive. That counts for something. Just keep on trudging onward steadily, and God will lead the way.
You never walk alone.
Till the next update.
It was nearly eleven years ago that I would be writing blog posts at stupid o'clock. How has time flown on by!
The circuit breaker was supposed to come to an end come June 01, but no one believed it for a moment---it already had one extension when it was supposed to be done by May 04, and given the current situation of triple-digit daily infections [that get the treatment of spin by deliberately conditioning the total daily numbers by the arbitrary distinction of ``citizens/PRs'' vs ``WP living in dormitories''], it was never likely going to be lifted come June 01, given the relatively conservative and reactionary nature in which Singapore is generally governed.
I didn't even bother to read up the minutae of the ``three-phase'' approach to re-opening things. Phase one is basically an extension to the circuit breaker in all but name, just like how the circuit breaker was basically a lock down in all but name.
As I've said before, 2020 is basically a bust. Everyone is just trying to survive, more so than before, and there really doesn't seem to be anything to look forward to, which is kind of a shame.
------
In other news, it seems that the new version of Ghostscript 9.52 broke something in the
ps2write device. Shell scripts that I had written which helped me shrink down PDF files through resampling and other knick-knacks that used to work on Ghostscript 9.27 [in Cygwin] failed competely with some awkward rangecheckerror on --restore--. I managed to isolate the problem down to how Ghostscript was trying to convert from PDF to Postscript, and was stuck there.I think I'd have to come up with a test case to file it as a bug, but effort is needed. I do have another thing that I would like to do first though, and will probably focus on that.
That's about all I'd want to write for now.
To anyone who is reading this (including future me---hi!), take it easy. Life's hard, and sometimes shitty, but remember this---you're still alive. That counts for something. Just keep on trudging onward steadily, and God will lead the way.
You never walk alone.
Till the next update.
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