collage madness

Ooooh this newly discovered collage function is keeping me very entertained.

The malls are playing cny songs which i have severe allergy to (which i have the same towards annoying and noisy kids). Allergy symptoms include facial contortion, use of profanity, instant repulsion away from source of allergy. Why did x'mas go away so fast :((

This Christmas seemed to have passed especially fast, shortened by CNY looming around the corner. Wish Christmas could have lasted longer. My break is almost over now, I suspect come 5 Jan 09 it will be even harder to maintain a weekly gym and run schedule. Gonna go do some last minute reading now...

realised picasa has collage function, pretty cool. here's what I made of the crabs outing

Desaru II (26Dec-28Dec08)

A good break from the cycling trip. Lots of time to be quiet and listen. Can't be helped that sometimes what the bunch of kids do is beyond my comprehension. Plus I was excessively poked at my biceps and stomach by my juniors the whole tripBut I enjoyed the quietness. The scenery - cows, lalangs, nature. The sea, its waves.

Seafood dinner was yummy! Buttered baby lobsters, black pepper crab (better than eng seng's!), steamed prawns, cereal prawns, oyster with eggs, vege, curry pork dish, lala, deep dried man tou, yam ring. Super cheap too. And on the way back from the dinner, the night greeted us with a clear starry night, and I thought how great it would be if my friends were there with me to watch them sparkle as well.

The cycling itself was yucks, but great workout for the thighs, calves and butt. Going-to-desaru journey was uphill slopes, slopes, and more slopes! I thought I would curse out loud if i saw another slope, but exhaustion kept my mouth shut. Also saw a few roadkills this trip - 1 iguana going to desaru; 1 monitor lizard (with spilled, or should i say burst guts) and a snake (squashed) on the way back. Coming back journey had less killer slopes, but nonetheless still a few torturous ones. It was the state of the ass that made the return journey more painful.

Itinerary

Day 1
0830	Meet Up at Changi Village
0900	Leave for desaru
1000	Arrive at Pengerang Jetty
1100	Arrive in town / lunch / collect bikes
1230	Start Cycling
1330	Ostrich farm
1430	Commence Cycling
1830	Arrive at Resort / Check In
1900	Wash Up
1930	Dinner / OTOT
Day 2
0900	Wakey Wakey / Wash Up
0930	Breakfast
1100	Check Out @Damai
1200	Check In @Pulai
1300	OTOT
1700	All Activities to stop / Wash Up
1730	Set off for HUAT seafood dinner
1830	Arrive @restaurant
2230	Back in resort
Day 3
0700	Wakey Wakey / Wash Up
0730	Breakfast
0830	Cycle to town!
1330	Arrive in Town / Return Bikes / Lunch
1430	Set off for Mango Farm
1500	Arrive @ Mango Farm
1515	Depart for Jetty
1545	Back to Singapore
1645	Arrive In Singapore / Home Sweet Home!

This is Christmas

Christmas, has snuck up. It didn't seem too long that we were in Hong Kong, walking down the mid-level escalators everyday. A trip I will never forget, because on hindsight, my instincts were right, and on hindsight it still hurts.

Eating krispy kreme, drinking toffee nut latte, trying hard to enjoy the trip.

This is Christmas again. But spent differently, with different people, first time since 2005. An older me, a more resolved me is spending this Christmas eve thinking about 2008, and 2009. I did the things I said I would. I found my ways and knocked on doors. I will pray now that 2009 will be kind to me. I will learn to love differently in 2009, and not ask for more. I will free myself of hurt and pain, and not be slaved to confusion or jealousy. I will be a pillar for people to depend on, and a shoulder for friends to lean on. I can see the goals to focus on. This is a Christmas unlike the last, it will not bring more pain, but rejuvenation.

somewat not sure about roughing it out

First thing, about the party today, I need to complain on inflexibility, ask-(idiotic)qns-and-provide-no-solutions and boh chupness. yup that just about summarized it all.

Second thing is, i figured out another thing on why marriage and me don't click. I just told a friend today that you can't believe when (and what) another person promises you about the future. e.g. Let's try again and things will be better this time blah blah blah. That's why I never want to hear my partner telling me "I will love you forever." because I can't believe that it is the truth, because forever is not very real to me. Not because for the lack of trust, but maybe it is just me. And marriage is such a promise, just look at the marriage vows, full of promises. I don't like to make promises I can't keep, and I expect the same from others. So I try to say what I mean and mean what I say to my very very best effort. I believe in love definitely. To be able to marry someone you love, for love alone sounds heavenly. But in reality, love alone is not enough. Trust, honesty, responsibility, communication etc, makes marriage work. Love is supposed to be the prerequisite. I will be happy to just be able to find someone who is able to have all of that with me, and want to spend the rest of our lives together.

Last thing is that I am having many second thoughts about roughing it out for the cycling trip with a bunch of kids. I am too old to be in the group. I will stand out like a sore thumb and it will be freakingly painfully awkward. What have I gotten myself into.

After submitting the two applications, and waiting for another enquiry in progress, i felt like i had completed all the things that weighed me down for the past 5 months. Now i can say i have done all i can and it can only wait for the results.

In the meantime, this is a very un-lull december, with lots of work, old and new, and even new work is starting to become bad logs because of urgent stuff. I feel surprisingly unstressed probably because of the submitted applications. But just need to remind myself to not feel complacent and to continue and be proactive at work.

Runny nose today, and finally wrapped presents. Got more to buy, and my weekend is burnt. I am looking forward to coming back from the cycling trip. that's when i can finally rest.

holiday mood

yesterday's run was 6.1km in 37mins.  after 5 days (including weekends) away from work, I am so dreading to go back.

16.6km in 2hr 6min. Didn't really cared about the time, but more on the distance I actually covered.  Told myself not to care about the timing when I ran today, just stretch my distance as much as possible.  So I have no qualms about clocking such timing.  I practically crawled back to big splash, my finishing point. I cannot imagine doing another 4.4km to make up a half-marathon.  That will take me maybe another 30mins?  My legs are shaky now.

Haruki Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about running

My friend passed me this book in an attempt for me to replace him for the stanchart marathon because his knees are injured. While I will be very impressed with myself if I were to complete a full marathon, I think more training and preparation has to be done for an attempt than 1 week's notice. I will do it when I am ready.

People who want to read the book may not want to look at the quotes below, the only purpose of my puting them down here is for my own easy reference in the future.

Some meaningful lines from the book:

1. Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional. 
2. ...I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more.  Do that , and the next day's work goes surprisingly smoothly. ...... To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm.  This is the important thing for long-term projects.  Once you set the pace, the rest will follow.  The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed -- and to get to that point takes much concentration and effort as you can manage.
3. I just run.  I run in a void.  Or maybe I should put it in the other way: I run in order to aquire a void.  But as you might expect, an occasional thought will slip into this void.  People's minds can't be a complete blank.  Human beings' emotions are not strong or consistent enough to sustain a vacuum.  What I mean is, the kinds of thoughts and ideas that invade my emotions as I run remain subordinate to that void.  Lacking content, they are just random thoughts that gather around that central void.
4. Can I laugh at Mick Jagger?  No way,  I just happen not to be a young rock singer.  Nobody remembers what stupid things I might have said back then, so they're not about to quote them back at me.  That is the only difference.
5. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people.  Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me.  These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings.
6. When I'm criticized unjustly (from my viewpoint, at least), or when someone I'm sure will understand me doesn't, I go running for a little longer than usual.  By running longer it's like I can physically exhaust that portion of my discontent.  It also makes me realize again how weak I am, how limited my abilities are. I become aware, physically, of these low points.  And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become much stronger. If  I'm angry, I direct that anger toward myself. If I have a frustrating experience, I use that to improve myself.  That's the way I've always lived. I quietly absorb the things I'm able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.
7. I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it.  Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.
8. I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to priortize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy.  If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance.
9. But when I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight was perhaps a blessing in disguise.  In other words, if I don't want to gain weight I have to work out hard everyday, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences.  Life can be tough, but as long as you don't stint on the effort, your metabolism will greatly improve with these habits, and you'll end up much healthier, not to mention stronger. ... ... But people who naturally keep the weight off no matter what don't need to exercise or watch their diet in order to stay trim.  There can't be many of them who would go out of their way to take these troublesome measures when they don't need to.  Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age.  If you don't exercise, your muscles will naturally weaken, as will your bones. ... ... We should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible.  OF course, it's not always easy to see things this way.
10. There are three reasons I failed.  Not enough training.  Not enough training. And not enough training. ... ... Without knowing it, I'd developed a sort of arrogant attitude, convinced that just a fair-to-middling amount of training was enough for me to do a good job.  It's pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride.  
11. Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn't applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work.  Input this canceled memory once again, and you have to repeat the whole journey from the beginning.
12. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit.  All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.
13. Focus -- the ability to concentrate all your limited talent on whatever's critical at the moment. ... ... without focus you can't accomplish anything.
14. In any event, I'm happy I haven't stopped running all these years.  The reason is, I like the novels I've written.  And I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of novel I'll produce next.  Since I'm a writer with limits -- an imperfect person living an imperfect, limted lift -- the fact that I can still feel this way is a real accomplishment.
15. This is my body, with all its limits and quirks.  Just as with my face, even if I don't like it, it's the only one I get, so i've got to make to. ... ... As you age you learn even to be happy with what you have.  That's one of the few good points of growing older.

on DB and running

dragonboat is a deceiving sport. Seemingly simple, you just row. 1) Getting each stroke right is the fundamental thing every rower has to do. 2) Then comes the strength of your strokes, and 3) how long you can maintain that strength for every correct stroke. That is about all I care for, for an amateur like me. Things like starts and getting the boat the glide etc etc, come later. Like what I thought before, getting 20 people to accomplish all 1), 2) and 3) is a great feat, but if possible, a great team can be formed.

Physique naturally plays a great part in this, and I must say my understanding of dragonboating has changed tremendously after 9 plus months of rowing. The constant reminder that not being able to pull your own weight in the boat equals a burden to the rest is also a useful way to tell myself to become stronger.

The thing about dragonboat is that everything you do (for training) get used in a race. Weights you lift in the gym are used as strength in a race. Runs that you go for translates to endurance to last the entire distance in the race. (If the entire team does this, then of course the race will be easier, and timing will be better.) Simple translation. It's not like badminton where you do all kinds of drills, the defenses, the attacks, the smashes, lobs, nets, drops, pushes, the feigns, fancy and non-fancy shots. But not all get used in a match. But of course I appreciate badminton for its burst, adrenaline and different types of gameplay that makes the game so endearing. But yet the simplicity of dragonboat can be addictive, that's why I say it is deceiving.

A friend passed me Haruki Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about running. Many quotable lines in time which I will post soon.

what do u do when there are things you want to say but can't

when there are things you understand but can't accept

things that you can't accept because you don't understand

i ran 9.4km today in 1h 05min == aching legs

Regatta 2008

Regatta's over, I guess it can be marked as an event to mention in 2008 for me. After all this is the race that I had trained for the last few months. It was the thing that I went to gym regularly for, and even ran regularly.

A rowing competition seems simple, 5 boats, 20/10 men in each boat, and you compete. But it is actually very difficult to win. For 20 ppl to be in the same boat and do the same thing, to want the same thing, and lastly to put in what they need to put in to achieve the results that all the people in the boat wants, is a feat. Maybe it's because sometimes people think of it as a simple sport. It actually is a straightforward one, but straightforward one doesn't mean it's requires little effort.

Now I feel like going to the gym more often, doing more weights, and run to become fitter. I hope everybody trains harder to gain the strength we need to win.

Pics@facebook

Good Writings

At work, I remind myself to make writings

• Clear
• Concise
• Accurate
• Coherent
  
• Appropriate in tone

In a paper, your job as a writer is to ensure that your information leaves an impression with your reader, and causes an influence. It is most important to put across the meaning and significance of your key message.

Notes of writing paper:

1. Don't tell your readers what they already know, unless it's context.
2. Always address your reader's concern e.g., if your reader is always concerned about money, address it.
3. Always find out who is the one reading your paper and craft it with strategy.
4. Accuracy is the minimum threshold, you hold all responsibility for the accuracy of facts and figures mentioned.
5. Quote sources of data.
6. You only select and stress part of your content.
7. Change different styles for different audiences.
8. Grammar is a given as well.
   
9. Make writing crisp - to the point, concise, clear and coherent.

A quote from an instructor sums it up nicely
"When you go into a shooting range, it doesn't matter how many bullets you have, or how powerful your gun is. What matters most is that you hit your target. If not, you will only succeed in making a lot of noise."

Other guide for report writing with a defined problem:

• Put objective in writing
• Outline position
• Describe problem
• Examine possibilities
• Put forward proposals
• Use short sentences & paragraph
  

tired

getting loads and loads of info from new work. and am burning my brains out getting reacquainted with codes. codes are still fine, but assembly language?! am reading all over the place on scripts and registries and analysis tools. it's just the lack of sleep and time, otherwise, this really isn't that bad. i just got to figure out how to shine in the new place fast. too many experts there while me, a noob. but i ain't going down.

my mind obviously runs too many strings of thought simultaneously. when that happens, it is, in other words, known as short attention span. or frequently disrupted or interrupted thoughts. very much like how your computer works, via interrupts. no joke, but this is ALL geek talk. I usually try to suppress it (the frequently interleaving thoughts), but lunchtime it happened again, i was reading on malware analysis and slipstreaming SP3 to make an iso image for installation in the virtual machine, when the thoughts below just emerged and took over for a while, so i wrote it down below. (Yeah all those in italics, i picked them up in a span of a week. i wonder how far down the geek road i can venture ...my guess is...as far as i want to).

Here goes:
They say that the aggregation of minds, brights ones especially, sparks innovation. Ideas develop quickly and motivated & intelligent people will drive their ideas to fruition with zest and passion. The system of reward and performance measurement however, counters such a phenomenon. Individuals are pitted against one another and ranked relative to each other in individual-based appraisals. This creates subtle hostility and thus, instead, high potential individuals are placed relatively apart and well-distributed within the organization. These individuals can the supposedly 'thrive' in the lesser competition, or possibly bring up the overall quality of work in his or her proximity.

I opine that lesser competition leads to lesser innovation and cannot support fully the assumption that 1 individual is able to cause such a 'change agent' effect and cause an overwhelming change. Incremental improvements are possible, compared with the overall leap when the 'smart ones' together are lumped together, organizations (depending on type, focus etc) may have more to benefit from quantum leaps of innovation as compared to incremental organizational improvements. That is probably why the high-performance management consulting firms only want the best to join them and form the crowd of only the best.

and i mentioned i am lacking of sleep now..

Different people brings out the different characteristics in the same individual. Maybe that is why some people observe that when someone is with another person, he/she behaves different as compared to when he or she is alone with friends, or in a previous relationship etc.. It may not be that the person whom you are with changed you. I think of it more like a magnifying glass, but different people magnify different aspects of you. It may be possible, but I don't know if it is desired, for somebody to stay exactly the same, before being in a relationship and while in a relationship. Interactions with people are supposed to affect us to a certain extent, but of course we can't let people walk all over our lives and make us behave 180 degrees differently, that would seem unnatural.

With this in mind, I guess the person I want to be with will be someone who can bring out the best in me. And even more so better if I can do the same for her as well. After all why affect each other for the worse right.

Like Tuesdays with Morrie, sometimes i feel like knowing what others would say at my eulogy, to know what they know me as, and what they remember me by. If would be good to know it while i am alive and healthy and well, to remind me to be more than what people remember me by, to do more good and be a better person than what i think i am capable of.

the thing about Obama wining the presidency... I think we only know if it is really THAT good when we know what he can do, after hearing what he can say. But as I was telling a friend, at the very least he managed to motivate the Americans, and a whole bunch of other people

ate the bullet

I feel like such a sorry little ass right now. I ate the bullet, and said I will move over to the other dept and got asked some trick question which I don't know if I answered correctly.

have a goddamn head that feels like it's going to explode. Ate 2 mouthful of dinner to find a caterpillar in the vege, and mcdonald delivery said they will take an hour to deliver. A fucking hour?!

I have not whimpered nor growled since the coding madness in uni. The unknown is scary, so is uncertainty. But there is no point having second thoughts now since I decided to bite the fucking bullet. It's time to raise to the occasion.

learn to live with stress.

As we grow older, it become inevitable that we take on more responsibilities, more burdens, whether by choice or not.  some choices have 1 option (i.e., no choice), but it is the right thing to do.  It is all too easy to lose yourself and wallow in self-pity of why-am-i-not-a-millionaire, why-am-i-not-able-to-do-the-things-i-like and why-do-i-have-to-do-everything.  Too easy. Such naive emotions spill out because on most days you act like an adult.  But being a real adult is not just acting like one.  It is taking the difficult responsibilities, the heavy burdens, alone if it has to be.  It is scary and stressful and can make people unhappy if they don't know how to cope with it.  It makes sense to feel overwhelmed because it is the first time you take on such heavy things.  But I guess you will get used to the load and become stronger with it.  Just like how we train in the gym, when we stretch our limits, it is difficult, but we grow.

So, learn to live with stress and make the stress work for you.  Make it the motivation and the drive to continue the journey in life.  

sometimes i understand how smart alecs feel.  their mentality is that why bother asking when you already know the expected response. but i guess when this becomes a habit, the automatic formation of assumptions can be very damaging.  So. sometimes it's better to slow down and ask one question at a time and not rely on any assumptions.

weather today is crazy. it rains through the sunshine when i was going to work. it poured when i reached office. the sun was bright during lunch. and it probably will rain later, and then the sun will come out before it sets in the evening. then it will probably rain again. And stop. And then rain when i am sleeping. freaking much like the stock market. 

kirchoff's laws

a teacher asked me about kirchoff's laws just now. and i remember what the heck those two current and voltage laws were about haha. ok to explain at jc-level, but the EEE-physics have rusted off a bit....the differential equations and integrals.....

physiotherapists

I have to many things to do, yet I choose to blog. Things to do include
1. Prioritizing the things that needs to be done
2. Finish half-read story book
3. Quant finance book
4. hacker exposed book
5. write letter of recommendation for myself for coach
6. work (is like a million things undone...but i reckon personal time is more important)

attended the council meeting today, lots of big shots came, sat at the roundtable and deliberated on manpower issues. The interesting thing was the comment on how the digital media side seems to prefer "bad" students. As in the creative ones who doesn't necessarily have the best grades. So it made me wonder...maybe the bad students get to choose what they like, and the good (academically) ones get herded to the mould factory to become lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers. I remember in JC for a long period of time I had to go to the sports medicine centre at the national stadium 3 times a week to see the physiotherapist for my back problem. My very beautiful physiotherapist made me feel like becoming a physiotherapist myself. i still remember her name, Shwikar. I think it's because of her I never dreaded the long journey from school to the stadium. Plus I get to get some great rubs after training *grinz*

Areas of pain have now focused into very localised spots. Left ass pain. Lower right back super suan and stiff. Upper right thigh, I can't lift it up properly, strained from badminton.

I will give anything for a nice massage now....where is my physiotherapist....

Did i forget to mention that I have a broken blister on my left palm..

8 hrs of workout over the weekend

Must not do stupid things like back-to-back 2.5hr badminton after 2 hr db. That as a starting point for a 3.5hr-long db is quite hazardous for the back, which is already full of old injuries that are threatening to make themselves felt.

At bedok reservoir yesterday: I hit my thumb against the gunrail 4,5 times, resulting in a small blue black. First time that has happened, don't know why. Might be the 47" paddle.
At Sg river today: No hitting of thumb, but we saw a dead, floating rat near the pebble bay area. And the marina barrage is done?! Sg river is going to be clean?????? I errr have serious doubts as of now. Got to do something about the wide strokes though *shake head* it musn't become a chronic problem.

I think I am getting very used to being alone now. Without the need to arrange my schedule with someone else's, or planning for weekends and getaways together. It makes me wonder if I can get used to it again when I need to do so. Then that makes me wonder if I will open my heart to another person again.

eng seng

8.7km in 1 hour, and my legs feel like jelly already. Running is hard....hard to beat your own timing.

I had eng seng's famous black pepper crabs yesterday with good company. No pictures taken, partly due to laziness, partly due to the lack of clean fingers. The crabs are good I must say, you can take your time to eat them and they taste great even when they are not piping hot. After eng seng's crab we adjourned to a dessert place at siglap. Rote grutze would have been ideally perfect (ha..ideal is not enough to describe the perfectness), but little chocolate cakes with cofffee was just as nice. And of course the company was even better. But I must say, dessert was a little overshadowed by excessive db talk.

Seminar slides were cleared surprisingly fast today. So I finally have time to do more reading on some techy stuff. Or do I...I fear not actually, with programme's nitty operational stuff peaking this weekend. Inevitable fact that I will have to work this weekend. Doing nothing but administrative work. Collating, sending email. Maybe I should burn my friday night instead. I hope it takes less than half a day....and then it will be another half a day gone attending seminar on sat morning. So i effectively have less than 1 day of real weekend this weekend. *resigned sigh*

I thought....my luck is supposed to change.

How many dwarfs can you be in a day

Usually I'm Sneezy in the morning, Grumpy before I have my coffee, Dopey after lunch, Doc when I am in a buzz, Bashful when ermm…on a date, Happy when it's time to chill and Sleepy at 1am.

End of the long weekend

The long weekend will be gone in another 2 more hours.  Then soon November will come.  Can't believe how the year has flown past, and I am writing this as though it's December 31st.  Come November it will be work, seminar, workplans, and juggling with new work - haven't quite figured out what to make of the new stuff.  

December will be the X'massy time, but this time it will be different. It will be 1 year since Hong Kong.  It will be 1 year since we walked down 半山 escalators from the bishop lei hotel.  I have no idea what Christmas will be like this year.

Strange things happened in 2008, things that I never imagined possible to happen on me.  Maybe I'm in some sort of a transition, for the better.  A metamorphosis to shed the quiet and satisfied me into a critical and hungry me.

thoughts from 'inner economist'

Scarcity of attention -- In our everyday life, umpteen things fight for our attention.  Hence we need to force ourselves to keep paying attention at every moment and not fall into the humdrum of daily routine.  

We must cultivate a habit of making such mental training a habit, so that we critique, analyse fast in this age of information overload.  It is too easy to go with the flow and do as you are told, which leads to the lack of mental exercise.  We must force ourselves to distill key feature of what is presented to us in the moment without delay, and keep at such until it becomes a habit, a second nature.  And especially so because while some things / services are there to make you happy (because customer satisfaction = returning customers), some things in life are not there with such a primary purpose of satisfying you.  Hence there is a need to pay attention and derive your own takeaways - i.e., engage your mind to think and analyse fast when you are presented with the facts/artifacts/proposals etc.

i feel paralysed, my ass is so painful now. The result of sat's 4-6pm db, 6-8pm badminton (geh kiang go and play singles), sunday's db and land training (with the damn squats!).  Areas of pain - neck, back, waist, butt, thighs, calves, arms.

I NEED A MASSAGE!!

awaiting the looonng weekend

today is such a long day.  I worked 13 hours, with only a 1 hr break. heck i took less than an hour for lunch.  and i missed gym because of work, the little bit of satisfaction from almost completing the seminar slides doesn't make up for it fully :(

IF

I've never liked poems very much, but this one I do. got it from a new friend.

IF -- by Rudyard Kipling
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

The List

List of words, commonly mispronounced, wrong usage, grammar mistakes etc etc.

1. because why?
2. thats mean (correctly should be "that means")
3. par-ci-tipation
4. fa-li-citate
5. cow touncil ("town council")
6. cer-fi-ticate
7. bazzar
8. irregardless (no such thing, it's "regardless")
9. favlour
10. nowsaday ("nowadays")
    

black pepper & steamboat

There were 7 ppl at training today. I deleted my previous post.

I had a great time at steamboat yesterday though. Black pepper crab turned out good and i was stuffed.  

physics EM law

an electric charge creates an electric field around itself with a certain directional vector
by Coulomb's law,

The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two point electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each charge and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the charges.

And hence, 2 charges, if of the same sign, repel each other.

And when 2 charges of different signs come close, they attract each other. When put near but not too close, the electric field that they create as individual charges are distorted. When even closer together, the resultant electric field is quite different from the electric field created by each charge.

pretty fun to apply physics to love. How different can people be when they are in love and when they are as individuals? How differently do they behave as a couple and when alone? There's no right or wrong, just interesting social phenomenons.

no more time to indulge in such random musings, got to in office early to deliberate on diagrams and models. again it's interesting, on how games like sims are modeled after real life. like how resources are limited, and how you need to gain 'points' or scores under certain parameters e.g. cooking, technical yadah yadah, before you can progress up any particular career.

such games are modeled after tjhe real world, yet in the real world, we somehow don't know how things work, but in games we do.

i'm yours or you're mine

The omnipresent Jason Mraz song, I'm Yours, it was playing when we were at dbl o sat night.  A fellow october baby who was getting high was trying to recall the title of the song.  And the whole group for a moment could not decide if the title was "I'm Yours" or "You're mine".  

Which is more desirable to you, someone saying "You're mine", or "I'm yours"? 

 

dbl o night

20 free shooters and 1 bottle of free champagne (free kind).  The free shooters tasted like fruit punch.  So the drinks count for the night is as follows:

5 lousy shooters (others had 4 because i put my glass last at the game of who-puts-the-shot-glass-last game)

2 glasses of champagn

1 vodka lime (that tasted more like lime juice)

1 vodka orange (that tasted more like orange juice)

3 shots of tequila shot, gin tonic, brandy (this is the real stuff)

2 cocktail shots of sex on the beach

2 cocktail shots of sex on the pool table

pool table shot nice, got coffee liquer inside. 

and i was up at 7am for db the next morning. 

what affects me is the response i have towards whatever event that happened

10 oct was staff conference, a rather poorly done one as far as i'm concerned. Logistically, expo seems to be too big for such an event. The too-high ceiling and black drapery as divider just screams factory and coldness. Did not take away anything useful except for 1 line from the infamous mr. khoo. I somehow have this immense dislike for him. Could be not-so-motivating motivational talks. I am extremely unaffected by such stuff. Detached, as usual.

I was explaining to my colleague why his speech was full of contridictions and invalid claims, and especially the bit on how he says that our emotional state is made up by our physiology (but note, his examples of physiology are posture, tone of voice...) and thoughts. So, while I agree that our emotional state can affect our outlook of life e.g., in high gear, we work more efficiently, are happier, think more positively, I largely disagree when he says that by changing your body posture (e.g., sit up straight, not slouching...) or tone of voice can change your emotional state. It's true that when you feel more confident, you sit up and lift your head up.  But just by lifting your head up and sitting up straight doesn't neccesarily MAKE your more confident. It may help get in trying to make you feel confident, but sometimes the pipe doesn't flow both ways.

And for thoughts. If it was so easy to change our thoughts, who will need the motivational speakers.

Mind Wide Open by Steven Johnson was a book I enjoyed on neuroscience. One of the things mentioned was that when certain events occur, while emotions can be evoked in a split second because of past experience etc etc, our response to that emotion however, is not hardwired. For example, when you are driving if some car decides to dangerously cut into your lane, a natural emotional response may be anger, and for some, the "natural" reaction is cursing at the reckless driver. However, on decontruction or if you are bo liao and want to analyse the situation, you can reason that the reckless driver may be in a great hurry - maybe his wife is giving birth in the car, or some loved one is dying in a hospital. Then you may not react with the "natural" reaction of anger. Other than such analysis, conditioning can also alter "natural" reactions.

So the only useful takeaway I had from that speech is what he said on "what affects me is the response i have towards whatever event that happened". Pretty self-explanatory.

And F&N has not reimbursed me the $1.40 for their vending machine that ate my money.

Sharpen the mind

Feel like some kind of an addict, having to use 2 types of nasal spray today, snorting the suspension to decongest the sinus. viral sore throat bugging me the past week. coupled with unrestrained unhealthy diet of carl's junior, kfc and grilled fish.

I am looking forward to a change of luck after 13 Oct. I hope I will be in time for the toto draw.

When I was young(er), and topping classes in primary school, my mother always told me that when I pray, I should always pray for Wisdom. Not cleverness, not smartness, not high IQ, not high scores, not 100 marks, but wisdom. Because that is what guides us to the road of enlightenment, or something like that. I agree. And it happens that wisdom does not necessary come with age, as maturity does. It is not something you get from studying or from classes. You can study texts, scriptures, wise sayings by wise people, but what can be taken out of every lesson that life gives differs from person to person.

A tendency to be introspective lets me think a lot, and talk aloud in my mind sometimes. At times I am afraid that I get lost in the maddness of everyday life. I don't like the feeling that I can walk the route to home without needing to think to find the way as if on autopilot. Must egg myself to be more aggressive in focussing, sharpening the mind, thinking faster. And of course translate the thoughts into words so that other people can understand.

9.9km in 1h 8mins.

quality of performance today at db <- sucked

afterthought from watching Prison Break.  Credibility of "i promise", "trust me" is rare in harsh environments where it's 'each for his own' and competition for survival is intense.  But whichever case its rarity and fragility is what makes trust so precious.  Trust when broken, breaks into a million small pieces, hard to find, even harder to rebuild.  Yet, trust doesn't have to be that delicate.  People who are honest with each other, who understand and accept each other can build on the trust they have for each other day by day, bit by bit.  Harden it so that it doesn't quaver at the most trivial and paltry daily affairs.   But I suppose when there is real betrayal (however you qualify that) the trust goes down with it as well.

Of the feeling of needing to be in control, from Tyler Cowen's Discover your inner economist --

"...the more prominent the reward, the more likely it is to reduce the intrinsic motivation...  This is a major drawback of rewards and penalties.  We use them to influence the behaviour of other people.  And this is precisely what makes people feel a lack of control and and a lack of freedom.  Many people rebel against those feelings, or against the sources of those feelings, and that is why incentives can be so ineffective or perhaps even counterproductive."

Incentives and penalties (or threats) can only be counterproductive and ineffective when inappropriately applied.  Hence it is very important to identify correctly what is of value to the other party (not yourself).  A stake can have different value depending on the evaluator.  A $1million offer has a different value to a billionaire and a beggar.  A $1million offer can have different meaning to a billionaire depending on the context and situation.  Many times, you need to dig beyond the surface to see what are the links, feedback loops and inter-relations are between things.

everybody wants something

am newly hooked on prison break.  it's already at season 4, but better late than never.  the plot's exciting, despite the violence and sometimes disturbing realisation that there are such psychotic criminals around.  

What's really interesting from watching the show is also realising that you can plan for every move, but there is always 1 element that can change the entire course of action -- people.  people are unpredictable and in the show, untrustworthy.   There is constant negotiation and as Sucre puts it succintly "Everybody wants something".  That is such a true statement. With that, you determine the bargaining chips and your bargaining position, and you can begin to influence without authority.

happy?

if at the moment of death we are appraised about the life we lead, it will be interesting to know what will be used to consider a life being well-lived.  

The amount of wealth he accumulated, the amount of philanthropy he practised, the number of children he raised, the number of lovers he had, and whether or not he found true love.  None of these factors account fully for the happiness he had felt in his lifetime.  

What more when sometimes, people don't know themselves how happy (or unhappy) they are.  Sometimes, people believe that they don't have a choice.  (In fact, people who believe they don't have a choice have actually already made their choice and decided.)  Or maybe, some people trick themselves into not knowing how happy they are because they know that deep inside they are not.   

If there is anyone who can know how happy he is, it is the person himself.  It is the least we can do for ourselves, to know ourselves.  And the next thing to do, is to let no one compromise your happiness.

it is not an impossible task.  if there is trust, respect and honesty between people.  if there is love and acceptance.   

fine fine night

it's a fine fine night. i am loving the weather right now this moment. cool, rainy outside while i'm all snugged up, listening to music, surfing the web and ready to crash without needing to wake up early tomorrow.

it's good timing, because it didn't rain on us when we were jogging at ecp just now. neither did it rain when we were eating, only started pouring as we left.  and now i hope the rain keeps falling until tomorrow morning.

I keep reminding myself the brutal truth.

The need to mature and become more driven and confident has never dawned on me.  Because I know I am smart, I learn fast, I adapt well and I rise to occasions.  But I then realise that, not being as driven and as confident might been costly.  It is not too late, at the very least work is something I can propel and will propel.

Book

finished The Logic of Life by Tim Harford today.  The book on rational choice theory, economics, little bit on game theory.

The underlying and most important statement that the book builds on is that people are rational.  And "Rational people respond to incentives and trade-offs.  When the costs or benefits of something changes, people change their behaviour.  Rational people thinking - not always consciously - about the future as well as the present as they try to anticipate likely consequences of their actions in an uncertain world..." 

And goes on to give many examples of how rational peoples' choices not necessarily lead to a "good" outcomes.  One of it was the rational racist/sexist/ageist example.  This rational choice theory of people leads to the emergence of steroetypes, of treating people as members of a group than as individuals of their own right.

It kind of exemplifies the system dynamics methodology, where systems' structures are analysed based on the circle of causality, where every happening/event is a cause and an effect of another.  There you distill the structure and identify self-reinforcing or balancing loops.  Steroetype and discrimination, and many other phenomenons are the self-reinforcing loops.  The interesting thing is, whether or not it a self-reinforcing loops ends up being a virtuous or vicious cycle is caused the difference in initial conditions - which sometimes seem to be due to random events. 

I have many things to read up this weekend.  I cannot imagine coding again.

expected unexpected unexpectedly took off

yes the unexpected and shirlyn wasn't around today at wala. That kind of sucked since they were the reason why I was asking all my friends if they wanted to go down tonight. Ok it was them, plus the fact that I really wanted to be out tonight and not be home early.  I wanted to be in a crowd, to be near people.  The songs they picked were nice, but the substitute band just wasn't up to par as compared to the original.

And I was so late today, only reached holland village at 10:10pm. After going way west to ntu, yl & kx drove all of us down pie, aye, and we all missed the clementi exit thinking that there was a commonwealth exit. took a u-turn at lower delta and exited at portsdown road instead of buona vista exit. ha. that was the long way down. i almost didn't get to meet f because it was so late, and she & friends left early (because shirlyn & band weren't there i suppose). But i did get to meet her :) at cold storage haha. a pretty interesting moment, and i found myself smiling a lot dunno why. it was a brief hello and a quick exchange before i left for wala.

anyway, i'm glad i went out tonight. 26 years and counting. every present moment is what i've got, and not to be wasted.  Today a colleague suddenly asked me a few 'funny' questions at the brainstorming at hortpark. when is your bond ending? then, what are your top 3 priorities in life now?  I was surprised i managed to answer her second question with ease.

1) To figure out what I want to do in life

2) To enjoy life, and the present moment

3) To think about how my family (i.e., mum) should live and if any plans should be made

the new 30% security stuff is not easy. but it's definitely interesting. I will need to brush up on several things now. Apps development, system development, coding, secure coding, exploits, compromization techniques, scripting, perl, c, c++...and the list goes on. 

6.2km in 39 mins. hmm so if 10km it'll be abt 63 min. still a bit slow. if i wanna do 10km in 1 hr it means
2.4km in less than 14.4 mins
3km in less than 18 mins
6km in less than 36 mins

Maybe I should improve on my 2.4km timing first...don't know if 13 min flat is possible or not.

heard a funny statement from a returned colleague "傻事做一次就好".

brutally honest

thanks for the gentle grilling bestest. and also saying brutally honest things, i need such things from people. to be honest with me. i admit that i just don't give up easily, but a sure way for me to do so is if someone of the right subject says so. which is why i'd rather hear it then for me to reach the conclusion on my own, however sure i am.

there is no absolute in anything, and everything is about position as what my boss says. or like what Einstein says, "everything is relative". nothing is absolutely good, or bad. a quality like persistence, perseverance, go-getter etc etc can all be bad stuff in different situations, in different context.

I must learn the art of gently wrenching open closed doors. it's like opening a tightly shut tin can, only to find that it is really mainly full of emptiness, nothing much to hold on to, nothing much to lose. But the realization is good and healthy I think.

i know i'm supposed to be working now, but i realised i haven't said my piece for the day.  Plus, there's really nothing much to prepare for tomorrow. i have like 3 slides, 5 minutes. i will prepare after i'm done, and make sure there aren't any grammatical errors in my 3 slides.  And. after re-reading my boss' sms, i realise all it says is that i have to tell my facilitators tomorrow "eh if you are not sure, don't anyhow answer queries ok. got any questions, ask boss to answer." I don't think that is beyond me, or will take more than 5 minutes.

So. with the right dosage of coffee and procrastination for work, i can be pretty prolific i.e., preferring to post my random thoughts than work.  In the sweltering sg heat, i am reduced to singlets and shorts, after the 2nd bath for the day.  feels like in ntu where frequent bathes were necessary for any engineering undergraduate to keep sane in the heat solving pde tutorials or, at the later part of the uni days, fourier and laplace transformations.

Damn i thought i had sunblocked my arms, why am i peeling.

Watched the Diminishing (read: 'dinimishing') Memories I & II on friday. It's two indie documentaries by a local producer/director/narrator... Basically it's about her memories of the old Lim Chu Kang kampong, what has become of it, and a bit on the struggles of the 'traditional/original/production' and 'new age/modern/showcase' farmers in sg-Lim Chu Kang.  Was not from Lim Chu Kang, so nostalgia wasn't exactly what i felt watching it.  But it did made me think about memories, and how they fade. Hence the need for photos, blogs, documentaries, video clips. And the The Resident Tourist comic strip too, mentioned a bit of mix tape - which is a compilation of the songs you like lumped into one tape. I should take more photographs then, so that in a few years' time, i will know what happened to my life.  You'll be surprised how little you can remember without such aids. 

haha i am coffee-coloured

1:37, 1:44, 1:47, 1:56, 1:50 today's timings for 400 metres. Not too fast, not too slow, but at least completed.  Of course, need I say that I felt like i was dying in between those sprints.. 

I don't know why but i'm quite amused by the comment from a friend at lunch today who said "hey you are quite dark hor, same colour as your kopi." and yes, my arms are indeed kopi-coloured. not the latte brown, but the pretty dark kopi brown. Amused. but will be happier if it is evenly kopi-coloured. it is time for some stomach-tanning.

I think subconsciously i have managed to (i hope it's true) tell myself that life is too short to stay angry or pissed or lousy. it's fine to react with some emotions sometimes, whether by choice or unconsciously (the neuroscientists and psychologists i believe tell patients that when things happen (usually bad stuff), they can choose to react differently in response to the emotions that are invoked), but staying that way takes a bit longer to undo when you let yourself dwell in it i.e., 纵容自己的情绪。In addition to that, emotions -x-> actions. Our response can be controlled (albeit some mental training), we just need to know that we can.

i will start my preparation for tomorrow at 4pm, after finishing my kopi.

crappy mood

in a very crappy mood today. not the crappy = trash-talking crappy manner. in a crappy i.e., miserable, lousy, shitty, stinking mood.  reason is an amalgamation of a few things. work, worthless private calls from credit card telemarketeers, private emo stuff. why do i feel the need to explain myself for every single thing nowadays. every damn thing about work and non-work.  is it possible at all to do something without being questioned.

i slept too much today, hence the sleepless-ness and wide awake situation now at 1am. so awake. i can't wait for monday to be over. depressed until then.

i hate events

been 2 damn nights that i dreamt about work, and colleagues. It's going to be such a fucking lousy weekend, because i am sure i will end up thinking about monday's event every minute. and my bosses have to sms me and say that because they don't think we know how to answer the queries that the people will have, we should direct all questions to them. If it's a freaking new programme, then why aren't you paying MORE attention to it and actually READ and think about the programme's details and processes weeks ago when the bloody draft was sent to you. it sucks. i hate programmes, i hate events.

and i cannot tell myself to not think about it at all because i have to, because i haven't thought about what i need to say on monday morning, and there are a million things that can go wrong, and probably will according to infamous murphy's law. i will be worrying about every single damn thing until it's over at 12nn. the adults, the students coming, the presentation, the questions, the networking, the application, the process after that, the things i need to sort out with the schools. sucks sucks sucks. i hate programmes, i hate events.

and why haven't the scores come in, it is encouraging me to procrastinate on the application that i am already dragging my feet on. now i am blaming it on the whole year. 2008 is a disappointing year. i don't think oct, nov and dec can salvage it, even though my favorite month and favorite holidays lies in the period. 2008 is disappointing. lost so many things and got so many sucky things. is it feng shui, is it karma. did i do something wrong?

rational choice theory.....hhuh?

reading "The Logic of Life" by Tim Harford, not a self-help book, but on everyday economics. apparently, whichever the case, supposedly the importance of preference is still less than the importance of market opportunity. But when he says "love is not rational, but lovers are." I haven't quite figured that out that yet. It could mean that rational people become lovers, and then they fall in irrational love, doing irrational things. But it can also mean that it is actually irrational to fall in love/be in love, but when you are in love, you can still do rational things. i really don't know.

Spent the whole day doing a cause-effect-symptoms diagram, freaking tiring. It's amazing how tiring it is to just focus and think ssllooooowwwwwlly, so that you can catch yourself making assumptions subconsciously and critique every single bloody link. And all it boils down to is an A3 loopy diagram and a 3-page word doc.

skipping a beat

haha corny quote from class95 "love is when you look into someone's eyes and you see the heart"

random quote from a neuroscience book ( i cannot remember the title now)

"...the reason why we emphasize mental training is the realization that outer conditions are important contributive factors to our well-being or suffering.  But in the end, the mind can override that.  You can retain inner strength and well-being in very difficult situations, and you can be totally a wreck where apparently everything seems perfect."

i think the most reliable way of knowing that an attraction exists is when your heart skips a beat when you see that person. fool-proof. Unless you have irregular heart beat.

7.7km in 54min, pretty slow today.  New shoes were fine, it was the old socks that was making my feet uncomfortable.  I think I don't like the sg river stretch. twice i get stitches at the same place, outside the art house near timbre. Run was interrupted at the far end of the flyer, towards the republic blvd.  I was running along the pedestrian pavement, until i saw that it was no through road and i thought wtf.  So I had to ask an indian worker who was probably working on the F1 road to show me the way out of the trap. And I ended up running on the damn road. But, it turns out that that no through road that i thought was no through actually had a small opening enough for ppl to cut across. it just appeared no through from where I was at. 

So the moral of the story: you must persist even if it means running into a wall, or for that matter, the F1 barricade.  Because from a distance there may be things hidden from your view. Must always go to the end, inspect everything and only after exhausting all possibilities can you give up.

But then again, there are somethings in life that I don't seem to be following the above. Am I wrong, should I revert. damn.