Tuesday, September 30, 2008

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.


Friday, September 26, 2008

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. 


Tuesday, September 23, 2008

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".

Monday, September 22, 2008

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.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

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.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

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?

Thursday, September 18, 2008

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.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

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.


Tuesday, September 16, 2008

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.

Monday, September 15, 2008

I think I have fully utilised my time allocated for exercising.  There is very severe under-utilisation in the "socialisation" category.  Maybe I can classify 'muay thai' under that...

miss the days in rj, where trainings were tough, 3 times a week plus another physical of weights and sprints and runs.  any absence must either be due to school or mc.  otherwise you are out of the team, as simply as that. There were no complaints, simply because any complaints could have been greeted by Sir, our extreme coach (he has since mellowed down a lot due to age).  But he trained a great team of players who fought and shone.  He taught me about pushing the limits, especially when you are the most tired.  When you reach your physical limits, it is your mental strength that comes into play, and that is when you can decide to push your limits, or let the chance go.  And when you do push your limits, you not only stretch yourself physically but are also training your mental strength.  As captain of the team, you need to do more than the team, and you need to show the strength, the endurance and the willingness to give it all.  Any less deserves less respect from your team.

As an easterner, I had the privilege of getting rides home from Sir after training ends at 9 plus at night from the old ghim moh campus.  However stern and strict he is with his players, his advice as a coach were always right.  Once in a ride back he told me he sees all the effort, perserverance and the earnestness in learning and improving.  But there was one thing that had to be worked on.  He taught me that in order to win, there must be the aggressiveness, the desire to win.  The flame is there, but you need to fan up that desire and want to be the best.  In a stadium of wild cheers of the tj-ians and rafflesians, when you are dripping in your own sweat and wavering with weariness from the long-drawn rallies, and do you cower or do you rise up to the challenge.  We won every single game for the finals.

In some ways, those spirits, are the same I have adopted to be my own.  To win and be the best, you must be aggressive, you must believe in learning and improving and always persevere and persist no matter what. You must know that limits are meant to be pushed and only when pushed can you become stronger physically and mentally.  And if you decide to do something, why settle for anything less than the best.



I am liberated. Really liberated. And i will not think any further to it. The anger and frustration i felt abt myself has finally passed. My persistance lost to stubbornness. i am still a rational person. why it took so long to reach this realization, i don't know. maybe i'm just slow, or in denial, or slow and in denial. Doubling your bet on the same thing only works when you have enough capital. I don't. When the odds are obviously against me, i should leave the table a graceful loser.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

at a certain point in life, your social circle not only doesn't widen much, it starts to shrink.  You don't see your teammates 3 times a week, or your hallmates 5/6 days a week.  Slowly you start working late, and end up going home at 8, 9 plus a few times a week. And it's going home straight afterward.  No parties, no drinking sessions, or chilling out with friends.  There are, but the frequency kinds of gets less unless you make an effort to keep it up.


So how do you manage it? Get more friends? Or specifically get a bf/gf so that he/she will take up all your time.  But that doesn't sound very right at all.  firstly a bf/gf is not just to take up your time, although in most cases they do.  Social landscape changes when you grow up, and i guess it's learning about how to manage them as you get along.  But with my inept social skills (i won't say lack of, because i have nonetheless 2 frens), things can get rather difficult and sian...


Saturday, September 13, 2008

drowsiness is an understatement now. ko-ed.

i discovered i was cutting corners today at work. It made me feel disappointed that I had degenerated. I thought hard about what that happened. But all in all, the reasons don't matter. It is my choice, and I will not fall any further. Expectations of myself are set by myself, and I choose to only be the best and to give my best.  

Whether it is the lack of stimulus, or the lack of things to focus on. The unexpended energy I shall channel to do something productive. Find something to work on. Those cannot be the excuses on letting standards fall at all. It's good that the internal alarm got trigggered today, because for some reasons I had let my guard down and drifted with the current. I can only say that when limits are not pushed, they contract and become lower. I know I can do so much more and drifting along is not what I want at all.

After settling the serious mental/internal state for myself, physically I haven't totally recovered. Sinus situation still hovering around, and after I got home, my sinus was blocked up, giving a pressure headache below the right eye. Bestest gave me a flu pill that her doc gave her. That, with the cough mixture, is a knocking me out. right now my body is pretty relaxed, and the sinus is clearing, which is good. i was to finish and write down somethings but the med is.....a bit strong. I just hope i don't dream of doing muay thai again, and end up waking up with a leg cramp. yes that happened this morning, when i dreamt that i was doing muay thai, and as i was about to kick, my calf cramped up in the non-lala land.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

It is official.  I have cornered myself into...well...a corner, and have checkmated myself to death.  And the opponent is myself. "so if i make this move, this is what will happen, and that is what will have after that."  The second-guessing is necessary, but straight-forward in most sports.  If I feign a smash, but do a drop instead, she (the opponent) might have already guessed, so I should just lob to her backhand instead.  And if I leave my sides open, tempting her to smash, I would be ready for it, but she might drop instead.  It's all about making guesses.  But in sports you get the results pretty fast, in a matter of seconds, or minutes.  But WORK, no, work is a long drawn affair. And it's never just second-guessing. There's the 3rd and 4th order of guessing involved, and that paralyzes the momentum of any form of productivity.  Like now.

No point in making early preparations, because things change.  But you have to register with the bosses that you HAVE thought of the things that you KNEW were going to happen, even though any form of circumvention is futile and fruitless and simply a waste of time. I don't like that -- I'm those time who submit assignments early instead of last minute.  But alas, the majority has the power.  

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

the rest of your life

7.8km in 48min. that pretty fast for my standard.  stopped twice to blow my clogged nose.  2 cans of 100plus.  dinner with frens, and am feeling happy and satisfied.

looking at the papers today (Malaysia's racial/political issues, , I suddenly felt grateful about how we have society that tolerates multiple races and multiple religions so well.  The emphasis on respect for others cannot be understate, SM Goh seems to hold this issue closer to heart than our current one, where economic development has become sort of a representation of him, at least that what i think.

when in doubt, surround yourself with friends.  when feeling lost or down, do the same.  but real friends only.  it takes a single & available person to say this -- that you live for yourself, and for your dreams.  But your life, it is shared, it is not yours entirely.  You share your life with your family, your colleagues, strangers, your friends, lovers along the way, and hopefully the one whom you want to share the rest of your life with.  Such a complicated concept. You live for yourself but you share your life with someone. So if she shares the same sentiments, how does it work.  "I live for myself, you live for yourself, but we love each other and want the companionship and want to be together." 

I have been told that I appear to be in a daze recently.  That is not true. I just don't like to look into peoples' face when I go out.  My brain has this selective face/body recognition that only alerts me when some people are detected.  These some people are usually friends and people I like more.  So, if I do find you in a crowd, it must mean something.  If not, maybe I'm just a bit blur.  Or if there's a million people in the room, my brain and eyes can't so the 'where's wally' trick that well.

They should have some status in msn/yahoo messenger/what ever IM available that says "disturb (or more politely will be 'send me a message') if you are in my 'liked' list".  Or maybe next time they will let you rate your own list of contacts according how much you like each of them, and there will be this special function that when activated, shows your status differently to different contacts, according to the level of 'likeness'.  BUT, of cos you will be in some friendship problem when your friends start comparing the different statuses that you appear in their messenger.  A disliked person will see you in a DND mode while some one you like ALOT will see you with a blinking "MESSAGE ME" status that is screaming for attention.

Ha, another crappy idea pulled out of my brain, i hope there is less crap remaining.


Tuesday, September 9, 2008

pure heart

fren: so how's your love life like?

me: like a dead man's pulse.

been coughing my lungs out the whole day because I didn't dare drink the cough mixture.  But interestingly it doesn't seem to have much effect on me now...which....is a pity because the drowsiness puts me to sleep well.

The work day ended on a low note. school of crap (go figure the abbreviation) is a place that I will never ever enrol myself in, even if it's the last place on earth to do a masters.  And of course the hunger took precedence over work, and I had mushroom chicken pie and a peach tart for tea.  need to drop a polite reply back tomorrow.

took my time and figured out a way to attach and link and embed files in a pdf file.  sometimes, the time to do such 'trivial' stuff can really be painful.

another day, another week ending.  That's another day of my life.  But many people end up looking at time like it belongs to work.  I am like that, but I am correcting myself. 

Walking from the station to work, I walk the less trodden path, to avoid people and to get some air.  I cannot stand crowds and the natural instinct is to walk away from them, even if it means straying from conventions, seeking some unbeaten paths.  But I like that, to see what most people don't or can't.  

I surprise myself at how little control I have over myself sometimes.  Or at how calm I can be when the most affecting news is broken to me. But I tear easily, at the things people say too cliche to be touching. I am touched easily, but not surprised easily at all.  

I am looking for a pure heart -- like the one super mario found (7 in all) to save the world.  I believe in it, although pureness is masked in the real world, and more often than not, by the need to protect oneself.  I had found a pure heart before, but I think in the attempt to protect itself more and more against the society, I was kept out of the inner sanctuary.  Hence I could not interact and communicate with the pure heart that I loved.   In the midst of everything I can sense and I believe in myself more now.  Because I have been right many times in the past, but I did not believe in myself.  Now, I have the courage to believe in myself.

I loved the way the Alchemist described the heart.  "You will never be able to escape from your heart.  So it's better to listen to what it has to say.  That way, you'll never have to fear an unanticipated blow."

"Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him.  We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them.  We speak of them only to children.  Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, towards its own fate.  But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them -- the path to their destinies, and to happiness.  Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place."  

But my own take is, don't read too much religion into what he writes.  Take what is written as it is written.  Just like Tuesdays with Morrie.  As it is, without further interpretation.  








 

Monday, September 8, 2008

 
Posted by Picasa

indulgence

now i know why ppl get high on cough mixtures. they are incredibly potent and just 10ml of it almost knockedme out. the decongestant helped, but now only for a short while, and when i cough, there phelgm taste is there ;s...very gross.

med makes me feel weak...but need to take them to feel better... there's some price to pay for the moment of indulgence.

Currently at chapter 3 of "A heartbreaking work of staggering genius" lent by my bestest. shouldn't take too long, but the way it's written is kind of like one long breath of rambling.  Not sure how it'll end up though.  

"By your side" by sade, is those kind of grooves you can just sit back to on a breezy beach cafe and feel good about yourself.

horoscopes from Jeanette Winterson's website says that i will be more insistent and forceful in September than I often am.  No saying on whether that is a boon or a bane, i guess it all depends on the handler. there are things that i should insist on, because i have let opportunities slip by before. i have this fear that it is deja vu all over again.

I asked a question before, on how you know when the right person comes along.  You will know because in a split second of many faces, you only see one person's face effortlessly, like a homing device programmed to search and target only one.  the human's ability to perform face/human recognition is amazing.  Yet, indulgence in foolishness is something i remind myself to avoid.

it is a contradictory concept, indulgence in moderation.  yet it is the right thing to do for many things. but i dun really like this concept, because i like to indulge fully in whatever i do. otherwise, and the difference probably lies in that i will want to enjoy (and therefore indulge myself in the enjoyment) and put in all i've got in that moment.  but the concept of indulge in moderation is more of an restrain in the actions you do. you can indulge in the moment all you want, but don't over-indulge in the activity itself and end up with an addiction of some sort.

Somehow the extension of portfolio has not hit me yet.  maybe they have forgotten about me, the extra 0.3 headcount they have. i don't even have access to the freaking secured room.  not that there is any real motivation to go in there.  i am using the time now to plan and chart my own future.  the personal statement is now ready, only waiting for the damn scores to come in.

i must start training harder this weekend, after my stupid sinus gets decongested and i can breathe properly.  


clogged up

back from siglap where apple crumble and confit duck salad kind of turned the night around, from plain porridge for dinner.  even though my nose and sinus is clogged up now, it's all worth it.  


my siblings are the funniest people at times.  they are right now laughing at how the ceiling fan sounds like it's farting. cyn has those type of contagious laughter and dy is like laughing at the fan as well. i find them very funny.

the band at wala is really good, and shirlyn's got the spunk. drummer's good, and the guitarist played the cliffs of dover, if i dun remember wrongly (GH3!!) which was awesome. i never thought i'll be able to hear that live.  i think i will be a converted fan if i go enough.


Thursday, September 4, 2008

monkey bay sauvignon blanc (NZ)

not that i have a lot of things to blog about. bitching about colleagues and work can take 1,000 words if i want to elaborate on. but i choose to forget about them, at least for now.

i enjoy re-reading the things i write. writing posts in blogs are like, writing to myself.

a friend said kennix said, there are 2 cases where 2 people do not end up together. one is where it's a case of bad timing, second is a case where things are really not to meant to be. i choose not to believe in either, because one tempts the person to believe and hope, and the other requires the person to give up all hope. neither is what i want.

need some earth-shattering change. need some peace within me. need some drive and passion, to sustain myself.

boss can make peoples' lives miserable, maybe that's why i don't really aspire to be a boss.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

don't concede your own good sense

don't concede your own good sense, especially when facing overwhelming peer pressure, negative labelling etc..

it just dawned on me the lack of common sense at our mrt stations. The give-way lines impose on the entrance and encourages people at the platform to encroach on the outgoing passengers. what a stupid design.

i have destroyed my feet from walking this morning. i am so going to incinerate that pair of heels. 4 plasters on 2 feet. and a lot of pain. and probably the highest number of expletives i've said within the distance from mrt to office this morning. very unglam, and i can only blame myself for the lack of common sense for not waxing that pair of damn shoes.