8 October 2012

Last Tues, I woke up hungry. Hunger disappeared and returned in full force.

I sat at the desk, ready to begin tying the loose ends. At nightfall, I'd completed nothing. A week later, it is the same. Almost. In reverse chronological order: 

• took a taxi once. because I couldn't abide by my schedule
• forced rewrote a bad superblock
• corrected vibrato
• bought a typewriter to produce namecards
• gained understanding about why my mind wanders and how to control it
• overcame a lifelong internal struggle on the ethics and rewards of looking good
• start and stopped on the structuring 
• took newfound pride in my handwriting

Blogaday Day 11 How to keep awake at your desk

In no order of effectiveness

• Munch on an apple
• Drink something icy
• Pop a candy
• Eavesdrop
• Take a power nap
• Hum to a tune
• Drum your fingers
• Tap your feet
• Thump the desk
• Get every passerby to strike your cubicle wall. preferably til the wall fabric tears

Blogaday Day 10

I've been waiting for this!

Blogaday Day 9

My intention today was to assure that i'd not mindlessly accomodated, nor cloned, and had checked back at suitable intervals and unyieldingly asked the necessary questions. I'm not sure if an iota of that went through.

Update: Ah bless that arrogant imp in me. I'd neglected the all-important question. Will you be worth my time?

Blogaday Day 8

I bit into a rotten apple today

Blogaday Day 6

I lost my toothbrush! It could be anywhere!

Blogaday Day 5

Deep breathing is so hard. Is it cos my belly has grown so big my diaphragm can't support it?

Blogaday Day 4

http://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together.html

'Acros the generations, I see that people can't get enough of each other, if and only if they can have each other at a distance, in amounts they can control. I call it the Goldilocks effect: not too close, not too far, just right.'

Blogaday Day 3

Apr 2 13:07

I place great weight on a person's ability to separate opinion from fact. 

Let me ramble a bit on this. Imagine if you will me telling you , I saw a dog being killed. Without more information on the context, can you pass judgement of any sort? Yes, you may. From my emotions from my expression. from our shared history (chats, encounters, SHARED) you may have gleaned something about me. But let's remove that. remove all traces of me. let's say this was over that chat program you can chat with anons. 
'I saw a dog being killed.' 
Where? at the butcher or the vet
Again removing all traces with me, of the actors, we may use this new piece of information to surmise (correct? was there evidence?) that the act of killing was good or bad for the dog. But even with this conclusion, you should ever hold within yourself (given limited interaction on all rounds) the probability that it may have been the other way round. Was the butcher or vet brutal? Who were the beneficiaries here? Who said anything about the butcher or the vet being the one who laid the hand? Could they have been the audience?

I am told Buddhists release animals in captivity on Vesak Day as an act of mercy and kindness and probably to earn merit for the afterlife. Let's say we have doves which were bred for such an act. So they really are domestic doves. If I were to buy a domestic dove and release it before a crowd of 100 Buddhists. I presumably become a kind person to them. If on Vesak Day, I released a dove that had been captured from the wild by a neighbour only the day before. And some animal rights activist saw me. I presumably become ignominiously selfish in his eye.
Fact: I released a dove from captivity on Vesak Day.
Opinion: I am a kind and merciful person. I led a defenseless dove to its early and unwarranted death.

The dangers of always resorting / returning to grey areas is obvious -- how else will we make a decision if there is always something pulling us in the both directions? You get accused of sitting on the fence. But that is what the context is about. Depending on the context, with the given information, you make a decision, a choice. The path you choose for yourself may differ from the path you would set for another person, if only you had that other choice or influence (but thankfully you don't and never should have that kind of dictatorial -- brings to mind the old Malay kingdoms. I forgot the word).

Blogaday Day 2 Flipflopbellywop

Decisiveness is a prized attribute.

You may decide, without knowing it, to dislike someone at first glance.

Instincts can be explained as decisions sped up. Just as we may not initially have words to describe how facial features differ, but are able to eventually observe and describe the tilt of the eyes, the protrusion of the lips, and the knob of the nose, if we were to slow our feelings down frame by frame, we could explain why we felt how we felt the moment we felt what we felt.

But instincts are habits too, and they may be, should be arrested before they wreak havoc.

When is it right to honour split-second decisions, and when to make careful, balanced decisions?

If, by choice or circumstance, you do not detail your decisions, on whom does the burden of explanation fall? Is anyone listening?

Blogaday Day 1

i've been admonished to stay honest. Honest i shall stay.

I've also been tasked to think up of three long-term commitments to myself; promises to last beyond this season. The first, to listen before judging, will save some guilt.

Backtracking on my choice of units. Gah!

Blogaday Day 0

the decision to write for a possibly non-imaginary audience gave me such a kick today I have decided to publish a post a day for the next 30 days. 

I will include howtos such as How to not fall asleep at your desk, How to not jump to conclusions and How to break the habit of completing people's sentences.

'Let's be adult about this'

My resolution in 2012: to speak and act in a constructive manner, or else hold my peace.

A coworker is convinced I have the hots for him, no matter what I do. And I think I have tried enough. appearing emotionless (something I am against as a matter of principle), no push-ups, reticence, hinting that I like ladies, ... I am just short of saying it to his face that he's gotten it all wrong. If it were only his ego at stake here, I might keep mum for longer.


Thing is, I cannot reliably gauge the ripples of the choice to be made here. I can most certainly count on the perversion of my intentions.

Add to the brew another coworker who is hellbent on making me a tool in his comeback plan.

Notes from CS183 Startup Class 9:

On some level, this was a literary masterpiece. If nothing else, it was impressive for the many nested levels of conversation that were woven in. Other people were talking to other people about PayPal, possibly at infinite levels on down. The son was talking to other people about those people. Bill Gross was talking to his son. Then Gross was talking to Peter Thiel. And at the most opaque and important level, Gross was talking to the other investors at the table, tacitly playing up how smart he was for having invested in PayPal.

Brian Eno, in an Edge conversation with Simon Baron - Cohen:

I knew a little girl who was so empathetic that she was almost paralyzed by her own empathy, because she was always calculating the effects of everything she did on everybody else. And she almost couldn't conceive of herself as separate from all of these other ramifications that her behavior would have, so it seemed to me like a disability actually. She had no individuality that she could deal with.

Can you hold on to yourself as you burrow through the consciousness of another?

某天写的

就这样试着吧.

那光阴 沧海桑田 远走高飞 再没力气追

越是有影响力的人，责任越大.

这不是选择. 说实在的，一个人的influence

不一定是可以衡量或_测的.

一个领导另一个， which leads to another.

我们要活好。可是。(you know there's always a 'but' with me)

活下去是一种责任。我不想把活这[sic]作为负担.

因为这也是另一种deep-seated malice. 我不知道

它会演变出什么趋势

十七岁那年 我在细雨下想着同在乌宾岛某个角落的你。 trekking时经过你的露营 不时往里头看
无疑的 你就像十五岁那年 一样的闪亮 那些年

奈何

This could get uglier

And I really don't know what to do

thanks for the fish

2011年心得

1. 有首歌唱进心坎了

2. 不懂得臆说的人好可怕

3. 原来我也有想被认同的时候