MY BOOKS ARE HERE!

I would probably be the last person to be excited about books. But the excitement surrounding these are not so much the books themselves. Funny story actually.

So I will be going to Wallaby in less than 48 hours. Last week i decided to bring some first generation entertainment to bring along. Originally i had planned to buy just one of those books but i couldn't seem to find it anywhere, considering its' not a very famous book by an American (hence, import) author. Anyway, being unable to find it, i decided to go online to Opentrolley to get it.

On the website, they were advertising a September discount where you could get books at about 10% discount and free delivery for 3 books. So i just picked 2 books that happened to catch my attention.

So with my 3 books at the shopping cart, i was wondering, and this happened over a few hours, whether i would want to spend slightly over $50 on just books. And by around 8pm, i noticed that there was a delivery info that said that it would deliver in 4-7 working days. this was sunday and i thought to myself, if i want to use this opportunity (the discount ended in a day), now would be the only time to do it. So i panicked and bought it in the end.

And the story does not end here. Those of you observant enough would notice that since i bought it on a sunday, the shop could technically deliver it to me on the next sunday, where i would already be in Australia because my flight is in the morning. Which means the reason i bought the book in the first place would result in me not having it. So i stressed about that for a good half a day.

And then i got over it.

Because i have something better to stress about. On Tuesday morning, i noticed that it was 4-7 WORKING days, working days did not include weekends. Which means i had 2 reasons to not get my books on time.

So obviously when it came, there was an immense sense of relief. btw, it came 2 hours ago.

Speaking of Wallaby, YES THAT IS A PLACE THAT I AM GOING TO AND WILL BE FOR THE NEXT 3 WEEKS. For those of you that still use this blog as a place to track my whereabouts (you're probably the only one.) I will be leaving tomorrow morning and coming back on the 17th October.

Also for your reference, my carry on bag. It looks bulky and weighs a lot, but that's just because I'm too lazy to pack all my things nicely. So instead, throw and squish until a vaguely bag-shaped thing appeared.

For your information, this is the only actual book i intended to get. It was recommended by a guy on the internet called John Green of the Vlogbrothers. For some reason, i felt compelled to buy this book because he was the one who chose to plug it. When the 2 of them try to sell you things, things that are either their jobs or their friends' work, i always want to buy them because they sound so sincere. It's really a good marketing strategy, even though it's not even in their business to begin with (one is an author and the other is a musician).

Also the lady on the cover looks pretty cute. I'm not going to lie, she is probably half the reason i bought this book anyway. Even though this book has no picture.

with regards to new facebook layout banner thing.

idea for picture as new banner layout thing over facebook.

take for very relaxed but pretentious pose, like the lonely island, e.g sit on giant reclining chair, like a boss. then with bold words. at the right side. with each word over each other. like angry. pretentious douchebag. at the right side.

Sidelining And Baselining

So what I do on long moments of silence where I am both alone and separated from technology is to ponder and reflect. I know that may make me sound deep but it doesn't, it's actually more of letting my mind wander on to various unconnected and seemingly random ideas and events and things, which unfortunately happen to be myself more often than not (our brain is actually more selfish than we think we are), thus, reflecting.

You may be thinking, hey you have an iphone, you could use it on the bus. To that I say, not all the time, as i get car-sick when i read on a vehicle sometimes and that stops me from doing anything other than listen to music, which for some reason takes a backseat to pondering.

I will call this activity sidelining for reasons i will explain later.

So in the past i find myself sidelining pretty often, usually in the shower or on long trips in the bus. This particular trip was from my GodGrandma's house to Mustafa Shopping Centre. But now, i find that i have much less time for that. Don't get me wrong, i'm still as alone as ever, but the number of bus trips I've been taking have sharply decreased since i only need to take them twice a week. I also used to be able to do a lot of sidelining before i slept when i was young, up to 2 hours on my bed, in the dark. But now i usually find myself tired enough to fall asleep approximately half an hour, i don't know, time is much harder to gauge lying down without my glasses.

Honestly, i find this activity to be one of the most self-destructive things that i do. Mainly because I am such a pessimist and have such a low self-esteem that most conversations with myself, which unless i'm thinking about an abstract idea, would devolve into a self-blame session. Granted, this has happened a lot less lately, but still, given a large enough amount of time doing nothing and without access to other activities that keep my hands busy, self-worth levels down pretty quickly. (quote stolen from friend)

As a direct result of this, many of my self-descriptions for interviews or biographies, i like to tell people that i want to experience life through doing and not watching (and consequently sidelining). Because it seems like a pretty reasonable goal to have. That i (and also, everyone) should take more time to do things instead of watch things.

However, if there was no sidelining, this blog wouldn't exist. Or maybe it would, in the form of, i had bee hoon for lunch today.

~~~

On a completely unrelated note, i will explain to you what is baselining.

Multiple sources have confirmed that (by logical inference) HAPPILY EVER AFTER DOESN"T EXIST.

and not for the reason you would think.

(dubious science ahead)

Our squishy human brains are designed to lower your endorphin level (happy juice) if you experience the same type of happiness over a period of time, thereby requiring you to do something that will bring about a greater level of happiness to get the same amount of satisfaction. In other words, your brain is deliberately making it harder to be happy if you are happy for too long. Granted, it works for the reverse as well, because if your too sad for long, your brain will treat that level of sadness as normal or average and thus you need less to be happy with your sad pathetic miserable life.

I'm not sure if you can guess why i call this baselining.

Happily ever after does not exist in the way humans understand it because most stories talk about it like it's an award, something to be given out when you've finished your quest or saved the princess. As happy as marrying that princess may be, you will not so much as become happily ever after, but more like happy for quite a while before this joy tapers off. But that's not catchy at all.

The only foreseeable way to remain happy is to continuously do new and different and exciting things that will bring joy from different sources and different perspective.

Also, this brings up the fact that being sad actually enhances the experience of being happy. Like i mentioned, your brain will keep your "average" low if you are sad for some time. Thus, wouldn't the joy of doing something amazingly joyful that much greater if you had lived in a state of immense sadness.

Would it be worth it?

also, unrelated note, my dog can no longer walk on his hind left leg. I still haven't gotten the details from my vet.

People Are Dumb

The Sims 3 Medieval (turns out to be a much better game than i expected) has this short intro video where out of the blue the narrator just says, People are dumb. He was talking about just watching people evolve as a society and civilization without influence, and they ended up screwing themselves.

I forgot where i was going with this.

Oh yeah,

I was thinking about the idea of leadership development in Singapore. that's a weird segue.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the system of other countries, but we as a nation seem so obsessed with bringing up leaders so much that every kid is encouraged to be one. I'm not sure if you know this, but no system in the world requires a bunch of leaders and no followers. So it makes very little sense that education doesn't really teach you to be a good one. I mean there are very obvious personality types that are not suited to be leaders and while teaching them certain things are useful, it is ultimately futile to try and get them to stand up in front of a crowd when they have nothing to contribute, unless of course your aim is to teach them how to bullshit their way through such a scenario.

To get people to lead in a situation that they have no expertise in is quite counterproductive because only a very small section of the population are prepared to do that, psychologically. I understand the business and future need for such a quality but at the age they are in, leadership seems to require a slow approach. Especially for kids who never want to talk in the first place.

I think the system stands to gain more by teaching kids to take the initiative in things they already know, or at least they are interested in. And i see the problem in that kids are interested in topics that aren't very academic, but shouldn't that be the job of the teacher. Maybe trying to spin a non-academic topic into something with some sort of a teaching point seems more useful a skill than say, powerpoint presentations. We all know we've had enough of them.

Students are less equipped to absorb what we have to say than we are to teach them what they want to learn. And I'm always interested in people who can turn something mundane into a genuinely interested thing to talk about. I've recommended Extra Creditz before in the past because while gaming is not a certified school-friendly topic, i find that they have so much more to teach us about the medium of storytelling than anything else.

And today i want to recommend someone who actually can teach you something useful. Vi Hart. Maths turned into poetry, impressive stuff. Watch her doodling in class series, that's what i'm most impressed by.

Anyway, i have a steak to get to, so i won't elaborate anymore.

Joy of Youth or The Criteria Of Sad

Since my birthday video, and possibly even before that, I've been thinking the Criteria of Sad. To explain, at what point can a person be sad about his life and not get shit about it (gossip, complains, other negative things).

But that's not what drove me to write this post. For a better part of today i was thinking about growing old, and being a senior citizen and particularly looking back and reflecting part. I wanted to ask an old person, like my god-grandma, was there an age or a period of time, where her life was the greatest. Because, in this world, some people are truly happy and they will tell you that they have never been happier. 2 cases that may be true, one, eternally optimistic, happy throughout his life, or 2 just so happen that his old age coincides with the happiest period of his life, i.e he had to suffer a lot as a youth or adult and could finally retire with relative peace and happiness.

So, naturally, being the selfish person that i am, I put myself in that shoes and thought, would i want to be that old. Because for most of my life, all I've wanted is to reach that semi-permanent state of happiness where i have a great wife and awesome children. And while I usually think of my end-state when i do reach any of my long term goal is around the late 40s or 50s. That is the age i would be when i either "win" or "lose" at life, in my imagination. So, as a result, i never really think that much about the silver age with greying hair and whatnot.

A few moments ago, i did. And it occurred to me that i don't want to grow old. Well, i pretty much assume that but i never really had a good reason besides dementia and other brain or age-related disorders. Not 10 minutes ago did i realize the most compelling reason to want to be a kid (or youth) forever. This is the only time in my life where i can wake up and not do a single thing and then go back to sleep again. This is why bachelors never want to be tied down and mentally 12 year olds never want to get a real job.

So i guess i should be happy about that fact, but I'm really not, aside for just discovering something that I hadn't before. Perhaps it would be necessary to go through the pain of doing something in order to appreciate nothingness. Like how people living in peace like to complain about boredom and other high-maintenance problems, while the people in violent conflicts just want to get out of it.

That was part one, moving on to part two, something i actually thought about for quite some time now.

The Criteria of Sad is something i came up with after going to about 3 or 4 funerals. At that point, i was pretty sure i was at the lowest point of my life. Turned out, the universe wasn't done with that. There has been a seriously ridiculous number of health and/or medical things that have struck at my extended family this past 1 1/2 to 2 years. And it has gotten to the point when my god-uncle called me, i hesitated for a while before picking up. And while i am forever thankful nothing has happened to my parents and my brother, this constant stream of bad news is very unnerving to hear. I can be talking about a certain topic in the car and all of a sudden one of them just talks about another one of my relative who went to the hospital and i would be shocked at hearing this 3-4 day old news.

And it's not just health, personally, i have been suffering a lot of blows to morale in relations to work and SAF but not only that. my friend has also suffered a major episode in his life which I obviously feel bad for him.

So it's been a bad year all around and i was thinking about whether it gave me a reason to brood and act all emo-y about it. Here' a thing about me that you may not know, I like to complain a lot on this blog and facebook and other medium but one thing i hate doing is being sad to attract attention. I would very much rather act stupid to do so. But still, acting normal or even somewhat happy when you don't feel that way takes a toll on you, and just externalizing some of the sorrow or fear or disappointment feels great.

I think about that magic point where you can in fact brood around in life where no one will give you shit. Because brooding is the emotional equivalent of letting your shoulders down after you've tensed them up. But even after going through all that, it still feels like i somehow not "qualified" to do any brooding because as far as anybody's concerned, nothing has happened to you. And just to be clear, most of the things that happened, happened to someone else, and i only feel sad because i am capable of empathy, more so than other, it would suggest.

So i never really feel comfortable telling others about something that happened to someone else, even when that someone else is related to me, because my relation with that guy, the "victim" not my friend, has never really been that close in the first place. As opposed to someone who, say his father died. That, everyone can empathize with. So it's extremely understandable that he can choose to avoid people and keep quiet.

I find it so remarkably strange that while other people in SAF and thinking about how to get more days of compassionate leave while i'm here thinking about how to be emo without people complaining.

MESSED UP PRIORTIES.

Cross-Specialization

Recently, I just realized something. i have 2 friends in camp who are essentially nerds, in other words, they have nerdy interests like gaming and computer hardware and some other stuff. I actually have more, but for this case, just the 2 of them will do. So you have these 2 "more-or-less" nerds but they do have a very distinguishing trait from other nerds.

They are very avid runners. They have essentially blended 2 very different and often times contrasting hobbies as their Main interests. In other words, if they were to have to fill out a survey or governmental form, they would have to put running beside another pretty nerdy activity like gaming. They have Cross-Specialized, a term i just borrowed from D&D

And it never really occurred to me until very recently, because these 2 activities are so far removed that they never ever come up simultaneously in the same conversation.

I think for any non-sporty person like myself, it is quite a reasonable worry that girls will be attracted to people who are generally smart and fit at the same time (of course good-looking is also somewhere in the equation). So I used to think about the fact that my "prime" would be the years immediately following either BMT training or SISPEC training because I would be the fittest and therefore most physically attractive at that time, given that my intelligence or even maturity would not fluctuate wildly.

So when it hit me that these 2 guys have actually Cross-Specialized, I got a little worried for a while, like about 2 minutes (yeah, it sounds weird to be worried about someone else being a "better catch", i know). Then I realized that both of them are actually single and more importantly, have pretty bad track records with the ladies. Granted, experience-wise, I would be the least knowledgeable about any and all Boy-Girl Relationships. But, still, observation would still suggest that while they may have successfully Cross-Specialized, they are actually not as great as others may be.

For example, both enjoy running, but neither can consistently get a Gold for IPPT 2.4km runs. In other words, they may be good but not as good as people who just mainly do that 1 activity. Also, even in the realm of intelligence or knowledge, both are actually "muggers" who work really really hard for examinations instead of just being able to absorb information quickly and apply them.

So to provide a gaming metaphor, they may have put their points into 2 different Tech Trees, but they aren't as far ahead as those who only put in one.

Disclaimer: Of course i know that there are virtually no people who do just one thing and identify their whole personality by that one thing, I just meant that even if they have different things, its usually related, like sporty people like soccer and running and basketball. Stuff like that. It's more important to show the contrast between such "clashing" activities like running and passively gaming.

You will never get this picture

Moe Little Pony by ~waiwaiwai on deviantART

Unless You're as Childish as I Am

Idolization

When it comes to music, i never really came to a point where i love a particular singer or band so much as to the point of "idolization". So i could never really "get" why my friends around me enjoy "chasing" after certain bands, especially given the rise of Taiwanese boy bands like F4 and 5566 in 2004 (?) and more recently K-Pop groups like, I don't even remember their names.

So do they dance? or sing? or something? 

 Something particular weird about this trend is that people seem to have favorites among these 12 or 13 almost identical girls, which blows my mind because i can't recognize their faces if they so much as switched positions. Here's the curious thing about me, i can never garner enough enthusiasm about a particular artist or songwriter or band because at some point, my mind would go, well, he is bound to screw up some of the times. Now, To give you a better picture, i'm not really the guy who's not into music, i actually can put songs on loop for a month or so because i love that particular song so much but yet i can bring myself to like the artist half as much. For example, some of the songs i enjoy include, Low from 2009 or 08 by T-pain and some others where, upon hearing just the first 2 or 3 seconds can hum out the rest of the tune.

But yet, i can't ever seem to give into the "fanatical" fandom that is how some of my friends are. I mean i do actually like a few artists like The Fray and B.O.B and The Lonely Island, but it will always be those same few songs that I hear instead of the artist themselves. In fact, the only album i remember buying was when i was 5 or 6 when i bought this album by this guy

Zhou Hua Jian

And even then it was still those few songs at the top, which i would get up and walk over to the stereo just to repeat them.

 So when it comes to movies and books and pretty much everything, i can never really like the artist as much as i like the work itself.

 So when Emma Watson came up with this weird fragrance commercial, i felt "obligated" to like it even though, i didn't like it as much as i think i should have.

Side note, she never speaks in this 1:45 minutes of advertisement, so that may be a root cause.

 "Too many air quotes"

Public service vs. personal vices

Tbc later when i have access to a keyboard