This is not going to be an easy topic to write about.
In the late 50s, there was a team of young football players who were among the most promising players of their generation. They belonged to a team called Manchester United. They flew to Yugoslavia to play in an European match. On the way back, they transited in Munich… well if you’re a Man U fan you know the rest.
(Incidently Munich was the place where Hitler first established the Nazi party. It was the place where Great Britain and France decided to allow Hitler to take over Czechoslovakia, setting off a chain of events which started off WWII. In 1972, during the Olympics, a group of Palestinian terrorists kidnapped 11 Israeli athletes, promising to release them for ransom. When they were lured into an ambush, they killed all the athletes. Munich is quite an exciting place.)
A lot of the Man U legend was built around that disaster. One of those who were in that plane and didn’t die was Bobby Charlton, who went on to win the World Cup, and become one of the greatest players in England, if not the world. (Probably not the world.)
Eventually, the team rebuilt itself, and by the late 60s, with their 3 star players Law, Charlton and Best, they won the league, and later the European Cup. They went through a comparatively lean period of more than 20 years without the league, but they became one of the biggest club sides in the world in the 90s, helped partially by the legend of the Munich Air Disaster.
Liverpool would suffer even worse. In 1985, they were already the greatest club side in Europe. They had won 4 European Cups, including the one in 1984, and were looking for their 5th.
The European Cup final in 1985 took place in Heysel, Belgium. Their opponents were Juventus. There was some trouble in the crowd, exacerbated by the hooligans on the English side. Just before kick-off, a wall collapsed, killing around 50 fans. (I can’t remember the exact number, it doesn’t matter.) The match had to go on, because they were afraid that there would be even worse crowd trouble if the crowd were told that the match was cancelled. Understandably, neither side wanted to win, but somebody had to and it was Juventus.
In 1989, Liverpool were to play an FA cup semi-final against (Nottingham Forest?) in Sheffield Wednesday’s stadium in Hillsborough. The police were having trouble controlling the crowd entering a stand. The match was about to begin and there was still a large crowd standing outside. They made the mistake of allowing too many people to enter one of the stands, and in the resulting crush, 96 people died.
This was the incident that led to a wholesale review of standards for the condition of football stadiums, and increasing commercialization of that league. The formation of the Premier League resulted in player’s salaries getting more and more obscene. It is very distasteful to juxtapose these 2 incidents together, but there is a causal link.
The slave trade had already begun before the Europeans came. It was the Arabs who went into Africa to raid the continent for free labour. But it was the Europeans, especially the settlers in the Americas who took this to a totally different level. We all know some of the facts from our school textbooks, and I haven’t read up a lot on this so I don’t really know.
But the descendents of slaves in the USA are certainly having it better than those who remained behind in Africa. They are still being discriminated against, and not given as much opportunities as the whites, but the idea of race is beginning to fade, if not disappear. Right now, the most powerful government official in the US is a black man. OK, he’s actually a descendent of someone who stayed behind. But for the majority of black Americans, if their ancestors had not been captured into slavery, they would be having a pretty miserable life.
I guess the wheel of fortune is very funny like that.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Monday, 26 October 2009
The proud Singaporean in Malaysia
OK will start by turning Shingot’s slogan upside down.
So we went to my father’s vacation home. He didn’t want to pay the toll for the 2nd link, but we also had some stuff to do in JB. Anyway I was wondering why he was burning another $8 worth of petrol so that he could save on $10 of toll.
I drove to the border, and then we changed places. Then he showed me this bridge they were building across the Sekudai river that would eventually provide a faster way to get from the older JB to the Iskandar region. After a couple of hours of driving, we arrived at Gelang Patah, which was the town nearest to the house. It was a former commie town. Had breakfast. Then over to the house, where to my father’s consternation, the contractor who was supposed to deliver 2 trees failed to turn up.
Later on, over to Pekan Nanas (I just googled the place on a map – wtf, it really was in the middle of nowhere!) To get some cheap groceries. Yeh well the old folks get really excited about cheap groceries. The stuff was OK, fresh farm produce. Although I haven’t really seen a wet market with so many flies buzzing around the carcasses for quite some time.
After that, back to the house, where armed with a newly acquired garden hoe and a wicker basket, I was about to engage in my great adventure of planting 2 pomelo trees. At the same time, we were expecting my uncle to visit and lend some much-needed advice to the renovation of the place. The storm clouds were gathering, so my father and I each dug a ditch for the two trees. This was the first time I was digging something since that trench I dug somewhere in Jurong for NS. Crappy (but hardly traumatic) experience, that.
As was to be expected, my father was much more of an expert at that than me. There was good advice, of course. You hold the hoe above your head, and let the weight of the hoe fall. I know that. But when I do that, the hoe doesn’t land where I want it to land. So most of the time, instead of methodically carving out lumps of soil (which is what you are supposed to do) I ended up pulverizing everything and having to scoop out sand (which is a great waste of effort).
My uncle was watching, and he chuckled and said, “ah, reliving the good old days.” (The two brothers were farmers when they were young.)
Anyway, they were all dug out already. So we did the rest: mixing the sand, some loam (bought this from a roadside nursery) and the clay-y soil, and dumping in 2 trees for good measure. Might have been the first time this city boy is planting a tree.
Doesn't this all remind you of all those old PAP cheap PR stunts called "tree planting day?" I don't suppose we have lots of them anymore because the amount of green spaces you find in newer HDB flats these days are a fucking embarrassment. But while I was digging a hole for the tree, I wondered if LKY ever dug the hole himself, or he had somebody dig the hole for him first, and then he did the relatively light work of filling it in with a sapling?
After that, more cheap groceries from wet markets, and then home.
Yes, I suppose it’s nice that the older generation want to introduce the charms of the rustic Singapore they knew from their childhood because it’s all disappeared. But it’s eluding me somewhat.
So we went to my father’s vacation home. He didn’t want to pay the toll for the 2nd link, but we also had some stuff to do in JB. Anyway I was wondering why he was burning another $8 worth of petrol so that he could save on $10 of toll.
I drove to the border, and then we changed places. Then he showed me this bridge they were building across the Sekudai river that would eventually provide a faster way to get from the older JB to the Iskandar region. After a couple of hours of driving, we arrived at Gelang Patah, which was the town nearest to the house. It was a former commie town. Had breakfast. Then over to the house, where to my father’s consternation, the contractor who was supposed to deliver 2 trees failed to turn up.
Later on, over to Pekan Nanas (I just googled the place on a map – wtf, it really was in the middle of nowhere!) To get some cheap groceries. Yeh well the old folks get really excited about cheap groceries. The stuff was OK, fresh farm produce. Although I haven’t really seen a wet market with so many flies buzzing around the carcasses for quite some time.
After that, back to the house, where armed with a newly acquired garden hoe and a wicker basket, I was about to engage in my great adventure of planting 2 pomelo trees. At the same time, we were expecting my uncle to visit and lend some much-needed advice to the renovation of the place. The storm clouds were gathering, so my father and I each dug a ditch for the two trees. This was the first time I was digging something since that trench I dug somewhere in Jurong for NS. Crappy (but hardly traumatic) experience, that.
As was to be expected, my father was much more of an expert at that than me. There was good advice, of course. You hold the hoe above your head, and let the weight of the hoe fall. I know that. But when I do that, the hoe doesn’t land where I want it to land. So most of the time, instead of methodically carving out lumps of soil (which is what you are supposed to do) I ended up pulverizing everything and having to scoop out sand (which is a great waste of effort).
My uncle was watching, and he chuckled and said, “ah, reliving the good old days.” (The two brothers were farmers when they were young.)
Anyway, they were all dug out already. So we did the rest: mixing the sand, some loam (bought this from a roadside nursery) and the clay-y soil, and dumping in 2 trees for good measure. Might have been the first time this city boy is planting a tree.
Doesn't this all remind you of all those old PAP cheap PR stunts called "tree planting day?" I don't suppose we have lots of them anymore because the amount of green spaces you find in newer HDB flats these days are a fucking embarrassment. But while I was digging a hole for the tree, I wondered if LKY ever dug the hole himself, or he had somebody dig the hole for him first, and then he did the relatively light work of filling it in with a sapling?
After that, more cheap groceries from wet markets, and then home.
Yes, I suppose it’s nice that the older generation want to introduce the charms of the rustic Singapore they knew from their childhood because it’s all disappeared. But it’s eluding me somewhat.
Saturday, 24 October 2009
American Beauty - 10 years after
I remember watching “American Beauty” 10 years ago and thinking, “this is a fantastic movie”. I’ve written at length about that movie before so I won’t do that again. But what made me suddenly think about that movie was reading about this: yes, Wes Bentley, that pot dealer who introduced everybody to drugs and invited them to turn on, is being sued by American Express for what he’s owed them in back payments.
I think, time has not been kind to the various people who were involved in the movie. They have never gotten back the same kind of acclaim that they had for “American Beauty”. Either they went downhill, or “American Beauty” was an accidental masterpiece, which fell into place because it just articulated what was on the minds of a lot of people at that time. I’m beginning to suspect it was half and half.
I think that the 90s were a bit like the 60s. It was a time when Americans were prosperous, and could afford to think about crazy ideas. It was a time when the world went collectively nuts and bought into the dot com stock craze. (Imagine how much money was lost in that bubble!). It was a time when there was a great cultural war waged between the conservatives and the liberals. It was a utopian time, when people were wondering if the world had changed forever, that the old cold war, pre-internet rules no longer applied to society. It was a time when counterculture was on the rise – instead of the hippies and Haight-Asbury, we had Kurt Cobain, REM and Radiohead, bands that were much less mainstream than the icons of the 80s – Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince.
But the merits of the film – I think that the ideas articulated were a little confused, just as 60s counterculture was confused. It was a time of great hope, a lot of talk about revolutionary change, but nothing really permanent and really significant materialised. I have not watched it a second time. The first time, it was a magical experience. Actually a lot of films I watched around that time were all magical. But I don’t want to spoil it. And I don’t want to get lost in a dream – there are very few fates that are worse than that.
Kevin Spacey had a few good roles, in “Se7en”, “the Usual Suspects”, “LA Confidential”. His role as Lester Burnham more or less carried the whole film. It was a great performance, and people were marking him for even greater things after that. But it was to be the peak of his career. A few good but not great roles followed: “Shipping News”, “K-PAX”, etc.
Annette Bening, the woman who managed to “tame” Warren Beatty. Remarkably, they are still married. She continued to get raves for movies like “Being Julia” and “Mrs Harris” but the movies themselves did not get a lot of attention.
Thora Birch was the goth daughter of Lester Burnham. They also considered Christina Ricci for the role, and you could see why. Afterwards, she was supposed to be the next Christina Ricci, and she had one good film in “Ghost World”. But after that – not much luck.
Wes Bentley was another person who was tipped for better things, having delivered that monologue about “there’s so much beauty in this world”. But other than a starring role in “Four Feathers”, he’s not starred in anything major. He’s still young and things could still happen. Or not. He’s just like David Bentley, fading after an early promise.
Mena Suvari, who was the hot chick in that bathtub, and the person Lester Burnham thinks about while masturbating, you’d expect her to be as hot as ever. But she’s now firmly slot in that “supporting roles for hot chicks” role.
Make no mistake, all the actors that I mentioned here are good actors, and a few are superb. Many have continued to put in good work, but none of them have achieved the heights of “American Beauty”. None of them can be considered failures – but Wes Bentley is dangerously close.
Sam Mendes is the director, and he’s done a few films afterwards – Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road. Revolutionary Road was a return to form, but hardly the equal of American Beauty, even as it also was similar in that it displayed the petty disappointments of the suburban existence. He also did a lot of stage directing in that time.
The one person who has moved on from “American Beauty” is Alan Ball. Not the England World Cup winning footballer, but the scriptwriter of “American Beauty”, and to my mind, the main hero in it. A lot of the sharpness of that movie came from the script, the strong characterization. A lot of the characters are stereotypes, but none of them are really 2 dimensional. His script does what very few scripts these days do: it has the ability to surprise and inspire.
1999 was a year in which there were 3 movies that promised to herald a better future for cinema: “The Matrix”, “Fight Club” and “American Beauty”. But to my mind this promise was largely unfulfilled in the 2000s.
I think, time has not been kind to the various people who were involved in the movie. They have never gotten back the same kind of acclaim that they had for “American Beauty”. Either they went downhill, or “American Beauty” was an accidental masterpiece, which fell into place because it just articulated what was on the minds of a lot of people at that time. I’m beginning to suspect it was half and half.
I think that the 90s were a bit like the 60s. It was a time when Americans were prosperous, and could afford to think about crazy ideas. It was a time when the world went collectively nuts and bought into the dot com stock craze. (Imagine how much money was lost in that bubble!). It was a time when there was a great cultural war waged between the conservatives and the liberals. It was a utopian time, when people were wondering if the world had changed forever, that the old cold war, pre-internet rules no longer applied to society. It was a time when counterculture was on the rise – instead of the hippies and Haight-Asbury, we had Kurt Cobain, REM and Radiohead, bands that were much less mainstream than the icons of the 80s – Michael Jackson, Madonna and Prince.
But the merits of the film – I think that the ideas articulated were a little confused, just as 60s counterculture was confused. It was a time of great hope, a lot of talk about revolutionary change, but nothing really permanent and really significant materialised. I have not watched it a second time. The first time, it was a magical experience. Actually a lot of films I watched around that time were all magical. But I don’t want to spoil it. And I don’t want to get lost in a dream – there are very few fates that are worse than that.
Kevin Spacey had a few good roles, in “Se7en”, “the Usual Suspects”, “LA Confidential”. His role as Lester Burnham more or less carried the whole film. It was a great performance, and people were marking him for even greater things after that. But it was to be the peak of his career. A few good but not great roles followed: “Shipping News”, “K-PAX”, etc.
Annette Bening, the woman who managed to “tame” Warren Beatty. Remarkably, they are still married. She continued to get raves for movies like “Being Julia” and “Mrs Harris” but the movies themselves did not get a lot of attention.
Thora Birch was the goth daughter of Lester Burnham. They also considered Christina Ricci for the role, and you could see why. Afterwards, she was supposed to be the next Christina Ricci, and she had one good film in “Ghost World”. But after that – not much luck.
Wes Bentley was another person who was tipped for better things, having delivered that monologue about “there’s so much beauty in this world”. But other than a starring role in “Four Feathers”, he’s not starred in anything major. He’s still young and things could still happen. Or not. He’s just like David Bentley, fading after an early promise.
Mena Suvari, who was the hot chick in that bathtub, and the person Lester Burnham thinks about while masturbating, you’d expect her to be as hot as ever. But she’s now firmly slot in that “supporting roles for hot chicks” role.
Make no mistake, all the actors that I mentioned here are good actors, and a few are superb. Many have continued to put in good work, but none of them have achieved the heights of “American Beauty”. None of them can be considered failures – but Wes Bentley is dangerously close.
Sam Mendes is the director, and he’s done a few films afterwards – Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road. Revolutionary Road was a return to form, but hardly the equal of American Beauty, even as it also was similar in that it displayed the petty disappointments of the suburban existence. He also did a lot of stage directing in that time.
The one person who has moved on from “American Beauty” is Alan Ball. Not the England World Cup winning footballer, but the scriptwriter of “American Beauty”, and to my mind, the main hero in it. A lot of the sharpness of that movie came from the script, the strong characterization. A lot of the characters are stereotypes, but none of them are really 2 dimensional. His script does what very few scripts these days do: it has the ability to surprise and inspire.
1999 was a year in which there were 3 movies that promised to herald a better future for cinema: “The Matrix”, “Fight Club” and “American Beauty”. But to my mind this promise was largely unfulfilled in the 2000s.
This is Hardcore
The CD player I bought from totoro 3 years ago has died. It didn't exactly die die. It was always a piece of crap. The CD door just stopped working one day, although it could still play stuff. But I think it was high time to chuck it.
The CD that was stuck inside was one that I don't play very often, but it's an album made about reaching your 30s and feeling that your life is going downhill all the way from now on.
A fairly highly regarded piece of work artistically, but this was a piece of work made under emotional turmoil: Jarvis Cocker had just become famous after more than 10 years of obscurity, but the lifestyle of hobnobbing with the famous (and all the bullshit that went with it) was starting to take its toll: it culminated in this especially infamous incident where he showed his backside to Michael Jackson (ie the moonwalker was mooned):
If your CD player could only play 1 album, it shouldn't be "This is Hardcore" by Pulp. That's bad. Not really something you want on constant rotation. So at the suggestion of the colleague, I took it apart with my screwdriver, and took out the CD. Now that the damn thing is out of my CD player I feel better.
The CD that was stuck inside was one that I don't play very often, but it's an album made about reaching your 30s and feeling that your life is going downhill all the way from now on.
A fairly highly regarded piece of work artistically, but this was a piece of work made under emotional turmoil: Jarvis Cocker had just become famous after more than 10 years of obscurity, but the lifestyle of hobnobbing with the famous (and all the bullshit that went with it) was starting to take its toll: it culminated in this especially infamous incident where he showed his backside to Michael Jackson (ie the moonwalker was mooned):
If your CD player could only play 1 album, it shouldn't be "This is Hardcore" by Pulp. That's bad. Not really something you want on constant rotation. So at the suggestion of the colleague, I took it apart with my screwdriver, and took out the CD. Now that the damn thing is out of my CD player I feel better.
Number Nine Dream
When you're in your twenties you're being an adult for the first time, and you have to realign your priorities in life. Almost without exception, I hear a lot of final year uni students remark, "oh my God, I've just taken my last exam." What's so amazing about taking your last exam? It is that from the moment that the person enters school as a 5,6 year old, his life would have been centred around exams. It is not that difficult for him to name his reason for living: it is the exam. But when you rip that centre out of his life, a major reorientation is needed.
I once told myself, you have enough dreams to last your whole life. That is true. But what becomes of those dreams? There are plenty of instances in my life where I've been lost and headed down blind alleys. Let's look at some of those dreams.
Musician
It would not have occurred to me when I was a kid, my parents breathing down my neck to make me put in that one hour a day. I hated practicing. I wonder why people never seem to realise that people hate practicing piano. It's bad enough to hate practicing, and when you know that you aren't good with your hands, and all that practicing is futile, it's even worse. I still cringe a little when ppl come up to coach me on something that needs hand eye co-ordination (basketball for instance).
That being said, I think I have a good shot at being a composer. Except that writing stuff alone is not going to get you very far. You still need the big logistical problem of having things performed. For a few years I stopped composing because there was no way of writing things down. Then last year I started writing things down, and after that I wrote some more stuff that I'm happy with, but it's dried up a little recently. Anyway the writing part is OK. It's the translating all that stuff into music that's the problem now.
Academic
It's hardly the case that I became really interested in knowledge only when I got to the Uni. But I suppose at that time the educational system is hardly inspiring. Singapore educational system is second to none for drilling the basic facts into peoples' heads, and even the angmohs admire that. But above that and beyond, it only really gets interesting when you get to the uni. And even if I were inspired by knowledge while in Sec School and JC, it's for those ideas that you get to learn about in the uni.
And I think that it's like building a house. The part all the way up till JC is when you are pounding in the foundations and building the pillars. It doesn't look like anything is being done, even though it's a lot of hard work. It's dreary and boring. And uni is when you bring in all the prefab stuff and fit it on, and suddenly, magically, the house appears.
I would go into a field which is intricate and complex. I thought about artificial intelligence for a while. I think I would go into a field which involves a lot of complexity, and it is not difficult to find one. The big problem with academic stuff is that when you get the main idea, and that is usually early on, it's a lot of fun. But after that it is the long hard slog and the project takes forever.
Books
People have this image of my being a bookworm, even though I've had to explain to them that I've only been one for 10 years. OK, 10 years is a long time but I was more likely to listen to Jimi Hendrix / REM / Sonic Youth all day when I was back in JC.
This was probably related to the previous dream, of being an academic. I thought I'd better start reading everything I could lay my hands on, just in case I ever got the chance to be an academic one day. But now my house is stocked up with too many useless books and I set a target last year to clear 2 shelves of books by reading and selling them away. I have read through more than 1 shelf already.
Marathoner
This was something really accidental. Just that at some point in my life I got to know 5 people who have done marathons. So I signed up for a marathon at the end of 2008. It's very tiring to practice but it's too late to stop now. Anyway I finished it. Although "finish" is rather flattering to me. Towards the end when I was in an army of stragglers, I thought, "this is what it must have been like when Napoleon was retreating from Russia".
Playwright
I wanted to be a playwright in school. But I think I blogged about this before so I won't bore you with the details. Anyway bottom line is that I've taken this as far as it can go so I'm OK with this.
Career
Nothing much here. At one point my thinking was, "everybody thinks that this is important, so it has to be important." It wasn't easy at first. I'm still getting by. Maybe for now I will just have a job, get by and at the same time work on my other dreams. Until such a time when I stumble upon something that is compelling enough that it becomes another one of my dreams.
Pussy
The one time that I have been in love, something strange happened. Everything gets imbued with a whole new meaning, although if you were to press me about it now, I'm not sure I can explain what this "new meaning" is. Whereas I was a more easy going person before that, I just got more forceful over certain things. When am I next going to get somebody? Well I used to think, make more of your own dreams come true, and this problem will fix itself. And it used to be that impressing women would be a great incentive to work at those things. Little by little, though, it stopped being important, and now when I wake up in the morning, I know that I will measure how useful a day has been according to these other things outlined above.
I once told myself, you have enough dreams to last your whole life. That is true. But what becomes of those dreams? There are plenty of instances in my life where I've been lost and headed down blind alleys. Let's look at some of those dreams.
Musician
It would not have occurred to me when I was a kid, my parents breathing down my neck to make me put in that one hour a day. I hated practicing. I wonder why people never seem to realise that people hate practicing piano. It's bad enough to hate practicing, and when you know that you aren't good with your hands, and all that practicing is futile, it's even worse. I still cringe a little when ppl come up to coach me on something that needs hand eye co-ordination (basketball for instance).
That being said, I think I have a good shot at being a composer. Except that writing stuff alone is not going to get you very far. You still need the big logistical problem of having things performed. For a few years I stopped composing because there was no way of writing things down. Then last year I started writing things down, and after that I wrote some more stuff that I'm happy with, but it's dried up a little recently. Anyway the writing part is OK. It's the translating all that stuff into music that's the problem now.
Academic
It's hardly the case that I became really interested in knowledge only when I got to the Uni. But I suppose at that time the educational system is hardly inspiring. Singapore educational system is second to none for drilling the basic facts into peoples' heads, and even the angmohs admire that. But above that and beyond, it only really gets interesting when you get to the uni. And even if I were inspired by knowledge while in Sec School and JC, it's for those ideas that you get to learn about in the uni.
And I think that it's like building a house. The part all the way up till JC is when you are pounding in the foundations and building the pillars. It doesn't look like anything is being done, even though it's a lot of hard work. It's dreary and boring. And uni is when you bring in all the prefab stuff and fit it on, and suddenly, magically, the house appears.
I would go into a field which is intricate and complex. I thought about artificial intelligence for a while. I think I would go into a field which involves a lot of complexity, and it is not difficult to find one. The big problem with academic stuff is that when you get the main idea, and that is usually early on, it's a lot of fun. But after that it is the long hard slog and the project takes forever.
Books
People have this image of my being a bookworm, even though I've had to explain to them that I've only been one for 10 years. OK, 10 years is a long time but I was more likely to listen to Jimi Hendrix / REM / Sonic Youth all day when I was back in JC.
This was probably related to the previous dream, of being an academic. I thought I'd better start reading everything I could lay my hands on, just in case I ever got the chance to be an academic one day. But now my house is stocked up with too many useless books and I set a target last year to clear 2 shelves of books by reading and selling them away. I have read through more than 1 shelf already.
Marathoner
This was something really accidental. Just that at some point in my life I got to know 5 people who have done marathons. So I signed up for a marathon at the end of 2008. It's very tiring to practice but it's too late to stop now. Anyway I finished it. Although "finish" is rather flattering to me. Towards the end when I was in an army of stragglers, I thought, "this is what it must have been like when Napoleon was retreating from Russia".
Playwright
I wanted to be a playwright in school. But I think I blogged about this before so I won't bore you with the details. Anyway bottom line is that I've taken this as far as it can go so I'm OK with this.
Career
Nothing much here. At one point my thinking was, "everybody thinks that this is important, so it has to be important." It wasn't easy at first. I'm still getting by. Maybe for now I will just have a job, get by and at the same time work on my other dreams. Until such a time when I stumble upon something that is compelling enough that it becomes another one of my dreams.
Pussy
The one time that I have been in love, something strange happened. Everything gets imbued with a whole new meaning, although if you were to press me about it now, I'm not sure I can explain what this "new meaning" is. Whereas I was a more easy going person before that, I just got more forceful over certain things. When am I next going to get somebody? Well I used to think, make more of your own dreams come true, and this problem will fix itself. And it used to be that impressing women would be a great incentive to work at those things. Little by little, though, it stopped being important, and now when I wake up in the morning, I know that I will measure how useful a day has been according to these other things outlined above.
Sunday, 18 October 2009
Whole Brain Thinking
OK, time for training again, and another fluffy course to make up the training hours so that we can fulfill another fucking corporate KPI.
This course is not that meaningless but at the heart of it is some overlong exposition of some idea that’s taken too seriously, taken too far. This is “Whole Brain Thinking”. Basically what it means is that they simplistically take 4 modes of using your left and right brain. You have 4 quadrants, and the personality test divides how much you use these 4 modes of thinking. They are:
The blue portion (left brain, cerebral)
The scientist who is always analysing, weighing up stuff, the rational-logical part.
The green portion (left brain, limbic)
The studious, conscientious part, which organises information into very
The red portion (right brain, limbic)
The emotional touchy feely part
The yellow portion (right brain, cerebral)
The imaginative, intuition part, which does a lot of leaps of logic.
So it was fun when at first I told them that I was a maths major, and then they concluded that I was a blue portion. Well it turned out that I primarily use the yellow portion, and a bit of the blue portion (that makes me more intensely cerebral than limbic, which means I’m primarily a thinker not a doer.) Then I’m fairly strong with red, and a little limp when it comes to the green.
I’m not surprised. I know that I’m good at blue because of my talent in maths. I’m also good at red because I have artistic talent. And given that blue and red are in opposite quadrants, I’m probably also good at one other aspect, and that is yellow, because it allows a person to see the whole picture, and probably you need holistic thinking in order to be able to switch between opposite modes of thinking.
But I’m concerned about my lack of green. This probably means that I should never ever touch operations. It probably also means that I have a good chance at being a success in life at anything other than operations. This is very interesting. In fact it means that I’m also fairly suspect as an engineer but don’t tell anybody I said that.
I’m thinking about other people I have to work with. I know that Monty Burns is either OK with the green portion and hopeless with the blue (or was that the other way around?) And he’s definitely crap at the yellow portion as well.
It is estimated that 70% of people use 2 of the zones, 20% use 3 of the zones, 7% use only 1 zone (and people in this category have an unfortunate tendency to piss off all those around them). The lucky few, the 3% who use all 4 zones, usually end up as leaders of men. If I were slightly stronger with red, I would be able to count myself as 3 quadrants.
The instructor did have a few interesting stories to tell. She did say that Singapore is very good and pumping out blue people, and to a lesser extent, green people. Yellow people have it tough in Singapore. I suppose that it’s quite ironic that they call it yellow people since most East Asian cultures are generally unfriendly towards yellow people. This is one major reason why I do not entirely approve of my own culture - I don’t give a fuck about people who say I’m being disloyal, the bare fact is that I often have to choose between being true to myself and being true to my culture. There is always a conflict.
The irony is that in my formative years I was brought up in a place which is yellow friendly. Most of my education were in yellow friendly places. But NS and work were not yellow friendly.
I know that the nail that sticks out will be hammered down but this nail intends to fight back. What usually happens is that when people pick on me I roll with the punches a little while, be very quiet, and try to sniff out their weak points, and then if there’s a way I kick them around a little bit here and there. This is nothing personal but yellow people need a lot of free space so too bad for you if you’re in the way. I can’t really help it but yellow people are rabble rousers. There’s really no point being always submissive, it’s no way to live your life. You have a role to play in society and you just have to do what you have to do. And anyhow the point of being yellow is that you can always find a way out because yellow is also the colour of cunning.
There are other ways of doing things - I think about Gorbachev, who came up in a very repressive and conformist society, and he still very artfully tried to effect a revolution from within. If you study history he gets most of the credit for overthrowing the Soviet system. He’s a person who managed to be a rebel, and yet do it without pissing too many people off. (Yes, he pissed off a lot of people, but that was later, after the USSR collapsed.) But I don’t have as many skills as he does. And you know, at the end of the day it wasn’t a happy ending for him. It wasn’t entirely his fault but Russia became a much more fucked up place after the end of the USSR, the life expectancy dropped by 10 years because everybody was drinking themselves to death. Russia is now ruled by the mafia.
The methodology of using user evaluations to assess whether the trainer gets to continue teaching is inherently flawed because it tilts the balance towards fluffy pseudo-psychological feel-good bimbonic stuff, and people who run one-size-fits-all management programs which have dubious relevance to the organisation can get away with charging really profitable admission fees. I sometimes wonder: is it very much more expensive to get your own guys to run some training themselves?
We haven’t had training programs that address problems that are specific to our company. That will change in due course.
I suppose Singaporean companies are very paranoid that people will find out about their modus operandi, to the extent that I have heard someone fairly senior on my organisation decrying the need to have somebody build an information portal that will be used by both ourselves and our customers. He complained that other companies will just bare a shoulder or two while we will strip naked in front of them and dance around. Be that as it may, if you want external consultants to effect real change in your organisation, you have to take it all off so that he can impregnate you isn’t it?
This course is not that meaningless but at the heart of it is some overlong exposition of some idea that’s taken too seriously, taken too far. This is “Whole Brain Thinking”. Basically what it means is that they simplistically take 4 modes of using your left and right brain. You have 4 quadrants, and the personality test divides how much you use these 4 modes of thinking. They are:
The blue portion (left brain, cerebral)
The scientist who is always analysing, weighing up stuff, the rational-logical part.
The green portion (left brain, limbic)
The studious, conscientious part, which organises information into very
The red portion (right brain, limbic)
The emotional touchy feely part
The yellow portion (right brain, cerebral)
The imaginative, intuition part, which does a lot of leaps of logic.
So it was fun when at first I told them that I was a maths major, and then they concluded that I was a blue portion. Well it turned out that I primarily use the yellow portion, and a bit of the blue portion (that makes me more intensely cerebral than limbic, which means I’m primarily a thinker not a doer.) Then I’m fairly strong with red, and a little limp when it comes to the green.
I’m not surprised. I know that I’m good at blue because of my talent in maths. I’m also good at red because I have artistic talent. And given that blue and red are in opposite quadrants, I’m probably also good at one other aspect, and that is yellow, because it allows a person to see the whole picture, and probably you need holistic thinking in order to be able to switch between opposite modes of thinking.
But I’m concerned about my lack of green. This probably means that I should never ever touch operations. It probably also means that I have a good chance at being a success in life at anything other than operations. This is very interesting. In fact it means that I’m also fairly suspect as an engineer but don’t tell anybody I said that.
I’m thinking about other people I have to work with. I know that Monty Burns is either OK with the green portion and hopeless with the blue (or was that the other way around?) And he’s definitely crap at the yellow portion as well.
It is estimated that 70% of people use 2 of the zones, 20% use 3 of the zones, 7% use only 1 zone (and people in this category have an unfortunate tendency to piss off all those around them). The lucky few, the 3% who use all 4 zones, usually end up as leaders of men. If I were slightly stronger with red, I would be able to count myself as 3 quadrants.
The instructor did have a few interesting stories to tell. She did say that Singapore is very good and pumping out blue people, and to a lesser extent, green people. Yellow people have it tough in Singapore. I suppose that it’s quite ironic that they call it yellow people since most East Asian cultures are generally unfriendly towards yellow people. This is one major reason why I do not entirely approve of my own culture - I don’t give a fuck about people who say I’m being disloyal, the bare fact is that I often have to choose between being true to myself and being true to my culture. There is always a conflict.
The irony is that in my formative years I was brought up in a place which is yellow friendly. Most of my education were in yellow friendly places. But NS and work were not yellow friendly.
I know that the nail that sticks out will be hammered down but this nail intends to fight back. What usually happens is that when people pick on me I roll with the punches a little while, be very quiet, and try to sniff out their weak points, and then if there’s a way I kick them around a little bit here and there. This is nothing personal but yellow people need a lot of free space so too bad for you if you’re in the way. I can’t really help it but yellow people are rabble rousers. There’s really no point being always submissive, it’s no way to live your life. You have a role to play in society and you just have to do what you have to do. And anyhow the point of being yellow is that you can always find a way out because yellow is also the colour of cunning.
There are other ways of doing things - I think about Gorbachev, who came up in a very repressive and conformist society, and he still very artfully tried to effect a revolution from within. If you study history he gets most of the credit for overthrowing the Soviet system. He’s a person who managed to be a rebel, and yet do it without pissing too many people off. (Yes, he pissed off a lot of people, but that was later, after the USSR collapsed.) But I don’t have as many skills as he does. And you know, at the end of the day it wasn’t a happy ending for him. It wasn’t entirely his fault but Russia became a much more fucked up place after the end of the USSR, the life expectancy dropped by 10 years because everybody was drinking themselves to death. Russia is now ruled by the mafia.
The methodology of using user evaluations to assess whether the trainer gets to continue teaching is inherently flawed because it tilts the balance towards fluffy pseudo-psychological feel-good bimbonic stuff, and people who run one-size-fits-all management programs which have dubious relevance to the organisation can get away with charging really profitable admission fees. I sometimes wonder: is it very much more expensive to get your own guys to run some training themselves?
We haven’t had training programs that address problems that are specific to our company. That will change in due course.
I suppose Singaporean companies are very paranoid that people will find out about their modus operandi, to the extent that I have heard someone fairly senior on my organisation decrying the need to have somebody build an information portal that will be used by both ourselves and our customers. He complained that other companies will just bare a shoulder or two while we will strip naked in front of them and dance around. Be that as it may, if you want external consultants to effect real change in your organisation, you have to take it all off so that he can impregnate you isn’t it?
Unified Modelling Language
Now, you probably wouldn’t think of engineers as being experts on relationship management, but there are other occupations which have persistently and consistently fared worse when it comes to managing their relationships. Like celebrities. And celebrities are supposed to be the most sexually attractive and desirable among human beings. So if we can do better than them, I suppose you should listen to us.
Another reason is that engineers are supposed to be masters at simplifying the complex, because if we can’t do this, nobody can. Engineering these days is almost the art of mastering complex systems. And we would say that a couple in a romantic relationship is a complex system.
One theory I’ve been expounding has something to do with software engineering. It’s how, when you are writing software specifications, you need to have descriptions about components. Each component is typically treated like a black box. You specify certain things about interfacing, without caring too much about the nitty gritties of how these things are being implemented. In other words, if you put in an input X, you should be getting an output Y. This should be very clear to the end user. It should work in a very predictable way, and after all human beings should work in a predictable way because at the end of the day, we are all machines, even though we are more complicated than what we think of as a machine.
There is an expectation about how people are going to behave in a certain circumstance, and people should deliver what is expected of them. If things are different, then maybe an environment variable we don’t completely understand is set incorrectly.
Under this software engineering model, we are supposed to understand the user interface correctly. I am not the first person to describe a woman as a very complicated machine whose workings it would a challenge to master. Which knob to turn, which button to push, and when. The point here is that, even if you understand that logic or you don’t, you have to admit that there is a certain logic at work, and the key to the longevity or the viability of that relationship is that you understand that logic as best you can.
At the same time that you are trying to understand this new fangled software component, you have to remember that you yourself are also a software component whose workings are clear to the other party. When circumstances are like this,
What is the consequence of the black box aspect of this? It is important to note that you don’t have to understand completely how that other software component works. Some women are very proud of the fact that nobody is able to understand her inner workings. Well and good, fair enough. Some women really mean that, others say that just so as to maintain some leverage over their man. Whether or not that is true, it doesn’t matter. But you have to understand the specifications. You have to know what is pushing what button, and what kind of behaviour is going to result from that.
Women are a little bit like quantum theory. You can look at all the equations, and you can look at the conclusions that come ouf of them, and you can say, “this is total nonsense. This is illogical, and does not conform to my expectations of what reality is like. Well and good. But you will always have those equations, and you will still be able to predict what is going to happen by applying those equations. Your job is not to understand the equations on a deep level, but merely to predict what is going to happen next so that you can act accordingly. You don’t have to understand your woman. But you need to be able to predict her.
Of course, when you go deeper into UML, you will have plenty of new-fangled engineering concepts that I’m only beginning to grapple with. What is a design pattern, what is a state diagram, what is a class diagram. Plenty of boxes with arrows and circles and what not. There is a logic behind everything. The key is to understand the system and work for it, and make that system work for you.
I see that engineers have an average to good record at making marriages last. Some people think that it is because engineers marry each other, and are so shit ugly that nobody else wants to touch them, I have nothing to say about that. Even if that were true, it still means that our quality of life is better than - say- Britney and Kevin Federline. And that is why engineers are better at romantic relationships than all these crazy celebrities, it is because when we buy a new piece of software, we take the time and effort to study the user specifications properly, and we actually read the operating manual that comes together with it, as opposed to those celebrities who only get into it because a sexy glossy manual looks sexy and glossy enough for them.
In a perfect world, all couples would understand the Unified Modelling Language well enough to apply it to their relationships.
The other thing about relationships that computer science can teach you is the halting problem. The halting problem is simply, given a program and an input, to decide whether the program would run forever or whether it would halt. There's no way of knowing until you try it out. So there's really no way of knowing for sure whether a relationship is going to work until you tried out that relationship in the first place.
Another reason is that engineers are supposed to be masters at simplifying the complex, because if we can’t do this, nobody can. Engineering these days is almost the art of mastering complex systems. And we would say that a couple in a romantic relationship is a complex system.
One theory I’ve been expounding has something to do with software engineering. It’s how, when you are writing software specifications, you need to have descriptions about components. Each component is typically treated like a black box. You specify certain things about interfacing, without caring too much about the nitty gritties of how these things are being implemented. In other words, if you put in an input X, you should be getting an output Y. This should be very clear to the end user. It should work in a very predictable way, and after all human beings should work in a predictable way because at the end of the day, we are all machines, even though we are more complicated than what we think of as a machine.
There is an expectation about how people are going to behave in a certain circumstance, and people should deliver what is expected of them. If things are different, then maybe an environment variable we don’t completely understand is set incorrectly.
Under this software engineering model, we are supposed to understand the user interface correctly. I am not the first person to describe a woman as a very complicated machine whose workings it would a challenge to master. Which knob to turn, which button to push, and when. The point here is that, even if you understand that logic or you don’t, you have to admit that there is a certain logic at work, and the key to the longevity or the viability of that relationship is that you understand that logic as best you can.
At the same time that you are trying to understand this new fangled software component, you have to remember that you yourself are also a software component whose workings are clear to the other party. When circumstances are like this,
What is the consequence of the black box aspect of this? It is important to note that you don’t have to understand completely how that other software component works. Some women are very proud of the fact that nobody is able to understand her inner workings. Well and good, fair enough. Some women really mean that, others say that just so as to maintain some leverage over their man. Whether or not that is true, it doesn’t matter. But you have to understand the specifications. You have to know what is pushing what button, and what kind of behaviour is going to result from that.
Women are a little bit like quantum theory. You can look at all the equations, and you can look at the conclusions that come ouf of them, and you can say, “this is total nonsense. This is illogical, and does not conform to my expectations of what reality is like. Well and good. But you will always have those equations, and you will still be able to predict what is going to happen by applying those equations. Your job is not to understand the equations on a deep level, but merely to predict what is going to happen next so that you can act accordingly. You don’t have to understand your woman. But you need to be able to predict her.
Of course, when you go deeper into UML, you will have plenty of new-fangled engineering concepts that I’m only beginning to grapple with. What is a design pattern, what is a state diagram, what is a class diagram. Plenty of boxes with arrows and circles and what not. There is a logic behind everything. The key is to understand the system and work for it, and make that system work for you.
I see that engineers have an average to good record at making marriages last. Some people think that it is because engineers marry each other, and are so shit ugly that nobody else wants to touch them, I have nothing to say about that. Even if that were true, it still means that our quality of life is better than - say- Britney and Kevin Federline. And that is why engineers are better at romantic relationships than all these crazy celebrities, it is because when we buy a new piece of software, we take the time and effort to study the user specifications properly, and we actually read the operating manual that comes together with it, as opposed to those celebrities who only get into it because a sexy glossy manual looks sexy and glossy enough for them.
In a perfect world, all couples would understand the Unified Modelling Language well enough to apply it to their relationships.
The other thing about relationships that computer science can teach you is the halting problem. The halting problem is simply, given a program and an input, to decide whether the program would run forever or whether it would halt. There's no way of knowing until you try it out. So there's really no way of knowing for sure whether a relationship is going to work until you tried out that relationship in the first place.
Football Betting Season 2 Weeks 4-6
I record my betting on this blog because I wanted to make public my experiment with football betting. The last 3 weekends have been very mixed in terms of my fortunes.
2 weeks ago, I had a great record. I bet on Everton to beat Portsmouth because everybody was beating Portsmouth (I was right). I bet on Liverpool to beat Hull, who were having a miserable time, and I was right. I bet on Arsenal to beat Fulham and I was lucky – Fulham played better than Arsenal, but lost 0-1. Finally I bet on Man City to beat West Ham and I got that one right. There was also a La Liga match involving Real Madrid or Barcelona, and I got that one right too. My takings were $20 for getting everything correct.
Last week, though, it was a disaster. I bet on Tottenham to beat Bolton, and they were only able to draw. I bet on Wigan to beat Hull, but Hull beat them instead. I bet on Man U to beat Sunderland, and I got that wrong too. The only bet that worked was on Burnley to beat Birmingham at home.
Burnley are very good at home. It was risky betting on Burnley but worth it. For the Wigan match, I had to remember: 2 times I bet on Wigan this season, and I lost both bets. Wigan are unpredictable. Man U was not necessarily going to win against Sunderland – they had just finished Europe. Later on I also found out that Alex Ferguson had made a few tactical mistakes. I couldn’t explain Tottenham and Bolton, but there are a few teams you shouldn’t bet against – Everton, Bolton and Stoke. The boring-football,-but-we’ll-kick-you-off-the-park types. In my haste to bet on something, just so that I had something to bet on, I violated some of my rules.
This week, though, things are going quite OK. I bet on Arsenal to beat Birmingham. Arsenal are going through a good streak this season, and even though many people were predicting they would drop out of the top 4 this season, it seems as though Liverpool would be the one to make way instead. I also bet on Stoke to beat West Ham. Stoke are another side like Burnley, quite good at home, and difficult to beat. The score was tied until the 70th minute and so it was uncomfortable for me, but eventually it turned out OK. I don’t know about Real Madrid, but I won’t lose sleep over it.
This week, I’m also proud of the decisions I made not to bet. Everton “should” beat Wolves, but this season Everton is weaker, and so it was a draw instead. Liverpool are stronger than Sunderland on paper, but they lost, because Liverpool are in deep shit. A very far cry from the swaggering giants who were winning week after week towards the end of last season. Chelsea “should” beat Aston Villa, but even though they scored first, Chelsea lost. Chelsea are another team in shit trouble at the moment and at this rate, Arsenal or Man City has a great chance at the title.
One regret is that I didn’t bet on Tottenham to beat Portsmouth, although I thought that would happen. I thought that Portsmouth turned the corner by beating Wolves, but they are still weak. Wigan are weaker than Man City, but remember – never bet on an outcome that involves Wigan.
Update: Man City and Wigan drew. So the dictum that you should never bet on an outcome involving Wigan is correct.
2 weeks ago, I had a great record. I bet on Everton to beat Portsmouth because everybody was beating Portsmouth (I was right). I bet on Liverpool to beat Hull, who were having a miserable time, and I was right. I bet on Arsenal to beat Fulham and I was lucky – Fulham played better than Arsenal, but lost 0-1. Finally I bet on Man City to beat West Ham and I got that one right. There was also a La Liga match involving Real Madrid or Barcelona, and I got that one right too. My takings were $20 for getting everything correct.
Last week, though, it was a disaster. I bet on Tottenham to beat Bolton, and they were only able to draw. I bet on Wigan to beat Hull, but Hull beat them instead. I bet on Man U to beat Sunderland, and I got that wrong too. The only bet that worked was on Burnley to beat Birmingham at home.
Burnley are very good at home. It was risky betting on Burnley but worth it. For the Wigan match, I had to remember: 2 times I bet on Wigan this season, and I lost both bets. Wigan are unpredictable. Man U was not necessarily going to win against Sunderland – they had just finished Europe. Later on I also found out that Alex Ferguson had made a few tactical mistakes. I couldn’t explain Tottenham and Bolton, but there are a few teams you shouldn’t bet against – Everton, Bolton and Stoke. The boring-football,-but-we’ll-kick-you-off-the-park types. In my haste to bet on something, just so that I had something to bet on, I violated some of my rules.
This week, though, things are going quite OK. I bet on Arsenal to beat Birmingham. Arsenal are going through a good streak this season, and even though many people were predicting they would drop out of the top 4 this season, it seems as though Liverpool would be the one to make way instead. I also bet on Stoke to beat West Ham. Stoke are another side like Burnley, quite good at home, and difficult to beat. The score was tied until the 70th minute and so it was uncomfortable for me, but eventually it turned out OK. I don’t know about Real Madrid, but I won’t lose sleep over it.
This week, I’m also proud of the decisions I made not to bet. Everton “should” beat Wolves, but this season Everton is weaker, and so it was a draw instead. Liverpool are stronger than Sunderland on paper, but they lost, because Liverpool are in deep shit. A very far cry from the swaggering giants who were winning week after week towards the end of last season. Chelsea “should” beat Aston Villa, but even though they scored first, Chelsea lost. Chelsea are another team in shit trouble at the moment and at this rate, Arsenal or Man City has a great chance at the title.
One regret is that I didn’t bet on Tottenham to beat Portsmouth, although I thought that would happen. I thought that Portsmouth turned the corner by beating Wolves, but they are still weak. Wigan are weaker than Man City, but remember – never bet on an outcome that involves Wigan.
Update: Man City and Wigan drew. So the dictum that you should never bet on an outcome involving Wigan is correct.
Saturday, 17 October 2009
Nap
I was trying to get to sleep after a Saturday morning run. It should have been easy. Sleeping is really easy right after you've done a run. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, my father called me on the phone. My grandmother picked it up, and started screaming my name, not knowing where I was. (She's blind and immobile, so that's the only thing she could do.) I didn't want to take it because I was asleep, I didn't get up because I wanted to sleep. But she was oblivious to it and was screaming my name for a couple of minutes. Then suddenly something pierced through the fog of consciousness, and she decided to give up, and when she tried to talk to the receiver, my father was gone, he probably figured out before she did that I was trying to sleep.
After that, I tossed and turned for almost an hour. It would have been so easy to sleep, but suddenly it wasn't. I was very pissed off.
I wonder whether that's what having kids is like.
After that, I tossed and turned for almost an hour. It would have been so easy to sleep, but suddenly it wasn't. I was very pissed off.
I wonder whether that's what having kids is like.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
High Ceilings
On a weekend, it is usually a nice thing to just sit at a coffee joint, read books, and just chill out. Saturday mornings are best because many of the places in the CBD are open, even until the afternoon, and no customers.
So it was with the expectation of whiling away 2 hours that I popped into the Starbucks at Capital Towers. Yes, I know I’m supposed to cut out my reading but this time it’s not some random book pulled out of a warehouse sale / library, but serious stuff, like how to write a compiler, or how operating systems work, or stuff like that.
So it was a good way of spending time when suddenly 4 gentlemen from the Indian subcontinent and 1 from the PRC (probably) walked in carrying a few pieces of scaffolding, and plonked it down 10 metres in front of me. So I had a great view of the interesting project that was about to unfold before me.
Now I think that Starbucks has a few places which are basically air-conditioned greenhouses. (Actually you could say that most of the CBD is an air-conditioned greenhouse). Glass and steel are OK in cold countries because they trap heat. But in a tropical climate they are just stupid. Luckily this particular air con greenhouse had a tall ceiling, so I suspect that would save a lot of air con costs – ie it incorporates cooling techniques that were designed for tropical weather.
So OK, on top of a large cup of overpriced coffee, and reading about how to handled left recursion while parsing computer code, I had the pleasure of watching them set up the scaffolding. 1 layer went up, then the trestle was fixed on. It’s like a farm, where the farmer is sweating his guts out, and the cows are just there, watching him, insouciantly chewing cud.
Another layer went up, and it was more interesting, because it looked a little dangerous: there were no safety harnesses (after all where are you going to hook them on, a skyhook?) and there was this dramatic suspension: what are they doing this for, and is anybody going to get hurt? Finally, with the rest of the building materials handed upwards to this brave guy teetering on a plank on top, the platform on top was built. By this time 2 Indian guys were holding the bottom part of the platform for support. Then the Chinese guy came up.
Then it hit me: this is the answer to the perennial question: how many foreign workers does it take to change a light bulb? The Chinese guy plucked the energy saving tube out from the socket (I suppose you don’t really bother about switching off the lights when it’s so much trouble to get back down). And then he just changed the tube. He did that for a few sockets. So that was entertainment.
I had another piece of entertainment when I went down to Orchard Central after work. It is a very strange building, on the site of the sadly departed Specialist Centre, on a narrow site, and 8 floors of shops. Moreover these floors have very high ceilings.
So I was chilling out at their gelato outlet, when I noticed that a few people were craning their necks. At first I thought they were just looking at this loud and garish giant LCD screen mounted on the opposite wall, when I realised that I was sitting right underneath what was “the highest indoor rock climbing wall (in a shopping centre)”. It’s like 4-5 storeys high, and overlooks Orchard Road, so you really feel like you are on some crazy rock cliff in – uh – Orchard Road. Now that was crazy. I was just chilling out and eating an ice cream and suddenly I discover that if somebody slips and falls, he’s going to land up in my banana split, or if his bladder gives way, raindrops will soon be falling on my head. Or if he craps his pants, I will have extra fudge for my ice cream.
Anyway it is great that the lonesome life of a wandering bookworm is broken by such interesting side distractions.
So it was with the expectation of whiling away 2 hours that I popped into the Starbucks at Capital Towers. Yes, I know I’m supposed to cut out my reading but this time it’s not some random book pulled out of a warehouse sale / library, but serious stuff, like how to write a compiler, or how operating systems work, or stuff like that.
So it was a good way of spending time when suddenly 4 gentlemen from the Indian subcontinent and 1 from the PRC (probably) walked in carrying a few pieces of scaffolding, and plonked it down 10 metres in front of me. So I had a great view of the interesting project that was about to unfold before me.
Now I think that Starbucks has a few places which are basically air-conditioned greenhouses. (Actually you could say that most of the CBD is an air-conditioned greenhouse). Glass and steel are OK in cold countries because they trap heat. But in a tropical climate they are just stupid. Luckily this particular air con greenhouse had a tall ceiling, so I suspect that would save a lot of air con costs – ie it incorporates cooling techniques that were designed for tropical weather.
So OK, on top of a large cup of overpriced coffee, and reading about how to handled left recursion while parsing computer code, I had the pleasure of watching them set up the scaffolding. 1 layer went up, then the trestle was fixed on. It’s like a farm, where the farmer is sweating his guts out, and the cows are just there, watching him, insouciantly chewing cud.
Another layer went up, and it was more interesting, because it looked a little dangerous: there were no safety harnesses (after all where are you going to hook them on, a skyhook?) and there was this dramatic suspension: what are they doing this for, and is anybody going to get hurt? Finally, with the rest of the building materials handed upwards to this brave guy teetering on a plank on top, the platform on top was built. By this time 2 Indian guys were holding the bottom part of the platform for support. Then the Chinese guy came up.
Then it hit me: this is the answer to the perennial question: how many foreign workers does it take to change a light bulb? The Chinese guy plucked the energy saving tube out from the socket (I suppose you don’t really bother about switching off the lights when it’s so much trouble to get back down). And then he just changed the tube. He did that for a few sockets. So that was entertainment.
I had another piece of entertainment when I went down to Orchard Central after work. It is a very strange building, on the site of the sadly departed Specialist Centre, on a narrow site, and 8 floors of shops. Moreover these floors have very high ceilings.
So I was chilling out at their gelato outlet, when I noticed that a few people were craning their necks. At first I thought they were just looking at this loud and garish giant LCD screen mounted on the opposite wall, when I realised that I was sitting right underneath what was “the highest indoor rock climbing wall (in a shopping centre)”. It’s like 4-5 storeys high, and overlooks Orchard Road, so you really feel like you are on some crazy rock cliff in – uh – Orchard Road. Now that was crazy. I was just chilling out and eating an ice cream and suddenly I discover that if somebody slips and falls, he’s going to land up in my banana split, or if his bladder gives way, raindrops will soon be falling on my head. Or if he craps his pants, I will have extra fudge for my ice cream.
Anyway it is great that the lonesome life of a wandering bookworm is broken by such interesting side distractions.
Executive
I’ve only started work on a new section at my workplace not long ago. It’s a place where, in spite of my long tenure in my department, I have never gone to – well, for more than 6 months at a stretch. That’s because they like to pigeonhole people, and I happened to have been pigeonholed as a “techie”, although not without reason. But I always resist pigeonholing, and I was bored of all that techie shit. So in my section, I get involved with more frontline stuff.
When you get closer to the frontline, it’s not so much thinking anymore. It’s a lot less being right about everything, and just a little more of doing. A lot more of making do, making compromises, a lot more of just doing a good job instead of doing a perfect job.
I know a lot of people at my workplace have invested a lot in a certain branch of management science. It sounded wonderful and intriguing at first when I heard about it but later on I grew to not like it very much. (And believe me it’s not very nice when you don’t like your job.) There is often a very big misfit between theory and reality and every time this misfit gets too large, it makes my stomach churn.
Yes, I know, I did pure maths. But I was comfortable with that because I never ever have to deal with a clash of cultures. I never have to make approximations, sweep some aspects of the problem under the carpet. Anyway I thought I would get more into that mode of executive thinking. This is something that I’ve always been a little weak in, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever cut it in management and stuff like that.
I know that, as a consequence of me having an elite education at just about every stage, there are naturally people who see me as one of those who put a little too much emphasis on book knowledge. While this is partially true, I also have parents who constantly drummed into me the limits of that. Like NWA said, "you are about to witness the strength of street knowledge". I have always understood the importance of street knowledge, even though, well, I hardly put that into practice.
I have always been a procrastinator, a ditherer. It is very true that a lot of people have brains that are wired up differently. This is the P-J axis on the Myers Briggs test – perceiving or judging? Perceiving people take a long time to think about things, and they go through a lot of very interesting but possibly marginal thoughts. Judging people make decisions quickly, and they stick to it. But in the event they are wrong, you probably have to break a chair over their head in order to convince them they are wrong. Generally, P and J people tend to drive each other up the wall. Among my friends and acquaintances, I have a rough idea who are the P and J people.
Needless to say, I am a P person. Unfortunately J is much more suitable for a corporate environment. So you could say I’m in here to learn a little bit more J thinking.
Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of reasons why I loathe the executive mindset, and why it never was my natural mode of thinking. I have a distaste for people who jump right to conclusions. I always believe that I can come up with a better idea when I wait just a little longer. I never really liked the corporate mentality which focused everything on the profit and bottom line. We all know that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but why is this so? Because most of us are corporation slaves who dedicate our lives to just this cause, whether we like it or not. Every time we squeeze out a little bit more of corporate profits, we are making some rich motherfucker even richer.
In a more general sense I don't like the executive mindset because it optimises the situation according to some narrowly defined criterion and says "fuck you" to everything else. You maximise profits, and some poor sucker elsewhere gets screwed. You maximise your wealth, but you piss other people off by pissing on them. Or you jeopardise your own mental health and your happiness.
In "Wall Street", Gordon Gecko says "greed is good. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit" I agree with the second part. But does it follow, then, that greed is good?
But I am willing to hold up my hands and say that a lot of the time, greed is good. Making snap judgements, trusting your instincts, saying the first good thing that comes to your mind, at least doing something instead of nothing, is good.
I’m not a man of action, rather I’m one of thought. But I need to get it all straightened out now and I suppose submitting myself to this sort of discipline is one way to proceed. When I was younger I used to have this disdain for management theory, management thinking. But I suppose it’s because there are a lot of intellectual creases in there that needs to be ironed out. Everything you do, you do it for a certain reason, but there are also a handful of reasons not to do that thing too. If you think too much, you could get immobilized by the inaction. Therefore it’s just useful to not think too much, just do it, have a stronger stomach, and just learn to say fuck that shit.
I used to put a lot of obstacles in front of me, so that I wouldn’t have to do anything. I don’t know if it’s just my way of avoiding responsibility, but this has been going on for a little too long. I suppose I read a lot of books because I enjoyed the knowledge, but I think I also enjoyed the lack of stress and the indolence from just curling up in front of a book, and kidding myself that a lot of good knowledge was going up into my head. The fact that this was partially true, I guess, just allowed me to go on a little longer. I would say that last year was a year I had set aside and allowed myself to ease back. (If you consider preparing for a marathon “easing back”) This year I’m a little edgier but time is slipping by and still a lot of things that need to be done still don’t get done.
The executive mindset is this: you focus on the task at hand. Get it done however and not get wedded to a certain ideology. Do it today, not do it tomorrow.
You know what we all say in engineering: a good solution today is better than a perfect solution tomorrow. Unfortunately we are all in the “perfect solution tomorrow” department. I see a lot of people who are more or less wedded to that mindset, dreaming about a better, more glorious tomorrow. Well I don't bank on being around when tomorrow comes. Or they forget about the law of unintended consequences: the big snazzy solution that you come up with today will be screwed up in a way that you currently are still unable to imagine.
Well good luck to me being able to change my mindset. This has taken forever.
When you get closer to the frontline, it’s not so much thinking anymore. It’s a lot less being right about everything, and just a little more of doing. A lot more of making do, making compromises, a lot more of just doing a good job instead of doing a perfect job.
I know a lot of people at my workplace have invested a lot in a certain branch of management science. It sounded wonderful and intriguing at first when I heard about it but later on I grew to not like it very much. (And believe me it’s not very nice when you don’t like your job.) There is often a very big misfit between theory and reality and every time this misfit gets too large, it makes my stomach churn.
Yes, I know, I did pure maths. But I was comfortable with that because I never ever have to deal with a clash of cultures. I never have to make approximations, sweep some aspects of the problem under the carpet. Anyway I thought I would get more into that mode of executive thinking. This is something that I’ve always been a little weak in, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever cut it in management and stuff like that.
I know that, as a consequence of me having an elite education at just about every stage, there are naturally people who see me as one of those who put a little too much emphasis on book knowledge. While this is partially true, I also have parents who constantly drummed into me the limits of that. Like NWA said, "you are about to witness the strength of street knowledge". I have always understood the importance of street knowledge, even though, well, I hardly put that into practice.
I have always been a procrastinator, a ditherer. It is very true that a lot of people have brains that are wired up differently. This is the P-J axis on the Myers Briggs test – perceiving or judging? Perceiving people take a long time to think about things, and they go through a lot of very interesting but possibly marginal thoughts. Judging people make decisions quickly, and they stick to it. But in the event they are wrong, you probably have to break a chair over their head in order to convince them they are wrong. Generally, P and J people tend to drive each other up the wall. Among my friends and acquaintances, I have a rough idea who are the P and J people.
Needless to say, I am a P person. Unfortunately J is much more suitable for a corporate environment. So you could say I’m in here to learn a little bit more J thinking.
Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of reasons why I loathe the executive mindset, and why it never was my natural mode of thinking. I have a distaste for people who jump right to conclusions. I always believe that I can come up with a better idea when I wait just a little longer. I never really liked the corporate mentality which focused everything on the profit and bottom line. We all know that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but why is this so? Because most of us are corporation slaves who dedicate our lives to just this cause, whether we like it or not. Every time we squeeze out a little bit more of corporate profits, we are making some rich motherfucker even richer.
In a more general sense I don't like the executive mindset because it optimises the situation according to some narrowly defined criterion and says "fuck you" to everything else. You maximise profits, and some poor sucker elsewhere gets screwed. You maximise your wealth, but you piss other people off by pissing on them. Or you jeopardise your own mental health and your happiness.
In "Wall Street", Gordon Gecko says "greed is good. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit" I agree with the second part. But does it follow, then, that greed is good?
But I am willing to hold up my hands and say that a lot of the time, greed is good. Making snap judgements, trusting your instincts, saying the first good thing that comes to your mind, at least doing something instead of nothing, is good.
I’m not a man of action, rather I’m one of thought. But I need to get it all straightened out now and I suppose submitting myself to this sort of discipline is one way to proceed. When I was younger I used to have this disdain for management theory, management thinking. But I suppose it’s because there are a lot of intellectual creases in there that needs to be ironed out. Everything you do, you do it for a certain reason, but there are also a handful of reasons not to do that thing too. If you think too much, you could get immobilized by the inaction. Therefore it’s just useful to not think too much, just do it, have a stronger stomach, and just learn to say fuck that shit.
I used to put a lot of obstacles in front of me, so that I wouldn’t have to do anything. I don’t know if it’s just my way of avoiding responsibility, but this has been going on for a little too long. I suppose I read a lot of books because I enjoyed the knowledge, but I think I also enjoyed the lack of stress and the indolence from just curling up in front of a book, and kidding myself that a lot of good knowledge was going up into my head. The fact that this was partially true, I guess, just allowed me to go on a little longer. I would say that last year was a year I had set aside and allowed myself to ease back. (If you consider preparing for a marathon “easing back”) This year I’m a little edgier but time is slipping by and still a lot of things that need to be done still don’t get done.
The executive mindset is this: you focus on the task at hand. Get it done however and not get wedded to a certain ideology. Do it today, not do it tomorrow.
You know what we all say in engineering: a good solution today is better than a perfect solution tomorrow. Unfortunately we are all in the “perfect solution tomorrow” department. I see a lot of people who are more or less wedded to that mindset, dreaming about a better, more glorious tomorrow. Well I don't bank on being around when tomorrow comes. Or they forget about the law of unintended consequences: the big snazzy solution that you come up with today will be screwed up in a way that you currently are still unable to imagine.
Well good luck to me being able to change my mindset. This has taken forever.
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Nobel Peace Prize
There’s a lot of talk about the Nobel Prize going to Obama. One insight suddenly struck me: Nobel prizes are always given out early. Too early, some might say. No, I think the prizes are too precious to be given away when somebody’s work is done. Most people would think that Nobel Prizes are given to commemorate work that has been done. But Alfred Nobel himself said that the prize was to be given out to living people. I suppose the spirit was to encourage them to continue their efforts, and to show their efforts at peace in a positive light.
There were prizes that were meant to honour causes, even as the struggle was going on. Lech Walesa was given the prize in 1983 for his struggle against communism, when the communist Polish government was only starting to weaken. Desmond Tutu was given the prize while South Africa was still under Apartheid. Aung San Suu Kyii was given the prize, even though since 1991, when the prize was given, not much has improved in Myanmar. Closer to home, Archbishop Belo and Ramos Horta were given the prize while the East Timor struggle for independence was still going on, and before they gained independence.
There are prizes who were given to people whose moral character are seriously in question. They gave the prize to Kissinger. Even though it was for a worthy act – the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War, there are many people who consider him a mass murderer because of his conduct of the Vietnam War, and because he ordered Cambodia to be bombed – an act that helped bring Pol Pot to power.
There was also Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat. The first was the Israeli President who, when he was a general, murdered thousands of Palestinians. The second was the Egyptian leader who was a dictator who oversaw the torture of many political enemies. But the fact remains that a large part of the Israeli conflict – the one with Egypt – was more or less resolved.
There was Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. They set in motion a roadmap for peace, but that was tragically derailed and if anything, the heightened expectations from that brief glimpse of peace worsened the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Seems like they gave the prize to a terrorist for nothing.
Then there was the Dalai Lama. I don’t really know the story very well, and there are always two sides to every story. This was definitely meant to highlight the Tibetian struggle for freedom, if not independence. But I don’t really know how much they contributed to the Tibetian freedom movement. On one hand it’s positive for him to put emphasis on non-violent struggle against China, and to spotlight the sufferings of the Tibetian under the PRC government. But I don’t know if it’s really peaceful when the knowledge that you have a government in exile incited a lot of riots and unrest leading up to the Olympics.
It is true that the Nobel Prize to the Dalai Lama is a rebuke to China. The one awarded to Aung San Suu Kyii is also one, but less so: Burma had close ties with China, but less so now. There were prizes awarded to some lady from Guatemala, and that can be seen as a rebuke to the US as well. I don’t really think that China is complaining that the prizes are unfair because lately, there are some prizes over the last few years that make very similar political points:
2002 – prize went to Jimmy Carter, former US president. Not an effective president while in office, but after his presidency was over, he did a lot of diplomatic work. Message to George Bush 2: look at him, and learn from him. He is a man of peace, unlike you.
2007 – prize went to Al Gore, George Bush’s opponent in the 2000 elections. OK, he did a lot of pushing for environmental issues, but he wasn’t the one who did the most work. In fact, some people accused him of undermining the Kyoto Protocol. Whether he deserves the prize is secondary. What is of greater importance is the message that Mother Earth is in deep shit. Message to George Bush 2: This is the guy that should have been president instead of you.
2005 - Prize went to IAEA and their director-general ElBaradei, who very vocally criticized the USA’s decision to go to war with Iraq. Message to George Bush 2: This guy said that Saddam Hussein had no WMD, and you should have bloody well listened to him instead of leading the US into war with Iraq.
2009 – prize went to Barack Obama, whose main foreign policy achievement in his as of now short stay in the White House was to repeal a lot of George Bush 2’s policies. Message to George Bush 2: we couldn’t wait for you to leave office soon enough and we gave the prize to your replacement at the earliest given opportunity.
There were prizes that were meant to honour causes, even as the struggle was going on. Lech Walesa was given the prize in 1983 for his struggle against communism, when the communist Polish government was only starting to weaken. Desmond Tutu was given the prize while South Africa was still under Apartheid. Aung San Suu Kyii was given the prize, even though since 1991, when the prize was given, not much has improved in Myanmar. Closer to home, Archbishop Belo and Ramos Horta were given the prize while the East Timor struggle for independence was still going on, and before they gained independence.
There are prizes who were given to people whose moral character are seriously in question. They gave the prize to Kissinger. Even though it was for a worthy act – the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War, there are many people who consider him a mass murderer because of his conduct of the Vietnam War, and because he ordered Cambodia to be bombed – an act that helped bring Pol Pot to power.
There was also Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat. The first was the Israeli President who, when he was a general, murdered thousands of Palestinians. The second was the Egyptian leader who was a dictator who oversaw the torture of many political enemies. But the fact remains that a large part of the Israeli conflict – the one with Egypt – was more or less resolved.
There was Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. They set in motion a roadmap for peace, but that was tragically derailed and if anything, the heightened expectations from that brief glimpse of peace worsened the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Seems like they gave the prize to a terrorist for nothing.
Then there was the Dalai Lama. I don’t really know the story very well, and there are always two sides to every story. This was definitely meant to highlight the Tibetian struggle for freedom, if not independence. But I don’t really know how much they contributed to the Tibetian freedom movement. On one hand it’s positive for him to put emphasis on non-violent struggle against China, and to spotlight the sufferings of the Tibetian under the PRC government. But I don’t know if it’s really peaceful when the knowledge that you have a government in exile incited a lot of riots and unrest leading up to the Olympics.
It is true that the Nobel Prize to the Dalai Lama is a rebuke to China. The one awarded to Aung San Suu Kyii is also one, but less so: Burma had close ties with China, but less so now. There were prizes awarded to some lady from Guatemala, and that can be seen as a rebuke to the US as well. I don’t really think that China is complaining that the prizes are unfair because lately, there are some prizes over the last few years that make very similar political points:
2002 – prize went to Jimmy Carter, former US president. Not an effective president while in office, but after his presidency was over, he did a lot of diplomatic work. Message to George Bush 2: look at him, and learn from him. He is a man of peace, unlike you.
2007 – prize went to Al Gore, George Bush’s opponent in the 2000 elections. OK, he did a lot of pushing for environmental issues, but he wasn’t the one who did the most work. In fact, some people accused him of undermining the Kyoto Protocol. Whether he deserves the prize is secondary. What is of greater importance is the message that Mother Earth is in deep shit. Message to George Bush 2: This is the guy that should have been president instead of you.
2005 - Prize went to IAEA and their director-general ElBaradei, who very vocally criticized the USA’s decision to go to war with Iraq. Message to George Bush 2: This guy said that Saddam Hussein had no WMD, and you should have bloody well listened to him instead of leading the US into war with Iraq.
2009 – prize went to Barack Obama, whose main foreign policy achievement in his as of now short stay in the White House was to repeal a lot of George Bush 2’s policies. Message to George Bush 2: we couldn’t wait for you to leave office soon enough and we gave the prize to your replacement at the earliest given opportunity.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
Health Care
Sent my grandmother to a stomach endoscopy. She had a real problem 1 year ago, when it always seemed that her stomach was upset. Now it’s getting better. Still, I decided to get her to go to a stomach endoscopy to see what was going on. I tricked her into going into a barium enema last year, and boy that was messy. I wanted to get her a colonoscope, but she saw the doctor without me around and she opted for the lesser option. As it turns out, there was no cancer but you can’t really see very much from a barium enema – just some shitty X ray images, whereas the colonoscope gets you a shot of the ass in full technicolour gory.
OK, I’m a bit sadistic. You know me, I’m the sort of guy who thinks that the infamous “bring out the gimp” scene in Pulp Fiction was funny. (Actually I’m not alone). After the barium enema, my grandmother was groaning, “you’re doing this for your own amusement aren’t you?” I didn’t deny that. Well I got her stomach checked too. OK, maybe these problems come and go. Maybe she was just getting anxious about her facilities leaving her one by one, and it’s OK.
But it’s OK. I go to Tan Tock Seng, and the place looks like it’s well run. It works. Doctors are busy, and they’re always busy. But the place is well maintained. Yes, it does help that Singapore has cheap and abundant foreign labour.
I don’t know what the US hospitals are like because I’ve never been in one. (Not even after 4 years). But from what my sister tells me, she’s being overworked. I should have remembered that the US health care system is being stretched thin before I gave her my moral support to become a doctor (I was the first one in my family to do so, and for quite a while, the only one). I don’t know whether it was a mistake for me to do so. On balance, I still believe that medicine is the right career for her.
Still, the general impression I get is that health insurance companies which are providing health care for the Americans are always trying to squeeze every last drop out of the system, by forcing doctors to see more patients in shorter periods of time, and giving her shit loads of paperwork because of the litigious culture in the US of MF A.
One of the first few things that Bill Clinton did as president was to get the health care passed. He gave the problem to Hillary, who worked on it behind closed doors, came up with a 1000 page proposal, which was shot down in Congress (doesn’t that remind you of working life already?).
It’s a problem that has come to a head recently, with Obama fighting to get universal health coverage passed in the US. There have been a lot of public protests against this, of late, and the insurance companies which have been fighting against this are suspected of organizing more than a few of these protests. Many people have been falsely labeling as socialism. I just realized that the US have this culture where they are extremely suspicious of any form of government. But they’re not doing themselves any favours like this. It’s a bloody shame that the world’s richest country cannot take care of their poor.
I haven’t watched the Michael Moore movie “Sicko” yet but I think I’ll go have a look.
OK, I’m a bit sadistic. You know me, I’m the sort of guy who thinks that the infamous “bring out the gimp” scene in Pulp Fiction was funny. (Actually I’m not alone). After the barium enema, my grandmother was groaning, “you’re doing this for your own amusement aren’t you?” I didn’t deny that. Well I got her stomach checked too. OK, maybe these problems come and go. Maybe she was just getting anxious about her facilities leaving her one by one, and it’s OK.
But it’s OK. I go to Tan Tock Seng, and the place looks like it’s well run. It works. Doctors are busy, and they’re always busy. But the place is well maintained. Yes, it does help that Singapore has cheap and abundant foreign labour.
I don’t know what the US hospitals are like because I’ve never been in one. (Not even after 4 years). But from what my sister tells me, she’s being overworked. I should have remembered that the US health care system is being stretched thin before I gave her my moral support to become a doctor (I was the first one in my family to do so, and for quite a while, the only one). I don’t know whether it was a mistake for me to do so. On balance, I still believe that medicine is the right career for her.
Still, the general impression I get is that health insurance companies which are providing health care for the Americans are always trying to squeeze every last drop out of the system, by forcing doctors to see more patients in shorter periods of time, and giving her shit loads of paperwork because of the litigious culture in the US of MF A.
One of the first few things that Bill Clinton did as president was to get the health care passed. He gave the problem to Hillary, who worked on it behind closed doors, came up with a 1000 page proposal, which was shot down in Congress (doesn’t that remind you of working life already?).
It’s a problem that has come to a head recently, with Obama fighting to get universal health coverage passed in the US. There have been a lot of public protests against this, of late, and the insurance companies which have been fighting against this are suspected of organizing more than a few of these protests. Many people have been falsely labeling as socialism. I just realized that the US have this culture where they are extremely suspicious of any form of government. But they’re not doing themselves any favours like this. It’s a bloody shame that the world’s richest country cannot take care of their poor.
I haven’t watched the Michael Moore movie “Sicko” yet but I think I’ll go have a look.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
History of numbernine’s facial hair
Before I was 17, I was under orders from my mother not to cut it. I started growing this ridiculous moustache which made me look ugly. She was so adamant that she was right that I got severely berated for trying to cut it. I was made to pull out my beard with a pair of tweezers. (I never used it on my upper lip - too painful). The impression was that if you shaved yourself, then your hair became thicker. First, later on I learnt that it was bull. Second, I got more problems trying to pluck my hair out with tweezers than by shaving. Last of all, I learnt not to trust women when it comes to knowing anything about facial hair.
I finally got my own shaver not long after. It was a small Braun shaver. My father liked Braun shavers, and he always used electric shavers. He didn’t use a razor because he always cut himself.
While in the army, I used the Braun. There was this sergeant, he didn’t really like me, so during morning inspections, he always used the excuse that I had stubble to pump me. I know there’s always a bit of bad blood between the farmers and the geeks. My revenge is to never ever not be a geek, because I know the mere fact of my existence makes them pissed off - but that’s another story for another time. It’s true, though, that electric shavers are not that clean.
I went to college, and when I shaved, I didn’t go out for 1 hour. I used to have cuts all the time. I started using the razor. I used the old Gillette models because the Gillette III was so expensive to be a rip off. I used the Gillette III once - it is a great product, because I never get cut while using it, but it’s still too bloody expensive. I also used shaving foam, because it was the cool thing to do.
I bought some shaving balm - I needed it. So it was - shave, slather on some shaving balm, get into my bath tub and study some more, then 15 minutes later, wash away those bloody red patches. It was gross.
I experimented here and there. I found out a few things, that shaving tends to be easier when you haven’t shaven for 3-4 days, when your skin isn’t dry and scaly, when you didn’t cut yourself the previous day, when you are using shaving cream.
One day, I made the biggest breakthrough - the secret formula (which wouldn’t be a secret if I had bothered to ask somebody who knows how to use a razor). Wet the skin first before you put on the shaving foam. After that secret, it was so much easier. I’m still guaranteed to cut myself after using the razor, but not as badly as before.
What do I apply to my face after a shave? I used to use shaving lotion or shaving gel. That was OK. I bought a small bottle of aftershave, but there’s too much alcohol in that, an it dehydrates my face, making it difficult for me the next time around, so that’s bad. Shaving lotion works best for me.
I don’t have steady hands. I need all the help I can get. I’m pretty hairy for a Chinese. My father is one of the hairiest Chinese guys that I’ve ever seen and he shaves just about every day. He has chest hair, something I don’t even have. I used to ask my grandmother if she had an affair with an Indian. Myself I’m quite hairy too, so I have to shave myself every day. But I’m a little lax, so I make it every other working day, and no shaving on the weekends. The last thing that makes shaving difficult for me is that I have a sharp chin, so it’s difficult to get at all the angular bits without more blood. Yes, shaving’s quite a bit of a drag.
There was once when I fractured my right hand, and had to go through life doing everything with my left. Shaving became a big problem. The few times I had to shave were a total disaster, and it looked like a horror film after I finished.
I also use my electric shaver, because if I don’t do that my face will get razor fatigue. It used to be very difficult to get a clean shave from my electric shaver, so I found out that wetting my face did the trick. I didn’t have to worry about water getting into the electric shaver, it was meant to be water proof to a certain extent. First time I wet my face and shaved with the electric, though I had a nasty experience. I allowed the stubble to build up in the shaver before I cleaned it out. But the first time I cleaned it out, there were lice all over the stubble that was inside the electric, so it was gross. So I have to clean out the shaver every time I use it. No big deal, that.
I have used the same electric shaver for more than 10 years now and I should change to a new one, but I think this one still has a few more good years in it.
The last thing to learn was this: I always wondered why I cut myself more with the razor in temperate countries than in Singapore. Finally I found out: when you are shaving, always shave with warm water.
So my father still doesn’t know how to use a razor, but I do. Yay!
OK, to sum up, this is how to shave.
Step 1: Clean your face.
Step 2: If your face is not wet, wet it. Of course, just wet the part you have to shave, unless you enjoy being wet. But only girls enjoy being wet. Use warm water.
Step 3: Put on the shaving cream / foam.
Step 4: Shave. Use a razor with a pivoting razor head for ease of use. Shave in any direction you want, although some people feel that shaving against the direction of your hairs is wrong. Use a clean motion with every stroke. Always shave in a direction perpendicular to the blade, never parallel. Do not press too hard on your face, but emphasise the sideways motion.
Step 5: Put some after shave lotion on your face, and wash it 5 minutes later.
I finally got my own shaver not long after. It was a small Braun shaver. My father liked Braun shavers, and he always used electric shavers. He didn’t use a razor because he always cut himself.
While in the army, I used the Braun. There was this sergeant, he didn’t really like me, so during morning inspections, he always used the excuse that I had stubble to pump me. I know there’s always a bit of bad blood between the farmers and the geeks. My revenge is to never ever not be a geek, because I know the mere fact of my existence makes them pissed off - but that’s another story for another time. It’s true, though, that electric shavers are not that clean.
I went to college, and when I shaved, I didn’t go out for 1 hour. I used to have cuts all the time. I started using the razor. I used the old Gillette models because the Gillette III was so expensive to be a rip off. I used the Gillette III once - it is a great product, because I never get cut while using it, but it’s still too bloody expensive. I also used shaving foam, because it was the cool thing to do.
I bought some shaving balm - I needed it. So it was - shave, slather on some shaving balm, get into my bath tub and study some more, then 15 minutes later, wash away those bloody red patches. It was gross.
I experimented here and there. I found out a few things, that shaving tends to be easier when you haven’t shaven for 3-4 days, when your skin isn’t dry and scaly, when you didn’t cut yourself the previous day, when you are using shaving cream.
One day, I made the biggest breakthrough - the secret formula (which wouldn’t be a secret if I had bothered to ask somebody who knows how to use a razor). Wet the skin first before you put on the shaving foam. After that secret, it was so much easier. I’m still guaranteed to cut myself after using the razor, but not as badly as before.
What do I apply to my face after a shave? I used to use shaving lotion or shaving gel. That was OK. I bought a small bottle of aftershave, but there’s too much alcohol in that, an it dehydrates my face, making it difficult for me the next time around, so that’s bad. Shaving lotion works best for me.
I don’t have steady hands. I need all the help I can get. I’m pretty hairy for a Chinese. My father is one of the hairiest Chinese guys that I’ve ever seen and he shaves just about every day. He has chest hair, something I don’t even have. I used to ask my grandmother if she had an affair with an Indian. Myself I’m quite hairy too, so I have to shave myself every day. But I’m a little lax, so I make it every other working day, and no shaving on the weekends. The last thing that makes shaving difficult for me is that I have a sharp chin, so it’s difficult to get at all the angular bits without more blood. Yes, shaving’s quite a bit of a drag.
There was once when I fractured my right hand, and had to go through life doing everything with my left. Shaving became a big problem. The few times I had to shave were a total disaster, and it looked like a horror film after I finished.
I also use my electric shaver, because if I don’t do that my face will get razor fatigue. It used to be very difficult to get a clean shave from my electric shaver, so I found out that wetting my face did the trick. I didn’t have to worry about water getting into the electric shaver, it was meant to be water proof to a certain extent. First time I wet my face and shaved with the electric, though I had a nasty experience. I allowed the stubble to build up in the shaver before I cleaned it out. But the first time I cleaned it out, there were lice all over the stubble that was inside the electric, so it was gross. So I have to clean out the shaver every time I use it. No big deal, that.
I have used the same electric shaver for more than 10 years now and I should change to a new one, but I think this one still has a few more good years in it.
The last thing to learn was this: I always wondered why I cut myself more with the razor in temperate countries than in Singapore. Finally I found out: when you are shaving, always shave with warm water.
So my father still doesn’t know how to use a razor, but I do. Yay!
OK, to sum up, this is how to shave.
Step 1: Clean your face.
Step 2: If your face is not wet, wet it. Of course, just wet the part you have to shave, unless you enjoy being wet. But only girls enjoy being wet. Use warm water.
Step 3: Put on the shaving cream / foam.
Step 4: Shave. Use a razor with a pivoting razor head for ease of use. Shave in any direction you want, although some people feel that shaving against the direction of your hairs is wrong. Use a clean motion with every stroke. Always shave in a direction perpendicular to the blade, never parallel. Do not press too hard on your face, but emphasise the sideways motion.
Step 5: Put some after shave lotion on your face, and wash it 5 minutes later.
Law of Large Numbers
I wrote the music when I was running at McRitchie. Night fell and I was groping my way around in the forest for a while.
I wrote the first part of the lyrics while driving. It's my favourite set of lyrics so far. The middle section has no purpose other than to wind up people who don't like maths.
If I had a time machine
to bring me back to yesterday
before I screwed it up,
Would I do it differently
or would I do it all again
because I'm being me?
Who is to say, if I didn't do that yesterday
I wouldn't do the same dumb thing
on another day?
Statistical theory:
the action of an agent is
the realisation of
that which is inherently
a trait deeply embedded in his
personality
Repeated instances of that experiment
will show me screw it up again -
the Law of Large Numbers!
McCartney had it wrong,
There is no going back into
a fabled "yesterday"
Walk on by and don't look back
the things you never get are the
things you never had.
I wrote the first part of the lyrics while driving. It's my favourite set of lyrics so far. The middle section has no purpose other than to wind up people who don't like maths.
If I had a time machine
to bring me back to yesterday
before I screwed it up,
Would I do it differently
or would I do it all again
because I'm being me?
Who is to say, if I didn't do that yesterday
I wouldn't do the same dumb thing
on another day?
Statistical theory:
the action of an agent is
the realisation of
that which is inherently
a trait deeply embedded in his
personality
Repeated instances of that experiment
will show me screw it up again -
the Law of Large Numbers!
McCartney had it wrong,
There is no going back into
a fabled "yesterday"
Walk on by and don't look back
the things you never get are the
things you never had.
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