Saturday, 28 November 2009

Relationships

http://tofreedomwithlove.blogspot.com

Well well well look at what we find when we’re snooping around on facebook. A former colleague putting up their blog for public consumption – only going to spell the URL because I dowan to link my blog to his blog. Last time Nat unwisely chose to link to my blog and he got outed. (OK maybe not unwisely because it doesn’t matter to him but still…)

On a (*cough cough* unrelated) note, I’m going to talk about what little I know about dealing with women.

What I want in a girl:
1. Intelligence.
2. Not lazy
3. Artistic

Notice that I didn’t mention physical attractiveness. It is not necessary. Any girl who is good enough in these 3 points, and is not physically deformed would be good enough. Remember what people say about “there aren’t any ugly women, only lazy women?” That’s what I mean.

4. Gets along well with girls.

Now this is important. There are a some women out there, especially the chiobus, who always claim they get along better with the guys. This is a red flag. Once somebody admits that, well you should count them out as your girlfriend. These women are trouble. Reason number 1: the main reason why they say they get along better with men than women is because men will give them a wider berth. Men think that they’re cute, and let them get away with a lot of bullshit. Women tend to hold other women to reasonable standards. Reason number 2: these women tend to have a lot of guy friends and it’s too easy for them to replace you. There is a natural mechanism which prevents your woman from having her way with other guys. Women tend to see such women as immoral and at the very least, there will be that “tut tut” of disapproval. Guys will also have that “tut tut” but it will be conflated with the natural thought “maybe I could get a piece of that ass for myself”.

The barometer for reasonable behaviour in a woman is other women.

5. Kindness.

I look at the women I’ve had crushes on (not many I can tell you, I can count them on 2 hands, maybe even 1) and for some reason they don’t really have much in common with each other.

OK, the basics for a relationship.

1. Is there a one and only girl who is the right one for you?

No. There are thousands, even millions of women out there with the right stuff. But you will only need one, and she will only be a right one for you after you’ve gotten to know each other well enough. This is one of the most common questions teenagers ask about relationships and the sooner this is answered, the better.

2. Why can’t women understand me, and see past the surface and get to the real me?

There are usually 2 reasons why women aren’t going to like the real you. First is that you are not expressing yourself well. It is possible to fix this: it is neither easy or hard. Second is that there is something wrong with the real you. Fixing this is hard. But it is worth it.

Another thing that could go wrong is that you may be looking for the wrong kind of women. Don’t go for women who are “out of your league”. A lot of the time, they aren’t worth it. Sensible people can get through life without being drop dead gorgeous. And conversely, if you are drop dead gorgeous, people will want to be with you for all the wrong reasons. If you’re not strong enough to deal with it then too bad for you. Being drop dead gorgeous is like a mild version of being famous. Everybody wants a piece of you.

3. What do women look for in a man?

I don’t know. I can’t answer that. But my guess is: strength, beauty and compatibility.

Physical strength is attractive for obvious reasons. Mental strength, more so. Women want a guy who takes care of her. There is power, which manifests itself as a more active form of strength. But there is also the inner strength, the tensile strengh, how to become calm when a storm is raging all around you, how you handle matters properly. How to not read some remarks wrongly and get upset when

Beauty - that would be aesthetics. The things that you do that appeal to her aesthetically. She might want you for a handsome face, or a sexy body. Or you're just very good at hitting her right spot. Or all sorts of irrational things that she might like in you, like the way that you walk, or your dress sense.

Compatibility is actually the beauty of the couple rather than the beauty of your individual self. You might be on the same wavelength, and she might just be a female version of you. Or you might be total opposites, and you just make up for what's lacking in each other. Your partnership may be a Vieira and Petit, or a Cole and Yorke.

But all that is theory. Practice is another thing.

Monday, 23 November 2009

"Perfect Day"

It was near the end of my take-home exam. As usual, I only started work on it the 3rd day. But the proofs were more or less sketched out. Yet I, the inveterate procrastinator waited until I had to stay up all night on the 6th night, before I started writing everything down.

On the 6th night, I got home to find codfish online. We had a cyber relationship for a few months, but it was breaking down. For a while, she thought nothing of feeding my insecurities until one day, on Valentine’s day, I tore into her with every insult that I could think of. We made up after that, but things were never really the same.

Things came to a head that night. I can’t remember the exact details, but that night was the night that I knew, in no uncertain terms, that it was over. It was the first time I was heartbroken, and as some of you might know, the first time is the worst.

There was still the take-home exam to do. I was writing it up while curled up in my favourite bathtub. Soon it was dawn. I only slept for 2 hours, and the first class, where I had to hand up my take-home exam, I passed by in a zombie state.

For the second class, I had to make a presentation that covered the whole period. It started OK, then when I was halfway through the proof, I made a mistake, and the professor leapt upon it immediately. I got annoyed with him and answered back. My mind was blank, and he challenged me with a vindictiveness that I found quite unnerving in that mental state – heartbroken and sleep deprived. In the end, I discovered my own mistake, and recovered to finish the rest of my presentation. Some in the class were probably repulsed by the angry, bitter expression etched on my face. For most of them, however, it was just one more higher mathematics class, when you have long since lost the thread of the original argument. They stared ahead in blank boredom.

After the lesson was over, an acquaintance, to whom I hardly spoke to, but who had been my classmate for various courses, came to me, and said, “He’s a PhD. He’s qualified to take your argument apart like that.” I smiled weakly at him. If only he knew the rest of the story!

If people were to ask me, “what is the worst day of your uni days?” I would definitely tell them about that day. But you have to see it in a larger context. The breakup with codfish was inevitable. I even knew it was going to happen from day 1. We stayed friends for a few years after that. For the 2 maths courses, I got an A and an A-. In the larger picture, nothing I did on that day was truly damaging. Except maybe it was very bad for morale.

So why am I telling you this? Because I just went through a minor version of what happened on that day. There were some things I didn't know until the night, and that was when I figured out why ppl were suddenly so nice to me.

Sunday, 22 November 2009

When Harry Met Sally

If nothing else, this is a public service announcement: “When Harry Met Sally” is available on youtube.

I watched “When Harry Met Sally” for the third time, tonight. The first and second times were before 1992, and definitely way before I was experienced at this romantic thing yet. (In fact the 3rd time I’m not much more experienced than the first 2 times.)

It is the “Seinfeld” of romantic comedies. It’s less the story of Harry and Sally than it is a repository of wisdom on the mating rituals of human beings. Billy Crystal is the hardened, cynical comic and Meg Ryan is the cutesy little girl.

When I watch the movie, I start to realize that it has some kind of architecture to it that I didn’t appreciate when watching it while younger. Both had just endured sad ends to their previous relationships, and were looking to get hitched. They saw the ugly sides of each other, as friends. There were other misadventures, such as the times when they introduced their best friends to each other and set them up on a double date. Instead of hitting it off with each other’s best friends, the 2 best friends got hitched to each other. That was funny. Eventually though, a sympathy fuck leads to a crisis and a resolution. They get hitched up and their friendship becomes a romantic relationship.

Some of the conversations have been classics. I didn’t know that the term “high maintenance” was popularized by this movie. The concept of the “transitional” relation. Most importantly, given the centrality of the platonic relationship between Harry and Sally, the big question – can a man find a woman attractive and still be platonic friends with her?

Very talky romantic movies have reminded me of Rohmer, who is a favourite of mine, as I have watched more than 10 of his movies. This is different from Rohmer, because in Rohmer films everybody is an unreliable narrator. The people in this movie are extremely canny and intelligent, and always speak the truth. The reason why this film is a classic is because there is so much wisdom in these conversations.

A lot of the earlier reviewers missed out on this aspect, rightly criticizing the relationship between Harry and Sally for being artificial and not convincing. Harry and Sally are at their most compelling when they are friends, telling each other stories about their own misadventures at love. There is almost a lifetime’s worth of good lines about romantic relationships. This is not a great movie about a romantic relationship. It is a great movie about people talking about the interesting things that happen during courtship.

In fact, think about the other movies that have been made about romantic relationships by either Nora Ephron or Rob Reiner. “Sleepless in Seattle”, “You Got Mail”

According to wikipedia, the biggest flaw in the movie is that Sally is merely cute and does not have much of a character, other than her obsessive compulsiveness, and her giving extremely exacting instructions when ordering food. The orgasm scene came about when the scriptwriter realized that Harry had been doing most of the talking, and they needed Sally to tell at least one interesting story.

If you were to ask me, I would say that this is really a movie about friendship, not romance. This movie paints romantic relationships in such a bad light that you wonder why people bother at all. The guy just wants to have sex. He doesn’t want to hold the girl in the morning any more than they have to. A man and a woman cannot have a platonic relationship because in the end he wants to have sex. Harry’s pursuit of Sally early in the movie is somewhat distasteful because he’s so upfront about wanting to have sex with her. Sally, when you take away her cuteness, is quite one-dimensional. Women fake orgasms with men. Considering that this movie was written by a woman it’s surprising that the man is the more fleshed-out character in the movie.

What is more touching is the meaningful relationships that friends have with each other, how they talk through their problems. What was happening in the end, when Harry was going to win back Sally? First and foremost, he was trying to salvage a friendship that was placed in great jeopardy by one night of fucking.

Also, movies like these tend to illustrate one great principle: that the best talky romantic movies come from either France or New York City.

Saturday, 14 November 2009

Why Numbernine is Single

A lot of guys were asking me why I didn’t have a girlfriend. It’s high time you guys got a straight answer.

Reason #1: the last time I tried to have a girlfriend, it didn’t turn out that badly. She was hot. A lot of people were after her. Some said she was out of my league. But I managed to get her to pay attention to me, a person she hitherto hardly knew, and who was staying 12 time zones away, and I held her attention for 3-4 months. She could have anybody she wanted, and we both knew it. What happened?

I’m not calling myself a Casanova. But the conclusion is that “I’m not that bad at this, aren’t I?” So it was complacency. That I could start again when I was older, and it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.

But those of you on this blog who have been following the saga of 7-8 and water girl will recall that some ladies are immune to my charms. That sucked, although I found out much later that she felt that we were incompatible – and she was right.

Reason #2: I’m picky. It is not that I have to have the hottest member of the species for my member. It’s something like, if I were to say, I want to find the female version of numbernine. Hello, guys, have you ever seen the female version of numbernine? Have you seen anybody else who is remotely like me? I have to settle for a close enough approximation.

Personality is also very important. If somebody has got the body, but not the personality, I would ask her for a few nude pictures, and go off somewhere to jerk off. It's just not worth putting up with a bad person just because she looks great. It'd be great if you could show off a trophy girlfriend to all your friends but I don't have a lot of friends.

Reason #3: The last one ended badly. To be sure, I knew it was going to end. I knew it wouldn't last. But I wasn't prepared for the 4 months of depression I went through, having to juggle that with a busy study schedule, running my own household. I wondered if I had given up too much to a cyber-relationship and passing up great opportunities that you only got in a good uni. It's difficult to say if I regretted it, because you cannot discount how, when it was good, it was damn good. The highs were high and the lows were low. I needed some peace.

Reason #4: my sister and my cousins. My sister has been living overseas for 10 years. She's a hardy person, almost a masochist. But I get struck by how she goes from guy to guy around once every year. I never wanted to be like that. Breaking a relationship is just like dislocating your shoulder. If you do it too often, it will keep on popping out at inopportune moments. I never want that until I'm ready. This is a minor reason.

But reason #5 is the most important: I didn't make space for another person in my life. I seldom organised my life around more than 1 person, and that would be the biggest change for me. Accomodating somebody else in my life.

I had an ex-colleague who took it upon himself to push me towards getting a chick. I appreciated that but it's like that gym instructor who tells you 5 more sets when you're ready to give up. I called him mofo, or "manager of fucking operations". He used to tell me, don't be shy. Well if you've read this far, it was never about shyness. It's always about what happens after the first few dates, and you are about to embark on an adventure together. And then what?

I had never believed that I was going to be single forever. But I always wondered if I was old enough. I thought, I'll wait until I'm 30, and it should be easier. And in some sense I'd be right. But it will never be like it was in your 20s when you are really carefree. I thought, it would be just like it was the last time, I was wrong.

And sadly, there's no such thing as bad sex when you're in your 20s. But it doesn't get better after that. And if you didn't take advantage of that, that's unfortunate.

Punk

I think a lot has been written about punk. What does it mean? Why is it a movement? I’m not a good anthropologist, but punk is obviously something that I identify with. The punk movement became fashionable in Britain, and some parts of the USA in the late 70s, which was coincidently the time when I was born.

The fact that it exists means that the potential for it has always been there. There are always young people around, and some of them will always be rebellious. But probably it would not have been a worldwide movement until the 60s. That was the time when a privileged generation, the baby boomers was growing up in the West, and for the first time a large enough group of people actually had time on their hands to express rebellious attitudes towards society without being thrown into prison.

In 1968 there was a spontaneous wave of student rebellions all over the world. Many unis in the states had riots or had buildings taken over by students, including the one I went to. There were student protests in Mexico, and it ended up with the students getting fired upon. In Paris, where it ended up with Charles De Gaulle being forced out of power. In Prague, and the Russians ended up having to send in the tanks.

It was bizarre. I don’t really know what they were fighting about, but they were probably like young people everywhere, they thought that the older generation were corrupt and too conservative. They were going to build a better and more idealistic world. Sounds familiar isn’t it? They were protesting the Vietnam War. There were a lot of communist sympathisers. Ho Chih Minh, Mao, Castro and Che Guevara were their heroes.

I supposed that was one of the high points of radical leftist politics, because from the 1970s onwards, America slowly became a more and more conservative place, until you had the age of the Reagans and the Bushes.

Anyway, the way I knew about the punk movement was through music. In the beginning there were a few bands who wrote the blueprint of what punk was about. There was the Velvet Underground, who took a lot of minimalist ideas from modern classical music, and fused it with rock music. They used to be more influential than popular. Now they’re influential and popular. There were bands like the MC5 and the Stooges. They played a very abrasive and loud form of rock music, but it was stripped down and simplified. Iggy Pop is still alive and kicking today, even though Dave Alexander and Ron Asheton are not. He is as indestructible as a cartoon character. A heroin habit did not kill him. The propensity to slash himself over and over on stage did not kill him. Rolling around on broken glass in performances did not kill him. You probably wouldn’t know it by looking at him but he topped his high school.

Thereafter, there was a scene in New York, where bands like Blondie, Television, the Talking Heads (David Byrne performed in Singapore recently), the Ramones and the Patti Smith group developed a more arty form of punk. Punk music briefly became popular in 1977, through the music of the bands Sex Pistols and the Clash. Wire. There was a band in Australia called the Saints. Suddenly everybody was forming a band.

Inevitably (because punks are by nature very self destructive) the punk movement burned out. But even though it faded away from the scene, there were a lot of bands that carried on the tradition. There were Sonic Youth, REM and Husker Du, who were very heavily influenced by punk, and would very heavily influence generations of bands that followed them. There were Black Flag, Minor Threat and the Germs, who would be more faithful to the bare, stark angry ravings of the Sex Pistols.

More crucially, punk mutated into New Wave. The simplicity of punk music inspired many to do likewise: you had Duran Duran, Joy Division and U2. It wasn’t around anymore but it had a huge influence on 80s pop.

Suddenly, in the 90s, it took over the world. Around the time I started following music in a big way, a band called Nirvana took over the number 1 spot on the albums chart from Michael Jackson. For a few years after that, many bands which had toiled in the underground movement start putting out albums on major labels. Thus, you had Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone, Screaming Trees following in its wake. The Smashing Pumpkins. Radiohead. Stuff like that.

After that, numbernine grew up and switched to listening to Jazz, and has not concerned himself with matters of the punk world anymore.

Anyway, what characterises punk music? What’s it all about? In 1977, the first time it became popular, it was a rebellion against the idea of a rock star. The rock stars had become fat and lazy. They were too rich and flaunted their wealth too ostentatiously. Their music went down in quality, and their concerts dragged on for too long. So when punk music came along, it was a rude blast of fresh air.

Punk is anger and rebellion. It is simplicity. It is about revolution, railing against whatever happens to be the current system. Punks like to think of themselves as straightforward and true to their ideas, although sometimes I think they’re just confused. They despise folks who carry themselves in a courtly and aristocratic manner. Those people sometimes have to say things they don’t really mean in order to avoid giving offence. Punks dispense with such formalities. Punks are like guerillas, and they live in an austere environment. Punk is the confused teenage years. Punk is about sex, not love, although one punk love song that comes to mind is “Ever Fallen In Love With Someone You Shouldn’t Have” by the Buzzcocks. Even then it is important to note: punks seldom get the girl.

On the good side, they are energetic, and they signal change. When you hear one of the greatest punk bands, the Clash, you will be amazed at how simple and effective their early music is. They can write simple songs like the Beatles, although the Beatles never took their music to such extremes. Later on, Clash would throw all sorts of influences into their music, even though the main thrust was still punk.

I always thought that good punk music is very methodical and disciplined. You are forced to finish saying everything under 3 minutes, and you are only allowed to use 3 chords. (If you are Wire, then you are only allowed to use 1 chord, and your songs are shorter than 1 minute.) And if, in spite of all these self imposed constraints, you can still come up with something worthy, good for you.

On the bad side, they are lazy, good for nothing, irresponsible and blame “society” for the plight they are in. It is no surprise that they came up in a bad economic environment, as the UK found itself in the last few years before Thatcher took over. Bad punk music is repetitive, uninspired and mediocre. They get drunk and take drugs. Punk is about being defeated by the system. Note that the Clash chose to cover “I Fought the Law and the Law Won”.

Bart and Lisa Simpson are a little too different to be siblings, but in a way they represent two faces of youth culture. Bart is a punk, simple as that. Lisa is the idealistic activist. But there are similarities between the two. Deep within the spirit of punk, under that rebelliousness and love of freedom is an idealism that you can shape the world into your own image. After all, the other face of the coin of cynicism is idealism - in order to be that disappointed with the world, you probably had to have pretty high expectations of it in the first place. And lying deep under the idealism, is the realisation that left on its own, the world does not make itself a better place. Part of wanting to shake things up or turn a bad situation around is to stand and rebel against the status quo.

Punk is not for everybody. I have a cousin who’s fairly open minded about music, but he did not understand punk music. I suppose you need to have it in you to identify with the chaos and rage.

I have something of the punk in me, obviously. People are what they are - you can’t change them. If you put them in a school which is very obsessed with its own image and how it presents itself in public, people like me would spend hours plotting how to rebel against that. I spent 10 years being educated in classical music, but it never feels natural to me. Because classical music is the music of the aristocratic class, which I have no affinity for. I appreciate its intricacy and complexity, but I could not appreciate Mozart or Tchaikovsky or Haydn. Beethoven - he’s the nearest to a punk in those days. And I like modern classical music better because they were starting to do all that edgy, shrill, dissonant stuff.

For me to identify myself with many (not all) of these values, I think I have an innate predilection towards being rebellious. It’s OK, I guess. I have 2 halves sharing a tense co-existence with each other: one of them the rigorous geek. The other the punk rebel. Somebody has to be the bad egg. Somebody must have the chip on his shoulder to be critical. Somebody has to be the poison pen. We can’t all be sheep. A good scientist is also a rebel. Think about Noam Chomsky. Albert Einstein. Charles Darwin. OK, Chomsky is a nutcase when he’s not talking about Linguistics, but I still think his heart is in the right place. Everybody must have something to contribute to society. I contribute my middle finger.

I don’t really know why have these personality characteristics. So very unChinese of me. A lot of the more interesting fellars in all those old Chinese stories were the rebels, because if you were brought up in that kind of environment, and still ended up as a rebel, you really had to be crazy.

I’ve always seen my father as a boring accountant. But in the last 10 years he has gotten himself into a fair bit of activism, that has seen him get up the noses of some fairly important people. So I suppose I have had a lot more respect for him.

But it is not straight forward hero worship. He told me he just didn’t have it in him to be a brown noser. He couldn’t be a yes man for a long time. That would be true for me as well. There’s something to clarify - it’s not completely true that I have made the choice to be a rebel. Some things we do well, others we don’t do so well. To a large extent the role that you play in society is not yours to choose, it’s fate. Fate gives you a hand of cards and you just play them the best that you will. In a way, I have a very perverse respect for people who can control their gag reflex and suck up to people. In a way I almost think that they deserve their exalted place in society because it is their reward in a society which rewards that peculiar talent. Just as people think that it is unfair that great talent for being able to control a ball with your feet is so lucrative, it is inevitable that other useless talents are so well rewarded.

Friday, 13 November 2009

I forgot myself

The other day I was at the library in a strange part of Singapore. I found a book that was found in only 2 branches of the NLB, both in equally obscure locations. It was a 600+ page book on the first few years of the Spanish empire. I was itching to read about that one day, so I borrowed that book. Similarly, I saw some other books in that branch that weren’t available in my usual nlb haunts, so I proceeded to get some of those books.

All in all, it was 1 long bus ride to another location diametrically across the central water catchment area from where I lived, then a few stops on a few other nlb branches, and then another long bus ride back. When I got home, I was at first happy about my new pile of books, until I remembered something:

Spending the rest of my life with my nose in a book is not a desired outcome for me.

Instead, I was supposed to do the things that responsible adults are supposed to do. Make money. Make love. Go out and meet people. Read about the world today, not just about books. At the very least, I'm not supposed to add new entries to my "to read" list.

Thursday, 12 November 2009

Near Death Experience

I was coming back home late and quite sleepy. Just had tennis with some of my kakis. Was feeling quite sleepy, and then I went to surf the internet.

I turned on the computer, the main computer which my household uses. Its the second oldest computer in my house, and has been in service since 2003. Considering the amount of trash that we've built up on it, it's remarkable that it's working almost perfectly still. Of course it's not as well used as some of the computers at work, which run massive database queries every half an hour. We call them the comfort women of our department because they're always getting screwed.

2 years ago, my father bought an external hard drive. I don't really know if it's the traditional magnetic type or the flash type, which would make it an oversized thumb drive. Anyway he's always been telling me to back up the computer, back up his files, and I've always dithered. What if I didn't know how to use the hard drive?

Then today, it happened. I was just using the computer, and halfway through, the screen went blank. I tried to turn the computer back on, and somehow the monitor wouldn't receive the signal. Then I turned it off without shutting it down (which I know is bad for the computer but when there's no signal on the monitor there's no choice.)

After that, a few aborted attempts to turn the thing back on. The LED would just weakly light up, and nothing else happened.

Magically I was wide awake in an instant. I was like - shit. Something I told my old man I was going to do, and I didn't do it. I risked losing a shit load of data. (Actually I hadn't actually lost it. I would just send the computer down for servicing, and he would get it back with 95% probability.) The thought of causing him to lose all his work... He doesn't really know how to use a computer, and I'm always at his beck and call, there will be once or twice a week he would need something relatively simple to be done - some formatting with word, some cutting and pasting from a PDF file, some scanning. But for somebody who doesn't know how to use a computer, he's got an incredible shit load of data - how on earth did he manage to accumalate 4 gigs, none of it MP3s or videos? I was in full panic mode, trying to figure out how I was going to tell him - your stuff's gone because I kept on putting off saving the damn thing.

I knew the problem was with the power unit, so I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with the thing. Could I kick the computer? I would if I could, but that would almost certainly crash the hard disk. What if I could kick one part of the computer?

I opened the panel, and located what I thought was the power unit. Or I guessed that was it, because it was next to the fan. Then I started tapping away at it with my finger. Then I turned the computer back on.

BY GOLLY, A MIRACLE - THE DAMN THING WORKED!

So without a moment's hesitation, I backed up all the files onto his hard drive. And the funny thing is, it only took me about 1 hour. I procrastinated for 2 years over something that eventually took me 1 hour! Folks, this is why I will never amount to anything in life.

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

Kurt Cobain

Timeline:

1980s: Big hair bands ruled the day. Bon Jovi, Warrant, Poison. They were perceived to be more about image than music. During the 1980s, the major labels dominated the music scene.

Late 1980s: An underground scene emerges, formed by people who feel that the original values of rock and roll - teenage rebellion against society, anarchy, revolt against the established order – have been compromised by these large corporations who package rebellion and sell it to the masses.

1991: Kurt Cobain, a brilliant songwriter, forms Nirvana and storms to the top of the charts. He’s the vanguard of the underground scene that delivered a blow to the music industry that they’re still recovering from today, and broke their stranglehold on the upper reaches of the pop charts.

1992-1994: After releasing 3 albums of great music, Kurt Cobain is disenchanted with his heroin addiction, the pressures of fame and fortune. Most of all, he has become the person he hated the most – a rock star. Eventually, he kills himself. One of his last songs is titled “I Hate Myself And I Want To Die”.

2009: Kurt Cobain’s image is appropriated for Guitar Hero 5. He is portrayed as the ultimate rock star. He is singing Bon Jovi. A newspaper commentator remarks that it’s OK “because Kurt Cobain can’t kill himself a second time”. His widow, Courtney Love, hardly the most well liked personality in show business, goes apeshit.

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Football Betting Season 2 Weeks 9

First, I think this is one of the line ups of the Premier League which has the most number of former champions I have seen in a while.

Here is the line up, and next to each former champion, the last time they won the league.

Chelsea (2006)
Arsenal (2004)
Manchester United (2009)
Tottenham Hotspur (1961)
Aston Villa (1981)
Manchester City (1968)
Liverpool (1990)
Sunderland (1936)
Stoke City
Burnley (1960)
Fulham
Wigan Athletic
Blackburn Rovers (1995)
Everton (1987)
Birmingham
Bolton Wanderers
West Ham United
Wolverhampton Wanderers (1959)
Hull City
Portsmouth (1949)

Well, actually, the number is the same as last year, since 2 former champions were relegated - Newcastle (1927) and WBA (1920) and were replaced by Wolves and Burnley. Plus there were a few clubs that won the league before and played in a premiership a few years ago but funnily enough nobody seems to know where they are now: Sheffield Wednesday (1930), Derby (1975), Sheffield United(1898), Leeds (1992), Ipswich (1962).

So why am I telling you all this? IT's to distract from the fact that I had another depressing weekend at the bookies. It sounded like a sensible decision. Bet on Man City to win against Burnley, who are fading after a bright start. Bet on Arsenal to beat Wolves. Well Arsenal are in good shape now, and can wipe the floor with most of their opponents, including Man U. But Man City - what can I say? I was following the match on the internet while doing other surfing.

Burnley scored - I said "SHIT". Burnley scored again, I said "SHIT" again. Then Man City pulled 1 back before the break. I willed Man City on to score 2 more, and I knew they were capable of it. This they did. Then I went off to watch "Interview with the Vampire", one of those unwatched VCDs I have lying around and not doing anything. Then I turned on my computer again - "FUCK!" Burnley equalised and it was a draw!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK!

Man City - I write them off for now. They were good enough to beat Arsenal a few months ago, now it looks as though they might not even crack the top 4. Is there nobody you can rely on nowadays?

Sunday, 1 November 2009

Football Betting Season 2 Weeks 7-8

Last week was truly dreadful. I bet on 3 matches, and I lost on all of them. I bet on Wolves vs Aston Villa, thinking that Aston Villa were that much better than Wolves. I was wrong: Wolves put up a good show, they were at home, and this was a derby, which made the result harder to predict. In the end, Wolves snatched a draw and I lost money.

I also bet on Man U to beat Liverpool. This was a risky bet and I put a lower wager. It’s reasonable to believe that Liverpool is in a big mess right now: in the last few matches they lost to Fiorentina, Lyon, Sunderland, Fulham, and also their second team lost to Arsenal’s. This is relegation form. They lost all their matches in the last 3 weeks, except against their strongest opponent, Man U. There’s no legislating for this kind of inconsistency.

Last of all I bet on Arsenal to beat Weat Ham. It was going so well for me, they were 2 up, and then they just gave it away and drew.

This week, I didn’t bet. I would have bet on Chelsea to beat Bolton (they did), and on Man U to beat Blackburn (they did). But I would also have bet on Stoke to beat Wolves, and Wolves managed to claw back the points. I don’t know the betting amounts but I would have lost a few dollars.

The temptation was there to bet on Wigan to beat Portsmouth: Portsmouth are the current whipping boys, and Wigan had just performed well to be the first team to take points off Burnley at Turf Moor this season. But my policy is never to bet on a match that involves Wigan, and it shows: Portsmouth thrashed Wigan eventually.

I also made the right call not to bet on Liverpool to bet on Fulham, although it was impossible to call.

The lynchpin of my betting strategy is that we have big consistent performances by the big 4. This probably doesn’t happen until towards the end of the season, when everybody else is exhausted, and the big 4 can keep on going because they have been rotating their squads, or because their regular players are not human. It’s possible that I will have to lay off betting until after Christmas.

Edit: after this was posted I was mulling on whether to bet on Man City to beat Birmingham. I was about to bet on them, when I had this strange gut feeling that I shouldn't have. Thank god for that gut feeling - you can't rely on Man City to be able to beat everybody they're supposed to beat. They are, after all, Man City!

Punctuated Equilibrium

There are basically 2 theories about change. One of them is that it happens gradually, and the other is that it happens suddenly.

Take, for example, option pricing theory. The Black Scholes model assumes that share prices move continuously, ie they don’t jump. But a few catastrophic episodes which have wiped out the accounts of not a few hedge funds have proven the theory of gradual change to be wrong.

Take, for example, the theory of evolution. Even people who agree on evolution disagree vehemently about how evolution takes place. Richard Dawkins takes the adaptionist approach, and thinks that the species evolved continuously and steadily. Stephen Jay Gould believed in “punctured equilibrium” where species stayed the same most of the time, but underwent sudden changes in response to a sudden change in the environment, which killed off most of the population except for a small minority lucky enough to have the right mutation.

Take, for example, the great debate that arose among practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism: a group of them felt that enlightenment is gradual. And then there was the Linzhi school, who started the Zen tradition (yes, Zen is a Chinese invention, not Japanese) who contended that it was sudden.

I live life in punctuated equilibrium. A lot of things don’t change for a long time. I lead the same boring, normal life, and suddenly, when it changes, it changes completely.

Something turned my life upside down 20 years ago around now. (Actually you may recall that this was also around the time the Berlin wall fell, so just as well there were a lot of changes in the world as well.) 10 years ago, another big series of changes took place in a short time. It’s only looking back, now that I may be on the brink of another great set of changes, that I realized that these two epochs were placed almost 10 years apart.

10 years ago, things were in a great flux. It was that 2nd year in college.

I started thinking seriously about a career in science (because of my circumstances I had to seek a watered-down alternative – half a glass full or half empty depending on how you look at it).

I finally believed that I could be a composer. (I have written around 30? 40? Lost count – songs since then)

I fell in love. (this didn’t last)

I became a film buff (the object of my affections was a film buff. I haven’t talked to her for years but she now has a PhD in film studies.) This didn’t last, but for a while, as I started to absorb the possibilities of this art form, I spent a lot of mind-blowing evenings at the cinema. Most of my all time favourite films were those I watched around this period. I could never be a film buff for long because of the suspicion I was whiling my life away.

I decided to become a kinder, gentler person. (Quite unfortunately this didn’t last – any much longer than my love affair did.)

I became a bookworm / I took an arts minor. (Strictly speaking, this was not true. But I started a lot of reading courses because a lot of engineers sucked at them I wanted to know if I could survive them. I did. Later on, after graduation, I became a bookworm. It’s hard for people to realize this, but I was not a bookworm when I was a kid, and I might not be one a few years from now.)

When I started learning about psychology for the first time, I had a lot of my thinking cleared up (or at least, I had some notion about the motives and driving forces of people, where before I had mostly behaved like I was a robot.)

I started living life with a passion. (This is partly still true. My behaviour is still more purposeful and driven than when I was a teenager, and just another cattle in the herd. But the fire is definitely burning much less strongly today. Is it any wonder? I am growing old.)

I took up cooking. OK, in a way this was based on necessity, but it was great – for a while. But I have never cooked while back in Singapore.

I took up exercising regularly. (It was strange because after NS I swore: I’m free from all this shit. I never liked physical exercise while in there. But falling in love made me horny, and the horniness manifested itself in exercise. Sorda. I still make it a point to exercise once a week.)

I also broke with the past. There were a bunch of people I considered to be my friends, but we never reached any real rapport with each other. I allowed those friendships to fade away, even though I would say hi to them if I met them on the street (which for some reason is “almost never”). I used to engage in really useless activities like hanging out in CD shops and looking at new music. I stopped that. I used to spend long periods of time staring at the ceiling, doing nothing. I decided then that life was too precious to while away like that, although I still spend hours surfing and then wondering where my time has gone.

Yes, I imagined all that to be Year Zero. (In the French and Cambodian revolutions, they reset the calendar for a few years.) It was not hard to imagine, because it was 1999.

Things have faded somewhat, and there were a lot of disappointments along the way. But when your life has changed as thoroughly and completely as it has in that comparatively brief period of time, you usually measure yourself against that.