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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.