Category: General

Before I proceed, here are a bunch of ads:

1. eye is less lax about updating delineate, so check it out.
2. h has written up something he’s been wanting to for a long long time. It might not be informative to many, but he feels much better anyway.
3. I’m nearly down with the concept of being vegan, but freeganism is just a bit much. Icky.

Often times, I do stupid things. For reasons best left unexplained, I carefully sort my riches out into different accounts based on ease of retrieval, interest rates, purpose of savings, and so on. While all this is well and good, it makes absolutely no sense when you make no money!

It is a nightmare to manage. And now what’s happened is I’ve lost track of a few of them. Amongst these include those that ought not to be depleted, but are. This is very bad news.

Why the fuck can’t I leave personal financial planning to those who know what they’re doing?

I am a scientist, not a jew, damn it.

This web log is slowly going to abuse freedom of speech, just like all the stand-up comics its author aims to emulate. Not to worry, it will eventually be an equal opportunity offender.

I have been trying to keep my posts somewhat-short for a while now. This was initiated to benefit those who aren’t keen on large blocks of text, but it hasn’t been pleasant. It’s not me. At least, it’s definitely not how I write (or speak, for that matter).

My writing style is more along the lines of long-winded and usually muddled, often seeming pointless. That is what I enjoy, and that’s how this post is going to turn out. Lest you’ve forgotten, though I do enjoy your presence and value your opinion, this journal—at its core—is primarily an egocentric release mechanism. Nothing more.

So, what I’m saying is, “It’s going to be long and boring. Deal with it.”

Our topic of the day comes to the fore because of the recent passing of Turkey day. Now personally, not being a fan of Turkey and having work to get done, it really wasn’t terribly different from any other of my days. But the constant jibba-jabba of people around being thankful for this and thankful for that resulted in a stark realisation:

I am not really thankful for anything.

There have been points in my life where I’ve been called “an ungrateful wretch” (yes, in those exact words), but I’d rather believe I feel this way (thankless) because I really don’t have anything to be thankful for.

Really.

Like the rest of the world, all I have are huge internal lists of needs and ambitions, and to cut to the chase, I am nowhere near where I ought to be. Now that clearly sucks, and justifies why I am not thankful for anything. Screw you “Season to be jolly and grateful”, I’m going to stick to what seems more unaffected at the moment—being a Scrooge-like bitter old man and all Humbugey.

Bah, humbug.

Even with somewhat extravagant goals, my life plan is relatively uncomplicated.

Sit around and wait until the things you want fall in your lap.

This plan is seductive in its simplicity and brilliance. Except that there’s one minor flaw, it doesn’t always work.

There are several distinct aspects of my (or anyone’s) life which function on varying levels of this autopilot-panacea. For instance, the thing about my academic progress and intellectual work in general is that they function and proceed fully automatically—in spite of me. All I can recall doing is floating around arbitrarily, but when audited at regular intervals, really concrete things have gotten accomplished as my understanding of the world has grown.

See? That’s how my whole life ought to be. I’m talking about the rest of my life too. My “real life”.

Then I’ll be thankful.

I needn’t have to work hard at anything, I’m me god damn it. But, clearly enough, this doesn’t carry over all that easily into my real world. So in effect, I’ve been coasting along for a quarter century, in my (arguably pleasant) status quo. Nothing terribly important changing, nor anything magical happening. I repeat,

Let stuff in my life magically fall in place, then I’ll be thankful.

I am not really asking for much.

Now, veering tangentially off our topic of the day, I’ve learnt to accept that my life isn’t going to have the range of highs and lows experienced by those kids in their orgy high on PCP, and the next day when they’re stumbling near the gutter in the cold. No, my life is a lot plainer, and my entire range of experiences will fall within a much smaller range of highs and lows.

Is it really all that cool?

There are pros and cons.

Is it what I want?

I don’t really have a choice.

This is something I learnt as a toddler and has provided innumerable hours of amusing entertainment ever since. I had forgotten about it for ages, but it came back to me as I was doodling on my steam-misted wall during my shower. I am assuming you will find it fun as well.

First, you just pick any random number that pops into your head and write it down. Then, all you need to do is count the number of occurrences of each unique digit (in the order in which they appear) and write this down as well as the corresponding digit in the following line. Keep doing this over and over again until you get tired, or the number starts to repeat itself. It’ll be more clear when you see the examples below.

Let’s say we start with,
81189198.

OK, so we’ve got three 8s, three 1s, and two 9s. So we write that down.
383129.

See how easy that was? Now we just continue the process, two 3s, one 8, one 1, one 2, one 9.
2318111219

You get the idea. Here are a few more iterations,
2213511819
224113151819
22145113151819
22611425131819
3216511415131819
23… and so on.

Here’s another:

41
1411
3114
132114
31131214
23411214
22132431
… and so on.

Pick a number, try it. It can get addictive.

» For brownie points (if you know of this from before, shh) figure out the smallest repeating number you can find.
» For even more brownie points, figure out why 81189198 wasn’t such a random starting point after all.

I know that a large portion of the populace that visits this place enjoys lurking and being dormant. I respect that and don’t have any problems with it. But even if you feel you have little to contribute to discussions, wouldn’t you like to let me know you stop(ped) by?

Now is your big chance!

Drop me a line by leaving a comment below. Tell me how much you love/hate frequenting this place. Tell me something interesting about yourself, your favourite dessert or favourite holiday destination. Just stop by to say ‘Hi’. Anything you want. You can be as anonymous as you want to be.

Even frequent commenters, first timers, everyone else—feel free to join in the festivities. The more the merrier.

Please do, you know you want to.

At least, I know I want you to.

I live my life by a set of principled rules formulated based on my notion of morality—of what’s right and what’s not. For the most part, this is a non-issue as these align with traditional laws put forth by the legal system. For minor deviations, I do consciously make it a point to abide by the letter of the law, even if I’m taking liberties with the spirit in which they were intended.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I end up contemplating violating the letter of the law as well. Not because it’s convenient to do so, or because I aim to benefit unjustly from such a violation, but purely because my moral compass opposes what someone else decrees as “right”. I imagine something like this not bothering me, even if technically illegal, because I don’t believe I am doing anything evil.

After a couple of seminars on legal issues however, I’ve realized this is a totally brain-dead idea. Apparently, even tiny breaches of rules (which will only result in a stern warning or a slap on the wrist for a normal person here) can result in international students losing legal status, preventing them from completing their programme.

Now, a bulk of my life plan is predicated on leaving here with a degree, so I’ve decided to make myself aware, and play along.

So, basically, you’ve got to stick to your guns and principles—unless it’s (or could eventually be) tremendously inconvenient.

As you can see, this is continuing a trend to keep posts somewhat-short, so people won’t be put off. Let’s see how long I can keep it up.

I just got off the phone with my mom, and my, how things have changed. Who would’ve believed I would be giving her cooking tips one day?

That’s it, that’s all I have to say about that.

But before I go, I just have to talk about something else that came up, a family-tree. You know you’re a geek when your mom’s letting you know about your family-tree (traversing back some 4 generations) someone’s put up on a website, and you begin to show her how to use diff and patch to submit patches with corrections to the website maintainer.

I found it amusing that I have relatives that go by (legal) names such as Persia, and also interesting that my great-great-grand-pappy(?), a doctor, held the highest administrative post in the land (under the king, something like Chief Minister?).

Sometimes, you come across something and you wonder, “Why the hell didn’t I come up with that?”. Cases in point,

» IT Whore
» Million dollar homepage

Sheer genius.

I don’t know anything about financial markets, but if I’m reading this graph correctly, if I’d put the entire car account into google stock (or shares or whatever it’s called) this time last year, I’d have more than enough money for the car now. And left over change for so many other goodies.

It can’t possibly be that simple.

It was bring-your-daddy-to-school week, and there I was in my daughter’s kindergarten class. I distinctly remember struggling to explain to a bunch of few-year-olds why what I do really is cool and interesting, or even useful.

I don’t think I succeeded, not even with her.

And that scares me.

Fun “science”: Contrary to what intuition might tell you, the muscles in a male’s penis are most tense when it is limp. During arousal, the muscles relax greatly and this results in openings which cause an inflow of blood some 50 times what it was, leading to an erection.

Yes, tense muscles—limp. Relaxed muscles—turgid. Chew on that.

Going out to lunch or whatever with people in this country often results in conversations skewing toward things they’re curious about, but somehow feel you’re the right person to clue them in on—like the concept of arranged marriages. Now I’ve been through my spiel numerous times, and I think I’ve polished it to a fair degree along the way.

But there is still one aspect of all of this that people here simply do not understand, and I’ve stopped trying to bring it up as a result. It’s not that they’re unintelligent or unsympathetic, but it’s just that they’ve led very different lives.

People from my part of the world (or at least I) come from a very shielded and protective environment—an environment where everything is handed to you (for long after it is necessary), and one that provides a safety net for you to shamelessly fall back on at any point in your life. While this is good if you’re too lazy to make your own bed, it is not good if you’re looking to develop into a strong and independent individual, or even figure out something trivial, like operating a bank account.

My point being, they nudge you, kicking and screaming if need be, every step of the way until they (and society) decree you’re mature enough to stand on your own feet. In stark contrast, most people I know here have had to fend for themselves since a much younger age. They’ve had (even if small) jobs since mid-teens, they’ve made it this far in academics with little help because they’re passionate about it, and are a hell of a lot more experienced in the ways of the world.

Sure, they’ve all had phases where things have gone awry, but the important aspect of this has been that they’ve picked themselves up and not been broken. They are stronger as a result, more independent and have been through so much more.

But what does any of this have to do with what I started off talking about, arranged marriages? Not much really, but the biggest problem with the system from my part of the world is that the child never really gets a sense of true achievement.

For instance, parents put you in a good school after spending a lot of money. Even if you don’t do particularly well, they spend a lot of money and get you into a half-decent college. They then make a large donation, like build a library, and get you into your dream grad school. Once you’re done, if they assume you’re struggling to find your first job, they call a friend who knows a friend who knows a guy who gives you a job.

See where I am going with this?

Now, after all this and so much more, if they’re going to find you a woman and get her to agree to marry you as well, just what is it you’ve achieved for yourself?

Absolutely nothing.

And it is for this reason that people I know have an unspecified resentment toward arranged marriages, even if they can’t articulate their problem just yet. It has little to do with their parent’s actual selection. And this is not something I can explain to people here, nor do I try to anymore.

Aural logs.

Yes, I’m finally part of another mindless trend. Click the link you fancy below to listen to my opinions on different things.

[MP3 ~6.68 MB]
[OGG ~4.61 MB]

Enjoy,
or not.

You now why? Because they’ve got breasts, that’s why.

No, it’s not what you’re thinking—the goal here is not to make some sort of blanket sexist-pig statement—just wait for me to explain, before unduly getting your knickers in a bunch.

Having breasts and a uterus relate to one of women’s primary functions (in the whole survival-of-the-species scheme of things), child bearing. Now, babies are basically defenseless little things and their survival during a bulk of their formative years requires—amongst other things—close proximity to lactating teats.

(It’s clear I’ve been reading way too much of and into evolutionary psychology of late, but bear with me as I hand-wave through the following argument.)

In terms of early woman, this general scheme almost implicitly implies that she (or another caregiver with functioning nipples) is going to be home with this baby; feeding, taking care of it, and making sure the kid doesn’t do something stupid or get eaten by a predator or something. Now all this basically means, in a primal sense, is that there is a good possibility that groups of women stayed close to home and used to gather up small edible goodies, while the men were out trying to hunt or whatever. This has given women an inordinate amount of time to build up interaction skills—you know, getting other people around to help out and what not, and an uncanny knack of not only easily reading social situations, but also developing the ability to manipulate social situations to ensure their best interests. (The overtly-swaying walk or the seductive hair-toss anyone?)

Before you scream, think about it. For instance, you might have a situation where, or need to:
a. sleep with the alpha male to ensure your kid has the cream of the gene-pool crop (as opposed to that thin bald guy with the inhaler in the corner)
b. said stud is obviously more interested in “spreading his seed” (for the good of the species, mind you), and is probably not the kinds to stick around and take care of her (at least when she needs it, like child birth) or the kid
c. convince an available, gentler, more caring male that the baby is his (you know, so you now have a supportive dad instead of an absconding stud)

See? Perfectly plausible situation in a prehistoric group. And what does all this teach our woman? The art of carefully reading, manipulating social situations and the ability to communicate, well.

The men on the other hand, leave home to find, chase and hunt down food. So, what does this do for them? They probably develop the ability to run faster (as in hips and such more tuned to chasing beasties (or running away from them) than delivering a baby) and throw farther. They’re probably enhanced in terms of spatial dexterity, get stronger perhaps, and probably even gain some problem solving skills.

But the thing is, the world today is ripe for the taking when seen from the point of view of a group capable of sensing social nuances and easily best resolving situations to suit their benefits.

A group with defined biceps?, not so much.

It’s a woman’s world.

If you’re wondering how many frickin’ times I am going to bring up the same topic under different guises, I have to let you know, I have a ton of these up my sleeve. An idea pops up in my head every time I contemplate male redundancy.

Fun “science”: The average pH of a healthy human female vagina is 4. Now that’s rather acidic, like red wine.

Being the manly man that I am, I decided to take a bunch of baking classes, and now I’ve enhanced my culinary repertoire to include shortcakes, cheesecakes and tarts.

That will be all.

Oh, that, and it’s such a pleasant change to have a 1:8 guy to girl ratio in a (kitchen transformed into a) classroom for a change.

I don’t ever remember dreaming as a child. No, I am not referring to the sort of “I wish I am a fireman someday” type “I have a dream” dream, but more the sorts of things you conjure up as you’re asleep and your brain’s sorting out experiences and information it has gained. There have been numerous times when I have had to write an essay or two about “what I dreamt about last night” for school[1], and I’ve had to turn in a blank sheet, or fake it (which is totally fine if done to prevent failing a class).

What can I say? Maybe I was just a very sound sleeper.

Over the past few years however, things have changed dramatically, and I’ve been dreaming very regularly. Nothing spectacular, as in I barely remember them on awakening, but I know my brain has been (hyper)active. What I do remember about them is how formulaic they usually are, even though, superficially, they’re very diverse in setting or in terms of my role in them. For instance, I always start off extremely immersed in them, as in I can’t distinguish them from reality, however implausible the situation might be. However, quite a while into them, I begin to notice things, like “Hey, that lion I’m battling[2] has a face eerily reminiscent of a character in that children’s story I was reading to that kid yesterday!”. At which point I’m still asleep, but battling to stay that way and continue the experience being cognizant of the fact that it’s just my imagination running amok; Not because I need the sleep, but because it’s sometimes an interesting experience (however crappy the actual situation might sound).

Just last night, of course I remember no details, but I think at some point I was doing something mundane—like playing a real estate broker—trying to sell a lot of “prime land” (damn you, realtor TV ads), and during my careful delivery of the spiel of all-that-is-good about living there, I realized I was describing my own neighbourhood. But stripped to its essence and scaled up distortedly, of course. So the situation is almost always an over-the-top warped version of something I saw, some incident, or an experience I had in the recent past. Sometimes the situations are happy, sometimes they’re sad (I remember the feeling, though I seldom can put my finger on anything more specific), though often, they’re just… there. They don’t evoke any emotion, and it’s like they’re running just parallel to my existence, like I’m a passive casual observer all over again.

You know, like those bleh movies on the 12 hour flights that quickly fade into the background?

[1] Come to think of it, what better way for a teacher to play junior-psychologist and figure out if any of her students have deep-seated emotional issues?
[2] Yeah, to the death.

The following is the large block of boring text the previous post was seeded off of.

I am obviously not an economist or a politician, but ignorance or lack of experience has never prevented me from opining before. Kids, the issue we will be delving into today is: Unlike this country[1], I do understand the difference between a form of economy and a form of governance.

Just as people here often confuse freedom of speech with the ability to say whatever they want at whosever’s expense (which is quite evil even if they’re paedophilic-thought-inducing cute), they often tend to equate communism with evil dictatorship. Get your facts straight people, one is a form of economy and the other is a form of governance. They needn’t be related, and you (as in your President going[2]) “But Saddam abused his people… like communists abused their people” is so far wrong, I wont get into the details.

Before I go on, a disclosure: I am a socialist. Yes, I’m an evil bastard who’s not fully pro your capitalist economy (note, not regime).

They’re so ignorant, they’ve proceeded to equate communism with bad, and capitalism with good. They’re neither, they’re just forms of (say it with me) economy. All the major news programmes right now are focusing on the high prices of fuel—and keep getting annoyed that the oil companies are raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue over a few months. They’re clearly angry, and are constantly wondering why their government isn’t stepping in and regulating any of this, especially in their “time of need”.

You know why?, because you’re capitalist you morons. This is the price you pay for “fully free” markets governed by supply, demand and human greed. You finding the price of oil too high, or being unable to afford it are not a valid problems. The oil companies get do what they want.

Don’t crib. Understand.

On a related note, I happened to notice during a news broadcast (over a month ago) that parts of Hawaii were going to limit their gas prices at three dollars a gallon. There was not more than the tiniest peep about this from the media, but I jumped in my seat. This is a HUGE DEAL. This is tantamount to this country testing the waters of socialism by dipping their toes.

Yes, that’s right, socialism. Mostly free and fair markets, but items and services of necessity have regulated prices and distribution schemes—so that everybody can get to them.

Oh, and by the way, while I’m at it, I am not against totalitarian governments (if done right) either. I believe individuals are intelligent, but masses are not. Having everybody have their say and appeasing everybody—pulling in different directions—impedes progress. You need one kind, intelligent, moral, knowledgeable, benevolent person with extreme foresight that steps in, grabs complete control, and drags everyone (kicking and screaming if need be) to a better future. Even having been born in, a citizen of, and living in a democratic country, I can see the benefits of something like a very good totalitarian regime.

And this is totally independent of whether such a society is capitalist or communist.

So basically, my views are along the lines of: not everybody is equal, and some do have to get a bigger say and more power. Scarily, this sort of thing can be assumed to be along the lines of those chicks (they were so sweet looking, it took me a while to get to their gasp-worthy lyrics). But it’s not. I’m talking about an all kind and gentle dictator, think, the pope? Or Gandhi?

[1] Yes, I said “this country”. I didn’t say “most people in this country”, or even “some people in this country”. The reason I tend to generalise things this way—before you jump-in with the “but over half of us know better and feel differently” defence—is because that explanation doesn’t matter. The rest of the world doesn’t care about your internal politics or intellectual differences; all they get to see and care about is what finally goes on.

For instance, over half the people probably don’t want the war. But are you at war? Yes. Apparently, over eighty percent of people don’t think free access to firearms is a good thing. But is that how it is? Yes. I could go on, but you get the idea, and I’m going to get on with my beef for the day.

[2] He probably didn’t say it, as in I just made that up, or he did say something I’m taking it out of context, but that’s how entries in this journal are set up, don’t get your panties in a bunch.