My Sentiments Exactly

My Favorite African Parable

2007-05-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion or i will be killed. Every morning, a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

It doesn't matter whether yoou are a lion or a gazelle: When the sun comes up you had better be running.

Walking in the rain

2007-04-26T23:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you just have to walk in the rain with your head held high.

Especially at times when you're stranded at your bus stop without an umbrella.

Don't pray for the rain to stop, or someone to bring you an umbrella. If you waited long enough, the rain would probably stop, or you could probably hope for HDB to build a shelter from the bus stop all the way to your door step. The moral question is probably how long do you wait.

But when you decide to go, go.

Don't run, just walk. Don't cringe or try to shelter any parts of your body with your hands or a plastic bag or a file - it doesn't work.

Walk calmly and proudly, as if there's nothing in the world that's stopping you.

As if it isn't raining at all.

Begin with the end in mind - a shower and a hot cup of coffee, and some time in front of your computer blogging the whole incident.

And if the rain stop just seconds before you reach your doorstep, you'll know that luck's not on your side and you should probably not waste any money on this week's lottery.

Don't Ask.

2007-03-12T03:23:00.000-07:00

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible." - Viktor E. Frankl

Complaining and Advising

2007-03-11T10:15:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to talk about it", is the usual response I give to people when asked about my apparent "problems" at work. Because I don't want to be perceived as any more whiny than I already am, and because I believe that it's difficult for people not in my shoes to give me any good advice anyway.

I was proven right again today when I was coerced into finally going into some detail about the specifics of my problems at work, and the complainee admitted, "Yah, I agree it's a hard problem, I don't know how I can help you."

That, I have to say, is terribly demoralizing.

It's like a kid who goes to his math teacher with a problem that he can't solve, only to have his math teacher say, "hrm, I'm not so sure how to do this either. You'll have to figure it out yourself."

Perhaps only Archimedes and Euclid will rise up to this challenge, the rest of us mere mortals will just decide to give up a lifelong career in mathematics instead.

Why Do I Like Coffee Bean?

2007-01-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

No reasons in particular, in fact, any cafe would do. Coffee Bean happens to have starhub wireless internet, which has turned free (great customer service move by Starhub).

But here, there's ambient noise, bad lighting, and just me and my laptop. This, somehow, allows me to focus, to relax.

Sometimes, the most private place you can be, is in a crowd. Nobody looks at the person sitting next to you, or hears their conversation, because they are all too engrossed in talking, too concerned about themselves. You could walk around naked and I'll be surprised if somebody notices. (okay, maybe they would.)

In this busy and crowded cafe, I find solitude.

Or maybe these are the delusional effects of an iced latte.

Updates on the 9th of January

2007-01-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Someone commented on my good writing, and whether it was a blatant lie or dripping sarcasm, i've decided to take it as a compliment (ref: previous entry on self delusion), and amaze the world with more of my literary lack of talent.

Updates:

I'm back in Singapore, thrown into work force and have already started incurring huge losses for my company.

Recent obsessions include sprinkling half-baked japanese phrases all over my blogs and profiles, in hope that cogito ergo sum power will up my japanese level.

4 months in Singapore and no gym membership yet, someone please bind me up in chains and throw me onto a treadmill.

What else? Glad to be home, had no idea that I could adapt so quickly, forget the wonderful taste of natto so quickly, that time passes so quickly and things changes so quickly, and yet to a friend whom i haven't met for years, that i could still look exactly the same.

---

今月経験した事に、色々を考えさせられた。仕事は、なんか、考えたより、ずっと楽しくて凄かった。卒業する前、ずっと仕事を始める事を怖がってばかりいて、仕事なんてやだなあって思って、でも、今は本当に会社と同僚の皆様が大好きになってしまった。人生が不思議なあって、思わせるなあ。

やっぱり、どんな事があっても、自分の居る場所と自分の幸せを見つけられる。夢と立志とか、いらない。自分の想像だけで限られたくないから。吃驚させられたい。驚かされたい。人生の奇襲、奇跡のように、自分の話を書いている。終わりなんて，まだ全然分からない。それは、生きているの楽しと思う。

The Feeling of Embarassment

2006-10-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

As usual, I outdid myself again in publicly humiliating myself. I will not recount the event, but I did some really embarassing thing at work today, which I think will haunt me to the end of my days and beyond.. but nvm..

But as I was being tortured by this feeling of extreme embarassment, wishing there were holes in the ground I can throw myself into, or that there were tools I can start digging with, and eyeing the tempting darker areas in the local drains, I realise a few things about the feeling embarassed:

1. You really develop the ostrich mentality that if you hid your face, the whole world can't see you. I spent the entire bus journey home hiding my face behind a book. (to no purpose of course, since the people whom I embarassed myself in front of weren't in the bus).

2. Embarassment is possibly closer to a happy feeling than a sad one. I spent the entire time half grimmacing and half grinning. (which by itself, is pretty embarassing and probably also scared the lady sitting next to me on the bus)

3. Your vocabulary becomes temporarily limited to variations of "argh" and your hands go instinctively to either your face or your head.

Now that I've got this emotion all figured out, I can't wait to get out there and embarass myself all over again. =)

New Facebook Notes and Iced Tea

2006-10-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

I've imported my lonely blog to facebook notes today, it's a little embarassing to add 8 ancient blog entries all at once, hopefully this most recent post will distract you guys from the historical ones...

Ordered a grande iced tea at coffee bean and tea leaf just now, the cup of tea came filled to about 1.5 inches from the brim. I decided not to let it pass because a $4.40 cup of iced tea, no matter how expertly brewed, should satisfy a thirsty woman, so I asked if there were any reasons why the tea wasn't filled to the brim. "It's for you to add syrup", came the answer. When I expressed that I didn't want 1.5 inches of syrup and asked if I could have tea instead, I was told that they were still brewing it. It doesn't take someone of my genius to know that they ran out of the tea and tried to get away with it by tempting me with syrup. Nice try though. However, I ended up not losing faith in my favorite hangout after a nice employee came with a free small ice tea later on. =)

The English Dake Rule

2006-08-18T06:49:00.000-07:00

There is something about moderately-and-above-English-proficient Japanese that drives them to insist on speaking English to you no matter how much you try to also prove your moderate-and-above Japanese proficiency by replying in Japanese. Their enthusiasm will make any English teacher in Japan proud, since they will have no problem instituting the English Dake Rule, whose counterpart failed miserably in our summer program.

keitai-ness

2006-07-12T00:46:00.000-07:00

My rental keitai is arriving in the mail Tuesday HAZU. Finally, enough of feeling like an ape next to some keitai-mochi person.

quote quote unquote

2006-06-05T19:29:00.000-07:00

The awful thing about being given so many things is that you'll eventually lose them.

quote quote unquote

2006-05-29T00:47:00.000-07:00

"You don't need to go to a museum to appreciate art. It's like going
to a zoo to see animals. There's something fundamentally wrong about
it."

To Kill A Mockingbird With Linear Equations

2006-05-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

I remember the painful day that I decided to abandon my budding literary career despite my obvious talents to pursue the harsh engineering subjects, simply because I could NOT tolerate the subjectiveness and unpredictability and inconsistency and total injustice of my secondary school literature teacher's grading style. I decided that numbers were safer.

UNTIL we've recently suffered the most injust grading process EVER, in an ENGINEERING CLASS, by a full fledged ENGINEERING professor, whose appreciation of our quantitative and scientific methods might as well have been that of a train conductor's appreciation of Picasso - i.e. random. And it's not even random with a proper distribution, mean and variance, it's a randomness that will terrify Brownian motion scientists and Chaos Theory mathematicians.

So why did I abandon what I thought were the unpredictable arts for a "science" that is even more subjective and misunderstood? Are physics laws really more like Murphy's laws or the 5th amendment? Should I have instead embarked on a stellar career of writing haikus and fanfiction and substandard chinese xiaolianbis?

The weirdest thoughts occur to you on the last day of your education career.

"The Lack Of Money..."

2006-04-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

"...is the root of all evil" says George Bernard Shaw, my all-time-favorite GP paper quotable cynic.

Many people are often caught up with the rat race and end up chasing money among other glamorous, glorious things... Fortunately, I don't think I've become one of these people yet. I only seem to really really want money, when I really really want to do something else which requires money. Otherwise I'm happy living with zero bank account balances and unpaid credit card debt, which I guess isn't something to be terribly proud of. Nevertheless, as I was saying.. actually I forgot what I wanted to say.. hrm.. hold on. Oh yes. So I gave up this big money-making opportunity last semester ( i.e. to continue working this semester), because it seemed to me that at that time I didn't need the money and would just prefer the free time instead. Now, however, I do need the money to do something, and suddenly I've become rather enthusiastic about finding some make-money opportunity, which of course doesn't exist. Anywayz, even though I'm in sorta a money-greedy mood now, I don't feel to bad about myself since it's for a greater good, a higher purpose (ref: my previous entries about my being self-deluded and narcissistic ).

So, the bottom line is (red), if you would like to contribute to my greater good of having a bang of a time in Japan, please drop me a line, and also a check.

Fear

2006-04-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

I fear that I will not do the things that I want to, but those that I have to.

Upscale Living

2006-04-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

Cuisine: Vegetables stored in refrigerator is wrapped in Wall Street
Journal instead of Lianhezaobao.

Back in Berkeley.

2006-04-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

I won't say more. LA driving was crazy.. we tried to pull some crazy swap-our-car-with-rental-car-plus-park-at-airport-parking maneuveur that was just slightly too sophisticated for two directionless idiots.. Anyhowz, hurrah, our springs didn't break, although our rental car suffered a mysterious case of radio-coma during most of our trip.... all in all, the desert was great.. death valley was.. much too cold for me to lay any impressive claims... (darn, should've went in summer).

I'm trying not to think about the day after tomorrow. (which coincidentally is both 3rd April and the first day of school.)

spring break..

2006-03-26T11:02:00.000-08:00

Finally heading off to the arid wastelands of california after months and months of procrastination... it's the ominous "spring break" again (ref: last spring break when our axle broke...) going in an even more dubious vehicle now, so won't be surprised if something "springs" up. What awaits us? stay tuned to find out.

gmail google talk

2006-02-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

this is too much..

Speling and Grammah.

2006-02-06T17:33:00.000-08:00

What's more important? Spelling or grammar? Just the tip of the iceberg of my recent dissatisfaction with life.

Well, I think grammar is more important, since spellcheckers are so readily available nowsadays. (as I'm typing this, Gmail is frantically checking my spelling.) However, this belief may be just a poor excuse for my pathetic spelling and my laziness to change it. For example, I have never been able to spell "receive". I spell it as "recieve" so consistently that I have to say I actually KNOW how to spell "receive" by reduction. Other unspellable words include: "entrepreneur" and "phenomenon".

Anyhowz, another amazing thing is that I realised that I've learnt English and Chinese in completely the wrong ways. (after picking up japanese, I've began "realising" a lot of things about other languages that I know.) Because it seems that I've learnt Chinese by verbally and English photographically, which is in fact the opposite of the basis of these two languages). As a result, I can neither write Chinese nor spell English, making me half-illiterate, which is a sad thing to realise at age 23.

Cogito what?..

2006-01-30T16:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, so about the address of this blog, as well as the signature I non-discriminately append to the end of my every email (including those to my university professors, one of whose response prompted this entry), "cogito ergo doleo" is a play on the famous "cogito ergo sum". The former basically means, "I think, therefore I am depressed." That is not to say, since I (the author) thinks, therefore I'm really depressed, for those of you who think in logic and see this implication. It is rather, supposed to just be a friendly message to the world, saying "Don't think. Be Happy."

So yes. I am not depressed, contrary to popular belief. I am whiny at times, and often resentful of my poverty, but on a whole I'm pretty contented with this dreaded Californian weather (trust me, it -is- dreadful) and my high speed internet connection.

rabbit

2006-01-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

Not that I'm going back to that "act-cute" phase of my teenage years, but this one was just too cute to pass.

(\ /)
( . .)
c('')('')

In Hiding

2005-12-25T17:36:00.000-08:00

You know your social life is in shambles when you are afraid even to check email.

Hessian Who?

2005-12-18T14:22:00.000-08:00

Argh. Need to master nonlinear optimization by noon tomorrow. NP-hard.

Natsume Maya

2005-12-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

Natsume Maya is sooooo coool!!!

Milestone in UPS Delivery

2005-12-13T12:11:00.000-08:00

Today marks the milestone of the First Successfully Recieved UPS Delivery in the history of 1820 Euclid Ave Apt 1. As I'm typing this, I'm listening to my prize, the original CD soundtrack of the X TV Series (Clamp).

The deal is: my apartment is a nice chic place with an apartment buzzer. The only problem is: the buzzer doesn't work (for me at least) and we have proven through numerous experimentations that it is a NP-hard problem for the UPS delivery guy to let me know when he's here downstairs with the package while I'm one floor up in my room. As a result, all my UPS deliveries involve either my stalking UPS trucks around the neighbourhood during every free moment I have and/or driving more than half an hour each way in peak traffic to the Richmond UPS call center.

But today, after a series of skillful negotiations with the UPS call center staff and support staff (with over 10 personnel involved in the project), I have finally managed to track my package down to a 15 min ETA window, during which I waited sitting on my porch until the delivery guy came. So, this is how achieved the amazing feat of recieving my "2nd day" package 10 days later. (An impressive tracking history depicting the events during the 10 days when the package went "missing" is available here.) The success of this operation would not have been possible with help from UPS from all over the United States, India and Africa, as well as the fact that my classes have ended and I can wait all day at home for UPS packages.

However, it is a milestone nevertheless and may mark the start of many more happy Amazon.com purchases, or my complete rejection of internet shopping anything (unlikely) and/or legal music.

Testing Mail-to-Blog

2005-12-12T16:04:00.000-08:00

One of the perks of blogger.com =)

argh. okay. all my email-to-blog posts are gonna have my email signature. Darness.

--
cogito ergo doleo

Blog Migration Plan

2005-12-12T14:28:00.000-08:00

As you can see, I'm attempting a Xanga->Blogger migration. Yes, I'm one of the billions of people in this world contributing to Google's plan to take over the world. No, I am not ashamed.. 'cos there are worse world dominators out there. Hopefully it works. Ah.. multiple domain names, cool stuff.