Venture into the unknown. Never stop working. Always learn.
Dear readers
I am taking a small break for a week or so. Life is very shitty at the moment and I am afraid I won’t be able to write anything decent. When I come back, I will have some extra things for this site. It’s called a Kodak P850 SLR camera.
A recent discussion made me dig deeper into a part of myself that I am unaware of.
It didn’t start out as a discussion about conflict. It started out as a discussion about handling criticism. I stated the fact that I can only handle one per day without feeling precarious emotionaly. The example used to present my case was one where I discovered that I feel condenscending while trying to help a person. It showed that I wasn’t sure which was the dominant motivation. The foregone conclusion was that I haven’t decided which way I want to be yet. This conclusion was as a quick fix and since I am in that rut of having to decide everything about my life. I agreed.
Then it occurred to me that the origin is from something else. I don’t really know how to explain this, so I will attempt to show through incidents that happened.
I remember looking out the window of my highschool classroom, awestruck by how calm and serene the trees are when they sway lazyly to the gentle caresses of the wind. I was gazing at the scene, admiring the moment which mother nature presents to its residents when the girl sitting underneath the window bursted my dream bubble with :”Qu’est-ce que tu regards là ?”. Challenging me with a hint of disgust.
I was quickly dragged back to earth to notice that I’ve been staring over the top of her head in order to look out the window. Realizing the implication of such prolongued staring mean, I immediately felt ashamed and looked down in silence. Instead of telling her the truth, that I was enjoying the scenary, I felt ashamed because she put me in the position which she imagined me to be. In my own words, her reality was stronger than my reality.
As for the condenscending accusation? I am very direct and oblivious of consequences most of the time. For me, it’s nothing to fuss over because I expect everyone to want to improve like I do. What I constantly fail to do, is understanding the type of impact that it’ll have on the recipient.
For the condescending scenario, it was a trigged by a short email to someone saying: “The resume looks disorganised, please redo it and I will print it out to give in tomorrow. GTG” At which point the person promptly tells me that this sounded very condenscending and doesn’t make her feel good. I replied by apologizing, which would not have been my reply today. It was a simple truth and I wavered accepting her reality. My reality was that I really wanted to help get her a job and the resume was crap which won’t even get looked at. I am surprised that this came from her and was pissed off that she didn’t take this seriously.
Should I care? Perhaps, but I’d rather not. In the end, it shows what type of thoughts the person tend to linger on. It’ll be a great way to filter out those who lack that confidence as I surround myself more and more with people who can look at the situation and laugh at it instead.
This moment, this short span of few seconds where I find myself completely in tune with a part of myself that the society shun upon. I call this moment my return to apathy.
“Hi”
“Hi” *grins.
That is one of the many possible ways to start the quest to get a free movie ticket. Like the way I do business, I like to attack front and center and get what I want despite showing my intention clearly. Only then, can I know that the victory is complete and my patient attempt has something to do with the outcome of the battle.
“Can I have that 2 for 1 special pretty please? But only for one person.”
“I am sorry, but you have to be couple with another person to do this.”
*Giving her the the sick puppy look: “Are you sure there’s no other way?”
“Which movie are you watching?”
“Manufactured landscape.”
“Well, if there is another person watching that in line you can pair up with that person.”
*Friend eyeballing me with disbelief adding to the pressure.
*Me towards the line behind me: “Is any of you single and would like to share a ticket?”
*Everyone murmurs: “no, no sorry buddy.”
*The cashier to me, pointing to a stranger: ” Hey, you two are watching the same movie, and he’s got a prepaid pass too, you can even watch it for free!”
And that’s how I talked my way in.
I am not a cheap person, nor do I practice this regularly as a greasy smooth talker. I just wanted to know if I can if I tried. The result of this is a combination based on luck as well as the combination of being super nice and a determination to harass everyone in line to achieve my original intention. I am lucky because the cashier who was kind enough to handle me is a cute girl and I have no problem being nice to her and interact in a pleasant way. I didn’t try to manipulate her, rather, I simply tried to get the outcome I wanted. At any point, any of the people involved can just say no, but they didn’t.
This is a perfect case where the environment is setup for a favorable outcome and I just need to reach for it. Now that I’ve pushed the envelop this far, I wonder what the next step should be.
To grow beyond understanding, one must first embrace one’s own devil child. It took me a long time, but I have finally reached a stage where openly admitting my own weaknesses is as natural as breathing. In the wake of this revelation, I realized that I never took the time to follow the trails and obtain new enlightenment. The thought just occurred to me and what you will be reading, is enlightenment in the progress within myself as it gets revised in my mind. I decided to blog this in real time for a change.
Primary devil: Honor
The one main theme that has prevailed through my father’s teachings as well as the Chinese cultural influence is the notion of honor. It explains why I’d always show up if I say so and give some insight into why I used to get pissed off if a person is late when they agreed to meet at certain times. I also keep track of the nice things people do to me so I can reciprocate accordingly. Honor makes my word a binding contract no matter how much I ended up not wanting to do it.
The weakness of having such binding honor allows anyone who manage to persuade me in the moment a chance at what I’d never agree to. It also made me do more than what I should have. Some usually think of that as me trying to be nice, little did they know, I am just abiding by honor. I’ve since taken actions to deviate from honorable behaviors into other ways of being. To be more true to what I feel I want to do, instead of letting a notion drive me.
Two things made me realize this:
Secondary devil: Challenge
We want what we can’t get. An idea that’s echoed by many and quickly adapted by me once I understood the concept. This change, by far is the hardest one to reverse because it came to me as a revelation to what life is. Yet the very idea, is contrary to a different concept from the Buddhist path of Wu Yu (No desire). I have but a glimpse of understanding of why this is not an absolute to abide by. That understanding comes from the knowledge that in order to ascend as one human to the next state of being, the whole human race needs to improve as a whole. A great question I often amuse myself with is if I can arrive at these same conclusions if I were born in the medieval times.
The challenge confirms with a few psychology principles:
I’ve since intentionally create such vacuums during interactions with people and have since refrained from trying to fill in the void when others create such vacuum. I don’t have a concrete conclusion yet, but it has been interesting observing my own raging emotions as it happens.
Tertiary devil: Change
Touted the strongest ability I possess by myself, is also a big hurdle in my life’s way. I want too much and try to be too much. Being good at adapting ensured that I’d get hooked to most of the things I set my mind to do. It is great if time is infinite, however I’ve soon realized that the reverse is true and I need to focus on a few if my life’s plan involves becoming really good at something. It is certainly where the human race is heading to, with so much new information being discovered at each second.
I’ve decided to settle down in Montréal to reap the benefit of growing roots, yet at any given time during my stay, I’ve often considered the following:
This is still a big problem for me and I have been managing to keep it down by analyzing each action financially. However, it’s getting harder and harder after the discovery of a partner in crime with the same mindset.
This is part thirty of my Triphasic sleep experiment. Please visit this page for more info.
This is a wrap up of the experiment around a month or so after I stopped. Stopping as in stopped trying to abide by a strict schedule. You see, I never went back to monophasic sleep. As things stand right now, my sleep pattern is what anyone would consider “completely messed up”. It is 4 AM in the morning and I am writing this blog post as refreshed as I will ever be. Is it a problem? Nope.
This is actually a healthy side effect I happily embraced after my sleep experiment. You see, I never went back to monophasic sleep and have averaged between 3.5 to 5.5 hours of sleep per day. The skill that emerged from the experiment is a skill that allows me to fall into deep sleep right away and naturally wake up after a set a mount of time. I let my subconscious decide, since it knows best which cycle I need.
The result also led me to believe that some of our groggyness in the morning are caused by our own thoughts. Whenever I get awakened now, I am comfortable enough to know that I am refreshed and I can fall right back to sleep if needed. I am not tired, nor do I ever think about being tired unless my brain start shutting down on me and I couldn’t remember the past 5 seconds. Being tired, is a state defined by human, from my point of view, there’s only degree of alertness and the different capabilities at your disposal with each state.
I’ve also begin a series of tests with my subconscious after this. It started with a joke when I “told” my subconscious that I want to naturally wake up in an hour. It still feels pretty freaky when I looked at the clock with dreamy eyes, wondering if I’ve been asleep for 25 hours.
To wrap it up, one quote from someone “I forgot who” is confirmed by all this. The busier you are, the more you get accomplished and the more sleep you get the more sleep you’ll need.
No love birds I know, have ever survived a dance partnership that they started together. In the few years that I was involved with dancesport, there was only one that I heard of.
I saw the all too familiar symptoms, the mood is gone and the night is going to end in disaster if I don’t suggest that we leave right then. Too bad, I was enjoying catching up with my swing dancing classmates… cute ones too, but alas… friends first.
I was hoping that the nature of swing dancing and the fun setting of Cat’s corner will be a good place for couples to start out together, how I have erred. Basic human emotions still trumps everything else. Jealousy, pride, fear of rejection served with women’s need to feel secure while comparing her man to the others. You will always end up with a nagging girlfriend.
That will happen, if the woman is better than the man. Statistically, women have always excelled at the beginning because they need only learn how to dance, whilst the man have to dance AND lead. You see our specie’s problem?
There was an interview with the only famous couple known to have survived this type of inequality, where the woman was already a top dancer but decided to start fresh with her newbie husband. The lady gave our dance sphere the most important advice ever. “Do not try to teach or correct your husband, leave that job to the coach.” Can you let it slide when you feel righteous? Can you hold your tongue when you think you know more than the other? More importantly, can you educate with the purest intention of helping, without thinking or knowing that you are superior?
Dance constitutes only of passions and feelings, reason and love are only functional when you are not dancing.
It was our first time being this close like this. Thing rubbing against thing with only a very thin layer of clothing between us. I can feel her intimate parts as well as she is feeling mine. Nothing my coach is saying is entering my mind because I was concentrating my efforts into not getting an arousal. It’d be super embarrassing because it’ll show right through the skin tight pants that I was wearing.
Only a week ago, we said our first hello to each other, now we are engaged in the equivalent act of humping each other’s legs… with several people watching including her parents. What is this that we are doing? Waltz.
I stopped worshiping women after I started dancing.
There was complete silence when we entered the small crowded change room. Let me correct that. I was surrounded by complete silence when they realized that I have entered the room and that I am a guy.
The veterans of shows and performances just continues on in their quiet solitude, floating in their head with rituals before a show. The silence was created by those new to the show scene, who are still uncomfortable changing in front of the presence of men. They are probably thinking: “Is he going to peek?”
The answer is: Yes and No. Being stuffed into the same change room with the ladies are often the result of a hindsight of the organizers. Alas, you cannot blame them because they are not dancers and have no idea that we need to change into our customs, which often require us to get completely naked beforehand. Which was quite exciting in the beginning for me, but the novelty already wore off for me after several years bathed in superbly toned bodies with superbly tanned skins.
It has changed my perception and I have since set that as the minimum requirement of beauty. It’s not the same beauty as the skinny model type though. Dancers are more muscular and fitter, often with a bigger bone structure to withstand the fast switch in gravity direction. The most prominent indication of a good dancer can be observed from the shape of their back and thigh. Which to my surprise, has become an instant turn on/off for me.
I get lost in watching people’s movement now. Seeing and understanding the reason behind each particular gait. I often find myself lost in finding irregularities of a person’s footsteps. A pretty face, no longer hold much meaning to me except for the probability of a spoilt person who expect everyone to hand them anything they wanted for sex.
It’s strange how when beauty is a norm around me, I find myself searching for a face that doesn’t fit the golden standard. Looking at a model’s face, is like looking at a wooden mask made by some faraway African tribe… emotionless.
Equality is an imperfect notion created by our egoistic self to ease the shock brought to our attention by our weakness.
“Why did you change the direction we were facing? You should have stick with what we originally planned to do in the first place and face the side with more audience.” She barked at me as I walked out of the door, fuming with anger at the insulting tone she’s been using. She’s like a kid who grab on to any chance to feel righteous in order to smack me down with the hammer of justice.
I didn’t argue. From the tone she used, she’d already passed the judgement that I am guilty. The truth is, I did it in the heat of the moment; on a hunch. This will sound silly in an argument no matter how I look at it.
The night’s show was a charity event to raise money and we are the spotlight of the night to attract the old widows and divorced millionaires. Which means, I don’t want to fight in front of the people… Nope, the temporary truce didn’t last till the end of the night and the only way I can find to avoid having people hear us fight, is to turn towards the door and get there as fast as I can.
How do I tell her that I changed the routine so she will end up doing the split in front of the smaller crowd, whom I think are more important. How do I tell her that I think flashing some of her skin to them was the intention for that change? Worst of all, how do I justify selling her body to “Dirty old men?”. So instead, I just listened to her quietly and bid her goodnight.
“Dancesport will be the last place in human society where male dominance can be found.” This quote has been repeated and echoed by many of my teachers. Before you get pissed off at the ignorance of this statement and brush everything off as pure male arrogance, hear my next question: “Why do you want to dance with a partner?”
The mistake that most men eventually make in a partnership is by asking a simple and innocuous question during practice: “What do you think?” Like many men before me, I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Yes, I do agree that it is a valiant effort from you to respect the recent rise in equality between sexes, but the nature of the dance will trump whatever improvement we make at that front, stripping all the bullshit down to the core issue: your feelings.
“A partnership will work out when the man is slightly better than the woman, it does not work the other way around.” quoted my teachers directly off dancesport magazines. By asking “What do you think?” you are accessing the wrong side of the brain that makes dancing work and attempting to give woman what they don’t want in dancing: choices.
It is important for the woman to accept what which makes her yearn to be swept off her feet by an experienced gentleman. A woman has to accept it and follow the lead in order for dancing to happen, because not even twins can synchronize their mind well enough so that they both lead the same move. The same principle applies to life, things happen, because one person expressed the desire for some thing and others either accept or reject after the long period of persuasion and cunning foul play.
It doesn’t mean however, that woman should play zombie or pretend she’s watching TV. As important as the man who leads and initiates, the woman shows the glamor and ensure the finish. If a man says he wants to try getting buried alive, the woman makes sure that he’s buried and dead. Do not put all the blame to the guy because “you are only following his lead.” because if you as a couple don’t look beautiful to the audience, it is because the woman aren’t making it beautiful, or if the guy overshadows the girl.
“I am sorry, this other lady already booked me for the next dance.” I said as I grabbed a random girl around me for a dance. I apologized later for the rude behavior explaining that I really wanted to dance with her and didn’t want to lose my chance due to another girl asking me for a dance. Lies and lies, but it was done to promote positive overall experiences to strangers I’ve never met and will probably not meet again. I am more direct with friends from people’s feedback.
I usually don’t resolve to this kind of strategy to avoid dancing with someone, it’s only one dance that lasts for a minute anyway. Easier to go through it than putting the effort to come up with an excuse. So why did I go out of my way to avoid this one? Especially when she asked? The incident happened waaaaay back, back when I first started out.
She was a young, beautiful and skinny teen. With a wrinkle like dimple around the tip of her lips which comes from her French heritage. I was a nerdy chinese boy who’ve never touched hair gel in his life, with a chinese bowl cut as hairstyle sporting big nerdy goggles. Even so, I still spent the night working up enough courage to wipe my hand clean of perspirations and walk up to her to ask for a dance. She rejected me as I imagined she would, but what made this rejection turn into a grudge was the attitude she had. The “I am too good for you” disdain that crushed all but my faint belief that I can dance a 6 beat box step.
Five years after, my frame has fleshed out from lifting and dipping girls, my skills better than anyone in that room and thank god for all the patience from my female friends, I have escaped from the asian bowl cut. What about her?
She got fat and sloppy. Yet it was that snotty attitude she had that turned me away whenever I see her. Lesson? Respect the asian boy with a bowl cut, for he has walked the road of ridicule to get to this point.
If you go to any pages in Nutang, you’ll notice the annoying surf bar at the top and the ads+ad links conveniently located at the bottom with mismatching colors. I had to write a few questionable code to circumvent these problems. It was a great challenge and despite all the restrictions, I am able to represent the page exactly the way I wanted it… and I should stop there.
There are many ideas that came to fruition during the quest and even though I’d like to implement them, I have to make myself understand that there will always be another project another time. To continually adding new ideas will just impede the progress and blur the original plan. So I hereby present you the final layout for Mistressbailey. It is temporary still on my test site. I am under negotiation with Nutang’s owner to work out what’s permitted and what is not. I am pretty sure I violated a bigger part of their license agreement.
In any case Check it out here: causalien.nutang.com
Unfortunately for us, dancesport is a winter sport in Canada and because of the volatile climate, we often encounter snow storms in the open plains between cities.
I decided to stop at a road side hotel and pay the handsome charge of $70 a night instead of trying my luck on a road which I can no longer see. We had both made sacrifices for the weekend in order to travel to Toronto, she had skipped all her Friday classes and I had called in sick from my cellphone. We wanted to arrive at the competition a night before the so the stresses of the road doesn’t affect our performance. It looks like it will anyway.
Already, she’s complaining about the extra money we are spending for the room, add that to the $90 entry fee, $120 gas, $80 hostel fee for two nights and my one day’s paycheck, the weekend is adding up to a hefty sum.
I didn’t mind the complaining at all, it happened so often that I’ve grown numb to it. All that’s going through my mind at that moment was how much gas we have wasted because the tires keep on skidding in the snow. Am I going to have to fork out more money? How early do we have to wake up if we are to arrive and still have ample time to get ready: put on makeups, slip into our custumes, warm up all 10 dances and eat.
At the back of my mind, I registered her complain about the state of the hotel we are in and what a dump it is compared to a real hotel. I made a mental note that I should book an expensive suite next time to fufill her wishes, just so I can watch her reaction when she sees the bill.
The fact that we are sharing the same room always unsettles me. For me, sharing a room usually implies more intimate friendships or romantic relationship. That is not the nature of our relationship. I kept getting the urges to start discussing something profound, yet caught myself before I did because we have to sleep, in order to be ready for tomorrow. So we both went through the preparation for the night in silence, visualizing the routines we will be dancing the next day. Like business.
Holding her thigh with my left hand with my right arm wrapped around her waist, I gently pulled until our pelvis touched and constant connection can be felt. With only a hear beat as the lead we went down into the sexual dip, pausing at the lowest point for the imaginary audience to enjoy.
Without looking, I noticed that we got stuck somewhere because we didn’t end up as low as I thought. Then I said the most innocent of all things: “Huh, why can’t we go lower?” (I use “we” here because this is the most approximate of expression. In Mandarin, there’s a way to address such things without pointing out who or what it is). She got pissed and left, leaving wondering what the heck just happened. Later, I’d find that I insulted her by saying she wasn’t flexible enough.
What did I do back then in my confusion? I just shrugged and waited 20 minutes for the next girl to show up.
During my final year of university, I reached the pinnacle of living by the moment. On a normal day, I spend at least 3 hours a day practicing with a partner whilst struggling with four classes that involves projects. There was never time to think and I resolved to drinking a caffeine/wine mix beverage to keep me relaxed and concentrated in classes.
It was during that time when I met the teacher that changed my view about engineering…
I hated Klaus Kannemann with a passion.
What’s supposed to be two easy classes in computer architecture and computer networking dished out the equivalent workload of 4 classes. Usually, a project is taken as a 4 credit class of its own. In the cases when integrated into a lecture style class, they are usually easy. He was a replacement teacher for the two classes that semester and I was unlucky enough to get need those two to graduate that semester.
“I know it’s hard work and you won’t like me for it, but this is how the real world works and in this class, I decide what you have to do. You’ll thank me for it later.” He announced one day with his thick German accent and a frown turn smiles into blight. He is the human embodiment of the most stereotypical archtype of a German snob and I hated him with a passion.
After classes, my dance practice last from 7PM to 10PM and I’d have to head to the “Unic lab” as my dance partner calls it and churn out codes till the wee hours in the morning just for him. I swore and cursed all the time and detested the guy with all my passion. But, I have to agree with his last statement, therefore I am thanking him. Without him, I’d never been able to do the following: Knowing how to use UNIX, knowing how to program multi-threaded and multi-processor applications, knowing how to write client-server protocols and applications from scratch and understanding that whether or not a project gets approval depends purely on interpersonal skills.
Our mid term report for the project got a 50% mark on it because of problems in our design. It was infuriating because I know for a fact that the other group’s codes are all derivatives of the codes I’ve written. We contested the marking and got our grade lowered to 48% as he found “serious flaws in the code”. I think I’ve pissed him off royally at this time.
I passed the class barely, but it wasn’t because of some great project, it was because I aced the final. Later, I would reflect on how someone who copied from me can get a 80% mark, whilst another group who never worked on it nor showed up to the lab (i.e. they found the code from his previous students) gets 90%. My only conclusion is that it doesn’t matter how good your code is. You only need to get it to work, the rest is up to the sucking up or sugar coating of your relationship.
If you are an engineer studying in University of Ottawa, avoid the teacher named K.K at all cost.
When I was first thrown into the classroom with no clue of French, I thought I was dumb. Compared to a few classmates in the immigration class, my progress was slow as snail. When the time came for me to be integrated into the normal world, my French ability was the equivalent to those of primary school, whilst my spanish counterparts were already joking around and mingling well with the rest of the population.
Did I mentioned that I felt dumb? Well, I felt dumber when my teacher publicly humiliated my speaking ability and wrote a letter to the dean that I shouldn’t be in the class.
Fast forward, 10 years later. I am sitting in a German conversation class and having a blast blabbing out incoherent Deutch anyway I can. The people are more mature and I can understand 80% of what my teacher is saying in just two classes. Granted she’s using simple words and speaking slowly, but the knowledge of English and French combined with the experience of getting picked on by “les Québecois français� has propelled my ability to learn. No wonder those spanish people was able to integrated with the normal population so easily. Spanish and French are pratically the same thing. In asia, it’d probably be classified as another dialect only. I’d say Cantonese and Mandarin has more differences than spanish/french.
Following the same train of thought. I was wondering if one can conquer all the languages in the world and how best to go about doing it. I was thinking that one can tackle the languages that has the biggest differences first and than expand from that to the subsets of the languages.
I’ve created a road map of a hierarchy of languages. Marked in red are languages that are so different that you’ll have to restart from scratch. The lines are supporting languages that will help speed up the learning of the next one significantly.
