The year-end review is back again. This is a full year of surprises and shocks, almost like a roller-coaster ride. And I'm glad I managed to survive this tough year. Brief recap of the interesting things that occurred over the past year.


Jan - Many firsts in life. First trip to Vietnam with the Team Gusto volunteers as well as first french meal with jean, the first friend i made in French class.

Feb - Training with the windsurfing peeps for NTU Open and ITWC. Let's do it again this year. 4th in a row.

Mar - Late night supper with the supper gang and spending time to Bare Your Sole for charity.

Apr - "I wanna nobody nobody but you!" *clap clap and Uniform Party in charissa's room in RH. We hope we didn't terrorise the school too much =P

May - Month of waltz-ing and emo-ing with Life on the Moon. It's also back to work at LISEN. omgomgomg.

Jun - One of the best trips so far in Gunung Stong. It's all about Teamwork, Perseverance and Goal-Doing.

Jul - Disappointed with how the windsurf camp went, but I guess this feeling will pass. Busy month with SL Matric Fair and Project Excellence.

Aug - Marveled at the sight of Jupiter and surfing it out at my first windsurfing competition.

Sep - The most emotional month of the year. "I still want to believe that miracles do exist" and it still does.

Oct - What makes me happy? I didn't have an answer then. "Like Love, Happiness need no reminder." (CP,2009)

Nov - Meteor shower reminded me that some things in life do really deserve the wait. Being overly pessimistic is just not worth the time. MR First Halloween Party occurred as well.

Dec - Philosophical pondering and First "Ready For School" project. Lots of time spent with Mugger Republic as well.

To my friends out there, I know its not easy to get along with me. I can be overly emotional, very stubborn at times, insensitive to others and extremely straightforward/blunt. While I am gradually learning to accept the flaws I see in people, I do urge you all can do the same for me.

Someday when I am less critical of others and myself, perhaps I can finally see that this world is still beautiful in a way. Have faith =)

Happy 2010.

In the words of Rene Descartes, "I think therefore I am." It suggests that as long as there is thought, we can be sure that the thought, or the person thinking truly exist. For thought cannot exist if there is no one is thinking about it.

I don't know whether I truly exist in the past, it could be a mere construction of a new memory , instead of reconstruction of a past memory. I don't know whether I exist in the future in a similar fashion. Because what I am thinking now, whether it is the past or the future is just based on representation of my current thought. Everything could just be a dream.

If what Descartes says is in fact true, at least at the very present moment, I know that I exist. Similarly feelings/emotions are presented in the same way too. I don't know what I felt in the past or in the future, but I do know that this feeling is present now.

I could imagine being happy in the future, I could imagine being happy in the past, but I cannot confirm both with certainty as well. But I know I can be sure I am feeling happy at the present moment.

Perhaps ultimately only the present matters.

Today simon told me an interesting illustration of the importance of patience. I shall call it the water heater example.

"When people bath, they turn the water heater to a certain level (eg. level 2). But they complain that the water is still too cold. So they turn up the heater to a higher temperature. In the end, they complain that the water is too hot."

This example shows us that very often we are too impatient to wait and tend to rush things a little. The water heater takes time to heat up the water, but because of our impatience, we turn up the temperature to a level that is not suitable for us (too hot). Perhaps in reality, this level 2 is already the best/optimal temperature for us.

So what this all suggest is that sometimes in life, we have to be patient. Somethings are already working at its best, so its no good to make things move a little faster. Time can be our best friend, it can also be our worst enemy.

Even though there is more good news than bad news, I don't really feel like blogging here.

But generally, both windsurf events went well without any major hiccups, all that is left are the post-event paperwork and they can be closed. The committee is getting more bonded, so that is another call for celebration. After all, that is one of the main goals I set for the second year in committee.

"Ready for School Project" was great too. Its definitely an experience worth remembering and I hope I will be back again next year.

Results was what I had hoped to achieve, so its another relief for me. Of course I will continue to work hard the next semester (or rather all the remaining ones).

Let's just hope the good things continue =)

Merry Xmas to everyone and enjoy the festive mood!

credits from yahoo images

Away for

December Training Camp,

Mugger Republic JB Trip,

CDAC "Ready for School" Event,

Windsurfing Internal Race'09,

MixedRice Year-End Party,

Project Excellence Xmas Party,

& Sports Club Welfare Treat.

shall update when I'm back! Enjoy the holidays everyone =)

p.s pray for good wind and clear skies too.

Till Death Us Do Part

Harry and Sophia wanted to take seriously the words of the minister would utter as they exchanged rings: "These two lives are now joined in one unbroken circle." This meant putting their collective interest first, and their individual interests second. If they could do that, the marriage would be better for both of them.

But Harry had seen his own parents divorce and too many friends and relations hurt by betrayal and deceit to accept this unquestioningly. The calculating part of his brain reasoned that, if he put himself second, and Sophia put herself first, Sophia would get a good deal from the marriage but he wouldn't. In other words, he risked being taken for a mug if he romantically failed to protect his own self-interest.

Sophia had similar thoughts. They had even discussed the problem and agreed that they would really would not be egotistical in the marriage. But neither could be sure the other would keep their part of the bargain, so the safest course of action for both was to secretly look out for themselves. That inevitably meant the marriage would not be as good as it could have been. But surely it was the only rational course of action to take?

(from "The Pig that wants to be eaten)

The classic "prisoner's dilemma" presented here again. If humans can be less calculating and care more for a collective good, this world would be a more beautiful place. But if this kind of problem can happen in marriage (concerns just 2 person), I cannot imagine how people can work together for a greater good. Sometimes blind faith might work better.

I don't know if its confirmatory bias but somehow I seem to notice a lot of relationship stuff happening all around me. It could be good news, bad news or whatever, but what interests me is that why am I starting to notice them?

Is it because these days I'm brainstorming a new storyline (a topic about cupid and love) that causes this or was it something else?

Even my mum is behaving so weirdly the past few weeks (and I'm pretty sure its not a perceptual problem). Must be because my younger brother got a girlfriend. haha.

p.s I'm collecting some interesting love stories for this. So if you have anything interesting please sent it to me =)

Super tired after such a busy week. But its not over yet.

After 2 days of intensive packing, we are done with the 9000++ vouchers to be given out for the CDAC "Ready For School" event.

Mambo, random CPG party, night cycling, adobe photoshop workshop, (kite-flying?). I need more sleep =(

CPR + AED Familiarization Training today, 3pm @ SRC Dancefloor.

SuperH says: so i've a group of friends whom i'm close with. v close. but as we become closer, i start to see their flaws. some of which is really irritating me. I'm not sure if its me who is getting anal, or is it because they are really treating ppl who are closer w less thoughtfulness. or rather, as time goes by, you have exhausted all their good points.

SuperH says: and i bet these are gg to strain my friendship w them. if thats the case, whats the point of being close to your friends when its just going to strain the friendship at the end of the day.

SuperH says: I am wondering if it is better to keep a distance from all your friends, a distance that is far enuff so that we dont see each other's flaws. maintain a good image, a facade. Keep the distance, keep the flaws. and since no one really understands, why make the effort to express your feelings to them. you can be your own best friend.

This brings me to the question about friendship. Can I accept the flaws that I see in my friends as well?

If yes, then I am contradicting the very beliefs that I have for myself. After all, the flaws are the ones that I see as unacceptable.

If no, then I guess there can be no friends for me. Since it is impossible to find someone who fits the bill (except myself). I am my own best friend in the end.

It's time to pick up philosophy again. This time I borrowed this book called The Pig that wants to be eaten.

An interesting and yet thought-provoking book by Julian Baggini. Not sure if I can post it here, but some of the short stories are so mind-boogling and awesome. Haha

Supposed you live in a desert all your life, and one day a relative comes back from his travels and tells u about his stories. One thing he mentioned was 'ice'. In the far corner of the earth, there was a place that was so cold that the water stopped flowing and formed into a translucent block. The only difference between the block and the water that flows is that it is much colder. Would you believe that 'ice' exist?

Now the problem is that if you have never seen anything with your own eyes, how can you show that it is true? Yet again, if you choose not to believe it, you could be missing out on something that is in fact true. But you cannot afford to believe it from just a person's perspective. Even if many people agree, does it mean it is in fact true? Remember the time when people claimed that the earth was flat.

So the best is to keep an open mind about everything. There is still a limit to our knowledge that cannot be addressed even till now.

This thought has been lingering for some time, but I was busy with other more important stuff that I didn't really have time to reflect on it.

But after huimin's comment during suppertalk, I begin to realise the importance of this issue. She said I look as though I was "living in my own world", even though I am always physically present, my mind seem to be always off somewhere else. What's worse is that she can see the "fear" in my eyes that I myself know is present as well.

I don't know how to describe this fear. The best words I can find for now is "loss" of emotions. In a way, I don't know whether I can feel truly happy or sad anymore. Don't ask me how come because I don't have a clue myself too. The emotions I experience seem to be like fleeting thoughts, I can be ecstatic whenever I play, but a few moments later I begin to feel nothing again. So much so that I start questioning myself if I did experience anything at all in the first place. Something must have changed me to who I am today.

When I'm happy I laugh, when I'm angry, I laugh, and when I'm sad, I laugh as well. So much so that everything I laugh, I can no longer know what emotion I am experiencing. And coupled with the fact that I know these are passing "emotional" thoughts, I start behaving like a detached individual, like what huimin said. Which is true in fact, because I can no longer see the actual me. Its like being an observer watching the life of another (which is still me) going on.

What is it like to truly feel again?

And its all over. Time to savour the well-deserved break.

What is it that I want to achieve in life?

After a msn conversation with huihui, I seem to understand this a "little" better. I still remember all these years, the only dream that I had was to make it to university. Now that I am here, it dawned onto me that I no longer have anything else to look forward to.

Even in retrospect, sometimes I wonder why I am so concerned with getting a degree in the first place. Perhaps it was due to socialization when all of us were young. Our parents always tell us to study hard and get a good degree, otherwise we can only be "road-sweepers" or "toilet cleaners". Somehow this is only true to an extent. You don't have to be a road-sweeper even without any qualifications, and it does not necccessarily meant that you can't be a degree holder toilet cleaner. Come to think of it now, I laugh at how silly I was to believed them in the past.

But I guess our parents are encouraging us for our own good. In this competitive society, qualifications seems to be all that matter. Good Honours means better paying job. But is that what I really want? Materialism doesn't seem to appeal me much. I am pretty fine just wearing pasar-malam clothes or imitation adidas from bangkok. Or is it the society itself, we value success only in such monetary terms. What happened to everything else? Does being poor really meant you are a total failure?

Again people is going to criticse that I'm daydreaming (idealist), or I should just conform to majority. Or that I have never tasted poverty to understand how money can make one happy. Yes that is true, but didn't our parents lived a life that used to be tough? How can we tell that they are more happy now than before?

But that is a side point. I can't forsee myself being happy just by earning a lot of money, whether I can afford to get my own car or that newest Iphone. I don't know what makes me happy (at least for now). There must be more to life that this.

I want to live a life where I know if I were to die tomorrow, I can still leave with a smile. Not trying to be pessimistic here, but since the future is unknown, anything is possible. Some incidents have a higher probability than others though, like getting heart attack, car accident, more than dying under the debris from an earthquake. I don't want to waste my time pursuing these superficial things.

Even after 10 years, I still don't really know what I want in life after all.

Just one more day.

Yesterday night spent at admiralty park was indeed worthwhile.

The sky was overcast since evening, and I was pretty afraid the clouds would remain so. Fortunately, the sky managed to clear up a little at about 2am. That was when I got so random and decided to take the field chair down my block and see from the bus stop (which is much darker). Apparently while I was staring into the sky, a police car stopped by. Super shocked because I had like no IC, no phone, no money with me at all.

The policemen thought I was drunk and sitting by the road. Oh well, I guess its really quite weird to find a lone figure sitting in the middle of the bus stop, leaning against the lamp post and staring into the sky.

Anyway, my uncle came and we headed for admiralty park. Set up the stuff and used the binoculars. That was when the sky cleared and I saw the most starry night I haven seen in Singapore (with the exception of Tekong).

In the end, I got to see 4 meteors, including one with a very nice blue trail. A special bonus when we unexpectedly located mars using the telescope =)

more on facebook album. This shall be the start of my star gazing album.

I need to amass all my positive self-efficacy to last through this week.

Independent Thinker: Career
As an Independent Thinker, you are one of the introverted personality types. That is one of the reasons you prefer to work alone. This does not mean that you cannot be successful in a team, as well. For you, the task is most important and people who are involved come second. The contact with others, the necessity to adjust yourself to their daily changing sensitivities - all of it is just more gratuitous emotion that keep you from totally devoting yourself to those things that truly interest you: analyzing systems and policies, researching potentials for change, developing new ideas and implementing them in reality.

Here you differ from the second introverted Thinker type, the Analytical Thinker: You truly enjoy implementing your concepts and you enjoy the results. Therefore you should look for a work environment where you can accompany and expedite your ideas through to their conclusion. You consider difficult situations as challenges that really try your creativity and you frequently surprise people around you with genuinely incredibly bright ideas, rendering others speechless with their excellence. Your world consists of statistics, legitimacy, and systematics.

Considering all of this, your Thinker type is very praxis-oriented, and by no means lives on an intellectual ivory tower. You are not interested in theories not related to reality. As in chess, you are excellent at predicting the consequences of your methods in advance, and then choosing the appropriate alternative. Once you have made your decision on how to deal with a situation, you are totally willing to use your elbows and you don’t necessarily show any consideration for others. With that, you occasionally encounter resistance from other, less task-oriented colleagues that you quickly brush aside.

You resent routine jobs or monotonic order of events. You believe that they smother your creativity. If necessary, your determination and unusual ambition will convince you to acquiesce to the inevitable. Nevertheless, when choosing your profession, you should be mindful that your working environment is going to provide you with something new to learn and that your tasks are as varied as possible. Your strength lies in solving novel problems and not working on details. Nor should your curiosity ever be satisfied; just as fresh information is as important to you as the air you breathe, so is the feeling that you continuously expand and increase your competencies. An activity where you do the same thing in the same department with the same colleagues for 20 years is the worst fate that can possibly happen to a hungry mind.

Independent Thinker: Love

For your partner, you are truly a hard nut to crack, and one has to give someone who goes through life as independent as you darn good reasons for a relationship before he/she deigns to at least consider it. You very slowly and judiciously develop trust and closeness to other people; whoever wants to win you needs a tremendous amount of patience and staying power.

Even once you begin to warm up to someone, one does not sense that for the longest time as you are uncomfortable and reluctant to display your feelings because you are not used to it. The cool, distanced, and somewhat arrogant vibes of all Thinkers are a little more pronounced with you and already sufficiently discourage many potential partners as they get frustrated and give up during the advanced phases of flirting - a shame because inside, you are not as indifferent and emotionless as you some- times appear, and sometimes your reserve simply hides your disappointment at the blindness and superficiality of the people around you.

Nevertheless, it is always a good idea for you to choose a partner very carefully and not blindly jump into an affair, because your demands are very high. You have a clear image of the “perfect relationship” and are not willing to deviate from that by even one millimeter to the right or the left. A sharp intellect that is equal to yours is the most important quality your partner must bring along. You need somebody in your life who inspires, stimulates, and always challenges you and with whom you can maintain an intensive intellectual companionship. Nothing will impress you more than competence, knowledge, and the willingness to learn because those are the traits that are truly important to you in your life. You are never really satisfied with your accomplishments, and always discover something about yourself that needs your improvement, where something new can be learned, and where you are not yet good enough.

http://www.ipersonic.com/test.html

Went for "Ask Stupid Question: Innovation without Inhibition" workshop at CDAC HQ yesterday.

It's been quite some time since I went back to HQ, and since it was a sunday, the whole place was empty. Oh well, I guess we have to find some other time if we were to catch Valerie at work.

Anyway the workshop was interesting, but the concept of asking stupid questions as a way to generate ideas itself was the most fascinating. Similar to most workshops I attended, most activities were in the form of experiential learning (meaning learning through play).

Unfortunately the method is a trademark of the NLB, so I can't really post them up here. But you can always meet me and discuss ways to generate ideas for future research =)

Today's the last session for Project Excellence this year.

Tried out moderating a debate for the first time. The motion of the day was "Using computers affect your studies positively" and the P4s had to come up with their own points and try to argue in a coherent manner.

It was quite impressive that they were able to present well despite it being their first attempt. Debates are usually for secondary school level, so considering their young age, it was really good =)

And with that concludes the end of the 2009 programme.