Passions

Ay le mao it's been over a month since I last blogged so here we go. Something on my mind that I've thought for the past year or so and I think it's about time to set it in pixels. Not stone, cause well, it's been a long time since most people used stones to read (unless you're an African kid in a poorly funded Islamic school where they send the kids to beg for their meals) and you're also likely reading this on a computer. Unless someone copied my blog posts and carved them on a piece of stone, which is a very queer thing to do indeed.

I think there's been a very severe lack in passions. I mean something that people are very passionate about. Like say little Timmy is very passionate about cars. He's fascinated by them. And he grows up, and he becomes a car designer. Or a fuel chemist, seeking to produce more environmentally friendly fuels. You feel me? Something that a kid is so fascinated about that it drives them mad. They want to know all there is to know about it. They want to be involved in that field one day. That's the kind of passion I'm talking about. A passion is so much more than just a hobby. And sadly, I think in general, most Singaporeans have a lack of this. Well, I do know one guy who is though. My classmate, let's call him SJ, who is very fascinated by mechas (I know this cause he did a presentation and I totally did not know that Japan actually built a functioning mecha until he presented), which is primarily the reason why he chose the course I take. But most of the other guys, I'm not quite sure what their motivations are in choosing what they chose. Shit, I know a guy who is taking my course but isn't actually very interested/good in mathematics. Not quite so sure why he is here, learning something he doesn't care about.

I know what my passions are. Or at least where they lie. I'm interested in space. But more so than that. I am an explorer. Unfortunately, trapped in between two eras of exploration. Too late for the seas, too early for the stars, as they say. Nonetheless, I am aware that without advancements in our knowledge of the stars or the necessary mechanical instruments, we would not be able to achieve interstellar travel. Which is also why I am fascinated by things like engines and propulsion. Did you know that an engine is actually only about 20% efficient? Of the entire available energy from the consumption of the fuel, most of it is actually turned into waste heat. 80%. 80% of energy obtained from fuel burned in an internal combustion engine is actually unusable. That's just crazy. But earlier steam based designs were even more inefficient and so to think that we could one day make an engine even more efficient is nuts.

The one group of people I can say for certain in Singapore who are truly chasing their passions and rather flamboyantly I might add, are the cosplayers. They wouldn't be doing it if they weren't passionate about cosplaying. But apart from that, I don't think many Singaporeans are passionate about very many things. Due in part I believe, that many Singaporean parents are rather uninvolved in their kid's upbringing and don't expose them to many things to develop their passions. Well that's all I have on this. Until next time, ciao.

Precision

It's going to be another rant, I've done enough of these here, you might know what this is already about before I get down to the meat and bones of it. I've done one on this before, after all. I've been here in my course for more than a semester already, I've got a kinda good grasp on the kind of people in my class. That said, I've not worked with all of them, so I can't say if so and so is this kind of person for sure. But for sure, I can tell you that I don't know what some people are doing in an Engineering course. Or anything Science related for that matter. I won't say names, but you might already know who these people are.

It's this pervasive idea of close enough. Like when I ask for you to throw a basketball through the hoop, you hit the pole holding up the board and hoop and say, "I did what you wanted." Like fuck you didn't. Not even close. Even if you did hit the board, that's still not what was requested. I've seen it in the way they do work, or even behave. They just can't be bothered to do things the way that's requested or even try to do it that way.

I was sitting in computer programming tutorial, the question was to fill out the part required and not the whole code and the guy sitting next to me hadn't finished it by the time the teacher went through the question. Why? Because he was wasting his own time, writing out the whole code in the name of "practice". Jesus fucking Christ, the start of the whole code so far has only changed one time, which was to add <math.h>, it's been the exact same otherwise and you need to "practice" that shit? I mean if you could write out the whole thing in the allotted time, good for you, but if you can't do that and can't even reach the part that we need to go through at least, then don't fucking bother, you're not helping yourself. You won't even know if you can do the part that the question was asking for because you didn't even reach it.

And only just now, I was chastised for being obsessed with detail. Well I kinda was back in DGAD but they called it "straight" (as opposed to flexible, not the sexuality connotation of it), which is supposed to be a bad thing. I mean I get it, you should be flexible sometimes, a bridge has to flex or it'll snap. But can you imagine the pillar holding the bridge up flexing? The longevity of that bridge is questionable. Sometimes, you've got to be straight too, especially when one's an engineer or a scientist.

Seriously, just think about it. If you have a penchant for doing things your own way or "close enough", then fuck off and go do art or something where blueprints don't exist. The things you create/work on are going to be used by people. Can you imagine if the engineer designing the engine in your car said," Well it doesn't matter if this here piston doesn't fit well. The car'll still run." And you drive your car with that engine in it and it suddenly fails you on the highway and you get a runaway engine that drives you right off a cliff, because the engineer that designed the steel barrier for that bend said it would be fine if they use a weaker steel, where if it was actually built to spec, would have saved your life. Magnify that a hundred times and you get a ship sinking because the designer didn't bother to find out if a smaller rivet used in the ship's panels would cause it to fail or not. And the lives of the hundreds of people on that ship.

Peace out.

Remaining

Well turns out I think I remembered what I wanted to talk about. So here we go again~

I don't know when I had this shift in mindset, I can't pinpoint an exact time and say, "Here, this is the moment that I changed." I can say that it's about last year that it happened. So I'm 18 already. Statistically, the average male lives to about 80. I've lived nearly a quarter of my life. I've only got about 3 quarters of it left if I don't do something stupid. I won't say it was the best quarter, plenty of shit happened but from that shit also came flecks of gold called life lessons, so it wasn't all for the worst. And gradually I've just come to not be annoyed at people who call me names, who insult me, generally people who want to shit on my life. If anything, there's pity for them, that they'd have to stoop so low to try and hurt my feelings even though it doesn't work. Part of this is also probably because I've gained this ability to cut toxic people out of my life without batting an eyelid (but doesn't mean that just because we were cut off you were toxic), probably helps with not being affected by being insulted. And now that I'm thinking about it, it seems a little psychopathic to be honest, to have no sentiment for such things and being able to cavalierly cut off people like that.

Another part of it, a bigger part I figured as a part of my sudden realisation that I have grown up over the past year, is that I've lived a full 18 years, well a little over now. But I've lived 18 years. I got 62 left and hell, I'll be damned if I let anyone shit on the rest of that 62 years. I am determined to be generally satisfied with my life and there's no room for people who want to shit on me in that 62 years. If we ain't good for each other then I'm not gonna bother with you. You feel me? You only got so much time in this world, you don't got time to be sad, to be insulted, to be shit on by lesser people. That time is for you to live, to learn, to love, be loved. I'm not saying shit won't happen or you should shut out people who shit on you but mean well, shit's going to happen, it's life and they shit on you because they love you. That's fine. I'm talking about the toxic ones, the ones who shit on you for the sole purpose of shitting on you, to make themselves feel good. They're not worthy of being in your life so just cut them off as you would a cancer tumour.

As Hailee Steinfeld says,

"I love me, gonna love myself."

Look

So what up, who the fuck actually still reads my blogs? To whoever's been reading this crappy collection of shitty writing all this time, congratulations for being such a loser. You really should reconsider your reading choices.

So I kinda felt like I ought to talk about something that was mentioned to me one time by my first ex. Also the first time I had any real interaction with any female, didn't have any really close female friends prior and you know, kinda was a disaster. So anyway one time, she said that I have this stare. She didn't describe it with a word, I asked if she thought it was rapey or intense but she she said it was as if I was studying everything about her. Which is actually kinda rapey if you think about it. I never actually realised up until the point she mentioned it how much I actually notice when I look at stuff. I always figured everyone had a keen eye for detail, which I guess isn't true.

That's really all I have to say. I actually had another topic I wanted to talk about but I totally can't remember it, so you'll have to settle for this.

"Refugees"

So with Da'esh taking large swathes of land in the Levant region, plenty of Kurds, Syrians and Iraqis have been forced out of their homes, faced with the threat of death. They've gone to places like Hungary, who have turned them back and many look to Europe for refuge. In this whole fiasco, plenty of other nationalities have been taking advantage of the situation to seek economic refuge. They tear up their passports and other identification, take a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean and land themselves in Italy, ground zero for their eventual journey to Swedistan or Deutschistan (Sweden and Germany, among other countries commonly sought after by "asylum seekers").

Honestly my personal opinion is this: fuck all these people. Don't get me wrong, really, if you're getting rekt by some political issue in your country, like maybe you're an Afghani escaping the Taliban or a Syrian from Aleppo, Raqqah or a Kurd from Kobaniye trying to escape from Da'esh with your whole family, that's cool. (I've seen a story of a teen escaping Syria because he didn't want to be conscripted, IMO that's unacceptable) But if you're an economic refugee, that's not cool. Your entire country is in economic shambles, what gives you the right to escape it simply because you made this arduous journey from your country? Hell no, deport these fucks I say. And even for the refugees of the former kind, they should be deported the moment their country is deemed safe enough for them to be returned. It is absurd that suddenly, these people manage to get a free pass because some shitty shit happened to them. Think about it, it shouldn't be easier for a poor Syrian with no education qualifications, no contacts, no knowledge in German or German culture or anything else that would be deemed beneficial to the German society to become a German citizen compared to say maybe a wealthy Chinese business man with decent enough German and several stakes in multiple German companies.

So that's just my 2 cents, it is fine to accept refugees of the non-economic kind, but only for as long as they are safer here than they would in their home country. They shouldn't be allowed to remain for longer than that and continue to be a leech to the host nation's taxpayers. Hell, remember that refugee that I mentioned earlier from Syria? While awaiting his asylum acceptance, he was given an allowance. For free. FREE. He didn't have to do community service, help produce some trinkets for sale, absolutely nothing that contributes to the German economy. And then he got to tour Germany on German taxpayer's money. The government paid him to tour the nation and generally do nothing. Absurd, I say. Absolutely absurd. Now think about it, this multiplied by hundreds of thousands of refugees? That's hospitals, roads, subsidies, scholarships and what not that instead of going to the German people, goes to these refugees that are here for the fun instead. Unacceptable.

A Friendship But Not A Relationship

So it's been over a month since my last blog post and school has already started for a week, it's currently in its second week now and quickly, work is seemingly already piled high ahead of me, I can only hope I can achieve a 4.0 GPA to bring it up but I highly doubt I can hit that. But that's not the topic of what I have to say today. It's on an entirely different spectrum.

For most people, they have a few friends of the opposite gender. Sometimes more than their own, which is perfectly fine. I don't have many friends who are girls, I can probably count it on one hand if I had to, which then again, I don't have many friends either. Most other people I know I'd only count as acquaintances. To me, the word 'friend' just has so much more meaning and power than to others. Some people only have to meet a person once or twice before deciding they're their friends (supposing they like them). For me, it's more like twenty. Minor digression, back to the point I was going to say, so sometimes, there's this friend of the opposite gender you really hit it off with. It's at the point where you have so many things you can talk about, movies, games, anything really. All your mutual friends are speculating if you're together, you hear them and laugh it off but then you doubt yourself for a moment. What if you really like them? Would you miss out if you don't act? Could he/she be the soulmate you were destined for?

And so you acted, or it could be that the other other party acted first. You end up together. Happiest 3 months of your life. Maybe rest of your life. And then strife. National Service, taxing classes, work stresses. Argument. Life so turbulent. You question if really you were meant for each other. Increasingly, you notice the things you never saw before, say words of war. At the same time, so does he/she. Tensions rise and they drop their guise. Suddenly you realise that you're not meant to be. Words you didn't intend, an unwanted end.  After 3 weeks, you run into them. It was fleet, your eyes meet. Pleas quietly said, no mends to be made, heart cut by a blade. You drink your mead, try to stop the bleed. Passage of a melancholy tide, tears have dried.

So before I get too carried away with the rhymes (actually it's just that it's gotten too hard), the crux of what I've been trying to say is that just because you have a great friendship doesn't mean that you'll have a great relationship. There's always things that you will never show your friends, likewise so will the other party. Things you'll expect of a significant other but not a friend. I've personally seen this in my own relationships (only in one actually but still) and that from people around me. Somehow, even when they're in the wrong (I'm talking for objective issues like if the sun is a star), they want the other party to cede to them, but they might simply accept that they were wrong and not fight over it if it was a friend instead who told them they were wrong. This is just one example of the things that could be expected from a significant other that won't be expected from a friend. Somehow, just because they're together, it is expected that the significant other should be treated differently, like royalty. And honestly, I don't think that's a viable relationship. You got together at first because you enjoyed each other's company. Then when unrealistic or sudden expectations are placed on the other party, suddenly your company ceases to be as desirable to the other party. You show things you wouldn't show your friends but would show your family. They see that you're not all that you're cropped up to be, likewise so will you, and well, things don't end well.

So don't be overly hasty. Sometimes, all that you'll ever be meant for is just a friendship but of course, that doesn't mean you can never be more than that.

Spirituality Without Religion

This post was sparked by this here video, so go on ahead to check it out.

To those that know me on a level greater than an acquaintance, you might perhaps know that I am a staunch Atheist. Not so long ago, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, I'd decided that I was an Atheist. I've known pretty much all my life that idols of the Buddhas in the temples I visit occasionally don't really have any sort of effect on me. I've never set foot in a church and I don't think I ever will, but I've never really felt Jesus or God in my life. I believed in one thing - nothing happens without a reason, everything has an explanation backed by evidence. That's my philosophy on religion, which so far has no evidence for existence of a God, but granted there's no evidence proving there isn't one either, though so far everything religion has said about the creation of the world has proven to be less than true. I mean come on, it's a really far-fetched story that the world was created in 6 days, with God resting on the last. It sounds just like a week, work for 6 days and rest/church on Sunday.

Just a couple years ago I'd straight up tell you that religion is a terrible thing and that anyone who believes in a God is a fool to cast aside the teachings of Science and choose instead to believe in old books and the words of our ancestors who didn't know better. Nowadays, I recognise that that's the way that some people choose to see the world and it's damn near impossible to change it. After all, it's not easy to let go of something you've been taught your entire childhood for something that a stranger or a friend told you when your whole family believes it. Your whole family can't be wrong right? And anyway, I realise that not all religious people are a terrible lot and just because I can't see the good of it doesn't mean they can't. Science speaks to me like Jesus or God speaks to them. And religion does answer some of the hard questions like where we go after we die and how life came to be born on Earth (though this is beginning to be more clear to us everyday).

My take on religion is that it was a way of living that worked for almost 2 millenium. There's no better way to teach an uneducated person how to live than with a omnipotent being that's ever watchful of your every move and would punish you for straying away from the "righteous path" and doing bad deeds or not believing in him. It was also a means of explaining complex events that have no clear and obvious reason. Like why is there a waterspout, a whirlpool or a tsunami? As the ancient Chinese would tell you, that's the dragons of the East Palace wreaking havoc because they were angry over something. Why has plague suddenly struck us out of nowhere? God's wrath for humanity's sins. Mythical beings are a very easy way of avoiding having to dig deeper for the truth, pinning everything to God's(or mythical beings') will. And if you think that's hokey, if your 2 year old child asks you why there's rainbows, is it easier to tell him it was made by God or to explain to him that a rainbow is a result of the refraction of light through water vapour in Earth's atmosphere? 

Now just think, if you didn't know why something happened and someone asked you for an explanation, wouldn't just be easier to say it was the work of God than to try to find an answer for it? After all you've got better things to do like work the fields and make sure the raiders aren't coming to abduct your women again. Much of the Bible contains passages about things that are forbidden and what's allowed, like not wearing clothes woven from 2 materials, not eating molluscs and shellfish or not eating pigs in the Qur'an and Torah. With good reason too, the octopus/sea slug could be poisonous, there's no way of knowing for sure and pigs often have tapeworms that could pass to humans if not cooked well. And there were other passages about things like selling your daughters to other men for wives and what not. Such a thing today would be unthinkable but not in those days. And not to mention there was incest between Lot and his daughters (instigated by them no less) because he has no male heir. Not all of religion is about outdated methods of living though, God does provide a sort of comfort to some people and that's not bad.

But there's a common misconception that a person who doesn't believe in God is on the wrong path and that unless you're on the same road as them (by that I mean the same denomination of religion as them), you're definitely on the road to Hell and our dear friend Stan. Yes, Stan. (Alright, alright, Satan.) Oftentimes I see this from Christians and being said to other Christians and people of the book. Like come on, you guys have the same God, can't you guys be nice to each other? Not too long ago, I saw an article written by a female Australian journalist about why she converted from Christianity to Islam and while most of the commentators were supportive of her change, the ones that stand out are Christians telling her that "She is not born again, I will pray for you and hope you find the way back to God." What the fuck? Fuck your prayers, she found her God. You can keep your God and your shitty mindset to yourself. Why couldn't they be happy for her? Why does it have to be either you're with us or you're on your way to hell. It's so freaking archaic and reminds me of the iron age. And it's always the christians like them that foul the image of all Christians and also the reason why I ended up being an Atheist. Constantly asking you to go to church with them and telling you quotes from the Bible like it's some fucking gem of a quote. Hell naw it ain't. They say nothing but "Believe in me because I'm the best and the most amazing." Literally the whole aim of the Bible is about asking you to believe in God if you just take a step back and look at it.

And these people often think that because we don't have a God, we aren't spiritual and we can't appreciate beautiful things because we don't know that it was made by God for us. Well my answer to them is that we can. We can appreciate the stars because we know what powers them, the forces that create them, how they shine, their births, their lives and their deaths, some go quietly into the night, others in a blaze of glory. When we look at the birds flying in the sky, we appreciate that they can do that because of the glorious evolution of their feathers from quills and breast muscles to power their flight. When I walk outside and look at the trees, the grass, the cat, the lizard, the bird and the fish, I can appreciate that we are all related to each other, that at one point in time we were not so different from one another and that we all share the same origin. That all matter in the universe is but a tiny fraction of that which existed at the very beginning of time and it's because of that tiny amount more matter than anti-matter that the universe came to exist as we know it. That the dirt, the water, the air, every living creature is made from stardust. From the Earth that gives us life we return to it in the great cycle. The root of the word Science is Scientia, Latin for knowledge. And indeed it is to know, to possess knowledge through Science from which my spirituality comes. Through Science, it is discovered that all life is connected to one another, we are all related and that is exceedingly beautiful. To me, it is far more beautiful to know that it was through the smallest of chances that we came to exist and are all connected than that we were created by a perfect being as separate creatures.

But I'm not saying that religious people are bad people, no. Not all of them. Many of the religious ones I know are good people. It is just that they see the world through a different lens to try and understand it in their way. By no means are they bad because they don't see the world through the same lens as us. I guess my message here is that no matter what we believe in, we are all the same as each other and there's no need for hate. There is no room for hate. The world we live in today is unsustainable and the only way we can survive the 21st century is if we are saved by some miraculous technology leading to a rise in complexity, as John Green puts it talking about the Anthropocene. And I believe the only way forward is through Science, as does Bill Nye and Neil DeGrasse Tyson and all other contemporary great minds. And perhaps there was a little shift in the direction of where I wanted to go in the start of this post and where I ended up but both messages are important, Not being religious isn't a bad thing, and we need a solution for our problems now so that we can have a brighter future. I'll end it on that note, peace out.

Anime

There's nothing wrong with watching anime. I used to watch anime too, but that was a long time ago and it's been probably 6+ years since I was interested enough to watch more than 5 episodes. I'm sure there's anime out there that have some form of values it's trying to inculcate though majority of it is usually fan service (I'm looking at you, Monster Musume). As much as I don't watch anime, because application of some simple economics tells me it's much better to watch educational stuff online than anime, I do think there's nothing wrong with watching anime. To each their own after all, some people do derive entertainment from watching anime and that's okay. Even the fan service ones filled with crude humour with little values, that's still fine.

But the real problem is when anime becomes your whole life and the only culture you're interested in. There's a term called otaku for these people, it's a derogatory term in Japan, it's shameful to let people know you're one. But here in Singapore, boy oh boy do you see weeaboo (derogatory term: Someone who is obsessed with Japan/Japanese Culture/Anime, etc. and attempts to act as if they were Japanese, even though they're far from it. They use Japanese words but usually end up pronouncing them wrong and sounding like total assholes. - Urban Dictionary. They also usually denounce their own culture, which is what sets them apart from people who are just interested in Japan.) after weeaboo proudly proclaiming themselves an otaku. And they say it with such pride as if it's a good thing. Really though, it's not. It implies an absolute obsession with anime culture. It's funny how they all think it's Japanese culture, really it's not. Japan's rich culture can't be boiled down to Tokyo, Harajuku, Akihabara (I forgot the name to this and googled Japan Anime District. Really amazing how they knew what I was talking about.), kimonos, Japanese high school life, sushi and ramen/udon. Although I'll grant you that there are people who are genuinely interested in Japanese culture and anime was the gateway drug, that's fine. I'm talking about the people who are only interested in anime culture and proclaim themselves as interested in Japanese culture.

Then comes the problem when anime becomes your worldview, all of their opinions and thoughts have some kind of root in anime or manga. So last year, the Mars One project was announced. A weeaboo I know made this very comment on the matter

"It's a bad idea, didn't they watch Terra Formars (Bunch of dudes landed on Mars, Mars has alien roaches that fucked them up, took them over and now humans send teams to kill em or they're fucked big time - synopsis provided by a friend)?"

Now that really rustled my jimmies. That his sole argument against the Mars One project was a fucking anime. Not that it's too costly, not that people who regretted going can't come back, not that the technology isn't likely to be out yet by that time, not that if something fucks up on Mars, those people are on their own but a fucking anime about aliens taking over the minds of the humans and coming back to wreck us. Which goes to show that he wasn't paying attention because they have no way of coming back, and you can take over the minds, but you're still stuck with their biological needs, reference Yeerks, and are probably unlikely to know the physiological needs for humans to maintain homeostasis and would likely lose too many to be able to have the manpower needed to come to Earth.

So really, there's nothing wrong with watching anime but never let it be your source of ideas and opinions for history and innovation is rich in ideas that anime only tries to imitate.

Experiences and People

WHY HELLO EVERYBODY. I just pulled off a Tyler Oakley intro and I have no idea why. Probably because it's like 6 am now which is right about 6 pm for me because I'm once again fucking nocturnal. Happens every fucking holiday period. Or just about any period of time where I don't go to school for at least 3 days. And it's been more than a month since I made any real blog posts, the one I made last doesn't really count because it was a rant. So I want to talk about experiences and people, without further ado, lets begin.

Experiences make people. I don't know if you've ever heard it before or or seen it before somewhere. I'll be honest with you I don't either. I've probably heard this from somewhere before but I never really got to appreciate it fully. Or maybe I just never sat down hard enough and long enough to really digest what it meant. So recently I've been watching Crash Course (please check them out yeah?), it's somewhat like Kurz Gesagt (please check these guys too), they make videos less than 10 minutes long about various topics and giving you a crash course on it. You can see where the name came from. I came upon it some couple weeks ago while studying Chemistry and a friend passed the link along to me. It was good help, got me a passing grade, not as good as I would've hoped but that's not the focus here. Anyway, so I snooped around and I found my favourite topic - Astronomy. Space has always been a huge fascination of mine, in case you've yet to realise.

So the host of Crash Course Astronomy is a fellow called Phil Plait and well he might not seem all that interesting really, hell you might not even have heard of the guy. I know I haven't but he is an incredibly knowledgeable person. He even has an asteroid named after him, 165347 philplait. Isn't it just fucking amazing? Not everyone can go around saying oh you know, I've got a rock floating in space with my name on it. And he first got hook onto Astronomy when he was a kid, 5 years old, his father brought home a telescope. According to Plait:

"He aimed it at Saturn that night. One look, and that was it. I was hooked."

And honestly I think it's just absolutely AWESOME. He even talks about it on the Saturn video. Personally I've never gotten to see Saturn with my own eyes, though this year I've managed to see Venus and Jupiter in the night sky for they were bright enough. It's a real pity that I live in bright bright Singapore, the light pollution is so incredibly intense. For city folk like me, you honestly never truly realise how bright your city is until you wander far enough into the wilderness and look back to see the glow of lights in the distance. Even then, it's still far too bright to see the Milky Way. I have no idea when it was that I got so hooked onto Astronomy and space. I couldn't place an event to it. Perhaps all along I had it in me and I just never really knew. I remember watching almost hour long documentaries on space. I actually hunted for them. At the age of merely 14 I knew about solar wind, Venus' atmosphere and what not. Most of my peers don't even know the age of the Solar System. 4.6 billion years, in case you were wondering. Or 6000, if you believe in that shit. Probably, the strongest event I'd say that shaped my passion for the stars would be that one trip when I was 16 back in 2013, when there was a farm stay organised by our school and we got to walk out into the farm at night. The stars, it was a sight I've never seen before and a sky I'd be glad to die under. And we didn't get to sit for a moment to truly appreciate the spectacle before us. Ah well.

But I digress, you see, it's truly the experiences a person's had that makes them who they are. Phil was fascinated as a child by the sight of Saturn, me by the stars I saw. And your experiences and your interpretations of it makes you. So have awesome experiences, and be an awesome person.

Wanting to be right

So before I start on today's blogpost, I just want to talk about my previous one slightly. It's that after discussion with my friends, I've come to the conclusion that my perfect humanity is impossible simply because of the fact that we are human. It is human to seek dominion over others viewed to be lesser. It's probably because of the desire to pass on our genes. We believe our genes are the best and hence will seek to make sure that people with "lesser" genes are less able to do so, as do lions and chimpanzees and a whole host of other lifeforms that have a social structure, even without, as can be seen in polar bears. While a hierarchy of power will always exist as it is inevitable, humans with the most power will often seek to dominate less powerful individuals. And I say a hierarchy of power is inevitable because it's the wisest to let people who are most capable to lead do so but it invariably gives them power as well, creating an imbalance in power and hence a hierarchy. So unless humanity is able to erase this will to dominate from themselves, thereby becoming inhumane, my perfect humanity scenario cannot exist and because they are no longer human, they aren't the perfect humanity but the perfect inhumanity. Therefore a perfect humanity is impossible.

Enough with all that humanity nonsense and back to today's topic which is this desire to be correct. Now there's nothing really wrong with wanting to be correct, in fact I think it's a fantastic thing to want to be correct. It can drive this passion of knowledge, to be as correct as one can possibly be. The issue lies in defiance in the face of overwhelming evidence. To help illustrate, imagine person A saying 2+2=5. Person B proves to person A that 2+2=4.  Now there's 4 possible endings, of which I think I could have experienced. 1, person A admits his mistake and accepts the new information. 2, person A denies this evidence and refuses to listen, cue annoying "lahlahlahlahlah" noises. 3, person A rejects this information simply because person A wants to win, person B is someone close to person A and person A feels person B should let person A win. 4, person A tells person B he's wrong in unrelated topic or person A did unrelated topic correctly.

Now I'm not judging you, I don't know your life story. You may or may not have done scenario 2-4. I probably am guilty of 2 and 4 at one point or another in my life. Here's my opinion though, if you've been proven wrong, just admit it and save yourself a graceful defeat that still reserves you some measure of dignity. Sure person B may gloat over it and what not but know at least that you've gracefully accepted your shortcomings. I've personally experienced 3 and 4 and I've got to say that 3 is nasty to deal with and 4 really made me want to shoot myself in the head. I personally can't bring myself to accept what people tell me without going to the primary source or have it be backed by evidence that proves the hypothesis true. Which was why I found 3 to be hard to deal with as I couldn't allow the other person to "win" even though she was wrong while she felt that I had to give way.

So it seems I've run out of things to say and our time together is at an end. As I've said, next time you're wrong, perhaps it should be wiser to just accept your mistakes and let yourself have a dignified retreat than a defiant fight that would ultimately prove to be in vain.

My Ideal Humanity

So recently I had a discussion with my friends from secondary school about some pretty philosophical shit at a shopping centre up on the roof. Sitting in the night sky was Jupiter and Venus, and indeed it was incredibly sad that no one else noticed them or was watching them. Over the 2 weeks that we were up there, they were moving further and further apart and it was a little saddening to see that.

So we had a discussion on the human brain and various aspects of humanity. This reminded me of a long standing thought I had on humanity. So here's my idea of the perfect mankind and whether I think it's possible and why or why not. Take this with a pinch of salt though, it's my idea of the ideal humanity but it might not be yours and that's alright, you are entitled to what your own thoughts might be.

So here's my idea of the perfect humanity, part of it you might recognise from my previous blog. Imagine that humanity has transcended the idea of "self" and there is no more conflict any where in the world. That humanity has decided as a whole to come together and solve all of humanity's problems, world hunger, poverty, war, crime, terrorism. Everybody adopts this new religion of exploration while not dropping their previous one, be it Atheism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, what have you. In their own way they tie their new religion of exploration to their own.

Now what do I mean by exploration? Well, anything really. It's only defined by the individual. For some it could mean becoming a marine scientist and exploring the oceans. To others, space is the next frontier. To the less otherworldly inclined people, it could just mean exploring their own limits, what they're capable of. Anything and everything is possible to be explored.

But that's not all, it's not just humanity's problems that we'd solve, we'd solve all of Earth's problems as well, reverse deforestation, cleanse the oceans, fix the food chains. Return Earth to the best state it could go back to before humans fucked it all up.

Aside from that, a world under one flag. The abolishment of countries, the idea of race and class. All humans on equal footing. When asked by an extra terrestrial our homeland, we'd reply with Earth, when asked our race, we'd reply human, not I'm a Chinese from China. A borderless Earth, where we would only have one flag that we rally with, our identity to any extra terrestrial to visit Earth. Where we'd have a combined effort to go beyond what is capable alone. Granted there'll be lack of competition but as long as there's the drive to challenge humanity itself, there's no place we can't reach. Well of course there has to be a way of identifying land masses, so it's likely to be more possible that the land is separated into provinces and we could tell other humans we hail from so and so province but when we introduce ourselves to aliens, we'd use Earth as our home.

Simply put, it's just communism as it was meant to be, as a friend of mine said. It probably is too, but in my opinion, it's not possible at the moment simply because of human nature. Not everyone would share this ideology and should one such person have a great enough ambition, he would surely seek domination over others. It's nothing short of expected, it's why we had kings and emperors in the past. It's something we can see in our cousins the Great Apes. Every chimpanzee troop has an alpha male who absolutely dominates over every other male and it is within their nature to seek to usurp the alpha and become the top dog. Such an instinct is in humans as well and it would take a great deal of enlightenment to overcome it. But it's not impossible, I believe a day will come when humans will unite in such a way to reach greater heights than we've ever achieved.

Again, this is another unlikely task as humanity's greed is far too great, as highlighted by the shining, I mean smoggy, example of China, who has forsaken its environment for rapid economic growth. It is highly unlikely that China would willingly cease it pollution and seek to reverse the damage it has wrought upon its own lands.

And I highly doubt it's possible for humans to be able to abandon their flag for a new one representing all humanity. Again like the chimpanzees, humans are highly territorial. It would be highly unlikely that humans would willingly give up their land to all of humanity. But again, I think it's not an impossible achievement.

So that's my thoughts on what the ideal humanity would be like, it's unlikely to happen in the span of a century, maybe even two. But I have a dream, as did Martin Luther King Jr., that this would eventually happen and allow humans to reach greater heights than ever before. As said by a scientist on the New Horizons project,

"We are capable of continuing an adventure that humanity began a hundred thousand years ago as our ancestors walked out of Africa, and we are continuing that exploration and this country is at the forefront of it."

Well I'd look forward to the day where it's humanity, and not just America that's at the forefront of it.

On Amos and his Supporters

Writing this in class with 17 minutes left on the clock because YOLO. Anyway, so Amos Yee recently got out of jail and he's been off shooting his mouth again. Many people were also like "Gee, he looks so terrified and traumatised coming out of jail." To that all I have to say is, there is nothing wrong with a kid learning his place in the world. So what's my opinion of Amos? Well having read his blog post regarding his school life and also from his Facebook status updates, and also having ran into him in school(yes we were in the same secondary school) and finding out about his antics and also a few of his YouTube videos, he gives me the impression of this incredibly stuck up little shit with a massive superiority complex. He believes that he is massively intelligent, infallible, unmatched by his peers and even his elders/mentors/teachers. He thinks he is of great caliber, up there with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. He thinks that he's such a great writer despite his misused vocabulary and imperfect grammar.

His supporters? I shall liken it it to North Korea and any of their 3 Supremes. They worship him and see no fault. Okay, I'm sure Amos has his good points, be it you like his indomitable spirit or his eloquence (I will not deny he is a well spoken person, when compared to most Singaporeans), these are things that you can admire him about. But shit, the majority of his fans you see treats him like fucking Jesus, can't talk shit about him or take his name in vain because he is all powerful and benevolent and what not and oh so infallible. Just take a gander through his comment sections, look at the replies people make to comments asking him to be more humble or even talking shit about him. They fucking defend him with all they have.

To be honest, I think that's real distasteful. There's nothing wrong about admiring someone but it becomes a problem when people are blind to the flaws of their idols. Sure you can agree with Amos' points, but do you agree with his cocky superiority complex that he has as well? What kind of a person does that make you if you are okay with that? A god damn sheep, it makes you. I have much respect for Richard Dawkins and his work in the field of Evolution but I have a problem with his hardline Atheist attitude. I'm Atheist as well but I recognise that religion does have its benefits. It was meant to be a way of living life that has become obsolete in certain areas and also can be misinterpreted and misused to create conflict and violence. All Richard Dawkins sees is the latter, which is not entirely reflective of religion. So here's my parting line, it is alright to follow an idea or an idol, but don't be a blind follower and see the flaws of it as well.

Perfectionism

It's been almost 3 weeks since I last blogged so hello, welcome back me. Anyway, I just kinda felt like talking about my perfectionism. Well I wouldn't really call it perfectionism but more of pedantry, nitpicking of really minor details, which I guess is in an effort to make things perfect? So calling it perfectionism is probably a better choice.

I'm a really critical person, if I see something wrong, I'll tell you about it whether you like it or not.  I am known to be quite an asshole by many people who know me because of this reason. I think I've been trying to tone it down for the past couple years but whenever I see something that's not right that easily should have been, I just can't hold it in you know. Kinda seems like I'm out of topic here but just listen and maybe you might understand. You see, my perfectionism is overflowing. That's the only way I know how to describe it. In the sense that I not only nitpick my own work, I nitpick the work of others, sometimes I act on it and try to tell them what's wrong but most of the time I don't. (And I only nitpick stuff I know I'm good at, if I don't know something I won't try and correct you about that.) That's not a really nice thing to do and usually people don't see why I'm so anal about it but the way I see it, if you can do it right, you should do it right. If it's not right, you should make it so. Thing is, not everyone thinks so.

There's this really pervasive view in society that good enough is good enough. Or nonchalance I guess. 

"Oh, I did it, I can't really be bothered if it's done well or not, I did it and that's good enough." 

Well here's what, it's not fucking good enough. There's an example I could use, there's a medical procedure where they stick a needle into your vein that leads straight to your heart that is used for various medical procedures. But problem with that is if that needle is infected, the infection goes right to your heart and spreads quick as fuck through your whole body and yea, for a person that already needs a needle in their veins so that some medicines can be administered faster, that's not really desirable. When this happens it's called a central line infection. Some hospitals go apeshit and start reviewing policies, making new ones and doing everything they can to prevent it from happening again. Now, isn't that good? But then there are hospitals that are just "Eh, shit happens." And don't do shit about it. In reality, such infections can be easily, very very easily prevented with proper protocols and what not. (Go check out the video where Vox talks about this.) Now, imagine if nearly everyone is like that and you'll see what I see.

Allow me to use an example from school. Before the term break, there was an assignment to be submitted and my classmate hadn't done it yet so he was doing it in class. And there where a boatload of errors and fallacies. Didn't use common sense to think about what is required and just writing everything down because well, it's gotta be right eh(no it's not)? Not answering the question and by the gods, English that would kill a man. If a doctor wrote instructions for nurses using his English, people will die. And given that we are studying to be Engineers, ENGINEERS FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, it is imperative that we have good English. We are meant to better the lives of people by coming up with solutions, inventions that can save time, money and lives. If you can't use English for shit to properly communicate your idea and it gets interpreted wrongly, people can die. Fucking die, you hear me? And it's just plain easier to read and understand if it is correct instead of broken to shit English, undefined parameters and vague properties. If I ask you how expensive something is and you answer, "Price," it doesn't answer a fucking thing, what the fuck is that supposed to mean? And then, I shit you not, he made this comment,

"Dude, it's just English, who cares?"

What the serious fuck. You know who cares? The person who is lying in a hospital because you couldn't be bothered to be precise and detailed. The person's family who lost a father or a mother, or a brother or sister, a son or daughter because YOU can't fucking be bothered to write in understandable and good English, something was executed wrongly and he/she FUCKING DIED. And who else cares? YOUR FUCKING BOSS BECAUSE HE IS GETTING SUED FOR YOUR NONCHALANCE TO DETAIL AND PRECISION. BECAUSE YOU CAN'T FUCKING BE BOTHERED TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE CORRECT.

This same person was in my group project, and boy he fucked up big time. Out of the 4 people, his work was the worst. Terrible English, fucking wrong protocols and he had the fucking gall to say

"Dude, I only spent one hour doing it in class."

*Insert slow clapping.* WHAT. THE. FUCK. Every fucking night he's playing CS:GO, didn't even fucking start his work and he told us he fell asleep doing it. And he fucking owned himself, exactly because he only spent one hour doing his work, it's fucking SHIT. Seriously, why the fuck do I even have to tell him that. He didn't even fucking check his work. And soon after he was nitpicking on the fact that people put a full stop in the rating section of the table.

Namely this:

Seriously, it's a fucking full stop. At least their work is correct.

His work:

YES, PUTTING ON GLOVES CAN STOP A FIRE FROM STARTING.

When I told him his work is shit, he told me "Lose grades lor, never mind what." Yea, lose grades, of course he would, but this is a group work and so would the other group members and I. After that, his work isn't even correct and he wants to nitpick other people's work because it was an eyesore. Fuck me, reading his work is like reading the Elder Scrolls, it's fucking making me lose my eyesight. And then he wanted to talk shit about how it wasn't "Minor Moderate Major" and people put "Low Moderate and Severe" instead(I was supposed to make the final edits to make it so that it was MMM instead of LMS). I honestly do not see how that is not the same meaning and people can mistake the magnitudes. Because high doesn't mean of a great magnitude, it means minor magnitude. Fucking dumbest shit I've ever been exposed to. I didn't have the time to make changes to things that aren't necessarily wrong. He even fucking tried to rebut me with my own point that it will cause us to lose grades as well but seriously, what we wrote was still correct at least. His isn't even fucking remotely close.

I have digressed really far into a rant, point is, people don't put in any effort into their work at all and just don't bother. They lack the drive to want to make their work the best and I see this in almost everyone. And it really pisses me off, the repercussions of such an attitude is often not felt just by the person with such an attitude(not that he would care anyway) alone, but by those around him as well. Why should others have to suffer because one guy can't give a fucking shit.

Funny

Just gonna make it a quick one. When I first joined DGAD and had people ask about my grades, most of them were surprised by how good they were and even asked me what I was doing there and not in an Engineering course. If I remembered correctly, I even had the course coordinator ask me that too in the first weeks of school, if I was sure I wanted to be in DGAD with grades as "good"(they're decent but nothing spectacular) as mine. Back then I didn't have a solid plan for my future and figured I enjoyed designing games so might as well try to make a career out of it till I realised I can't draw for shit and decided it might be better to go for my truer passion of the Sciences and then the same people who were surprised at me going to DGAD were then surprised that I was leaving DGAD. I just thought it was funny that they expected me to join an Engineering course but then when I decided I wanted to transfer, they're all shocked and shit. Funnier still was how I was encouraged to by my ex and when the transfer was nigh, she decided that she didn't want me to.

But I'll have to say, the thing is, people come and go in your life, but the things you choose to do stay with you for the rest of your life. Ask yourself if it is really worth doing or not doing something because of one person that may not stay in it.

The Way Things Turn Out

So recently my girlfriend and I broke up, which means I'm out of the Japan trip that we(mostly she and my other friend) planned, which is actually pretty decent since the trip is costing close to 2 grand and with an impending financial crisis, according to my sister who studies Economics, that's not the kind of money I should be throwing around. Also somehow I found a country cover of Fireflies on Spotify right as I'm writing this. Not bad. Well that's all I'm gonna say on it anyway because when you say too much, people tend to get the wrong impressions and someone becomes a villain, which to be honest, in the story of us, there isn't. Just two people who weren't meant to be together.

I guess I've drifted somewhat from my old friends and my girlfriend. Not being in the same class anymore or playing the same games anymore leaves very little to talk about. Well it's not like they didn't invite me to play games with them but it's Maplestory, you see. And I fucking hate that game. You see, it's an "RPG" but you can go ahead and ask most players and they can never tell you the game's story word for word. Most people don't even fucking do the quests. And see, they give you far too many quests than is possible to complete before you level up or is economic to do so. A person who actually bothers to do these quests will lag far far behind someone who doesn't give a shit. But you wonder, what's the most efficient way of leveling up in Maplestory(if you don't already know)? Well my dear reader, the answer to that is mindless grinding in various training grounds. Doing nothing but just killing mobs. And to be honest I really see no purpose in that. I fail to see how endless farming of creeps is fun. If I were to play an RPG, I would want to know every story there is to know about. I would do every quest and squeeze the game dry of its story. Now how will I achieve the grand achievement of "I can reach xxx level in 1 day"? Listen to every Mapler, when they talk about how "good" they are in the game, it's all about how fast they can level up. They don't talk about the story of the game. They know jack shit about all the other NPCs. They can only tell you about the "heroes" and that's it. What the fuck is the fun in that? What the fuck kind of an RPG is that where no one actually plays the game for the story.

And if I were to play such a game, I would actually go ahead and do the quests to immerse myself in the story and find myself left far far behind by them and I'll just be left to be playing by myself and what's the point in that? So I just refused to join them in the first place. And well I guess they took that to be that I don't even want to play any games at all with them and they went ahead and started a new game without even asking me at all. And they actually started a game that I might consider playing if it weren't so expensive. So whatever really. Really, I'm not even pissed. I'm just disappointed that just because I don't want to play Maplestory with them, they took it as a sign that I don't want to do anything with them. Hell they even went out to eat together and didn't even invite me.

I guess, it's really just how the way things turn out.

Sharks

So the Vesak day weekend, long time ago, waited till now to talk about this because I'm a shit ass procrastinator. So I went to KL to offer my prayers to my ancestors and while I was there I was at that shitty ass stinky street market that I once featured on my instagram where there was dead cow heads and rats lying about. So as I was walking through that overcrowded mess, I saw that there was a new addition in the fishmonger's offerings which were juvenile sharks and like a stack of them. That was kinda sad to look at seeing that sharks are endangered and also raises the question of how come there's no regulations on this, who the hell actually eats shark meat, where the sharks are coming from and what not.

So that's pretty much it for this one, I'd just like to ask all of you to not eat shark meats and not approve of it. It's high in mercury and the sharks are going to shit and if they do go to shit, the whole ocean goes to shit too so just don't.

Substandard Police?

So today I had the chance to visit a police station in Malaysia, Johor Bahru, in fact. Since I can't read Malay or speak it to save my life, I have no idea where that place was beyond that it was pretty near City Square which is that shopping centre right outside JB Sentral, where you step out of the CIQ customs from the Woodlands Causeway. What I saw really gave me a shocker. The facepalm kind of shocker, not the oh-shit-that-scared-me kind.

My mother was there just to report her stolen handphone, my sister and I were following since she didn't have a handphone of her own and we didn't want to get separated. At the sentry post of that police station stood a guard with an M16A1 variant, triangular handguard, standard STANAG aluminium box magazine, though I have no idea what other details of the rifle there is, beyond the signature triangular handguard of the A1 variant, nothing really special. An hour or so later, the guard switched. The previous one, the one that was standing duty when I got there, was holding the rifle up, in the "Rusok Sendrata" pose. Not sure if I spelled that right, or if it even is the right command, it was just what I was taught in NCC, where the rifle is held by the right hand on the back of the pistol grip, where the palm of your hand would normally rest on when holding it in a shooting position, with the rifle pointing up at a slight angle, triangular front sight post and gas block just right in front of the right shoulder. This next guard that came along though, oh ho, he was special. Well the guards weren't exactly standing still at duty in a little box where they had to stand. Granted that's alright, guard duty isn't a parade after all but still, show some discipline yea? You represent the police force of Malaysia with that uniform after all.

So as I was saying, this next guard was really something special. If he was one of my cadets back in NCC, if I was posted as a platoon sergeant, hell I'd recommend this guy for RTC(Recruit Training Camp) every fucking year. He'd join the fucking Sec 1s for 3 years. Fucking hell this guy has such little respect for the gun, my goodness. He stood in the "Senangdiri" position, at ease, that means, for my non-melayu speaking friends, gripping the front sight post of the rifle. Or he was supposed to anyway because HIS FUCKING HAND WAS ON THE GOD DAMN MUZZLE OF THE GUN. YOU KNOW THE PART WHERE BULLETS COME WHIZZING OUT AT SPEEDS FASTER THAN SOUND? YEA. THAT HOLE. HAD HIS WHOLE HAND ON IT. Jesus fucking Christ, skin me with a butter knife. Like wot. You're a policeman. Who uses guns. You're supposed to know how to use a gun to save the lives of people by putting down those who would threaten the peace. But it looks like before that happens, you're gonna blow your hand off.

He brazenly walks the fuck around with his hand gripping the muzzle of the gun, palm on the hole of the rifle barrel, ready to blow his fucking hand off if the gun was loaded and the safety fails. OR WOULD IT BECAUSE IT WASN'T EVEN ON SAFE. The fucking rifle, had its safety selector switched to the semi notch. For semi-automatic fire. What the literal serious fuck nugget. And right before then, the previous guard had hipped the rifle. Not exactly shoulder since he held it Rambo style and like waved it around at the ground, facing the police station, with his colleagues and innocent civilians in it. Had it misfired, bullet hits the tarmac, ricochets off the tarmac into the fucking police station and someone dies. What the fuck. The supposed guardians of the state of Johor and this is all they got? Come on, I don't even fucking do this for a job and I can tell you what the fuck you're doing wrong.

Some time ago, maybe a couple years back I think, I saw a story on the internet where there was an MP5 submachinegun(I think, but I know it was a firearm of some sort larger than a pistol) left in a patrol car. Well, nothing special, plenty of police departments internationally carry some sort of larger firepower firearm in their patrol cars, be that a shotgun, submachine gun, long rifle or carbine. Except, it isn't securely locked. I think American patrol vehicles that carry shotguns in the cabin have them locked in a rack between the front seats. Singaporean patrol vehicles I think keep the MP5 submachinegun in a gun safe in the trunk. Well, the MP5 was literally sitting just on top of the handbrake. Just lying there. Smash the glass in and hey, guess what, I know own a fully automatic firearm for free, courtesy of the police. Except guess what? I DON'T EVEN HAVE TO DO THAT. THE WINDOW WAS ROLLED DOWN. Hey yo, free guns I guess. Thank you, kind policeman.

So that's all I have to say, perhaps I think, it is about time Malaysia looks into stricter training for its policemen serving the nation. Can't say if this is the same throughout all of Malaysia but it surely is indicative.

Electronic Music and Me

Just a short-ish blogpost about my foray into Electronic music, a little history about how I came to start listening to it and how it has affected me, perhaps a little on why I like it. Making this blog post because hell, I've been into EM for a short while now and I may know very little on it, but just felt like giving my own 2 cents on it.

So I guess there were a multitude of reasons that culminated in my eventual exploration of it. Well it's very limited since I listen largely to Zedd and just one song from Calvin Harris that I've begun to realise actually lacks any lyrical depth. Yeah I know, EM isn't about the lyrics, it's about the beat. But I can't bring myself to enjoy a song purely on its beat alone, it's gotta have something substantial in the lyrics department. My first exposure to it I guess, I have to thank Zen for, for relentlessly playing Zed(League of Legends champion) with Clarity(mana giving summoner spell). Every time he does that, it was customary to play Zedd - Clarity, a thing we had among ourselves that was amusing. Back then, I didn't really listen closely to it as well, it was just a joke to me and I don't have the focus to really listen to it and play at the same time. Then I had my girlfriend who was really into Electronic music and kept pressuring me to listen to it.

Well I guess one day I did, was trying to find that song Rude by Magic! and just clicked the first link without looking too closely and got the Zedd version of it. I realised a minute into the song and saw that it was by Zedd, and thought "Hell, why not listen to Clarity?" This time I actually listened to it and was completely blown away by parts of the song that I hadn't caught before, little details that just wowed me. The lyrics of the song got me, I'm a romantic at heart and it had undeniable tones of a couple that knows they can't do without each other. So dang, just like that, after a couple replays I got totally hooked on Zedd and began to explore other songs by him. That was sorta how I got into EM, albeit just exclusively Zedd at the time.

So ever since I got hooked onto EM, things that really didn't matter to me became so much more apparent. Basses and beat among others. Prior, I didn't really care much about the songs I listened to so long as they had meaningful lyrics and was pleasing to the ear. I'm not so sure how to put it but EM just has that thing that Pop doesn't offer. Apart from that, there's sounds in EM that you just can't get out of normal instruments, stuff that sends shivers through my body. It can really put me in a place that the stuff I used to listen to before didn't and that's really something.

So yeah, that's pretty much it.

Answer

Alright, long overdue but at least I'm finally writing it. The reply to your direct message on Twitter which I have ignored for a really long time. But I won't be replying you there, but here, because hell I do what I want.

To be completely honest, I didn't really dislike you, personally I had nothing against you. You just happened to be a convenient source of entertainment on a boring bus ride home. But aside from that, actually, I think you're the one that has a problem with me. Hark back a season or two, you absolutely hated me and I don't even know why, though I suspect a thing or two. I've never spoken to you before, nor you me. So I have absolutely no idea why you hated me. And one game of Dota 2, I think the first I've ever played with you, I wasn't included in the Skype call, not that I cared either way, it'd just be a lot better for coordination. You mentioned that you couldn't wait to see how noob I was, haha, I found out. I later went on to get a rampage that game, how's that for you? Among other comments like I didn't use chronosphere a single time that game(I did but you didn't see) and how I didn't use it in the teamfight top lane. To which I replied then and I will reply again now, I was bot lane, chronosphere is not global. Do you expect me to chronosphere the bot lane tower for no good reason?

One more thing, there's a massive discrepancy between what you preach and what you actually do. On your own blog, you mention that you know what love meant to you and how a crush you had had confessed to you but you rejected him because of the aforementioned reason. Yet, here we are a little less than a month later, on your Twitter where you were literally almost begging for someone you like to confess to you. What for? So you can reject the guy? I don't understand this disparity. Just a word of advice, beautiful things are worth waiting for(I've actually indirectly tweeted this at you before.). Just because most of your peers have partners doesn't mean you need one.

You say you miss our group but do you really? That's very ambiguous. If I take that for what it is, that would imply that you miss all of us, the entire group. Are you really sure you still do? Cause I seem to recall that you don't like a couple of us, nor do you have any particular reason to like every single member of group 1.

I'm pretty sure there's a couple things I left out that I don't recall at this specific moment but the gist of it is there. That's my answer to you.

Update + Rant

Yo whats up people I just transferred to my new course just this week on the 4th of May, which is Nanotechnology and Materials Science. Was accepted because, as I was told, my Chemistry score for O Levels was pretty good. My new classmates seem pretty friendly and I think I'll be fine here though I'd say it's still too early to tell if they'll become my friends. I don't know them all that well yet. So here it is, my farewell to all my friends of DGAD, definitely going to miss you guys because I really hate new long-term environments and it usually takes me a couple months to get comfortable. I know I kind of left without saying goodbye but well, I'm not so good with that.

Interesting to note, most of my other course mates seem to be really full of shit. But good thing my class seems fine.

So I just watched an old video by Veritasium as part of an assignment and was just mildly annoyed by how stupid and ignorant some people are that they don't even know what water is made up of or the states of matter. It's not a poor African child who can't afford school here, it's a very obviously middle class white girl as well as several other adults in their 20s and 30s. For fuck's sake the girl called a water molecule "the little circles of oxygen". Yes, because that's all that's in a water molecule, H2O. She can't even name hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, off the back of her head and it's really just wow. What the fuck do you even do in school. Some people can't even afford to go to school. And then some asshat in the comment section defending that she does not need such knowledge for life. Sure, she doesn't. It won't kill her but still this is high school/secondary school knowledge, it's so basic.

So that's pretty much it, just a really small update and rant about ignorance. Wonder if any of my new classmates will find this.

Transferral

So week 2 of school started and I can genuinely see myself enjoying this course apart from Drawing cause damn fuck that guy. Maya seems interesting, Digital Painting is gonna be awesome and wow, Game Level Design, what I've been waiting for for a long time. Character Design is well meh, not going to have too high hopes for that cause I'm shit at drawing characters, I can come up with worlds and imagining how it should generally look like but I'm no good with individual characters where I have no freedom to direct how it looks.

Well anyway my transfer is underway and I'm awaiting the call from the school. I'm not too sure if I still want to transfer anymore but well, hey, if I do then I do. I have no intentions of sharing this blog post this time round cause well, I don't want it to be known that I am transferring out so soon. That's all I guess, just want to let you guys know. If you even read my blog.

Adulthood and wasted potential.

Before I start, I guess I should apologise for leaving my blog on hiatus for so long since I didn't do that in the previous post. Just relaxing myself into a pool of relaxation. So in this post I'm just talking about my feelings lately, nothing much. If you aren't interested in a little whining then I guess you could stop reading and go to 9gag now. See, I even gave you the link.

Boy I feel so fucking old lately. I've not remembered myself with such mature thinking before. I recently had a talk with my girl and she told me I should quit DGAD since I'm not interested in it. Well I think I'm not good at that shit, that's for sure, and I have seen what it has to offer and I just ain't interested any more, partly because I suck too. So well I don't know, I guess I started growing up and thinking about my future more seriously? The wake up call was really the 2.76 GPA I got for this semester. It ain't above a 3 and to me that just sounds like I'm bullshit, which I am. I also realise that this course isn't something I'm gonna be able to ace in without some base skill and practice which I don't really have the base skill to begin with and I don't think I'll have enough meaningful time for me to get good for it to be any worth in my diploma grades.

I remember Ray sitting me down one time after class to talk to me about my future studies and well fuck I guess I made the wrong choice by not listening to him. He told me I'm good with my Sciences and Maths and I should honestly consider JC, which well, I didn't, obviously. So I'm like ultra fucked up the butt now and I totally regret not listening to him and just went with JC. Gosh that man was an inspiration. So so awesome. Just remembered the tuition classes I had with him. I didn't really talk to anyone there and usually sat there doing my work. Being very silent. The only person that'd make me crack a smile was him with his occasional banter with the other students and his jokes. I really enjoyed his lessons.

So then that led me to think about my past in general. My PSLE t-score was 242, which apparently was a really high number and led to some of my friends questioning me as to why I was not in an Engineering course. Well I just didn't want to go to Aerospace Engineering cause fuck Singapore's bullshit technocratic education system where they won't teach you anything that Singapore doesn't need. And well all along I've known I was pretty intelligent. Ever since like early primary school I knew. I could feel it in my environment, which led to me not studying cause well the work was really too easy and I just didn't see the need to. An idea that stuck with me till now, that I'd do fine without studying cause I was smart. It was incredibly fucking stupid of me to have not realised that in lower Sec when I was failing Science and Math because I couldn't be bothered to study, thinking I'd do with my smarts. Well fuck me the wrong way with a neutron star dildo because smarts isn't going to get me far without hard work as well.

Now I regret not studying harder because I could have definitely done better, I am capable of it but I just wasted it with my laziness and complacency. Now I see and understand the words of my teachers and seniors. Well shit happens eh.

The right thing in life and other things.

Recently I've been wondering if I'm doing the right thing in life. There's so much I want to do but I feel that there is so little time. I didn't use to think like this when I was younger, shit growing up does to you eh? Now I'm always thinking about the future, what's going to happen to me, what will I do? A person lives probably around 85 years if they're lucky. That makes every year more than 1% of my life. How am I spending this 1%? Am I using it well?

Sure, I am happy with my life as it is. I have amazing friends. The most genuine people I know, people I know I can count on, the kind of folks I would bring into battle, the kind I would fight for, lay down my life for if they wish it. The people that I would want by my side should world order break down this very moment. But as for what I am doing with it, what kind of future will it bring for me? Already, I have spent an academic year in this course. A course mostly for people with artistic minds. A mind I do not possess. All along, I've always known myself to be a scientist, a thinker and tinker. I have an insatiable hunger to understand the inner workings of everything around me, horizon events, neutron stars, psychology, evolution. Everything, I want to know everything. I'd probably do better in a course of scientific pursuit than artistic, would I not? And yet here I am, spending 1% of my life in an art-based course. What is it that I want to do with my future exactly?

I've always wanted to become a YouTuber that plays games. It's a fun and easy job, no? Sitting there, playing games, editing videos and uploading them to YouTube. Vlogging, sharing my life with people out there who are interested in my life. Getting paid by ad revenue. Making short films even. I'd probably take a course in Filmography in a heartbeat. And so there's my passions. Science and film. But here I am doing Art.

And yes, I still have a long road ahead of me. I'm only 18, I have 60 or more years of my life remaining if I am lucky. 60 or more years to do the things I want, to learn more about everything. But I've also spent a quarter of my life as well. Is this going to become something I will look back upon in my old age and think, damn, I shouldn't have done that.

I thought about all of this recently, when I was watching a Kurz Gesagt video on Neutron Stars with my sis(also there was a talk I had with an old pal). It was incredibly fascinating. It got me really excited. And my sis made a remark, "You should have taken a science course." Damn was she right. Science had been my passion all along. Physics was my shit. Ray(my tuition teacher, great fellow), Mr Tang, Mr Song, Mrs Lim and Ms Tan had been some of the most fantastic teachers I had. Theirs' was the subjects I did the best in, Math and Science. Ray in particular, had been the one that inspired me the most and started the fire in my heart that I would come to have for Physics when he explained that everything around me in the world can be explained by Physics, words that were echoed by Mr Tang and Mr Song. And so began my interest in it, my effort to understand it more, an effort that I did not possess in my lower Secondary school life.

I want to learn Physics, in particular, Astrophysics. About stars and space, our next great frontier. Manifest Destiny was wrong, the idea that it was the destiny of the American pioneers to colonise America. No, the true frontier is space. The galaxy. The universe. Homo Cosmicus, an idea by Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, a Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory, of Russian and Polish descent. He believed that humans would eventually come to colonise the Milky Way Galaxy and evolve into the next step, Homo Cosmicus, no longer Homo Sapiens. I too, believe that is our destiny. Humanity was born on Earth but meant for the stars. That, is our resting place. That, is our Manifest Destiny.

Most of my friends have told me that in the future I could possibly end up doing something else. I concur with that but then might my life now be in vain? It could all be put down as an experience I had in my younger days. I don't know what I'll end up doing but hey, at least I got to see what I got to see and it's all a fun journey.

Amos Yee.

So recently there was that kid called Amos Yee who made this really offensive(subjective opinion of the masses,  I didn't find it to be so but I tend detach myself from emotional or opinionated things and look at it very objectively) video on the first Prime Minister of Singapore. As this post is not about the first PM of Singapore, I shan't say anything beyond that I didn't really grieve his passing. People die, that's what people do when they reach old age. He's reached 91 and that's actually pretty good, most people don't get to live that long. He's also left behind a permanent trace of himself in his legacy, which is Singapore, good for him. I think that's what people should strive to do; leave something behind that you can be proud of.

Now on to our main topic. I realise how much Amos and I are actually pretty similiar. Opinions and personality wise. When faced with something that we view to be an injustice or we feel that it isn't right, we can never be silenced. Even if it causes us to burn for what we have said, we'd burn on that stake with a smile on our faces. Hark back to that incident some weeks ago about that Faceraping and the teachers that handled it. I had written a really long letter that I had wanted to send but finally didn't. And I said to my friends who advised me not to send it, "I'd go out in a blaze of my own glory. At least I know that I tried." In that sense, I think we both are pretty similiar to Mr Lee, if we see that something isn't right, we'll fight till it is or die trying. I've read his blog post on his 4 years of Sec School life(and we both came from the same school, he was 1 year my junior) and I've agreed with some of his opinions on respect, that it is something that should be earned through actions and words than position of authority or power or fear.

The school actually does advocate the idea of avoiding controversy to protect the 100+ years of the school's reputation and it's pretty much a Chinese school so obviously it'd be very conservative, something I think Amos should have considered before deciding to enrol here, if he did chose it. Then again, we live in Singapore, an Asian country with Asian values, Asian parents, Asian culture. It's all very traditional, the idea that with age comes maturity and wisdom. Grades are important. "I am older or in a higher position than you so you must respect me." And yes, the long pants are soooo comfortable. And actually if you ask me, all secondary schools should make long pants a thing since Sec 1. If you make them think the long pants grant you maturity, then giving them to you will make you think you're mature and so you'll be mature. A placebo effect. And regarding the CCA side, well...

An opinion that has been riding in my head for a while is that my CCA, which was NCC is in my opinion, pretty much doomed ever since there was a change in the head teacher for it. He instigated a new "rule" that if you want a position of leadership, you'd have to have good grades for it. That's what killed it in my opinion. Some twerp with zero leadership but amazing grades would get a leadership position, and who'd follow his command? No one. And what you have on your hands then? Ineffective leadership and declining performance across the board. Also there was this thing where all the Sec 3s have to come back for CCA in NCC. Sec 3 being the year where we take on the various leadership positions of S1, S2, S3 and S4. S1 being the Admin, S2 being the platoon leaders of Sec 1 and 2, S3 being the PTI and S4 which is Logistics. So how many of us actually get leadership positions? 2 S1, 4 S2. 2-3 S3 and 2 S4. Which gives us a number of about 10. Max of probably about 12. In a platoon of 24 members minimum? That leaves half or more of us with absolutely nothing.

I was placed in the Admin department as a member. And I can tell you that I have never once seen the attendance sheet(that's how much I know about being in S1, taking attendance) nor touched it before in my entire career. Shit, the juniors don't even know my rank. I've never been greeted by them. I've pretty much not done much at all in relation to leading my juniors except escorting the ones who report sick back to the canteen and I don't even know shit about being a medic. That's me and the rest of the half of my platoon. We really don't get to do much at all. We don't even know why we're there for "training". There's none to be had and none to do. We were actually told by the teachers to go do drills or something. Cometh the fuck on. We've done enough of it in Sec 1 and 2, where's our time to show our stuff? And I have it better than some of my platoon mates. Unlike them, I have obligations with regards to shooting in NCC. I think I've done more live firing than any of my other platoon mates and have gone on quite a few trips out of school to better my skills or represent the school. There are others in the Orienteering team and the Drills people(can't remember what we used to call that Advanced Drills or something). My other 2 "members" of the S1 are examples of those that really have nothing else to do in NCC. My constant companions in wondering what are going to do in every training session. Probably nothing.

I digress, back to topic.In my opinion, he's probably a psychopath. No no, he's not going to go about killing people soon. He just has traits that psychopaths have. And believe it or not, many people around you probably have them as well. They are actually pretty common, these "psychopaths". He shows no remorse being arrested and having his charges read out to him, that's one of the signs. And you know what,  Singapore? I actually think arresting him has helped him achieve his goal. He wanted influence. He wanted his idea out there, he wanted controversy. He wanted to prove his point. And arresting him also proved his point in that anyone who has an idea that was controversial would be arrested and charged. Clap clap clap. You guys just proved his point. And he doesn't care that he was being punished for what he's said. Based on his blogpost about his school life, he's actually grown immune to that. It'd just make him want to voice out more of his opinions and more strongly those he's already voiced. He's a smart man. His words were probably very well thought out, even the vulgarities. He wanted to make sure he'd be arrested for it. He made sure to push the right buttons to draw the attention to him to get his point out there. He knew what he was doing. He knew alright. To those out there that aren't looking at the minute details, it'd just appear to you that he's an insensitive and unappreciative brat. Despite all appearances, he's actually won. You've all just made a fool of yourselves.

So that's my analysis, in a brief summary, I am quite like him in my opinion and judgement of myself, and that by arresting him, he actually won. He's proven his point that anyone who says anything controversial in Singapore would be arrested. Psychopath. Genius. A lone wolf. An iconoclast.