keep on plodding

Strength is the one virtue that makes all other virtues possible.

You may disagree, but listen to me first; what does "strength" even mean? We use this word in so many contexts - obvious ones such as the strength of a structure, the strength of a man's muscle - and less obvious ones, like the strength of a man's integrity, the strength of a man's skills.

There are probably many definitions of strength, but this one I've found, I like the best.

There is a wonderful board game called Go. While I was playing a game of Go, I noticed that I was spreading stones across the board faster than my opponent, who took his time to build a strong Dragon - a tight arrangement of stones that could not be destroyed. Eventually, my weak pockets of stones that covered the board had to answer to the Dragon, and couldn't stand against it. Before the game was finished, I had already lost.

My opponent's strength was that he could influence me to change my actions, and this stemmed from his resilience.

This is the meaning of strength. To be unmovable by others, thus allowing you to move them.

For example, in the strength of your integrity, you should not be moved by the world's temptations, thus moving others to follow you. If you can resist the urge to eat that chocolate, your strength motivates others to not eat that chocolate as well. If you can't resist, there's no way you can convince other people to not resist - that's hypocrisy!

It is very important to note that to be strong, you are both unmovable and you can move others.
So if you completely believe that there is a flying spaghetti monster in my room but can't convince anyone else that it's there, that's weak. Sure, you're unmovable, but you can't move anyone else. If you're a boxer with a great knockout punches, but cannot even take a single jab from an opponent, you're weak. You can move others, but you're not unmovable.



Strength: Like a mountain. It never moves for anyone, yet people all over the world flock to try and beat it.

These speak for themselves. :]

I'm a single guy, so the only person responsible for ensuring my well being and happiness is myself. This is a problem, because imagine this:

A suicidal person cheering themselves up.

Ridiculous right? But somehow, I can cheer myself up, by myself, by looking at these.

• What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. Colette
• There are no shortcuts to any place worth going. Beverly Sills.
• It's easy to do anything in victory. It's in defeat that a man reveals himself. Floyd Patterson
• There are no labyrinths you cannot get out of.
• It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness. Eleanor Roosevelt
• Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables. Spanish proverb
• You will always pass failure on your way to success. Mickey Rooney
  

And finally, the one thing that I can always count on:


Bouncing about, dancing, fighting, these are my Best skills, the things I do which I can do better than anyone else. I can always count on doing these to enforce my value of myself, to myself. But in particular, Dancing, I can do on my own. I can always count on my dancing shoes when there is no one else to save me.

So. I went out for a friend's 23rd birthday party Saturday night. Sunday morning. Whatever. It ended with me taking abuse from a stupid leather skinned creature with blood of ethanol. You may know them as "bogan bitches". About 5 minutes later I was thinking of all the witty lines I would have liked to throw back at her, but of course that's too slow. Like a hermaphrodite snail. The french call this problem "L'esprit d'escalier".

I'm no party animal. I'm a social introvert, I'm about to graduate from a Software Development major, the majority of my life I lived as a VietCatholic of imposed rules of purity. Teachers loved me, kids went to me for homework answers, y'know. I'm an Asian Geek. For others, when they are invited to go out, they think "yeah! Sounds fun, see you there!" For me, I perceive it as almost an experiment, a chance to observe social interactions, a test of the adequacy of my so called social skills.

I'm not horrifically socially inept, as I found. Just a little uneducated when it comes to the laws of clubbing, as they apply to me. For one, in a club full of beautiful people, unless they talk to me first, don't bother! Shoulda known that from watching 10 Things I Hate About You. Ah, that movie has so much wisdom.

Seriously though, it bothers me a little how the rules of social interaction, completely change when you add night, music and alcohol.
It bothers me a little that if I start feeling up a girl without an invitation she'll just laugh and give me drinks, but if I start talking to get to know her she dances with someone else.
It bothers me a little that if a girl traces her fingernails all over me, runs her hands through my hair, feels my pecs, scratches my abs, etc, etc, that it's not actually sexual. It's just like saying hi I suppose?!

It doesn't bother me in the sense that I'm upset. It bothers me in the sense that I wish I had learnt more of this earlier. Gotta think about going clubbing some more I guess!

First one is about 127348 times better right? Everybody was really supportive and told me I looked cute in the second one, but I think it's incredibly unflattering. Annoyingly, this second picture is going to be used on a poster that will be distributed all over uni campus, so EVERYONE will see it =/ The poster is for a dance event which I have to attend - I'm planning on painting my face and body for the event so no one will figure that I'm the guy in the poster, blech. Anyhoo, I'm very happy with the first photo xD I had to take around 30 photos before I finally settled on that one...I have the greatest respect for professional photographers. I think I will have to buy a tripod some time in the coming months.

In other news, one of my closest friends is leaving for Japan and I may never see her again, another couple of friends have gotten married, another friend has turned 20, and I think I have a couple of crushes. haha xD

Also, check this out.
I bought a Sacher (that's "sasher"...weird french) Torte for my friend's 20th, but she received so many cakes she couldn't keep it. In total I think only 3 slices of it were eaten by other people. Everything else you see is missing, I ate myself. I wonder how badly my skin will freak out. 8 slices to go...

Some time ago, I wrote down the things I need to be happy. A short list, of only 7 things, which should be easy to get. They were:

I also blogged elsewhere, the 10 Rules of being Human. In particular, this rule:




I've realised, that I do not have those things, and that I am also wrong.

1. I do not have a best friend. I have no one that I am bursting to tell my news to. Instead, I'm suppressed by the overflowing news I hear from everyone else. People who don't care for the happenings of my life. Things boil within me instead of bursting out.
2. I do not have a best skill. My martial arts skills are worthless, my dance skills are worthless, my academic skills are worthless. This is irritating.
3. Well, I do have a favourite food. Several in fact. Thank goodness.
4. People do not make me happy. Only my "best friends" make me happy, but as I said, I no longer have them. How annoying.
5. I have not had anywhere near as much time alone as I need.
6. There isn't a whole lot I can do about this. Even more annoying.
7. No, what I have is not enviable.

Also, the rule of happiness is wrong. If a person cannot be happy "here", that doesn't condemn them from being happy "there". What about depressed people who can recover?



So, since this blog doesn't have any followers besides me, something is going to change. I'm not going to devote time to writing posts on the things that I have learned, unless I really want to. I'm only going to record those things that make me happy, the things that would be worth sharing to my best friends if there were any. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to start recording my dance freestyles. :]

My new list of happy things is:

1. A best skill. Just dance for now. Martial art and drawing later.
2. My students.
3. A favourite food.
4. Hugs.
5. Time to look back.

And also importantly, is my list of sad things that I keep letting eat me.

1. Being "me" as other people have decided. My life belongs to me.

There's a problem with the way many people converse today: There's too much conversation.

How can any of it be memorable? We even have company secretaries, voice recorders and other assistance to help record what we talk about because there's so much of it. Even things that might be hugely important get lost beneath common banter like the size of some girl's cleavage or last week's test results.

Kung Fu masters obviously realised this long ago. By going straight to the point, reducing concepts so they were easily understood, the amount of time a person had to think about it decreased. If you think about the answer to "A tree falling in the forest" for as long as the story of your friend's drunk adventure, which one are we more likely to remember?

Kung Fu masters instead gave their answers in riddling questions. Questions which annoyed the hell out of everyone. Most people would whine and complain, "Why can't you just go straight to the point?" The smarter ones would mull it over more. It would gnaw at their brains, for days, weeks, months, even years. Finally, they would realise the answer. When a question sits in your mind for that long, you cannot possibly forget the answer when you get it.

Hope you guys learnt something today. :]



More stuff to think about:
Video - Doing things slowly

People often tell me that I look good in many different ways.

"God, you're sexy."
"You have a pleasant look."
"Holy s#!7 you're huge."
"Your muscles are like, poking into me. 0.0"

And so on. But I've never really believed any of it; I thought that being my friends and so on, they were biased. But recently, I've thought a little more about what "looking good" means.



We've probably all been there. We have a friend who decides that for some reason, they don't look good, but we believe they look fabulous. How can this be? More specifically, how is it that two people can look at the same person, have differing opinions on how that person looks, yet both be correct?

I saw one of my girl friends today, and she thought she looked horrible, because she had an infection that everyone could see. She saw herself, and felt bad that she looked sick and not as great as she normally does, so she believed she looked bad. But for me, when I see her, I only see her, so I feel good when I see her and thus, I think she looks good.

Both of us are right! A person looks good if looking at them evokes some kind of good feeling. We could feel good when we see a person with green eyes because everyone we've met with green eyes has been lovely. And in the same way, we could feel bad when we see a person with tattoos we feel that people with tattoos are inclined to hurt us, and so on. This applies both to other people, and ourselves when we look in the mirror. Association is a powerful thing.



What does this mean in the real world?

• When a person tells me I look good, and I think I look bad, it's cruel of me to destroy their good feeling by telling them they're wrong.
  
• This is also a nice way to explain to someone who is self conscious about their appearance, why they definitely look good, and they can't argue otherwise, as sad people tend to do.
  

If you have never played Katamari, the rules are simple; Look around for things smaller than you, then roll over them to make yourself bigger.

When you begin, you are almost nothing. Everything is too big for you. You look around desperately for things that are smaller than you to absorb, and struggle slowly, painfully, to make yourself bigger. The thought of growing to the size of a universe seems beyond impossible.

Eventually though, something happens. You reach a sweet size, where you absorb just about everything. Sweet things like watermelons and ice cream stands, spiky things like road cones and cacti, you don't care, you suck it all in and just grow manically. Things to absorb are everywhere and as you grow bigger, things get bigger too.

Eventually, you reach an unimaginable size. You're rolling about, absorbing asteroids, comets, moons, planets! But, by this point, things to absorb are now hard to find. Only the biggest of the biggest will do, but there's nothing left. Growth is hard and slow going again.



The way our skills grow is exactly the same. We start out stupid, and know nothing. Walk into a martial arts hall, and you see skills that are too big for you - multiple flying kicks, concrete smashing, feats of strength with unusual body parts and so on. Walk into a dance hall and you see skills that are too big for you - walking on tiptoes, headspins, complete body popping and so on. Walk into uni and you'll see skills that are too big for you - quantum mechanics, corporate law, medical science and so on. If you try to absorb these huge skills as you are, you'll expend huge amounts of energy making slow gains, and if you eventually succeeded, all you have is just one skill.

The better way to absorb these big skills, is to grow bigger than they are. And to do that, you have to absorb lots of little ones. Some easy kicks, stances, flexibility. Some body tricks, footwork, musicality. Some study tricks, the meaning of causality. Little skills that slowly make you bigger. Ever so slowly, the skills you pick up need to get bigger as well. Ditch punch drills for live sparring. Ditch solo dance for dance offs and competitions. Ditch textbook reading for lab experience. Get bigger. Until that concrete smash is nothing to your Devil Sweep, Twin Pistons, Wuxi finger hold, and scores of other martial skills. Until that backflip is nothing to your air tracks, L-kicks, air chairs and scores of other dance moves. Until that course in Parallel Systems is nothing to your experience in Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Algorithms and Semiconductors. You'll have that one skill that seemed so big so long ago, and so many more, and things are so much easier than if you strove for that big skill directly.

In short, the easiest way to acquire big skills:

• Find skills you don't have that are just a little smaller than you, and pick them up.
• Getting bigger will be slow to start, then speed up to exciting speeds. Growth will eventually slow down, but by then you should be too big to care.
• Ultimately, nothing is too big for you.
  

Stumbled across this, courtesy of Tim Ferriss. Reproduced here for your benefit :]

Ten Rules for Being Human

by Cherie Carter-Scott

1.	You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2.	You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3.	There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4.	Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5.	Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6.	"There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7.	Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8.	What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9.	Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10.	You will forget all this.

I like all of these, but, the ones I'll keep in my mind are:

1. Your body is yours to keep forever - Like it or Not. Choose wisely.
2. Happiness will not be "there" if happiness is not "here".
   
3. All people are mirrors of you, of varying amounts of polish.
   
4. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.
   

I'm picky about the standard of graphics in the games I play. I don't mean how real it looks, but in terms of how powerfully it lures and immerses me. The Scene of the Crime is one game that does this nicely.

The game features smoothly animated, slick and cinematic movies on beginning and end. The graphics are all digital art, in a style that feels like a 40s detective film, a perfect match. The game is ever so slightly buggy, but enjoyable for anyone who "thinks too much".

I once believed that music could only empower my dance, not my work. I've tried listening to music at work, at the library, and at school. At all these places, music reduced the pages I turned, data I entered, homework I finished. For a very long time, I forbade myself from having music when I had other matters.

But there's another kind of music I hadn't tried. This music was created specifically to put the listener in a state of mind to produce brilliant work.

Video game music. Specifically, strategy game music. Think about them and the sound of their music for a moment.

Reading, working and studying are all activities with relatively high levels of mental focus. The technical and emotional complexity of music makes mental focus on a task difficult. In general then, these tasks can't coexist with music. But strategy games are also highly intense acts of mental focus, yet they predominantly feature fine soundtracks that don't distract me at all. In fact, they empower me with a sense of belief in my abilities, a sense of responsibility as a commander, that somehow allows me to do these tasks with vigour, attentiveness and intelligence.

Why is this so? I can speculate a number of reasons.

1. None, or incoherent lyrics such as those from latin choirs. Trying to understand "principles of formal process management" while being fed lyrics that describe "nights in da club" is a recipe for failure. Even if the lyrics were relevant, they would still jumble up with whatever thoughts are in my head. Imagine listening to two radio stations talking about politics simultaneously. It's possible, but more trouble than it's worth.
   
2. Power. As mentioned above, strategy game music has a thickness, a masculine body that empowers me to do the best I can. In the game, it inspires you to prevail over your enemies, while in the working environment, it inspires me to do my best.
   
3. Positive association. If we love something enough, we develop a strong positive association with it and everything related to it. Many people love the Mario games enough such that hearing the Mario Theme invokes many of the same feelings they have when playing the game. On the same note, studying while listening to music of a game I love seems to trick my mind into believing it's playing that game, and I can work with a sense of addiction similar to that while playing the game.

I've had great success with the soundtracks of Shogun: Total War and Battle Realms. Conveniently, the soundtrack to Battle Realms can be downloaded for free.

I'm still on the hunt for more music. I'll add them to this post as I find music that works.

A cute point and click adventure (^-^) Mr Blop Man as I've lovingly named him, is on a quest to recover his son's blue beanie from the clutches of a frightening bower bird! The game features smoothly animated sprites, and a wonderful sense of atmosphere from lovingly made game environments, music and sound effects. If you have love of anything cute, you must give this game a try. It's flash, free to play, and should take only a few minutes of your time.

• If a couple whose income is $100,000, which increases by 4% a year, saves 5% of their income every year, with 8% interest, they'll have $523,000 after 25 years.
• If they increase it by 1% every year, to 30% in year 25, they'll have $1.6 million.
• If they go the other way, starting at 30%, decreasing by 1% every year, they'll hit $2.1 million in 25 years. In addition, they'll have contributed $133,000 less than if they had used the former method.
  

A penny invested early is worth more than a penny invested later.

Source: Decreasing Contributions Strategy

While this idea of investing money early, alone, is very powerful, it can just as easily be applied to time.

Consider a two students. One who begins study with great intensity, early in his life. The other also studies with great intensity, but not until later in life. Of course, by the time the second has started, the first has already learned a great deal. They will also have a well developed learning method, and a knowledge base that ensures future learning is faster still. Even if they stop studying feverishly, through the simple act of calmly living their life, being exposed to bits of news or experiences here and there, being with friends, talking to people, overhearing news, his knowledge base will continue to grow and compound almost exactly like money. The second, even though they will be learning quickly as an older, mature person, will always be at a disadvantage to the first academically.

Even on a smaller scale, such as in a school course - a person who studies at the beginning of a course with great intensity versus a person who studies at the end around test time is at a great advantage. His initial investment of time compounds as he continues to go about uni life - he learns more from classes than the second person without even trying. The second gains little or nothing from classes, as he has no base to build on.

Time is another form of money, with a great interest rate. Invest it early.

It's been a while since I posted, and the main reason I'm posting now, is that it seems someone is still viewing this blog! So to whoever that is, this post goes to you.

I've posted a lot of little ideas and thoughts here and there, but I think by far the most important thing in life is simple happiness. I've thought that I would be happy, or happier, upon having perfect skin, perfect teeth, a bigger room, and so on. And I probably would be happier, for a little while at least. But I realise now, I've been happy in the past with things I can have again with almost no trouble.

You're probably old enough to have some idea of what makes you happy, but I find it rather relaxing to try writing these things down. Defining them so I now value them just that much more, and strive more to have and treasure them, makes me happier still. :]

1. A best friend - Things like your first kiss, first win, first everything, you have to tell these things to someone. Ideally, one person who you love to bits, and desperately want to hear the news. Someone to hang out with, give and get presents from, doze on each other's shoulders, life is bliss both when I'm just thinking about being with this person and actually being with this person. :]
   
2. A best skill - The one thing that keeps me up at night AND gets me up early. The thing I do better than anyone else in the world. The thing I read about, and whose champions I idolise and aspire to beat. A skill that doesn't need any "point", its point is to keep me happy and feeling alive. Fun to do, and also gives me kudos from being good at it, that is, a circle of fans and people who come to me to benefit from my knowledge.
3. A favourite food - People sometimes say that it's best not to play favourites, but I completely disagree. Having a food that you would cross oceans for because everything about it makes you feel wonderful, is real happiness.
4. Being with people - Strangers or friends, I do love the company of people in the right setting! Laughing in the arcade, laughing in the restaurant, laughing in a club, laughing is always best and right with other people.
   
5. Being alone - The only time I can realise what it is I value most and treasure it, what I need most and attend to it, is when I am alone. Spending minutes, hours, even days, just attending to my own every need and want, reflecting on the things and people I love, is refreshing and liberating.
   
6. Good hair - If I walk out of my house with bad hair, I can't feel confident, and will feel self conscious all day long completely irrespective of what anyone says. I won't dress as well, I won't prepare properly, because no amount of work elsewhere can overcome a bad hairdo. If I walk out with what I think is good hair, I go all out and prep everything else to go with it. I feel the eyes of other people on me, good and sexy :] Which leads very easily to being happy!
7. Realisation that what I have is the envy of many - I once kept pining for what others had, but there are so many people I've met who tell me how much they envy what I have and ask me how to have them. Not only am I happy to know this, I'm happy to teach them how to obtain it for themselves. Happiness around for all.
   

I continue to return to this list, and realise that with how simple it is for me to be happy, there's no reason for me not to be happy all the time.