The rant of inexperience and the lack of cousins

My muscle has atrophied. It was actually pretty easy to check. Two months ago, when I was in the midst of studying for my A levels, frisbee was my life. I looked up videos, searched tactics, ran to make myself faster. I could jump and touch the ceiling with my palms in my house.

I taped a measuring tape to the wall and my jump height was 58cm. I was by no means atheletic so my vertical jump was something I was satisfied by. I don't train so the potential to jump higher with knowledge of the average vertical height was another thing that fueled my frisbee craze. Two months later, after hours of computer games and puzzles and sitting on a damn chair. My jump height has dropped by 5cm. I can feel the significance of the loss of height. It does fill me with a little regret. Something I had enjoyed had reaped me the benefits of height; yet the loss of it was sudden and certain.

Which made me reflect on what I have done. Was it worth it? The opportunity cost of whatever had followed frisbee.

	males		females
rating	(inches)	(cm)	(inches)	(cm)
excellent	> 28	> 70	> 24	> 60
very good	24 - 28	61-70	20 - 24	51-60
above average	20 - 24	51-60	16 - 20	41-50
average	16 - 20	41-50	12 - 16	31-40
below average	12 - 16	31-40	8 - 12	21-30
poor	8 - 12	21-30	4 - 8	11-20
very poor	< 8	< 21	< 4	< 11

Mundane things, to be sure, but not to me. I define my life by learning. But by engaging in the action of learning, I would have decided to stop learning something else. Which is very similar to the concept of libertarianism and determinism. I digress, but I have no cousins. My New Year, indeed, every holiday, is with me and my brother in the doldrum. My aunts and uncles, four of them, know not my blogging. Hence I am free to rant. In exchange for cousins, my brother and I have became the apple of everyone's eye. It's pressurising and I do not enjoy it to say the least. There is a subconscious judgement of which has been placed on both of us. That we do not have any cousins have reinforced the concept that we are mere childs. There is no comparison of growths, no mothering of their own childs. One moment that still frustrates me is when I cross the darn road, one of my aunt still tries to hold my hands.

My mom laughed at that. I digress but I need to show a picture of how I have grown up. It's has mostly been my brother and I- which is probably why we are so competitive. We fulfil the roles of rivals and cousins, of enemies and best of friends. We only have the other to interact and we step in each role perfectly.

My aunt, of course, would have a maddeningly superiority complex. Any argument ends with a shake of a head, a smile and a sigh. You lack experience, they would say.

"Time, aunt, is a perception. Perhaps we merely perceive the stasis of space and time to be the passing of it. That time and space are a movie already played frame by frame, but we have the ability of only viewing one frame at a time, and only in the forward direction. The flaws of a three-dimensional creature."

"You lack experience, boy," *smiles*, "one day, when you grow up, you will know time is time. Cannot be changed."

 But an argument with my brother yields more interesting discussions. Which is why I am bleeding thankful I have one.

"Free will exist. I am a proponent of the Many-World Theory. A choice is merely the splitting of one world into many. Wave-functions collapse. Parallel universes locked in temporal steps, exactly the same except for the choice just made."

"No, it doesn't. I don't support the MWT but in fact, it shows it doesn't. Think of it this way. Make a choice and you restrict the other from making one. He makes a choice and it means He, or You in this universe has made another one. There are no exceptions due to the conditions of the MWT. No choice you make is so individualised till the impact is nil."

"Winner of the next reversi match wins the argument."













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If I ever have super powers

Disregarding whatever powers I may want to have(because everything sounds good to me), what might be more important would be what I do after obtaining it.

Imagine one day, you wake up. You yawn and try to get more shut-eye. But you know the feeling. The twists and the turns and you just cannot return the the state of sleep you were in. So you laze in bed and only get up after awhile. Opening the door, you broke it. Events followed but suffice to say you realise you have the exact powers Superman has. What would you do?

I am sure confusion is one of the first few things you feel. What to do with it. Perhaps try to fly? You realise you can fly because you levitated above the ground 10 centimetres. Are you going to jump straight out the window? Chances are you will try it on the ground floor(if you live in a high-rise apartment). Caution have to prevail. You don't want to die because you failed to fly the correct way and fell to the ground due to panic.

Human beings are wholly predictable to a certain point. We know this new Superman will panic. He will question, he will accept it. What comes after acceptance? The consequences of the power.

I find it interesting, the resultant action of a man with a power. Immediately, the person will think of similarities. Whatever this Superman does will be with reference to the culture he is in.

He weighs the pros and cons. Not just that, he needs to know the weaknesses. Perhaps he would like to be a bad guy. Rape. Murder. The King of the World doesn't need morals or laws. Power dictates. And so, weaknesses become so very important in deciding the next course of action.

I always wonder about this. What will I do when a ghost appears? What will I do when my best friend commits murder? What will I do if I stumble upon a serial killer on the move; and I have no time to inform the police. The course of action pertaining to each individual is always unique. It branches out. Mostly, it's the same but as time passes, actions are like each individual sprigs of leaves

I think I won't do a thing. I will be too busy being apprenhensive of this unknown that I won't do much. It's 4am. If right now, I have the ability to fly, I won't. And as I type this, slightly satisfied that I have decided to do nothing should the day comes, I realise something. If I obtain the power to control minds, I don't think I will be as timid. But I haven't decided what to do. I know I will do something about it. There's something about mind control that draws you in. And I am equally satisfied I feel that. Ho hum.

I think I am just high.

On experience, depth of thoughts and Othello

I am not in Singapore. So here's a couple of pictures. Blogging overseas is bleeding inconvenient but kinda fun.

That youths are always dismissed is obvious. I have always wondered why that is so(partly because I am one myself). At the first glance, it's because of experience; but that seems one-sided, imbalanced. It suggests an inferiority that is inherent with age. Yes, we should respect our seniors but I would like to know the reason to it. Just like how not respecting anyone gives one too much of an inflated ego, respecting an individual too much washes away personal retrospection- one seeks to much to be someone else, you don't learn who you are.

And I think perhaps, teenagers have something superior than that of adults. Depth of thoughts. It is proven for example, our most active activities pertaining to our brain came when we were toddlers. Our existence was vague to ourself and everything was a mystery. Language, objects, even our own existence. We merely existed and learn from extern stimuli.  But learning. That learning we did surpass any Einstein. Our parents might try to get us to pee, patting our stomachs, putting us on infantile toilet seats; but the final action of peeing was deduced all alone ourselves. When our parents pointed at themselves and said "mama, papa", we had no previous experience of the pointing gesture, or of the difference between common sounds and languages. But we knew. We deduced. Not for nothing can we master languages at the fastest speed before the age of 21. Our minds are the most plastic then.

Adults' biggest mistakes are thinking that their experience triumphs all. And our biggest mistakes is thinking our depth of thoughts triumphs all. Each thinks the other as a negligible trait. Adults hate thinking themselves as lazy thinkers. To them not thinking is the euphemism for stupidity. Yet most don't. It's simply too tedious to do both when experience can substitute thinking. It's tedious for the teachers to treat their students with equivalent respect because superiority makes it so much easier to teach. It's tedious for the parents to treat children as though they learn twenty times faster- simpler to get them to follow the rules. Make no mistakes, there are exceptions. Some do both, and these adults are the one truly worthy for us to learn from. I am not supporting the lack of respect but rather, the tempering of it.

Similarly, youths trust their depth too easily. There's a difference between retouching of a hot kettle and the warning of the danger. Perhaps some don't see it. It's similar to the warning of the dangers of speeding and crashing it after speeding. Such experience leads to death. The only difference between both examples is that the stakes were upped. I have valued my thought processes too highly at times. When I am right, I affirm the righteousness of my thoughts. When I am wrong, I think back to the times in which I was right.

Balance is often the hardest trait to seek out in our lives. The finding of the conditions for both sides is so tremendously hard. As we grow, to consciously maintain our depth of thoughts while welding our new-found experiences together will be one of the most challenging things to do.

The whole of this week was the Japan Othello World cup held at Tokyo, Solamachi. There was the team game, in which it's Team World vs Team Japan. There was also the conventional swiss pairings -individual standing matches. It's not arrogance. Japan is an Othello powerhouse. First, second, third went to a Japanese. And fourth went to Arnand. I was rooting for Makoto Suekini, partly because he worked in Singapore for awhile. While I have never met him, that he came Singapore does differentiate him from the rest. :/

He also excels in subtle complexities. The moves might not the optimum ones but always seek to confuse the opponents.

I have learnt a lot. This few days, I have been begging my aunt to return to the hotel at an earlier time, so I have time to watch the game live and join in the live chat. Yesterday, what made me a little irritated was that I stated a couple of moves in which top rated players(yes, everyone was in that chat, weirdly) chastised my judgement on move 36. I shut up. This, of course, is a very recent personal example of my blogpost. Turns out, as I ran the match(Junya vs Okamoto, for those interested, you can see the match on www.liveothello.com) on a computer playing out the last part of the game in perfect play, I was right. Moments like these made me happy. I know my middle game is pretty strong now; I ran all my moves in the computer and most were similar. My opening is weak and my end-game takes me too long. But I know I am not at the same skill level as I was two months ago. As with skills, you plateau at certain points- and you stay there until you found a way to climb again.

I wish more people share my passion for othello. It would be so much more fun. I know four who did but their passion petered out. My brother is left. Then again, we are brothers. Who else?

Picture 3 is in Kenting. Fucking beautiful places. Picture 2 shows Junya after winning the competition. Six hours of playing top players. Mentally exhausting. Picture 1 shows my correction of Junya and Okamoto's moves. The circles with asterisks means I am right and my moves were better. Circles without means I made a mistake.

Of myself and of failures

I am off to Taiwan tomorrow. And I didn't update my blog again. That does it. I am redefining blogs. To my very own personal definition. I do it while bored stiff anyway. Most of the time, before I begin blogging, I am feeling bored and maybe, a little frustrated. Some blog to keep a log. I guess I do that too. Though the purpose of my blog remains as murky as democracy in China- there's some knowledge of it but you don't know where it starts and ends. I could say I want to end this blog, but that would only be as true as length of my newest hobby. I switch hobbies at will- after all, trying one too long is the missing of another equally interesting thing. So I have dabbled in magic, rubik's speed cubing, entering contest in sudoku, you get it. My skip to other hobbies is usually due to boredom- or just straight pissed off at something. And blogging is one of these hobbies.

These hobbies take a lot of time. Once I drew mazes. Those took up multiple lectures, especially the larger ones. Connected by foolscap papers, they confused the solvers quite a bit and the maker, me, even more. But I stave off boredom(which is also exactly the reason I am fucking worries about my A levels). I see people next to me drooling in their sleep. Some, I see writing stories, others, chatting. But these people, they always work in the end. My friends are always, without an exception, more hardworking than me. They disagree, of course. In every student's mind, no, every slacker's mind, the more they slack off and the higher the marks, the more intelligent they are. It doesn't always need to be about intelligence. It could just be because they need to look good. Or perhaps it's to do with their pride. When one scores 90 with 5 hours of work, an 85 with half an hour is always bragging rights. This is pretty bad stuff, this ego thing but I support the very concept of it. It's counter- intuitive in nature. One forces oneself to forget about the efficiency of studying when there's one superior. And since there's always one superior, one forces himself quite a bit.

And so it goes, the typical Asian student downplays his hard work and shows false modesty. All to achieve a personal sense of superiority. And I wish I was one of them. I am the rare few that achieve horrendous results most of the times, and achieve normalcy in the others. Rare few not because of the results, but because of the work that goes behind it. I do nothing. It's sad really, that I am the real deal. The "slackers" head off for tuition. They do their work, however little it is. They take some semblance of notes. Most of the times, it's enough.

They believe I am with them, the same kind of people. Not hard workers, but workers. Simple workers that do enough to cater to their very defintion of necessity. Sometimes, I exceed my expectations of myself. Some results may be higher than I should have got with the effort I had put in(or the lack thereof). And people uses these to craft the main image of me. Not just me, others obtain these exceptions too. Of course you have done something unexpected in your life. Of course you didn't expect it. But people always use exceptions. It's sad, how people strive for hope. No, not even strive. They wholeheartedly believe in it. It lives in their very soul. Crush the hope and a new one emerge. A hope that hope never fails. Crush even that and yet another one grows upon its corpse. True failure obtains less than it wishes to have. That is a good thing. And yet, I don't think it is for me. Perception so often differs.

Of single moments in life

Single moments. By that, I mean one of two of those moments where you feel at peace. I am not sure actually, whether "at peace" is the right phrase. This sense of not feeling anything at all. Nothing emotionally. Peaceful would be right  I think. The difference between that of the waves of the ocean and stagnant water. Right now, this moment is stagnant. There's no ripple. I do not feel like doing anything- maybe I am a little tired. Only that.

Months ago, I had a moment similar to this. It was in the afternoon. Blue sky, hot as hell, a little chirping. Mostly monotonous. I was boredom then. Emotionless and bored. Now, it's the same thing but instead of bored, it's fatigue. Partly because it's four in the morning and also because I have played so much since the A' levels. I don't know what I might find fun. Everything seem so mundane. I have been dabbling with magic trick. Trilogy from Dan and Dave. Advanced as hell and progress is slow. The whole day has been tiresome.

Well. I do know I anticipate the trip to Malaysia. And next year. Early of the year. Backpacking with my aunt from Osaka to Hokkaido. Tens of kilometres. I cannot wait. Yet, it's the present I am unsatisfied with. If I only look forward to the uncertain future, I seem to be detesting the certainty of the present. Everyone is so darn boring. And me. I bore myself.

It IS four. I think I won't sleep tonight. Enjoy the night breeze and the feeling of having nothing to enjoy. It's enjoyable really, living in a moment with nothing to do right now. :/