Perspective

by jon laa on June 23rd, 2009

Impoverished imagination, a myopic view of the world.

I probably cannot give a definite, confident, single-line answer to anybody who asks why I write/blog. Probably because I hadn’t given enough thought about it and also because I could not explain why I feel better after writing.

One thing I realised sometime back was that writing helps me construct my thoughts, sort out information like how drawing a mind map helps others. Unfortunately, or not, a mind map never worked for me. Because of how I draw relations between information by writing, I find myself rewriting chunks of text very often, I guess that may explain my love for history.

The closest answer I have to my purpose of writing is I write to explain to myself. The longer my entries, the less I understand, the more effort required for me to get around it.

I also write to justify myself, you may want to know that.

Points to what I think, believe in, that others should know,

1) happiness and depression exists on two different spectrums. Meaning, happiness and depression can coexist and they don’t belong to extreme ends of a single spectrum.

2) One should be himself instead of attempting to please others. Reason being when you deliberately, make a choice to please others, you are making a deliberate choice to displease others - putting in effort to be unappreciated. If you were to remain yourself, you displease others but that’s all you deal with.

3) The limitless choices we have creates more dissatisfaction. The most understood concept to illustrate my point would be the concept of opportunity cost, when we have more choices we incur more opportunity cost. Also, level of expectation escalates with choices, which somewhat decreases the probability of reaching contentment, leading to dissatisfaction.

4) Opinions will always differ but there is no need for agreement and one’s opinion should not be inflicted upon others. However, there’s always something to bring away.

5) Contentment and happiness only comes if you allow it to, live your life within a manageable fishbowl.

6) Depression resolvable by suicide is not a problem, depression unresolvable by suicide is.

7) (Overactive) imagination increases odds, and is the key, to success, being ordinary does not bring one too far.

8) The absence of perfection does not justify the impossibility of having perfections.

9) Great, excessive expectations lead to depression only if you can’t deal with failure.

10) There’s never discontentment if you count your blessing. Or like how rilke put it - “if your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.” Life is made beautiful for us.

11) We draw our strength from failures, not success.

12) Do not expect yourself to understand one’s problem at all, we are made different even within our similarities. Even more so when you completely do not any experience or understanding of their trade.

I’ll end off with two questions,

1) if you think we are in a forward technology progression, do you care to explain why technology from centuries past remains unexplained?

2) Each time you complain men are lusty, sexual creatures, as if women are not, who do you think they are doing it with?

Impress

by jon laa on June 22nd, 2009

I’d think many people speak to impress others, whether impress like creating a favourable impression or to impose characteristic or quality upon others remains to be debatable. We speak to make ourselves heard, voice our agreements and ideals, and most probably also to change our surroundings to what is more favourable for ourselves.

That’s all for now.

Perspective

by jon laa on June 22nd, 2009

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.” - rilke

And I’d think maslow’s hierarchy of needs very clearly put forth the differences in pursuits between generations.

Perhaps happiness is all about perspective, how you put yourself within life.

Palate

by jon laa on June 20th, 2009

It’s amazing how people actually do eat cavier that sells at $6000 per kilogram, and it’s amazing how expensive one can pay for food when a significant lot of the world is dying from hunger.

Of course living on the somewhat better end of the stick, I’m just as guilty of wastage. It’s better to have more than less. Bad, bad logic.

I was thinking of people who refuse to eat sashimi and how I always think they’re being whatever until I realise my previous two sashimi encounters left me repulsed.

Gah.

Perhaps a bad experience is all we need.

Unhappy

by jon laa on June 20th, 2009

Fucking unhappy, could swallow the whale that swallowed jonah.

I still think I’m hardly emotional, so this sucks.

Never really know how to cope with emotions.

Between

by jon laa on June 19th, 2009

I never felt that I am a nice person beyond the occasional material help I dispense. Nonetheless, I never felt that I am evil enough to murder or to see somebody die before my eyes.

Because of how anal I am, I don’t think I’m in anyway a hypocrite or a deliberate liar, I also do not tell white lies though I believe that half-truths are harmless.

Most people approach me expecting myself to be honestly normal, which I am a far cry away from. Probably quite a number underestimated the power of my imagination and the ferventness I can wield to carry them out. I’d pretty much normal, really, just that it isn’t at all honest. It’s part of the facade thing that has been in fashion for some time.

In my rather short lifespan of somewhat two decades, I’ve had several who in honesty and earnestness told me, “it’s a wrong idea to …” and “I regret …” both in the context of me being undesirable.

But really you gotta be stupid to think I could remain oblivious to what wrong you have had done, that you yourself are afraid of being exposed.

Then you are definitely stupid to underestimate my observation prowess, though at its decline still pretty much lies somewhat beyond the expectations of others at large.

I’m not trying to rant here, and I am not ranting at all. My point is simple, don’t underestimate me. If you do, don’t regret.

In my rather short lifespan of somewhat two decades, I haven’t heard any who in honesty has anything good to say about me without edging on flattery. Even in situations where I did what was humanely possibly the most beautiful, I was labeled dumb.

I suppose it takes one who has seen me beyond my attempts to remain socially acceptable before one can somewhat attempt to draft the impossibilities of my living. Then it takes plenty of miscalculated risk to call me friend, though you probably still have not come to terms with what manner of man, or woman, I am.

HA!

Maid

by jon laa on June 18th, 2009

I shouldn’t use the word maid on my maid because ever since the campaigns for better treatment towards domestic helpers, maid is a dirty word.

Either way, my maid grew brains. Much better than before, she feels more at ease with work and it makes a big difference. For the least, I’m no longer annoyed at her. Nor do I get annoyed at her for not listening. Took her a long time though.

More importantly, she’s pretty willing to do work and extra work these days, which makes me feel bad.

HA!

That’s because of your meatballs, sn.

Blended a huge onion, 3 cloves of garlic and a quarter cup of alcohol, the chinese kind, into a marinate for the meatballs. The smell is a little overpowering, I hope it doesn’t end up like kim chi. Even if it does, it’s going through butter.

I wanted to add advocados to them but they were way expensive and carrots may not be most apt so I will decide tomorrow what I am putting in.

HA!

Breeze

by jon laa on June 17th, 2009

Breaks can be good, sometimes. Picked up the violin after much procrastination, set the metronome to 80, worked on the lower half of the bow. Guess what? My hand doesn’t shake anymore, no idea why.

Maybe I was so used to the old-bow-hold which is causing the shake and the long break somewhat detaches me from that old-bow-hold. Good, good. Did exercises up to crotchet to 100, as written by the teacher, and it worked out fine. Not adventurous enough to move on to 120, probably need more time.

Did some speeding through the bach’s piece, pretty pretty. Dynamics are somewhat hard to control, transition between dynamic markings suck. Not interested in the bach’s piece at all, dvorak’s worse.

Maybe after some good few weeks of good harvest, the drought is here. Progress seems minimal and motivation is at its lowest.

And people are telling I’m enlisting soon, time flies. No, my enlistment still feels far away actually. But time flies, still, when I realise my to-do-list is still as long as ever. I need to get things done, that’s what I say.

Moving on from that delicate wooden irregularly-shaped box, singing is getting better too.

Lots of minor details to work on, I attempted to read the translation of the piece last night and couldn’t understand what the piece is about. Tsk. Not going back to it till when I need to get the program notes out. Laziness is getting on me, like the usual. Besides, understanding the song too well can affect my singing. Like, getting all emo and ending up compromising on technique, good sound, etc.

Bah!

Jaws are getting tighter, a dramatic recent change. They never felt that tight before. Good thing I noticed it early and putting my fingers at the jaw joint somewhat helps, I feel. Going to work on relaxing the jaws, isolating the vowels from consonant, which should help diction too. There are some fast bits where the vowels and consonants are too mashed up and it sounds like a complete mess.

For the least we have some direction and some pointers to work on. Beats those days when my voice type is flaky and sound is almost repulsive.

Long way to go, I know, but at least there’s hope now. Or rather, at least I feel there’s hope now.

Need to start running again. Gold for ippt, I told myself. Intervals, speed training. Target before enlistment, 400m x 10 in 1:45. Idealistically, I should be going for 1:40 but I’d be glad if I can manage 1:45. 1:50 will be a good start and I’ll probably be better doing some long runs too.

Kayaking, gosh, I need the hip flick. Gah!

And I need God.

Note:

by jon laa on June 17th, 2009

1) 2 sets of whatever army clothes
2) 10 hangers, marked
3) 1 febreze (which I don’t even know what is it for)
4) 1 sponge
5) ziplocks
6) one dollar coins
7) black tape
8) towels
9) new underwear
10) engineering glove (whatever it’s for)
11) blister plaster
12) nail clipper
13) shower/foam/shampoo (I don’t think I’ve much hair left, anyways)

Bah.

Brag

by jon laa on June 17th, 2009

I hardly come to terms with people who call themselves talent. No need for explanations. It gets on me.

But at the same time, I get annoyed by people who undermined themselves. Like, I’m a slow runner but I run 10k in less than 40 minutes. That gets on me too.

Then there are people who have awesome profiles written in bad english, of which I have absolutely no tolerance for. I’d like to think if you want people to read what you have to say and convince them in the capacity of your words, you shouldn’t be putting them off in noticeably unsound english.

And I guess there’re a lot of people who can’t give shit about sound grammar, because we are not caucasian. Then when asked to speak mandarin instead, they claimed they are in a multiracial society. It brings me to wonder what exactly does it mean to be in a multiracial society, and how different is a chinese in china different from a chinese in a multiracial society?

Grr, singlish is here to stay. Bad english isn’t. Get it?

Oh, and some people change for the better dramatically. Guess we all need time. It makes wonders.