Stressed

Its so difficult to work now. I get so stressed. When I'm working that my mind just blanks out. Just feel lost, and not knowing what I'm supposed to do. So i just do something else to take my mind away, and I would forgot about my work and its so difficult to get started again. And I would feel guilty afterwards, and 'punish' myself by working overtime, by skipping rest, the little breaks, the little luxuries of life. And the pressures of work would prompt me off again.

Seems like a polar disorder. A struggle with no end. Feel like going crazy sometimes, but feel relaxed at other times. But I have to persist, cannot give up yet, just a few months, and it should be over.

Have to snap out, have to fight myself. When can I live up to my own expectations, when can I be good enough for myself.

成仙

我要成仙。
可以，去修苦行吧。
新加坡哪有地方能修苦行？
有啊，就在 NTU 读个 PhD

恭喜我，我将要成仙了

Meditation and multi-tasking

A meditation teacher once said that meditation helps to improve our focus and concentration. He illustrated a person's mind with a diagram with many short wiggly lines. These lines represent a person's thread of thought which exists at the same time or a short period of time (don't remember exactly). After a period of meditation practice, the number of lines decreases and the length of the lines increase. Ultimately, there is only one line left. Only a thread of thought at a period of time, which means total concentration.

Is that useful enough to warrant attention? Imagine running multiple background programs on a pc at a time. The program with focus will surely be slowed. That's why I like to get rid of unnecessary background processes which are eating up my CPU cycles.

As a side note, it seems to me that people speak highly of multi-tasking these days. I beg to differ. We only have one brain, so we are not really multi-tasking. We are split-tasking. We devote a small portion of attention for a small part of a task, and then switch to another task in the queue. Our minds make it seem like we are doing both at the same time. In fact, that's what a single processor system does as well.

But then, as a counter-example, many people seem to be able to study effectively while listening to music. Even better, many people listen to music almost all the time, regardless of whether they are doing something. I have tried, but I just can't concentrate on my studies while enjoying the music at the same time. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I sure won't run an anti-virus scanner while I'm playing a pc game.

I wonder

I wonder whether whether narcissistic gay, lesbians or bisexuals would want to marry their clones.. Imagine someone saying, "I'm married to myself". Haha.. But coud be dangerous, since it could turn out to be a plot to kill him/her. How so? Remember a hooded, crooked man appearing on a hologram and saying, "Execute order 66"? (OK, maybe not everyone has watched star wars)

But then human cloning technology is still not available, so that's why narcissists have to make do with a mirror.

Decisions, decisions..

Do I take the easier or harder path? Taking the harder path means in the short term I have to put in much more effort, will encounter more problems and might run out of time to produce something meaningful for QE, but in the long term I would have more options for research. Simply put, take the harder path and I’ll probably be worse off short term but better off long term, and vice versa for the easier path. Might I add that worse off short term might also mean game over.

If I were playing a computer RPG, I would take the harder path for sure. If I die, I just hit the load button, and tada(!), I’m alive again and better experienced to resume. I can try different strategies every time and see what works. Worse come to worse, I just load the game at the earlier point and choose the easier path. Too bad there’s no option to reload in life.

I wonder what would it be like if RPGs are more similar to life and there’s no save/load buttons. If you die, its back to square one, a level 1 character at the beginning of the game, even if you were defeated by the final boss. Or even better, the game locks up, and you are unable the play the game anymore cos you just ‘died’.

Imagine how difficult an RPG would be if you only get one chance to play the game, and must not die. You round a corner and see a wizened humanoid waving his hands. You are wondering who the hell is he and what the heck is he doing and the next moment you are dead. Then you’ll realise that the save/load function is the best ever feature for RPGs.

郁闷

I'm getting dishearted with my course. I doubt that I'm able to graduate in a 4-year period. The more I read, the more I realised I'm way behind other researchers and enthusiasts. How am I supposed to do proper research when I don't have proper knowledge of the subject at hand?

Feel hopeless.. Even if I can graduate, I might not be able to make more than a little ripple in my field. I'm not doubting my abilities, but bemoaning my lack of time. If only our stipend can be increased to 6 years..

I feel like I'm trying to study the equivalent of a bachelor + masters course in 1 year

I wonder how ppl like Sardine can publish papers so easily like shitting. Just a little 'gek', and a paper comes out. 5 papers, as easy as put put put put put.

Life and fate

I'm inspired to write this post after reading a friend's blog article comparing Fate and Life to a game of mahjong. As a sidenote I have many thoughts and reflections which I got too lazy to blog about. Writing something in blog form takes much more effort and time so as to make it easier and nicer to read. But blogging is a good way of sharing (though I have little idea whether anyone other than yours truly visits this blog; its too abstract and complicated for many)

In brief, Kgim likens playing mahjong to living our lives in the sense that we are both subjected to predetermined fate and the fate we make ourselves. A Mahjong players game is very much affected by the tiles he draws and his opponents' strategies, but he can still adapt his game to his environment. Life is partly determined by fate, but you are still the one holding your cards (ahem, tiles).

Another friend's blog which I read sometime ago (can't manage to find it again), she wrote briefly about fate and life. Their are two schools of thought; one says that we control our life (refer to Terminator 2), the other says that our life and fate is predetermined and we cannot change it (refer to Terminator 3). The author prefers the 1st notion, because she doesn't like the idea that we are not in control of our own life.

My point of view echoes that of Kgim, the answer is somewhere between the two schools of thought. Buddhism says our fate is due to our past actions alone, so in other words, we are solely responsible for our own fate. Let me put this in a form of an equation (who says philosophy cannot have maths!?)


where t is the present, and -infinity spans back to an infinite number of lives

Now, if we consider t0 as the point of time when we are born and tDIE as the point of time we die, we can get our fate for this lifetime..



So its clear now that the first term contributes to our predestined fate in a classical sense. Why we were born the way we were, why we were lucky or unlucky in our early stages of life. Only the second term contains actions which we remember. These are the actions we take to shape our lives, to live our lives as we want it. The other_terms on the left side of the equations shows that our actions, past or present, might not contribute to our fate in this lifetime. So good people might not necessarily get a good life in this lifetime; hardworking people might not necessarily be successful.

Anyway, we shouldn't worry about our fate nor how our past actions will affect our future. You have to be enlightened to be able to solve the above equation anyway. What is done is done and we should concentrate on the present rather than dwell on the past.