She is an interesting character.

She seems to hide secrets. That is fine, though; there are plentiful such people around me and I am used to the discomfort. Perhaps she does not trust me, but that is alright again; for I, being an ordinary human being, do not deserve her special trust.

But, I wonder, should I therefore hold onto it, with such contradictory accounts and affairs (to me, at least)?

Again, I'm off to work on more interesting problems! :-)

Labels: thoughts

Suddenly, I think I do not quite understand her.

She used to be bubbly and attractive. Her awkward gestures were not awkward but beautiful. Her shy smiles were not shy but alluring. Her caring personality was so dear I felt that no one could match her (other than mum, of course).

But it appears she has changed. She does not want to "make mistakes by saying all those stupid things." She has "nothing much to say these days." According to her, "People will change."

On the other hand, I observe that she does not say "Hi" or "Hello" like she used to, in conversations. Personal emotions aside, I -- in my humble opinion -- think that a sense of politeness is missing. Is it not a polite gesture to greet a person when you speak with/to him or her?

She also sleeps very late. Perhaps she has always been sleeping late; I do not quite remember. However, when I tell her to sleep early because I think it might be better for her, she refutes by suggesting that she has a different Circadian rhythm. Regarding this matter, I always wish to ask her, "Then how do you cope with school life, waking up early and, by logical inference -- assuming she needs at least seven hours of sleep -- sleeping early?" If she is able to alter her Circadian rhythm such that she sleeps and wakes up later, surely she could do the opposite(?) My hypothesis is that she just refuses to practise self-restraint and sleep early. But, alas, what can I do if my constant suggestion/reminder (i.e., words of concern) falls on deaf ears?

Of course, I stand to be corrected, and am happy to listen to arguments for sleeping late.

And so, she leaves me in confusion. Poco a poco, I seem to feel less for her. Yet, why am I still so concerned?

It seems I have my own questions -- questions to which I seek clear answers.

Till then, I shall just indulge in some intellectually stimulating affairs! :-)

Labels: thoughts

Disappointment. :-(

Time to activate project PC.

Labels: thoughts

(The thoughts expressed below are entirely personal and meant for constructive criticism only. I do not mean to condemn any organisation, firm or corporation in any way. In particular, Guardian is an extremely great online article database which contains many interesting and intellectual articles worth reading.)

Thumbs down for Guardian: an essay of constructive criticism

Present tense. The power of persuasion. Watch out for super-achievers. These are the latest articles in This column will change your life, Guardian.co.uk. Granted, being in the present, possessing strong persuasive skills and learning about the dangers of looking up to geeks (really?) are useful insights into personal growth and success and relationship development. However, where is The importance of responsibility? Against the backdrop of our perpetually evolving world with increasingly many issues on responsibility (or more accurately the lack thereof) however not matched with an equal number of articles on responsibility, has responsibility really gone down the drain?

Certainly not. Corporate responsibility still stands as one of the fundamental pillars of business practice; CEOs and leaders are, in general, responsible individuals. We still live in a world which runs on moral and legal accountability (perhaps arguably with the exception of banks and some poverty-stricken states). Yet ironically, we are too familiar with our parents' and grandparents' jeremiad about the increasing trend of a lack of responsibility in us. This is conceivably true, inasmuch as teenage pregnancy and teenage gangsterism crime figures are high and rising. However, there is definitely more than meets the eye - why the deep, exhausted sigh of disappointment from our forefathers if we could simply educate ourselves or be educated not to commit teenage adultery and crime? This, I believe, is due to our disregard for responsibility in all its permutations and aspects. Our lives seem to be more profit-driven than value-driven with increasing competition within our small nation and even with our counterparts all around the word. Sportsmen and coaches compete in championships to the extent of engaging in quarrels and unsporting fights; academic students struggle to attain 5 Dean's lists and the A grade which, to us, is the symbol of absolute perfection. Rarely do we bother to greet our teachers nowadays, simply because all we care about them is whether they can deliver the knowledge content and, perhaps in the last few months of high school, write a good college recommendation letter for us. Of course, being competitive has its concrete advantages and benefits: students with straight A's enter the Ivy League and experience "a radical change in their lives", and it might even obligate us to learn to be courteous and respectful to our peers and tutors for a better recommendation letter and testimonial on top of our colourful CVs. But all of these hardly qualify as individual morality or creed; they are just manifestations of pragmatism.

Incidents of lending money to friends without them paying the sum back are common, and - perhaps less obvious - some of us sleep late simply because we want to spend time with friends (this is irresponsible because we, as students, should place learning on top of everything else, and by sleeping late we make ourselves tired and unable to concentrate during lessons, thus not fulfilling our responsibility of being a student). Honestly, my experiences with money-lending have not been pleasant - I had to gently remind a few of my friends after a few weeks that they owed my cash. In all my life, I have always been told and taught to return money to people whom I borrowed from immediately, simply because it is responsible for me to do so (if I don't return it immediately, I am keeping something which belongs to someone else and that's irresponsible [from a Confucian perspective, for that matter]). Of course, the story for sleeping early is similar, but I concede that I unfortunately have not been disciplined enough to sleep early for the past few years (I now try my best to sleep early and interact more in school to compensate for the fall in number of MSN and GoogleTalk chats). However, the point here is that we should take responsibility for what we do and be responsible individuals, and we should do so even in the trivial aspects of our lives because many of our small actions reflect and represent our true level of responsibility.

To quote Confucius, 恭，宽，信，敏，惠《论语，阳货》. Confucius tells us that there are values which are indispensable to nurturing benevolence, and these values include moral and mental accountability, or responsibility. In saying this, Confucius certainly wants the man seeking self-improvement to let responsibility be a part of his creed.

So let's be responsible. Let's fix our moral compasses. And the world will be less screwed up.

Labels: thoughts

Life

Empty heart, tired soul;
A hollow jar with a hole.
And my heart the jar is;
Awaiting your answer to my pleas.

Music

Doh. Re. Mi -
Crotchets;
a symbol of regularity.
And regularity, alas,
is but an ideal state.

Fa. Soh.
-pause- La -pause- Ti.
A reflection of
life's syncopations - irregularities
which you can relate to, perhaps.

Doh.
The end of a scale.
How beautiful it'd be,
I can imagine
if a rest could follow
and that same rest could
come to me.

Labels: thoughts

Logic;

Big Bang;

Tabula rasa;

God.

Which one is the ultimate truth? Or can they all coexist in harmony, like all those colourful musical chords I hear in Bach's music? Most importantly, which one should I choose to believe in?

These are questions that the school should make us think about. They should not make us cut words such that our written reports each hit the 3000 word limit.

And perhaps our busy, competitive life should slow down a little bit just to allow us to truly feel, experience and share with others the beautiful moments in life that grades, results and competition cannot replace.

认识了她，让我感受了人生的幸福。
认识了她，让我明白人生的真正意义。
认识了她，让我有机会以一颗纯真的心疼爱一个人。

也许她不再是以前的她。不过，记忆中的她是不会变的；她的亮丽，活泼，可爱，聪明全都是永恒的。

孔子曾曰：“爱一个东西，就是要它生存。”

XX，我会永远爱你的。

Labels: thoughts

这世界真奥妙。当你离开她的时候，便会更想念她，更记住她对你说的每一句话；最神奇的是，在想法，动作上，你会越来越接近她。

难道这就是我所观察的一切吗？

呵呵，也许我想多了。

呵呵，或许我想念多了。

Labels: thoughts

Sometimes, I just want to tell the world how much I want to be different. Being different gives you so many privileges which others do not possess. It also makes you feel special, as though God has chosen you amongst others to be that one unique individual. Yes, I secretly wish I could solve the Goldbach Conjecture; travel in a rocket into outer space and experience time dilation; get pulled by overwhelming gravitational force into the dark, enigmatic abyss of the black hole, and somehow inexplicably successfully escape; or even create new theories to explain our world, just like how Lofti Zadeh created Fuzzy Logic to resolve ambiguity. I want a different experience; I want to be different.

I'm almost certain that hard work begets this difference, but a part of me also wants to possess the genius that separates Einstein and Feynman from many other prominent physicists, Erdos (with the oomlaut above "o") and Zadeh from the rest of the mathematical community, and perhaps Newton from his counterparts during 17th Century. I want it so badly that, if I could possess it, and that my possessing it only lasted for a few seconds, I would forsake everything just to experience that instant, and live that fleeting moment for an eternity.

And just in case I will never possess this natural gift bestowed upon by God himself, I shall put in twice - or even thrice - the amount of effort, and work towards my ideal self. Till then, I must not be decadent, for true happiness only lies in my future.

Labels: thoughts