Struggling with Meaninglessness

For the past 8 months, I’ve watched every single moment of Rafa winning …

   The French Open Roland Garros 2008 Grand Slam Champion,

   June 2008 (Clay court beating Federer)

   Wimbledon Championships 2008 Grand Slam Champion,

   July 2008 (Grass court beating Federer)

   Beijing Olympics 2008 Gold Winner,

   August 2008 (Hard court beating Gonzalez)

   The Australian Open 2009 Grand Slam Champion,

    January 2009 (Hard court beating Federer)

OK, I admit I missed the first 3 rounds of The Australian Open since I was working during the weekday afternoon. But I was following the live score all the time OK!

All the best tennis matches that I’ve watches so far came in these 8 months -

1. Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer @ Wimbledon Final 2008

2. Rafael Nadal vs Roger Federer @ The Australian Open Final 2009

3. Rafael Nadal vs Fernando Verdasco @ The Australian Open Semi Final 2009

4. Rafael Nadal vs Novak Djokovic @ The Queen’s Final 2008

OK, I’m biased here because it is pretty obvious I will not put it in the list if Rafa has lost any of the games above. Who cares.

I feel sorry looking at tearful Roger. But I really hope Roger will win   the history-breaking 14th Grand Slam or possibly 15th soon. But well, if only he could find a way to beat the unstoppable Nadal that is.

Cheers to the King of Clay. To be honest, Rafa is still not as good as Roger in terms of technique yet. But Rafa’s physical fitness, mental strength and the never-give-up attitude is unmatched by any athletes in this world.  He is the ‘Moving Wall’. He is only 22 and I’m sure Rafa will soon transform to King of Tennis in few years time. Oh well, he IS the number 1 in the world now anyway. I’m looking forward to more heart-stopping and adrenalin rushing games from these 2 players in the future.

For now, Vamos Rafa!

I don’t feel like writing much this week, so I will post more pictures instead.

First up, I took a so called comprehensive personality test and this was my result:

(click to enlarge)

I’m not really sure whether this character strength ranking is really accurate to describe me well but I think the first three and last three strength are probably placed correctly. Probably.

Arts!!

You know, I actually really love arts. Not those kind of ‘picasso-ish’ abstract arts that always confuse people, rather, those modern and trendy arts that depict fashionable ladies stylishly. I’m totally crazy over them it is almost a fetish to me. I have plenty of these arts in digital format in my computer, but I think nothing beats the real piece of printed artwork on a physical paper.

Without any doubts, Jason Brooks is on top of the game when it comes to stylish arts. Yes, get me one of these for my birthday present, and I will give you a kiss, alright?

The price for these arts are kinda steep especially after the conversion rate (Ringgit to Pounds). But I swear I will get few of these artworks one day, frame them up nicely and put it up in my room.  Wooo~

So for the mean time while waiting for the day to come, I will support our local Malaysian art which is way more affordable for myself – like PlasterDoll!

Obviously, Plasterdoll is not as brilliant as Jason Brooks’ arts, but I still like it nevertheless. It comes the closest to what I really like at a decent price – ladies in stylish fashion.

I got one of these recently and planned to get another one soon when I have the time. Actually, the art is too girlish for myself, so I would want to keep them and give it away as gifts to friends.

Penang Jazz Festival

I went to Penang (320 kilometers away from Kuala Lumpur) during the weekend for a Jazz Festival. Overall, it was a good Jazz Festival. I’ve told myself that if this festival is 70% as good as Kenny G’s concert I attended last April, then I will be satisfied. Well, I would say it pretty much hit the mark. Kenny G’s performance is still the best live Jazz performance I’ve watched to date, so it’s normal I would want to benchmark against it every time I go to a Jazz concert/festival.

Out of 12 performers, I was really impressed with 3 groups – Jaume Vilaseca Quartet (Spain), Jeon Young Se Trio (Korea) and Ray Harris with Fusion Experience (UK).

I bought Jeon Young Se Trio’s CD and managed to get their autograph! Woo Waa! But the best performance over the 2 days was from Ray Harris. It blew me off .. totally. However, their music weren’t consistently great. Only 2 out of 5 was brilliant. Jeon Young Se Trio on the other hand, is consistently great throughout.

I will certainly want to attend the festival again if they are going to hold it next year.

A Journey to Complication

When it comes to food, my friends dislike going to popular tourist areas to eat (eg. Gurney Drive) because those hawkers often overcharge the prices. (But hey! We ARE tourists too! =P ) Hence, we often search for authentic local food places to eat every time. Well, being a guy who has no opinion when it comes to food, I let my friends to decide all the time.

On the second day, we’d decided to visit a really famous place in Penang for lunch, well known as the best ‘Asam Laksa’ in the country. However, we weren’t sure of the directions to the place, so we just relied on the signboards to guide us. We went around on and on, stuck in the traffic jam, took the wrong turn, then stuck in more traffic jam again. After 2 hours of searching, I mildly suggested – “Should we give up the plan and eat somewhere else since we are in the town anyway?”

But my friends insisted to go on. Naturally, I asked myself why? To me, that’s a really strange decision to spend more time searching for the place considering we have wasted 2 hours. (I wasn’t angry nor agitated, just curious.)

Right away, it reminded me the behaviour of a typical gambler in the casino. We can safely assume that every gambler goes in to the casino with an unshakable belief that he will win, or else why would he wanna go there in the first place? So, imagine the gambler has $10,000 in his hands. He plays roulette and keep betting on the number 18 every round. After losing 10 rounds or so, he is left with $5,000. Some rare gambler may think – “I think I have no luck today, so I better get off now before I lose everything!”  But for hardcore gamblers, they usually think the other way round – “I believe I will eventually win, all I have to do is to keep trying”. Well, unless the gambler is lucky on that day or else, usually this is the typical mindset of gamblers who will lose all their money to the casino.

I realized that when individuals invested a huge amount of resources (money, time, effort, etc) into something deemed important, they will naturally see it as an ‘investment’. For many people, to give up half way the journey is a taboo because it is equivalent of pointlessly throwing all the investment into the sea – There will be a sense of unsatisfactory or a mini-grudge inside us, an unwillingness to give up all the things we have put in to accomplish the journey. I feel this refuse-to-give-up-investment can be applied to a wide range of area especially to our belief system (superstitious belief, ideologies, mindset, etc.), hence, explaining why many people always resist to changes and also resist to contradicting beliefs.

“We have already spent 2 hours looking for the place, why not keep looking for it, so that the 2 hours spent is justified at the end?”. I can feel that’s the voices in my friends’ head.

After another hour, we finally found the place. But the place was packed like hell. We have to wait another 30 minutes before we got a place to sit. And another 15 minutes before the food arrived, 15 minutes of eating and another 30 minutes to get out of the area once we were done. Total damage – 4 hours and 30 minutes spent for several bowl of noodles … and several cups of sugar cane drink.

I was thinking, looking from economics point of view, was the decision efficient? Did the resources spent (cost) justified the benefit we got at the end? I guess for most people, psychologically, it’s hugely rewarding to spend large amount of resources to attain huge satisfaction, just like a guy who will get a huge satisfaction after spending huge amount of resources to chase a girl. But again, was the decision to keep going on after 2 hours really efficiently justifiable? I don’t know, I’m not a person who live to eat, so it’s not fair for me to judge the value of good food.

Again, I wasn’t agitated with the whole scenario. I just find it curiously interesting on how our mind works…

All in all, it was a really fun experience, we had some really really funny moments in the hotel where we laughed till our tummy hurts. I always enjoy all these humorous experience.

Trivia Conversation

A friend of mine shared a very interesting story with me. There was a species of baboon (or was it monkey? I forgot) which already thought be extinct since the early 90s due to overhunting by human being. But recently, it was actually discovered that there are many of them left in one forest. So how did these baboons evaded human radar and stayed in stealth from human eyes all these years?

First they recognized that human was a super threat, so unlike other primates which will make loud noises to alert their tribe of danger, these baboons will remain silent instead. They ‘know’ making loud noise is futile to escape from human (as we use guns). Secondly, they are using a very primitive form of sign language to communicate with their tribe whenever they encounter a human to plan an escape.

Natural selection and Evolution has forced these primates’ psychology to up one notch. I’ve long envisioned that there will come a day when human being may enslave chimpanzees and primates to do labour work for us once these primates intelligence reach certain level.

(Humming Urban Stereo – Baby Love)

7.30 AM in the morning.

I’ve been writing an essay for 20 hours+ over the last 3 days. Plenty of editing as it is a pretty difficult topic to dissect and tackle. Already scraped out 2 drafts, and hopefully this will be the final one.

Back with the music, I hope I’m not being biased to repeat again that the Japanese and Korean are the most creatively consistent when it comes to producing good non-mainstream music.

So, for the mean time .. let me enjoy these good moments first.

(Humming Urban Stereo – Hawaiian Couple)

Below is the list of the best things i’d came across in the past 2-3 weeks….

Best Article.

• The Moral Instinct by Steven Pinker.

Even if i have to repeat myself one thousand times, i will do. This is the best article I’ve read in, not only in 1-2 months, but many many months perhaps the entire year. Insightful, critical, creative, counter-intuitive and thought provoking. At my level, i can only dream of writing an essay as compelling and brilliant as this.

To be honest, i’ve been bored to death with the recent science articles i could find at Digg and Reddit. So refreshing to read something as amazing as this.

The most captivating quote in the article is certainly this – The reason for these double standards (moral values) is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles.

It’s a 7,000+ words article on morality and psychology… and i wish it could be longer…

Best Book.

• Human : The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Michael Gazzaniga

I admit, it was a little gamble buying this book as it was wrapped and i didn’t have a chance to take a sneak peek inside the book. But you know what made me bought this book? It was the testimonial by ….. Steven Pinker! and also V.S. Ramachandran (a famous neuroscientist).

And this book went beyond my expectation. It was brilliant. A book which covers everything about human being from Psychology, Neuroscience to Evolution to Genetics to Philosophy of Mind. I will put this book as one of the top 5 books i have ever read.

Best Blog

• Overcomingbias.com

This is a blog which i have been following for several months already. Eliezer Yudkowsky, one of the co-bloggers, is a brilliant thinker, enough said. I wish there’s a technology where I could use a USB drive to copy his brain and transfer everything he knows into mine.

Best Song

Bob Sinclar – I Feel For You (Funky Disco House)

I got this song from the album Bargrooves Bar Anthems (unfortunately this album is  just below average). Gosh, i feel like dancing now. Not a big fan of Bob Sinclar’s music though (with the exception of 2 of his songs – World Hold On & Love Generation) but was surprised to learn that this song I Feel For You is already 8 years old … since the year 2000.

I Love Disco House Music!

Best Video @ Youtube

I’ve watched countless videos over YouTube recently. But there’s only one video which keeps me playing over and over again. That’s La Caina’s performance at Ibiza with the song Le Vent m’a dit, one of my all time favourite Bossa Nova songs. (4 of my top 10 favourite Bossa Nova songs came from La Caina).

My only tiny dissatisfaction with the performance is the replacement of trumpet with flute. The original version of the song which uses trumpet, sounds much more smoother and mellow compared to this version which uses flute. Nevertheless, brilliant performance.

I Love Live Jazz/Bossa Nova Performance!

Best Quote

• “What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.” - Christopher Hitchens on God and Religion.

How I wish I’d came across this little wisdom earlier. It would have certainly prevented me from wasting plenty of digital ink and time denouncing the imaginary friend called God. Thinking about it, it is equivalent to a man spending several months researching and dissecting magic show, arguing and conclude that magic show is not real magic but only tricks and illusions – how meaningless to argue on something so obvious and perhaps self-evident.

Best Trivia

• Where is the South of South Pole?

I stared at world map for 3 -4minutes like a curious chimpanzee and then only realize that there’s no such thing as the South of South Pole. Oh no, my mind is working so slowww……..

Best Thing I’ve Learned

• An intelligent alien will bear close resemblance with human being. If intelligent aliens exist, they will have to walk upright like how human being do (instead of remaining four legged like animals) because intelligence needs hands.

I got to learn about this from Eliezer @ overcomingbias.com. Perhaps there’s nothing much amazing with this for you, but personally for me, i find it very interesting of how important our hands are to us and our intelligence. One example would be – Writing. If you have played the game Civilization before (voted as one of the best PC games of all time) you will know the importance of learning Writing as it is the core of every civilization’s technological progress. If we’d remained 4 legged and couldn’t free our hands, Writing will not exist and there will be no alphabets (communication is severed), no transfer of knowledge (no books), no mathematics (no scientific progress), no code of law,  no money currency and all which will lead to .. no Internet.

And Writing is just one of the many important things we can do with our hands.

At the moment, i’m concentrating to read more on Psychology and Evolution (i’ve stopped reading on physics) just to keep up with the flow i’ve been in these days.

1. My blog’s PageRank jumped from 0 to 5 overnight! I’m pretty sure it is some funny Google bugs. I mean, a blog with only averagely 70 clicks a day got a PR of 5? NooOo waay….

Anyway,  i’m just using this blog as a personal journal to share some interesting thoughts with myself and my friends, and i surely do not intend to ‘market’ this blog to the public. Well, i’m glad some random people bumped into this blog (via search engine) and were pretty tolerant towards my average English. LoL.

2. I joined the first ever DotA tournament on last weekend and my team was pretty unfortunate to lose in the first round! Wrong strategy. Sucks.

I have never achieved anything big in gaming after ending up as a runner-up in a small Counter-Strike competition 7 years ago. Oh, time flies. I guess i’m a rusty gamer right now who just spend my time with my PlayStation Portable playing stupid games. Haha. Should i get myself a Wii? Fun!

3. My internship with MindValley was over last week. Not only it is the coolest place to work in Malaysia, also I’m really glad to have such opportunity to work for them.

February was certainly the most productive month for myself in the office in terms of learning as they have now the weekly Tuesday + Thursday meetings. Let’s see what i can do with the stuffs i have learned and came across. I wish them all the best.

4. Bought 3 new books – Insights of Genius (Art & Science), Stumbling on Happiness and 4 Hour Workweek. All of these books are genuinely good stuffs. Currently also reading books on Adolf Hitler. Another great stuff. He is more than just a tyrant, he is a brilliant dark-thinker.

And btw, Michio Kaku is gonna release his new book – Physics of the Impossible next week! Oh, i can’t wait. I can’t waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait~~~

5. Thinking of attending Psychology classes in the future… just for fun…. if i could make enough money to provide myself such extend to do it.. haha.

It took me more than 12 hours over the span of 3 days to complete my previous post, Intelligence : Nature vs Nurture vs Random. This is certainly not my first time spending a great deal of time writing out a post. I clearly remember it took me a quarter to half of a day to write the post Science isn’t Strange. We Are. 

It is not as if i started writing a post from scratch without having any ideas on what to write. I have them in my head. All of them. Rather, it was the process of ‘translating’ my thoughts to words which sucked my time away. It’s pretty absurd to me – what’s so difficult writing my thoughts down? But this is in fact some pretty stubborn obstacle in me. I can still vividly recall my writing experience 18 months ago when i took 3-4 hours to construct a nice little post (roughly around 1,000 words) to support my argument in a discourse. Within 30 minutes, i received an equally long reply from the opposite side. I was like .. wtf? Is that guy extraordinary good in writing or am i just being horrendous? 18 months later, which is today, i realised, the speed of my writing did not even improved by a bit.

Talking about talent, I know i have zero talent in writing. Absolutely ‘un-gifted’. I’m slow in expressing my complex ideas in words, my vocabulary is shallow and it seems i’m prone to occasional grammar mistakes too. I was reluctant to start a blog initially. I questioned – why do i need to start a blog when i can effortless construct ideas in my head? However, i was pretty glad i gave blogging a chance. Blogging and writing is surely a mentally exhaustive and time-consuming activity for myself, but i have to admit, for some strange reasons, i think it is fun. It is fun to express my ideas in words.

As a winner of a business idea competition organised by MDeC (Multimedia Development Corporation Malaysia) 2 years ago, I thought of sharing plenty of business ideas especially on the internet and Web 2.0 arena i’d conceived all along these years. But suddenly in recent months, i totally lost my passion in business ideas. Looking back at all the blog posts i have written all these months, i noticed i have only been covering topics on science and philosophy. Ahhh… perhaps the problems and questions posed by science and philosophy is more challenging than the ones in business area? I do not know, but i know i’m enjoying what i’m writing in this blog.

I guess this is one of the rare moments where i will write something personal in this blog. I’m not entirely fond of writing personal stuffs anyway because, well, there’s nothing much interesting and colourful with my life. Strange it may sound, but i’m extremely comfortable with this dull life of mine.

Working on SocialRank has allowed me to look deep into bloggers’ activities, interests and thoughts. One popular topic i noticed recently is “8 Random Facts About Me” where bloggers randomly tell eight things about themselves. So, i guess i will join the bandwagon and write something about myself too. The following is the summary.

1. I talk to myself… all the time…. vocally. And no, i’m not weird … many people have this habit too! *covers up*

2. I have two inner voices in my head. 

3. I always have the feeling of an invisible hand massaging my brains and a swift flow of stream traveling around my head and forehead whenever i’m in deep concentration. From a scientific perspective, some people said it is the electromagnetic field, and we could feel it when we meditate as we lower down our body defense system. On a spiritual perspective, that is ‘Prana’, some life-force thingy. Hmm …

4. I have an inflexible tongue and I can’t speak clearly in soft tone.  Whenever i speak, i not only have to concentrate on my thoughts, but also i have to place a piece of my concentration on my tongue so that i can pronounce the words properly. That’s why sometimes talking is tiring to me.

5. I have a little difficulty in writing. I always wish i could write more fluently. I still do not understand why – i could effortlessly articulate an entire idea in my head but whenever i’m gonna write it down in words, it will not be as a fluent.

6. I can semi-control my dream occasionally… or am i not? I thought maybe so since i could conceived ideas out in my dreams (with critical thoughts) and sometimes i could call myself to wake up from my dream. I just feel my consciousness is semi-linked with my dream. Perhaps, it is just my illusion after all?

7. My ambition – to become an accomplished thinker by 26 years old.

8. My ambition# 2 – to live a decent life without working hard. i still believe there is shortcuts in life and i’m seeking them.

I’m a very curious boy since i was young. Even a small tiny detail could light my curiosity up and made me spend hours pondering on them. Thinking back, my curiosity capacity was at the peak when i was between 7 to 12 years old. However, without my awareness, my curiosity suddenly became ‘idle’ for the next 8 years. Perhaps, i was too overwhelmed by so many unanswered questions that i found it so pointless to be curious anymore then. But thanks to the Internet and emergence of Web 2.0, where knowledge and discussions are so accessible, I recovered my curiosity back 2 years ago when i came across a forum. The topic of the thread happened to be discussing something which i had intently contemplate when i was 7 years old – Does God exist?

Suddenly, i realised everything i questioned when i was a kid have meaningful answers in this Internet age. After spending 3-4 months reading about religion and scientific(evolution) point of view, i drew my own conclusion that religion’s God should not exist (i wasn’t 100% convinced back then). But if religion is not the answer to the existence of humanity & universe, what is the real answer? And that leads me to all of my current interests such as physics, science, astronomy, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, etc. which point to a common theme -  How, & Why does the universe and life exist?

Gifted with strong memory, i could remember all the things i’d pondered on when i was a kid. Apart from God, i also questioned :-

• I noticed from a picture of heaven and hell that God, Deities and devil are depicted very traditionally. If Heaven and Hell exist, do they follow earthly technological advancement? Meaning, does car exist in heaven right now? Do devils use gun now instead of fork to torture the ’sinful’ people in hell? Will God dressed in T-shirt instead of traditional robes?
• If i dig a hole here all the way to the other side of the earth, will i still be considered as an illegal immigrant? (the answer is yes )
• I played around with some rice in a bucket. There are plentiful of rice in the bucket. I take away one grain of rice and it will still be plentiful. But if i consistently taking away one grain of rice at a time, to what extent it will no longer be considered as plentiful?
• I wondered why am i scared of cockroach when these little friends do not hurt me (yes, i’m still frightened by cockroach now). In fact, i’m terrified with almost all kind of insects (except for ant, fly and mosquito). Why do i like dogs and rabbits but not insects?
• Why did the moon and stars follows me wherever i go?
• Why can a fish breathe in water but human cant’? (i experimented it myself and got myself choked lol)
• Why can’t i grab water?
• Can i shout so loud, the other side of the earth hear me?
• Is there a way to burn rubbish without emitting smoke?
• My mum could always tell that i’m bluffing and predict what i’m gonna up to. I always suspected that she has some psychic ability listening to my inner voice.
• I was standing roughly 4-5 metres away from the TV. I stretched my arm forward, and by extending my palm, i could blocked the TV from my vision. Compared to the size of my palm, the TV is so small. But as i move forward, the TV gets bigger and bigger, and as i stood right in front of the TV, my palm is so much more smaller compared to the TV. Why?
• I thought of something exactly like the Zeno’s paradox of the Achilles and Tortoise (conceptually). Up to this day, i still can’t find a reason why was i thinking about that.

And some other lamer and nonsensical stuffs. I think it is rather a blessing to have such curious mind. I always thought it is natural for everyone to be curious on everything, but as i grow up i realised not everyone has the higher level of curiosity in them.

In my next post, i will post an explanation to one of the mysteries i came across during my childhood – why do human have different looks but cats, dogs and rats all look the same?

INTP – ENGINEER

INTPs are logical, individualistic, reserved, and very curious individuals. They focus on ideas, theories and the explanation of how things work. They are especially adept at discussions and debate. They have the ability to focus intently on a subject. They appreciate and respect intelligence in others.

“INTPs contribute a logical, system-building approach to their work. They like being the architect of a plan, because of the scheming and thinking involved, far more than being the implementer of that plan. Implementation tends to be drudgery. They are content to sit back and think about what might work, given their view of the situation. INTPs may ignore standard operating procedures. The hours that they spend are not what is important to them, but rather the completion of their thought process”

Carl Jung’s Description of INTP

loner, more interested in intellectual pursuits than relationships or family, wrestles with the meaninglessness of existence, likes esoteric things, disorganized, messy, likes science fiction, can be lonely, observer, private, can’t describe feelings easily, detached, likes solitude, not revealing, unemotional, rule breaker, avoidant, familiar with the darkside, skeptical, acts without consulting others, does not think they are weird but others do, socially uncomfortable, abrupt, fantasy prone, appreciates strangeness, frequently loses things, acts without planning, guarded, not punctual, more likely to support marijuana legalization, not prone to compromise, hard to persuade, relies on mind more than on others, calm

People with intrapersonal intelligence are adept at looking inward and figuring out their own feelings, motivations and goals. They are introspective and seek understanding. They are intuitive and typically introverted. They learn best independently.

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You know what makes personality test so attractive? It is when they start putting you in the same category with other celebrities and geniuses. In INTP, they put me in the same category with people like Einstein, Carl Jung, Descartes, Socrates and Charles Darwin. Hooo~ hooo~~ HoOooOOOoo~

It was strange i got a little excited by such trivia stuff ….