Yourself?

Aha!

Aha aha! Discovery of the century! I have e-mail! I actually have an e-mail account all this while. It was the latest version of OS X that actually highlighted that to me. Love you macmail! Mail for free! And then I found the open relay SMTP server for SCV guys so in the end I got to use nice OSX Mail to manage my e-mails instead of using lousy old webmail.

Still, Mail keeps everything. The first old message I read was from Justina, all the way back then before the taiwan trip, nagging at us to bring the stuff to YC in her business tone. And also Xiao Hui, who I haven't SEEN in ages! Strange that. I only realized it cos Mail blinked at me and told me I had 2 unread messages. And I just went to check if they were junk mail. Then WHOO HOOO! it was from 2004. Which meant that there was a mail account somewhere that still works. Which meant that I now have e-mail. After a little work.

down(removethis)here@macmail.com is my e-mail address. Come on guys, give her a little work.

Speaking of e-mail addresses, I don't know if you can call this a theme of sorts :) Just met Olivia and Su Ching the other day at Kino when they were chilling out in Goth costumes. Looked really cool. They had to remind me of my e-mail thing. Or rather, my lack of contactability through that medium. Oh well.

I'm back. If you can call being online 24 hrs a day and not doing much with the computer being away in any sense. But I'm back. Chugging along perhaps on a rig that still hasn't changed much from 2002. With my little flagship outside from 1998 that's still toiling along, serving the rest of my network webpages, videos and music. The rig I'm using now, the iBook, has followed me from VJ to RJ to Taiwan and back. It still surprises me from time to time with the amount of material that's just stuffed into the nooks and crannies on some harddisk platter somewhere. Wonder if we all leave our marks on our computers. If they've become an extension of our being, keeping all that makes us us on harddisks and displaying them on monitors, while our brain just does the messy stuff of organizing the knowledge and thinking about it. Without the computer, without this blog, I don't think I'd be able to remember the discussions we've had in 2003, or even Jan 2004 for that matter. There's just too many things in our minds, too many things that are part of the now. We can never return to the time when the now lasted a few generations. Our now ended even before you realized it. Our now was yesterday.

On a different track, I was really quite amused with the Goth thing in Orchard Road. I know my mirth (read uncontrollable laughter) might have been quite, rude, or even, annoying. But I guess it was the happiness I felt after one entire week of mind numbing studying of econs, improving my scores at pinball, and staying in an airconditioned room, loaning out keys to people needing to conduct lessons because they were ordered to. I'm happy cos they were really funny people, and really attention grabbing people, but I'm extra happy too because they were from RJ. I mean, how often do you meet RJ people doing cool things because they want to? Instead of just keeping up appearances, or doing things because their senior told them to. And they looked great and fresh! For once, there was this moment of relief, that there are strange people in this world to, like me. People who are different.

In my moment of paralysis in the bath tub, I was wondering about the same question. The question of me being strange, but what was the influence that led to the now? I had visions of myself being nothing but a binary construct of protein chains. That which is me, is but a collection of DNA strands randomly constructed at birth, and influenced by the experiences of other DNA strands like me, both older and younger. We are the digits in the calculator striving to resolve an unbalanced equation. And I'm just the result of a carry forward in the addition operation. Perhaps we do all live like that. Voyeurs of our own lives that we are unable to exert any real control over. However, rationalizing, that would not mean that life is not worth living if we are only viewers of our fate. Perhaps the answer comes to us all as we solve our bit of the problem. Perhaps, by just participating in this process, we can be treated to a glimpse of the solution. Just knowing one digit of the answer would be marvellous enough.

I think this keyboard isn't keeping up with my typing. It's nice, an Apple G5 keyboard designed in 2003. In fact, I think it's one of the more beautiful keyboards around. It better be at $88. Just looking around my room, I see so much wealth that is none of my doing. It's all a gift from parents, friends and siblings. I don't deserve all this. I'm being given payment for work I have not yet accomplished. Perhaps no payment was expected, that it's all actually written off as a gift. But when we trace this pattern of giving backwards, all roads lead to God, and the gift of life. It started small, but see where it has brought us to today.

posted by Downhere. @ 11:47 pm