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Friday, March 31, 2006

Truth

Bloody doctors don't lie.

When they said it was tough I thought.. ahhh what's tough man. And now I'm humbled. Just did a whole bunch of housekeeping and the dental papers and realizing how deep the shithole really goes here.

It's actually the sort of challenge I like. The piecing of cryptographic clues together to make up the whole human body. Except the world is so bloody big and filled with so many chemicals and stuff that you just freak out when you read about a new Vitamin that you've not studied before, or a new molecular shape.

Reading the notes again is really eye opening. I really wonder how much I understood in the earlier lectures because they were just filled with stuff related to the later lectures. And for some of the later lectures, I thought I was seeing stuff for the first time.

Oh well... I feel like a soldier without armour or sword or gun just rushing blindly into battle while picking up the falling pieces of cloth.

Next time.. I should go around the mountain rather than go over the mountain yah? But then again... the View!!!

Thursday, March 30, 2006

More than this

It was fun for a while
There was no way of knowing
Like dream in the night
Who can say where we´re going
No care in the world
Maybe i´m learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning
More than this - there is nothing
More than this - tell me one thing
More than this - there is nothing

More than this - 10,000 maniacs

Haha just reading Wired.com, and they have an interview of Steve Jobs, one of my idols, together with a bunch of other people, and it's just so inspiring! I just feel like I'm in in the right place and the right time and doing the right thing, and I've just got to make it happen! I've just got to gather the people now and make it happen!

We can do more than make notes and study for exams! We can change the world! We can change the world! He changed the world when he was 23. We can change the world too! We've got three years!

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?"
-- The line he used to lure John Sculley as Apple's CEO, according to Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, by John Sculley and John Byrne

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Me against the world.

Listening to Jay Chou now and feeling all right! After all, it's always been me against the world :D. They can win once or twice it's okay.. but in the end we'll win!

Ahaha how interesting inspiring songs can be. I love art! I love music!

Monday, March 27, 2006

I give up

I can't take it anymore.. There's just too much to cram in a one month's timeframe. Too much details too many headaches. I can't think when I'm having a headache, and most of these things I don't even have to think at all! I'm just trying to compress it because I'm not gifted with a huge memory. I'm guessing half the time using basic principles but I don't really know!

I never know anymore... everything is just guesses that I think will be right...
Ohhhh when will this all end!

Friday, March 24, 2006

Tired Nonsense

Urgh.. I hate exams. I'm sounding arrogant again, and I realized it only today. Exams make people cranky, but even worse, for me I've lost even the English Language.

I said Genetically Modified today when I meant Talented. I said one should go for either the most expensive item, or the most adequate, and gave some silly example about 10 000 people having the same Gucci handbag when I meant craftsmanship and personalization over expensive and exclusive items.

There are so many nuances in a conversation, and it's very hard to have a conversation when your brains are filled with non-english words, and still make meaningful, nuanced statements. Simple words just escape the mind.

I think like a monk really. Things I buy have to be two things. It has to be functional, and it's form has to fit its function. Price is usually secondary. The really useful things are cheap. Usually expensive things are not worth the money unless you bear to use it and lose it.

And that's the second part of my philosophy. There's no point owning the best thing in the world if you can't bear to use it or lose it. Nothing is best forever. Most best things become second best with time. Will you still want it when it becomes second best? How about third?

I hate to come across as arrogant, and I guess it comes across because I try to hard to present my spin on things. It's easy to just agree. The words are just there. But putting a new spin on things is hard, and to have meaningful conversations with people when you're tired is even harder. I hate sounding arrogant, and my ideas are not arrogant at all. One can be a very happy man with nothing. Making the most out of nothing is the sort of person I admire most of all.

Hopefully one day I can make do with nothing. But for now, I need some big ticket items to pull me through man... It's not because I'm splurging really. It's all stuff that I've denied myself for years in JC and NS and finally getting them in Uni.. so don't think I go on shopping sprees all that often. Look at my old clothes :P

Thursday, March 23, 2006

My Deck

I've forgotten how much I could use. After the initial euphoria of a new laptop, it's beaten into submission again. Settling down and slowing down into the sort of companion I could use for life. It's really a whole host of emotions when I sat down at the MacBook Pro.

Like I've grown somewhat, like meeting an old friend again. It's a sort of crack, but it comes at the right time, this time when I need it most. All those things we used to do in the computer labs, those were days of passion. Just sharing common interests. Now, days are rather dull. You no longer have time for the exciting ideas, that next marvellous breakthrough.

Everything's so structured like a stepping stone to success. You walk and walk and walk.

Recently emotions have been up and down. It's the stress of studying, but I love sitting down and really putting my mind into it. Somehow, I can see myself getting faster the moment I got my laptop. I think me and my laptop are symbiotic. If one fails, the other's life is just miserable.

Someone said I've been splurging alot on toys lately. I think so too. Somehow all the things I've been buying lately are so expensive. I know my parents are working hard making the money, and I envy all those other people who can complete their jobs with pen and paper.

But I need something that follows the pace of my thinking. I need something that works as fast and as hard as I do when I'm working. I don't take breaks when I need something done, and I don't need something that fights with me.

I just read a few posts in the history of my blog. Some of the posts are so raw and so naive I could feel myself blush. But just reading them again brings back the memories into focus. Looking upon it as an older person, part of me realizes that what I feel is horror, but part of me also realizes that I'm envious. I'm envious that youth lies in those unrepressed, powerful FEELINGS.

Nothing is that beautiful.

MacBook Pro

I just got my new MacBook Pro, and it's really been a breeze using it so far. I thought it would appear after the exams, but no, it had to show up right before the exams so that I can make the best use of it to review my work. It's a great machine! I think I've experienced some problems other people also had, but the machine itself is solid and fast, and I can't wait for everyone to come on board and release the Universal Binaries for their programs.

Suddenly, it's like the dawn again. I have a machine that will match up to my speed. I have a laptop with wings, and it's a really good feeling. Worth all that money. Now it all depends on me.

Trying to integrate all the software that I've always wanted to integrate, and now, after everything has matured, I do see my vision coming to life. Amazing...

Monday, March 20, 2006

Pain

How would the world be, if every time a murderer killed someone, or tortured someone, that pain would be shared by both parties? The moment your blade pierces the flesh of your enemy, you would experience his pain, his memories, his fear of death. What would happen in the world, if every time you committed a crime, the victim would tell the perpertrator, would make him feel every moment of his insult.

What then?

Because this is how I feel sometimes when I talk to women. I am the blade and the murderer and the pain. I just hurt people I don't know and help those I know understand it. But it's not understandable. It's not logical. It's all shattered illusions and dreams and physical desires, and the language of flirtation.

Is it okay when you do it subconsciously? When you don't know the hell what your body is doing or saying or revealing to the other person? Is it okay when you know it consciously, and use it to read into other people's responses to you, make a logical evaluation of something that simply should not be put to the test of reason but enjoyed by chance?

I don't know how to put this better because it lies at the edge of my understanding of ethics and good and bad. But the feeling I get is this. The more you know about the bad, the more bad you are responsible for. And so, why don't I know less about the bad?

Education.

Question: It is the universally accepted conclusion of modern intellectuals that educators have failed. What is, then, the task of those whose function it is to teach the young?


Krishnamurti: There are several problems involved in this, and to understand them, one must go very carefully into them. First of all, why do you have children? Is it mere accident, an unwanted event? Do you have children to carry on your name, title or estate? Or do you love, and therefore you have children? Which is it? If you have children merely as toys, something to play with, or if you are lonely and a child helps you to cover up that loneliness - then children become important because they are your own self-projection. But if children are not a mere means of amusement or a result of accidents, if you really love them in the profound sense of that word - and to love somebody means to be in complete communion with them - , then education has quite a different significance. If as a parent you really love your children, you will see that they have the right kind of education. In other words, children must be helped to be intelligent, sensitive, to have a mind and heart that are pliable, able to deal with any situation. Surely, if you really love your child, you as a parent will not be a nationalist, you will not belong to any country, you will not belong to any organized religion; because, obviously, if you are a nationalist, if you worship the State, then you inevitably destroy your son, because you are creating war. If you really love your son, you will find out what is your right relationship with property; because it is the possessive instinct which has given property such enormous significance, and which is destroying the world. Again, if you really love your children, you will not belong to any particular religion, because belief creates antagonism between man and man. It you love your children, you will do all these things. So, that is one aspect.

Then the other aspect is that the educator needs educating. What are you educating the children for? To become clerks or glorified clerks, governors, engineers, technicians? Is that all life us, merely a matter of glorified clerks, technicians, mechanics, human beings made into cannon fodder? What is the purpose and intention of education? Is it to turn cut soldiers, lawyers and policemen? Surely, the occupations of soldier, lawyer, and policeman, are not right professions for decent human beings. (Laughter.) Don't laugh it off. By laughing it off, you are pushing it aside.You can see that these professions do not contribute to the total well-being of man, though they may be necessary in a society that has already become corrupt. Therefore, first of all, you have to find out why it is that you have children, and what it is that you are educating them for. If you are merely educating them to be technicians, naturally you will find the best technician to educate your child, and he will be made into a machine, he will discipline himself to conform to a pattern. Is that all there is to our existence, our struggle and our happiness - merely to become mechanics, tank or airplane experts, scientists, physicists inventing new ways of destruction? Therefore, education is your responsibility, is it not? What is it you want your children to be, or not to be? What is the purpose of existence? If it is merely to adjust to a system, to efface oneself for a party, then it is very simple; then all that you have to do is to conform and fit in. But if life is meant to be lived rightly, fully, joyously, sensitively, then there must be quite a different process of education in which there is the cultivation of sensitivity, of intelligence, and not mere technique - though technique is necessary.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Library, Swimming and Toes

I love the med library. If there a better place to study, I haven't found it yet. Where else can you fall in love with physiology and anatomy, get funny Ouyang to give you a summary of GIT at 1 am, look at Cheryl's new slippers, hobble around without shoes, listen to Bryan remind you to put your toes in ice, and simply just hang out with people you love for lunch and dinner!

I just recently fell in love with swimming. Somehow, I've taught myself how to swim pretty decently I think. Lots of things to be worked on I'm sure, but I'm just enjoying myself now, instead of drowning in slow motion like previously, and it's so nice to know you can swim for an hour without much strain. It's just so meditative, looking at the floor tiles pass you by, like a screensaver, counting your seconds under water, lifting your head and seeking air. Just this moment in a day when you don't need to think about anything, but feel instead. Feel the water on your skin, aligning yourself for the least friction, hear the sound of your kicking, floating with the air on your back, on your thighs, on your heels. Watch the people around you just kick and flail their way onwards, while I conserve energy, try and minimize effort, stay light and aerodynamic. Least effort.

I need to work on it though, cos the last time I got out of the water, I felt really dizzy. I think I'm not breathing often enough to oxygenize my brain while swimming, but after a while, I find myself too lazy to raise my head out anyway, until the last moment before bursting lungs. Most efficiently, at the brink.

I dropped a drawer on my toes today. Sort of pulled it out, and it didn't stop and just rolled onto my toes. The pain was exquisite. It sort of overwhelmed me. I could think of nothing but reducing the pain. By trying to get rid of it. But then after that initial wave of pain, I just enjoyed it. Sat up and actually thought "Wow, that woke me up!" Only after seeing the blood then did I realize it was so bad. It's interesting how pain is so transient. How pain is something so essential to life, to feeling alive. I never felt more alive than the moments after pain. In that one instant, I had no doubt whether I was alive.

The world is not too small for the brave.

Really haven't been posting much, but I've been busy studying and swimming and working for Hall Orientation. Thinking of helping out as Medicine OGL as well, humanitarian trip to India and all that.

You can feel stressed about it. Or you can feel free about it. Reading about the Indian Muslim dancer who's an outcast because she learnt Indian dance. Really, the world is not too small for the brave. We can all find a place.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Money

I love it when money can solve problems. I'm not particularly attached to my money, and I'm not particularly atttached to objects either. I think when money can solve a problem, it wasn't a problem in the first place.

I'm not saying that money is valueless. On the contrary, I feel that money is extremely important as a medium of exchange. But in the end you've got to see it for what it is. It's just compensation for your efforts, it's a sort of stored charge that you nurture, and hope that more stored charge will produce more stored charge.

But really, having being involved in the manufacturing end of things, most things we buy today are INCREDIBLE values. INCREDIBLE. Compared what we got for our money in the past, we're living in an age of plenty through the advances of technology.

If money can solve a problem, it should be the best solution. Give me time to focus on more important things. Give me more time always.

Life is the only stored charge you can't add to. Life is the only stored charge that runs down.

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Because you asked

Because you asked, I had my first anat dream last night. Well, the sperms arise from the spermatogonia cells in between the Sertoli Cells, and the basal lamina, which then mature into primary spermatocytes, secondary spermatocytes and then spermatozoons. Supported by the leydig cells

There was also a tunica question which I forgot once I woke up and started blogger ...

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Spirit of Tools

Spirit of Tools: From a Japanese Woodworker

When asked about the spirit of tools Makoto acknowledges that "Yes, tools do have spirit, and machines also." However, this spirit is not like an icon on an altar. There is, for example no spirit when you first get a tool. It is the use of the tool that empowers it. Through use, spirit increases as well as understanding. The tool and the work come closer and closer to the heart. This is the direction, the ideal, when tool, work and worker become one. For Makoto, work is his life, his love, and his religion. He believes hard work is the basis of religion and that this idea was taken from nature and then people made up the rest. Although he does not sit for meditation, he looks to Zen for inspiration and as a model for direction. He also receives great inspiration from trees, firmly rooted in what they are doing, striving upward with minimal wavering, true to their direction. Craftsmanship is his direction and of this, there is no doubt. His basic philosophy is "work hard, say yes, listen and do!"

... One can spend all day on one joint to make it perfect but that isn't practical. It is the average that is important, so that over time, the average quality of the work has improved." The average approaches the ideal. "One might not know anything at first but trying makes a big difference. The energy put into the work will know how much the person is really interested." The experience gives the answers.

Makoto warns against over emphasis on technique and specialization. "Try not to be just good technically, but more in the heart. The heart knows everything." All aspects of the work are equally important, (layout, sharpening, chiseling, sawing, etc.) each part contributing to the average of the whole. "Everything is right here" he says laying his hand on his heart. Makoto continues, "In my work, I'm trying to be, 'how much closer ?', to my heart." Each person can ask that question, "How much closer can I get ?" As Makoto says, when "head through body comes to the heart", the answer and the ideal become known.


I keep seeing this idea around, but it is so difficult to achieve! We all fall for the illusion that it is our tools that make us who we are. But it is how much we put in. How much closer can we be to our heart. How much closer can we dance to the blade. How much are we willing to put in.

I'm not putting in much. If at all.

----- bLOGGEr isn't working today -----

The most important thing in life, no matter what, is to do everything gracefully.

Anyway, returning from a long long hiatus is Claire! I just sent her an invite. Hope she posts soon!

Sunday, March 05, 2006

12 hr rush

I haven't studied BioChem at all. DIE. It's the first paper. And I have about 12 hrs to it. I think I need to slow time already. Bleah. This doesn't bode well.. I always screw up my first paper anyway.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Being Clear in Your Mind

Well the toughest thing as a Doctor, is probably being clear in your own mind about the treatments that you are proposing to your patients. It's the same with the basic sciences. I hope that in the next few days I can be very clear in my own mind with the basics.

Justina's mum sends me her regards. I probably got her regards like a few years late. I just added Xuan Rong, recently, through En Ping, and the first thing Xuan Rong said was, Justina's mum sends her regards to me. Wow. The last time I saw her mum was 2 years ago.

And two years seemed like yesterday.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Truth and Books

Because I never lie and I'm always right

I guess this is the recurring theme of this week for me. Prof Ling said "Jing Xin Shu Bu Ru Wu Shu" when Moses questioned him on something in Moore. What is it that leads us to believe what is written in books is right. What is it that leads us to have convictions that a certain factoid is wrong, even if we know very little about it.

I've been doing my own research on the Cortisol question, which is, why is Cortisol secreted when the body is stressed (e.g increased levels of Adrenaline), and specifically to reduce the inflammatory response? Shouldn't it be time for a stronger immune response? Ok right now I've got three possibilities to this idea which I haven't really cleaned it up.

1) Cortisol reduces inflammatory response because in stress states, Adrenaline secretion will increase Basal Metabolic Rate of everything, including immune cells. However, increase in activity of immune cells may take away energy from muscle cells for fight and fright response.

2) Adrenaline increase activity of immune cells and this is actually dangerous for the body. Cortisol reduces activity of immune cells to prevent auto-immune diseases.

3) Prof Ling said something about Cortisol and other steroid substance productions. Need to check that out.

Okay lets get back on track. I just needed to write that because it's been frustrating. The recurring theme is that of knowledge. While looking around the stress section of the medical library, I found this book on stress, with a very interesting preface. It spoke about this Brothers Grimm story the scientist told to his child, about a girl, who had to buy meat from this cook, and give bring it back to her mother everyday. However, one day she stole some meat, because her mother was very poor, and it ended up with the girl killing the cook, and the mother and girl living happily ever after. The scientist asked his kid, so where do you think the Daddy of the girl was. His kid immediately replied, "The cook was the daddy."

Of course, it may seem obvious in retrospect, but the minds of little children have a special sensitivity that we only begin to develop and understand as adults. The scientist claims that Freud, with his theory of repression leading to mental disorders, could perhaps be manifested in this anecdote he gave. The thing is, as we grow, we repress certain thoughts that we may have as children. We may be born knowing, but we end up forgetting.

Perhaps, the idea of children's stories were to continue passing on understanding to children without knowledge. We don't really tell them anything about the "real world" in our children's stories. No big bad wolf walks the forest, we don't even have forests nowadays in the city. We're telling them about violence and sex. And we're doing it in a way that we're not even subconsciously aware of it's significance. Children may be more perceptive of events in the stories that we may not realize ourselves.

I guess that is why this blog is important to me. This is why my prior work is important to me. I don't believe in self censorship, although I did a while back during a relationship. I think that the perspectives we get at every stage of our lives will be different. The only way I can recall what it was like to be at that age, would be an artefact or a memory of what I did then. Some piece of myself that will trigger those memories again. Then, if my children asked, I could tell them what I thought at their age. What I did then.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Yi Qi Hui You

Haha got to know someone else today. Jonathan Chong played a game with me today. It's really interesting how Weiqi can make you friends, when I thought Weiqi was a game already dead.

Anyway, he gave me a very good feeling as we played. He didn't hesitate to take risks when necessary, very courageous when facing the unknown. Very well thought out defence when he's under attack, willing to sacrifice when necessary. I think he's someone I'd love to work with in the future. Someone sharp, confident, decisive and yet willing to grind out the possibilities when in trouble. Gracious in defeat (although I was pretty unfair in this respect... upset with myself later for venting my frustrations on him so near a test). Hope it doesn't affect him much. After all it's just a game. Still, a good game is a close game.

Perhaps the only flaw I felt from him, was the same flaw I found in myself. When nothing is happening on the board, making a good next move was a difficulty.

But altogether, a really fruitful game. I like him.