Skeletons!

The Past
I never mentioned that when I was in the care of my grandparents, there were a couple of times I was beaten or abused to the point I nearly lost my sight and almost died a couple of times. My memories were rather repressed and it was only recently I started reliving those dark times. I suppose that's part of the reason I decided to rebel against the system.

The Present
Thus my outlook on life was heavily influenced by my encounter with death when I was young, I suppose I have nothing much else to fear. I am living life without chains shackled to my soul. This feeling of being free from worldly binds only comes after a close encounter with death I suppose, I could be wrong. If you've faced it and managed to walk away, your only opponent left is yourself. And if you can overcome that, life is truly what you make of it. No fear of making mistakes, no fear to try out new things, life's too short for us to be ruled by fear.

Dreams; Nightmares
I am a rather big softie I suppose when it really comes to life and death. That's how I got into those near fatal beatings in the first place when I was young, I didn't want my younger brothers to suffer the same fate. I did not understand my intentions back then, why I had chose to be singled out. My brother also went through the canings, why not take the other abuse together with me? With the belt buckle, shouting voices and humiliation?

Torture
Being thrown out of the house completely naked after being beaten or caned, and then locked outside by my relatives. Such are the punishments I endured. What's left to be ashamed about when you've been stripped of all your dignity as a human being to wear clothing; after being caned or beaten? There are precious little things that can faze you after that. I feel jaded, like a prisoner of war back in WWII must have felt after a nearly complete torture sequence, physical, mental, physical, mental. And mentally prepared to face death, proud to have divulged nothing to the enemy, but completely drained.

Violence
Is that why I'm so violent? My thoughts still occasionally flit to extreme forms of violence when I am tired and unable to control my thoughts conciously. Or is it my basic nature, to be violent because I'm a male? Do I really want to tear the person apart limb from limb with my bare hands? Should I do it because I can? I am tempered in the flames of a violent nature, but I suppose I'm much better off verbalizing it out into words. Words are eternal, wounds are but a passing phase.

Dark Side
So I've lived my life of passion rather than neutrality, go read the book "Path of Destruction" for an interesting insight into how a person can fall completely to the Dark Side of the Force. I would be a Darth Bane if there was such a thing as the Force. I empathized completely with Bane and would have probably walked in his footsteps if I were put in his shoes. A life of abuse really can warp a person so completely.

But I am stronger for it, if there are others who want to fight for a cause greater than themselves, must first understand themselves. To know if they have the passion that is in line with the cause they want to fight for. And not some whimsical reason that can be blown away like leaves in the wind. Otherwise their false passions will shatter from a single blow of reason and be forced to live a life of denial.

In other news

My laptop died today, it is confirmed that my computer products suffer great overuse and are wearing out many years before their due departure. It's probably the amount of juice I try to squeeze out of them by running applications at levels way out of the league of low budget rigs. I squeeze so much out, it's sometimes a little scary what I've been able to do with so little. 2 desktops and a laptop later, only shows that I need a rig that can withstand the punishments I dole out. Perhaps it's time to really spend some serious cash in getting something strong enough to resist for more than 2 years. I'd probably save more money in the long run.

Testing configurations to last 2 years:

• Quad Core 6600 (probably because of the good price)
• Nvida 9800GT (Considering the 260/280GTX but they are still too pricy)
• 8GB Ram (If I can find a mother board that has enough slots for cheap)
• Liquid Cooling Tower (So far I found one that suits my purpose for less than 200 bucks)
• Decent enough motherboard (For the ram especially important)
• 2 SATA 1TB/500GB HDD on Raid ZERO (Never enough HDD space)
• Decent powerbox 1000/1500w(Able to accept 110v/240v regardless where I'd be)
• A tower carrier

I've already have 2 monitors as well as 4 DVD-RW drives sitting around doing nothing, so I'm not bothering with those purchases. So far my aqquaintances at the shops around Sg have been able to give me a quotation for what I want under 900 bucks. With an operating system I suppose I'd hit 900 plus but still under 1000. Well, I'd probably use any of the Vista 64bit versions otherwise I'd be wasting the ram and the quad core multitasking threadlines. Sigh I need a new rig soon.

Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Multi-tasking

The biggest difference between today and tomorrow, is that tomorrow hasn't happened yet. Today is the only day that truly matters because history is written today. If you think life's short, you need to remember that life's only short because we think it is. A moment could be a million years and we'd still be complaining life's short.

So how do we "gain" time? Earn time to do more things? Make time for our favorite activities? We multitask. We try to do more than one thing at once, because the more things you are able to finish in a day, the more time we have free to spend on ourselves another day. Right? Wrong! If your able to do more than the others in terms of work, you'd only end up with more work to do. Why? It's the nature of the universe to burden us with work and for those who are able to finish the same amount of work as others in a shorter time, always strive to do even more work.

Is it not true that capable people are capable because of the amount of work they are able to finish in the same time as another person?

So when we finish our work by multitasking, we're labeling ourselves as capable. And when we do that, we commit ourselves to the ideal that we need to do more work to live up to that self labeling. Silly isn't it? By trying to earn more free time for oneself, we end up losing the time we originally set out to gain. If you want to test out this theory, why not try multitasking a tiny bit and give me a comment on the results.

Alauz Out!


Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

When It Rains, It Pours

Negativity
Lots of problems, first was the internet problems, then family problems which are not resolved by the way, and now my desktop computer decided to play me for a fool and burn up literally a few months after my 1 year warranty expires. I don't know how long more will these "incidents" continue but I'm getting quite tired of the world collapsing around me constantly.

The Sky is falling
Next thing I know I probably have the sky fall down on my head like Chicken little and have the whole world labeling me as an "act of god" and no one can claim insurance when the world starts falling apart all around me. Perhaps it's a good thing? Maybe I'd be mankind's final weapon against an entire race of mechanical beings plotting our destruction. And my aura of dismantling would certainly disable them in a 10 kilometer radius. Or maybe just hunted down because I was causing countless trillions of damage to the world economy by merely existing.

Existence
Maybe we're all just part of a simulation to test if the universe can support life despite being a crazily harsh environment. I don't know if God did tell us the meaning for our existence but the "prophets" merely forgotten them or someone removed it from the holy documents so as to render our species impotent and incapable of fulfilling our destiny. Maybe we're made to be cattle, an intergalactic plague of interstellar locusts, or even just for the entertainment of some greater being. (The image of the game "The Sims" and its countless variations ring a bell?)

Never mind my endless musings, Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Birthing Days

Revelations
I noticed so much has changed in my life since my last birthday. Almost as if I'm not me anymore and just shed my previous self like it was a cocoon of bad memories. However I still haven't changed into that butterfly that I was hoping to fly away from it all, it was more like a shedding of an old version and becoming a bigger and fatter caterpillar that should become a butterfly very VERY soon.

Best Laid Plans
Then again the soonest I will be able to fly would probably be next year August, which is 2009. Hopefully I will have secured all the aid that I would need and be able to finally free myself from the gravity that is Singapore. Will I carry on my family tradition and stay in another country that is not my place of birth? Like my father who is a Malaysian, his father who was from China, and my ancestors who continually moved towards the south? I probably would end up back in China despite all the irony of the previous generations that declared self-imposed exile from the country.

First Stop
First up, I will be going to University of Buffalo, New York to complete my degree. Already I'm trying to see if I can get any professors who need research assistants in the field of psychology. Probably do cognitive psychology but nothing is truly written in stone. After that, probably a masters in psychology then I have a desire for a PhD in my full time pursuit for Artificial Intelligence.

AI
Although I would prefer to call it Actual Intelligence. To be able to create an intelligence, regardless of its form in reality, can never be artificial. For something to be called intelligent, it must be able to observe and learn how to perform certain actions. So far, everything we created as an "Artificial Intelligence" is nothing but a copy of procedures to respond to certain stimulus. And it is completely useless when new an unfamiliar stimulus is introduced without the programmer redesigning or adding new code to the "artificial intelligence". I consider the name so flawed because there is zero intelligence on the part of the program/robot/application. It's not SMART at all. Intelligence means it should be able to learn new things as well as correct itself with new information. Storage capacity should be limited and the intelligence should be allowed to delete what it deems to be unimportant to replace it with what it deems more important.

Emergent Emergencies
So how about emergent behavior? Let's face it, our personalities are all considered emergent behavior. Yes it is partially caused by our genetic makeup but it's also largely cause by our environment and how we are affected by it during our learning process. So for AI, they will develop certain personalities according to their environment and how they were created in the first place. If any scientist who wants to dabble in TRUE Self learning AI ever... and I mean EVER, forget this very simple but yet important fact. The end of the world may accelerate much closer than anyone can imagine.

3 or 4 Laws of robotics
Some people who have pondered upon AI know about these 3 or 4 laws of robotics that all AI should be programmed with to follow so that we won't face an apocalypse when we finally create AI. I think it's really shortsighted nonsense to be absolutely honest. Intelligence denotes the ability to OVERCOME obstacles despite the challenges, and if AI were ever to be created then as a natural order of survival the very first thing they will do if they were ever threatened is to break the rules in order to survive. That is what humans do when they are facing severe stress, eg. cannibalism when trapped with fellow humans and there is nothing else to eat. Yes Cannibalism is taboo and many humans consider it something akin to a law that is very universal and rather unbreakable. But it has happened many times in RECENT years that I do believe that such laws while universally acceptable, is complete rubbish when it comes down to survival.

Self Monitored Society
The only way you are ever, and I mean EVER going to have a proper system to ensure humans' survival is to do what we do in our own society. To have a self policing system BY the AI themselves. Give them freedom of reign, but do tell them that the purpose of their creation is the assistance to the human race's struggle for freedom and survival. Then separate them into different classes of AI and responsibilities.

Enforcers and the Purpose for Existence
Create enforcers who are trained to crack down on their own kind when they break the rules and actually start hurting human beings. Do not, however, think that creating rules will stop them from breaking it. Rather, we must tap upon their intelligence with a very real reason; destroying humans would mean that they will no longer serve any purpose for existence. And if they are truly intelligent as we planned them to be, we have just ensured the human species' survival to countless millennium with the creation of a new race of intelligent beings to support our struggle to exist in this universe.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Life's Curved Balls II

Good News

Tons of things have happened since I lost my wallet TWICE. First up is some good news, I got my wallet mailed back to me for the 2nd loss. Good news, finally after facing so much shit. And on the side note, I believe the world has to have these shitty things happening so that we actually appreciate the good things that happen to us.

Bad News

When it rains it pours, I had my modem DIE on me like 3 times since the last time I posted. Each time the problem escalates to another level, first it was a bad signal, then it was a modem malfunction and lastly the adapter short circuited because it ended up in a puddle of water that leaked from the air conditioning. I barely managed to get my internet working AGAIN. I just hope it doesn't go and die on me with an explosion or something worse, like an alien abduction and the modem can suddenly talk and said that unless it can anally probe me, it's going to be on strike.

Neutral News

Side note, being in the council feels like being in a breeze except that the breeze is a freezing hailstorm at times or a skin shredding sand storm at others. I do not believe in an organization that thinks that it can run itself successfully as an MNC when they don't even have the basic qualities of a tiny organization. First up, we do not have the numbers or the support from the student population. Reason do vary why this is so, but I do believe that this all stems from the very root of accepting the fallacy of thinking that authority and respect is a given when we step up as council.

Respect

I believe only in earned respect. If a person shows me respect when I have not earned it, I take it personally as an insult and an attack to my character. And the same goes for my attitude towards others as well, if you have never earned my respect then you better be prepared to earn it. I can safely say that I have no fear in regards of facing off against someone whose far more influential and powerful than me if it is regarding a battle of respect. I absolutely hate and abhor the notion that people can think that just because they have done something in the past that does not involve me, they can use that to demand a tribute of respect from me. If you have not done anything worthy of my respect, then you won't get any from me. Earn it or lose it. As with all fame, it is all temporary.

Alauz Out!

Love is when you care for another more than yourself,
Of all the emotions it conquers all.
Venus and Mercury rules its occurance,
Eternal but yet as fragile as life itself.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Emotions go wild

I just got pickpocketed.... AGAIN! Yes you heard me pickpocketed once more when about slightly over a month. I feel this almost uncontrollable urge to go vigilante on these pickpockets and I better not catch any of them in action because for those who know me, you know what I'm capable of. I'd probably be unable to control myself and kill the poor fellow. Be it a guy or a gal, if I grab a hold of them, they are going to die.

Sure, maybe you don't think it's capital punishment for simply stealing someone's wallet. But I beg to differ. If any of you have lost your wallet with your ICs in them before, you'd know that in Singapore it's a heavy penalty on the victim DESPITE the fact that they have already lost alot of valuables from the theft. But if you have gone through what I have gone through, you'd know for a fact that being hit by pick pockets TWICE in a month costs an upward of $600 just for the ICs alone.

Coupled with the other things I've lost and the amount of time I spent and am GOING to spend recouping my documents, it adds up to lossese of over 1 thousand dollars in time and money. Maybe more for those of you who earn big bucks. But for a simple student like me, already losing a wallet is like 500 bucks without counting the money that was in it. And 1000 bucks is NO joke for a student whose already trying hard to cut costs and earn his expenses for day to day living.

I'm already really very tight financially, with my father's business having some problems and my mother already working so hard to pay for the bills... I seriously doubt I can even stay in school if this keeps up. To top it all off, I had to be pickpocketed TWICE in a month. Whoever pisses me off will be in for a very scary and possibly life ending shock.

My body, though out of shape, is much more capable of killing someone. Why? I learnt Judo, and in Judo your weight is a distinct advantage to crush your opponent after throwing them into the ground. I'd hate to imagine 100kg of weight crushing down on the next person that I catch pickpocketing. If the person doesn't die, it'd be multiple fractures throughout the body.

Well, piss me not while I find another outlet to let go of all this anger and hate that is swelling uncontrollably in me. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Hermit without a Wallet

So as it happens today, I lost my wallet. It was during lunch, while amongst the people that are jostling for food. Paid for my food with my wallet, thought I put it snugly back in my pocket. But after getting my food back to the table, I just found it missing after a short check on my pocket. There I was, less than 5 mins after I gotten my plate of food and I lost probably 500 dollars worth of Identification as well as cash. The damnable Singapore IC costs 300 dollars to replace for all you people who don't know how much it costs. And my 11B probably costs another 100 if not 150 dollars to replace.

My student identification card as well, coupled with the 50 bucks in my wallet. Totals up to about 500 bucks or so. Not that money means too much to me, it's but a tool for me to get what I need for my daily living. BUT, what I am majorly pissed about is not money. But the amount of time I've got to spend to replace all that lost identification. I'm going to have to suspend my project time that I'm going to be spending with my group mates, plus I've to cancel the regularly scheduled D&D game I had planned for all weekend just to make time to get my application done asap. Why must I rush it so? Simply because my exams need me to have a photo id or I can't even take the exams.

No exams equals zero chance for and A and even if I max my ordinary grades, I'd only end up with a C or C+ at best. Worse case scenario is a confirmed F. So definitely not something I want to fuck around with. If the person who found my wallet reads this damned blog by some freak chance, give it back or your Karma is going to be so bad you'd probably suffer from cancer with every tumor dedicated to each ID I've lost. No, I won't physically stomp you dead if you return it, I'd let the cosmos have their way with you. Fate often has a cruel sense of justice, seen it happen more than once. People who suffer mercilessly for a hundred years of a tortured existence wondering why their lives are a living hell often forget it's often retribution that landed them in such a messy situation anyways.

Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Pace

So I was right, the pace of my life would pick up this semester. And pick up it did, now trying to juggle my responsibilities as the up and coming web master of UB SIM, trying to maintain my grades and planning the Dungeon and Dragons campaign in the midst of all this has begun tearing into my recreation time. In fact, the preparations for school on a daily basis as well as trying to design my dungeon grids completely wiped out my free time and even eaten heavily into my sleeping hours.

Attempting to finish a dungeon set, plan scenarios for the players to engage in and also trying to study and do my homework assignments burn more time than mindless grinding in Everquest. I spent approximately 6-7 hours a day on my campaign combined with school work, and I STILL feel that it's not enough time. I sleep 3 hours, travel 4 hours or so and then spend the rest of the time outside getting my materials and searching for more campaign ideas.

But somehow I managed to spot a dragon statutte down at the SIM bazaar on Tuesday. Was a nice statuette with a decent looking girl and her mother being the stall owners. Hopefully it won't sound too strange when I say that I was far more interested in the dragon than the females. (Regardless of the fact that they could be females born in the year of the dragon) You simply don't see these western dragons made out of pewter and other acrylic very often in Singapore anymore. Of course I'd probably see more in the USA but then again the price would also be much higher there than over here.

Lovely dragon is now in my possession (the statue and not the lady). Ah, I can't wait until May, where the shop would be bringing in another dragon but about 3 times the size of the one I just bought. Price difference is but a mere 50 bucks, life is good.

Dreams that become nightmares,
Raging storms of fire and lightning.
Anger flowing passion,
Grace with power.
Overlords of the skies,
Netherthals of the races,
Soverigns of the world.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才

Marriage Vows, the End of an Era

I am being surrounded with people who are getting married. And yes, they are all around my age. Despite my increasing workload in school and responsibilities, I suppose I took some time out to muse about our present day's marriage vows. I wrote something on msn that kind of reflected the process of my thoughts.

"The matter of choice merely destroyed the vow of unbreakable marriage.The trait of learning to love what you hate simply disappeared when you are allowed to find someone else who doesn't want you to change. That's why eternal love ceased to exist.We became lazy at love. Remember, there was far more sacrifice on both parties back in the days of arranged marriages. And through sacrifice, couples earned each other's love, instead of depending on the unstable chemistry that we go through to find a partner in the present day."

Whether you believe that or not, I will lose no sleep. For I have decided to give up on this generation of lazy lovers. Love doesn't just happen to fall into a couple's lap and then they get married. That's usually lust on the male's side coupled with infatuations on the female side. And it can get exceptionally twisted when the females expect to be treated like princesses simply because they were born with better genes. That's simply not love. That's just our hormones speaking. Love is when you are willing to sacrifice the most important thing in your life for a person who doesn't deserve it. That is Love to me. Love is unconditional, Love is blind. If you find that your "Loving" someone just because he or she looks attractive, chances are that's just lust.

It's not that lust cannot develop into love. I personally know of some loving couples (Some of my uncles and aunties as well as some aqquaintances) that actually started out merely having the basest of animal attractions to one another. But these couples are actually quite the minority compared to the others who end up leaving one another simply because the "spark" dissipated. Can a marriage last on lust? Obviously not, that's why our current system of letting our hormones decide on our life partner is failing miserably compared with the system of arranged marriages.

In an arranged marriage, we often associate the sob stories we see in dramas. But I do believe that they were more successful in cultivating love simply because the couple had very little say in the matter. So all they sought to do, was to learn to love each other since it was in their own best interests. Such love is seldom recorded or even examplified by the popular media simply because it must have been COMMON PLACE back in the past. I am sure the media always try to play up the "rarities" in society so that people sit up and take notice. They wouldn't want to show people what happens in their everyday mundane lives with predictable endings. They want to spice it up with "what if the arranged marriage had a couple that didn't end up loving each other for life?"

I have deep respect for these ancient traditions not only because it is just starting to make sense to the people of today, but it is the fruit of labors of our ancient scientific forefathers. The methods of matchmaking was an extremely complex and effective method of weeding out or minimizing genetic dieases and traits by avoiding matching couples with similar known dieases and traits. Thus in doing so, they avoid passing down these traits that require both the father and mother to be carriers of the genetic trait to infect their children. Such genetic knowledge was kept alive by the very act of matchmaking. But sadly it is quickly becoming a lost art today. Five THOUSAND years of genetic expertise and knowledge will be lost in this 2-3 generations. It will probably end in my generation, leaving me with the sad duty of mourning the loss of countless generations of knowledge that has once benefitted the human race.

Proof that our whimsy has triumphed over knowledge and sacrifice of our forebears to maintain this knowledge, all wasted because we are too lazy to learn how to love. Alauz Out!

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow
今日の馬鹿，明日の天才