Relationships?

With the intake of girls in my batch, everyone seems to have started behaving slightly differently. Perhaps we can all blame raging hormones. Nonetheless, this has sparked a discussion on relationships.

Now, why would anyone want to be in a relationship? From what I see, there are only a few possible reasons.

a) Have some fun, gain some experience.
b) You just fell in love.
c) Find that someone special you want to settle down with and feel a sense of security in a relationship.

If it is the first reason, I have nothing to say. If it is b, I cannot comment either. Yet if it is reason c, it is rather ironic. Because of how relationships at this age are characterised by instability. Recently a close friend of mine found love. Though on certain days he finds the relationship fulfilling and beautiful it is saddening watching how on other days he is torn apart within this very same relationship.

Perhaps that is what a relationship is all about, but for now, all I can say is summarised in this comic. http://xkcd.com/c55.html

Why doesn’t the identity matrix work?!?

Idealistic.

I put my book away and checked my timetable. I set my alarm for 9 am and went to bed.

Strolling into class at 10, I saw that my best friend was already in school. He had read an interesting book the previous night and we discussed the main ideas in that book. Not too long after, the teacher arrived and we launched into an intriguing lesson in Mathematics…

Class ended at 2 pm. I went out for lunch with a group of close friends before heading home. The math teacher had given us some homework and I proceeded to solve the challenging questions.

After dinner, I settled down on the couch, picked up my book and continued where I had left off…

Knowing?

Most of us are brought up in an environment where we feel secure and safe, cared for by our parents who provide us with everything we need. Yet throughout our life, layer by layer, all our defenses are peeled away. Today, I will recount how one particular side of my life has been torn apart and left raw.

I believe there was a time I believed my parents knew everything. I used to ask my father about everything in the world. I used to think he was the ultimate source of information and that he would have an answer to every question I had to ask. Sadly, somewhere along the way I realised there is a limit to my father’s knowledge.

During primary school it wasn’t hard to ensure I learnt everything there was to learn in the primary school syllabus. I felt safe within the system because all the unknowns could be placed into the “I’ll learn this in the future” box. I felt I knew everything I could know.

In secondary school my grades were quite messed up. However, I found solace in Mathematics. My English (very much like it is today) was substandard and hence I was unsure of most of the humanities. Chemistry and physics required proper expression in English and once again I felt lost in those subjects. However, in Mathematics it all felt clear and simple. It was a land of variables, always like a simple analogy. I gave up trying for the rests of the subjects and consoled myself that at least I understood Mathematics.

However, today, I see how Mathematics is a field as wide as any other and portions that nobody understands. The Mathematics I know is but the tip of the iceberg.

Everything I felt safe and secure in are being torn away. I feel a sense of bewilderment. It has been very difficult to come to terms with the fact that I will have to give up studying almost everything and will one day have to specialise. The feeling is horrible and it does not help that the teachers in school are not interested in teaching anything other than what is tested.

To deal with this problem, I have been asking around people who are seemingly untroubled by this problem how they deal with it. The responses can be grouped into 3 types.

a) It does not matter how much I know. It only matters how much I know relative to the people around me. I am happy that I know more than others.

b) Why must you know everything? I don’t care.

c) You cannot possibly know everything, you can only work hard to learn more.

I find none of responses anything I can readily accept and everyday I still think and wonder what I have missed out by reading this book and not the other still waiting for me on the shelf.

New Week

It is once again Monday.

This week will bring a physics test, a chemistry test, another lit commentary and both my Chinese group and individual oral. Already, I cannot wait for the next weekend.

I have gone to the library and borrowed a few books on mathematics. I find these books very interesting, far more interesting than the mathematics we learn in school. This has led to a change in my lifestyle. Instead of rushing to finish my CAS proposal, study for my upcoming tests or hurrying home to download the new episode of Smallville, I have been reading more. I have only been doing the essential bits and pieces of homework where necessary. Though this has kept me thinking, I have not been making progress in major long term projects.

I hope there are no major consequences to this, but I had better get used to doing work again.

Arguments

I’ve been thinking about arguments recently and so far, I believe I can see two key reasons why people argue unnecessarily.

Firstly, I believe many arguments exist only because people do not define their terms clearly. Very often people argue for hours before finally realising they both hold the same belief, only that the terms in the original point of contention were ambiguous. Sometimes I wonder whether the problem is a linguistic one. Just as the problem of 0.9 recurring being equal to one exists only in the base 10 system many such arguments may never exist in another language. Does this mean that a certain language is flawed?

From what I see, another key reason why pointless arguments arise is because ideas can be applied to something on different levels. (For the past few days I have been grappling over how to clearly express this point. I hope I can adequetely explain this.)

The only constant is change.

At first look this appears very much like an oxymoron. We can tell this statement does not prove constant equals change or that change equals constant. That would certainly be contradictory. However, in certain contexts, this may not be as clear. I believe the reason why this does not mean constant = change is because the word constant and change are on a different level. We are describing the set called “change” as a constant. This does not mean every entity within the set is a constant. In a similar way, we can say that there is regularity in irregularities. This is not a contradictory statement.

It just gets more confusing when we wrap it all in a language. It just gets puzzlingly illogical.

Poof again.

I always like new beginnings, new years, new days because they bring hope. It gives me hope, and yet another chance to make a change.

Like any other new beginning, I was hopeful when I first started this new blog. Sadly, our society does not believe in such new beginnings. As expected there were many doubts that I would be able to continue writing. There was even a rather sarcastic remark from one of my seniors. Hopefully, this time round I will be able to accomplish what I set out to do.

People make generalisations. My peers have fixed impressions of me in their mind. Each new beginning, is meaningless to them. No matter where or what, they will still see ME through all the facades of each new beginning. Though each new beginning does not allow me to start afresh, each new beginning provides me with yet another chance to alter that impression in your mind, and that, I suppose, will have to suffice as a reason to continue trying to improve.

Chinese New Year

I do not deny the fact that I am slow, behind time and procrastinate far too much. However, I still think the Chinese New Year is worth blogging about.

As many others have vividly described, Chinese New Year has lost much of it’s meaning and these annual gatherings are becoming increasingly mindless. However, I feel there is much for us to learn from Chinese New Year.

Most of my Chinese New Year holidays were spent in Singapore. A few of my aunts had come to visit us and we spent most of our time with them. However, on the second day of the Chinese New Year we made a day trip back to our hometown in Malaysia.

The journey there was uneventful. I believe till the day I can drive or I can get a nice car (e.g. Maybach) I will find most three hour drives boring.

When we arrived at our rural hometown Bekok, we were warmly greeted by our relatives. We made trips to every house in Bekok and we all had a copious amount of homemade biscuits.

Most of my relatives had brought their families from various parts of Malaysia and Singapore. The adults were engaged in their own discussion and like all the other children I sat on the sofa feeling vaguely awkward and uncomfortable. I tried my best to join in the discussion, but something was missing.

Every Chinese New Year gathering brings back our relatives from various walks of life. There is much to learn and discover from these relatives, yet none of us adolescents were able to gain much more than kilograms from this Chinese New Year trip.

Very much like any other relationship, we have to give before we can expect to get anything in return. Yet everybody seems to disregard this event, one of the few remaining Chinese traditions stressing the importance of the family unit.

Maybe it was just me.

Communications

Very often the problem with everyone and everything is the inability to communicate. It is one thing to be able to formulate ideas or to be able to calculate 3.14 * 999 in microseconds yet it is of no use if you cannot express yourself to the person sitting in front of you.

I have always found it puzzling why cars don’t come with bluetooth installed. My father’s car is fully equipped to handle a phone call (dedicated buttons on both the radio and the steering wheel, ability to use the inbuilt speakers for sound output) yet because we didn’t opt for the car phone as an optional extra, we have never been able to make use of this functionality. The phone and the car are but a few metres apart, yet they are unable to communicate. If only my father’s car had bluetooth, the car and the phone would be able to communicate and we would be able make use of the dedicated phone buttons on the steering wheel!

I live in a society. I sit next to a fellow human in class. I am connected to fellow humans by the internet. I’d very much like to be able to tell you how screwed up my life is.

My aim.

I may not have eloquence, or be able to write coherently, but I can dream!

Before I begin, I want to first explain what this blog is about and why it is so named.

asdf-zxcv. It may appear simple and you may think I was unable think of a better name or you may think it serves only to inform a random geek that I use a qwerty keyboard.

asdf-zxcv. It represents all the letters on the qwerty keyboard.

My dream, my aim, my vision is simply to be able to write a blog post with nothing but the letters on this keyboard.

poof.

It’s a new beginning, it always is.

Poof, and it appears.