Most people I know are not big fans of baseball but it is a game that I used to try and immerse myself into. Grew up with cartoons featuring lots of baseball references, learned the game, watched a couple of them (during school holidays) and I find it is a highly strategic game and sometimes a little long. Most of the time baseball games are screened on TV (when we finally had access to this old piece of technology called satellite TV) it was during the morning when I had school.
Baseball is one of those sports where it has made its way into culture and even the phrases we use. Perhaps my unusual love for this game grew from a saturated American media that I used to watch a lot. Which probably isn't a surprise that my mentality or emotions tends to be a little American. While clearly being Asian of course.
I don't know why more people don't take up this sport.
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Went for a friend's concert today and it is the first time it was purely strings. Very nice though I was a little distracted by my plagued thoughts. Could have enjoyed it more.
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Oh hello, I recognise this place, being second. My doubts may have been justified.
Update
Thursday, March 29, 2012
at
11:58 PM
It has been a crazy 6 weeks at work with another week to go before it is feature complete. Though I'm pretty happy at where it is going I will be extra happy once this is over. Then maybe I can actually take leave for the first time.
Kick-ass bass I has. Kick-ass bass techniques I don't has. Meh.
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I'm having doubts again. Dammit.
Every. Single. Time.
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Sad Face
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
at
12:31 AM
I don't normally have a strong feelings of sadness for someone else but today is an exception.
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Sapling
Saturday, March 24, 2012
at
11:08 PM
There are times where we have read a passage in the Bible many many times and we glance across the same lessons. It is always a good reminder to revisit some of these things to make sure that we remember them. But every so often, you have the look on your face that just says "Yes I know this already". Then out of many of those times, you stumble across something that you've missed and often times it is to do with the bigger picture. Yesterday was once such a day.
It's the familiar passage of Mark 4, the parable of the sower. We all have been through this before: the seed is the word of God and depending on which soil the seed falls upon represents the responses of people towards God's word. End of story. What was more interesting is that Jesus used the analogy of the seed in the two parables after that which sounds like he is describing the same thing but highlighting different characteristics of it. So in the parable of the seed growing highlights that once the word has been planted it is God who causes the person who receives the word to grow and mature. The next one highlights that even though this word seem so insignificant (like the mustard seed) when it has reached maturation, it is exceeding grand.
So what are the three characteristics about the word of God from Mark 4? One, people will respond differently to it. Two, God grows and matures the person who has received the word and will bear fruit, not the person who sows it. Three, God's word may not look like much but the end result is so much more compared to what we see it on the outside or expect it to be. It's like saying don't be discouraged by the responses you get preaching the word because it is expected to have different results. It is also saying don't worry, God will make people grow in faith and finally be encouraged of what full maturation of the word looks like, which describes the kingdom of God.
It's nice to be able to step back a bit and see the bigger picture.
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I am on the verge of making another big purchase. Must learn to eat grass. On the plus side, I will be venturing into funkier playing styles.
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My Glorified Photo Frame case can't come fast enough.
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I have passed judgment on Toast Bar and its kaya revolution. There are a few things that I know I am right and this is definitely one of them.
It's the familiar passage of Mark 4, the parable of the sower. We all have been through this before: the seed is the word of God and depending on which soil the seed falls upon represents the responses of people towards God's word. End of story. What was more interesting is that Jesus used the analogy of the seed in the two parables after that which sounds like he is describing the same thing but highlighting different characteristics of it. So in the parable of the seed growing highlights that once the word has been planted it is God who causes the person who receives the word to grow and mature. The next one highlights that even though this word seem so insignificant (like the mustard seed) when it has reached maturation, it is exceeding grand.
So what are the three characteristics about the word of God from Mark 4? One, people will respond differently to it. Two, God grows and matures the person who has received the word and will bear fruit, not the person who sows it. Three, God's word may not look like much but the end result is so much more compared to what we see it on the outside or expect it to be. It's like saying don't be discouraged by the responses you get preaching the word because it is expected to have different results. It is also saying don't worry, God will make people grow in faith and finally be encouraged of what full maturation of the word looks like, which describes the kingdom of God.
It's nice to be able to step back a bit and see the bigger picture.
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I am on the verge of making another big purchase. Must learn to eat grass. On the plus side, I will be venturing into funkier playing styles.
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My Glorified Photo Frame case can't come fast enough.
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I have passed judgment on Toast Bar and its kaya revolution. There are a few things that I know I am right and this is definitely one of them.
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Achtung
Saturday, March 17, 2012
at
2:30 PM
At some point in time we Asians have had this discussion before, how the year we were born produces some stereotypes particularly related to Chinese zodiac. For example, people born in the year of the dragon tend to be a lot more vocal. Like anything related to mumbo-jumbo like that it is to be taken lightly but every now and then you indulge yourself in some of these stereotypes because there are many things out there that have absolutely no relation to us but just sparks that little feeling inside that just says "Hey, that sounds like me". Because we all like to identify ourselves with something apart from ourselves.
I was born in the year of the rat, sneaky little creature according to the story of how the zodiac was formed. But rather than identifying myself as the sneaky little one, I'd take the quietness and low key behaviour of a rodent. For the many years that I have cleaned the church, I've always told people that I'm the church mouse, wandering around church at night when no one is around, squeaking at...cleaning the church? A timid creature that runs aways whenever the spotlight is on it, occasionally getting myself into trouble by not recognising the mousetrap behind that block of cheese.
Needless to say, I don't handle attention very well. So when recently there was a kaya fest after bible study and they wanted to pit my kaya against others, I naturally felt uneasy and fidgety. There's a number of things that are slightly undesirable about mine which leads me to think that the first response is "meh". In fact that was one of the reactions prior to this but that's another story. Well the result just faded into silence which restored me from my feelings of uneasiness. Then I went back into mouse mode and nibbling on toast and eggs.
When I do things for people, I generally do it for a few select people, some group that stays contained or under a huge veil of anonymity. Having too much attention leaves me uneasy and if it's a question you ask me, I will just deflect it somewhere else or just not answer at all. It's the same thing with approaching a mouse, you don't run after it to catch it. Like mice too, my actions are low key as well.
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Watched The Producers yesterday and it was a further reminder on what I have missed in the musical theatrical world when growing up. The first musical I watched was Starlight Express way back in 1996 in London. A trip where I went through 90% of the trip with no glasses. So I didn't understand the theatre production simply because I couldn't see it and I didn't understand music in theatre (or rather I was ignorant about music then). It was still a nice atmosphere but I didn't get the whole deal. Not to mention that Malaysia lacks good musical production.
It is one thing to love the Disney Renaissance animated films that had musical value but it is an entirely different thing in real life. And so because of this I get annoyed at myself whenever I watched/listened to great musicals shouting deep down "WHICH ROCK HAVE YOU BEEN LIVING UNDER?" Remember, you are talking to the guy who didn't watch The Sound of Music or Mary Poppins in it's entirety until about 2009. The final nail in the coffin was when I listened to the soundtrack of Wicked, the greatest musical I have never seen. I remember when I got the soundtrack it was on loop every day for a good two weeks. My sister was even complaining about it.
I'm friends with people who live and breathe musical theatre and it's hard because I want to be part of that conversation but have zero input (relative to them). No chops man, no chops.
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At some point, I'm going to do. I don't know how or when but I will do it.
I might regret it. Good God what am I doing.
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Hands On Person
Friday, March 9, 2012
at
2:00 AM
I mostly work on building productivity apps on a regular basis so I guess it is fair to say that I provide a service to make things easier for people to do things and what not. So sometimes when it comes to my free time, the last thing I want to do is to engage in something that will take a split second to do what I want to do. Sure there are gadgets out there that will certainly do that for you but once in awhile, I just want to "waste" time. Cooking is one such activity.
I was talking to some friends of mine who owned a Thermomix and one who would love to get one. It is a wonderful gadget and does pretty much everything short of actually cooking your meals and fold your clothes. Things can be done in a fraction of the time with pinpoint accuracy and with never fail results. And I do say it is an almost magical gadget. But, unless someone gives that to me as a present, I will not get it by my own means.
Here's why...
Cooking to me has always been about the look and feel as you make it, much like how some people prefer to drive manual over automatic cars, because there is a sense of connection between you and the object. The intermediary aromas, the textures between processes, all these things makes cooking what I think it is. The time it takes, the multitude of steps builds a certain kind of anticipation that I think you can only get when you are doing the time. Sure it is sometimes hard work and sometimes it takes brain power to get there, but it is one of those things where the journey is more important than the destination. You can press a couple of buttons and your wonderful delicious meal will be done in a couple of minutes but I don't think you'll learn anything. You know how to make some but not why it becomes this gorgeous meal. The more I read from my usual favourite food/chef bloggers, the more I am convinced that if you really want to learn how fresh produce turns into a wonderful meal, you need to do the time.
The best example I can give was when I made ramen last week after being totally inspired from one of my favourite food lab bloggers. He has tried everything to replicate what it takes to make a kickass ramen soup base. He found out that the best result actually comes from boiling it for at least 12-18 hours straight as compared to the easier method of using a pressure cooker for 1.5 hours. And so armed with few principles outlined in his blog, I started making one. Boiled the damn bones for 13 hours and dished out on some ramen, cabbage, narutomaki, soft boiled egg and spring onions. And man it was super tasty. Even more surprising was absolutely no salt component was added. But I learned even more as over the course of several hours I see this pot of bones with water and some vegetables turned into something delicious. How and why the colour and flavour changes over time, these are the sorts of things you don't pick up when you press a few buttons.
The most common excuse that people give is that there is no time and granted. Since I've started work, time is a much more limited resource. But I still think that there is still time you can squeeze in to learn a thing or two about food. It helps improvising a lot in the kitchen when you have limited items in the fridge and limited time after coming home from work on a Tuesday. Two, it's a way to slow down your mad routine. I find cooking therapeutic though I know a lot of friends out there who would think otherwise. The couple of hours you put in to make soup or slow roast meats is worth the time for you just to be still.
Food cooked by friends even if nearly the whole thing is done via gadgets like the Thermomix is still good food. But I'd like to do things the old-fashioned way if it's my turn. I may get some weird looks due to my unconventional approach to everyday home cooking but I'd say it's worth the effort. For once, I actually look forward to failure because I'd know why it failed.
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I feel like I cannot connect anymore. Again.
I was talking to some friends of mine who owned a Thermomix and one who would love to get one. It is a wonderful gadget and does pretty much everything short of actually cooking your meals and fold your clothes. Things can be done in a fraction of the time with pinpoint accuracy and with never fail results. And I do say it is an almost magical gadget. But, unless someone gives that to me as a present, I will not get it by my own means.
Here's why...
Cooking to me has always been about the look and feel as you make it, much like how some people prefer to drive manual over automatic cars, because there is a sense of connection between you and the object. The intermediary aromas, the textures between processes, all these things makes cooking what I think it is. The time it takes, the multitude of steps builds a certain kind of anticipation that I think you can only get when you are doing the time. Sure it is sometimes hard work and sometimes it takes brain power to get there, but it is one of those things where the journey is more important than the destination. You can press a couple of buttons and your wonderful delicious meal will be done in a couple of minutes but I don't think you'll learn anything. You know how to make some but not why it becomes this gorgeous meal. The more I read from my usual favourite food/chef bloggers, the more I am convinced that if you really want to learn how fresh produce turns into a wonderful meal, you need to do the time.
The best example I can give was when I made ramen last week after being totally inspired from one of my favourite food lab bloggers. He has tried everything to replicate what it takes to make a kickass ramen soup base. He found out that the best result actually comes from boiling it for at least 12-18 hours straight as compared to the easier method of using a pressure cooker for 1.5 hours. And so armed with few principles outlined in his blog, I started making one. Boiled the damn bones for 13 hours and dished out on some ramen, cabbage, narutomaki, soft boiled egg and spring onions. And man it was super tasty. Even more surprising was absolutely no salt component was added. But I learned even more as over the course of several hours I see this pot of bones with water and some vegetables turned into something delicious. How and why the colour and flavour changes over time, these are the sorts of things you don't pick up when you press a few buttons.
The most common excuse that people give is that there is no time and granted. Since I've started work, time is a much more limited resource. But I still think that there is still time you can squeeze in to learn a thing or two about food. It helps improvising a lot in the kitchen when you have limited items in the fridge and limited time after coming home from work on a Tuesday. Two, it's a way to slow down your mad routine. I find cooking therapeutic though I know a lot of friends out there who would think otherwise. The couple of hours you put in to make soup or slow roast meats is worth the time for you just to be still.
Food cooked by friends even if nearly the whole thing is done via gadgets like the Thermomix is still good food. But I'd like to do things the old-fashioned way if it's my turn. I may get some weird looks due to my unconventional approach to everyday home cooking but I'd say it's worth the effort. For once, I actually look forward to failure because I'd know why it failed.
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I feel like I cannot connect anymore. Again.
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怖かった
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
at
2:00 AM
I don't normally have a lot of dreams. There are times where I will not have a single dream for years and suddenly I will have rapid fire dreams in a short period of time. Most of the dreams that I can remember were very strange dreams, doing seemingly impossible things, saying things that I wouldn't normally, seeing strange animals and their unusual behaviour. Needless to say that when I wake from these dreams, I feel very puzzled sometimes almost stunned. Gone are the days where I sometimes have nightmares, the kind that scare you shitless, wake up in sweat.
However, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I've had a dream unlike any I've had. It wasn't a nightmare nor was it the regular strange dreams nor the kind that makes you feel like you don't want to wake from that dream (this is extremely rare for me). I was emotionally drained from a dream that seems to last forever. Woke up to a gloomy day which kinda matched how I felt when I woke up. It took me several minutes longer to recuperate from such a dream than usual to examine and reassure myself that it was just a dream.
It described a situation of loss, regret and hopelessness. The futility of my actions in dream world, to try and change something that I've already lost. My stupidity in front of my peers in dream space further highlights my desperation to try and save something that I've conceded. Even though the events that took place in the dream were deemed to be ridiculous, far-fetched at best in the real world, I still felt as though it really did happen. It really was heart-aching both in the apparent and reality.
If you believe that dreams are a manifestation of the subconscious, perhaps there is something to it. Perhaps it is to leave me in a position where I must decide to either gamble and possibly win or to be pre-cautious yet again and lose. Nearly all my dreams never relate back to me this full on until today. Perhaps it's just a fluke, a stroke of coincidence. That it was just a dream after all. But the heart ache felt might mislead me to think otherwise. Or maybe, like a dream, the manifestation of the subconscious idea is just an illusion.
I need to lie down.
However, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I've had a dream unlike any I've had. It wasn't a nightmare nor was it the regular strange dreams nor the kind that makes you feel like you don't want to wake from that dream (this is extremely rare for me). I was emotionally drained from a dream that seems to last forever. Woke up to a gloomy day which kinda matched how I felt when I woke up. It took me several minutes longer to recuperate from such a dream than usual to examine and reassure myself that it was just a dream.
It described a situation of loss, regret and hopelessness. The futility of my actions in dream world, to try and change something that I've already lost. My stupidity in front of my peers in dream space further highlights my desperation to try and save something that I've conceded. Even though the events that took place in the dream were deemed to be ridiculous, far-fetched at best in the real world, I still felt as though it really did happen. It really was heart-aching both in the apparent and reality.
If you believe that dreams are a manifestation of the subconscious, perhaps there is something to it. Perhaps it is to leave me in a position where I must decide to either gamble and possibly win or to be pre-cautious yet again and lose. Nearly all my dreams never relate back to me this full on until today. Perhaps it's just a fluke, a stroke of coincidence. That it was just a dream after all. But the heart ache felt might mislead me to think otherwise. Or maybe, like a dream, the manifestation of the subconscious idea is just an illusion.
I need to lie down.
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Thought Diarrhea
Monday, March 5, 2012
at
2:30 AM
We often hear that as Christians we cannot give God a portion of our time, as in I will set aside 20% of my time for God and the rest goes into everything else. God permeates through every single aspect in our lives, God is in every activity you do. It is of course easier said than done to let God permeate because it goes against what we naturally do, compartmentalise.
Just a brief look at yourselves and you might find that you actually do that, you switch to a different mode when amongst workmates, church goers, friends, more-than-friends etc. It is especially so when we as Asians have spent a great deal of time mingling with the Caucasians while we are at university or at work. We speak our normal Manglish/Singlish hybrids once we see someone with mata sepet (small, almost squinty eyes) but switch to this unusual concoction of our Asian-ness and the default accent (in my case Australian). And we do this so effortlessly that sometimes we don't even realise it. I've asked a friend before ages ago to let me hear how she speaks when she is around Australians. She couldn't do it unless there's actually an Australian talking to her.
We switch to how we behave at work from the crude nature to the "holiness" of church goers, behaving one way in front of colleagues but say another to our pastor. And we do this just as easily and as effortlessly as we switch between accents. The worst part of it is that we may not actually realise that we have compartmentalised it. The act of letting God be transparent in all aspect of our lives is actually a really really hard thing to do.
Don't get me wrong, compartmentalising is not all that bad. It gives us some kind of order in our otherwise chaotic lives, helps us process information easily in batches like Lightroom. But God is not a "thing" that you can keep in a drawer or he is "this type of person" so I will naturally assume he will do "these things". He is much bigger than any compartment, whether physically or metaphorically. We can choose to think that he is a "thing" but that doesn't make him a "thing" because it is not his a nature of being that "thing" you've made him.
Are you making God a "thing"? Am I?
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I am not sure what to make out of certain Facebook comments I've been getting today. Let's just say it's to do with past history. Perhaps I'm overthinking it again but I will have to wait and see. Proceed with extreme caution.
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Saturday was one of the most productive but extremely quiet days I've had in a long time. To my surprise, the crummy weather actually helped. Now make it stop.
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Conquered ramen soup base and chilli pan mee (well not quite yet).
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I am highly annoyed that I cannot find Marit Larsen's CDs around and they are not available on iTunes Australia either =( Super love her.
My next obsession is Emi Meyer. At least she has stuff on iTunes
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I'm going to plagiarise a friend's idea and have a pair of timbale sticks and brushes as my go-to kit. While strictly not for a full on drum set, it will do just fine.
Then to get a new bass and headphones. Sigh.
Then to get a new bass and headphones. Sigh.
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I will need the mental strength to go through this week's release without thinking about Mass Effect 3 and the iPad 3. Super distracting.
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Niblets
Friday, March 2, 2012
at
2:30 AM
They may not like the job but some people look better in corporate wear. I am not such a person. I'm a code monkey remember?
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6 years on and I still love this. And now I can kinda...relate?
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Oh goodness, I'm such a fool
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6 years on and I still love this. And now I can kinda...relate?
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Oh goodness, I'm such a fool
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