It felt strange, after realizing it has been me behind everything that happened. It scared me and rejoiced me at the same time. It scared me because even a little stray thought could cause a massive life changing events in future. And for the good news, there is no conspiring others out there trying to get me. What about those evil people? Well, perhaps my evil thoughts spawned them into existence somehow. I don’t expect everyone to believe this shit. And me being not expecting you to believing this caused you not to believe this! See this pattern? No? Of course, I don’t expect you to. Under this new found light, it turns out all those coincidences are not so random. They are mare rippling effects of my intentions manifesting from the past. Even the worst things happen in life can be traced back to my involvement some how. Yes it is weird. LIFE is weird. ….....Now let’s start working. How about “Let there be light!” for a start?
After a few days of reflection on the first day of new year, I found out that I know very little about computing and stuffs compared to my peers. I asked myself how much I know about programming, web and software architectures. The answer is __ “Very little!”. What? That can’t be possible. So all these times, I was trying hard to appear smart by hiding my own stupidity. Then I realized I was so scared of people thinking of me as stupid. I had put burden on myself by trying to be looked smart. Well, screw them. From now on I won’t do shit just to impress people. That’s quite a free sensation, being stupid. It’s time to say ‘NO’ to pretentious smartness.Well, stupid people are slow. That gives me the chance to slow down my pace. All this rushing and getting things done just doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s time to read slower, eat slower and live the live slower. As a stupid and slow person, a simple life style is the best choice to live. Do less, own less and live more, that’s what I gonna do alright.
This had been said many times by many respectable individuals but main stream media refuse to accept and correct their mistakes. So I will just relay the message again here. Around 1980, a new breed of computer-fed kids evolved, due to easy access to the Internet in the United States and Europe. They soon learned that they could break into other people's systems. Unfortunately, the media called them hackers and the name sort of stuck, when in fact hackers do not consider such illegal security breakers to be hackers, but crackers. Hackers build things; crackers break them! [1]There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker. [2]There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end. [3]Hackers build things. Crackers (criminals) break things. [1] Berry F. Phillips, Member of the Computer Club of Oklahoma City http://www.tcs.org/ioport/apr05/hackers.htm [2] Eric S. Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html [3] Eric S. Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
I have this habit of leaving meals unfinished. Some people get annoyed whenever I left a portion of meal that I can’t finish. They would blame me for wasting foods while there are hungry children in Africa. Like that thought would make me hungry more. The reason I left food unfinished is I am just full. Simple as that. I refuse to eat just for the sake of finishing it. It is not good for health.This obsession with finishing things must be stopped. We don’t have to finish everything we started. Certain things in life are better off throwing away. If your carrier sucks, quit and start new one. If the book you are reading sucks, stop reading it. If your daily routine sucks, invent new ones. Don’t let something you hate sucking the life force out of you everyday. It’s no big deal really, just say fuck it and kick that shit out of your life forever. Of course, it does not mean you can give up on the dream your following, the carrier you are building or the relationship you are working on. This might sound contradictory bullshit, but it is not. You can check whether you should quit or continue something by asking yourself, “Does it suck now and gonna suck in long terms?” If the answer is yes for both, just leave that crap unfinished! Sometimes you don’t have to quit for the goal, but need to change the path towards it. You just can’t keep trying and pray for success. Following a wrong path won’t get you to your desired destination, no matter how far you travel. Doing the same approach again and again won’t yield any significant results. You have to evaluate the feedback from your efforts and correct the course accordingly. So my point is that quiting is just as important as finishing.
At one point or another in life, we made decisions to change our lives. We would declare to the World that how we are going to change, how we are going to exercise, how we are going to work toward our goals, etc. But after a few weeks or months, the fuel gradually burned out and we found ourselves falling back to old tracks. What happened to all the energy and excitements? Many of us won’t even notice. We will ease back into old patterns and keep going until we got hit by another unfortunate life event. Then realised, “Oh shit! I have to change, I am going to live a new life!” etc, etc. And the cycle goes round again.One of the reasons why we fail to change is, we got bored along the way. Although it was exhilarating on first few weeks, most people developed resistance and felt indifferent to their new adventures. Over time, we lost excitement, motivation and the urge to push forward. To prevent this, we need to develop awareness of the changes we are making everyday. Just being aware of our new habits, will make them shine and get us motivated. A few weeks ago, I have started to make changes to my life. Now I am seeing the signs of decreasing in momentum. If I don’t do anything, everything will fall back within a few months. So I have to spice things up, make them more interesting and keep them exciting. This post is a start to make things interesting, at least for me. And the next step will be to have short term goals and celebrations to keep me high and going. So far I have achieved regular workouts, an uncluttered desk and little success in letting emotions go. But at least this far, I did it!
Now I have decided to drop out from my part-time engineering degree course. It had been one and a half years of struggle. It is painful to make this decision since I had invested large amount of money and time for the course. If I were to continue, I still have to go next 3.5 years to finish it. It was a slow and painful realization that I am wasting my time and money. My day job is a programmer and I am passionate about it. But spending most of the evenings studying circuits and amps won’t help me achieve what I want to be, an awesome coder.So you might ask, “Why the hack you started anyway and why wait until now?”. Well, I thought it was important to have a degree from a recognised University. I had a degree from my home country which is not recognised in Singapore. So I was being a sheep and follow the crowd neglecting my passions. To make things worst, they only offers electronics and mechanical degrees as part time courses. I thought, I could study electronics at night while coding at day time. I thought I could become a hybrid electronics engineer and programmer. I was wrong. Although I enjoy learning, I didn’t enjoy learning electronics. There are all the other things I want to learn, do and experiment. After a year, I had this enormous list filled with books to read, languages to learn, challenges to take, side projects to hack on and a wife to take care of! The most annoying thing is whenever I wanted to take on a thing like poking around new programming language, I was stopped by the thought, “Hey aren’t you supposed to study?” I was getting done less and less in both worlds. Alright, screw it. I don’t need any internationally recognised degrees or certificates to live my life the way I want! I am going to spend my time on all the crazy things I wanted to do. For all money and time I have wasted, I have learned important lessons. Things I am not passionate about are not worth pursuing. Do less and do the things that matters. From now on, I will keep asking “Does it really matter and does it worth my life?” And you should ask yourself too.
Life is the cruel teacher. It will make sure you learn something by throwing lessons after lessons until you learn. Why is this happening to me? Why are people lying? Look at these knives sticking out of my back? Oh Why? Why? I asked and asked without seeking the answer.I was so immersed in self pity, I missed the whole point: to learn and grow. Instead, bullshits piled up at darkest corners of mind. Visions were sway and distorted, fuelling more nasty down cycles of emotional mishaps. Boom! Before I knew it, I became a pathetic piece of shit. I let my guards down, and let events get the best of me. When looking back at these unfortunate episodes, there was a theme, there was a pattern. It was the same story, same happenings and of course same lesson to learn. I was so busy collecting twisted emotions, I forgot to let go. I forgot to move on. I has forgotten the face of my father as Roland of Gilead might say. I messed up. I have to do something before it is too late. Inspired by Task Bankruptcy from www.mostlymaths.net, I decided to filed an Emotions Bankruptcy. It is simply to let go of all these emotional junks. I need to disown them and save myself from the loser state. But how? There is a simple practice in Buddhism. Just to be aware of feelings and emotions, be aware how they show up, how they seek for attentions and how they exist apart from me. It may work or it may not. I am going to try out this simple practice to built myself, piece by piece.
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