I know it's glaringly obvious, but today I finally put into words how I distinguish a crush from a friend -- a crush is someone whom I really want to get to know every single little detail about. I don't really care to do the same for a friend.
I don't understand how feelings work. If I know equally little about two people, I should be equally curious about them. But somewhere along the way, my subconscious decided that one person is more interesting than the other. I'm not a guy so it's not about how hot one person looks compared to the other. You know how it is: you can tell who the best-looking person in a room is and have absolutely no interest in him/her. Instead, the quirky person who may pass for someone decidedly odd is way more interesting.
If anything, this sure explains how some not-so-hot people end up with terrific eye candy on their arms. Unfortunately, I was reading somewhere that a very unequal level of attractiveness often dooms a relationship from the start -- I'm not citing my sources here. I was reading readers' comments on a blog. I think it's popular opinion. As an aside, ScienceDaily has an article on how people often think that an opinion heard repeated from the same person is actually popular opinion. I don't know how reliable popular opinion is really. I mean, your opinion doesn't have to affect what happens to me. But it does, subconsciously. It's all about what you believe, and you can't really control that.
Going back to crushes, I think we know what we are looking for in our partners. It's easy to say that you want a funny, intelligent and nice guy/girl, but those are really subjective labels. What sort of humor? What kind of intelligence? How nice is nice? It's hard to break those down to their little subcategories but we know what we like when we find it.
So maybe it is as they say -- go with your feelings. Don't think about it. Because really, people are having a hard time explaining why humor works. And with all those different intelligent quotients...I think we should just step back and ask ourselves if we're happy. If we are, then we're headed in the right direction.
One of the professors in school is obsessed with how E.coli is capable of directional brownian swimming. Really, it's all about the happiness gradient -- where is the food? Humans aren't that different really -- which way to happiness? Follow your gut instincts.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Sunday, May 20, 2007
strings of words and ideas
I'm currently fascinated by Paulo Coelho. Karl Langerfeld is still interesting, but his time is over for now. I finally got around to reading up about Coelho this afternoon, and on his wikipedia page I read this:
"Although Coelho has achieved great international success, his work has not been unanimously appreciated at home; his election to the Brazilian Academy of Letters proved controversial. Seen by some Brazilian literary critics as a lesser author whose material is too simplistic and similar to that of self-help books, criticism of his work arises mostly from his plain, direct style and borrowing of ideas from other authors. Additionally, his works in Portuguese contain grammatical errors and inaccuracies; some of these have been minimized in translation or altered in later editions." (5/20/07)
I have a lot to say in response to the first part of the paragraph, but let me just focus on the very last part, the part that says that his works in Portuguese contain grammatical errors and inaccuracies. Well, that was certainly not obvious to me since I've been reading his books in English. I'm now confused by what makes a good writer.
The way I see the world is this: many people are competent in a language and of those people, a subpopulation somehow manages to express themselves in a more creative, more thoughtful way than others. Those who don't know a language well usually don't have a desire to create works in that language. What happens if you're not comfortable in your native language, or any other language? (Sure sounds like the dilemma of the Singaporean.) What now, now that I know that Mr Coelho is a law school dropout and a world-famous Portuguese author who isn't comfortable with Portuguese grammar? And what is his editor doing anyway?
I'd always been bottom of my class in Chinese. We used to have to write stories for class, and I would often do poorly. Yet one of my stories was submitted by my Chinese teacher for the school publication. My story was accepted. It was a big deal for me because PRC students made up less than 10% of my school population but 90% of the works in the collection were written by someone from China. You probably don't believe me; I should have kept that book. Just for the record, I was not published in the collection of stories in English.
I think my grammar in Chinese is decent -- they don't really teach grammar to native speakers. My vocabulary was wanting -- my stories were written in the simplest of words. What prompted my teacher's choice of submission was the originality of idea, and a desire to encourage me. What I got out of it was that words don't matter; ideas and style do.
I dare say you'll find the same thing in my writings here. My English vocabulary is poor, but I make do with using the simplest words to express myself. There is a flow, a desire to communicate, to arouse feelings. Perhaps the simpler the words the better; the simpler the words the more easily understood and universal my writing becomes. Alright, maybe I am just lazy.
A writer is ultimately a word smith -- he takes what he has and puts it together. The skill lies in being able to string words and ideas together, not in owning a large collection of words. As for the grammatical part, leave it to the editor. We can't be good at everything.
"Although Coelho has achieved great international success, his work has not been unanimously appreciated at home; his election to the Brazilian Academy of Letters proved controversial. Seen by some Brazilian literary critics as a lesser author whose material is too simplistic and similar to that of self-help books, criticism of his work arises mostly from his plain, direct style and borrowing of ideas from other authors. Additionally, his works in Portuguese contain grammatical errors and inaccuracies; some of these have been minimized in translation or altered in later editions." (5/20/07)
I have a lot to say in response to the first part of the paragraph, but let me just focus on the very last part, the part that says that his works in Portuguese contain grammatical errors and inaccuracies. Well, that was certainly not obvious to me since I've been reading his books in English. I'm now confused by what makes a good writer.
The way I see the world is this: many people are competent in a language and of those people, a subpopulation somehow manages to express themselves in a more creative, more thoughtful way than others. Those who don't know a language well usually don't have a desire to create works in that language. What happens if you're not comfortable in your native language, or any other language? (Sure sounds like the dilemma of the Singaporean.) What now, now that I know that Mr Coelho is a law school dropout and a world-famous Portuguese author who isn't comfortable with Portuguese grammar? And what is his editor doing anyway?
I'd always been bottom of my class in Chinese. We used to have to write stories for class, and I would often do poorly. Yet one of my stories was submitted by my Chinese teacher for the school publication. My story was accepted. It was a big deal for me because PRC students made up less than 10% of my school population but 90% of the works in the collection were written by someone from China. You probably don't believe me; I should have kept that book. Just for the record, I was not published in the collection of stories in English.
I think my grammar in Chinese is decent -- they don't really teach grammar to native speakers. My vocabulary was wanting -- my stories were written in the simplest of words. What prompted my teacher's choice of submission was the originality of idea, and a desire to encourage me. What I got out of it was that words don't matter; ideas and style do.
I dare say you'll find the same thing in my writings here. My English vocabulary is poor, but I make do with using the simplest words to express myself. There is a flow, a desire to communicate, to arouse feelings. Perhaps the simpler the words the better; the simpler the words the more easily understood and universal my writing becomes. Alright, maybe I am just lazy.
A writer is ultimately a word smith -- he takes what he has and puts it together. The skill lies in being able to string words and ideas together, not in owning a large collection of words. As for the grammatical part, leave it to the editor. We can't be good at everything.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Prost!
I don't know why it's taken me so long, but finally finally I have come to my senses. There is no future for me in wine. I'm going over to beer. Yes, I'm going to learn to appreciate beer.
For the longest time, I was trying to taste the differences in wine, unsuccessfully. Sure you can tell the difference between the $10 bottle and the $40 bottle. But the differences are so minute -- is it really a $30 difference?
You may call me a boor, but I can't appreciate wine. And if truth be told, it seems that no one really knows what a good wine is. And for all that jazz about flavor and batch of crops, you really can just improve the quality of your wine by adding sugar or what not to it. As far as wine is concerned, I think it's an artificial distinction between bottles. Leave me out of it.
Now beer, oh beer. There is a real difference. There is the Belgium White, and the dark stout and you have to be pretty taste-challenged to not be able to tell the difference. It can be smooth, or metallic, or sour. And you can say what you taste and everyone will know what you're talking about. A well-rounded flavor? Whatever.
There is no such thing as the bumper crop of 2001. Beer is good fresh, not sitting around in a bottle for years. There is quality control -- you get as good a beer as you paid for all year round, all decade long.
It's taken me the longest time to come around though, no thanks to my childhood experiences. The only people who drank beer were the men in the family. They were older, and mostly out of shape. Their wives may steal a sip from their mugs, but I never met a woman who enjoyed a good beer. But the smell, oh the smell! I've always liked the way beer smells. Yet it was sour, and bubbly, and grating to the tongue. An acquired taste. Well, maybe the lack of exposure -- they drank about 3 different brands of beer when I was growing up and none of them were that great. And maybe it just wasn't a female thing.
In college, beer was something the frat boys do. Drunken and loud. Just for the sake of getting drunk. No one really cared about the taste. It was cheap and plentiful. That was enough.
Thankfully I recently met people who are serious about their beers. They tend to be rather traditional in their tastes -- blueberry flavored beer? No thanks. Yes, they are Germans. They've been brewing beers for hundreds of years, and they know how to enjoy a good cold beer.
I don't know about you but I used to think of beer in terms of percentage alcohol. Today I change my mind: that's so very wrong. Whatever the alcohol content, I now think of it as a warning label. The point is the taste -- do you like the way it tastes?
My beer tonight supposedly comes with tinges of orange peel and coriander. Whatever. I'll call it Belgium White.
PS. When you toast your friends, be sure to look them in the eye. That's how they do it in Deutchland.
For the longest time, I was trying to taste the differences in wine, unsuccessfully. Sure you can tell the difference between the $10 bottle and the $40 bottle. But the differences are so minute -- is it really a $30 difference?
You may call me a boor, but I can't appreciate wine. And if truth be told, it seems that no one really knows what a good wine is. And for all that jazz about flavor and batch of crops, you really can just improve the quality of your wine by adding sugar or what not to it. As far as wine is concerned, I think it's an artificial distinction between bottles. Leave me out of it.
Now beer, oh beer. There is a real difference. There is the Belgium White, and the dark stout and you have to be pretty taste-challenged to not be able to tell the difference. It can be smooth, or metallic, or sour. And you can say what you taste and everyone will know what you're talking about. A well-rounded flavor? Whatever.
There is no such thing as the bumper crop of 2001. Beer is good fresh, not sitting around in a bottle for years. There is quality control -- you get as good a beer as you paid for all year round, all decade long.
It's taken me the longest time to come around though, no thanks to my childhood experiences. The only people who drank beer were the men in the family. They were older, and mostly out of shape. Their wives may steal a sip from their mugs, but I never met a woman who enjoyed a good beer. But the smell, oh the smell! I've always liked the way beer smells. Yet it was sour, and bubbly, and grating to the tongue. An acquired taste. Well, maybe the lack of exposure -- they drank about 3 different brands of beer when I was growing up and none of them were that great. And maybe it just wasn't a female thing.
In college, beer was something the frat boys do. Drunken and loud. Just for the sake of getting drunk. No one really cared about the taste. It was cheap and plentiful. That was enough.
Thankfully I recently met people who are serious about their beers. They tend to be rather traditional in their tastes -- blueberry flavored beer? No thanks. Yes, they are Germans. They've been brewing beers for hundreds of years, and they know how to enjoy a good cold beer.
I don't know about you but I used to think of beer in terms of percentage alcohol. Today I change my mind: that's so very wrong. Whatever the alcohol content, I now think of it as a warning label. The point is the taste -- do you like the way it tastes?
My beer tonight supposedly comes with tinges of orange peel and coriander. Whatever. I'll call it Belgium White.
PS. When you toast your friends, be sure to look them in the eye. That's how they do it in Deutchland.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
What I learnt from Nicholas
I've learnt to talk without conviction, to argue for the sake of argument because no one ever takes the other side so that we can all be entertained. So you start with an idea, then you link to another idea and you try to position things across from each other so that your audience's minds are stretched. But really, it's all rhetoric.
The ideas are there as your mental medicine balls, tossing from person to person as we engage in this group activity. But no one really sees that it's a medicine ball. They think we're playing a game with a score. There is no score. Perhaps there is some sort of an acknowledgment of how gracefully one throws, but we get better. We should. The scores are not permanent. Your score today means nothing. It's a series of battles, each one strengthening. There is no war -- why care about the battles? We're not even fighting. I just happen to be on the other side for now.
Stream of consciousness. We are not judging. Let flow.
The ideas are there as your mental medicine balls, tossing from person to person as we engage in this group activity. But no one really sees that it's a medicine ball. They think we're playing a game with a score. There is no score. Perhaps there is some sort of an acknowledgment of how gracefully one throws, but we get better. We should. The scores are not permanent. Your score today means nothing. It's a series of battles, each one strengthening. There is no war -- why care about the battles? We're not even fighting. I just happen to be on the other side for now.
Stream of consciousness. We are not judging. Let flow.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Perhaps perhaps perhaps
Someone asked me today what that one (or two) thing in life I want to accomplish is. It sounds like a typical enough question, but I don't think I've given much thought to it. I've thought about whether I'll regret my entire life if I didn't do something, but not what that one thing I really want to accomplish is. Anyway, it didn't take too long for me to figure out what I want to leave as my legacy -- a good book.
It doesn't have to be a great book, just decent and semi-insightful enough such that someone somewhere down the road will think that it makes a decent read. I would actually rather have this good book than be a famous scientist.
I could get lucky with my first book, but I wouldn't count on it. I read an article a couple of years ago that said that with the number of books being published today, the easiest way to become a published writer is to make your mark somewhere else first. I usually link articles, but I have no idea where this particular one comes from. I agreed with that opinion, but it somehow feels unsatisfactory tonight. If you can get what you want directly, why are you going on a detour that may lead you there? I'm sure it's hard to take the direct route, but the indirect route is just as improbable. I don't want to be a famous person with a book. I want to be a person with a good book, and part of that probably comes from having writing experience.
For now, I can't even write on a regular enough basis. I did think that I would attempt short stories, fables, existential anecdotes. Maybe they'll build up to a book. Murakami actually thinks that short stories are more challenging (read the intro to one of his recent short story collections, or maybe an interview about it). I like how short stories can be like haikus -- a scene that implies more than what is being described.
Let's try it again, another resolution. Maybe I will write.
It doesn't have to be a great book, just decent and semi-insightful enough such that someone somewhere down the road will think that it makes a decent read. I would actually rather have this good book than be a famous scientist.
I could get lucky with my first book, but I wouldn't count on it. I read an article a couple of years ago that said that with the number of books being published today, the easiest way to become a published writer is to make your mark somewhere else first. I usually link articles, but I have no idea where this particular one comes from. I agreed with that opinion, but it somehow feels unsatisfactory tonight. If you can get what you want directly, why are you going on a detour that may lead you there? I'm sure it's hard to take the direct route, but the indirect route is just as improbable. I don't want to be a famous person with a book. I want to be a person with a good book, and part of that probably comes from having writing experience.
For now, I can't even write on a regular enough basis. I did think that I would attempt short stories, fables, existential anecdotes. Maybe they'll build up to a book. Murakami actually thinks that short stories are more challenging (read the intro to one of his recent short story collections, or maybe an interview about it). I like how short stories can be like haikus -- a scene that implies more than what is being described.
Let's try it again, another resolution. Maybe I will write.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
In phases
No thanks to certain books, I've grown to mistrust best sellers list. I've learnt that just because something sells doesn't mean that it's any good. Thanks to this notion, I totally missed out on the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho when it came out. Fortunately, I read about Paulo Coelho in the New Yorker (yes, I seem to keep refering to the New Yorker these days), and I decided to check him out. For the first time in a long while, I sat down and finished a book from cover to cover. Sure, it wasn't a long book. It was a good book -- I think that's my point.
I tend to read in waves, by authors. The last author I checked out was Calvin Trillin. Before that, Haruki Murakami. I'll be reading Paulo Coelho for as long as I can find an unread book in the library.
I'm not sure if its wise to read only a certain author. But that's how I function, by obsessing over one person, one idea, one thing, and never really coming back again. Literally, the phases of my life.
I tend to read in waves, by authors. The last author I checked out was Calvin Trillin. Before that, Haruki Murakami. I'll be reading Paulo Coelho for as long as I can find an unread book in the library.
I'm not sure if its wise to read only a certain author. But that's how I function, by obsessing over one person, one idea, one thing, and never really coming back again. Literally, the phases of my life.
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