Awesome website, awesome stuff

Not sure if I'm slow, I just discovered this awesome site called Quora. It provides a platform for people to discuss their topics of interest, much like reddit. I think I must be slow to discover it because I already have two friends in my google contacts there! Some of the questions the users posted are really interesting. Here I'm going to share an interesting paradox I stumbled upon:

A  baby girl is mysteriously dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in  1945. "Jane" grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents  are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She  falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for  Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the  drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery,  doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her  life, they are forced to surgically convert "her" to a "him." Finally, a  mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.

Reeling  from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, "he"  becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and  her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970,  he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop's Place, and spills out his  pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers  the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and  abandoned, on the condition that he join the "time travelers corps."  Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the  drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan  woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant.

The bartender then goes  forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops  off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off  the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers  corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a  respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then  disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a  date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop's Place in 1970.

The  question is: Who is Jane's mother, father, grandfather, grand mother,  son, daughter, granddaughter, and grandson? The girl, the drifter, and  the bartender, of course, are all the same person. These paradoxes can  make your head spin, especially if you try to untangle Jane's twisted  parentage. If we draw Jane's family tree, we find that all the branches  are curled inward back on themselves, as in a circle. We come to the  astonishing conclusion that she is her own mother and father! She is an  entire family tree unto herself.

That is why, time travel must not be made possible, not within the same universe at least.

Took the test again...

As I've mentioned in my previous post, I was bored. I was so bored I started to scroll through my previous posts and stumbled across this one: http://rainbowishsmiley.blogspot.sg/2013/11/i-have-come-to-conclusion-that-my-life.html

Curious, I took the test again to see how I'll score now. Bleh, not much  difference.

http://www.okcupid.com/results/the-sublime-philosophical-crap-test/?var_Metaphysics=8&var_Ethics=4&var_Epistemology=3&fromCGI=1

Too much maths so I shall post instead

Yeah I was doing some maths at khan academy because I'm genuinely bored. That's not to say I have nothing to do. I have loads of things to do but they will just make me more bored, like filing my stuff and cleaning my room etc. I was doing implicit differentiation and almost committed suicide because it's just so easy to make mistakes and one small mistake kills it all, furthermore I have to get 5 correct in a row. So I gave up and did some boring quadratics, then I decided to come here instead.



So yesterday I had a fun time simulating a conversation with a fictional teacher in my brain. In my mind I was a innocent and naive person (on purpose) and I was sleeping in a teacher's class (the teacher is someone I don't know, just a dummy taking the role). The teacher spotted me and shouted to wake me up. I rise my head and opened my buggy eyes, only to see the teacher's angry face. I was made to stand.

"Do you know what you just did?" The teacher shouted.
"I slept in your class."
"Why would you do so?"
"Because your lessons are really boring."
The teacher got really angry and raised his/her voice.
"Do you know how rude you are?"
"And you are equally rude to me." I replied.
"Stand for the rest of the lesson and see me after this." The teacher snapped.
"Why should I stand?" I became confused.
"You were extremely disrespectful!" The teacher shouted at the top of his/her lungs.
"But you are not respecting me either. I believe respect is to be earned. Now, we respect you because you are a teacher, hence you are expected to be wiser and more knowledgeable than us. But now, you seem to be abusing your authority, which makes me doubt whether you are worth of the respect."
"What do you say? To the principal's office, now!"

And so I went to the principal whom is of no importance because he/she is a more sensible person and allow this matter to be resolved personally by me apologising to the teacher.

After the incident the naive me in character thought that things ought to improve. Therefore, I sent an email to the teacher, firstly apologising again. Then I wrote "I believe that to prevent further unhappy incidents of this kind, we must resolve the root of the matter..." and then a long essay on how his/her lessons can be made less boring. In the end, signing off I smiled to myself, thinking how I can survive through the lessons more easily after the changes are made.

Yeah that totally doesn't happen in real life. Everything is created in my brain and I don't even act like that in reality. I'm experienced enough to know that people will be angry and not all people are willing to take criticisms. Still I wonder what happens if I really do this. This is what I mean, when I said that sometimes I'll create little scenarios in my mind to amuse myself.

Really, sleeping in class is bad. Don't do it. And the teacher I created here is a not so nice one. I believe most teachers are nice people, although most teachers don't like their authority to be challenged.

I'm really bored. Do other people also get bored this easily?

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!

Yo people merry Christmas! Although I'm not a Christian I still like the atmosphere during Christmas time.

Still, I'm not going to change my blog background (the nightmare before christmas) for Christmas. I still like halloween more and I didn't get any nightmares yesterday.

Anyway, merry Christmas!!!

This is a flash I did during sec 2 (I think) for my ICT project. I was obsessed with angry birds back then.

Urg how do you insert flash into the webpage...

Oh yay!

Just rambling

I'm using my phone to blog again. Sadly I can only write in html so I have to manually insert paragraphing. I've just returned to sg. To be honest the trip isn't very interesting. As with all group tours to China, we were brought around to many sponsored shops for shopping and the attractions are so commercialised it sort of ruined the experience a bit. But the main point I want to make is not really about the trip but rather how I find myself to be a socially awkward person.

People relations have always been a hard thing to grasp and thus a troublesome thing for me. I'm really uncomfortable initiating a conversation with strangers and with acquaintances it will be even more awkward. What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to say? Will I say something inappropriate? Will I form a bad impression? With these thoughts gushing into my mind, I stay silent, and awkward silence it is. These thoughts are least welcomed into my mind but they just pop out inevitably and refuse to go away. It is not that serious when I'm with people whom I couldn't care less. The problem comes when I actually want to talk with someone but dare not to. Secretly I'm hoping that someone will ask me some questions so that I can answer and hopefully start the conversation. However of course in reality it seldom works out. I'm much more at ease when the person I want to speak to is proactive, extroverted and friendly such that we may have talked to each other before I realised that I want to talk to him/her.

*edit: now I'm using comp because typing on the phone late at night on the bed is really exhausting*

Okay carry on, although I forgot mostly what I was about to say because it's a new day.

Anyway, people relation can get very awkward for me. Sometimes the reason is that I tend to think too much, way too much. These unnecessary thoughts makes me very uneasy and thus acting unnatural. It's like me becoming not me any more, at least not the spontaneous and laid-back me, and I cannot do or say whatever that comes to my mind. It has to go through a system of rigid filtering and careful modification before coming out. This is very energy draining. As a result, I get tired very easily when I have to interact with unfamiliar people. Also due to this, it will usually take me a long time to establish a friendship with people whom I interact on a regular basis. Unless, under one scenario, in which the person has many similarities with me, but that usually will not happen.

Therefore, in the long 10 days of the trip, I still hardly know anyone by the time we bid goodbye. It is kind of a sad thing. On the taxi back from airport to home I did some thorough reflection to figure out why it's hard for me to interact with people. Strangely this reflection did not occur during the trip at all although I was getting increasingly uncomfortable with my relations to other people in the trip. I guess sometimes I just need time to be alone to think and process what's going on.

There's a quote I once saw on a poster in Google/Microsoft (can't remember which) which says, "All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret." I fully agree to that. There's some things so private that even this blog-which-no-one-ever-reads cannot contain. Apologies to my phantom readers. Also sorry for this awkward insertion because this just came to my mind yesterday but I was lazy to write it down.

As a result this blog entry becomes so fragmented sigh...

Anyway, I'm just an awkward person. Sometimes I find myself abnormal. During the trip I was reading a book "The Elegant Universe" when I got bored. My mom says I look very out-of-the-world when I carry a book around. But what then am I supposed to do when I'm bored? Last time when I get bored my mind will be filled with interesting imaginings to keep myself entertained, but now they just don't come as easily. I involuntarily become more aware of my surroundings although there are no interesting things going on around and I just cannot relax and allow random thoughts to roam free in my mind.

I just think too much, and think too much about thinking too much. I'm now having a love-hate relationship with thinking. Thinking is fun and rewarding, but in some occasions when thinking is not required over-thinking becomes a burden. But I can't stop thinking, for I'll get bored easily. Why do I get bored so easily? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Never mind I'm rambling nonsensical things now. I guess I just have to do something with my life.

Is there more to life than survival?

Edit: Originally I was about to stop here but I realised I have a lot of things not added in. Apparently this post isn't long enough so I shall make it longer (sarcasm intended).

Just two things to add in: First, I think I care too much about how others view me. This is obviously not very good because it makes me act unnaturally. But I can't help. People say you should just live your own life. Easy said than done. I bet a little piece of everyone's heart secretly wishes himself/herself to be noticed and liked. Maybe I shall try to train myself to take less notice of how others view me so that I can live my life truly the way I want it to be.

Second, the part on social awkwardness is trainable. I realise that one reason of me not knowing how to interact socially is due to an incomplete knowledge of social convention. Social conventions have always baffled me because they are not meant to have much sense but people follow them anyway. There's a lot to be learnt. But will learning these things and acting according to convention make me not original anymore? Of course I can just follow every rule society pose on me, and at the end of the day I'll become a dull and ordinary person. That's something I want to avoid. Maybe there's a way to interact with people naturally without changing myself too much. I shall try to seek this way.

No title (I hate paradoxes of this kind)

Originally I was going to post a post titled "Thinking is rewarding", but after I write halfway I realise I deeply contradicted myself and so it's not published. The first paragraph goes something like this:

In these recent nights I always fill my mind with random thoughts, pondering on some philosophical issues that have no answers (In fact I think all philosophical questions have no answers? They are called philosophical for a reason.) The result is

1) I cannot sleep. But that can also be an effect of green tea overdose.
2) I have a better sense...

And now you will never know the rest of the story because I'm not going to publish it. Muhaha I'm so evil :D

You know, sometimes it's not necessary to finish something because

After I told Yunsi a story which I didn't finish and the sentence above, she said, frustrated and laughing, that it's the most retarded thing she's heard.

I don't know why humans have this nature yearn for completion. And if things don't complete, some will get very angry.

Since I'm already here I shall post this funny video of tbbt:

Also just an announcement that I'll be overseas for the next 10 days so I'll be out of contact, and my blog will not have any new post. If there is any, it's likely a paranormal event.

Recently I also managed to recontact AYL and went to her house. It's been really really long, like 3.5 years, which is about 1/5 of my life. I feel that she didn't change much, still so cheerful and stuff. Me, on the contrary, changed a lot. At least very different from myself three years ago. It's natural, people change. Getting to talk with her about our happenings in life and random things is really happy, and I feel much at ease unlike when I go to my other friends' houses. Her mom is so amiable, just in overall a very happy family. I even had a game of chess and another of othello with her brother, who had grown so tall now and became more quiet, and I lost in the chess game terribly. Hmm time to sharpen my chess skills, kind of rusty now.

Anyway I really like it when I get to recontact old friends. AYL is like my best friend in primary school. See, time, there's some things even you cannot break apart.

Maybe I can use my phone to blog sometimes

Just listened to a video of an introductory lesson on ethical reasoning from the University of Oxford, with an old professor/lecturer in her British accent, and many questions from the audience too also in their unique Britsh accent, in a quiet night. How better can life be?

Hmm maybe with some hot beverages.

(Edit: here's the link http://www.mariannetalbot.co.uk/podcasts/a-romp-through-ethics-for-complete-beginners/1-rules-truths-and-theories-an-introduction-to-ethical-reasoning/)

Strange dreams recently

I think it's the day before yesterday when I had a weird dream. As of all dreams I can't remember 90% of the content, but I remembered attending some classes, still in NY I think. Then my class is filled with strangers but I seemed to perfectly comfortable with that. One of the girl, I think her name was Shawnean or sth, complained that Miss Zhong penalised her work because she asked too many questions, then Miss Zhong got very angry. I'm sure Miss Zhong won't act like that in real life, but oh well anything can happen in a dream.

And for some weird reason we were honoured to meet Werner Heisenberg, he just walked into our class like some kind of amiable non-important person and we were crowding around him supposed to ask him questions. I wasn't shocked or amazed perhaps because somewhere deep in my mind I've registered that this was fake because, well, Heisenberg was dead quite a long time ago. Unfortunately with our (or mine, since the dream is mine) general stupidity we came up with stupid questions, and throughout the session I didn't say a word, I sort of just looked up at this guy in his overcoat. I can't remember what I was thinking, but I remembered feeling regretful when the session ended and he smiled, waved goodbye and left. Maybe I was thinking of how great this guy was, how I can make the session meaningful, but everything ended too soon.

Why, out of all scientists, the fascination with Werner Heisenberg? Actually I know nothing of him except his uncertainty principle and those pictures of him I saw on google, which I searched after stumbling upon a parody song on uncertainty principle "sang" by him on youtube. But seeing his picture and his smile already gave me a warm feeling, and it made me want to know more of his life. Weird that I always get this feeling out of dead people, for example the same thing happened when I listened to waltz no.2 and saw that worried face of Dmitri Shostakovich. I simply feel some kind of connection when I hear waltz no.2, as though I'm drinking a mushroom soup thick with various feelings all mixed up. Strangely it is as though I can feel the composer. The same thing did not happen to me when I see Heisenberg, but I feel that he's somewhat special, more special than Bohr, more special than Schrödinger, even more special than Einstein. This strange feeling is unexplainable. In fact, after that search which happened so long ago I've almost forgotten about him, and the memory came back only when he made this sudden appearance in my dream.

Then I had another weird dream yesterday. As usual 90% of the dream is forgotten. All I can remember is that I'm at HCJC, being placed in the third class (which by itself is already illogical because we are not sort into classes on the first day of school) and meeting a lot of my old classmates from primary school. Then we had an assembly, which I forget the theme, and then I realised I was wearing my periodic table of minecraft T-shirt and NY school skirt. I started to panic and rushed to the HC bookstore (which looked like a make-shift stall) to buy uniform. The bookshop aunty said that the uniform is not for sale when there's like six sets hanging there. I begged and begged and she finally agreed to sell me one out of her sympathy. When I passed her my cashcard she said sth like the uniform will have weird disastrous effects...

Poof the next moment I'm at home (?) wearing on my HCJC uniform and at the same time googling what's wrong with the hcjc uniform. Then I woke up.

Guess my brain also cannot figure out what can be wrong with a uniform so it ran out of ideas.

Oh and apart from the uniform story I think before the assembly it's free time and I was playing some kind of game in a room with low walls where I could glide down the air. Meaning I squat on the wall, then I push myself down and I'll be slowing descending while moving forward as though I'm on a glider. Anyway this is not important. At this moment a NY teacher came and saw me (???), and I stopped the game and started to chat with the teacher. That teacher was someone who I've always wanted to talk with but never did, so I was quite glad, and I went for the assembly.

Nice illusions that my brain created, but that darn panic feeling was so real until I woke up. Is that a sign for me to buy my uniforms?

perfectly normal paranoia

Due to a sudden spark of inspiration yesterday I drew a halloween town till 4 am. As a result of this negligence of time I woke up at 2, brushed my teeth, prepared my salad and pizza, ate my breakfast at 3, finished at 4, cleaned up and lied on my bed listening to This is Halloween from The Nightmare Before Christmas and fell asleep again at 5.30.

Then I was woken up by my mom's loud voice that originated from the living room which vaguely meant something like my dad should wake me up or she's going to keep the dinner. And so grudgingly I got off my bed, washed my face and ate my dinner, then I finished reading the last few pages of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy under the constant nagging by mom which said I should clean the dinner table and sweep the floor. So I cleaned the table and claimed that the floor is perfectly clean and got away. And now I have nothing to do. 

So I looked at my table in its disastrous state and decided that I should continue (from where I left off at the start of holiday) organising my room given that JC is starting soon yet it is so cluttered with things rendering some parts of the room dysfunctional or unaccessible. As I get my hands on some of my sec 2 things memory gushed at me and I nearly drowned. Again my brain start to analyse the fact that I've graduated without realising how I've mostly spent my past 4 years. All I can find are some fragments, though mostly happy ones.

It is at moments like this that I start to doubt the meaning of my existence and that of life itself. Sometimes I try to find some meaning in my life but the search is futile. And I think of how I waste my life away sometimes and I feel sad, and when I try to find something meaningful to do I can find none, I feel sadder. And I will ponder on the very meaning of time, whether it is a delusion, a dimension or just something to make people feel sad.

I'm sure everyone has moments when everything seems meaningless. Really, everything. To try to prove that I indeed feel this way I'm doing a google search on "most meaningful things to do". Ah this came out: http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-ways-to-live-a-more-meaningful-life.html

So vague. Mostly it's about helping people and make the world a better place. But when I think about it, the human race is going to die off someday. So what if you do something good or something bad? Generations after generations, time after time, who is going to remember you? And so what if you are remembered? You are dead anyway. So what if human is constantly progressing, so what if we have advance technology, sophisticated works of art and in overall a flourished civilisation. We are going to die someday. Even if we don't kill ourselves and nature doesn't kill us, the sun is going to expand, the universe gets cold and we are all going to die. That's the hard truth, everyone dies. 

I don't know why I'm feeling so pessimistic now. Usually I'm not like this.

Oh well, nothing is going to win against time. Time is such a ruthless beast. When I look up the night sky and see infinity stretching in front of my eyes, I feel my insignificance and the insignificance in the things we do, and the stupidity of them all. (Btw I can't see a single star in the sky, how sad)

From The Hitchhiker's guide:

"You know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was."

"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that."

"Everyone?" said Arthur. "Well, if everyone has that perhaps it means something! Perhaps somewhere outside the Universe we know..."

"Maybe. Who cares?" said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. "Perhaps I'm old and tired," he continued, "but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

Douglas Adams is a genius.

A new post

I'm posting this purely because I don't want the first thing people see when they visit my blog to be a "terrible mistake" (referring to the previous blog post). Since I'm pretty bored now I shall share my obsession with the Tim Burton movie--"The Nightmare Before Christmas" and dark but non-disturbing things.

To be honest I have not watched the film at all. But as people around me may know I always have obsessions with things I don't know (or half knowing). Firstly, completely unrelated I came across this video that my friend shared on facebook:

Although dark and a bit creepy I really love the story, and I don't find the vampires scary at all. It is a story of love, though in a creepy setting.

And so started my love for dark things. I have always loved black cats, vampires and bats, and witches too (not that kind of old ugly grumpy witches but more of girls in long black dresses with magical powers). I think being a vampire is not bad, you get to fly and hang upside down which is quite awesome and even teleport (can vampires teleport?).

I vaguely remembered hearing of a movie (the nightmare before christmas) so I did a search of it. Quite a lot of searches actually. And now I really want to watch it.

The graphic, firstly, is fantastic. Everything is so beautiful and curly, and the characters are so well designed. The music is wonderful too, the words rhyming so perfectly. Overall, I really love the style of the film.

Here's the intro:
(and I love the theme song so much)

And then I came across this awesome minecraft the nightmare before christmas train ride which is unrelated to my post whatsoever but so great that I'm putting it down.

This is the original trailer:

Oh just look at how nice the graphic is:

And then I realised that the same director/producer Tim Burton also directed many nice films, such as Frankenweenie. Of course there are many epic ones like batman too. But I like Frankenweenie and haven't really watched his other films. Should watch some day.

And I also came across this short video on youtube.

Oh isn't it lovely.

The dark side seems nice. I don't know why I seem to be drawn to those dark and mysterious things. As long as it doesn't involve blood and death, I'm fine.

Terrible mistake

Taking those tests at okcupid.com was a terrible, terrible mistake. For the fun of taking some interesting personality tests I was linked from a decent website to there, took a couple of their tests which I've posted all of the results in my blog (which again is quite a stupid thing to do). Then they started to send me weird emails which made me realise that I had stumbled upon a dating website. Sensibly I quickly deleted my account. It was only moments ago when I did a search for lixin96710(my email) for fun did I realise how horrible the whole thing was.

So my username for that is lixin96710. Gladly google eliminated some of the nonsensical and completely unrelated results, but if you click on the link below which says show the omitted results, you will see that there's a lot of sick tests showing up which I OBVIOUSLY DIDN'T TAKE AT ALL BECAUSE THERE'S LIKE 100+ OF THEM BUT THEY PUT MY NAME THERE. It could be someone else's result or result combinations generated by the system, but unfortunately maybe during that time I was doing my own tests and somehow my name appeared in the bulletin board which that page had. As a result of the terrible arrangement my name will now have correlation with these tests that I've never heard of and misguide ignorant people into thinking I may have something to do with them. Ah there goes my reputation.

I have underestimated the power of the internet. This is just the tip of the iceberg, I know from stories that internet can do really horrible things to people. Teachers who taught me cyberwellness, I'm sorry I should have paid more attention.

If you are tempted to search that, please don't. When I tell you it's bad it really is.

And hopefully my future employer won't be vicious enough to google me, or at least be sensible enough to not believe in what the internet got to show him/her.