Integrating complexity for simplicity

I was musing the other day that, chaotic though the world may seem, a sort of guideline - rules, if you will - governs the world. It's just that we're too much a part of the world to recognise them easily. If we could only get out of ourselves to see things the way God might, and find out what they were, everything would fall into place.

These rules would be alarmingly simple - complicatingly so. Perhaps it isn't even plural, it's just a rule.

The pure and simple truth.

Like a curved graph. The basis of a curved graph is straight lines. You see, a curve can be viewed as an infinite amount of straight lines that join up together to form the curve (i.e. the tangents of a curve). These straight lines are plain as Jane and twice as simple, and they wouldn't be able to tell the direction the other tangents were heading; only the direction they were heading themselves. To them, every other line (or perhaps even their own gradient) would be directionally random. Yet viewed from a higher perspective, they come together to form something totally magnificent (lets just assume we find curves appealing). To the straight lines, the thought of straight lines actually curving must be quite mind-mogglingly complex and beyond comprehension.

In the same way, the rules that govern this Earth probably are plain and simple - from up there (I mean Heaven). We're just too close to them to realise it.

[Edit: vertical integration with secondary four differentiation gives y=x^2, d(y) = x]

Who is the fairest of them all?

It's quite common to hear people lamenting that the world isn't fair. It's very uncommon, though, to hear people complaining that the world isn't beautiful.

I think God created the world with the concept of beauty in mind, rather than the concept of fairness. If everybody was born with equal amounts of the same amount of everything, and the world was evenly distributed with the same natural resources et cetera, it would be monotonous, and of course, ugly.

As an alleged beauty lover, I have to say that I think God's vision is better than having human perceptions of fairness reign. I'd rather have a world of diversity and beauty in that than a fair but prosaic world.

Mother tongue

I think I've finally figured it out. You know, the reason why I seem not to be terribly good at expressing myself in writing. Why I seem to have no inspiration for writing, and why even if I do, I usually don't bring the point that's in my head across.

 It's becaue I'm not fluent the written and spoken word, as a whole. It's not that I lack the vocabulary, or that I lack any of that sort of thing. It's because written and spoken word isn't my mother tongue (when I mean written and spoken word, I include Chinese, so I don't mean that.)

 I think I'm more fluent in the language of music and dance than writing. It's a consoling thought - actually, scrap that. I'm hardly fluent in either. But at least, when everything is in its place, I feel as if I'm getting my point across in those languages much more efficiently. It's my mother tongue - albeit a language I'm still a novice to.

 This claim isn't unfounded - I've examined my preferences, and found little pieces of supporting evidence. For instance, I actually prefer instrumental music to songs. It's an unusal preference, I believe. Most people prefer songs to just plain old music. Of course there are exceptional pieces of music that these people prefer to song, but that is more the exception than the rule.

 Of course, there's also the very obvious obsession with ballet. I can sometimes feel extremely ecstatic (as opposed to just aesthetic) when dancing, over and above the simple endorphin release. Asssuming what I've deduced is true, that's kind of a relief to realise all this.

It really helps after all those low low marks in essays and compositions (in English and Chinese). Not to mention oral.

Fidelity Fiduciary Bank

Yesterday was a rather interesting day. My mum, goodness knows why, decided to up and take us all to the bank.

I knew I was likely to be bored, so I brought a book along, which I read on the journey there, and found out about slime moulds. Slime moulds are really rather interesting creatures, although their name sounds decidedly boring and borderline disgusting (Their genus sounds even more repulsive - Dictyostelium). During the happiest part of their life cycle, slime moulds exist as unicellular amoebas (ring a bell?), feasting on bacteria and other microbes, in some dank corner of your nearest park. But when the weather starts to dry out and food is scarce, these little critters start converging on central locations, joining in streams that look like webs of slime. When all are present and accounted for, they assume their positions to form something of a garden slug. This slug-thing creeps about until it finds a place it likes, then settles down to change form again. It sends up a thin stalk into the air and more cells crawl up to form a ball. As the weather turns even drier, the ball cracks open and spores are released. Said in a Discovery Channel voice: And thus their life cycle is continued.

When we arrived, we were escorted to a small room decorated Oriental style and given tea and coffee (sounds so Mafia-ish, doesn't it?). While I struggled to identify whether the music playing was Japanese or Chinese or a fusion, and whether it was the guzheng or pipa or neither, my parents talked bank stuff. After a while, my dad got bored and started to draw on his serviette. This caught my attention so I decided to nosy in. My dad was drawing a Moebius strip, which, as I found out, can be easily made by taking a thin strip of paper and twisting it once, then attaching the two ends together to form a ring. The cool thing about this string is that if you cut it along the middle line, it doesn't become two same-size but thinner rings, but becomes one bigger and thinner ring. Soon we started to tear up the napkins to try this out. I was in the process of making my fifth or sixth when the bank person attending to us left the room and my mum started talking to my dad about investments.

I quote: "You mustn't be bought in by all this sales talk, dear. At the end of the day, an apple is still an apple. No matter what you say or do, it is still an apple. Just because she says [insert some banking jargon here - something about interest rates], doesn't mean anything. No matter what she says that apple will never become a pear."

And, in response to my laughter: "It's true! You can call it a Granny-Smith or a New Zealand, but at the end of the day, an apple is still an apple! And make sure you clean up that mess you made with the tissues!"

It's the heart that matters most

For a long time I have been searching for the Truth; irrefutable proof that the Christian God exists. I've always known, deep down in my heart, that the Christian God is the truest God of all, but I wanted to prove it was true through foolproof argument and irrefutable logic.

For this entire semester I have been almost bogged down by this. I spent most of my quality time with myself in the shower mulling over the issue.

Then, someone asked me how I would want God/Jesus to prove that He was who He claimed to be. My answer was that God/Jesus would tell me something so wise and true that I would know immediately that he was who he claimed to be. But this raised the question, how would I know that what was said was a Great Truth of Life? Perhaps it could be because it was so obvious, yet so unreachable by leaps of mortal logic. Perhaps I would know because I would feel it with my heart.

Then, I realised what a grave error I had made. I should have trusted my heart, in the same way I woud trust my heart to recognise a Truth when I heard it. There is plenty of evidence that the Christian God is true, but no human evidence or understanding can be complete. In the end, I have to use my heart to tell me what's right and good and true.

[Edit (28/11/2011): Now I've realised that God indeed did talk to us through His Word.  Jesus himself spoke many home truths that revealed His deep understanding of the world, and how we are to live in it.]

The only place you can die more than once

Her last spark of hope had been reduced to ashes. She finally realised, even though she’d known it all along, that her love was futile and unrequited. She made her way toward her handmaiden with a certain – finality – in her step. With a ceremonious grace, she unsheathed the dagger her handmaiden gave her.

A flicker of trepidation crossed her face for just a moment. But the moment was felt by all around her as they anxiously watched in the shadows, waiting for the inevitable. Grasping the hilt with both hands, she raised the sword, bringing the feeling of impending doom up with it. It felt like an eternity, but nary a beat had passed, and she aimed the dagger into her chest.

It almost seemed as if had missed its target, but as she pulled it from her breast, the red wash of blood seeped across the light fabric of her kimono-styled attire. She staggered, still graceful even in the last throes of death, dancing a good-bye to the world.

With the last, lingering strains of music, she fell dramatically onto the floor. The heavy crimson curtains closed on the scene and the entire concert hall was filled with thunderous applause.

As the curtains began to open, the dancer got up. She was smiling triumphantly, and her eyes, which was only a moment ago welled up with unshed tears, brimmed over with silent glee.

Edit 25/4/2011: This was written after watching Madame Butterfly, performed by Singapore Dance Theatre. The ending is the way I wish that Black Swan had ended.

Dedication to my toilet

Ever since I moved house, my favourite place has been (drumroll please) the toilet! I love it, man! Anyway, that's why I'm dedicating this entry to my toilet. It's a beautiful place.

As you walk in from the dance studio, a beautiful glass folding door greets you, and in case you're so blind that you can't see the profile of the toilet bowl from behind the glass, the word "Bathroom" is sandblasted onto the door. The glass is coloured marine blue, so light entering via the door gives the room a slighly bluish tinge, reminding you of the sea. 

As you enter, you see a beautiful square sink with a unique looking tap (the handle is in the shape of an X, the initial of my first name). A good-sized mirror is flanked by two sleek, shiny white shelf units.  As you take another step, you come within an inch of the toilet! And it's a beautiful toilet. It has a graceful, curvaceous profile, and its seat is made of plastic and contoured to your butt. A nice place to contemplate on life, or enjoy a good book. As you enjoy the delicious experience on sitting on an ergonomic toilet seat that's not too cold or hot, you'll notice that the floor looks like the place has been carved out from a limestone mountain. The walls are tiled in a matt white, which if you didn't know by now, is my favourite colour. 

Directly in front of you lies the shower. It's quite spacious, though not quite big enough to do a full arabesque. Maybe an attitude and some battement jetes. The heater is really really cool (I mean hot - wait never mind, terrible pun) and you can adjust the temperature of the water to an exact degree (Centigrade). The heater also feature a digital clock, so you won't be late for school on those dreadful Monday mornings. 

After a shower, you'll notice that the towels are readily accessible from a stylish shiny towel rack, all you have to do is partially - not even fully - slide open the shower door, and you can stick your arm out and grab it. Close by also, are the hand and face towels racks, situated conviently near both the sink and the shower, which you can swivel to a convenient position for use.

Where does a circle start?

Do you ever wonder how, if sickness is passed from one to another, it even starts in the first place. Go to any sick person now, and they'll say, so and so passed this to me. So, who starts it? Or what starts it?

[Edit: studying to be a doctor, I realise that sickness is generally caused by invading pathogens, but that doesn't really answer the question, which is really, where does it all begin?]

Newton's third law states that every action has a reaction, and an equal and opposite one at that. If God created that law, then he must have known that once he had started the world, it would never really end. I mean, think about it, if in the end, the Solar System expands further and further until the Earth is so far away from the Sun it goes all cold and dead, that would lead to a reaction. I can't say what it is. But the reaction would then become an action and lead to another reaction. Excuse me if I've taken the law into the wrong context, but it seem to me that there would be an unbroken chain of action-reaction things occuring, and it would be impossible to break the chain.

To illustrate this point I'll go back to the spark which got the fire going. To get the spark, there had to be someone who lit the match or something. The person did it as a reaction to coldness. This is caused by a change in the weather. And so on and so forth. To continue the fire incident onward, the person would probably roast marshmellows over the fire to make good use of the heat, and because the person was hungry, and then eat the marshmellows, and from there you can either follow the path of digestion, or say that the person felt sleepy after eating, so he went to sleep, and of course he had to wake up. And so on and so forth...

So as far as I can see, all God had to do was set off the right reaction (which probably wasn't easy), and he would start the mechanisms to get the clock moving. I think one of the first things he must have done was to invent the action-reaction law. From there, everything under the sun and otherwise, would start itself.

Addendum: If God created the world, who created God? Logically (or perhaps illogically) speaking, God should be an action as well as a reaction to something that happened before him. If there was no spark to get the fire going, then...this wouldn't even exist. The concept of existence wouldn't even exist.

[Edit: There are two possible conclusions to make: 1) So there is no God, although this does not answer the question of how the chain-reaction of life started. We are left to question. 2) That God, if He exists, exists beyond the laws of this universe, and to the extent that He has properties that are beyond this universe, cannot be understood. In a way, this seems logical, but requires a bit of a feat of mental agility to grasp; up to the limits of logic, it is possible to glimpse God, but there is only so far that logic can take us, beyond which we can only depend on God for divine revelation of himself to us.]

Two sides of humanity

What makes human beings human?  Is it our human natures, our foibles and natural urges? Or is it that something else that makes us different?

I believe there are two sides of us. One is the normal everyday side, which everybody nutures. The other is a side which is a little harder to define, which not so many people nurture.

The Christians call it the spiritual side. Yes, that's partly it, but there's more to it too. It's the side that you use to understand the world.

It's a bit like: your normal everyday side is your point of view, while your other side comprises of your viewing points or your points to view (this idea is taken from Mister God, This Is Anna).

In a way, it's a little bit like becoming more Spirit, and less human, because it's totally separate from human needs and wants. Perhaps it's becoming a little more godlike, to be able to see things from many viewing points. However, you can never actually reach a stage when you can have as many viewing points as God, because we are not God, but His creation.

But it's not quite being godly, because it's separate from being good or bad, or even being. It's seeing and knowing, in the suspension of human judgement, or the pretense that you know better than someone else how to lead their life. Not how molecules are bonded, or why light travels in straight lines, but something else entirely.  It might consist partly of philosophical questions. Certainly, it involves questions which lead you in large circles, which inevitably lead you no where nearer to your answer than a circle can have an ending. It possibly involves extensive use of the question why, based on how we see, or know that stuff is true. For example, I know that Christianity is the true religion, just like I know that one piece of chocolate tastes better than another. However, what I haven't solved is what, why, when, where, how Christianity is truer. I've made the decision. I want it to be a more informed decision.

Snippets and sawdust

World's closing in around me,
I wish I'd never come here.
Soon the tears will fall,

big, clumsy blobs -
like Humpty Dumpty from the wall.
Then when it all ends,
the sawdust covers all.

I'm typing on a sawdust filled keyboard and looking at a sawdust coated screen, for the IKEA people came today to drill in the cupboards on the wall. Now everything, everywhere in the study, is covered with sawdust.

A conversation I had with myself recently went as follows:
me: Read between the lines. 

myself: But there's nothing between the lines, only whiteness. 

me: Read that, then.

A Plea for Castles in the Air

The castles in the air I built,
They towered high up high.
Above the land of dreams I thought,
with more substance then should lie.
Perhaps the plans were too amibitious;
I should have known the end was nigh.
But I couldn't give up the thing that stood
so gracefully adorning the sky.

The one castle that I loved the most,
was built on dreams in main.
It had no real foundation,
so the inevitable came.
Those castles came crashing down,
right down the proverbial drain.

I cling now to the pieces
of rubble that are left,
I won't ne'er let go,
not even for a breath.
I won't give it up,

I can't give up,

for all my dreams' at stake.
Though I can't deny their building up

seems daunting work at best.

So please just let me have once more,
my castles in the air,

for without them glistening softly there,
there is really nothing left.

Guide to Hot Chocolate

There are several criteria to be met when you receive your cuppa choco. 

The first thing to do when you receive your cup of hot cocoa, is to inhale deeply. Does the rich aroma of chocolate waft gently into your nose? If there is hardly any smell, or you have to sniff so loudly that you disturb the people sitting nearby, then your hot chocolate will most probably be sub-standard.

Next, check the level of the foam using the teaspoon provided to skim the surface of the foam, and sample it thoughtfully.  Foam should be white and bubbly, with suttle undertones of the chocolate peeking out at you around the edges. In the most places, you will often find cocoa, nutmeg, or cinnamon powder sprinkled lightly on top of the foam. Alternatively, you might find a swirl of melted chocolate drizzled on top. This may or may not be good, depending on the quality of your melted chocolate - chocolate syrup is worse than any topping at all.  Depending on the size of you cup, the amount of foam vary. A small cup should have at least 1 cm foam. Bigger cups should have at least 2 - 3 cm foam. It would be ideal if the foam goes over the rim of the cup by about 3 mm.

Sometimes foam is substituted for cream. Once again, this can be a blessing or a curse. If the cream is of a high quality, it will complement the chocolate nicely, otherwise, it may be better to do without.

Once you have finished savouring the foam, you will generally be able to tell what temperature the hot chocolate is. The very best hot chocolates will be piping hot by the time you have finished the foam.  The true colour of the chocolate will also be revealed to you. It should always be uniquely the colour of hot chocolate. It should never be the colour of tea or coffee, in which case, it is either too weak or rich, respectively. Deep brown is best.

An important thing to note, however, is that many sub-standard establishments do not properly mix the cocoa powder, so you end up having a lot of very bitter, rich chocolate at the end, while the rest of your chocolate tastes rather bland. To test for this, stir the chocolate. If the colour deepens, then it is likely the case. While this does not mean the chocolate will be bad, true chocolate gourmets do not hold with this nonsense. Especially since you will have to keep stirring throughout the drink, losing precious heat.

The first sip of your drink should always be that - a sip. Nothing more, nothing less. If you have to use your teaspoon to drink it, it is too hot. Make sure that your sip is relatively soundless.  If you have to sip loudly, that probably means that the drink is too hot. 

Once you have had the first sip, you should roughly be able to tell whether it is worth downing the rest.

That said, my budding chocolate gourmet, appreciating hot chocolate depends on your tastbuds. However, there are some things we all agree on. The chocolate should taste authentically like real chocolate. If you are a fan of dark chocolate, it should have a slight tinge of bitterness. Most hot chocolates are much too sweet. However, beware the bitter hot chocolate! 

Lastly, don't judge a hot chocolate by it's appearance. While this has yet to have failed for me, some people claim to have found one or two hot chocolates which have deceiving appearances, and while lacking in foam, and looking distinctly tea-like, purportedly taste like heaven.