icedtrees

Wanna be the very best

2012-02-12T02:16:00.000-08:00

I kind of like blogging. Not exactly sure why. Perhaps writing stuff is fun. Perhaps dumping the massive litany of stuff that you imagined blogging into words is fun. Speaking of which, I seem to have forgotten the massive litany of stuff that I'd originally planned on blogging.

also, replying to comments and replies yay

I must mention, one of the advantages of being a guy is that you never have to worry about how much you eat. Well, at least I don't. It just seems to be a more common theme among guys than girls.

I'm going to quote Harvard here, because I thought it was nice:
"I think our minds are finetuned to see imperfections that we can't comprehend what it means to be perfect anymore."

I'm not actually sure if that was the quote that I was originally going to quote but I'm going to quote it anyway. I think being quoted makes you feel important.

---

@Brendan: "Or helping people outta proverbial Dark Ages"

I'd like to point out that

My major work is intended to be an investigationof the origination of the term of “Dark Ages” as an overarching label for theEarly Middle Ages and its significance in the formation of the modern andpostmodern pejorative connotations of subnormality and cultural and economicdeterioration

and that

The comprehensive lack of written evidence in this time periodcauses ambiguity about the reasons for this resulting in changing historicalinterpretation about the intrinsic causes for the label. This project willaddress the involved historians through examination of the creation of the termby the 14^th century Italian scholar and poet Petrarch, and hishumanist-themed criticisms of the decline of the prominence of the culturalachievements that he viewed as characteristic of Antiquity

@William: (+quotes)

"christianity is overrated, like honestly. we'd all be following a different religion if it weren't for european mass colonisation"

Pretty sure we wouldn't exist if it weren't for european mass colonisation. But I get the general idea. Isn't it funny how one dude was like "hey let's sail south and get Australia" and we ended up being here? My parents met in Australia, so I and millions others wouldn't exist if it weren't for that one dude.

"islam will be the new christianity in the future"

No comment

"baha'i, jainism, buddhism (asian religions) tend to be more lenient towards other faiths"

I like this concept. I like lenience towards other faiths. Conflict is annoying. Although, I haven't met a Christian yet who has anything against any other faith except based on their scripture.

"evangelism will only cause religious tension"

Perhaps. Whatever the result, I doubt I'll end up becoming any sort of evangelist.

"god and the gods transcend human understanding, atheism is technically a religion a non-existent god doesn't mean that an atheist doesn't possess any 'spiritual' goals"

I agree with the transcending of human understanding. But to put it in analogous terms, if a you were to consider a divine figure as three-dimensional and mortality as two-dimensional, the three-dimensional figure would have ultimate insight and would be able to display the two-dimensional facet that s/he/it wanted. That is, we don't have to understand. We just have to know that what we see is what is meant to be seen. Also refer to Harvard's quote.

I have nothing to say about the spiritual goals of an atheist. But to clarify, I am reasonably sure that atheism is the belief that there is no god, while "no religion" is the lack of belief in any god. Agnosticism is the belief that one cannot know whether there is a god or not. So if you believe in any of those, you have a religion. To quote my year 10 christian studies teacher: "On the other hand, if you don't know what you believe, you're just very confused"

"people don't really like catholics that much. oh well, 1.1 billion people to back me up"

I have nothing against catholicism. Do you know anyone who dislikes catholicism?

"religious arguments always end up becoming messy cesspools"

Depends on the nature of the argument.

"oh and i forgot: christians aren't always nicer people than everyone else. it may have something to do with the bible but its not like non-christian are mindless ,egocentric savages with no empathy."

I do not recall mentioning anything about non-christians. It's just that every time I meet a really nice person I wonder if they're Christian and I often find out that they're Christian. Perhaps I have a situational bias, but that's simply my experience. Teachers, friends, associates, people.

I like people.

8. the postulation that life is predestined or if free will prevails is rather pointless. carpe diem.

Okay

9. idk, i guess each person have their opinions. on religion, mine are more transtheistic than anything: why can't all religions be valid as merely many different interpretations of the same thing.

Because the values and historical bases of the religions are too different. Idk, really. But religion is interesting to study (history extension!)

---

I think I know why I don't feel much motivation when it comes to school-based activities. It's something to do with nothing to gain from getting good marks. You got a good atar, yay, you get to study more in uni. Something like that.

---

Valentine's Day. There's actually an interesting section on it in the yearbook Renee gave me for christmas-swap-thing. It has a lot of interesting bits of information.

Valentine's Day evolved from a Roman festival called Lupercalia, a "racy festival where pretty much anything went". The saint himself, St. Valentine, was actually a dude who married Christian people even when it was banned by some church or other (and religion appears again! how intriguing). Apparently he was executed (not on February 14th, though. The reason it's on this day is because of Lupercalia, Valentine died some other day. Interestingly enough, Captain Cook died on Valentine's Day) for marrying the couples. I can see why he was saint-ified. (beatified? I think that's the word. Actually now that I check it's actually canonisation, beatification comes before canonisation. Apparently beatification is where you are made holy posthumously and canonisation is where you make a beatified person into a saint. I suppose you can only be a saint posthumously too.)

The tradition on Valentine's Day used to be to take the first person of the opposite gender (assumedly related people were disincluded) that you saw that day to be your Valentine. A strange custom indeed.

What I found interesting was the Japanese version of Valentine's Day. On February 14th girls give guys chocolates, while on March 14th guys return gifts. Getting chocolates for Valentine's day in lieu of the traditional rose would be pretty cool.

I don't know what to think of romance. I have nothing against the idea of romance in highschool, though. I dislike the idea that highschool romance is un-serious. Don't know about true love, but love is definitely there.

What I am wondering is why "cat-lady" has become synonymous with "unmarried"/"unaffiliated"/"single". What's wrong with cats? I want a cat when I finish highschool. My cat will be extremely awesome.

Valentine's Day seems to be a day where people who want to get involved get involved and people who don't have a normal day. Except Kael, because it's his birthday. Don't forget to wish Kael a happy birthday! But on second thoughts, I guess it's the same with all events regardless of being Valentine's or not.

As for my own Valentine's/romance, I don't know if being romantically involved/having a valentine's would make me happy. Which is kind of a weird feeling. I can't imagine Valentine's ever being particularly significant for me, even though it always has been. If that makes sense. Which it probably doesn't.

---

I shall go and eat chocolate.

A comment on stuff

2012-02-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

I forgot what exactly I was going to comment on then I played a few games and remembered.

Motivation for school. Currently my motivations to do schoolwork consist of two things:
- not failing
- making parents happy

If my parents didn't care all that much how much schoolwork I did, then I wouldn't try as hard, I guess. It's not like I have any good reason to try really hard in school. The whole first week I spent doing nothing, because I didn't feel any particular reason to do much schoolwork. Also because I was kinda sad. It's pretty hard to do anything except maybe maths when you're sad.

---

Christianity. I always construct random blog posts in my head about religion and end up never actually blogging them. I think I've talked about religion before. Anyway, I think Christianity is a religion, despite a lot of Christians arguing that it's not. Of course, it's quite valid to state that being Christian does not involve being religious, but the word religious has completely different connotations attached to it (as opposed to the word "religion").

To quote a friend on facebook (you don't know him btw):

"Religion gets exhausting, and people grow tired of trying to keep all the rules in hopes of somehow earning God's Favor.

Jesus came to end religion and start a relationship between YOU and God."

Basically, I dislike a lot of the arguments put forward about Christianity not being a religion. They seem to all have a judgemental overtone, which is disagreeable, whether very Christian or not. Most of them have a very apparent implication that Christianity is different from religion. They say that Christianity involves a relationship with God, which makes it different from the idea of obeying rules and standards and having no relationship with God. Some of these have a very derogatory overtone when talking about other religions, which is, to reuse the adjective above, disagreeable.

- To speak from a non-Christian point of view, it's quite a biased generalisation to say that other religions involve simply following rules. Muslims love Jesus as well, and their litany of sins and regulations are no different in format from Jesus' own teachings in the New Testament. And derogatory-ing other religions just doesn't seem like a very nice thing to do, whether you're trying to promote the word of god or not.

- The implication that Christianity is somehow different and better, and that "religions" (or "other religions", depending on your viewpoint) can be grouped into a bundle, but Christianity isn't in this bundle because the relationship with God transcends religion. I mean, I can accept Christians saying this. It's perfectly logical. Since you are Christian, you know not to worship any other idol (ten commandments, iirc) and believe your religion. You're Christian, so you're Christian. But I don't think it's completely valid to call your own system of beliefs anything other than a system of beliefs. Of course, from your viewpoint they're not beliefs, they're truths, but like, if you try to take an objective stance on it, it's still a system of beliefs. A chair is not a table because a group of people believe it's a table, and similarly Christianity does not stop becoming a religion because many Christians believe it to be so. And the idea of challenging english definition is kind of arrogant too.

^Above argument has no value at all to anyone who thinks Christianity isn't a religion. I think I just failed.

Anyway, that's enough negativity about the semantics of Christianity and religion. All in all, in my experience Christians seem to be generally nicer people than non-Christians. I don't know why, it makes no sense to me. What connection does following a religion have to do with how nice you are? I have two ideas:
- People who are Christian are nice to other people because that's what the Bible teaches you to do.
- The sort of people that readily believe and follow the precepts of Christianity are the sort of people that tend to be nice. I favour this theory, because the other one seems kind of flawed.

Sometimes, when I see Christian people being nice to other people, I think "Christianity is an excellent thing!" Although, if the teachings of Christianity is really what makes people nice, I'm off to convert everyone I know to Buddhism, which is slightly nicer.

Sometimes I wonder if the Bible was compiled so that people would be nicer to each other. Maybe that's what the first compiler of the Bible had in mind when he stuck all the books together.

I'd often wondered about converting to Christianity myself (specifically the Anglican/Protestant church). I really quite like the stuff that's in the Bible. The words of Jesus are those of a really very wise person. I agree with practically every way of living he teaches. Love thy neighbour, and everything. Hopefully my own philosophy of "be nice to everyone" is somehow equivalent to that.

And to add to that, it's nice to feel as if your life is set out for you. God sets out your life in front of you, so you know that everything that happens to you has some purpose, some lesson to it. It's really, really nice to be able to think something like that. Sometimes I often slip into thinking my life is ordained, like the plot of a fantasy fiction book.

It'd be really nice.

But I seem to have an intrinsic inability to accept God's link to humanity and Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. It has something to do with a dislike of the concept of God, maybe. I don't feel like God is a god. A god wouldn't be like God, I feel. And I guess I just can't feel God.

Well, at least I can try and be a nice person.

---

This was going to be a section on romance and Valentine's Day except I have to sleep now and I want to post this post, I can do that later

Do you make a habit of getting lost in gardens?

2012-02-05T03:13:00.000-08:00

My streak of 19 commented-on posts has been broken! At first my perfectionist streak was a bit annoyed at that. But I figured I got more comments than I deserved, anyway. And also my last post was written in an irritating tone.

There appears to be a semi-depressing aura hanging around school. It made me pretty sad.

But I'm pretty happy now. Maybe it was just the weather. This is good, because in my sad-state I'm not very schoolwork-productive. When I'm sad I'm pretty good at cleaning stuff, though. Windows, dishes, rooms. Stuff like that. I'm also very good at doing stuff like reading all 351 chapters of a pretty-good manga. I liked that manga. It felt nicer than the usual shonen power-up ones. There's a dude who wants to help other people, which I thought was better than a dude who wants to defeat all his enemies and become powerful to protect people.

A really nicely-coloured picture!

"Forgiving and being forgiven is what this story is about"

Also the art style and fourth-wall-breaking is very cool. I thought maybe I should try read some stereotypical shojo sparkly guy manga but I remembered trying to understand Vampire Knight and gave up on that idea. I spent a week finishing those 351 chapters. But I don't feel like I've wasted the week. I feel inspired.

Today I clicked on the link to detective conan manga, currently in 805'th chapter of serialisation. And then I was like "lol as if I'm going to read that". 800 chapters is a massive amount, though Kochikame (1700) and Jojo no Kimyo, which spans multiple generations. I'd never liked multiple generations-spanning books.

Today I picked up my ext2 journal and was suddenly everything had a ridiculous clarity. Before I had been depressing about how my major work would never reach my expectations and would never touch anyone like that manga did to me but I understood my concept and it seemed okay.. And I wrote lots of stuff and everything made sense. And I was seized by a supreme dislike of my own nanowrimo, something which had never occurred to me before. At the moment my characters are too perfect. Which I guess is okay in comedic type fiction, but my story is intended to be more serious. A serious story.

I went to lie in bed for a while because I felt like it. I realised that if I didn't have to get back up and do work, I could probably lie there forever, staring at the ceiling. Waiting for someone to save me.
what am i saying? i don't need a hero
I think I'm going to go for a run.

I was going to run my usual route but there was this dude who was also going along the route, and I didn't want him to think I was following him so I changed my direction at the traffic lights and ran down this place I'd never run to before. And then I ran back. Uneventful indeed.

Sometimes I wonder if being me is too easy. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I deserve more hardships in life. But apparently the hardships come later, so that's okay.

Zlotych

2012-01-31T03:09:00.000-08:00

An interesting word that I often use in word games is zloty, Polish currency. Apparently the plural is zlote for things ending in 2, 3, or 4 and zlotych for everything else more than 1. I found that interesting. Scrabble! At least, I hope it's on the wordlist.

Outing was fun! At least it was for me. I spent the rest of the day being enchanted about everyone and everything with a superbly optimistic outlook. Perhaps I went temporarily mad. My thoughts went along the lines of "my life is good, everyone is good, the world is good, why is everything so good?" There's probably a downside to excessive optimism, but I suppose that I can't see one yet.

Excessive optimism.

Then the next day my sister came back from her outing and she apparently played boardgames too and thought they were boring. So I became a bit disenchanted. But that's okay, because as long as no one thought the outing was a waste of time or anything then I'm quite happy.

----------------

School has started.

I was quite excited for school. I was also quite excited about the new timetable.

Yesterday year 7s were walking past and they were like "omg a year 12!" One came up and asked me where the gym was. I suppose because I was the nearest person at the time. I hope he got to his class alright.

If this was last year, I'd be like "sorry I'm new too I don't know hey do you know where the gym is?"

I'm quite sad.

----------------

Suddenly each step became a significant movement to him. It was as if he had just realised how much effort it took to walk, as if a portion of concentration was required for each step he took. Thump. He resolutely lifted his other foot and threw it in front of him. Thump.

Around him was a grassy plain. There wasn't a person in sight to break the monotony of grass. He knew there were people, people somewhere forward. If he kept walking, he would find people. But in that instant, in that brief moment he felt frozen by a strange clarity. For the first time that day, he felt truly alone. Time slowed slightly as he registered that he could no longer hear the thumps of his footsteps impacting the dusty grass.

But swiftly the moment passed, and he continued his journey, as a journey it had become. He felt as if he had long forgotten the reason that he took his tired steps. But he supposed it felt strangely nice, being able to walk forward in this perfect solitude. And for that brief part of his journey, he could imagine that there were no other people in the world, he could imagine that all he had to do was reach the end of his path. Then he'd disappear forever, his purpose in life complete.

The buildings he stepped through were deserted, but his solitude had disappeared with the plain of grass, now barely even a memory. But he didn't know that. He didn't know that he was already back in the cold reality from whence he came, the reality he smiled at because of the moments of warmth it offered him. A reality he readily immersed himself in. For he had already become too attached to the world, too attached to its people. It was one such attachment that dominated his mind as he crossed a lively street.

Slowly, he raised his hand to offer his friendly greeting.

"Hello," he said.

----------------

^I just realised that if you read it you probably wouldn't like it. You probably don't understand all of it. I should probably write less for myself and more for others. But I have my nanowrimo for that. My nanowrimo's definitely not written for myself. But to clarify, this story above was a story I wrote for myself. So don't expect to like it very much, I guess.

----------------

I feel like I'm not happy enough to properly be Mr. Happy. But that's okay, because Mr. Happy can do my smiling for me. Which is pretty convenient, since I'm also not a naturally smiley person. At least I don't think I am. Thanks, Mr. Happy.

If a genie appeared to me now and offered me three wishes, I could honestly tell him that I want nothing at all. I would tell him that the wishes would probably be better used in the hands of someone more benevolent.

Back to life writing I go.

Coruscating

2012-01-22T19:03:00.000-08:00

Recently I've had a large amount of trouble thinking up appropriate post titles. When I used to blog, I used to get this little paragraph of inspiration including post title and then the blog post would just grow from there. But now it's more like "hey, I haven't blogged for a long time, let's go blog something."

So I picked one of my favourite words. I actually didn't know it was one of my favourite words and couldn't quite remember the word so I typed "corus" into google and it autocompleted for me and I was happy. Coruscating.

As for nanowrimo, I'm starting to dislike some of my chapters, because they seem too crazy and unable-to-relate-to and cliché. Perhaps it is part of writing that you hate some of your own work. At the moment I'm trying to rewrite chapter four and it goes like this:
- Delete sentence that I hate
- Replace with superior sentence
- Decide I hate the superior sentence too and it's actually worse than the first sentence
- Replace sentence again
- Figure that I'm probably going to end up hating all the sentences I write regardless because my plot sucks
- Try to adapt the plot
- Come up with a plot idea, then see my fail sentences again and rage and give up and go do something else

I think I'm spending way too much time editing my nanowrimo. Stories are actually ridiculously hard to edit, I've been spending like the whole holidays on just this and (in terms of work done) and I still haven't gotten past chapter three. I guess my perfectionist syndrome is attacking my schoolwork capabilities again.

School in ten days, guys! Don't worry, I'm sure much of the grade has done less work than you. Many people seem to be expressing the lack of work they've done.

At the start of this year the person chairing the assembly (I think it was harleen) was like "you probably haven't done as much work as you hoped" and at that moment I was thinking that I wouldn't do as much work as I hoped regardless of how much work I actually did.

I'm looking forward to year 12 camp. At least, I think there's a year 12 camp. There isn't one on the calendar.

---

I just had a 3 1/2-hour online blitz chess marathon. To clarify, they're 5/0 (5 minutes per side, no time bonus) and basically each game takes around 7 minutes on average to finish. That's 30 chess games (it divides evenly! makes sense though, because 3.5 is half of 7).

When I'm playing chess I'm often reminded of Kael's starcraft endeavours and his attempts to improve. Sometimes I feel like I should be playing starcraft instead of chess:
- Chess is often boring, there aren't any cool graphics really.
- Chess's strategy is very static and discrete. There isn't any room for trying out new strategies, because they're not new strategies. They either:
(a) suck
(b) have been played 100000 times before.
It's pretty restricting.
- Chess doesn't involve much manual skill. You could have two broken arms and two broken legs and play chess with your head. I kind of like the idea of reaction time and manual skill.
- When you get to a certain point, the game becomes kind of tedious to play. You're either completely decimating your opponents (facebook chess opponents are generally lower-skilled) or you're concentrating really really hard, and the game gives you nothing for your concentration except a draw, because you can't find the flaws of your opponent's defense.
- It's really quite frustrating to try your hardest, playing close to perfectly, and being unable to force a win because of a small oversight. If you play a perfect game in something like starcraft, you're guaranteed to have an advantage because a perfect game is such a hard thing to achieve. If you play a perfect game in chess, against a semi-skilled opponent the best you can hope for as white is a +0.53 positional advantage and equality as black.
- It's also frustrating when you lose a completely winning position because you make that same small oversight. But I guess that'll happen in all games, not just chess.
- It's quite hard to measure your improvement, as there isn't any concrete thing to show you how good you are. There are no online skill leagues, and grandmaster and master titles are just so hard to get because of the amount of tournaments you have to win to get the titles. You could have improved a ridiculous amount, then lose to a string of 2000-rated players who've just started playing blitz and are on their way up. And then you'd feel terrible.

Chess feels kind of like starcraft where both players have maximal control over their units and production and they can pause the game to assess the situation.

But on the bright side, I know I'm getting better. Loss after win after loss, and now I guess I can see everything on the board more easily. Suddenly knights have become a ring of 8 squares rather than actual pieces, and bishops have become the diagonals that they control. Rooks become the vertical lines that they are rather than just pieces.

Sometimes I can feel good, because I know that the Kings dude I lost to last time isn't half as good as the dude I just lost to. If I can play like that dude I lost to, I can win against the Kings dude.

On the non-bright side, I should stop playing chess and do work now.

---

Recently I've noticed quite a few people looking forward to university. I don't know what I think about this. Sometimes I feel like I never want to leave high school, but sometimes I can feel the uni-look-forward-to as well. Only briefly, though. I guess at the moment I don't really care about much.

I've been having a series of extremely weird dreams lately, one every single night/early morning (I think that's when you're meant to be getting dreams). But they make sense to me, because they're my dreams.

Hopefully I'll finish editing nanowrimo today.

Random exercise I thought up. Think of some people you know, and try to conjure up their faces in your mind and see how clearly defined it is. I seem to base my images of people's faces on random aspects - glasses shape, distinctive eyes/hairstyle, a memorable facial expression. A combination of all of them.

I can usually get everyone after a bit of effort, but one person's face refuses to come to me, no matter how hard I try.

Hey, guys.

2012-01-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

Warning: never ever ever drag and drop an image straight into the blogger editor, it will screw up your post forever. (Instead of storing the image on the blogger server and linking to it like a normal obedient blog editor, it decides to embed the entire image into the html of your blog post. Which means it takes forever and ever and ever for your blog post to publish, and even if it does publish your post is broken and you can't even see it)

Firstly, and most importantly (relative to the other stuff in this post), blog outing! And everyone who wants to come is invited! But I guess the name implies that you've made a blog post sometime in your life. So if you've made a blog post sometime in your life, come! (I'm serious, half of the blogosphere haven't posted for like >2 months)

Anyway, we're going to go somewhere and do some stuff. The ideas we have had suggested currently:
- Board games + go to someone's house
- Bike riding
- City outing (activities: karaoke, lasertag, etc)
- Beach

Current opinions:
Boardgames: +3.5
City outing: +1.5
Bikeriding: +1
Beach: -6
(No particular preference: +3)

Random other opinions:
- Not monopoly
- Not karaoke (+2)
- Somewhere close to southeast area
- Somewhere not obscure (+2)

Basically, board games seems to be the most popular option at the moment. So we're probably going to end up doing that. But it'll also be good if we can think up other ideas or other activities we can engage in at someone's house.

People who have offered their opinion, which I (mostly) take as interest in coming:
William
Aaron
Daniel Li
Mark
Renee
Harvard
Nara
JM
Crystal

People that have a blog but I haven't gotten an opinion from (I don't think this is a comprehensive list, please tell me anyone I've missed)
TJ
Eunice
Andy
Elisa
Brendan
Beatrice
Alysha
Michelle
Isabella
today's letter is w
Also if you want to come just comment in the thingy below or tell me. People with private blogs (i.e. idk who you are) are also welcome! It would also be nice if you could mention your activity preference and your suburb.

I drew a map of our living spread, and it's pretty awkward.

Actually, now that I go blog-stalking around, there appear to be a ridiculous amount of people that I've missed. And I don't think they'll end up reading this blog post. I think I'll go cry in a corner now. Actually, just please help me extend my invitation to everyone that has a blog. Extend the blogosphere!

---end of outing discussion, start of normal blogging---

I think you should write a blog post, and just write about whatever comes to your mind when you're writing it. Because it should be very enlightening (when you read it later) about your personal qualities. Reading my previous blog posts, I seem to be highly self-centred, introspective, someone who thinks about thinking a lot, still very self-centred, and self-righteous (trying to avoid this lately). I do talk primarily about myself in this blog. Perhaps I should talk about other people. Perhaps I should discuss events. Or maybe it's just a temporary thing caused by the influence of the holidays and seeing other people on a fortnightly basis.

The need to do work is quite pressing. I suppose you could draw a graph where the amount of stressing over work is inversely proportional to the amount of days left in the holidays.

I don't actually have that much to say. The holidays are largely uneventful. I don't know if I want to go back to school. I guess I do want to go back to school. Woo, school!

Compilation

2011-12-29T20:07:00.000-08:00

I was watching my sister play MapleStory. And I was remembering when I still played, and everyone was like "grats" when you levelled up. It was pretty hard to level up back then. But now they decreased experience limits or something. And no one congratulates you when you level up. Which I thought was pretty sad.

Yesterday I went running at like, 11:30 PM. I did it a lot before the exams, because I often felt that I needed to do exercise but it was already late. Anyway, the darkness used to be pretty scary. Darkness is scary. But for some reason I was like "actually, darkness is okay. Please be my friend." I think that's the name of a novel. I never liked John Marsden's cover art (hahaha I just typed "Jack Marsden" and was like "why can't I find anything in google"). And then I was like "it's okay, someone coming out to attack me at night is the least likely thing ever. get over yourself, davy." And then I felt pretty good, because the darkness felt friendly now. And then I observed the lamp posts and their light, and I liked the lampposts too, because they felt like my friends. And then I remembered JM's lamp story and was like "wow I appreciate that metaphor now."

It's hard to be friends with light and darkness at the same time. It always feels conflicted. I suppose it could be a symbolic representation of the difficulty of being objective. It's pretty hard not to take sides. It's pretty hard to be a good person.

And then I saw two people coming towards me and I realised my first thought wasn't that they were muggers out to get me. I don't actually remember what my first thought was, but my second thought was that my first thought wasn't immediately negative. Which was reassuring. Anyway, I'd never seen anyone out walking at 12pm before. I swear I could hear them judging me or whatever as they went past. I doubt they'd ever seen someone out running at 12pm, either. The woman made this funny noise as I went past, which I tried to decipher to no avail.

If you read this, start comment with r
I'm getting increasingly concerned about how much I eat and how much I'm supposed to eat. Because I'd never cared about how much I eat and I always ate as much I wanted to eat. And I always wonder what my body's telling me to do. Because on some days I eat relatively less in a meal and then if I go running or something I get tired really quickly and I worry that my body's telling me to eat more and it's struggling without the aid of food consumption. And then on some days I eat too much and I feel extremely fat and worry that my body's complaining because of all the digestion it has to do. And then I get a stitch if I eat before doing exercise. But I guess it'll be okay, because having fat but not excessive amounts of fat is good from a health perspective and I'll get hungry if I need more food. And not eating enough was never a problem in a first world country. Or something.

The secret messages are back!
I'm not sure if I'm glad of these holidays. On one hand, I'm glad of all the time that I have to do stuff that I wouldn't normally end up doing. But on the other hand I feel detached. I think I mentioned this before. Detached from everything around me. It makes me feel kinda hopeless.

After these holidays, I'll be glad to go back to school. Not to say I'll be glad of the end of the holidays, or that I don't like holidays, but I'll be glad to go back to school.

For Christmas I got two books from my sister - John Flanagan's Brotherband and George Martin's Game of Thrones. They're pretty good. I also got a christmas fluffy pen-thing. I haven't used it yet.

There are so many things I need to do, so many things I've done, and so many things I haven't even thought of doing. So many things I used to do a lot but have forgotten. Multitask, for instance. Forum-lurking. Watching online anime.

But I guess I shouldn't forget to look forward. The future awaits!

Also, editing nanowrimo, shall upload soon.

The holidays

2011-12-20T21:52:00.000-08:00

Today I looked in the mirror and I thought "my eyes look dull". And then I realised my eyes felt dull as well. My whole body felt dull. I felt dull.

I started this blog post without any particular topic in mind that I wanted to talk about, except maybe my dull-looking eyes. Perhaps I feel that the holidays are dull, despite the large amount of stuff that I've chosen to do.

I wonder if perhaps staying in a house all day and not talking to any people makes you dull. I guess I feel disconnected. Perhaps I am losing my sense of people as people. The world seems dull.

On another note (I like other notes), who's up for another blog outing?
Dandelion suggested someone's house for board games and house-y stuff.

Because my world felt so dull, I decided to make something happy, to brighten it up.

The red candle merrily greets the blue one. Be friendly!

The candles will be good friends. And yes, the wings are the same wing as on the banner on the top of this page. I remember when I used to do photoshop a lot. That was when I used tumblr. I remember that. I remember learning how to use the pen tool just so I could draw these wings. I like those candles. It feels like they're my friends, too. Not that my world feels very much brighter, despite the optimism of the candles.

Maybe I'm spending too long on the computer

Maybe I'm going slightly mad, haha.

I'd always liked anthropomorphist stuff. It's always been as if all the objects around me have feelings, too. I often worry that my possessions feel neglected if I don't use them. I wrote two anthropomorphist short stories in year 10 for my halfyearly and yearly exam. I got 14 and 13, despite how terrible they were. The first one was about a frog, the second was about a cat. I do not want to read them again.

But I guess it's doubtful that I'll ever write one of those again, with all the teachers heavily recommending against it and me sucking at writing them.

About a week ago I had a dream that I got my english essay back and it was 7/15. This week I dreamt that I got my english essay back and it was 13/15. I don't know what that says about me and my modes of thinking. I'm certainly no more optimistic than I was a week ago.

I'm going to finish editing my nanowrimo soon, and then I'll upload it. Reading over it again, I wonder how I could have written such terribleness. Although I've mostly only reread the parts that I completely rushed. I think it could end up under 50k after I finish editing.

My sister got 98.90. She's not happy, because she wanted 99. She also stateranked PD. I would be happy if I stateranked PD. And then she told me that I should get much higher than her because she didn't do that much work, especially in terms of maths (3u).

I'll do some schoolwork, after I finish my google code-in task for SymPy (I have to document an anomaly in the library) and finish making the database program my dad wants me to do for his company.

I have a feeling the holidays are going to pass pretty fast. I'm glad of that. I want to go back to school. I'm looking forward to everything, from the year 12 camp to the composition of the biology class to waking up early for extension 2 maths.

If you haven't heard, my bio class is merging with the other bio class in our line. I don't know why. But before I heard about it one day I was wondering what would happen if the bio classes merged somehow and I was imagining seating arrangements and there was me in my seat and this person on the opposite table to the left. And then I was like "lol, as if that's going to happen". So when I heard about the merge I was like "WHAT THE ALSKDJIDOAWJDIOJ" and it felt a bit like a dream.

Do you like your dreams?

City/karaoke on thursday. I find myself practising singing a lot lately, using a pc-singstar program called ultrastar dx. It's quite fun. My sister usually beats me, though. I can only win with luck or on the songs I know better, like Aladdin's part of A Whole New World, Hero (Skillet), Just A Dream (Tsui version), or songs that are better suited to male vocals, such as I'll Make a Man Out of You, Comatose (I'm still unsure how I should pronounce it. comb-a-tose or corm-a-tose?), and Dynamite (suitability debatable in the high parts).

I still suck at I'm Yours and Soul Sister (to a lesser degree).

I guess I should go back to sympy. Only ~17 hours left to finish it and I'll spend much of those 17 hours sleeping. Apparently I have to "document why unpickling a singleton doesn't return the singleton object with protocol 0 and 1". If you don't know what that is, great, I have no idea either. Apparently the singleton is pi and when the protocol is wrong cos(pi)=cos(pi) when it should be cos(pi)=-1. Something like that. Perhaps IT is not the best career choice for me.

Integrity

2011-11-15T21:48:00.001-08:00

So I was reading a tumblr post that said "Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching." And I thought this was interesting. An interesting idea.

Awhile ago, I saw a person throw an apple core away except he missed the bin. Someone was like "dude go pick it up", and he's like "I'll do it later", despite the fact that it was obvious he wouldn't. At this moment I was considering the potential consequence of picking it up myself before Harvard beat me to it.

I was surprised. I thought, "integrity!". He didn't know that I was watching him and the apple core.

So next time when the bin was missed, driven by Harvard's own lack of inhibitions, I went to do the same thing as him. Except this time the core rolled pretty far next to this little person (I find it hard to differentiate between junior grades) and they, driven by some incomprehensible primal impulse, stepped on it until it broke into pieces. Anyway, at that point it wasn't as if I could go back and leave the mashed-up apple there or anything, so I went to pick it up anyway. And the kid looked at me like I was weird. But I didn't really expect anything else. Perhaps I have low expectations of people. Maybe that's why nice people make me so happy.

Next time you see a bit of rubbish on the ground, and you're on the way to the bin, pick it up! You can contribute to the cleanliness of the school. And you never know what younger kid might be watching and they'd be influenced by your example and everything would lead to a clean school.

Or maybe the consensus is that it doesn't matter because the cleaners will clean everything up anyway. If it is, then I think it's a retarded consensus.

This mini-rant leads me onto my next mini-rant. I guess they're not really rants. They're more like...philosophical reflections of internal and external phenomena.

What I was going to say is that you shouldn't be angry at people. I guess disliking someone or something someone does it out of your control, but I believe it is always good to make people happy, whoever they are. Because happiness makes happiness. I like being someone that can make other people happier, don't you? Even if you don't, it's important to realise that everyone is human. You could have been any of the people around you.

So instead of feeling a sense of annoyance at the person who refuses to pick that apple core up, or feeling angry at that person who didn't contribute a secret santa present because they couldn't be bothered, try to understand what they feel. Empathise. Because you can't judge someone's actions as bad before you even try to understand their motivations, their aspirations. I think people like Harvard or Eunice have good empathy. Reading their blogs, I've noticed a strict lack of judgemental statements and general negativity towards other people. Which is pretty cool! At least cooler than my irritated rants.

And this applies to wider everything too. Take all the hate directed towards politicians, without comprehension of their situation or their circumstances. Because if you don't know what they're doing and how they're doing it, you shouldn't have any right to judge them negatively. Because if you haven't even talked to them before, if you take everything from subjective media representations, you only create unneeded discord.

But yet, never forget that the people who judge others as mentioned in the previous paragraph aren't bad people either. I can understand their words and thoughts perfectly, I've often made such hasty comments without thought. They are just the same as you or me. But what if you can show one of those people their own lack of knowledge? What if you can argue with them without a trace of prejudice or judgement, and nicely convince them that it would be better to make less hasty judgements?

Then you are doing good, because you're reducing the conflict and general annoyance throughout the world.

Maybe you'll tell me I'm crazy, maybe you'll tell me I'm mad to think I can reduce the anger in the world by any amount. And I don't care. Perhaps you would give me percentages, tell me that if I worked for my whole life towards this cause, I'd change barely 0.001% of the world's population. And I'll simply reaffirm my lack of care. Because when it comes down to your own heart, your own purpose, numbers don't matter anymore. Do you think you really know the difference between 1 million and 10 million people? I know that I don't. My mind has no clue how many people 1 million is. Because when it comes down to my purpose, there are no numbers.

There is just hope.

Goodwill!

Posting BB article if you wanted to read it again:

Different High Schools

Have you ever stopped to consider the qualities aboutour school that we take for granted? I bet you just did. I transferred to thisschool in this year (Year 11). As a person that has been to an exclusive,private, single-sex boys’ school (the most expensive school in Sydney,$22,000/year last time I checked) located in a super-metropolitan suburb with atrain station barely 200m from the school and an exclusive, selective, co-edschool located in a semi-suburbia where trains do not even reach, I feel as ifI should be able to present a valid judgement on the unique characteristics ofthe two schools. I shall put them into a list format to make them easier foryou to read.

1. Disciplineand strictness. You think Dr. Bathgate complains too much about our uniformstandard? Imagine prefects being put on roster at the front gate of the schoolgiving detentions to people whose compulsory straw hats are not being wornparallel to the ground. To give you an idea of what it’s like in a privateschools:

a. Instantdetentions upon being late to class

b. Compulsoryties and blazers all year around

c. Compulsoryhats worn during recesses and lunches

d. Uniformmust be perfect at all times, even outside of school. Shoes must be polished,belt must be a school belt, and bag must be a school bag. Compulsory straw hatscalled boaters costing $50 each.

e. Saturdaydetention upon mobile phone ringing in class

The list could go on and on.

2. Teachers.When I was in year 8 (in the private school) I distinctly recall having a maleteacher for Maths, English, Science, History, PDHPE, Music, Design/Technology,Visual Art, and Latin. In other words, every single one of my subjects. When Istarted here in year 11, I had a female teacher for Maths, English, EnglishExtension, Physics, Biology, and Ancient History. In other words, every singleone of my subjects. Unfortunately (or fortunately) this year I picked up 4-unitmaths which means I now have one male teacher (shoutout Mr. Simmons!) (I alsopicked up 4u English and History extension which means I have 3 more femaleteachers as well).

But I’ve heard a lot of people cite the teachers of private schools as a reasonto send their children to them. And this is logical. If teachers are paidhigher in private schools, it follows that they should be better. However, Idisagree with this. I’ve seen good and bad teachers at both schools, in myexperience there is no correlation. However, I must also put this down to thestudents. A teacher will find it infinitely harder to teach when s/he needs toconsistently tell the class to be quiet, and engaging teachers are simply rare.At my old school I had one brilliant Maths teacher, one brilliant Frenchteacher, and three terrible English teachers. There is simply no consistency.

3. Girls. Of course, I’m unable to comment onsingle-sex schools in general, since I’ve obviously never been to a single-sexgirls’ school, but I think this is a massive consideration.

To consider this from a comprehensive perspective, the reason most schools aresingle-sex is because it’s traditional. In some countries it’s even religious.If you accept the main arguments put forward by advocates and opponents ofsingle-sex education, the advantages of single-sex education lie mainly in distractionsof sexual attraction post-puberty and that boys and girls require differentmethods of education and the disadvantages lie in decreased social skills andthe generation of sexist attitudes.

Well, guess what? I understand none of this at all. Well, except maybe thesexist attitudes. From my view, all the above arguments are complete twaddle(except, as I’ve said, possibly the sexist attitudes), and all the universitytheses are being retarded. I’m not sure exactly how much of it I can attributeto the school, but I can mention some things that I suspect are due to lack orpresence of girls.

a. AsI previously mentioned, sexism. While I’ve believe that many pubescent malesand post-pubescent males are sexist regardless of school, I must mention that alack of contact with girls likely causes boys to more often objectify femalesand consider them more as sexual receptacles than as similar people. If youwere to hear the late-night camp discussions of single-sex school boys, youwould imagine that their idea of a girl was a collection of body parts ratherthan a human. Of course, there’s some male sexism in this school as well, butit’s not nearly as prominent. I think contact with females helps teenage boysdeal with girls as people.

b. Oncemy French teacher (the brilliant one) said that the boys in the class would bea lot nicer and less generally annoying if there were girls in the class. Isuspect that it is indeed, true. I remember one particular ridiculous incidentthat would be censored if I put it here. Nevertheless, the reasoning behindthis claim is that the guys would get cut down by the girls when they did meanthings to them or each other. And that reasoning sounds quite valid to me. Butmore on how nice people are later.

c. Focus.It is also logical and probably inevitable that boys will concentrate more onthe opposite gender when in a school with more than a third of the people therebeing that opposite gender. At the point you might say “But Davy! You just toldme that that argument was complete rubbish! You lied to me!” But no, I say, Iam still arguing that that argument is rubbish. While from my own experience, Iprobably do think about girl(s) more, it’s hardly a hindrance to my schoolwork. I suppose heartbreak and love problemscan have an effect, but it’s only temporary and counterbalanced by anassociated increase in motivation and competitiveness.

4. Eventsand Activities. Do you believe that we don’t have enough mufti days? Well,imagine having no mufti days at all, for every single one of the ~200 days ofthe school year. Something I havepreviously thought about is the role of the prefects. In this school theprefects run interesting and fun activities for everyone and make life better,basically. High Resolves, the SRC, prefects, everything! But I think privateschools lack the idea of “fun”. There was nothing to make my schooling lifebetter each day, it was the monotony of class day in, day out. No one everbothered to organise events for Christmas, for Halloween, for Easter. There wasno one to look out for how happy the students were besides a lone schoolcouncillor who I got sent to once for practising alliteration of D-words in mydiary (i.e. death, destruction, disease, despair, the list ended up being about60 words long). And so my schooling life became focused around achievement, andI got my fun from sitting in front of a computer screen playing games all day.The lack of fun made school such a restricting place, a place where you simplycannot relax.

5. Thepeople. I left the main one to last, as it is interlinked with all the others. Itsimportance is supreme. A school is, at its very foundations, made up by thestudents that attend it. I believe everything above: the rules, the teachers,the events are all just secondary(see what I did there?). It’s difficult to consider all the people I know atonce (try doing it. It’s actually pretty hard) but my conclusion is that littleminority of people who bother to go out and be friendly to that new kid lookinga bit lost (shoutout to those people, you know who you are) revitalise theschool entirely.

And the more I think about it, the more I realise that the people in the schoolare everything to it. Year 8 camp would have been awesome and not a hell oflost items and endless hiking if the less nice people in my group had beenreplaced by some from this school. I would have struggled through theridiculously long hikes and stuff with a joyful spirit. I shall paraphrase acertain person here, who told me that everything’s fun when you’re with yourfriends. Never a truer statement. I like this school. I look forward to goingto school, but only because there are nice people here.

Perhaps you still fail to understand the absolutely massive magnitude of theimportance of the people in the school to how much you like it. Imagine youcame to school and it was just you. You’d solo all your classes, you’d eatrecess and lunch alone, and you’d be the only person on the bus home. Well,that’s what happens if you don’t feel a sense of *ahem* belonging with the otherpeople in the school. That’s what happens when you don’t have marvellously nicepeople in the school. I mean, when a new kid came to our school one day andcame to all our classes I’m pretty sure no-one said a single word to him atall. No one asked what school he came from, no one asked him if he liked theschool until the teacher deigned to at the end of the history lesson.

Andthere are so many nice people in this school. It might be something to do withthe beneficial presence of both genders, I don’t know, but there is somethingabout this school where suddenly so many people are nice to me, giving me afriendly wave or hello. I thought about this one for a long while, andconcluded that nice people generate nice people. Seeing other people beingfriendly encourages you to be friendly, because being friendly is the thing todo at this school. If everyone around you is in their own little circle offriends, you’re going to either feel left out or you’re going to join your owncircle of friends and that other dude who doesn’t know anyone is going to besad.

Ican’t help you understand what private school boys are like. It’s hard tounderstand a group of people, because unless you want to overgeneralise you’regoing to have to simultaneously understand each and every person in that groupand then understand them all together. And I doubt even Jason Ma couldsimultaneously comprehend many thousands of people at the same time. Therefore,I shall firstly inform you that the popular “stuck-up” image of private schoolpeople that I seem to be getting from some people’s understandings ismisguided. I shall paint an image for you of the typical private school boy. Heisn’t stuck up, he simply takes money and monetary security for granted, asmany of you might. Because he only knows similar people - that is, rich,European-descended, upper-class sex-driven teenage boys, he misconceives girls,poorer people, Asians, academically talented people and the other generalminorities such as homosexuals, physically or mentally disabled people, etc. He isn’t a nice person thatwill stop to help someone else who has dropped their books. He’s a normalperson, a normal person influenced by the restrictions of his school.

Butof course, I am doing exactly the thing I thought I was meant to avoid, and Iam overgeneralising people. There are nice people in private schools too, Iguess it’s just the atmosphere of this specific school that allows the peopleto be nicer, more accepting, and more friendly towards each other. I sense thatthe people of this school are simply more willing to be friends with me.

Or maybe, as somepeople have suggested to me, it’s just my grade that’s nice and all the year 7sand year 8s are immature freaks that fell out of the sky after they decided tojump out of an airplane for fun (I hope you realised that that was a joke).Obviously I choose not to believe that.

To conclude I believe I shall give my opinion about the two schools andthen about private/non-selective/single-sex schools in general as opposed topublic/selective/co-ed. As you can probably tell from the overarching tone ofthis article, I really like this school and believe single-sex expensive private schools are evil devil’sspawn from the deepest ocean trench imaginable, but I will attempt to presentan objective, un-biased judgement of the schools.

About my old school. I felt not a trace of sadness when I left it. Iwaved goodbye to the school name (which I’m not mentioning for obvious reasons)above the main gate and felt not a trace of regret at leaving the place despiteits familiarity. But I have the feeling that leaving this school, I will beseriously sad. Incredibly, devastatingly, mind-numbingly sad. Because the yourfriends and nice people are the ones most important to you. Because for thefirst time since primary school, I was happy going to school. Isn’t that funny?This school inspires me.

And you know what? I was kidding about the objective judgement aboutschools. I’m going to tell you private schools are completely terrible AND ONLYSEND YOUR CHILDREN TO THEM IF YOU WANT THEM TO DIE A TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DEATH INTHE DEPTHS OF THE HELL FROM WHICH THOSE PRIVATE SCHOOLS SPAWNED!

I’m glad I’m here. Go Baulko!

By Davy Jones, Year 12

I guess it's time to fix my NaNoWriMo so I can upload it in a semi-okay state, and prepare my Viva Voce and do stuff that I've written that I would do on my little to-do sheet.

Today I wandered around Parramatta shopping centre for a long time. I never realised it was so big. I also never realised that the information terminals were for information. I wandered around for a long time. I think I like shopping more when I'm wandering around, questing for my next objective. Questing is exciting.

H

2011-11-11T18:14:00.001-08:00

I was going to title the post "Hope" except then I decided it looked weird and semi-clichéd and also I think I've already had a post titled "Hope".

I could make a list of things I need to do. That list would be extremely long. But it'd probably be pretty boring to you.

I have to keep myself from slipping into that dreary finality-containing tone that I used to use.

I've been typing a lot lately. Typing tests, typing races, typing speed. I don't know why, but it's sort of fun, I guess. Maybe because I've found websites that allow you to compete against other people. And then I can practise typing fast, which I think is making me faster.

The funny thing is, I can remember almost all the events that improved my typing speed.

I remember when I was about 10 or so, and then my dad got this really old program. It was called "Typing Tutor IV". It's a really really really old DOS program that attempts to help you improve your typing. I think that was when I started typing. Typing using three or four fingers, I believe. And my typing speed hovered around 5-15 WPM. And I really sucked at typing. But then I got better and could get 20 WPM occasionally. In primary school we did some typing, and my typing just naturally increased to speed of about 30-40 WPM. I guess at low typing speeds you don't need to actually try that hard to increase your speed because at that stage it's just finding the keys on the keyboard. When I got to highschool we had this ICT class in year 7 where typing was one of the courses. I learned to touch-type in year 7. At the end of the course 60 wpm was around the best I could do. I had a friend who could occasionally reach 90-100 WPM back then, which irritated me slightly because it was so high. I think I'm a bit faster than him now, though. And because of all the computer assignments and essays that I wrote in 7-10, my typing speed ended up rising to about 75, which I thought was pretty good.

Then at the end of year 10 I started using ridiculous amounts of msn to talk to people, and acquired an extreme adversion to typos. Which brought my speed pretty high, like 100-110 or so. I think that was the major typing speed increase.

And then one day Renee linked the typing speed thing on her blog with 500 points. And then I felt challenged, because I'm a challenged person. Challenged person? Anyway, I ended up doing ridiculous amounts of typing, and realised the massive impact typos actually have on your typing speed. And then I ended up doing typing sessions a lot, which probably took a lot of time from my schoolwork. But still, it was worth it, as a few months' practice has given me ~135 (125-145) WPM now.

I'm going to talk about my competitiveness. I become competitive about a lot of things, which usually do not include exam marks because I don't put that much effort into them. When I compete with another person, they seem to become a personal opponent to me and idk, they're just an enemy to defeat. It's the same in all competitions, in chess games, in crane-folding competitions, in typing speed competitions, even in shoelace-tying competitions I guess. Sometimes it's hard for me to recognise other people's achievements because of that.

I was out running yesterday and I was thinking that coming to this school has changed me in two major ways: firstly it has made me (slightly) less self-centred and secondly it has made me much more inspired. I was thinking of all the things that I wouldn't have done if I didn't come to this school.

- I would still be terrible at chess.
- I would still have a typing speed around 100 wpm.
- I would still be chasing after empty dreams on the wind.
- I would still be an unsocial reject, disliking all the people around me and being annoyed by their actions daily. I'd still dislike coming to school.
- I'd have done a lot less running, and would be much less fit.
- I wouldn't have had the confidence to pick up extension english (something I do not regret in the least, I like the genre of autobiography because I've done so much of it already in blogging and diary writing. Did you know that a personal blog is considered life writing?) or pick up extension 2 english or extension history.
- I'd still be, admittedly, a bit scared of girls.
- I'd still be unconfident walking around school.
- I wouldn't have started NaNoWriMo.
- I would be losing my motivation to do maths.
- I would probably have a terrible english teacher.

I could go on forever and forever about this. Renee told me that I have a very "romanticized [sic]" view of the school. I guess I do. I inevitably end up ranting about why this school is good and how the people in it are good. Or maybe it's just now. I remember a period awhile ago when I felt really sad and for an instant of doubt in my romanticism. But I'm happy now.

I guess humans have a naturally positive attitude towards things that make them happy, whether those things are good for them or not.

Stuff Vol. II

2011-11-07T03:51:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a long time. I could spend a lot of the time that I'd normally spend doing unproductive stuff writing blog posts.

Alright.

Today I was doing the typing test again, and then my dad came and he was like "why are you wasting your time doing this stuff? you're not going to become an accountant or anything". And mentally I was just contemplating this and remembered that I do this because it's fun.

If you like doing something, then you should do it. Of course you need to earn money and stuff, and if you have no money you'll have no time to do stuff you like doing because you'll be too busy earning money, but if you have a proper hobby, a skill you want to train, then it's really good. But I think doing stuff actively is better than doing it inactively. I.e. playing chess is better than watching television even though you like watching television more, because you're actually thinking when you're playing chess and when you're watching television your brain is doing practically nothing. At least that's what I remember of the little television that I used to watch.

And of course, this makes no logical sense. Why is being mentally or physically active so much better than being mentally and physically inactive?

I thought about this for a while, and concluded it was because being inactive requires no effort. There is no measure of how good you are at watching television. There is no measure of how good you are at smoking either, now that I think of it. Before I mentioned that it is human nature to seek happiness. But pleasure for the sake of pleasure seems empty

I wonder at the sense of satisfaction that we receive at performing different activities. Why is it that we are made happy only for a short while at skilfully winning a chess game? Why does our happiness last longer when we complete an assessment task with confidence and receive a good mark? When we are productive for a whole day and complete much work?. Because we are happier when we do something productive that isn't empty, that isn't happiness for the sake of happiness?

So why is it that someone coming up to talk to you can cast a radiant undispellable glow on your entire weekend that persists despite all events that occur and casts everything into an optimistic light?

But of course without contextual details as to what I'm actually talking about you probably don't understand what I'm trying to convince you. Or maybe I'm trying to convince myself, as clichéd as that sounds.

Maybe we just don't understand happiness.

Maybe it's better that way.

--

The most recent paragraph in my NaNoWriMo (it's not too late to start!):

"Oh, me? This shop is just an apothecary. I make my living from selling medicines and herbs to people who need them. But now that I have all this extra money, I can afford to give away some of them without charge."
Sprint knew this to be untrue. She had been giving away medicines for free long before he had made his first visit to the clean, orderly shop.
The footsteps were coming even closer now and he realised he had not been paying attention. They were approaching the door to the shop now. Spring quelled his initial surge of panic with a breath, as he had done many times before. Panic would not help him now. But something else would, he was sure. He spun around, scanning the various items of furniture.

I'm sorry for the repeated posts on your dash

2011-10-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

But my blog is broken or something

Fastfingers speedtest has a new website! (note: login if you're aiming for a scoreboard highscore so it gets saved and you don't lose it.)

Pictures deleted because they screw up my post.

I found myself smiling randomly at gradelove posts, as I seem to have a habit of doing. I mean, actual smiling, not formspring smiling. Aimless smiling.

Since I am happy, I shall write about optimism.

When you think of something well it seems to throw a bright glow on it that will radiate into your brain and make everything seem perfect and good. It also works the other way, if you think pessimistically about something you have to do you won't like it at all.

Hey guys, NaNoWriMo starts in TWO DAYS even though I don't think anyone else wants to join me.

An interesting website I found:

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://icedtrees.blogspot.com is written by someone 18-25 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://twastheblurstoftimes.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://trustgravity.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://thelastthingtodo.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 26-35 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://tendercrysbeachicken.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://haveyoumetharvard.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://sunlitmemories.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://mokonasakaidono.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://yabbiesandlobsters.blogspot.com is written by someone 13-17 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://average-adayinthelifeofme.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 18-25 years old.

The AgeAnalyzer thinks http://photograph---snap.blogspot.com/ is written by someone 13-17 years old.

I actually don't have that much to say. I guess I'll just post this.