Stapler of Pi

I had to print a large manual at work today but when I went to the giant stapler, I found that it was out of staples and no one had bothered to reload it. Typical, I thought as I reloaded the stapler with its frighteningly large cartridge of giant staples. As usual, I punched out a couple of staples to release any clogs and also to align the cartridge. Lo and behold, when there's no paper, the stapler punches out Pi-shaped staples! It was a tiny thing and a geeky one at that, but it gave the rest of my day a little sparkle.

My Condition has resulted in me viewing the world quite differently these days. It might also be that I'm (finally, at long last!) fitting into a life role that I'm comfortable with. Regardless, when I was a child, little things delighted me, for the world was but a playground of discovery. I remember reading about an article in Reader's Digest a long time ago that if you cut an apple the "wrong" way (i.e. along the "equator" of the apple), the cross-section of core looks like a star. Yes, I did try it out and it's true! Somewhere along the way whilst growing up, I've lost a lot of my sense of wonder. It's been replaced by concepts like Duty, Honour and other such adult values.

I think it's a shame.

Maybe I wouldn't have had the major successes I've had in my career if I didn't pay homage to Ambition. Perhaps I wouldn't be where I am now if I didn't have the Drive to succeed. Don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying that these values are wrong. Far from it - being an adult means being Responsible and those values I've mentioned are important if you want to survive in this world. No, where I went wrong was in having these values drown out my sense of Wonder and other feelings of amazement that I used to have when I was a child. Being well-educated can be a curse sometimes - you start to understand (or think you understand) the world to the point that miracles seem ordinary. If you don't believe me, just look up at the giant tubes of winged steel flitting across our skies and ask yourself if it evokes any amazement anymore.

This is a timely reminder for me personally. I'm engaged in volunteer work locally as a guest scientist in schools. My original intent was to go and teach them about the subject matter. Now, I think a better path is to nurture their sense of wonder by feeding their need for comprehension. There is no better place to start than with my own kids. Now, where did I put the parts for that tabletop plasma accelerator I had...

Age

I've been feeling deathly tired for the last few months. Not weary tired but exhausted tired - I'm starting to fall asleep standing up, literally. I'm needing a lot more sleep these days. Granted, it's been a very stressful few months but I've never been as exhausted as frequently or as long as this before.

I'm also finding that practically everyone I meet at work or socially is either around my age or younger. I'm also taking stock of my friends, most of which have either moved away or I have moved away from over the years. The family of a very close friend is moving away to the coast soon, a family I've known for almost (gasp!) two decades.

Hobbies with excitement don't really interest me anymore. Between a thrilling movie or a quiet book, I'd take the book any day. In about a decade, I'll be seeing some of my friends become grandparents.

I think I'm getting old.

Drat.

Genetically, I've already lived over half my lifespan, if my relatives and father's age at passing is any indicator. I've already had my (first?) midlife crisis - instead of the usual flamboyant stuff, I splurged on...a research-grade telescope. Yep, not only am I old, I'm boring too. *sigh*

Looks like I'd better tuck some cash away for a good facelift in a decade or so.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

If you know me well, you've probably heard the phrase "...able to look yourself in the mirror in the morning" at some point in our conversations. I've always meant it as being able to face the consequences of your choices. I can honestly say that I *can* look myself in the mirror. It doesn't mean that I've never made bad choices, far from it. But where I've made a mistake, I've tried to correct them if possible. I once walked away from a quarter-million dollar job because I wanted no part of the unethical way the company was treating the employees. It hurt me financially and I could have been able to semi-retire by now if I had chosen to stay on. But it would have cost me my soul and no amount of money is worth that.

Recently, I've been rebuilding my wardrobe from scratch. You know what? Between the effects of the Treatment and the new wardrobe,I *like* what I see in the mirror now. My sis teases me that I preen quite a bit these days, which isn't something I'm contrite about at all. Which is where the whole mirror-alternate-meaning thing comes in. I've always been able to look myself in the mirror morally and ethically but I've never been able to just *look* myself in the mirror. Some of you may have difficulty wrapping your mind around this and if so, be thankful that you're not afflicted by the Condition.

It's a small, tiny fragment of peace and happiness, of comfort and familiarity that most people take for granted but which I have never known - I have it now and I am not letting it go.

Oh yeah - a small tip for my regular readers: large polka dots are generally a big unsalvageable fashion mistake.

Throwing away the map

I haven't blogged in a while mostly because I'm still trying to find my equilibrium. I have been having either bad days or boring days lately, no good days. That changed in the past week, when my spouse and I attempted a rapprochement of sorts. I think we still have a very long way to go - I honestly believed we had "turned the corner" a couple of weeks back but it was not to be. *sigh*

Having said that, my sis, who is very much in the thick of things at our home, took me out for a great dinner on Friday night. The kids were off at a slumber party, so we had the night off. I chose to try the tasting menu at a local oyster restaurant called Catch. It was by far the most expensive dinner either of us had ever had but ohmygoodness the food was divine! I think this was truly the first time either of us had had great cuisine excepting maybe that roast duck in Paris. Sis, if you're reading this - *THANK YOU*. I'd like to take my sis (maybe the kids too) on a culinary tour of either Europe or Asia if I ever have the opportunity and means.

I've been thinking a lot about what I'm doing and where I'm going. I think part of what I'm going through right now is defining happiness for perhaps the first time. I am still unhappy and I have always been unhappy for as long as I can remember. The difference now is that I'm significantly less unhappy. I think I'm approaching this with a two-pronged approach - the first is to act on the things that make me happy (like going for social gaming, cooking for my family, spending quality time with my sis, etc.) and the other is to question the things that make me unhappy as to whether it's valid or not. The first part is going well. The second part is extremely painful right now because it has caused some really major arguments in our home recently since what is being discussed are now matters near and dear to my heart where there is little wiggle room. However, I didn't come this far dealing with my Condtion to not be authentic; if it *really* bugs me, then I'm going to deal with it. I think we're making progress but I fear my relationship will die before we clear the air. :(

Since I was a small child, I've had a clear vision as to what my future was supposed to be. I don't anymore and it scares me. The person that I was 2 years ago would be freaking out about that. Me, I'm choosing not to think of it as being lost but rather being *unbound*, free to go wherever I wish. Yes, given my navigation skills I might just fall off the edge of the Earth, but it'll be an adventure! Likewise, despite the strife and heartbreak in our household, I'm choosing to remember the good times like that beautiful dinner my sis and I had. Our familial life is not all bleak and argumentative; as long as we can still have good moments like this, we still have hope.

There is still a long way for me to go but I know I'm on the right track because these days, even when darkness surrounds me I still find hope.

Childlike discoveries

As I was mentioning to my sis tonight, the rebuilding of my social life is going reasonably well. I've probably met more people in the past two months than I have in the past two years. Aside from work and professional circles, all the new folks I've met have two common threads:

1. Apparently, I'm quite nice but am a rather strange person
2. None of them are buying that I'm all "Sweetness and Light" (more on that later!)

*sigh* Rebuilding one's life is a trial sometimes. On that note, I was deathly tired last night and I tend to babble about physics or math when I get that way. I ended up completely confusing her with talk about M-theory and lower dimensional shearing. Overnight, the babbling serendipitously worked its way through my overtired mind into a method of fixing misaligned 2-ply toilet paper (don't ask). It's rather simple:

1. Ensure that the roll rolls out from the top, i.e. it dispense squares from the top, towards you
2. Since the two plys are already separated (misaligned), take just the top ply and gently flip it backwards (i.e. down through the "hole" between the roll itself and whatever wall/cabinet the roll holder is attached to).
3. Follow the bottom ply until you see the section where both plys are aligned. Tear off the misaligned plys + the first completely aligned square.

Of course, a simple Google search will reveal that other people have figured this out ages ago. My life is rife with disappointments like this - as a child, I had been rather proud of my perpetual motion machine that I had planned out on paper years before and saw it all crumble before my eyes upon learning the first law of thermodynamics for the first time. Or that time when I managed to figure out wireframe vector graphics via matrix transformations from first principles (wow, trigonometry actually had a use). Unfortunately, being just a callow child at the time, I had no idea what "rounding errors" were and watched in dismay as any object modelled on my computer shrank into nothingness after several rotations - I didn't figure out why until first year computer science in university.

I have been obliviously treading down a path that many others have already come and gone. Still, I feel a warmth and pride that I managed to work it out by myself from first principles. This isn't about bragging or patting oneself on the back though - childlike discoveries aren't common after we grow up and I'm *savouring* these moments of wonder when I encounter them. In the big picture, I guess what matters is that we all as a species continue to progress in our collective understanding. It doesn't take much to do good; we only needed one Isaac Newton (+ one apple) to have the math to touch the sky, one Alexander Fleming (+ some mould) to save countless lives. I do not count myself anywhere close to these giants - heck, I'm relearning trig just so I can make a perfect giant chocolate icosahedron (a d20 die) to bring along for my D&D group to eat. How totally useless and non-Earth shattering is that? :)

So why blog about something mundane like this? Well, let me ask a question: how many times have you had some great idea (or what you thought was great) but never pursued? Please note that ideas generated while drunk don't count! :) Seriously though, I suspect that those who make great discoveries do so not solely by dint of great effort but also by ruthlessly pursuing every path of inquiry they have, panning for that one single nugget of truth that will change the world. I remember flipping through a book that my sis has that showed the pages of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. It had beautiful sketches of fantastic machines of which only the tinest fraction were ever built and fewer still actually worked. Regardless, it's not the success or failure that counted, it's the *idea*. Da Vinci drew plans for an ornithopter that never worked but years later, the idea inspired people to build working helicopters. We are in an age of information overload and the low-hanging fruit, the "easy" discoveries are mostly gone. We are in an era where discoveries are so hard that it takes the joint effort of many to succeed. I, for one, am going to keep a tiny notebook by me as much as possible to collect these transient ideas for further investigation and I respectfully suggest that you may want to consider it too. Realistically, not everyone can be a Newton or Einstein and I have zero expectation I shall either. But if I can contribute just a tiny little bit to the betterment of all, then I shall have done good and in my opinion, it would have been worth it. Wouldn't we all benefit from finally jointly solving the mystery of missing socks in the laundry? ;)

After all that, I still maintain that it's very personally gratifying to discover something by oneself even if it's by accident and even if it's trivial. Is it vanity? Or stubbornness? I honestly don't know.

But I'm beginning to suspect that there may be some truth to the allegations that I'm strange.

The company we keep

I am really enjoying my D&D sessions twice a month. I have a pair of wonderful DMs and a good core group in my campaign. It's elicited quite a few good laughs with comments ranging from "Yay! He *finally* figured out which end is the sharp end!" (when one of the players manage to score a hit after an unusually long stint of misses) to "Uh Mom, can't talk gotta run I'm killing zombies now, bye!" (when one of the teenagers got interrupted by a phone call from his Mom mid-swing at a zombie). Ah...good times. :)

I've wanted to write this posting for some time now and what eventually motivated me to finally do so was because a good friend from my support group was asking if D&D players were people I really want to be keeping company with. Let's face it, I'm middle-aged and is it really "appropriate" for middle-aged folks to associate with a stigmatized group of guys who are apparently still living with their parents?

I gave it some thought. For all of 2 seconds. The answer is Yes.

I go to D&D to play, to have fun. Yes, we're a misunderstood group and get laughed at a lot. But you know what? My fondest memories of my university days was when my friends and I gathered together to play Magic: the Gathering in MacHall. My Condition has forced me to restart some aspects of my life from pretty much the beginning and I could definitely view it negatively that way. However, my oldest and very dear friend calls it an "opportunity for complete reinvention of self" which I think is a *beautiful* way of looking at it. So I am. Another dear, dear friend who won't hazard a trip to the Frozen North was kind enough to send me some words of encouragement some time back and he quoted, "we don't grow and stop playing games, we stop playing games and grow old". He's absolutely right. To get off-topic and mushy here, I am truly blessed to have a such a group of wonderful friends standing by me through these trying times. You know who you are - thank you (and yes, I mean you too, sis!)

If having good times at D&D means that I get teased, taunted or looked down upon because I still play games in my middle age, then so be it. Certain unkind people may laugh but I will have new fond memories of good times and happiness like that is rarer than astatine. And if you laugh within earshot of me, don't be surprised if a new very heavy dice bag filled with pointy dice comes hurtling unerringly at your head in a flattened parabolic arc. Remember, I'm an overachiever; I don't just roll a d20 to sling a rock in D&D, I also know the math behind its trajectory too. You have been warned. :)